From National Geographic: Puppets Help Raise Africa's Abandoned Hornbill Chicks.

Researchers hoping to increase the breeding rate of southern Africa's increasingly rare ground hornbill have taken to feeding abandoned chicks with puppets disguised as the birds' parents.

The faux foster mother may seem real to the ground hornbill chick. But inside the puppet head is a human hand trying to save the chick and its species from sliding to extinction.

Ground hornbills lay up to three eggs at a time, but they feed only one chick. Conservationists collect remaining hatchlings that are otherwise left to starve and hand-feed them. [continue]

From National Geographic: Paper Wasps Beg Their Young for a Saliva Snack.

Parents across the globe usually take their role as providers very seriously. But in an unusual role reversal, paper wasp queens beg their young for a meal.

When they get peckish, the queens wag their abdomens across their nests, creating vibrations that "ask" for a nutritious saliva snack.

"She does it when she's hungry, not when the larvae are hungry. So the adult is begging for food back from the larvae," said Bernard Brennan, the postdoctoral researcher at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who made the discovery.

Paper wasps (Polistes dominulus) are among the best studied insects in the world. But the reason for the queens' wagging behavior remained a mystery until Brennan started researching it as a graduate student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. [continue]

From discovery.com: Bird Woos with Violin-Like Feathers.

Males can do the most amazing things to impress females — at least if they are male club-winged manakins.

The colorful, sparrow-sized South American birds serenade females with violin-like hums that are produced by vibrating their wings more than 100 times a second, according to Kimberly Bostwick of Cornell University and colleague Richard Prum of Yale University.

Common in insects such as crickets, the mechanism may be unique to manakins among vertebrates. [continue]

From the CBC: Banff food web shows sharp differences without wolves.

When wolves left an area near Banff, Alberta, elk became more common, a meadow replaced willow trees, and songbirds were replaced by sparrows, biologists say.

In the mid-1980s, wolves naturally recolonized the Bow Valley in Banff National Park, except for areas near the town itself.

Mark Hebblewhite of the University of Alberta in Edmonton and his colleagues have found the exclusion of the wolves caused major changes in the area's food chain, down through its trophic levels.

The study in the August issue of the journal Ecology is one of the first large-scale studies to show the key role of a top predator on land.

"Those effects trickled in a cascading fashion down the trophic levels from the highest carnivore to the herbivores, elk, down to vegetation," Hebblewhite said.

Since wolves feed on elk, the number of herbivores jumped without the predators. Elk populations were 10 times as high in the low-wolf area compared to where many wolves roamed, the team found.

"Where there's lot of elk, it's like a lawnmower's gone through and mowed everything down," Hebblewhite said. "There's no young aspen." [continue]

From the National Post: Canine medic alert: Some dogs sniff out medical problems before they occur.

Bob Maher's diabetes was shutting his body down. He no longer got the shakes or the sweats to warn him that his blood sugar was plummeting. Instead, he would just pass out.

It made him scared to drive, to be alone, even to sleep.

Chewie's going to change all that. The two-year-old dog, an auburn Labrador mix named after the Star Wars character Chewbacca, has the ability to detect changes in Mr. Maher's blood sugar that are unrecognizable to Mr. Maher himself. Chewie then alerts Mr. Maher to correct it.

To see the phenomenon "just makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up," said Jennifer Kriesel, director of development at Canine Partners for Life, a Chester County, Pa., organization that trains service dogs for people with impaired mobility and medical conditions. [continue]

Related links
Pacific Assistance Dogs (Western Canada)
Assistance Dogs Australia
Canine Partners (UK)
Canine Partners for Life (US)

From the University of Texas: Speaking of Bats: Bat language discovered by neurobiologist who studies auditory systems.

The Kono people of Sierra Leone, Africa have a wonderful legend that explains why bats fly at night.

According to the Kono, long ago when the earth was new there was no darkness or cold. Life was blissful, warm and light until one day a bat was given the task of flying a mysterious basket to the moon. Unbeknownst to the bat, the basket contained darkness!

Hoisting the secret cargo on his back, the bat took flight, bound for the sky. Soon the load became onerous, and he found that he must stop, unburden himself of the heavy bundle and venture off to find food and get much-needed rest. While he was away, other animals came upon the basket, and, curious, they raised the lid to peek inside. Out leapt the darkness!

According to the Kono, since that time bats have rested by day and spent their evenings rushing through the night skies, trying to catch all of the bits and pieces of darkness, put them in the basket and fly them to the moon.

Unlike the Kono, who were interested in explaining the "why" of bat night flight, Dr. George Pollak, a neurobiologist in the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin, has devoted decades to studying the "how." Even though his findings don't include a perilous flight to the moon or a heavy basket of darkness, the facts he has unearthed in the past couple of years regarding bats' sophisticated navigational tools are as fascinating as folklore. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:

Flying foxes
Bats
St George found in Welsh church
Bats eat mosquitos

From nature.com: Mice gang up on endangered birds.

On one of the Earth's most remote islands, mice have learned, and are apparently teaching each other, how to attack and kill bird chicks that are 200 times their size.

Far from exulting in the cleverness of mice, the researchers who discovered this want to eradicate the rodents from the island in order to save endangered albatrosses.

Biologists on Gough Island, a speck in the Atlantic between the southern tips of Africa and South America, first learned of the problem when they found that tristan albatrosses (Diomedea dabbenena) were losing their chicks at an extremely high rate: up to 80% were dying. [continue]

From National Geographic: Parrot Prodigy May Grasp the Concept of Zero.

A new study suggests that some birds may have a better grasp of numbers than the average three-year-old child.

Researchers have shown that an African gray parrot may comprehend the mathematical concept of zero—an abstract notion that human children rarely understand until around four years of age.

The concept of zero is surprisingly difficult to grasp, even for people.

"There is some understanding of nonexistence that seems to develop naturally, but the actual use of the term 'zero' seems to need to be taught," said comparative psychologist Irene Pepperberg. Pepperberg conducted the study at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

The idea of zero as a nonexistent quantity was not obvious to early human cultures, Pepperberg said. Most Europeans lacked a term for it until the 1600s.

Researchers in the United States and Japan have previously shown that chimpanzees and possibly squirrel monkeys can comprehend zero when taught. Chimps have also used it when adding and subtracting quantities of objects. Now a precocious 28-year-old parrot named Alex may have provided the first evidence of animals other than primates getting it too. [continue]

Is this for real? Ananova says there's a bear going around knocking on doors in Croatia.

Animal experts in Croatia say a bear has learned how to trick people to let him in by knocking at the door.

They believe the 35-stone brown bear probably learned the trick while nudging a door to get it to open.

Experts speculate the nudging was mistaken by the owners for knocking and that the bear, pleased by the outcome, repeated the tactic.

The Loknar family from Gerovo in western Croatia said the bear had knocked at their door three times and they were now refusing to answer the door. [continue]

Well, no wonder.

From National Geographic: Chickadees Use Complex Calls for Predator 911.

Black-capped chickadees employ some surprisingly sophisticated warning calls to alert birds of the same feather to the danger of predators, new research reveals.

For human soldiers, the words "enemy tank!" may cause an entire troop to take aim, whereas "enemy sniper!" may rally only a few soldiers for the capture.

Likewise, chickadees relay similar details about the threats posed by predators and the response required. The songbirds' encode the information in their namesake "chick-a-dee" call.

The greater the threat, the larger and more aggressive the feathered mob that forms to harass the predator away.

"It's like they're saying, Hey, there's a perched or terrestrial predator over here, come harass it," said Christopher Templeton, a biology doctoral student at the University of Washington in Seattle. "Subtle variations of the call elicit the level of threat the predator poses." [continue]

From nature.com: Hummingbirds get in a unique flap.

Does a hummingbird fly like an insect or a bird? A bit like both, according to aerodynamic research.

"What led us to this study was the long-held view that hummingbirds fly like big insects," says Douglas Warrick, of Oregon State University in Corvallis. Many experts had argued that hummingbirds' skill at hovering, of which insects are the undisputed masters, means that the two groups may stay aloft in the same way: by generating lift from a wing's upstroke as well as the down.

This turns out to be only partially true. Other birds get all of their lift from the downstroke, and insects manage to get equal lift from both up and down beats, but the hummingbird lies somewhere in between. It gets about 75% of its lift from the downstroke, and 25% from the upwards beat. [continue]

From scotsman.com: Delight as red kite returns to the capital.

A bird of prey which was hunted to the verge of extinction has been seen in Edinburgh for the first time in 300 years.

Reports of a red kite flying over the capital and circling Holyrood Park have left experts believing the "magnificent" creature could be making a comeback to the city.

The species, known as a "cleaner" because it eats carrion and scraps, is recovering from almost being wiped out in Britain. In 1930, there was just one pair successfully breeding - in mid-Wales.

Despite recently being reintroduced in Perth, Dumfries and the Black Isle, bird experts are surprised it has been seen in Edinburgh and say it could be a sign the native bird is breeding and increasing in numbers.

The red kite was killed off in Edinburgh and the surrounding areas by hunters who saw the creature as a prize trophy. [continue]

Related:
Red Kites - redkites.co.uk
Red Kite Centre - redkitcentre.co.uk
Red kite movies (Quicktime format) - redkitecentre.co.uk
Wild Woods red kite - forestry.gov.uk
Red Kites - BBC Wales
Red kite in flight (photo) digidylan.co.uk

From csmonitor.com: With woofs and wet noses, dogs help heal in China.

CHENGDU, CHINA – A tangible buzz courses through the Hua Xi cancer hospice when the newest "doctors" make their rounds. Faces of patients light up with broad grins, and chatter and laughter fill the halls.

What this group lacks in medical training, they make up for with their bedside manner.

Meet China's "Dr. Dogs." These three - a golden retriever, a shih-tzu, and a Chinese toy mix - are just some of the more than 300 "canine consultants" from Animals Asia Foundation (AAF), an animal-welfare charity based in Hong Kong. They're practicing "animal therapy" - the theory that pet companionship can improve a patient's mental well-being which, in turn, promotes healing. [continue]

From the BBC: 'First platypus' still intact.

It may be more than 200 years old, but the story of the "first platypus" is still told in Australian schools.

When European settlers sent back a specimen of this bizarre creature, scientists were baffled and concluded it was probably a fake.

It was only when more examples arrived from "Down Under" that the issue was resolved.

But what happened to that original specimen that so famously bamboozled the experts? [continue]

Related:
Platypus facts - BBC
Platypus - Wikipedia

You can thank my sweet husband for finding this gem for you in the Guardian: Animal magic.

It was a courteous encounter, like Stanley meeting Livingstone. In Deep Jungle (a gem on the rubbish tip of ITV1), Roman Dial was hanging about in the canopy of the Borneo jungle. Sometimes he is up there for weeks at a time mapping the density of the jungle with lasers and a global positioning system linked to a computer. The animals are only of incidental interest to him.

Suddenly an ape offered him a sprig of leaves. He said: "Look at that! A gift!" and took it. There was a rather pointed pause on the ape's part. "Oh, now you want something back?" he said and returned it. High in the forest canopy they stretched towards each other, one arm hairy, one bare. He tickled its palm with pale fingers. It hooked a long, strong finger and touched him.

It looked like The Creation of Adam.

Deep Jungle is full of curious creatures, most of them wearing shorts. Wherever there is a jungle, you will find another naturalist being nosy. I was particularly taken with Kim Bostwick, who has taught herself the courting dance of the Panamanian manakin bird. It is mostly a hula-hula, though, when it slaps its wings on its thighs, there is just a dash of morris dancing. [continue]

Related:
Deep Jungle - pbs.org

From the BBC: Waggle dance leads bees to nectar.

Radar has helped resolve a long-standing controversy about the purpose of a strange dance performed by bees, Nature magazine reports.

The famous "waggle" dance contains information about the whereabouts of nectar, just as was originally proposed in the 1960s, scientists now claim.

The theory met with scepticism, partly because people did not believe bees could decode such a complex message.

But now radar tracking has proved they do follow waggle dance instructions. [continue]

From The Telegraph: US police force to recruit capuchin monkey for 'intelligence' work.

An American police force is planning to sign up a monkey to reinforce its elite special operations team.

Members of the special weapons and tactics (SWAT) unit in Mesa, Arizona, believe that a capuchin monkey, dressed in a bullet-proof jacket and equipped with a two-way radio and video camera, could prove an invaluable reconnaissance tool.

The SWAT team's commander has agreed to a feasibility study into the use of a capuchin monkey. Sean Truelove, a SWAT officer who builds and operates reconnaissance robots, has applied for a £53,000 federal grant to fund the four-year monkey project. Capuchins have already been trained to be companions to quadriplegics, performing tasks such as serving food, turning off lights and brushing hair. Mr Truelove said the same training could prepare a capuchin monkey for police intelligence work.

He said the monkeys, which weigh only 3-8lb and whose puzzle-solving skills are enhanced by tiny, dexterous human-like hands, could unlock doors, search buildings and find injured people upon command.

Their size could allow them into places that officers and robots could not reach, such as attic rafters, he said. "Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it. It would change the way we do business." [continue]

From the Elephant Listening Project site:

The Elephant Listening Project (ELP) of the Cornell Bioacoustics Research Program was founded in 1999 to assess the potential of acoustic monitoring as a tool for evaluating the abundance and health of elephants living in the dense forest. Because forest elephants live under the dense rainforest canopy, their numbers cannot be monitored via aerial counts as in the African savanna. Forest elephants can only be monitored using indirect methods. The current standard for forest elephant censusing relies on counts of dung piles. ELP is developing an alternative method for monitoring forest elephants based on their vocalizations. Elephants make powerful infrasonic calls (below the level of human hearing) which travel long distances, allowing researchers to identify the presence of elephants over large areas without visual sightings. [continue]

The site includes links to video and audio files, and more information about forest elephants.

Link found at Rebecca's Pocket.

From Science Daily: Birds' Brains Reveal Source Of Songs.

Scientists have yearned to understand how the chirps and warbles of a young bird morph into the recognizable and very distinct melodies of its parents. Neuroscientists at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT now have come one step closer to understanding that process. They've shown for the first time how a particular brain region in birds serves as the source of vocal creativity.

"It's an extraordinary finding," says Sarah Bottjer of the University of Southern California. "Here's an organism that enables a direct investigation of how animals learn motor activities."

The songbird's creative, trial-and-error type of learning provides an ideal model for studying similar processes in humans, such as how a baby's babble takes on the conversational cadences and recognizable syllables of mama and papa. Likewise, the brain pathways involved in birdsong have a human counterpart, the poorly understood basal ganglia circuit, so birds may have something to teach us about our own brains and what we learn may eventually apply to human diseases that affect motor abilities, such as Parkinson's disease. [continue]

From National Geographic: "Torture Racks" Are First Known Traps Made by Ants

A tiny tropical ant has developed a gruesome way to catch prey much bigger than itself.

Scientists say it uses traps reinforced with fungus to ambush large insects, stretching them out like victims on a medieval torture rack as nest mates swarm in for the kill.

Even for creatures as ingenious as ants, it's a device to marvel at. Using cut plant fibers glued together by a specially cultivated fungus, the tree- dwelling ants construct a spongy platform pitted with holes, or galleries.

Lurking in these holes, the ants grab the legs and antennae of unsuspecting insects. The ants then stretch their prey out flat and sting them to death before they are carved up by a swarm of nest mates.

The trap allows the ant to subdue prey massively bigger than itself. [continue]

From the BBC: Butterflies ‘follow flightpaths’.

Butterflies do not flutter aimlessly around the garden but instead follow precise flightpaths, scientists say.

A UK team of researchers made the discovery by tracking the insects with radar, using tiny transponders attached to the backs of butterflies.

This gave them information on the insects' flightpaths, speeds and foraging behaviour - some of which could guide conservation measures. [continue]

However did I miss this one? From the Guardian: Snake tricks lose their charm.

It looks just like any other north Indian village. There are buffaloes roaming around neatly scrubbed streets, fields of rich green wheat and rows of tidy mud houses. But the inhabitants of Salenagar - an hour's drive from the city of Lucknow - are unusual because of their profession.

Ever since their ancestors migrated from Bengal to the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, the locals here have made their living from snake charming. But the hereditary profession that has been going since the 18th century is now in trouble. The snake-charming business, I discovered during a recent visit to Salenagar, has fallen on hard times. [continue]

From Planet Ark: Octopus ‘Walks’ on Two Arms, Researchers Find.

Two little species of Indian Ocean octopus can tuck up six of their arms while running on the other two, US researchers reported on Thursday.

They can use their other six arms to disguise themselves from predators, either as rolling coconuts or clumps of floating algae, the team at the University of California Berkeley and Universitas Sam Ratulangi in North Sulawesi, Indonesia found.

The discovery, published in Friday's issue of the journal Science, discredits theories that walking requires hard bones and skeletal muscle, as octopuses have neither.

"We have observed octopuses that do indeed walk," Berkeley's Christine Huffard and colleagues write in their report. [continue]

And then there's this thing about a running vampire bat over at BoingBoing. Amazing.

From National Geographic: Elephants Can Mimic Traffic, Other Noises, Study Says.

It isn't only children playing with toy cars who make engine noises. Elephants produce a similar roar, though in their case it's the rumble of trucks on an African highway that the animals imitate, scientists say.

The experts behind the discovery say elephants are capable of vocal imitation, joining a select group of animals that includes parrots, songbirds, dolphins, and humans.

Zoologist Joyce Poole was the first to notice some rather unelephantine noises emanating from a group of semiwild, orphaned elephants in Amboseli National Park, Kenya. She managed to track the sounds to a female named Mlaika. But the ten-year-old's powers of mimicry were so developed that the task wasn't easy.

"I was sometimes unable to distinguish between the distant trucks and Mlaika's calling," said Poole, the scientific director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project. "This is what first made me wonder whether she could possibly be imitating the truck sounds." [continue]

From the BBC: Using texts to save Kenya's elephants.

A wild bull elephant strolls across the Kenyan countryside, ears flapping, oblivious to conservationist Ian Craig, creeping up behind him, gun poised.

This is no ordinary hunt. The gun is not loaded with bullets, but tranquilliser darts.

Mr Craig and his fellow conservationists hope to keep a track on the elephants in the Samburu National Park in northern Kenya, by using mobile phones, so they can send SMS messages giving their latest location.

The dart hits home, and startled, the elephant careers off.

But within minutes, the 20-year-old jumbo is lying on its side, snoring deeply.

A team of wildlife scouts dashes out of the jeep, carrying screws, hammers, measuring tape - and something that looks like a huge dog collar. [continue]

From the Beeb: Ants - learning from the collective.

"Go to the ant, thou sluggard," King Solomon advised in the Book of Proverbs Chapter Six, "consider her ways and be wise".

Humans have always looked at the little beasts - so efficient, so purposeful and yet so different from us - and puzzled over what they have to tell us.

The cultural historian Charlotte Sleigh, author of Ant (Reaktion Books 2003) says that in every age we have re-interpreted the mysteries of the ant colony to suit our own ideas. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Hive society

From National Geographic: Unlocking How Flocks Stop, Turn, and Swirl in Unison.

It's one of the wonders of the natural world—to see a flock of starlings pulse, wheel, and ripple as one across an evening sky. Just how do they perform these displays with such precision?

The question thas puzzled scientists for centuries, since many group-living animals have this talent for moving together in a seemingly spontaneous yet highly coordinated way.

Anchovies, for instance, are as synchronized as starlings in their underwater ballets, especially when animated by the presence of predators. [continue]

From Aftenposten: Moose rings twice.

It was too early to be the postman, and a family in Buvikåsen found instead that their unexpected visitor was from the animal kingdom.

The family had barely risen from their beds when they heard the doorbell chime on a frosty morning during the winter holidays last week.

The man of the house, which is on the edge of a forest, tried to spot who their unexpected visitor could be, but the view of the front door was blocked by a veranda roof - but he could hear heavy breathing from the entrance stairs, newspaper Trønderbladet reports. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Moose breaks into grocery store
Don't mess with a drunken moose

From sundayherald.com: Beaver set to return to Scotland by 2006.

Five centuries after it was hunted to extinction, the beaver could be about to make a comeback in Scotland under plans from the government’s conservation advisers.

Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) has asked ministers to approve a trial reintroduction of up to 20 beavers in Argyll as early as next year. If the trial is successful, scores more could be introduced across the country in years to come.

This week, the Scottish Wildlife Trust will be launching a campaign in support of SNH’s proposals, which are opposed by landowners and farmers. "We have a moral obligation to right a wrong of our ancestors and restore an extinct species to Scotland," said the trust's chief executive, Simon Milne. [continue]

From the BBC: Crows and jays top bird IQ scale.

Crows and jays are the brain boxes of the bird world, according to a Canadian scientist who has invented a method of measuring avian IQ.

The IQ scale is based on the number of novel feeding behaviours shown by birds in the wild.

The test's creator Dr Louis Lefebvre was surprised that parrots were not high in the pecking order - despite their relatively large brains. [continue]

From the CBC: Chimps have a sense of ‘fair play,’ study suggests.

Chimpanzees show a sense of fairness similar to that in humans — one that changes depending on their social bonds with other animals, a study suggests.

It's the first time that nonhuman primates have been shown to react to inequity like humans, says the paper published Wednesday in the online edition of the Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences.

Combined with the authors' previous study on fairness among capuchin monkeys, it suggests the sense of fair play may have a long evolutionary history in primates. [continue]

From the Globe and Mail: Birds of a feather fly forever.

Gray-headed albatrosses, famed for flocking to the South Georgia Islands near Antarctica to mate and raise chicks, routinely circle the globe between breeding seasons in a restless search for fish, British scientists have discovered.

For a study appearing this week in the journal Science, researchers for the British Antarctic Survey attached electronic locators to the legs of 22 birds. They provided the first strong evidence of how the graceful south-sea fliers spend their time outside of the breeding season. [continue]

From National Geographic: Artificial Spider Silk Could Be Used for Armor, More.

Scientists hope to soon be able to spin spider silk without the aid of spiders — achieving an age-old human quest to harness one of nature's most remarkable materials.

Randy Lewis is a professor of molecular biology at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. His team of researchers has successfully sequenced genes related to spider-silk production—uncovering the formula that spiders use to make silk from proteins. In the process the team acquired a better understanding of how the silk's structure is related to its amazing strength and elastic properties.

Their next task will be using what they've learned to spin spider silk themselves. [continue]

The article goes on to mention practical things the fake spider silk could be made into. All very sensible, I suppose. I'd just want to use it to climb buildings.

Related content on Mirabilis.ca:
Soon, spider-silk togs and mussel glue?
The stickiness of spiders
Spiderman gloves within reach
Why don't spiders stick to their own webs?
Spider webs in technology
60-acre spider web

From Reuters: Crows Have Natural Tool-Making Ability.

Birds may not be renowned for their intelligence but New Caledonian crows have an instinctive ability to make and use tools, researchers said on Wednesday.

They bred four crows in captivity and found all the birds were able to make tools from twigs without being taught.

"We show that hand-raised juvenile New Caledonian crows spontaneously manufacture and use tools, without any contact with adults of their species or any prior demonstration by humans," said Alex Kacelnick, of Oxford University in England. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Crows, the tool-makers

Related news articles:
Betty the tool making crow - anomalies-unlimited.com
Crow makes wire hook to get food - National Geographic
Crows prove they are no birdbrains - BBC

From Oxford:
Tool use in corvids - Oxford University - Behavioural Ecology Research Group

From New Scientist: Rats show off language skills.

Rats can tell the difference between Dutch and Japanese, suggests a new study. But it is not because some spy agency has bioengineered them to eavesdrop on conversations in Tokyo or Amsterdam.

They are simply recognising the difference in rhythmic properties of the languages, says Juan Toro, a neuroscientist at the University of Barcelona in Spain, whose study is part of an effort to trace the origins of the skills that humans use to analyse speech.

Human infants are extremely sensitive to the rhythmic regularities of language, which researchers think may help infants to break sound into patterns they can decipher as words. Earlier experiments showed that both tamarin monkeys and human infants can discriminate between Dutch and Japanese - two languages with rhythmic content that differs greatly.

Toro's team trained rats to recognise either Dutch or Japanese - by pressing a lever in response to a short sentence - and then exposed them to sentences they had not heard before, in both languages. [continue]

From the CBC: Geckos could hold key to ouchless bandages.

The adhesive hairs that geckos use to stick to surfaces are self-cleaning. Scientists say the finding could lead to ouchless bandages or longer-lasting duct tape.

In 2003, researchers in the U.S. found geckos, or tropical lizards, used tiny forces between atoms that are close together to cling to ceilings and walls.

The team also synthesized an adhesive based on the microscopic hairs coating the bottom of gecko feet.

Now they say the microscopic hairs, or setae, also clean themselves. Geckos don't groom their feet and the adhesive on their toes is too sticky to shake off dirt.

"Conventional adhesives like tape just get dirtier and dirtier, but we discovered that gecko feet actually become cleaner with repeated use," said Kellar Autumn, a biology professor at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., in a release. [continue]

Update: WorldChanging has just posted lots of interesting stuff about geckos: Biomimetic Adhesives — The Lessons of the Gecko.

From The Australian: Wildlife saved by a mysterious sixth sense.

What did the animals know?

There are no signs they perished in large numbers when the tsunami slammed through Sri Lanka's Yala National Park on Sunday.

A photographer who flew over the park in an air force helicopter yesterday observed abundant wildlife, including elephants, buffalo, deer ... and not a single animal body.

The animals sought out the high ground, said Gehan de Silva Wijeyerantne, owner of a hotel within the park that was destroyed by the tsunami. [continue]

There's a similar article at the BBC: Did animals have quake warning?

From National Geographic: Forks in the Road Guide Ants Home.

Forget GPS, forget road signs. Foraging Pharaoh's ants employ a simpler means to find their way home: geometry.

Researchers in England report that a simple construction rule the ants employ when building their trail networks helps to guide the ants home: Outbound trails always fork at a 60-degree angle, or thereabouts.

The geometry (picture a capital Y) allows the ants to reorient themselves if they become lost, said Francis Ratnieks, a professor of plant and animal sciences at the University of Sheffield. [continue]

From the BBC: Snakes bite back at poison toads.

Snakes in Australia have evolved to counter the threat of invasive, poisonous cane toads, scientists have found.

The toads (Bufo marinus) were only introduced in the 1930s but have already overwhelmed the local wildlife in Queensland with their rapid reproduction and toxic flesh, which kills many predators foolish enough to make them a meal.

But for two species of snake, at least, natural selection has produced a defence: the snakes have developed relatively smaller heads and longer bodies.

In essence, the reduced gape of the animals limits their ability to eat the toads likely to do them the most damage. [continue]

From BillingsGazette.com: Scientist says prairie dogs appear to have their own language.

Prairie dogs, those little pups popping in and out of holes on vacant lots and rural rangeland, are talking up a storm.

They have different "words" for tall human in yellow shirt, short human in green shirt, coyote, deer, red-tailed hawk and many other creatures.

They can even coin new terms for things they've never seen before, independently coming up with the same calls or words, according to Con Slobodchikoff, a Northern Arizona University biology professor and prairie dog linguist.

Prairie dogs of the Gunnison's species, which Slobodchikoff has studied, speak different dialects in Grants and Taos, N.M.; Flagstaff, Ariz.; and Monarch Pass, Colo., but they would likely understand one another, the professor says.

"So far, I think we are showing the most sophisticated communication system that anyone has shown in animals," Slobodchikoff said. [continue]

Related links:
Decoding the Prairie Dog Language- knauradio.org.
Prairiedogs.org
Prairie dog communication -prairiedog.info
Prairie Dog Information - prairiedog.info
Animal intelligence: how brainy are they? Scientist are learning how animals talk, think, and feel - findarticles.com

Update:
Rodents' Talk Isn't Just 'Cheep' - Wired, June 05

What? Pandas do handstands? Apparently so, according to an article at the BBC.

Remarkable new film of wild pandas shows how the rare bears engage in some gymnastics to mark their territory.

Pandas can adopt four distinct postures to deposit scent, with probably the strangest being the handstand. [continue]

The article includes a photo of a handstanding panda. If I were that bear, I'd be embarrassed about being caught on film in such an undignified pose.

(Link found here at The Presurfer.)

Related news articles:
Fish-cam' catches the bear facts - BBC, November 30th, 2004
Bear-faced chic - The Guardian, December 1st, 2004

Related content on Mirabilis.ca:
Adventures with bears
Living with grizzly bears
Ruskin meets a bear
Where's the bear?
Polar bears
Bear webcam
Bear tracking
Bears snoozing near ski hill

A friend wrote to point out this Economist article about The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us.

The author's proposition is that humans have always viewed the beehive as a miniature universe with order and purpose — and have looked to the hive to make sense of human society. In her delightful book, Bee Wilson traces the ideas that humans have had about the hive, and how these ideas reflect prevailing views about the body politic.

In other words, bee politics have been invented to justify human ones. In particular, the hive has been a useful model for believers in a monarchy, providing a natural justification for rulers and the ruled. In 17th-century Europe, advocates of the divine right of kings claimed that a master bee was guarded by generals, marshals, colonels and captains, and that some of the honeybees had special tufts, tassels and plumes to distinguish the several ranks.

The brief abolition of the English monarchy in the mid-17th century saw the arrival of the commonwealth hive. Meanwhile, by 1740 a republican hive was all the rage in France. After the revolution disposed of French royalty, the tricky problem of explaining the queen's purpose was solved by asserting that true power, in fact, lay with the workers. Ms Wilson says that the hive has been, in turn, monarchical, oligarchic, aristocratic, constitutional, imperial, republican, absolute, moderate, communist, anarchist and even fascist. Never democratic, however. [continue]

I often think of the Monks of New Skete, as this story about their dogs delights me. Today TimesUnion.com has an article about these monks; here's the first bit:

The sun drops from sight, and a big bell inside the tower clangs three times — loudly, deeply, solemnly — enough to make the trees tremble atop this mountain where nine monks live in search of God.

Then a series of smaller bells peal in a pitter-patter rhythm used for centuries by bell-ringing monks, from the deserts of Egypt to the wilderness of Russia.

The clattering ceases after a moment and fades into black silence.

A lone figure dressed in a full-length habit steps out from the bell tower. It's Brother Stavros — short, goateed, with piercing dark eyes, and a brain pan sizzling with the wisdom and deeds of scores of saints and martyrs who came before him. If Trivial Pursuit had a "History of Saints" edition, Brother Stavros would run the table. [continue]

Related links
New Skete Monks -NewSketeMonks.com
Raising Your Dog with The Monks of New Skete - DogsBestFriend.com
The monks and dogs of New Skete - TheWitness.org

Some of the monks' books at Amazon.ca:
How to be your dog's best friend
How to be your dog's best friend: a training manual for dog owners
The art of raising a puppy
I and dog
Celebrate dogs

From National Geographic: Toxic Frogs, Birds May Get Their Poison From Beetles.

The Colombian poison-dart frog and six Papua New Guinea birds, mostly jay-sized songbird species commonly known as pitohui, live almost at opposite ends of the Earth. But the animals share one thing in common: They use batrachotoxin, a rare neurotoxin that is 250 times more potent than strychnine.

Researchers believe the creatures use the poison, which laces their skin and/or feathers, as a type of biodefense that protects the animals from predators and parasites.

One enduring mystery, however, has been the source of the poison: Scientists suspect the birds and amphibian can't manufacture batrachotoxin naturally.

Now researchers say they may have discovered how the animals obtain the toxin: They eat beetles riddled with the stuff. [continue]

From news.com.au: Don't mess with a drunk moose. [Update: sorry, article no longer available.]

A drunk moose staggering through your backyard and nibbling on apples fallen from your tree may sound like an amusing anecdote to tell your friends, but for those Swedes who each autumn come face to face with the angry beasts, it's no laughing matter. (...)

About 300,000 moose, or elk as they're known in Europe, roam Sweden's woods. But every northern autumn at least a few of the normally timid animals end up astray, trudging out of the woods and into cities and suburbs where they gladly munch on fermented apples that have fallen from trees. (...)

Traffic accidents with moose are well-documented: there were 4204 of the animals killed on Swedish roads in 2003, to be exact.

Less documented, but no less terrifying, are the reports of drunken moose jumping through living room windows, bellyflopping into empty swimming pools or violently attacking people. [continue]

Related:
Moose breaks into grocery store
Strange 911 calls

From Wired: Don't Knock the Birdbrains.

Three decades after researchers first fathomed the unusual brain power of songbirds, scientists are devoting big chunks of their careers to finches and canaries, hoping to understand how they manage to be among the only species that learn how to make new sounds.

Even though their brains range from just the size of a grain of rice to peanut-size, some types of songbirds can still pick up hundreds of songs during their lives. They improvise the songs like miniature jazz singers and even develop regional accents depending on where they live. [continue]

From the BBC: ‘Smelly’ mates guide seabirds.

Seabirds called prions, which mate for life, find their nests by sniffing out their smelly partners, scientists say.

The birds make their nests in deep burrows, which are very dark, so they cannot rely on any other sense to find them, Science magazine reports.

The birds also actively avoid their own smell, which could be a way of making sure they do not breed with their kin. [continue]

From the CBC: No trick-or-treating for Churchill polar bears.

Trick-or-treaters in the northern Manitoba town of Churchill will get street protection worthy of a visiting head of state this Halloween.

Come Sunday night, the town of 1,000 will be ringed by about a dozen fire trucks and ambulances, all revving engines and shining spotlights on goblin-filled streets to keep curious polar bears from getting a little too close to roaming children.

Overhead, a helicopter will circle, while a crew armed with immobilizing darts will be stationed around town, just in case the bears don't get the point.

Halloween's polar bear patrol has been a feature of Churchill for 20 years. Bears are regularly spotted in the community from early summer to the end of November, depending on ice conditions. They lope into town because of Churchill's proximity to the world's largest denning area. [continue]

From The Guardian: Jammy little dodger may not be extinct.

A hundred jam sandwich traps have been hidden in remote forests in Yorkshire in an attempt to catch a mammal thought to have been extinct in England for 100 years.

Scientists will discreetly monitor the sticky mixture, squashed into plastic feeding tubes, for hairs and other DNA traces of pine martens, which once roamed the area under royal protection because of their thick, highly-valued fur.

Local naturalists have logged 35 suspected marten sightings on the densely-wooded fringes of the North York Moors since 1990, but none gave much more detail than a swift, brown shadow moving swiftly through the trees. Then, in July, an experienced wildlife photographer gave an accurate description of a marten which triggered the current rethink of English Nature's extinct species status. [continue]

From the BBC: Pandas benefit from wireless net.

The world's dwindling panda population is getting a helping hand from a wireless internet network.

The Wolong Nature Reserve in the Sichuan Province of southwest China is home to 20% of the remaining 1,500 giant pandas in the world.

A broadband and wireless network installed on the reserve has allowed staff to chronicle the pandas' daily activities.

The data and images can be shared with colleagues around the world. [continue]

And speaking of images, the article includes a photo of a baby panda being bottle-fed. You can't resist that, can you?

From csmonitor.com: A night on the beach ... with some busy turtles.

Our guide, Castor, is serious when he tells us, "No camera. No flashlight. No cigarette." It's 10 o'clock at night, and we've been stumbling along behind him and his wife, Maria, on the beach in complete darkness for half an hour, hoping that every shadowy form is a giant green sea turtle that has emerged from the Caribbean to lay her eggs on Tortuguero Beach. [continue]

National Geographic has an interesting article about cowbirds: Raised by Others, Birds Use Code to Find Their Kind.

The animals are one of the more than 90 known parasitic bird species, so called because they lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species and leave the chick-rearing to other parents.

The fact that the bird is raised to independence by unrelated foster parents prompts biologists to ask the question: How does the cowbird learn what it is and successfully find its way back to the flock to mate with its own kind?

Mark Hauber, a behavioral ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, is in search of an answer. His findings so far suggest that parasitic birds employ secret passwords of sorts to identify their own kind. [continue]

From Ananova: Meatloaf sees off wild boars.

Serbian villagers are blaring out rock music 24 hours a day in a bid to stop wild boars destroying their crops.

People in villages in the Sokolovica mountains say they started playing rock music as a deterrent after one farmer who played Meatloaf as he worked said his fields had never been raided by pigs. [continue].

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Pigs in Berlin
Hairdressers help drive away wild boar

From the BBC: Monks seek homes for St Bernards.

Wanted: Home for 64kg-worth of shaggy, doe-eyed dog, used to long walks in the Swiss Alps, brandy keg optional.

Monks at the St Bernard's Hospice in the Swiss Alps are planning to sell the world-famous rescue dogs to devote more time to needy people.

The skills of the 18 dogs, renowned for saving avalanche victims from snowy graves, have long been overtaken by helicopters and heat-seeking equipment.

But the new owners must promise to bring the dogs back each year.

The hospice, run by Augustine monks, stands at 2,438 metres (8,000 ft) - the highest point of the pass where the Swiss Entremont and the Italian Buthier valleys meet.

The monastery was founded in 1050 by Saint Bernard of Montjou. The first record of dogs being used there dates back to 1703, with stories of dogs being involved in rescues from then on. [continue]

Related:
Dog days catch up with St Bernards - The Independent
St Bernards headed off at pass as monks now put people first - The Herald

St Bernard - Catholic Encyclopedia

From National Geographic: Chimps Shown Using Not Just a Tool but a "Tool Kit".

Anyone who has tried to replace a punctured tire or fix a leaky faucet knows the importance of having the right tool for the job. Chimpanzees, it turns out, are also very particular about their tool choice, especially when it comes to digging into termite mounds to get a tasty snack.

Using infrared, motion-triggered video cameras, researchers have documented how chimpanzees in the Goualougo Triangle - a region within the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo - use a variety of tools to extract termites from their nests. The "tool kits" are among the most complex ever observed in wild chimp populations. [continue]

From National Geographic: Canada's Rain Forest Wolves a Link to Past.

From the inland fjords to the windswept outer islands, the north and central archipelago of British Columbia in Canada has been largely untouched by time. In the thick temperate rain forest, wolves reign supreme, just like they have for millennia.

To Chris Darimont, a University of Victoria Ph.D. student, the rugged and remote islands are "the home of the truly wild." Since 2000 he has been studying, among other things, the foraging behavior of wolves in the Great Bear Rainforest to learn more about the little-known ecology of the islands. [continue]

From Ananova: Hairdressers help drive away wild boar.

Hairdressers in a German town have started collecting their customers' hair to drive away wild boar.

The spa town of Bad Saarow, between Berlin and Frankfurt on the Oder, has been plagued by boar roaming the town. [continue]

What are the chances of this article appearing on Ananova, just after I posted about wild boars in Berlin?

Who knew there were so many wild boars roaming about in Berlin? From The Walrus: Pigs in the City.

Somewhere between five thousand and seven thousand now live among the 3.4 million human denizens in Berlin, and Ehlert is the man who facilitates the relationship between the two species. In his capacity as Jagdreferent [hunt adviser] des Landes Berlin, he commands the city's network of fifty volunteer hunters, who are charged with regulating the city's boar population. Ehlert's team killed five hundred of the creatures last year and will likely do the same this year as part of the ongoing facilitation. Hours earlier, Ehlert arrived at a street near Olympic Stadium just as a thirty-year-old man threw himself in front of one of the marksmen, shrieking "You don't shoot my pig!" The boar weighed 230 pounds and possessed five-inch tusks, and was known as "the traffic pig" for the way it would cross a street - always between cars - where hunters can't shoot. Despite his job (or perhaps be-cause of it), the Jagdreferent has developed a soft spot for the very population he is supposed to control. Those boars that have adapted most completely to Berlin impress Ehlert the most and, thus, get names. As we close in on "Sophie," he is still sad about signing off on the order to shoot the "traffic pig." [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Meatloaf sees off wild boars - October, 2004
Hairdressers help drive away wild boar - October, 2004
Wild boar the ground force team to revive forest - August, 2005

From the BBC: Dogs ‘sniff out’ bladder cancer.

Dogs can be trained to sniff out bladder cancer, the first controlled experiments published claim.

There have been anecdotal reports of dogs spotting cancer in their owners, but now researchers say they have proved this phenomenon scientifically.

The scientists at Amersham Hospital, Buckinghamshire, ultimately hope to build a tool that is as good at discerning these smells as dogs' noses.

Their findings appear in the British Medical Journal. [continue]

From The Independent: Love, death and Christmas: the meaning behind Britain's birds.

Why do some birds mean so much more to us than just feathers and wings? Why does the raven symbolise death, and the robin, Christmas? Why do eagles mean power and doves mean peace? Why, for that matter, is the red kite now a cherished icon of wildness in Britain, when once it was associated with rubbish and filth?

Answers to most of these questions are intriguing: they are not one-liners and they would not fit into an ornithological version of Trivial Pursuit. When looked into closely, they often turn out to involve the most profound human fears and hopes, sometimes dating back to the Stone Age; they reach into cultural and social history as much as ornithology itself. But a forthcoming book is attempting to answer them all.

When Birds Britannica appears in 2005, it will be building on the most remarkable event in natural history publishing in recent years. Richard Mabey's Flora Britannica was a completely new type of wild flower guide: it went beyond standard descriptions of Britain's wild plants to record comprehensively the folklore surrounding them, their ancient names, their forgotten uses, their medicinal and even magical properties. [continue].

Random House has more on the Birds Britannica project.

From the CBC: Bad dog! Bad driving!.

WHITEHORSE - A pedestrian in a Whitehorse suburb was taken aback Tuesday night when a black dog drove by in a red pickup truck.

Police said a resident was out for a walk when a truck with a Labrador retriever at the wheel passed by.

When RCMP arrived, the truck was in the middle of Thompson Road in Granger, blocking traffic. The dog was still behind the wheel. [continue]

From newscientist.com: Dinosaurs may have been doting parents.

A fossil of one adult Psittacosaurus dinosaur surrounded by 34 juveniles has provided the most compelling evidence to date that dinosaurs raised their young after hatching.

Previously discovered fossils of teeth found at the same site in China from Allosaurus dinosaurs of differing ages, and fossils of groups of young Maiasaura have hinted that dinosaurs may have indulged in parental care.

But what makes this 125-million-year old fossil find from Liaoning province more convincing is that the skeletons are complete, and crowded together in life-like positions with their legs tucked under and heads raised, indicating that they were buried alive rather than swept together after death.

Psittacosaurus are herbivorous dinosaurs, about one metre long, with parrot-like beaks and cheek horns. The newly unearthed juveniles are about a quarter of the length of the adult, and far bigger than hatchlings. This suggests that the adult had tended them for some time, says David Varricchio of Montana State University in Bozeman, US, who examined the ancient remains with Jinyuan Liu of the Dalian Natural History Museum, China, and colleagues. [continue]

From the CBC: Parrots use tongues to change sounds: study.

In a study that breaks new ground on how animals communicate, scientists in Indiana have shown that parrots, like humans, use their tongues to modify sound.

Researchers had known that a parrot uses its syrinx, a voice box organ located between the trachea and lungs, to produce sound.

But the new study, by Indiana University's Gabriel Beckers, Brian Nelson, and Roderick Suthers, shows that the tongue does play a role in what sound is produced. [continue]

You know I'm fond of bats, yes? If you are, too, go take a look at this BBC article about flying foxes. Who knew that bats came in that kind of size?

A huge tropical bat which could soon be extinct in the wild appears to be doing well in captivity in a British zoo.

A colony of Livingstone's fruit bats, whose wingspan can reach 5ft (1.5m), has been kept at Jersey zoo in the Channel Islands for the last 12 years.

A number of the bats have now started to fly through a purpose-built tunnel in their enclosure in search of food.

The zoo, HQ of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, is one of only two global sites where the bats are kept.

Livingstone's fruit bat (Pteropus livingstonii), also known as the Comoro black flying fox from its home in the Comores Islands near Madagascar, is thought to be at risk of imminent extinction because of the loss of its forest habitat.

The trust is working with a local group, Action Comores, to save the species. It now has 30 bats on Jersey; another colony is at Bristol Zoo Gardens. [continue, see photos]

From the (Malasia) Star Online: Haven for man and beast.

The Buddhist temple in Kanchanaburi province, 322km north of Bangkok, is the perfect setting for the monks who live there, the serenity of the surrounding forests conducive for deep meditation. The peacefulness of the land there is almost palpable, the silence as thick as the trees. But once in a while, you will hear the crowing of a cockerel, the call of a gibbon — and even the piercing wail of newborn tiger cubs.

The Luangta Bua Yansampanno Forest Monastery in the Sai Yok district has over the years become a wildlife sanctuary, where the monks not only practise their daily rituals and routines, but also care for animals that have wandered into the monastery grounds or were brought by concerned villagers. Under the leadership of abbot Phra Achan Bhusit Chan Khantitharo, the monastery has adopted the objective of not only propagating Buddhism but also conserving wildlife.

And it all started with tigers. [continue]

From nature.com: Owls use dung as bait for beetles.

It is unlikely to win an award for tasteful home decor, but the burrowing owl has a good reason for filling its lair with other animals' muck. The birds scatter scraps of faeces in and around their burrows to attract dung beetles, one of their favourite foods.

The birds' ‘bait and wait’ strategy represents a form of tool use, say Douglas Levey of the University of Florida in Gainesville and his colleagues, who made the discovery. Although dung might not be everyone's idea of a useful tool, the fact that the birds gather and arrange it means that it can be defined as such. [continue]

From csmonitor.com: Soon, spider-silk togs and mussel glue?

They're spun thousands of times a second. They're so sinewy and commonplace, they hardly get noticed. And yet for decades, spider webs have stumped researchers.

No one has been able to create anything nearly as lightweight and flexible (not to mention waterproof) that is also many times as strong as steel. And visions of using spider's silk to make rip-proof clothing, from children's garments to military uniforms, have remained just that: visions.

But researchers are now closing in on understanding how spiders make silk, which may give them the key to creating a synthetic version. Spider's silk is one example of how advances in biotechnology and synthetic chemistry are fueling rapid growth in animal-based products. [continue]

From the BBC: In pictures: The rat catchers.

Black Death or Bubonic Plague, officially declared as wiped out nearly 30 years ago by the Indian government, still poses a real threat to the country and to Bombay (Mumbai) in particular.

The sprawling metropolis plays host to tens of millions of rats, which carry the disease via their fleas and hence pose a danger to the city's population.

In a unique way of combating the problem, the city has set up a troop of Night Rat Killers (NRK) to clear Bombay's streets of these diseased vermin. [continue]

From The Guardian: All anxious sheep want is a picture of ewe.

And now, the new way to soothe an anxious sheep: show it a picture of another sheep. Scientists at the Babraham Institute near Cambridge believe that - like humans - Southdowns, Romneys, and Cheviots need to see a familiar face when they are alone.

The researchers put sheep into a darkened barn on their own and projected life-sized images of sheep, goats and symbolic faces, on a screen. They measured stress levels by recording heart rate, restlessness and the number of times a sheep bleated. They also tested levels of cortisol and adrenaline - chemical indicators of stress - in blood samples. Goats and triangle shapes did nothing for the fretful Ovis aries, but once shown faces of other sheep, the anxious captives seemed to calm down. [continue]

From The Telegraph: Museum recruits flesh-eaters.

A team of 100 flesh-eating beetles that like to toil in the dark has been welcomed as the latest members of staff at the Natural History Museum in London.

The half-inch Dermestes maculatus beetles have the grisly task of stripping animal carcases to skeletons.

"They aren't the most conventional colleagues. But they do work very hard," said Patrick Campbell, curator.

"The larvae will eat the most and when the group is established they will get through two to four kilos of flesh a week."

From an initial colony of 100 beetles and larvae the museum expects to breed almost 1,000.

The advantage of using these natural "cleaners" is that every aspect of the bone is preserved. [continue]

Related:
Museum welcomes flesh-eating bugs - BBC

From National Geographic: Dogs in Training to Sniff Out Cancer.

Some people say that old dogs can't be taught new tricks. But don't tell that to Larry Myers.

A professor of veterinary medicine at Alabama's Auburn University, Myers has trained unwanted dogs to detect everything from drugs and bombs to off-flavor catfish and agricultural pests.

Myers says that, with proper training, just about any dog can learn to detect a unique scent — even the odor of certain cancers. [continue]

I know a place where the bats fly in the dusk each evening. I go there, to this lonely grassy trail, and watch them flit past and between the trees, one or two each minute. I could never hope to see their faces; they are fast and nimble.

So then at home again, I sit while the kettle begins to whistle and look at this photo, and this one. Are there better or more endearing bat photos anywhere? Are there?

I like watching these leathery flighted things. Next summer I'm going to get organized and put up a bat house.

I will not, however, have bats in my belfry.

Related Mirabilis.ca content:

Bats eat mosquitos (Includes bat house links.)
Natural History Museum (They've got bat sounds!)

Updates:

Shari wrote to point out another cute bat photo. She also sent this:

Now Air is hush'd, save where the weak-ey'd Bat,
With short shrill Shriek flits by on leathern Wing.
(William Collins (1721-1759), British poet, Ode to Evening.)

Thanks, Shari!

Thanks also to my friend-since-forever, who mentioned that a children's book called Stellaluna has gorgeous illustrations of a baby bat.

From the CBC: Bon-vivant bear evicted after beer binge.

SEATTLE, WASH. - Authorities relocated a young, black bear away from a campground in Washington state after he reportedly downed dozens of beers and passed out.

Campers at the Baker Lake site north of Seattle had apparently omitted one crucial step in making their temporary abode safe – they forgot to secure the cooler holding their stash of beer.

Camp workers found the two-year-old bear lying on the ground surrounded by about 36 empty beer cans.

I hope they took photos.

It appears the animal had broken open the cooler and punctured the cans using his claws and teeth before pouring the beer down his throat.

The bear fled after he came to, but when he returned the following day, wildlife officials managed to capture him using doughnuts and more beer as bait.

Authorities relocated the bear away from the campground and further alcoholic temptation.

If I were a bear, I'd be looking for cans of beer, too.

Related:
Beer-guzzling bear lands up with sore head - sify.com
Boozy bear plunders campers' beer - BBC

From Aftenposten: Wolves send text messages.

It sounds odd at first, but researchers are using mobile phone technology to track a young wolf's 1,000 kilometer (621 mile) trek from Hedmark to Nordland. The wolf will ‘keep in touch’ by sending regular SMS (Short Message Service) bulletins, Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reports.

The sender on the wolf is configured to automatically send text messages about its location every time it comes near a mobile transmitter mast.

The researchers have received nearly daily messages from the wolf and know that in two months it has traveled from Åmot in Hedmark County to Grane in Nordland County, via Sweden. [continue]

I'm not big on text messaging, but getting text messages from a Norwegian wolf would be fun.

From National Geographic: Africa's Penguins Still Reeling From "Guano Craze".

After a century-long population crash, African penguins face a tough road to recovery, conservationists say. The birds face problems old and new—from the lingering aftereffects of a 19th-century guano craze to modern woes like oil pollution and a dwindling food supply.

"Before artificial fertilizers were invented, guano [bird excrement] was the best source of nitrogen. [It was] white gold," said Les Underhill, the director of the avian demography unit at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Seabird dung was heavily harvested by 19th-century European and North American traders and sold to farmers to replenish exhausted soils. The islands off the coast of South Africa were waist deep in the stuff. Resident penguins burrowed into the guano to make nests. [continue]

From the Beeb: Super ant colony hits Australia.

A giant colony of ants stretching 100km (62 miles) has been discovered in the Australian city of Melbourne, threatening local insect species.

Oh, dear heaven. That's like something out of my nightmares.

The ants, which were imported from Argentina, are ranked among the world's 100 worst animal invaders.

Although they exist in their usual smaller group size in their homeland, the colonies have merged in Australia to create one massive super colony.

Experts fear that the invasion poses a threat to biodiversity in the area. [continue]

This makes a 60-acre spider web seem like quite a small thing after all.

From National Geographic: Insect Vibrations Tell of Good Times and Bad.

Grab a branch of a young acacia tree crawling with appropriately named thornbugs and you just might utter an "ouch" at the sharp prick. The tiny horned insects will not hear your vocalization with ears, but rather as vibrations in the stem.

The thornbug (Umbonia crassicornis) is one of about 3,200 species in the treehopper family that, along with at least 200,000 other insect species, communicate by making the surface they live on vibrate, a method scientifically called substrate vibration.

Thornbugs send signals into the stems of trees by shaking their bodies. Other insects pick up the vibrations via sensors in their legs, explained Rex Cocroft, a biologist at the University of Missouri in Columbia. [continue]

From National Geographic: New Deep-Sea Creatures Found in Atlantic.

New deep-sea creatures have surfaced during a two-month voyage of scientific discovery in the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Researchers arrived back in Norway yesterday with a catch that includes fish and squid that may be new to science.

Docking late yesterday, the research vessel G.O. Sars returned to Bergen, Norway, laden with a cargo of strange creatures trawled from the mid-Atlantic abyss. Collected at depths of up to 4 kilometers (2.5 miles), the haul of 80,000 specimens will now be carefully studied.

The research team says it also gathered spectacular images of seabed scavengers and valuable new insights about life along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR). The MAR, a range of undersea mountains as tall as the European Alps, divides the ocean floor between the Americas to the west and Europe and Africa to the east. [continue]

From The Guardian: Enthusiasts celebrate King Darius's steed.

A horse thought to be extinct for 1,000 years is alive and well and living in Rutland.

Celebrated in the ancient world as a chariot horse for racing and in battle, and presented to kings and emperors as a valuable gift, the caspian horse was thought to have disappeared in antiquity.

Drawings of the distinctive horse can be seen on 3,000-year-old terracotta plaques in the British Museum and on the seal of King Darius the Great from Persepolis in ancient Persia. They were probably used to pull chariots in the battle against Alexander the Great. [continue]

Update:
How DNA saved an ‘extinct’ breed - BBC, August 22nd, 2004.

From a BBC article, Guru of the gnus.

The Serengeti and the wildebeest belong together. Add up all the lions, elephants, warthogs, giraffes, gazelles, zebras, impalas, topis and hyenas that live on these plains and they fail to outnumber the gnus. With their teeth, hooves, horns and dung, wildebeest have literally cultivated the grasslands. But it's the elephants, lions and other charismatic mammals that get coffee-table books written about them. Wildebeest couldn't even get a speaking part in The Lion King.

Richard Estes speaks for them. "They are my constituency," he says. He chose wildebeest because they were "the most interesting" of all the mammals he considered studying, due mainly to the "extraordinary performance" of the rut and the birth season's "incredible spectacle". Today, most of the world's knowledge of wildebeest behaviour is based on the observations of ‘the guru’ of gnus, as Estes is known. [continue]

Now, why would squirrels at an Edmonton golf course steal lots of golf balls? From the Globe and Mail: Bushy bandits having a ball.

In a split second, often without the golfer's knowledge, the sharp-toothed rodents make their move and spirit the orbs up trees where they deposit them in magpies' nests. Some balls also end up in the squirrels' caches.

So many balls are hidden on the course that dozens have fallen to the ground when workers shake trees.

Speculation about the rodents' motive rages among Riverside regulars. Some think they mistake golf balls for mushrooms, eggs or a new kind of nut. Others think they're just pesky.

James Hare, a University of Manitoba zoologist who recently did a study on squirrel communication, said the animals' behaviour is "totally bizarre" and "really mind-boggling." [continue/see photo]

Related:
Speedy golf ball-stealing rodents driving golfers squirrelly - Canada.com
Squirrels' golf-ball mania stumps experts - Edmonton Journal/Canada.com
("They may think balls are mushrooms and hope to dry them in trees.")
Squirrels stealing ‘only good’ golf balls - AZCentral.com
Thieving squirrels par for the course for Edmonton golfers - CBC

From the Telegraph: Pigeons ‘may have followed roads since Roman times’.

Pigeons have taken the easy route home and followed major roads and other human thoroughfares for thousands of years, researchers claim.

The study, published yesterday by a Swiss team, provides "statistical proof" that the carrier pigeon's uncanny ability to find its home coop depends a great deal on trunk routes, suggesting that the birds have probably relied on human directions as long as people have been changing the landscape.

The study of birds released from sites around Rome to their loft in Testa di Lepre, 12 miles west of the city, showed that the pigeons do not travel as "the crow flies".

They followed SS Aurelia, Italy's old coastal highway, and preferred this route to a greater extent than the newer and larger highway A12, or the railway. [continue]

Related:
Pigeons find all roads lead to their Roman home

From National Geographic: For Most People, Eating Bugs Is Only Natural.

If you think eating insects is gross, you may be in the cultural minority. Throughout history, people have relished insects as food. Today, many cultures still do. (...)

The ancient Romans and Greeks dined on insects. Pliny, the first-century Roman scholar and author of Historia Naturalis, wrote that Roman aristocrats loved to eat beetle larvae reared on flour and wine.

Aristotle, the fourth-century Greek philosopher and scientist, described in his writings the ideal time to harvest cicadas: "The larva of the cicada on attaining full size in the ground becomes a nymph; then it tastes best, before the husk is broken. At first the males are better to eat, but after copulation the females, which are then full of white eggs." [continue]

Related content on Mirabilis.ca:
Escorpion Especial
Edible.com
Chocolate-covered scorpions

From nature.com: Monkeys master ‘mind control’.

Machines that can be controlled by the mind have moved a step closer to reality. Researchers have trained monkeys to ‘think’ a cursor around a computer screen to reveal their preferences and goals.

It is hoped the technology will lead to devices that can display the thoughts of paralysed people who are unable to communicate through speech or sign. It could also aid the development of artificial limbs and robots that are operated by the brain alone. [continue]

Ananova reports that an injured seagull in Turkey has been given a new leg — one made by a yacht crew from parts of a Barbie doll.

The crew, apparently inspired by peg-leg pirates, amputated the leg and created a new one with the leg of a Barbie doll and a big Barbie doll hand as a foot.

The seagull, who they have called Martha, has made an incredible recovery and is now walking, and even running, around the boat on the new leg.

Glad to hear Barbie dolls are good for something after all.

From BBC Science & Nature: Not so Dumbo.

For the first time, remote-control cameras disguised as dung-heaps have infiltrated African elephant herds. Moving slowly across the plains, the ‘dungcams’ have shot hundreds of hours of elephant footage of the most intimate variety. On watching the footage, you start to believe that elephants may indeed be as intelligent as the great apes. "The communication and understanding is so evident when you get inside the herd," says film-maker John Downer. "I know of no other species, apart from ourselves, who gather to greet a newborn and equally appear to mourn their dead relatives." [continue]

Related:
How Cameras Disguised as Elephant Droppings Revealed Secrets - article from The Mirror, reprinted at save-the-elephants.org

From The Guardian: Gull trouble.

...urban gulls have been displaying Hitchcockian tendencies. Local councils throughout Britain have been inundated with complaints about the birds' noise, mess and aggression. More disturbingly, the last few years have seen a number of attacks on people. Just last week, an irate seagull began swooping on pedestrians in Bell Yard in the City of London. In recent months a woman was knocked to the ground and a man left with neck wounds in Monkseaton, north Tyneside. [continue]

A couple of serious links are below, but first a more lighthearted one: the BBC's When Seagulls Attack Flash game.

Related:
Seagull attacks -GibsonTMacDonald.co.uk
Aggressive Seagulls Menacing Urban Britain - National Geographic

From National Geographic: Rats Rule at Indian Temple.

The floors are a living tangle of undulating fur. Small, brown blurs scurry across marble floors. Thousands of rats dine with people and scamper over their feet.

It may sound like a nightmare from the New York City subway to some, but in India's small northwestern city of Deshnoke, this is a place of worship: Rajastan's famous Karni Mata Temple.

This ornate, isolated Hindu temple was constructed by Maharaja Ganga Singh in the early 1900s as a tribute to the rat goddess, Karni Mata. Intricate marble panels line the entrance and the floors, and silver and gold decorations are found throughout.

But by far the most intriguing aspect of the interior is the 20,000-odd rats that call this temple home. These holy animals are called kabbas, and many people travel great distances to pay their respects.

The legend goes that Karni Mata, a mystic matriarch from the 14th century, was an incarnation of Durga, the goddess of power and victory. At some point during her life, the child of one of her clansmen died. She attempted to bring the child back to life, only to be told by Yama, the god of death, that he had already been reincarnated.

Karni Mata cut a deal with Yama: From that point forward, all of her tribespeople would be reborn as rats until they could be born back into the clan. [continue]

Also see Thomas Tomczyk's Temple of Rats pages; there you'll find lots more information and amazing photos. If you'd rather see a Quicktime video taken at the temple, check out this page at vagabonding.com.

Related:
Rats! - Cairo Times article about the temple
Mark Moxon's visit to the Karni Mata Temple

This morning I discovered a wonderful thing while bicycling home from my swim. There's a heronry in Stanley Park! The nests are large twiggy clusters, and the baby herons (and the adults, too, I guess) make lots of grraaak noises and a fair bit of mess. Watching the birds from the ground made me wish for some cluster balloons (sensibly tethered to the ground, of course) or wings of my own. Wouldn't you just love to see into those nests?

About the Stanley Park Heronry:

Heron journal
Great Blue Heron Facts & Calendar
Stanley Park Heronry news
maps
Great blue heron stages comeback in park - CBC

About herons in general:

Hinterland Who's Who: Great Blue Heron
Blue Heron - Bird Biography
amazing photo of a heron about to land in a nest

About Stanley Park:

Stanley Park - City of Vancouver

Update:
The herons in Stanley Park - Darren Barefoot's photos, April, 2005

From abc.net.au: Dogs predict seizures with a sloppy kiss.

Dogs can predict when a child will have an epileptic seizure up to several hours in advance, according to new Canadian research.

While not all dogs can do this, those that do tend to lick the child's face, slow down, act protectively or whimper.

One dog even pushed a young girl away from the stairs 15 minutes before an attack, the researchers reported in the latest issue of the journal Neurology. [continue]

From The Economist: Hunter-programmers .

What really goes on in Africa's remote national parks? Though satellite imaging and aerial surveys give a rough idea of changes in animal and plant life, the most detailed data still have to be collected on foot. This is all very well for those places where skilled botanists and zoologists swarm in the undergrowth, but what about everywhere else?

When Ebola fever struck Lossi sanctuary in eastern Congo two years ago, the zoologists who were studying the gorillas there noticed that 139 of their apes had disappeared, presumably killed by the disease. As an aside, they also recorded chimpanzees, antelopes, bush pigs and other species that were struck down, suggesting Ebola is more deadly than once thought. The toll elsewhere was unknown.

The useful extra data were collected only because the zoologists in question had a convenient system for doing so. They were testing the prototype of CyberTracker, an invention of Louis Liebenberg, a self-taught animal tracker who lives in Nordhoek, near Cape Town. CyberTracker is a hand-held device that lets users record what they see quickly and easily, and then plots maps showing exactly where the observations were made, using the Global Positioning Satellite navigation system.

Mr Liebenberg's invention is designed to allow currently untapped expertise to be used when trained scientists are not around to note things down. Rangers, park guards and even well-informed tourists could use it to record handy data as they work or play. There are other advantages, too. Many expert trackers are illiterate, so CyberTracker uses only symbols and pictures. And it is cheap. The software to run it, which is now available for general use, can be downloaded from CyberTracker's website for nothing. All that is needed to run it is a mass-produced hand-held computer. [continue]

Thanks to Lawrence for telling me about this article.

Related:
CyberTracker

From BBC Science and Nature: Pond Life.

Seven years ago, Willem Kolvoort dug a large pond in his garden, seeded it with a starter culture of a few buckets of water and some plants from local ditches and waited to see what would develop. Then, frustrated by the limited view from the surface of the burgeoning biodiversity beneath, he donned his snorkel and waded in. His reward was a unique view of the pond community, from a frog's perspective. [continue]

This is fascinating, in an "I'm glad I don't have to touch the creatures in those photos" kind of way. You won't catch me in any garden ponds!

From nature.com: Octopuses have a preferred arm. [Update: article now available only to subscribers.]

Most octopuses have a favourite arm, zoologists have discovered. This is the first time they have been found to show any bias when choosing which of their eight limbs is right for the job.

The creatures use their trusty first-choice appendage when exploring a new nook or cranny, says Ruth Byrne of the University of Vienna in Austria. She presented the discovery on Sunday at the annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society in Oaxaca, Mexico.

In terms of skill, octopus arms are created pretty much equal. "All eight arms are capable of the same tasks," Byrne told the meeting. "There's hardly any specialization."

This had prompted experts to suspect that the creatures simply use whichever arm is handiest. Indeed, one of their preferred hunting strategies is to jump on top of a rock and curl all of their arms underneath, grabbing whatever they find.

But when Byrne and her colleagues placed unfamiliar objects into an octopus's tank, or presented the animals with a T-shaped cavity to explore, each individual tended to favour one of its limbs when investigating. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:

Einstein the octopus
Jar-opening octopus
Save the tree ctopus
Octopus eyes open new electronic vision
Searching for ancient Persian warships

From the Washington Post: Study: Dogs Similar to Children When Learning Language.

A dog can do something scientists thought only humans could do: figure out that an unfamiliar sound is the name of a strange object, researchers reported today.

A series of carefully designed studies of a German house dog named Rico concluded that the border collie uses the process of elimination to determine that a name he had never heard before refers to a toy he had never seen before.

"This is called ‘fast-mapping,’ which was thought to be something exclusively human. It is how children learn the meanings of new words," said Julia Fischer, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who helped conduct the research. "Nobody thought this could be done by an animal."

While many species can be trained to recognize the names of objects, what makes Rico unique is that he has a stunningly large vocabulary, can puzzle out the names of new objects on the first try and is surprisingly good at remembering what he learns weeks later, the researchers said.

"Maybe this is the Albert Einstein of dogs. Or maybe this is something that other dogs can do too," said Fischer, whose research is being published in Friday's issue of the journal Science. "We just don't know. We need to find out."

The findings are the latest evidence that animals are capable of more complex communication than had been thought, with dogs being especially astute at comprehending their human companions.

"This is an extremely provocative paper," said Robert Seyfarth, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist who studies monkey behavior and communication. "Dog owners will say a lot of things about their dogs. The question is always, 'Are dogs really as smart as they think they are?' This says they might be." [continue]

Related:
Dog's verbal tricks probe origin of language - NewScientist.com
Smart border collie learns new words like toddler - CBC
Dogs can understand words, study says - Globe and Mail

The Beeb reports that ducks quack in regional accents.

"Cockney" ducks from London make a rougher sound, not unlike their human counterparts, so their fellow quackers can hear them above the city's hubbub.

But their country cousins communicate with a softer, more relaxed sound, the team from Middlesex University found.

Ducks, like humans, are influenced by their environment, said Dr Victoria De Rijke, who has been nicknamed Dr Quack.

Her research team discovered the difference after recording the quacks of ducks at two separate locations.

The birds at Spitalfields City Farm in the heart of the cockney east London, were found to be "much louder and vocally excitable" than the ducks recorded on Trerieve Farm in Downderry, Cornwall, said English language lecturer Dr De Rijke.

The Cornish ducks made longer and more relaxed sounds, much more chilled out. [continue]

From nature.com: Tortoise conservation: One of a kind.

Poor Lonesome George. He may be famous, but he hasn't got a mate. All alone in the world and, sadly, singularly uninterested in sex, George the Galapagos giant tortoise looks set to be the last in his line.

Ever since George was discovered in 1971, there have been many attempts to get him to reproduce. Researchers have combed his island and the world's zoos in search of a female of the same subspecies. They have brought in a pair of female tortoises from a nearby island to act as playmates. They have even enlisted the help of a young, attractive female zoologist from Switzerland to help boost his sex drive.

So far they have met with little success: Lonesome George hasn't shown the slightest interest in the females in his pen. But his keepers do have other cards to play. George has yet to be introduced to what may prove his best possible partners — female tortoises from a distant island that seem to be more closely related to him than those currently in his pen. If researchers can get the two together and overcome George's low libido, he may yet reproduce.

The Galapagos Islands were once crawling with giant tortoises. Before the first ship sailed into the Galapagos archipelago in 1535, it was home to at least 15 distinct populations of giant tortoise (Geochelone nigra), isolated from each other on different islands or on volcanoes separated by impassable lava flows. But heavy exploitation at the hands of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century whalers, along with competition from introduced animals such as goats, pigs and rats, caused four of these subspecies to go extinct and has earned the remaining 11 a place on the World Conservation Union's list of threatened species. Indeed, the G. nigra abingdoni subspecies from the island of Pinta was thought to be extinct until a snail biologist stumbled on a sole survivor: Lonesome George. [continue]

Thanks to Manthos for pointing out this story.

From the BBC: Hippo's ‘magic’ sweat explained.

The really clever thing about hippos is that they produce their own sunscreen, in the form of a sticky reddish sweat.

Now, a team from Kyoto Pharmaceutical University, Japan, has explained the chemistry of this special substance

It has told Nature magazine the oily secretion is made up of two unstable pigments - one red, the other orange.

The red pigment also has antibacterial properties, which work to protect the hippo from certain pathogens and accelerate its recovery from wounds. [continue]

From the BBC: Microchips to save Peru's alpacas.

Peru has launched a campaign to implant microchips in hundreds of pedigree alpacas to try to stop the best animals being smuggled out of the country.

Officials say they know alpacas are being sneaked across Peru's borders.

The microchips, inserted into the neck, will allow them to keep tabs on the best animals and safeguard the gene pool of its three million-strong herd. (...)

Peruvian law bans the exportation of alpacas that win pedigree certificates.

The microchips surgically inserted into the animals' neck muscles will carry identification codes that can be read by hand-held scanners.

The plan is to tag some 900 top alpacas within five years. [continue]

From National Geographic: Blue Whales Sing at Same Pitch, Study Says.

Luciano Pavarotti they're not, but if blue whales ever build up a repertoire they could give the Italian opera singer a run for his money. The cetaceans have perfect pitch. So perfect, in fact, that it's impossible to tell individuals apart from their calls.

"You might think that a big whale makes a lower sound than a small whale—they come in all different sizes—but they all make the same pitch," said Roger Bland, a physicist at San Francisco State University in California.

Bland, who took an active interest in underwater acoustics 12 years ago as a way to spend more time with his water-loving kids, would like to figure out how to tell individual blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) apart from their calls.

Such an identification mechanism may allow conservationists to keep better tabs on blue whale populations, but so far the task has proven fruitless. [continue]

From sciencedaily.com: Spiders Make Best Ever Post-it Notes.

Scientists have found that the way spiders stick to ceilings could be the key to making Post-it® notes that don't fall off – even when they are wet. A team from Germany and Switzerland have made the first detailed examinations of a jumping spider's 'foot' and have discovered that a molecular force sticks the spider to almost anything. The force is so strong that these spiders could carry over 170 times their own body weight while standing on the ceiling. The research is published today (Monday 19 April 2004) in the Institute of Physics journal Smart Materials and Structures.

This is the first time anyone has measured exactly how spiders stick to surfaces, and how strong the adhesion force is. The team used a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to make images of the foot of a jumping spider, Evarcha arcuata (pictures available – see notes). There is a tuft of hairs on the bottom of the spider's leg, and each individual hair is covered in more hairs. These smaller hairs are called setules, and they are what makes the spider stick. [continue]

Thanks to Boing Boing for pointing out this story.

Related:
Spiders inspire eight-legged Post-it notes -theregister.co.uk
Spiders get a grip - physicsweb.org

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Why don't spiders stick to their own webs? - May 2003
60-acre spider web - November, 2002

From an AP article at the Seattle Post Intelligencer: Ancient bones may be those of royal pet.

LONDON -- Corgis, the little dogs with the short legs, may have a long royal history. Archaeologists from Cardiff University said Wednesday that ninth century bones unearthed in Wales may be those of the first Welsh corgi to be kept as a royal pet.

They have been analyzing bones found at a ancient royal dwelling in a bog in the Brecon Beacons, a hilly area of southern Wales.

"We have the foreleg of a corgi-sized dog, which, dare we suggest, might be a much-favored ancestral royal companion," said Alan Mulville, of the university's School of History and Archaeology, who is leading the study.

Experts believe the crannog - a lake or bog dwelling built on stilts or a man-made island - at Llangorse Lake was the royal residence for the Welsh kingdom of Brycheiniog, dating from around A.D. 890. Tree ring dating of oak planks from the crannog indicate that it was built between 889 and 893. [continue]

From National Geographic: Himalaya Honey Hunters Cling to Cliffside Tradition.

Twice a year high in the Himalayan foothills of central Nepal teams of men gather around cliffs that are home to the world's largest honeybee, Apis laboriosa. As they have for generations, the men come to harvest the Himalayan cliff bee's honey.

The harvest ritual, which varies slightly from community to community, begins with a prayer and sacrifice of flowers, fruits, and rice. Then a fire is lit at the base of the cliff to smoke the bees from their honeycombs.

From above, a honey hunter descends the cliff harnessed to a ladder by ropes. As his mates secure the rope and ladder from the top and ferry tools up down as required, the honey hunter fights territorial bees as he cuts out chunks of honey from the comb. [continue]

From the BBC: Taming Ethiopia's hyenas.

I Seyyid Abdiweli Abdishakur, a traditional leader who also doubles up as a farmer and a pastoralist, has made a mark within his community by achieving what many men dread to even attempt.

He has trained a hyena to look after his livestock and four hawks to guard his grain farms from destructive birds.

The Hyena and Hawk man lives in the small town of Qabri Bayah about 50 kilometres from Jigjiga town the headquarters of the Somali region in eastern Ethiopia.

When I visited him in his house, he was busy tending crops at his green garden - a rare sight in this arid neighbourhood.

A group of young men were playing with the male hyena, which seemed to enjoy all the action. [continue]

From nature.com: Birds catch flies with bendy beaks.

Hummingbirds have bendy lower beaks to help them catch insects, research reveals. The flexibility allows long-beaked birds to open their mouths wide enough to hunt on the wing.

Hummingbirds use their long, narrow beaks to probe flowers for nectar, but they also need insects for essential nutrients. It wasn't clear how they could catch them; birds that hunt flying insects usually have short beaks to help them open their mouths wide. [continue].

From the Guardian: How to fight the gorilla war at work - use chimp talk.

Don't be a chump, be a chimp. Don't hail the boss with a meaningless greeting, try a thoughtful grunt instead. If that doesn't get a rise, try grooming your dominant colleague and see if it smartens up office relationships. If things start to go wrong, don't swear, just emit a short, high-pitched "oo oo oo" call and watch your colleagues swing into action.

Zoologists want a few hundred volunteers to ape humanity's nearest relative, the chimpanzee - and perhaps learn to get along a little better. "When we as keepers are working with the chimps, we use their language to communicate with them," said David Field, curator of mammals for the Zoological Society of London. "Our feeling is that if we can communicate this way with the chimps and build bridges, there is a chance we can build bridges within the work environment as well." [continue]

Oh right. You do it and I'll watch, ok?

NZ's answer to Pamplona: the running of the sheep. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

A small New Zealand town reached for some of the glamour and danger of the Spanish bull-run city of Pamplona yesterday - by running 2,000 woolly sheep through the middle of town.

No one was chased, trampled or gored by the animals in the inaugural "Running of the Sheep". And instead of seeking cover, most spectators helped stop the shaggy mob from scurrying everywhere but the right direction.

As organiser John Grainger predicted, the result was pure chaos as sheep, people and dogs struggled along the planned route through North Island's Te Kuiti, a rural farming town 570 km north of the capital, Wellington. [continue]

From New Scientist: Penguin cameras reveal dive buddies.

Miniature cameras mounted on penguins have recorded their social behaviour underwater for the first time.

Marine birds and mammals spend much of their lives in the open ocean, making it exceedingly difficult for biologists to study their behaviour.

So Akinori Takahashi, of the National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo, Japan, and his colleagues mounted tiny cameras on five Adelie penguins and five chin-strap penguins to monitor their dives off Signy Island in Antarctica.

The cameras weighed only 73 grams in air and were held on the penguin's body by a waterproof tape. They recorded over 11,000 images from 2,140 dives.

The images revealed that the penguins swam underwater with at least one other bird 15 per cent of the time. Sometimes, as many as 11 penguins dived together. When the dives were deeper than 20 metres, the penguins accompanied each other 25 per cent of the time - remaining in close visual contact at all times.

The cameras did not show the penguins feeding together at the bottom of their dives, so the researchers think that the birds dive together to help avoid predators. [continue].

Related:
Penguins - Mirabilis.ca

From The Telegraph: GM scientists create brand-new butterfly.

Imagine a world where butterflies are adorned with advertising slogans, logos and exhortations from the Government to keep fit and eat less.

Although scientists frown on this application of their work, designer butterflies are now a possibility after the announcement that one of their kind has been genetically altered for the first time by scientists.

"RAF circles would be quite cool, as part of a recruitment campaign," said Brian Millar, creative director of the creativepartnershipmarketing agency in London.

Some brands might not want to be associated with genetically modifying nature, he added. And there could be a new form of genetic pollution: "Brands should consider what would happen if the butterflies breed. Would this produce unthinkable mutant Coke⁄Pepsi⁄McDonald's⁄Burger King offspring? These would have to be hunted down and eradicated by a new breed of brand entomologists." [continue].

From the BBC: Monkey mischief ‘blesses’ Bangladeshis.

The town of Keshabpur is overrun by hundreds of monkeys.

They steal and break into houses, but the people consider themselves lucky.

"This place is blessed, that is why monkeys live here," said Haridun Chakrabati, the Brahmin of the town's Hindu temple.

"These monkeys live nowhere else in Bangladesh. They come here because the people are friendly and they worship them as a god."

Most people in Bangladesh are Muslims, but Keshabpur in the western division of Jessore is home to many Hindus.

They revere the animals, black-faced langours, as Hanuman, the monkey god.

But the relationship between people and monkeys is uneasy.

The animals roam the town, raiding gardens, kitchens, and even people's shopping bags.

"Usually they sit on the roof of my kitchen," says Illan Bishush, a 34-year-old housewife. [continue]

Llama nanny to watch over park's lambs. From The Guardian:

Britain's first municipal llama (or lllama because he is Welsh) yesterday began his first full day as long-necked nanny to new-born lambs in a country park near Wrexham.

"We put him in with the lambs this morning and we hope he will do a good job," said Liz Carding, head ranger at the Ty Mawr park run by Wrexham county borough council. "He has already seen off a couple of pheasants."

Ms Carding decided to recruit Laurence (or Llaurence) after reading about the excellent reputation llamas have for protecting livestock.

"During the foot and mouth outbreak we were closed for five months as a precaution and the park became inundated with wildlife, including a lot of foxes," she said.

"We are involved with conservation here and we had to find an environmentally friendly way of dealing with the foxes."

Llamas, which have a strong herd instinct, have an established reputation for seeing off predators. A US study found that they helped sheep farmers reduce losses from coyotes, wild dogs and even bears. [continue]

Birds know warning calls from other animals. From The Scotsman:

BIRDS are capable of recognising calls that other species use to warn each other about predators. And some species can tell one warning call from another, while ignoring those which do not indicate a danger to them, scientists said.

Biologists at the University of St Andrews found a bird species which recognises and responds to noises from a potential predator, as well as reacting to warning calls from other animals under threat from the same predator. [continue]

From The Telegraph: Stalin's last army - hordes of gigantic crabs on their way to invade Europe.

Millions of giant Pacific crabs, whose ancestors were brought to Europe by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, are marching south along Norway's coast, devouring everything in their path.

The monster crabs, which can weigh up to 25lb and have a claw-span of more than three feet, are proving so resilient that scientists fear they could end up as far south as Gibraltar.

Energised by a mysterious population explosion a decade ago, whole armies of the crustaceans - known as the Kamchatka or Red King Crabs - have already advanced about 400 miles along the roof of Europe, overwhelming the ports of northern Norway. [continue]

Dear heavens!

From abc.net.au: Cats stand guard over Russia's artistic treasures.

Saint Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum is well known as home to some of the world's greatest artistic treasures.

A lesser-known collection at the museum is an army of cats, its praetorian guard against rats.

For more than 250 years, the Hermitage's resident felines have waged incessant war against the rodents that infest Russia's most prestigious museum, set on the bank of the Neva River.

In summer they stroll the institution's grounds and yard, picking out their sinuous way between the statues and other priceless exhibits, but in the winter the 50 strong army spends much of its time in the better-heated basement.

"We consider them to be museum employees," said Tatyana Danilina, one of the Hermitage's human employees. (...)

The presence of cats in the Winter Palace, the historic residence which houses the Hermitage Museum and was once the heart of the Russian empire, owes nothing to chance.

The feline invasion began in 1745 when Emperess Elizaveta Petrovna, Peter the Great's daughter, signed a decree ordering to "find in Kazan (a city located in the Volga region, some 800 kilometres east of Moscow), better cats, the largest ones, able to catch mice, and to send them to Her Majesty's court, accompanied by a person who will look after their health."

Within a few decades, during the reign of Emperess Catherine the Great, there was already a substantial population of "Winter Palace cats" living in the building. [continue]

Link found at Cronaca.

Related:
Hermitage Museum - Mirabilis.ca

If you have even the slightest interest in polar bears, take a look at this page at National Geographic, where "A polar bear paparazzo brings back close-up images of these Hudson Bay celebrities." There are thumbnail photos on the left side, leading to full size photos like this, which I defy you to resist. The site includes videos, a flash presentation, and still more content besides.

Pigeons reveal map-reading secret. From the BBC:

Homing pigeons are finding their way around Britain by following roads and railways, zoologists claim.

They say the birds' natural magnetic and solar compasses are often less important than their knowledge of human transport routes.

A 10 year Oxford University study discovered some pigeons turn off at certain motorway junctions and use landmarks to remember where they are.

The scientists behind the study were "knocked sideways" by their findings.

The researchers worked with a team from the BBC's natural history unit, which placed a tiny camera on one pigeon to capture what it could see for a new programme. [continue].

Related:
The homing pigeon's ploy: follow that road - Guardian

Eurekalert tells of the search for ancient Persian warships. The whole article is interesting, but the part about the octopus is the best bit.

An international research team including a University of Colorado at Boulder professor has mounted a deep-water search off the northern coast of Greece in search of a fleet of Persian warships presumed lost in a massive ocean storm in 492 B.C.

The armada of warships is believed to have been sent by Persian King Darius to invade Greece, according to ancient historical accounts. The research team included more than a dozen Greek, Canadian, American and Finnish scholars.

The project is being conducted in the seas off the Mt. Athos peninsula. "This survey is the first one where scholars have searched for fleets of ancient ships using an historical source--in this case the writings of Herodotus," said CU-Boulder History Professor Hohlfelder, a senior maritime archaeologist on the project.

Herodotus, a Greek historian who lived from 485 to 430 B.C., is often called "The Father of History." His extensive writings include a report that in 492 B.C., nearly 300 ships and more than 20,000 men perished in a severe storm off Mt. Athos.

The event was said to cause Persian King Xerxes to cut a canal through the narrowest part of Mt. Athos prior to his 480 B.C. invasion of Greece to avoid the need to round the peninsula in the Aegean Sea, said Hohlfelder.

The team used sonar from the R/V Aegaeo ship of the Hellenic Center for Marine Research, the manned Thetis submersible submarine and a remotely operated vehicle known as the Achilles for two weeks last October, said Hohlfelder. But ironically, it was an octopus that proved perhaps the most useful detector.

"We were a high-tech operation, but our most useful research tool turned out to be the octopuses that lived in these waters," said Hohlfelder. One octopus living in a ceramic pot 300 feet down had dragged broken pieces of pottery, stones and a bronze spear point with part of the wooden shaft still intact into the entrance of its home.

"Happily for marine archaeologists, these animals love to collect antiquities and pull them into their homes. "Very often the first clue that a shipwreck is nearby is a pile of artifacts collected by these wonderful creatures with an antiquarian's passion for old things." [continue].

From National Geographic: Rat Radar: Rodent Uses Natural "GPS".

Hikers trekking through unfamiliar territory are well advised to carry a compass, if not a GPS unit, to stay on course. Other animals are lucky enough to have complex navigational equipment in-built. New research reveals that Israel's blind mole rat (Spalax ehrenbergi) uses the Earth's magnetic field on long journeys, much like a compass, to continuously monitor and maintain its course.

But that's not where the burrowing rodent's abilities end. The mole rat also has an uncanny habit of burrowing around obstacles—such as ditches or concrete blocks—without ever coming in to physical contact with them. [continue]

Kleptography has a set of lovely mantis photos. Choose the low-resolution images (faster loading, smaller) or the high-resolution images (slower, but bigger images) and browse away. Here's the story behind the photos.

From the our story page at the Operation Migration website:

As a young boy, William Lishman joined the Cadets because he wanted to fly. But a mandatory eye test revealed he was colour blind and dyslexic, stopping him from becoming a conventional pilot. So, he decided to become an unconventional one. He used his ultralight-piloting skills in 1988 to lead a flock of 12 Canada geese on local flights. In doing so, he made ornithological and aviation history. Then, in 1994, he and partner Joseph Duff together led the first aircraft migration of 18 geese from Ontario to Virginia.

The flights made the two partners realize that they could help save not only the birds, but the world. Together, Lishman and Duff decided to raise funds for future migration studies. In 1994, they founded Operation Migration, a non-profit organization registered as a charity in both Canada and the United States. Since then, the Operation Migration team has conducted nine migration studies leading three species of birds. Teaching birds safe migratory routes helps preserve the world's vital ecosystem and its irreplaceable wildlife. [continue]

Related book:
Father Goose : One Man, a Gaggle of Geese, and Their Real Life Incredible Journey South

Man's new best friends? Over the centuries, man has observed the behaviour of wild animals. In some cases he has made use of their abilities in a mutually beneficial manner. In Africa, the honeyguide bird can memorise the position of every bee's nest across a massive area of land. The bird has entered into an amazing partnership with the local tribesmen. It attracts their attention with a loud call and deliberately leads them to the bee's nest. It patiently waits for the men to catch up, over a distance of several kilometres. When the party gets to the nest, the bird gives a softer call and perches nearby. The tribe benefits from a supply of honey and the bird is rewarded with a honeycomb full of grubs.

In Laguna, near the southern tip of Brazil, fishermen and dolphins have teamed up. The water is murky and the men can't see the fish, but the dolphins can use echolocation to find them. The dolphins signal when they have found a school and then they herd it towards the shore. As the dolphins dive, the men cast their nets and both benefit from a good catch. The knowledge of this arrangement is passed from parent to young, in both human and dolphin families.

From the D-F of Weird on BBC's Weird Nature site.

From the BBC: Chill-out CD to calm turkeys.

Yorkshire turkeys have been shaking their tail feathers to the sounds of Gregorian chanting and wind chimes in the run up to Christmas.

The National Farmers Union (NFU) sent relaxation CDs to turkey farmers across the county to test the common belief that playing the birds music keeps them calm. [continue]

From the Globe and Mail: Dog helps boy cope with autism.

Jamil Shah threw long tantrums, and like thousands of other autistic children, could barely communicate with his parents.

These days, the 12-year-old is doing better. He cuddles beside his canine companion, Sherlock, whenever he's upset, he's grown aware of his surroundings, but mostly he's more affectionate.

"He's really attached to the dog. He's writing poetry about Sherlock," his mother Salma Shah said.

He would cry and scream, often becoming impatient, and at times his parents feared he would hurt himself. Now he is more calm, they say. Sherlock goes over to Jamil when he shows signs of acting up.

Jamil and his two-year-old golden retriever are part of a University of Guelph study which shows that pairing autistic children with assistance dogs can help such children become more affectionate and better connected to the world. [continue].

Related:
Assistance dogs help autistic children emotionally, says U of G prof - University of Guelph

From the Globe and Mail: Bison to roam the prairies again.

It's been more than 150 years since wild bison thundered across the Saskatchewan grasslands, but a sort of homecoming is scheduled for the legendary animals next week as a small herd will be reintroduced to the prairie.

Millions of the enormous, shaggy herbivores roamed North America when European settlers arrived. Excessive hunting nearly wiped them out, and only two known herds of pure-blooded bison remain in Canada.

A third herd will get its start on Dec. 12, when conservationists load 50 young bison into oversized trailers at Elk Island National Park in Alberta. They plan to drive non-stop for about eight hours and release them into a grassland preserve located in southwest Saskatchewan.

The herd's new home will be the Old Man on His Back Prairie and Heritage Conservation Area, about 5,300 hectares of native prairie near Eastend, jointly owned by the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Saskatchewan government.

Relocating bison is a tricky job, said Sue Michalsky, a director of land conservation for the NCC. [continue]

Related:
Where the Buffalo Roam - Saskatchewan Environment
Prairie photographs help preserve heritage land - CBC

Letting sleeping bears lie is an article from The Globe and Mail about Cari and Boo, the orphaned grizzly bears who are hibernating just next to a ski run at Kicking Horse Mountain.

When the 1,050-hectare ski area opens for the season on Dec. 12, visitors will be carving tracks into the hills just a snowball's throw from the den where the orphaned siblings will be tucked away for the next five months. The den, a log cabin located below the resort's busy gondola lift, is lined inside with dirt and branches, and buried in a deep blanket of snow.

While the notion of bears on a ski hill may seem unusual, veterinarian Ken Macquisten, director of the refuge, has had success with a similar project launched in 2001 at Grouse Mountain near Vancouver.

Even though there will be plenty of noise on the Kicking Horse hill -- a steady drone of snowmaking equipment, the hum of the overhead gondola and an occasional skier's shout -- the bears will continue to sleep well in their soundproof den, Dr. Macquisten says. [continue]

There are photos of the bears on the Kicking Horse Bear Refuge page.

Related links:
Bear Webcam - Mirabilis.ca posting about the bearcam at Grouse Mountain, near Vancouver.
Refuge for Endangered Wildlife - grousemountain.com
Grouse Mountain Grizzlycams - grousemountain.com

From Ananova: Scientists confirm discovery of new whale species.

A previously unknown species of whale has been identified by scientists.

Eight specimens were caught by Japanese whaling research vessels in the 1970s. The carcass of a ninth was found stranded on a coastal island in the Sea of Japan in 1998.

Detailed analysis has now confirmed that they are members of a species of baleen whale not recognised before.

A team of Japanese researchers led by Shiro Wada, from the National Research Institute of Fisheries Science in Yokohama, have reported the findings in the journal Nature.

The scientists found that the DNA of all nine specimens matched, but were different from all other known baleen species.

The toothless baleen group of whales includes all the major species of large whale, except sperm whales, which have teeth.

The new species, named Balaenoptera omurai, also had an unusually-shaped head and a small number of baleen plates. These form the sieve-like device, made from the same material as hair and fingernails, that the whales use to filter out the tiny crustacea on which they feed. [full article]

New Whale Species Announced by Japanese Scientists - nationalgeographic.com
New whale species found in museum - newscientist.com
Japanese team identifies new whale species - CBC
Whale species is new to science - BBC

From National Geographic: Armor-Plated Snail Discovered in Deep Sea.

Researchers have found perhaps the world's most unusual snail. The as-yet-unnamed creature bears a mass of interlocking, iron-based plates on its body and the base of its foot. Like a suit of medieval armor, the snail may use its metal scales as a defense against predatory attack.

As gardeners already know, all other slugs and snails (or gastropod mollusks, to the experts) sport a soft and slimy foot.

The new snail, described in the current edition of the journal Science, was discovered in the hostile hydrothermal vent environment of the deep Indian Ocean.

Anders Waren, a biologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm and the lead researcher behind the find, said this "very strange little beast" is the first animal discovered that uses iron sulfides for a structural purpose. [continue]

Related:
Cast-Iron Foot: Undersea snail has mineral armor - sciencenews.org
Armored snail - biomedcentral.com

From the Guardian: University project to teach seals how to talk.

St Andrew's University has acquired its very own Dr Dolittle, with the arrival of a Harvard academic on a mission to teach seals to talk.

Tecumseh Fitch, a specialist in language evolution, plans to recruit undergraduates to "hang out" with young seals in the hope that the seals will pick up human speech patterns.

The experiment may have echoes of Hugh Lofting's creation, but it is inspired by the bizarre but entirely genuine example of a talking seal called Hoover, who entertained visitors at an aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts, with entire phrases delivered in gravelly male tones.

"He said things like ‘hey Hoover, get out of there’, and ‘move over Hoover’," said Dr Fitch. "Not only did he do this, he said it with a Maine fisherman's accent."

On this side of the Atlantic, Dr Fitch and his colleague Vincent Janik will research seals' rare ability - shared with humans and birds - to imitate sounds. [continue]

Related:
Hoover, the talking seal - from the New England Aquarium

From the Guardian: Monkeys Terrorize India Workers, Tourists.

NEW DELHI (AP) - In a capital city where cows roam the streets and elephants plod along in the bus lanes, it's no surprise to find government buildings overrun with monkeys.

But the officials who work there are fed up. They've been bitten, robbed and otherwise tormented by monkeys that ransack files, bring down power lines, screech at visitors and bang on office windows.

The Supreme Court has stepped in, decreeing that New Delhi should be a monkey-free city after citizens filed a lawsuit demanding protection from the animals.

Easier said than done. A past initiative to scare off the army of Rhesus macaques with ultrahigh frequency loudspeakers didn't work. A plan to deport them to distant regions has stalled because local governments refused to have them.

There's an ape patrol of fierce-looking primates called langurs, led about on leashes by keepers. But whenever a langur looms, the pink-faced, two-foot-tall hooligans simply move elsewhere on government grounds. [continue]

From the New York Times: Animal-Watching Deep in the Amazon.

We are gliding along the banks of a river deep in the wilds of the Peruvian Amazon, when the Indian guide at the bow of our wooden canoe suddenly shouts "Capybara!" Three furry mounds proceed to rise up and glare at us through eyes eerily placed on the tops of their heads.

Our Indian boatman, who still hunts with a bow, had only contempt for the gigantic rodents, though we had drifted so close to them we could see their sad teddy bear mouths and the flies buzzing around their whiskers. "They eat grass," he spat. "They have a stinky taste."

I'd love to see a capybara. Remember the story about how the Catholic church once classified capybara as fish?

A century ago, a deadly hail of arrows would have greeted us instead of these bizarre snouted creatures, shot by the ancestors of the very Indians who are now guiding us up this jungle tributary. They are members of the Ese Eja-Sonene tribe, once the fiercest of warriors, who massacred missionaries, loggers, and any other white men who ventured into their territory.

Now, although they are still one of the most primitive tribes in the Amazon basin, the Ese Eja, backed by eco-tourist organizations, have recently built and opened a very comfortable jungle lodge in the Manu Wilderness on the border between southeastern Peru and Bolivia. Nestling into crisp sheets and handmade quilts while snakes and parrots held forth in the trees above us, my son, Josh, and I stayed here for four days of a 10-day trip into the region last January. [continue]

More enlightenment from the Beeb: Most walruses are right-flippered.

The walrus has been added to the growing list of animals that seem to prefer using one hand, or flipper, over the other.

The ivory-tusked sea mammal tends to use its right flipper to forage for clams on the sea bed, say scientists.

Anatomical studies confirm that the bones in the walrus' right limb are longer than those in the left - the same phenomenon seen in right-handed people.

The Danish, Swedish and Greenland researchers report their discovery in the online journal BMC Ecology.

Handedness - preferring one side of the body to the other for certain tasks - has been found in chimps, monkeys and even crows, so it is perhaps not surprising that it should be found in an aquatic mammal. [continue]

Physics Plucks Secret of Peacock Feather Colors. From the National Geographic:

The peacock is one of the natural world's most elaborate and showy males, mustering its physical resources to wow potential mates with its enormous and gaudy, fan-like tail plumage.

Now scientists in China have uncovered the exact mechanisms used by one species to produce the iridescent green, blue, yellow, and brown tiny feather tips that comprise the bird's distinctive ornament.

"The male peacock tail contains spectacular beauty because of the brilliant, iridescent, diversified, colorful eye patterns," said Jian Zi, a physicist at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and lead author of the study published online earlier this week in the science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Male peacocks shed and re-grow tail feathers each year. The plumage is prized throughout the world as an exotic decoration.

Researchers found that the feathers' bright colors are produced not by pigments, but rather by tiny, intricate two-dimensional crystal-like structures. Slight alterations in the spacing of these microscopic structures cause different wavelengths of light to be filtered and reflected, creating the feathers' many different iridescent hues.

Sir Isaac Newton, the 17th- and 18th-century British mathematician and physicist, was among the first to suggest that tiny, layered structures were responsible for producing color in peacock feathers, and other iridescent insects and birds.

But until now, the exact physical mechanism by which different colors are produced has not been known, said Zi. "Our work has [now] revealed … ingenious and simple mechanisms of color production in peacock feathers," he said. [continue]

From National Geographic: Tree Canopy Walks Draw Tourists, Scientists.

The warblers, lemurs, and bees that tweet, screech, and buzz high in the treetops are sharing their once hidden domain with eco-tourists and scientists who've begun to wander along walkways that lead from the ground way up into the canopy.

The walkways are suspended from towers or the branches of trees, allowing people to look canopy-dwelling wildlife in the eyes and smell flowers that bloom a few hundred feet closer to the sun. (...)

Researchers sit for hours on elevated platforms and study an ecosystem that was until recently as cloaked in mystery as the depths of the seas.

"The canopy is like a leafy aerial continent, elevated on stilts, called the treetops," said H. Bruce Rinker of the Center for Canopy Ecology at the Marie Selby Botanical Garden in Sarasota, Florida. "When you get up there in the aerial continent you have a different perspective on the forest that is broader and healthier than what you have on the ground." [continue]

From csmonitor.com: Saving a muskrat the hard way.

He was almost or completely full-grown. I wasn't sure which, because he was the first living muskrat I'd ever seen. He looked up at me from the bottom of the 16-inch-deep window well into which he'd fallen. He was pacing anxiously.

I was pretty nervous myself. Obviously it was up to me to get him out of this part of my home and back to his home - the marsh bordering the cornfield at the rear of our property. The four neighborhood kids who had brought him to my attention stood looking back and forth from him to me, awaiting my next move. [continue]

The Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) is the largest of all rodents. (It should be noted that the now extinct rodent Phoberomys pattersoni was significantly bigger.) Full-grown Capybaras reach between 105 and 135 cm in length, and weigh 35 to 65 kilos. They are native to most of the tropical and temperate parts of South America east of the Andes, always near water. It is the only member of its family, Hydrochoeridae. (...)

When Spanish missionaries first found Capybaras in Brazil during the 16th century, they wrote to the Pope for guidance, saying "there is an animal here that is scaly but also hairy, and spends time in the water (the capybara has webbed feet to facilitate its aquatic habit) but occasionally comes on land; can we classify it as a fish?" The question was significant, as the Catholic faith forbids eating meat during Lent. Having a second hand description of the animal (and not wanting the petitioners to turn away from Catholicism), the Pope agreed and declared the Capybara a fish. [continue]

That's from Wikiupedia's Capybara page, which I found through a link over here at Irish Elk. (And thanks, Irish Elk, for your kind comments about Mirabilis.ca.)

There are lots of good capybara photos here.

Related links:
Rainforest Live: Capybara
Animal Planet: Capybara
A capybara in South Africa

Among Bowerbirds, Mimicry Wins Mates, Study Says. From National Geographic:

Male bowerbirds famously woo females by fashioning elaborate bowers — not nests but U-shaped showplaces with parallel walls of twigs. There the males prance and noisily serenade the females.

This spectacular courtship ritual during the November and December mating season has long attracted ornithologists to the species formally known as satin bowerbirds, native to Australia.

New research, however, reveals that the ritual may be even more complex and subtle than previously recognized; male satin bowerbirds mimic the calls of other bird species to attract a mate. [continue]

Update:
Bowerbirds Dance, Decorate to Suit Females' Changing Tastes - National Geographic, April 2004

From the BBC: Giant rodent astonishes science.

The fossil remains of a gigantic rodent that looked something like a monster guinea pig have been identified by scientists in Venezuela.

The 700-kilogram beast - about the size of a buffalo - lived among the reeds and grasses of an ancient river system that threaded its way into the Caribbean Sea eight million years ago.

Researchers think the creature, which was 10 times as big as today's largest rodents, could have run in huge packs.

Evidence suggests it also had to dodge the constant attentions of super-sized crocodiles and carnivorous birds, which stood three metres tall.

The discovery of "Guinea-zilla", as some have already dubbed it, is reported in the journal Science.

The remains were pulled out of brown shale and coal beds at the town of Urumaco, 400 kilometres west of Caracas. [continue]

Monkeys strike for justice. From nature.com:

Monkeys strike for equal pay. They down tools if they see another monkey get a bigger reward for doing the same job, US researchers have found.

The experiments show that notions of justice extend beyond humans, says Sarah Brosnan of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. This is probably an innate ability that evolved in our primate ancestor, she believes: "You need a sense of fairness to live in large, complex groups."

Brosnan and her colleague Frans de Waal taught brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) to swap plastic tokens for food. Normally, monkeys were happy to exchange a token for some cucumber.

But the monkeys took offence if they saw a neighbour getting a grape for a token. In about half of such trials, the short-changed capuchin either refused to hand over its token, or rejected the reward. Some threw the token or cucumber clean out of their cage.

The animals' umbrage was even greater if another monkey got a grape for nothing. About 80% rebelled in some way in this situation.

"It's a really neat discovery," says primatologist Charles Janson of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "The monkey is clearly paying attention to what its neighbour is doing, and realizing that it's getting a better reward." [continue]

Related articles:
Study shows monkeys may resent unfairness - Salon.com
Monkeys Show Sense Of Fairness, Study Says - NationalGeographic.com
Capuchins prove we are brothers under the skin -Telegraph.co.uk
Genetic Basis to Fairness, Study Hints - NYTimes.com

From National Geographic, here's Cyber Tiger. Name your Siberian tiger, design a zoo for him, then turn him loose.

How else would you want to start your week?

From Love on the rocks:

Amidst an exciting sea of swimmers, stingers, and stunning beauties, barnacles may seem boring. But within their limestone homes, these tiny crustaceans hide an extraordinary sexual endowment and enviable masonry skills that have guided them down a long and successful evolutionary path. Emerging more than 520 million years ago, barnacles even survived the Permian extinction, which decimated up to 96 percent of all marine species.

Cemented into a permanent headstand, barnacles kick food into their mouths with feathery feet. [continue]

How could you do anything but continue, after an introduction like that?

You may also like The Secret Life of Barnacles. And how about the amazing barnacle photos at the Virtual Ocean?

I found this a while ago, while checking to see if anybody really does dip scorpions in chocolate. (Yes, and yes. Isn't it incredible what some people will eat?) Anyway, here is Escorpion Especial and a Side of Chocolate, Por Favor. It's not about eating scorpions, but gives a good idea of what it would be like to live with scorpions appearing in one's house now and again. Total creep-out stuff for innocent Vancouverites, I tell you. I love the second part of the scorption bite remedy.

Scorpions are everywhere in Mexico (including, it turns out, my kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom) and they range in size from about the length of a cigarette filter to that of a very manly cigar. In some places, birds hunt for scorpions, and in others, the scorpions hunt birds. They come in black, white, green, brown, and in combinations of these colors. They come out only at night, and they fall: from thatched roofs and clotheslines, cracked skylights and banana trees, anything overhead. You choose your steps cautiously from bed to bathroom, and plop! there is one on your shoulder. You plod barefoot from the beach to your home, and plop! one appears in the sand, awaiting your next footfall.

When they are not busy falling, they march. In a perfect 4:4 time (remember that arachnids have eight legs) and always in a precisely straight line, they march, death held aloft and swinging slightly left and right with each step. They are like tiny tanks rolling inexorably over your kitchen floor, turrets swiveling this way and that in search of movement. They have no discernible head. There is only death, swaying lightly above, and legs, marching steady below.

The locals have numerous precautions, procedures, remedies, and superstitions. The most intriguing of these is chocolate, considered in these parts the sole known antidote for some varieties of scorpion sting. If you are attacked, you are supposed to 1) kill the thing, 2) eat chocolate, and 3) don't sleep. If you sleep you may fall into a coma. While you are awake your skin will burn and you will develop a fever, but you can reduce these symptoms by consuming heaps of chocolate. [continue]

From National Geographic: Scientists Rethinking Nature of Animal Memory.

An elephant never forgets — or does it?

Scientists have long believed that animals do not have so-called episodic memory — the kind that allows humans to remember past events. But recent experiments with scrub jays, chimpanzees, and gorillas have led to rethinking of the nature of memory in animals.

Animal memory researchers first face the challenge of communicating between species. "You can't exactly ask the animals where they were, and what they were doing, when Bambi's mother was shot," says Nicola Clayton, a professor of comparative cognition at University of Cambridge in England and a leading researcher in the field of animal memory.

Over the past six years Clayton has devised a series of ingenious experiments that seem to show that scrub jays can recall past events and use the information to plan for the future. [continue]

Ananova reports that a nervous dragon receives acupuncture treatments.

An eight foot long Komodo dragon lizard in Singapore's zoo has been receiving traditional Chinese acupuncture treatment for a nerve disorder.

Eight-year-old male lizard, Tirto, who weights six stone, has been receiving twice-weekly treatments for a neurological disorder for the past three weeks.

"Tirto is now more relaxed and is beginning to enjoy his treatments," a spokesman for the Singapore Zoological Gardens, Vincent Tan, said.

Komodo dragons, the world's largest lizards, are prehistoric-looking reptiles that can grow up to 3 meters long and weigh more than 90 kilograms. They have long claws and serrated teeth that help them tear meat from the animals they prey upon. [continue]

Related links:
Animal bytes: Komodo dragon
Giant lizards
Komodo dragon pictures
The Komodo Dragon: On a few small islands in the Indonesian archipelago, the world's largest lizard reigns supreme
Singapore Zoo

This is from the Cultural Entomology Digest Online.

Consider the following questions: What insects do we find in art? What insects affect us psychologically? Can you think of any song, book or movie based on insects? What insects have been deified? Do insects carry any symbolism? Maybe you've seen Dürer's stag beetle or Jiminy Cricket. Perhaps you've experienced entomophobia (fear of insects). You might have heard Flight of The Bumblebee, read ‘Metamorphosis,’ or seen ‘The Fly.’ The Egyptian's deified the scarab beetle and the ancient Greek cult of Artemis worshipped the bee. As you work like an industrious ant, your mind might think of love as you watch a butterfly drift by. We begin to realize the extent to which insects have become a part of almost every facet of the humanities. We'll call these cross-spectrum snippets "Cultural Entomology."

It's a fascinating website, this. Check out the butterfly wing patterns, the very cool bugs, or some of the articles.

Where else can you read about Japanese family crests containing designs based on butterflies, or about the butterfly and moth as symbols in western art?

Creepy crawly news from the BBC: Robot insect walks on water.

Scientists have developed a robotic insect which walks on water.

The team, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, were testing out a theory about how one family of foraging insects performs the same trick.

Previous theories put forward to explain how water striders (Gerridae) manage to propel themselves across the surface of ponds and lakes had one major problem.

They predicted that young water striders should be too weak to move, while nature shows clearly that they are not.

Surface tension explains why water striders do not sink below the surface as they stand on water.

But a careful experimental study was needed to explain how they propel themselves forward.

"What we did was to apply some conventional techniques of flow visualisation in fluid dynamics," MIT's John Bush told BBC News Online.

"You basically sprinkle dye or tiny particles into the water and record what happens with a high-speed camera." [continue]

From Ananova: Experts train rats to sniff out landmines.

Giant rats are being trained to sniff out landmines in Tanzania.

Their trainers at Tanzania's Sokoine University of Agriculture say the African pouched rats can do a much better job than dogs.

Christophe Cox is the Belgian co-ordinator of a project that is training 300 rats to locate mines by recognising the smell of dynamite and TNT.

He said: "Rats are good, clever to learn, small, like performing repeated tasks and have a better sense of smell than dogs."

One reason the animals are useful in detecting mines is that despite their description as "giant" rats, they are small enough, about 30 inches long to scamper across a minefield without setting off the charges. [continue]

From the Independent: The museum whose insect collection is being eaten ... by insects.

To the human eye, the display cases of iridescent butterflies and delicate blooms in the archives of the Natural History Museum are objects of interest and beauty. To Anthrenus sarnicus, a tiny beetle just two millimetres in length, they represent something else - dinner.

The curators of Britain's leading repository of plant and insect specimens revealed yesterday that the diminutive bug is the voracious vanguard of a creepy-crawly army that is threatening the nation's botanical and zoological treasures.

Staff are fighting a daily battle to halt the progress of Anthrenus sarnicus - one of a species aptly called museum beetles - and a cast of other hungry creatures hell-bent on munching their way through cases of rare vegetation and delicately preserved creatures. [continue]

Related links:
Natural History Museum
Discover Insects - part of the Natural History Museum's site

So do cats have strange postpartum mental problems? From canada.com: Family cat a mom to mice.

CRANBROOK -- The Weller family awoke yesterday to find their cat nursing two mice -- along with her seven week-old kittens.

Irene Weller said one of her daughters found some baby mice in a nest in their home on Monday.

"I didn't want mice in the house," Weller said. So the baby rodents were promptly taken outside.

But yesterday morning, the Wellers saw their cat Patches nursing and caring for the mice as if they were part of her litter.

"I don't know where she found them," Weller said. "But clearly she found them and brought them in instead of killing them."

It appears Patches is in a real maternal groove.

"She's actually feeding the mice," Weller said. [continue]

From abc.net.au: Great tits hit the high notes in the city.

The great tit, a bird common throughout Europe, changes its song to a higher frequency when competing with the din of a city, Dutch researchers have found.

The reason for hitting higher notes might be so that male great tits can still make their mating call heard above the loud, generally low-frequency, racket of urban areas, suggest the scientists in the latest issue of the journal, Nature.

Dr Hans Slabbekoorn and colleague Margriet Peet of the University of Leiden recorded the songs of 32 male great tits in different parts of the Dutch city of Leiden.

Each of the birds (Parsus major) had a repertoire of between three and nine distinct song types. Slabbekoorn and Peet found that great tits living in noisy urban territories had, on average, higher-pitched songs than great tits living in quieter suburban areas.

While it is possible that birds with different song frequencies choose home environments suited to their vocal range, the duo said that it is much more likely that they adapt their song to their surroundings.

Great tits are particularly adaptable singers. It is well known that the great tit's song is learnt, rather than pre-programmed: they can even adjust their frequency according to the acoustic properties of their habitat.

Although there is no evidence that sound pollution plays a direct role in the declining biodiversity in urban areas, these results suggest that human-altered environments can change the communication signals of wild bird species. Species that are less adaptable to the city might find themselves drowned out and mate-less, the researchers said.

This is from Mike Reddy's page on Tudor and Medieval Beekeeping.

Beekeeping has always been an integral part of the British Economy. Although we now see honey as a rather expensive sweetener, compared with sugar - At £2 a 1 lb jar it loses hands down to a 25 pence bag of sugar - The main product of Mediaeval and Tudor apiarists was the wax, used by chandlers to make candles for the Church until the Reformation in 1536 when King Henry the 8th in his obsession to gain a male heir all but destroyed the market. Honey was still the reserve of the richer families and was used in baking, medicines, polish and the manufacture of Mead (the oldest alcoholic drink!).
In fact, mead was the weakest of a number of honey derived beverages, collectively known as Meth (not Meths!) or Hydromel. The strongest was Methaeglen, a one time favourite of Queen Elizabeth the 1st. Such was the importance of the drink to the Royal Court that Welsh mead makers were immune from all prosecution while making it! They could, literally, get away with murder!

The main difference between beekeeping is that now we have techniques for separating the honey from the brood - a legal requirement for selling in fact - with the movable comb hive. Although, tree stumps and clay pots have been used around the World, in Western Europe, the most popular hive was a conical basket called a skep - derived from the Anglo Saxon "Skeppa" which means basket - made of woven wicker baskets (with a coating of cloome or daub), or long straw coiled and stitched with blackberry briar. The straw skep is said to have started with tribes west of the Elbe in Germany [Crane]. The earliest remains may have come from possibly a twelfth century skep found in 1980 during an excavation at Coppergate, York. [Crane].

Skeps need not be made with long wheat straw. Reeds and sedges could also be used, presumably dependent upon locally available materials. Skeps have been known to last 150 years. Skeps were usually set upon tables to protect them from damp and scavengers. The platforms would be made of wood, as stone would be likely to chill the bees. [continue, and see photos]

And here's some informatin from the The Scottish Beekeepers' Association:

Before hives with removable wooden frames were invented, bees were kept in a variety of hollow containers in which they were free to build comb just as they liked. The trouble with this arrangement was that the combs could not be removed to be inspected or moved from one hive to another, which made efficient beekeeping rather more difficult.

Below is a photograph of one of the older types of beehive used in Scotland. It is made from coils of tightly bound straw, and is called a skep. Skeps were not very waterproof, and easily blown away, so were usually kept under some sort of more substantial shelter. A recess in a stone wall was a common location for a beehive, where in winter it would be packed around with straw to help keep the cold away from the bees.

Storks' nest switch jolts scientists. From the BBC:

Storks in Poland have set scientists an intriguing puzzle: to understand why they are changing their nesting habits.

Traditionally the birds used to nest on the roofs of buildings and in trees.

But over the last 25 years they have begun developing a marked preference for building their nests on electricity pylons instead.

Ornithologists think the change may be linked to greater breeding success.

Poland is one of the European strongholds of the white stork, with about a quarter of the continent's total population. The birds spend the summer there and winter in Africa.

In 1985 there were about 30,000 breeding pairs, and by 1995 around 40,000. The estimate for 2002 is 44,000 pairs.

Dr Przemek Chylarecki, a biologist, is president of the Polish Society for the Protection of Birds (Otop).

He told BBC News Online: "In 1974 4% of Polish storks built their nests on electricity pylons, and by 1995 that had risen to 37%.

"We don't know why they prefer the pylons, but we suspect they may be breeding more successfully there - there is some slight evidence to support that. It does seem to be an evolutionary change." [continue]

Oooooh! Nature is Profligate. has a fine posting: The time has come, the Doctor said, to talk of many things: Of shrews -- and shrimps--and shocking acts -- and whether birds have flings. Here's what the entry says:

One of my sources of inspiration in creating this blog has been Olivia Judson's recent book Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation. A number of my recent posts (e.g. Not afraid to throw themselves at a pretty girl's head) discuss new studies that touch on topics treated in detail in her book.

Written as a series of sex advice columns to various distressed or confused non-human creatures, Judson's tone is light but her research is extensive. If you're wondering whether such a humorous, light-hearted book can be scientifically accurate, wonder no more. Olivia Judson (through her alter ego, Dr. Tatiana) shows it can be done. This is easily one of my favorite books of recent years.

Judson's motivation in assembling such a volume, or at least my interpretation of it, is both a desire to expound on the diversity of bizarre sexual practices in the (animal) world and to foster some tolerance in her human audience. If you feel either intolerant or squeamish when it comes to the sometimes messy, sometimes violent practices surrounding reproduction, then this book --newly out in paperback -- may not be your ideal summer read. Having said that, I have yet to encounter a negative reaction to the book's content among my friends, who have devoured the book with an enthusiasm similar to mine. Dr. Tatiana does not glorify or endorse any particular reproductive strategy; she simply documents the truly astonishing diversity of practices and seeks to explain them from an evolutionary perspective. She'll make you look at the world in a different way, and that's a rare quality in such an easy to read book.

If you want a second (or third, fourth, etc.) opinion, Dr. Tatiana's publishers have assembled a list of links to reviews, but they seem to have left out this fantastic review from National Geographic magazine. Write again soon, Dr. Tatiana!

Thanks to Amity for the above, and to Jill at Unlocking the Air for suggesting that I go read Nature is Profligate. Now I've got to stop by the local bookshop to order that book.

This would have been fun to watch: Gallant police snare croc, but it was stuffed.

Italian police snared a two-metre crocodile in Rome's Tiber river only to find the reptile, believed to be the same one which has terrorised Romans for a week, was a stuffed hunting trophy.

Two intrepid police officers, who answered an emergency call, swooped onto a city centre riverbank after passers-by had seen the croc, jaws agape, apparently closing in on a child.

One officer clobbered the beast with stones as the other moved in, watched by hundreds of people from the city's Garibaldi bridge in the Trastevere tourist area.

Sportingly, the embarrassed cops later posed for pictures with their catch for Italian newspapers.

Police are hoping a burgeoning urban legend has been nipped in the bud, after overheated commuters reported sighting a crocodile in various parts of Rome over the past week.

From abc.net.au: Beetles walk backwards by the light of the moon.

Dung beetles use polarised moonlight - light which has different properties in different directions - to walk backwards in a straight line.

Dr Marie Dacke from the University of Lund, in Sweden and colleagues from South Africa report their investigation of the use of polarised moonlight by African dung beetles in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

The African dung beetle (Scarabaeus zambesianus) flies around foraging for fresh dung at sunset. When it finds a pile, the beetle lands and uses its front legs and head to make a small ball of dung. It then immediately sets out to hide the booty from competitors, making a beeline away from the main pile. The beetle pushes the ball along with its back legs while walking with its front legs, face down to the ground.

The researchers had suspected the beetles were using polarised moonlight when they noticed that on overcast nights beetles made very erratic paths, compared to the straight lines they made when the moon was shining. [continue]

Do you remember reading about the Kamchatka bear project? If you haven't heard about the Canadian naturalists who raised three bear cubs in the Russian wilderness, start at this blog entry for one of my favourite stories: adventures with bears. The bear photo gallery is a must-see.

I've been watching the Kamchatka bear website for updates. Finally there's a new journal entry, but the news is heartbreaking: Biscuit the bear is missing. Say a prayer for a bear?

Ananova reports that cows are being taught to read in New Zealand.

Cows are being taught to ‘read’ in New Zealand in the hope they can save farmers time and money.

Researchers hope they can teach dairy cows to identify which gates to go through to robotic milking machines by using signs.

Scientist Jenny Jago says the cows are already starting to understand what the signs mean.

"We've got to the stage where they are using the signs to make that distinction as to which gate they should go through," she said.

"So what we have to do now is work out what it is in that sign that they are using. Is it the colour that they are using as a cue? Is it the shape that we're giving them?"

From the Christian Science Monitor: Noah's Ark for the Internet era.

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA — Have you ever wondered what a Dodo bird sounded like? Or a Carolina Parakeet? Perhaps you'd like to be able to see a Mammoth or Mastodon in motion. Clearly, it's too late to record any of the animals above, but with a worldwide extinction rate estimated at one distinct species every twenty minutes, it's essential that science document as many currently endangered species as possible while it still is possible - and then protects those documents in the event of eventual extinctions. Britain's ARKive intends to serve exactly this purpose, and, in addition to gathering the information, is planning to make the collection available to anyone with an internet connection.

Describing itself as a virtual conservation effort and "Noah's Ark for the Internet era," ARKive plans to collect and post films, stills and even sound files for some 11,000 endangered plants and animals - and a few recent extinctions as well. (Current intentions are to have roughly 1200 species posted by the end of 2003.) With a goal of 6-10 stills and 10 minutes of high quality film footage for each species, it's still the ramp up stage for the site - but there's already a great deal to investigate. (...)

...where else can you find moving pictures of a Tasmanian Tiger?

ARKive can be found at http://www.arkive.org/.

From nature.com: Mutt origins exposed.

Mutt owners may soon be able to hold up their dogs' pedigrees - be they part Labrador, part hound or a dash of Chihuahua. A technique to decipher crossbreed origins is well on its way, say scientists.

Elaine Ostrander and her team at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington, plan to distinguish dogs by examining landmark regions in their DNA. The group has already classified 85 such landmarks in 18 pure breeds of dog, including bulldog and beagle.

Most breeds carry a distinct set of these genetic tags, they found from a computer analysis. Having been inbred for hundreds or thousands of years, the animals have grown genetically similar.

On the basis of the classification, the program analysed DNA from purebred dogs picked at random and worked out which breed they belonged to. "It matched 'em up almost 100%," said team member Heidi Parker at the Genome of Homo Sapiens meeting last week at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York.

When more genetic tags are added to the ID system, "we hope to be able to [identify] a mixed breed dog," Parker said. The program stumbled when identifying the Presa Canario, a breed largely created within the past 30 years by crossing mastiffs, Canary Islands herd dogs and other breeds.

Owners keen to establish Rover's genetic credentials might use the system - as might forensic scientists, suggests Parker. DNA collected after a vicious attack, for example, could finger the culprit breed. [continue]

From the Globe and Mail: 'Spiderman gloves' within reach, scientists say.

Scientists working to replicate the incredible stickiness of gecko lizard's feet have come up with a sort of tape that could allow people to climb, superhero-style, on glass ceilings and walls.

Geckos — a type of lizard with weak limbs, a stout body and a large head — can dangle their entire weight from a wall by a single toe. They can heave themselves up a sheet of polished glass at remarkable speed, covering as much as one metre in only a second.

The secret behind their incredible stickiness was only recently cracked, and now a team of researchers working mainly from the University of Manchester has published in the journal Nature Materials the results of two years' work on a synthetic version of a gecko's foot.

"They have been able to manufacture self-cleaning, re-attachable dry adhesives," the university said in a statement. "The research team believes it won't be long before 'Spiderman' gloves become a reality." [continue]

Related links:
Will "Gecko Tape" Let Humans Climb Walls? - nationalgeographic.com

From Canada.com, Medieval art helps make jet flight safer.

The most frequent flyers at Montreal's Dorval airport these days are rewarded not with bonus miles and free travel, but rather with yummy bits of quail meat.

That's all it takes to keep falcons such as Orion, Figaro, Gibraltar and Elie happy as they circle above the runways and keep passengers safe by scaring off the gulls and geese that can pose deadly threats to airplanes.

"The falcon's routine is: Fly around, have a good time and then come back when the work is done," says Mark Adam, founder and president of Falcon Environmental Services. (...)

Using the medieval art of falconry just seemed like a logical extension of the other practices many airports use to keep birds from flying into airplane engines during takeoff and landing, said Adam. [continue]

From the delightful nature.com: Salamanders can do maths.

Salamanders, given a choice between tubes containing two fruitflies or three, lunge at the tube of three. This hints that the ability to differentiate between small numbers of objects may have evolved much earlier than scientists had thought.

Primates can spot the greater of two quantities smaller than four, without any training. Babies choose the bowl with more cookies; monkeys go for the bucket with more slices of apple.

The surprise, says Claudia Uller, of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who carried out the study, was that the amphibians "failed in the same way that babies and monkeys do" - more than three objects confuses them.

"There is a limit on the number of objects that can be tracked at one time," explains Alan Leslie, who works on human brain development at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. The portion of the brain that focuses attention cannot, it seems, deal with more than four objects. [continue]

You've gotta love a website that a) provides articles like this, and b) adds footnotes.

From the Telegraph: Elephants ‘free captive antelope’.

South African conservationists are baffled by the behaviour of a herd of elephants which appeared to raid an enclosure on a private game reserve "deliberately" to release a group of antelope captured by rangers as part of a relocation and breeding programme.

Lawrence Anthony said his capture team thought the elephants in the Thula Thula reserve in northern KwaZulu-Natal were approaching the enclosure to share the bales of lucerne being fed to the captive antelope.

"The herd circled the fence and then the matriarch moved to the gate and very carefully and deliberately undid all the gate's metal latches with her trunk and pushed it open."

He added: "The antelope took their chance and dashed back into the bush followed by the elephants, who did not give the food a second glance." [continue]

I love this quotation:

They are extraordinarily like children, these little people of the Antarctic world, either like children, or like old men, full of their own importance and late for dinner, in their black tail-coats and white shirt-fronts — and rather portly withal.

I found it at Guillaume Dargaud's Antarctic Penguins, where it's attributed to Apsley Cherry Garrard.

You really ought to see some of Guillaume's penguin photos. Who can resist those half-grown penguins, who look so much like fuzzy stuffed toys? There are a few more shots of penguins (plus antarctic scenery, etc) here.

An article in the Oregon Mail Tribune makes me think I should have become a wildlife biologist. Just imagine tracking bears the way this guy does!

As Dave Immel forces open a thick patch of huckleberries, the radio receiver clicking wildly through his earphones proves that five hours of climbing, pushing and sometimes crawling through dense forest finally has paid off.

Immel spies a large Douglas fir snag and quickly thrusts his backpack over the hole clawed into the snag’s base. A strange noise, like the sound of a spinning washing machine from two rooms away, drifts through the rotten wood.

"That’s the den and she’s in there," says Immel, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist. "That noise is the cubs suckling." [continue]

Dave goes into the den, too, to check out mama bear and the cubs. Amazing.

Looks like crows are way smarter than we thought. From ABC Austrlia's News in Science, here's part of the Crows better tool-makers than chimpanzees article.

New Caledonia's unique crows are more sophisticated at making and using tools than man's closest relatives, the chimpanzees, New Zealand researchers have discovered.

In the latest issue of the Journal of the Royal Society Proceedings B, researchers from the University of Auckland show that not only do New Caledonian crows fashion barbed tools from the leaves of pandanus trees, but the tools differ in different parts of the island - suggesting technological evolution in increments.

New Caledonia is a large South Pacific island off the east coast of Australia which has been under French administration since 1853. It contains unique flora and fauna which have evolved in isolation for more than 80 million years.

The ability to develop and improve tools is what some claim makes humans unique, said Dr Russell Gray, a member of the New Zealand research team. "Because, to make this level of tool, we need high fidelity sort of learning," he told ABC Science Online. "These tools are way more sophisticated than those used by our closest relative."

Pandanus is a tropical plant with long leaves that are serrated down the edge with barbs that are hooked. The crows, Corvus moneduloides, use their beaks to make a number of tears down the edge of the leaf. They then move down the leaf and tear back the other way. "What you get is a tool that is narrow at the tip and wide at the base with hooks or barbs on the end," said Gray. [continue]

If you were in a certain Czech town, you might see Jaroslav Kana walking his pet lion on a leash. From an Ananova article:

Mr Kana said: "Dogs catch his scent and come running round the corner of the street dragging their owners, but then they stare Leon in the face, turn round and head back the other way even faster.

"Leon just starts roaring and pawing the ground as if he's about to spring loose, but that's because he wants to play with the dogs.

"But I don't think the owners are too sure, so I just have to make sure I keep him on a tight lead.

"I love dogs as well and Leon would never hurt them. He's just a big pussycat really. It's also good to turn the tables on the dogs for a change, they never show any mercy when chasing cats."

Leon is now taken for granted by locals in the town of Holedec na Lounsku in the Czech Republic. Mr Kana even leaves him tied up outside the local supermarket when he does his shopping. [continue]

The CBC says that Grouse Mountain's bear camera is going online.

The world's first Web site showing live video of hibernating grizzly bears will be launched on Monday by the Refuge for Endangered Wildlife atop Grouse Mountain.

Spokesperson Dr. Ken Macquisten says the new site will follow the daily activities of the refuge's four orphaned grizzlies.

Macquisten says watching them has shown researchers why the bears finish their hibernation in such great shape.

He says as they sleep, they shiver a lot when they inhale and then seems to relax as the exhale each breath.

"This shivering is not because they're cold. They manage to keep their den at a nice one to two degrees above freezing, but they seem to be exercising as they sleep."

Related links:
Refuge for Endangered Wildlife - - from grousemountain.com
Grouse Mountain Grizzlycams - from grousemountain.com
Grouse Mountain's Bear Facts page - from grousemountain.com
Mountaintop Experience - from exn.ca

From Expatica, A desirable pet for every home. [Sorry, linked page is no longer available.]

An octopus called Frieda at the Munich zoo has joined a small and elite but growing number of mollusks that have learned to open jar lids with their tentacles.

The four-month-old female treats visitors of the Hellabrunn Zoo to daily displays of her dexterity and has even learned to discern between empty jars and those containing her favourite snacks of wriggling shrimp, crabs and clams.

Like others of her undulating species that have mastered the feat, Frieda positions her entire body over the lid of a wide-mouthed jar and grasps the sides with the suckers on her 80-centimetre-long tentacles. Then with a mighty full-body twist, she wrenches the lid off.

Since her body almost entirely covers the jar it is difficult for observers to see quite how she does it.

But the results are obvious, as the lid wafts its way to the sandy bottom of her aquarium and Frieda contentedly slurps up the goodies from the open jar. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Strange locomotion
Octopuses have a preferred arm
Searching for ancient Persian warships
Octopus eyes open new electronic vision
Save the tree octopus
Einstein the octopus

Elsewhere on the web:
Octopus: Skills from Pulse of the Planet
Keeping the Octopus Occupied - from Shed Aquarium

From Science Daily, Ant Agriculture: 50 Million Years Of Success.

Fungus-growing ants practice agriculture and have been doing so for the past 50 million years according to research published in the Jan. 17 issue of Science. These ants not only grow fungus gardens underground for food but also have adapted to handling parasitic "weeds" that infect their crops. [continue]

Lobsters Navigate by Magnetism, Study Says.

The animal world has its share of celebrated navigators, from flocking geese to spawning salmon. A rather unlikely character, however, may soon take its place among the best of them.

New research suggests that Caribbean spiny lobsters, despite their limited intelligence, may be among the animal kingdom's top navigators. Their homing abilities could also provide scientists with new clues to the long-debated role of the Earth's magnetic fields in animal movements and migrations.

Larry C. Boles and Kenneth J. Lohmann, researchers at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, reported their findings in the January 2003 issue of Nature. Their research suggests that spiny lobsters are able to determine their location on Earth even when transported to an unfamiliar area. The lobsters are the first invertebrates to display this ability known as true navigation. [continue]

From Ananova, Donkeys making a comeback in Bethlehem.

Roadblocks and piles of rubble have rendered cars next to useless in many areas and Palestinians are reverting back to donkeys.

The Times reports that the price of donkeys have rocketed over the last two years.

A small donkey that would have cost £100 now fetches around £300 while a top-of-the-range two-year-old female can go for as much as £750.

The Monks of New Skete support their community by raising German shepherds and by training dogs. They've been at it for thirty years, and their books and videos get rave reviews from dog owners.

Today Alertnet has an article about the monks, Rural New York monks train dogs with spiritual touch. [Update: article no longer available.] I love this part:

The spiritual side to the training program is palpable. The monks are quiet and calm. So, for the most part, are the dogs.

"We're monks first, and our life is pretty much dedicated to a search for God and that affects how we deal with the dogs and how we deal with the people who bring their dogs to us," Brother Christopher said.

So calm are the dogs at New Skete, in fact, that they used to attend church services at the monastery with the monks and townspeople from nearby Cambridge, a tiny rural crossroads less than two miles (3.2 km) from the Vermont state border.

But that practice had to come to an end, said Brother Marc, one of the monastery's founding monks.

"They snored," he said.

Related links
New Skete Monks -NewSketeMonks.com
Raising Your Dog with The Monks of New Skete - DogsBestFriend.com
The monks and dogs of New Skete - TheWitness.org

The monks' dog training books at amazon.com:
How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend: The Classic Training Manual for Dog Owners
The Art of Raising a Puppy

From a Vancouver Sun article, 60-acre spider web baffles biologists: [Update: Vancouver Sun article no longer available.]

A warning: If the thought of tens of millions of tiny spiders spinning a web 24 hectares — 60 acres — in size and crawling all over it scares the wits out of you, you might want to tread carefully over the following.

Because that's exactly what happened last month on a farmer's field near McBride, about 220 kilometres east of Prince George.

Just what are those spiders trying to catch, anyway? Sheep? Here's more from the CBC News website: Spiders weave huge natural wonder.

A biology professor in northern British Columbia has spotted a clover field crawling with spiders and the results of their efforts.

Brian Thair of the College of New Caledonia in Prince George said he saw a silky, white web stretching 60 acres across a field.

"When you see horror movies with spider web festooned from this place to that place and so on, it comes nowhere near approaching what occurred in this field," Thair told CBC Radio's As It Happens.

A typical barbwire fence on wood posts surrounded the field about six kilometres east of McBride in the Robson Valley. Thair said it looked like the whole area was covered with an opaque, white plastic grocery store bag.

The thin, elastic coasting was not soft and fluffy like webs built by individual spiders. There were about two spiders per square centimetre laying the silk, which first appeared in early October.

Thair said the web showed great tensile strength– enough to put a handful of coins on it without them falling through.

Here's the web of mystery photo gallery.

You know, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

I have been waiting for this news for years. The Toronto Star has an update on the British pet passport program: U.K. to admit Canadian pets.

Dogs and cats from the United States and Canada will be allowed to enter Britain without enduring the dreaded six-month quarantine, and just in time for Christmas travel. The government announced today that from Dec. 11 its "pet passport" plan for vaccinated animals from western Europe and some other countries will be extended to cats and dogs from the United States and Canada. The strict quarantine, long-established to keep rabies out of Britain, was lifted in 2000 for pets from western Europe that were tagged with an identifying microchip, vaccinated and blood tested before they travelled to Britain. In 2001, the plan was extended to more countries, including Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Bahrain joined this year.

About time, eh?

More than 2,300 years ago, Aristotle wrote about elephants crossing rivers and lakes completely submerged, with only the tips of their trunks above the water, like built-in snorkel tubes. From a physiological point of view, this should be impossible; the differences in pressure exerted by the outside air and the deep water should cause the blood vessels in the lining of the lungs to burst.

This National Geographic article, Snorkeling Elephants and the Secrets of Breathing, explains why elephants are able to snorkle. Another mystery solved!

If the monkeys at your local zoo are bored, maybe they'd like a food puzzle.

Large cabbages make cheap, simple yet effective puzzle feeders, as well as providing a source of food on their own. Using an apple corer several small holes are gouged out of the cabbage. A large central hole is cored completely through the cabbage through which a rope can be threaded and then secured with a knot. The other holes can then be filled with a variety of different food treats such as shelled peanuts, dried fruits and mealworms. Honey or peanut butter can also be added to the holes to form a bung so that the other items do not fall out too quickly. The cabbage is then hung from the mesh ceiling of the indoor enclosures to provide a moving edible food puzzle.

The monkeys must reach the cabbage and extract the tasty items. Often they balance on adjoining branches or hang from ceiling or even try and balance on the swinging cabbage itself. It therefore encourages balance, arboreal feeding posture and extractive foraging skills. In our experience this has proved to be an extremely effective food puzzle which is often consumed once the food treats have been recovered.

Source: Guidelines for Enrichment, which provides "detailed descriptions of enrichment devices and ideas for each taxa."

Don't say you never learn anything here, kids.