I’m writing this from Colorado, the home of some of the country’s most breath-taking mountain vistas. But while I’ll never forget the time we spent enjoying those views, I’ve fallen head over hills in love with a relatively flat open space about a 5-minute walk from my son’s home. Looks pretty nondescript doesn’t it? It’s not, though. It’s filled with wildflowers and birds, some familiar but many others unknown to me. But more than that, it has a prairie dog town beside one section of the path that rings the area. What can I say? I’m sucker for
Read more →It’s that time of year again in New England when the fireflies flash their distinctive calls as they court members of their own kind. On clear, moonless nights, they look like low-lying twinkling stars. On foggy ones, the tiny points of light become fuzzy golden globes zipping around the yard and garden. Although we humans with our complex relationships might find their simple on/off form of communication simplistic (or even enviable!), when it comes to courting, it’s not without its unique twists. Each firefly species has its own distinct flash pattern to avoid breakdowns in communication, but as we
Read more →It’s that time again, time to do an ethological analysis of the American political process to see how we measure up to lower life forms. Alas, so far and once again, not so good. In animals, the goal is to produce viable young, and ensure their survival. This is a two-step process. First males and females compete among themselves to prove who has the best competitive skills. The second part is that those who proved their superiority among their respective peers must then prove that they’re sufficiently compatible and qualified to mate, produce viable offspring, and successfully raise them.
Read more →I heard a news report the other day about how climate change is precipitating a burst of mass wildlife extinction. That’s hardly surprisingly and not really even news any more. And those who prefer to remain in denial about any modern human contribution to this can rightfully claim that such mass extinctions have happened before. What sticks in my mind about this particular interview was the scientist’s response to the typical newscaster’s question: “What will the loss of all these species mean to the average person?” The scientist somewhat blithely replied that the average person living in a western
Read more →Does the phrase “frozen zoo” conjure up as many images for you as it did for me when I first heard it? If it makes you think about wildlife on the north and south pole, you’re indirectly right in that the future on those species may very well depend on the zoo–even though it’s located 35 miles north of San Diego, CA. If it makes you think of sci-fi, well, there are certainly elements of that in the high technology of the frozen zoo, too. And, sadly, if it makes you feel cold and empty when you think of
Read more →Are there times you look at your pet and think you don’t know anything about animal behavior? Well, click here and read about this study and I bet you’ll find yourself thinking, “Gee, I knew that! “
Read more →Several weeks ago I was in WalMart’s huge parking lot in Claremont, NH around 7 a.m. That morning was what is becoming a typical December one in that it was damp, grey and foggy. As I trooped from my distant parking space toward the store, I heard geese overhead, but I couldn’t see them. As I continued walking, the fog thinned and the noise became louder and louder. Periodically I could see what at first I thought was the leading edge of a group of migrating geese. However, these geese weren’t migrating anywhere. They were circling and honking above
Read more →it’s always fun to teach animal behavior during an election year and see how humans measure up to animals when it comes to picking leaders. The most glaring difference is that Nature and evolution reward those who get the job done using the least amount of energy. That got me thinking about two things. One is the way humans often use money as a substitute for energy. The second is the ever-increasing cost of political campaigns with so little in the way of returns for society. Because it seems highly likely that politicians will find reasons not to pass
Read more →I don’t know what topic described in this article fascinates me more: that dogs have been trained to locate right whale scat in the middle of the ocean to help scientists learn more about these animals, or the wealth of information that scat provides. Granted it didn’t come as a surprise that whale scat smells, but I had no idea that even the smallest bits of it could attract the attention of trained sniffing dogs a nautical mile away. Not only that, these dogs must work fast because, in addition to stinking, right whale scat sinks in less than
Read more →Two articles from the National Geographic website remind us of the elegance of new species creation. In the first, a new DNA study suggests that human and chimpanzee lines split from apes much earlier than previously believed, and that interbreeding occurred much longer than previously acknowledged before the two species diverged. This is significant because hybridization hasn’t been considered a primary player in the evolutionary process in the past (for as logical as such a path might seem to the average person thinking about the problem). It’s also interesting to note that the study also suggests a male-biased mutation
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