Very cool, it is amazing what happens in life. And that bird is remarkably patient. Getting, even playfully, ambushed by a cat doesn’t seem like something what would come naturally. At least with polar bears and huskies they both are used to playing rough with their own.
Related: fun with cats – Bunny and Kittens – Bird Brains: thinking crows – Photos by Fritz the Cat – animal planet on the cat and crow
Octopuses give eight thumbs up for high-def TV
When the octopus movie was screened some became aggressive while others changed their skin camouflage or “would go and hide in a corner, moving as far away as possible”.
On viewing the swinging bottle, some puffed themselves up, just in case the object was a threat, while others paid no attention.
But significantly, when the experiment was repeated over several days, she found no consistent response from any octopus. Such random responses implied octopuses have no individual personalities.
She suspected previous efforts to show movies to octopuses failed because their sophisticated eyes were too fast for the 24-frame per second format of standard-definition video.
Related: Octopus Juggling Fellow Aquarium Occupants – Red Octopus in Brine Lake Beneath the Sea – Randomization in Sports – Curious Cat Science Search
Photograph of Gumprechts Green Pitviper courtesy Greater Mekong Programme/WWF InternationalWhile most species were discovered in the largely unexplored jungles and wetlands, some were first found in the most surprising places. The Laotian rock rat, for example, thought to be extinct 11 million years ago, was first encountered by scientists in a local food market, while the Siamese Peninsula pitviper was found slithering through the rafters of a restaurant in Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.
“This region is like what I read about as a child in the stories of Charles Darwin,” said Dr Thomas Ziegler, Curator at the Cologne Zoo. “It is a great feeling being in an unexplored area and to document its biodiversity for the first time… both enigmatic and beautiful,” he said.
The findings, highlighted in this report, include 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, 4 birds, 4 turtles, 2 salamanders and a toad. The region comprises the six countries through which the Mekong River flows including Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan. It is estimated thousands of new invertebrate species were also discovered during this period, further highlighting the region’s immense biodiversity.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” said Stuart Chapman, Director of WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme. “We thought discoveries of this scale were confined to the history books. This reaffirms the Greater Mekong’s place on the world map of conservation priorities.”
The report stresses economic development and environmental protection must go hand-in-hand to provide for livelihoods and alleviate poverty, and ensure the survival of the Greater Mekong’s astonishing array of species and natural habitats.
Full press release. I am a World Wildlife Fund member.
Related: First Contact in the Greater Mekong (8 Mb pdf) – Massive Gorilla Population Found – 2,000 Species New to Science from One Island – Giant Star Fish and More in Antarctica – Huge Ant Nest – Why the Frogs Are Dying
Video removed.
The tree climbing goats of Morocco. Also see the fainting goats.
Related: Chimpanzee Riding a Segway – What Makes Scientists Different 🙂 – Friday Dog Fun
Bird-brains smarter than your average ape
“The crows appeared to solve these complex problems by identifying causal regularities,” says Professor Russell Gray of the Department of Psychology. “The crows’ success with the trap-table suggests that the crows were transferring their causal understanding to this novel problem by analogical reasoning. However, the crows didn’t understand the difference between a hole with a bottom and one without. This suggests the level of cognition here is intermediate between human-like reasoning and associative learning.”
“It was very surprising to see the crows solve the trap-table,” says PhD student Alex Taylor. “The trap table puzzle was visually different from the trap-tube in its colour, shape and material. Transfer between these two distinct problems is not predicted by theories of associative learning and is something not even the great apes have so far been able to do.”
Related: Cool Crow Research – Orangutan Attempts to Hunt Fish with Spear – Backyard Wildlife: Crows – Dolphins Using Tools to Hunt
Fun but, pretty short. Why not see some more cat fun: Bunny and Kittens: Friday Cat Fun #5 – Cat running up a $300 water bill – Dolphin Rescues Beached Whales
Photograph of dolphin with a sponge it uses to hunt, courtesy of Ewa Krzyszczyk, PLoS, high resolution.Cool open access research from PLoS One, Why Do Dolphins Carry Sponges?
We compared sponge-carrying (sponger) females to non-sponge-carrying (non-sponger) females and show that spongers were more solitary, spent more time in deep water channel habitats, dived for longer durations, and devoted more time to foraging than non-spongers; and, even with these potential proximate costs, calving success of sponger females was not significantly different from non-spongers. We also show a clear female-bias in the ontogeny of sponging. With a solitary lifestyle, specialization, and high foraging demands, spongers used tools more than any non-human animal. We suggest that the ecological, social, and developmental mechanisms involved likely (1) help explain the high intrapopulation variation in female behaviour, (2) indicate tradeoffs (e.g., time allocation) between ecological and social factors and, (3) constrain the spread of this innovation to primarily vertical transmission.
The dolphins use the sponge to push along the ocean floor and disturb fish, that are hidden. Once the fish start swimming away the dolphin abandons the sponge and catches and eats the fish. Then the dolphin goes back and gets the sponge and continues.
Related: Do Dolphins Sleep? – Orangutan Attempts to Hunt Fish with Spear – Dolphin Rescues Beached Whales – Savanna Chimpanzees Hunt with Tools – Chimps Used Stone “Hammers” – open access papers
I am not a huge fan of wild animal pets but this one is pretty cool. I still think they are crazy, Hippos kill more people than any animal in Africa, that isn’t what I look for in a house-guest (well actually people kill a lot more people than any animal but still…). It is pretty cool the Hippo is free to go between wild and their home and does so.
Related: Leopard Bests Crocodile – Polar Bears and Huskies – Home Engineering: Windmill for Electricity
A penguin takes sanctuary on a boat while killer whales circle.
Related: Killer Whales Create Wave to Push Seal Off Ice – Octopus Juggling Fellow Aquarium Occupants – Jumping Savannah Cat
Chimpanzee learning to ride a Segway on Japanese game show.
Related: Orangutan Attempts to Hunt Fish with Spear – Friday Cat Fun, Bunny and Kittens – Quantum Teleportation – RoboCup German Open 2008 – Water and Electricity for All