The Fossil Record

Awesome Vampire Squid video

He looks like a sea monster, but he's only six inches in length!  And despite his scary name, the Vampire Squid's place in the ocean hangs in a delicate balance.  Pollution, overfishing and global warming all threaten to squash the populations of this amazing creature and others like him we have yet to discover, according to Senior Scientist Bruce Robison of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. 

How can you help?  Visit the Keep Our Oceans Clean website to learn about how we can all reduce waste, conserve water and clean up marine debris.

Come on--stick your neck out!

Hey, my dog does this!

It's a boy!

The San Diego Zoo has a new baby!  One of their Giant Pandas, Bai Yun, gave birth back on August 5th to a healthy male.  As of September 17th, the new panda weighs almost six pounds and is opening his little eyes and ears.  The baby doesn't have a name yet,  but he will get one when he is a hundred days old.  That's the Chinese tradition!

The new baby is Bai Yun's fifth cub.  She recently celebrated her eighteenth birthday, complete with bamboo ice birthday cakes, and has successfully raised three other cubs at the Zoo.  Two of her grown cubs live in China. One of them is a female who is now having cubs of her own.  

Giant Pandas are critically endangered, so the birth of every cub is a triumph.  The panda bear's habitat is at risk from deforestation and human encroachment.  The efforts of zoos around the world to increase the  species numbers are critical for the mammal's survival.

In a video on this page, you can hear Bai Yun's tiny cub squawking for his mom as she goes out of the den to get some fresh air.  On the Zoo's Giant Panda Blog, you can track the cub's progress and read about how the vets care for him.

It's seven o'clock in the morning on the west coast right now, so as I turn on the Live Panda Cam, all I can see is a ball of black and white fir sleeping cozily.  But in a few hours, I'll bet  the bears will be up and ready to have a snack.  I'm going to keep my eye on them, and I'll be sure to thank the people at the Zoo for all the fine work they do to try and add to the world's population of these fantastic animals.

(photo from the San Diego Zoo)

Scientists smell a giant rat!

Did you know that rodents first appeared in the fossil record about 54 million years ago?  They've been causing trouble ever since.  I don't doubt that they will probably outlive, outsmart and out-populate every other creature on the planet, including humans.  

To make matters worse,  scientists have recently discovered a GIANT rat, as big as a cat, in the crater of an extinct volcano in Papau, New Guinea.  

The crater, which is two and a half miles wide with walls rising almost half a mile high, houses a "lost world" of mountain rainforest, and contains strange, rare creatures.  In addition to the monster  rat, scientists there found about sixteen new species of frogs, three species of fish, one gecko, a small marsupial and more than twenty different insects and spiders.  

The giant rat measures about 32 inches long and weighs almost 4 pounds.  That makes him almost as big as the one I had living in my garage last year.  Mine rattled the pots and pans so loudly in my kitchen one night that I thought he was a burglar trying to cook himself an early breakfast.  Did you scientists listen to me when I told you to come film him for your BBC special?  Nooooooo!!!!!  You went all the way to New Guinea instead.  

I won't say I told you so.

Be quiet, he can hear you.

The Great Grey Owl, one of the world's largest Strigiformes,  grows to an average of 24 to 33 inches tall, with a wingspan of almost 60 inches--but only weighs about as much as a quart of milk. Great Greys live in northern Europe and Asia, across Canada,  in Alaska and in the northern Rocky Mountains of the United States.  They  love to eat rodents and other small animals.  In the video below, one of these majestic modern-day raptors reveals how his head can act like a satellite dish to pick up the sounds of tiny creatures, even as they try to hide from him under the snow.

Learn more about the Great Grey Owl on The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's awesome All About Birds website.

Now that's a big baby!

My friend Eric, who lives in Portland, showed me this video of the Oregon Zoo's gorgeous and very playful eight-month-old and 1,005 pound baby elephant, Samudra. The young Asian elephant, who is the first third-generation elephant to be born in the United States, weighed a whopping 286 pounds at birth. He could weigh anywhere between 6,000 and 14,000 pounds when he's a fully grown adult. Asian elephants reach their maximum size when they are 25 years old. Their average lifespan is 45 years. 

Learn some more interesting facts about Asian elephants here and read the updates about Samudra's life story here. 

Happy Earth Day 2009

Big cats hunt for Easter eggs!

Earth Hour!

Transparent fish caught on tape!

Curious octopus floods aquarium

Story by Bob Poole of the Los Angeles Times

It's not surprising that with eight arms and inquisitive nature, the two-spotted octopus is pretty handy around its tank at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium.

Still, those reporting for work Thursday at the popular beachfront attraction were caught by surprise when they were greeted by water lapping around the kelp forest display, the shark and ray tank and the rocky reef exhibit.

 

• 

  Octopus tinkers in its tank

The guest of honor in the aquarium's Kids' Corner octopus tank had swum to the top of the enclosure and disassembled the recycling system's valve, flooding the place with some 200 gallons of seawater.

"It had grabbed the tube that pulls out the water and caused it to spray outside the tank," said aquarium education specialist Nick Fash. Judging by the size of the flood, Fash estimated that the water flowed for about 10 hours before the first staff member, Aaron Kind, showed up for work.

Kind issued an all-hands-on-deck call to summon co-workers to the pier with mops, water vacuums and fans. Even though the aquarium is built over the beach, it has no floor drain.

The tiny octopus, which is about the size of a human forearm when its appendages are extended, floated lazily in the water that remained in its tank. 

It watched intently through glass walls and portholes as workers struggled to dry the place out in time for the day's first busload of schoolchildren to arrive on a 9:30 a.m. field trip.

Randi Parent, the aquarium's community outreach coordinator, said the only significant damage was to newly installed ecologically sensitive flooring in several offices. It consists of linseed-and-cork tiles that soaked up the seawater and squished beneath workers' feet the rest of the day.

The incident was reminiscent of a 1994 incident at San Pedro's Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in which an octopus named Octavia pulled a plastic pipe loose. 

That giant Pacific octopus died when all of the water in her tank drained out.

Since octopuses are considered by many to be the most intelligent invertebrate -- and to have good memories -- Fash said he jury-rigged his octopus tank piping with clamps and tape in hopes of thwarting any further mischief by its occupant. "She would need tools," he said of his octopus, which until now had no name.

"Some people are suggesting we call her 'Flo,' " he said.

Devastation in Australia

Hope is that thing  with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all.

--Emily Dickinson

The world should thank the rescue and rehabilitation crews who have worked so hard to help save all the people and animals they could during Australia's devastating bush fires.  The fires wiped out over 40,000 hectares (or nearly 100,000 acres) of land.

 Australia's creatures are often unique to that continent--koalas, wombats, wallabies, echidnas, dingoes, Tasmanian Devils and kangaroos to name a few--and their populations have suffered devastating losses.  A great number of the surviving animals have lost their habitats.  They will need plenty of help moving into new homes.  

Many animals who survived the deadly fires have been badly burned.  Animal rescuers even found a turtle--still alive--whose shell had melted and fused to her body from the fire's intense heat.  

"We've got a wallaby joey at the moment that has crispy fried ears because he stuck his head out of his mum's pouch and lost all his whiskers and cooked up his nose," Wildlife Victoria President Jon Rowdon told the Associated Press news agency in a February 11th article.  

Now, zoos and animal shelters in Australia are overwhelmed with injured and recovering animals.  Many volunteers are working around the clock to help save them. The video below shows one of  many firefighters, who had been out in the brush, performing a famous koala rescue.  Koalas are dangerous wild animals who normally do not let humans get near them, but this little gal was so thirsty that she put aside her fear and let the kind fireman give her some water.  Rescuers named her "Sam," and she became a symbol of optimism for her entire nation. We wish Sam and all the animals and people of Australia a safe and speedy recovery from this terrible disaster.

 

Titanoboa!

Polar Bear friend gone

This summer, a month after I visited the Seneca Park Zoo and took this photo of him there, Yukon the polar bear died. 

He came to the Seneca Park Zoo about 16 years ago from Cincinnati.  He had fathered five cubs since then.  

You can see from this photo that he was very playful and outgoing, and the camera loved him. 

So did we.

Rest in peace, Yukon.   ♥

 

Dog days of summer

It's toasty outside now that I'm back in south Texas, so I'm thinking cool thoughts about this handsome fellow I met up at the Seneca Park Zoo in New York State a few days ago.  He's an arctic grey wolf, Canus lupus arctos, the largest species of all wolves. Adult male arctic wolves  can weigh over 100 pounds.

Even New York is too hot for this guy, though. He normally lives between the edge of North America and the North Pole, hunting for rabbits, caribou and musk ox.  

He has a brilliant white coat that distinguishes him from his close cousin, the North American gray wolf, who was just removed from the federal list of threatened and endangered species this past March.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, the arctic wolf is the only subspecies of wolf that has not yet been threatened, due to its isolation from humans in its native environment. As mines and oil pipelines encroach upon their territory and interrupt their food supply though, we may see arctic wolf numbers begin to decline.

You can read some interesting facts about Nikko, the Seneca Park Zoo arctic wolf, here.

A sad seal story

When Columbus came to the New World, legend is the first animal he discovered was a Caribbean monk seal on the coast of Santa Domingo. In fact, Columbus and his men hunted the small but plentiful seals, who once populated the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, for food. The docile creatures were easy prey for the explorers and for the multitude of European settlers who followed in their footsteps.  

The seals were hunted so much for food and for their oil that by the 1880's, they were already rare.  But up until the 1950's, visitors to the Florida Keys could still see monk seals swimming in the area's warm waters.

There hasn't been an official sighting of a Caribbean monk seal in more than fifty years.

Now, just this past week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has officially declared the Monachus tropicalis species extinct--the first extinction to be officially blamed on humans.

Scientists warn that Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals could be the next pinnipeds to vanish from the planet.  They say there are about 1,200 Hawaiian and 500 Mediterranean seals remaining.

"We hope we've learned from the extinction of Caribbean monk seals, and can provide stronger protection for their Hawaiian and Mediterranean relatives," says Kyle Barker,  an NOAA Fisheries Service biologist.

U.S. National Museum illustration

Sea turtle gets another chance

Allison is a three-year-old green sea turtle who was found one day back in 2005 by some tourists on South Padre Island.  She was brought to Sea Turtle, Inc., a hospital for the endangered animals,  because she only had one fin. Allison's other three fins had been bitten off, probably by a shark.  The prospects for her survival looked pretty grim, but the staff at Sea Turtle, Inc. nursed her back to health by giving her antibiotics and feeding her a diet of squid.  

Now, Allison's doctors are working with the University of Texas Dental branch to create a prosthetic fin for her out of silicone.  A mold of the stump that's left from her injury will be used to fashion her new flipper, which will be the first of its kind.  The flipper will be attached to her body with straps, and may have to be replaced every five or ten years as she grows. She currently weighs only about eight pounds,  but adult green sea turtles can grow to be about 450 pounds and live to  be nearly 100!

Once she gets her new flipper, Allison will stay at Sea Turtle, Inc. since she would be too vulnerable to predators.  If she had three flippers, though, she could be returned to the wild.  That is why the work being done to help Allison will be important in helping to save other green sea turtles with injuries in the future. Green sea turtles nest at night in the Gulf of Mexico--but only every three or four years.  The rare sea turtle babies need all the help they can get in their difficult quest for survival.  

"Allison is near and dear to everyone's heart here at Sea Turtle, Inc.," says Jeff George, a curator there.  "She will make a great ambassador here since she is an endangered animal."

Learn more about green sea turtles here.

(Photo from Sea Turtle, Inc.)

Harvesting the sun

Can you say Solana? Sounds like the name of a space ship, but it's actually Spanish for "sunny place." It's also the name of what will be one of the world's largest solar energy farms, to be built near not-so-shady Phoenix, Arizona by the year 2011.

The plant will cover about 1,900 acres of land (about three square miles) with what are called parabolic trough reflectors, which look a lot like giant square-shaped satellite dishes. 

The thick glass mirrors in the troughs will collect sunlight and reflect it like huge magnifying glasses into a receiver, where it heats a synthetic type of energy-carrying oil. The sunlight heats the oil to a blazing temperature of about 725 degrees Fahrenheit. The oil then travels through pipes to heat exchangers which convert the energy first to high-pressure steam, which powers a turbine that creates electricity.

When operating at full power, Solana will be able to provide clean electrical power to about 70,000 homes. Now that's hot!

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  (Solana farm illustration from APS)

Happy Earth Day!

Let's keep it clean.

Remember to reuse, recycle, reduce--turn off the lights when you leave a room (and the video games when you're done playing), shut off the water while you're brushing your teeth, don't waste paper, plant a tree, don't litter--and spread the word about conservation to all your friends!

It's so easy being green!

Hark! Who goes there?

We took another little road trip to West Texas recently where we came across this field in the Davis Mountains full of deer and wild turkey. There must have been at least 200 deer there, and they looked like they were gathering for some kind of huge family reunion. I'm surprised they weren't wearing little t-shirts telling them which banquet hall they belonged in. I know they were related because they all had those big funny ears.

In fact, those big ears gave the Mule Deer their family name. Their large, gray and white ears look like (guess what?) mule's ears. Mule Deer are pretty common in West Texas and the western half of the country. They look a bit different from the White-Tailed Deer I'm used to seeing back in the East!

Mule Deer like to eat grass, and lots of it, so these guys were all having fun at their picnic.

I wonder if those big ears help them hear better?

I like how that one fellow in the picture is not interrupting his meal for whatever is making the others stand up and listen!

Did you know...that deer appeared in the fossil record about 35 million years ago, in the Oligocene Epoch?