Label: Animals

February 3, 2011

USHERING IN THE YEAR OF THE RABBIT

People all over the world are celebrating Chinese New Year with parades, huge fireworks displays, and delicious feasts. Every family has thoroughly cleaned the house to sweep away any ill-fortune and make way for good incoming luck. Children receive red envelopes with money inside, representing the passing of good luck to the person who receives it.

The Chinese Lunisolar Calendar marks the new year on the second new moon of the winter solstice, which is based on the phases of moon. 2011 is number 4709 in the Chinese lunar calendar, and is the Year of the Rabbit.

With all this excitement, I think that rabbits all over the world must be doing binkies! 

What is a bunny binky, you might ask? Rabbits, who are generally very quiet, sometimes jump in the air unexpectedly when they are feeling playful. And when a bunny twists and jumps into the air, it is called a binky. A new, fascinating animal fact for you in celebration of The Year of the Rabbit!

This photograph is from my upcoming eBook, FUN FACTS ABOUT PETS. It is full of little known facts like bunny binkies, hamster magicians, and parakeets who spit for love! 

"Kung Hei Fat Choy" to all, which means "May you be prosperous in the New Year!"

Photo Credit: Emma Payne 

February 2, 2011

It’s Groundhog Day. You have probably heard the fable that says that if the groundhog sees his shadow on February 2^nd, then we will see an early spring. He’s unlikely to see his shadow today, as the historic winter storm cuts a 2000-mile path across the US, from New Mexico to Maine.

There is no scientific basis for Groundhog Day, of course - it’s just a story. But it does give me an excuse to show you this photograph of four incredibly cute groundhog babies who were born under our garden shed last summer!

January 25, 2011

Today’s "Cool Photo of the Week" is actually a microphotograph (photographs of very tiny things that can only be seen through a microscrope).

You are looking directly into the face of a Southern Hawker dragonfly (Aeshna cyanea). These large (up to 3-inchs long), brightly colored dragonflies are often found near ponds or rivers, where they breed. They also travel quite widely - you may see one in your garden - and they seem to be curious, often flying close to you and hovering.

Can you spot the dragonfly’s eyes are in this picture? The eyes are actually the two biggest things in this photograph - the two large, grayish ovals below the yellow are the dragonfly’s compound eyes. These two main eyes actually contain up to 30,000 (that’s right, thirty-thousand!) tinier eyes, which turn the dragonfly into a born predator. These eyes are like balls, and allow the dragonfly to spot movement all around it, so much so that it has 360-degree vision! This helps the dragonfly sense even the tiniest movement, so that it can feed on insects in the air all around it.

Photo Credit: André Karwath/Wikimedia

January 21, 2011

Ever wonder how the hammerhead shark can see where it’s going when its eyes are on the sides of its head? Marine biologist Dr. Michelle McComb of Florida Atlantic University has been studying hammerheads and she found that these strange-looking creatures have incredibly good binocular vision. “Binocular vision” simply means that you use both of your eyes at the same time and see one image. We humans have good binocular vision, too, at least straight in front of us. But hammerheads, with their widely spaced eyes, have clear binocular vision above, below and even behind themselves! That is very useful when your diet depends on catching fast-moving prey, and it is probably why the species evolved in this way.

Ironically, the only place that hammerheads don’t have great vision is straight in front of them. However, they have nostrils near each of their eyes, and Dr. McComb says they use “enhanced stereo smell” to make up for that blind spot.

Image: SharkDiving.us

January 20, 2011

Reader Mary Spezzano sent a note this week to tell us how excited she and her boys are that Lily the Black Bear is due to give birth again very soon (probably within the next week). "Everyone is excited, nervous and eager to see how it will all play out since Hope (1 year old cub from last year) is in the den with her," Mary writes. "This will be a rare glimpse into a mixed age litter!!!!!" Mary and her sons Patrick, Sean and James are watching Lily and Hope on a webcam placed in their den by biologist Lynn Rogers of the Wildlife Research Institute near Ely, Minnesota.

Although Dr. Rogers’ intention was to conduct a long-term, scientific study of black bear ecology and behavior, he also ended up creating ursine Internet celebrities! More than 25,000 viewers watched live as Lily gave birth to her cub, Hope, last January. Hearts melted as Hope’s tiny paw reached out to touch Lily’s nose just after the birth.

Click here to watch the bears live on the webcam, and while you are on the website you can also read notes from Lynn Rogers, the biologist. In yesterday’s post he described what is likely to happen when the cubs are born. "With birth(s) about to happen, there are so many things to think about. What to look for? Likely 1-3 cubs, each about ¾ pound and 9 inches long, covered with sparse fur and looking light-colored because of their white skin. They will have little sucking mouths with no teeth. Is there room in the den? The den is 5-6 feet long. The cubs will mostly be under Lily.  They are too small to take up much room."

To learn more about bears and this bear research visit the North American Bear Center and read Dr. Rogers’ blog on the Wildlife Research Institute page.

January 19, 2011

Photographer Bence Máté describes the scene in today’s Cool Animal Photo of the Week: "I was photographing hummingbirds when I heard the sharp, alarming noise of the birds reacting to the presence of a predator. Sixty feet away from me this green-crowned brilliant (also known as Heliodoxa jacula, a type of hummingbird) was fearlessly attacking a small viper."

Máté took this photograph in Costa Rica, where about 50 of the 338 known species of hummingbirds, as well as tree-dwelling vipers, live in the tropical foliage.

This amazing image is a winner in Nature’s Best Photography magazine’s 2010 Best Photography contest. You can see more great nature photography on their website.

January 17, 2011

I received this charming note from a San Antonio 4^th grader named Alicia. She had been reading my book BIG BUGS, and did this drawing on which she wrote that the insect was supposed to be a cricket, but “I don’t know how to draw a cricket.”

Actually, Alicia, you’ve made a pretty good start. Although we casually refer to “bugs,” bugs actually include two different species – insects and spiders (Arachnids). All insects have 6 legs, but spiders have 8 legs (they are not insects). A cricket is an insect, and you have definitely drawn an insect.

To make it look even more like a cricket, you could give it very long back legs, as you see in this photograph. Crickets use their four front legs for walking, and their two back legs are long and strong, so that they can make big leaps.

The very regular chirping of crickets is a common night sound in many places. As the temperature drops, their singing becomes slower and the pitch of the chirp gets lower. Some people use the chirp rate of crickets to estimate the temperature. I wrote about this in my book ANIMAL FACT, ANIMAL FABLE. Crickets are pretty interesting insects!

January 11, 2011

Is there a glass of milk sitting on the table as you read this over breakfast? Bet you didn’t know that the production of milk is one of the big offenders in the creation of damaging greenhouse gases.  How are dairy farmers are working to improve this situation? By reducing cow burps!

That’s right. Half of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with each gallon of milk take the form of methane gas, which is released both when cows burp and when they produce manure (that is, when they poop). And it’s not just a problem here. A British study found that methane emissions from gassy cows are responsible for 4% of the U.K.‘s total greenhouse gas emissions. A 2006 United Nations study found that cows produce a staggering 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions — more than planes, trains and automobiles combined.

Can burping cows really be responsible for all this? When cows digest their food, stomach bacteria produce methane, an ozone-forming gas considered 23 times worse than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere. "A lot of people think this gas is coming from the rear end," explains Nancy Hirshberg of Stoneyfield Farms in Highgate, Vt. "Ninety-five percent is actually from the front end, from the burps." Stoneyfield Farms is one of the many dairy producers who are working to develop new kinds of feeds that will help cows digest their food better, as well as constructing machines called methane digesters, which convert the bad methane gas to usable biogas.

Some families have one meat-free and dairy-free meal every week to help this problem of burping cows!

January 4, 2011

Sea turtles are the last of our world’s ancient reptiles, and have been swimming the seas for more than 200 million years, since back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. But in just the last few decades, hunting, coastal development, fishing and pollution have reduced their populations to dangerously low levels, to the point that sea turtles are now endangered. That is why many of us, including our young environmental reporter Alana G., were very worried about the fate of the sea turtles when the Deepwater Horizon oil spill happened in the Gulf last year.

The very good news is that the rescue efforts were quite successful. NOAA (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration), the Gulf states, many nonprofit partners and the Gulf fishermen teamed up to rescue more than 400 sea turtles from oiled waters and take them to aquariums and other facilities for de-oiling and rehabilitation. Marine biologists even moved more than 25,000 sea turtle eggs to Florida’s Atlantic coast, so that the hatchlings would make their way from their sandy nests to clean water. More than 96 percent of the 400 sea turtles brought into rehabilitation have survived, and most of them have already been returned to the wild. This is great news!

Unfortunately, scientists also learned something disturbing from the Gulf oil spill. Most of the dead turtles that turned up on the beaches did not have oil on their bodies and necropsies (that is what you call the autopsy of an animal) showed that they were in good health prior to their death. It appears that the majority of these 600 turtles died from drowning, after being trapped in fishing gear.

So now a new effort begins, to make fishing equipment more "turtle proof" in the Gulf, where five of the world’s seven species of marine turtles live. In order to protect this species and get them off the endangered list, NOAA is considering establishing a rule requiring fishermen to use TEDs (Turtle Excluder Devices). These escape hatches allow sea turtles to swim out of the shrimp skimmers so they don’t drown. As NOAA and the states continue to assess the natural resources damaged by the spill, we are gaining a much clearer picture of what we need to do long-term to protect these glorious, ancient creatures. 

December 18, 2010

This tiny marine snail has a unique way of protecting itself. When it feels threatened, it lights up its plain, yellowish shell and emits a bright, neon green light. It probably makes it appear larger than it is to potential predators. In a laboratory experiment, scientists found that the snail lit up when confronted by crabs and swimming shrimp.

The snail, Hinea brasiliana, is a type of clusterwink snail that is typically found bunched up in groups along rocky shorelines. The green glow results from a phenomenon known as bioluminescence - or light made by living animals (pronounced "bio-loom-i-NESS-ens"). The most familiar example of bioluminescence is the firefly, which is actually a beetle. Fireflies use the flickering patterns of light to attract mates.

 Photo: Dimitri Deheyn / SIO / UCSD 

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