Tag Archives: animals

Learning About Life over 200 Million Years Ago From Samples Trapped In Amber

230-Million-Year-Old Mite Found in Amber by Charles Choi

One way to learn more about prehistoric life is amber — fossilized tree resin. Before it hardened, this ooze often dripped over bugs and other wildlife perched on its tree’s bark, entombing them for millions of years.

“Amber is an extremely valuable tool for paleontologists because it preserves specimens with microscopic fidelity, allowing uniquely accurate estimates of the amount of evolutionary change over millions of years,” Grimaldi said.

Scientists have now revealed arthropods trapped in 230-million-year-old amber from northeastern Italy, which appears to hold the most abundant outcrops of Triassic amber in the world. These are the oldest amber-trapped arthropods by about 100 million years, and are the first arthropods to be found in amber from the Triassic.
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These mites are unexpectedly similar to their closest relatives, modern gall mites, creatures that feed on plants and cause abnormal growths known as galls to form around them.

“You would think that by going back to the Triassic you’d find a transitional form of gall mite, but no,” Grimaldi said. “Even 230 million years ago, all of the distinguishing features of this family were there — a long, segmented body; only two pairs of legs instead of the usual four found in mites; unique feather claws.”

These discoveries are very cool. The process of the discovery is often fairly tedious.

“The challenge for us, personally, is the tedious work required to screen through so many tiny droplets of amber — 70,000 droplets for three specimens, in this case!”

The Science Behind Hummingbird Flight

Aerodynamics of the hovering hummingbird

Hummingbirds and insects have evolved for sustained hovering ï¬‚ight from vastly different ancestral directions, and their distinct phylogenies underlie the differences in their aerodynamic styles. In all other birds—and, presumably, hummingbird ancestors—the downstroke provides 100% of weight support during slow ï¬‚ight and hovering. Given that many birds possess the mass-speciï¬c power (using anaerobic metabolism) to hover for short periods, the selective pressure on hummingbird ancestors was probably for increased efï¬ciency (resulting in stiff wings with greatly simpliï¬ed
kinematics), and an upstroke muscle (the supracoracoideus) that makes the recovery stroke rapid, while contributing enough to the hovering power requirements to allow the downstroke muscle (the pectoralis) to operate within its aerobic limits.

In other words, this pseudosymmetrical wingbeat cycle is good enough, and although hummingbirds do not exhibit the elegant aerodynamic symmetry of insects, natural selection rewards ‘good enough’ as richly as it does our aesthetic ideals

Great Webcast Explaining the Digestive Systems

You will learn things like why it is so important to chew your food well (increase the surface area for enzymes to get at the food). Our bodies also have adapted to provide a huge surface area for the digestive system to work; the small intestine alone has a surface area of 250 square meters (larger than the size of most apartments). Your small intestine is 4.5 to 10.5 meters long.

Domestic Cats Remain Successful Predators

House cats kill more critters than thought by Elizabeth Weise

While only 30% of roaming house cats kill prey — two animals a week on average — they are still slaying more wildlife than previously believed, according to research from the University of Georgia.
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The cats brought home just under a quarter of what they killed, ate 30% and left 49% to rot where they died.

The carnage cuts across species. Lizards, snakes and frogs made up 41% of the animals killed, Loyd and fellow researcher Sonia Hernandez found. Mammals such as chipmunks and voles were 25%, insects and worms 20% and birds 12%.
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Seeking a window into the hidden lives of cats, the researchers recruited 60 owners in the Athens, Ga., area. Each owner put a small video camera mounted on a break-away collar on the cat in the morning and let the cat out, then removed the camera and downloaded the footage each night.

Interesting data. As I wrote about before you can get your very own cat cam and see what your cat is up to. I posted an interview I did with the engineer that designs and sells the cat cams.

Backyard Wildlife: 2 Raptors Over Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Two raptors soaring by John Hunter.

I see a fair number of birds around my current abode (a condo in a high rise) in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Getting photos of them isn’t easy though. Here are 2 hawks or eagles? If you can identify them please add a comment (if you have a link to authenticate the identification, even better).

I even have some storks that commute past my windows every morning and evening.

Mother Polar Bear Giving Her Cub a Helping Paw

Another reminder to thank your mother. See previous at cat mom playing the hero.

Sex and Development of Life in the Ocean

TED education is providing access to really interesting education material. In this webcast learn about fertilization, development and growth in the ocean depths.

Mountain Lions Returning to the Midwest USA for the First Time in a Century

Cougars Are Returning to the U.S. Midwest after More Than 100 Years by John Platt

Cougars once lived throughout most of the U.S. and Canada but state-sponsored bounties put in place to protect livestock and humans from what were often deemed “undesirable predators” led to the cats’ extermination in the east and Midwest.
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Things started to turn around for the cougar in the 1960s and 70s when, one by one, the bounties were rescinded and states made the animals a managed-game species. Today they are classified as game species in most states and a “specially protected mammal” in California. This allowed their populations first to grow and then to expand their territories.
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Cougars are generalist predators, so LaRue says they can select any habitat with enough prey. They have also been shown to walk hundreds of kilometers in search of new habitat. “They have no problem traveling through cornfields or prairies for long distances if they have to,” she says. But cornfields and prairies aren’t suitable habitat for the cougars to settle in. She says they require forest cover, rugged terrain and dispersal corridors (typically rivers) that allow easy migration for both the cats and their prey.

Mountain Lions are very cool animals. So like our pets but with a size that means they can kill us, if they want. They are not much risk to us though. Occasionally there are attacks (now that the numbers of cougars are growing) but an extremely small number.

Data from the city of Boulder, Colorado:

There has been an average of 0.2 annual human deaths in all of North America from mountain lions between 1900 and 2007. This number is very low compared to annual deaths from black widow spiders (1.4 between 1950-1989), domestic dogs (16 between 1979-1998) and car crashes (45,000 between 1980-2005).

Friday Fun: Kitten and Bunny

Just some fun for your Friday. Enjoy.

Elephant Underpass in Kenya

photo of elephant preparing to walk under a highway

Elephant Underpass Reuniting Kenya Herds

The first of its kind for elephants, the underpass will ideally provide a safe corridor for the large mammals to move throughout the Mount Kenya region, where highways, fences, and farmlands have split elephant populations…

Without the underpass, animals that try to move between isolated areas often destroy fences and crops—leading to conflicts with people.

Since its completion in late 2010, the underpass has been a “tremendous success”—hundreds of elephants have been spotted walking through the corridor, according to the conservancy.

It is great to see such solutions put into place. Animals that come into conflict with people (whether it is farmers in Africa, ranchers in the USA or villagers in India) often lose. There is a reason humans dominate the globe. We might be easy to beat in a one on one battle when we can prepare. But when we get frustrated and decide it is time to take action, that is bad news for most mammals (bacteria are only in trouble with our scientists and manufacturers get together and even then the bacteria might not lose).

What we need to do is find ways for the animals to live without too severely impacting people. Because if we don’t eventually the people will take action.

I have been to the game parks in Kenya twice, it is amazing.