Wildlife Wednesdays

Dedicated to educating about the marvelous curiousities of wildlife and raising awareness about conservation.

[sdzoo]

The Chinese name for the red panda is “hun-ho,” meaning “fire fox.” But even rainy days can’t extinguish Clark’s cute looks.

📷: Christopher Chain

[wildlifewednesdays]

No female-presenting nipples here, staff, just two blue-footed boobys performing their mating dance!

Happy Valentine’s Day from @wildlifewednesdays! 

Here’s a male blue-footed booby displaying his gorgeously colored feet, along with his beak and wings, to woo a female!

[wildlifewednesdays]

One Arctic town's very busy polar bear patrol

Recent news have reported that a Russian town had to declare a state of emergency as large numbers of polar bears invaded the town in search of food. As ice melts and it becomes harder for bears to find food, human-bear conflict is becoming more and more frequent. here’s the story of such conflicts on Greenland.

Living with polar bears

Dine steps outside the incineration plant early in the morning to smoke a cigarette. Flicking on his lighter, he finds himself looking into the eyes of a polar bear standing by his ATV four meters away. The bear moves straight towards him. Dine races for the corner of the building, and fortunately, the bear chooses to move in another direction.

Mikkel, who works at the weather station, goes to launch a weather balloon at 22:00. As he walks towards the building, he hears the ice crunch behind him. He turns around and sees a polar bear three meters away. He runs inside, and the polar bear takes off down the slope at the dump and swims towards Storesten.

The hard work of the polar bear patrol

Throughout the Arctic, conflicts between polar bears and humans have risen as summer sea ice shrinks due to climate change. In some areas, bears are now forced to stay on land for longer periods than before. In their search for food, they are often attracted to nearby villages.

In Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland, the problem is particularly severe as a deluge of bears created life-threatening situations for both bears and the villagers.

In 2007, nine polar bear conflicts were registered in all of Greenland. By 2017, there were 21 conflicts between August and December in Ittoqqortoormiit alone. In almost all of the 21 cases, the local polar bear patrol was called to ensure that the bears were scared away from the community and kept under observation.

WWF provided support for the community to establish a polar bear patrol in 2015 to protect the town's 450 residents from dangerous encounters on their way to school or work, and to reduce the number of bears killed in self-defense. During peak polar bear season in autumn, the patrol is particularly active just before school opens each morning.

“The community members tell us that the patrol gives them greater peace of mind, and we prevent a lot of polar bears from being shot in self-defense”, says Bo Øksnebjerg, Secretary-General of WWF-Denmark. “So on the one hand, we’re glad that the polar bear patrol is working so well. On the other hand, we regret that the patrol is so busy. Everything indicates that the problem of hungry polar bears in communities will continue to grow as the sea ice shrinks.”

WWF supports similar polar bear patrol projects in Alaska and Russia. These community projects aim to prevent unintended and potentially fatal encounters between polar bears and people, keeping both towns and bears safe. Deterrence tools such as noisemakers as well as better lighting near public places, bear-proof food storage containers, and warning plans for when bears enter communities are further effective means of protection.

The village of Wales, Alaska—the westernmost town in mainland North America— started a polar bear patrol in 2016. Now, they are embarking on an expedition to six other villages in the region to tell their story, listen to the concerns of other villages, and see if a polar bear conflict avoidance/deterrence program might be a good fit for them. WWF has committed to helping two additional Alaskan villages initiate polar bear patrol programs in 2019.

[sdzoo]

The greatest story ever told. 

Video by Ryoko Chonan

[cool-critters]

Saffron toucanet (Pteroglossus bailloni)

The saffron toucanet is a species of bird in the family Ramphastidae found in the Atlantic Forest in far north-eastern Argentina, south-eastern Brazil, and eastern Paraguay. It is a relatively long-tailed toucan with a total length of 35–40 cm. This species is dimorphic, meaning that males and females have distinguished looks from each other. The saffron is found in the Atlantic Forest. The saffron is a large-gape frugivore. Due to their nature, they are especially crucial for plants with larger seeds to disperse themselves to further areas. They are one of the few birds that are capable of carrying larger seeds to new locations. It is threatened by habitat loss, degradation, hunting, and being captured. They are currently considered Near Threatened by BirdLife International.

photo credits: Jairmoreirafotografia, Francesco Veronesi

[sdzoo]

The bontebok was once considered to be the rarest antelope in the world, with only 17 left in the wild in the early 19th century. They were hunted by the thousands for their meat and skins, and were nearly brought to the brink of extinction.

In 1837, farmer Alexander van der Bijl built a fence to hold his sheep, but it wound up saving the last 17 bontebok on the planet. Almost any other African ungulate like the eland, springbok, or kudu would have gracefully jumped out of this simple sheep enclosure, but the bontebok lack the athleticism to jump. Lucky for them, or they surely would have met their end.

After the tiny population of bontebok were relocated to other parks, they began to reproduce and thrive. Their numbers hovered in the low hundreds for many years. In the 1930s, a national park was declared specifically to conserve them, which helped them flourish. Careful conservation efforts have helped their numbers increase to around 3,500 today.

[sirena-anarquista-deactivated20]

[femmenietzsche]

How tiny wasps cope with being smaller than amoebas - Not Exactly Rocket Science

Thrips are tiny insects, typically just a millimetre in length. Some are barely half that size. If that’s how big the adults are, imagine how small a thrips’ egg must be. Now, consider that there are insects that lay their eggs inside the egg of a thrips.

That’s one of them in the image above – the wasp, Megaphragma mymaripenne. It’s pictured next to a Paramecium and an amoeba at the same scale. Even though both these creatures are made up of a single cell, the wasp – complete with eyes, brain, wings, muscles, guts and genitals – is actually smaller. At just 200 micrometres (a fifth of a millimetre), this wasp is the third smallest insect alive* and a miracle of miniaturisation.

The wasp has several adaptations for life at such a small scale. But the most impressive one of all has just been discovered by Alexey Polilov from Lomonosov Moscow State University, who has spent many years studying the world’s tiniest insects.

Polilov found that M.mymaripenne has one of the smallest nervous systems of any insect, consisting of just 7,400 neurons. For comparison, the common housefly has 340,000 and the honeybee has 850,000. And yet, with a hundred times fewer neurons, the wasp can fly, search for food, and find the right places to lay its eggs.

On top of that Polilov found that over 95 per cent of the wasps’s neurons don’t have a nucleus. The nucleus is the command centre of a cell, the structure that sits in the middle and hoards a precious cache of DNA. Without it, the neurons shouldn’t be able to replenish their vital supply of proteins. They shouldn’t work. Until now, intact neurons without a nucleus have never been described in the wild.

And yet, M.mymaripenne has thousands of them. As it changes from a larva into an adult, it destroys the majority or its neural nuclei until just a few hundred are left. The rest burst apart, saving space inside the adult’s crowded head. But the wasp doesn’t seem to suffer for this loss. As an adult, it lives for around five days, which is actually longer than many other bigger wasps. As Zen Faulkes writes, “It’s possible that the adult life span is short enough that the nucleus can make all the proteins the neuron needs to function for five days during the pupal stage.”

Dang

[sdzoo]

When our boisterous baboon band charges into their expansive, naturalistic habitat, the daily spectacle stops Zoo visitors in their tracks.🐒 http://bit.ly/HBaboon318

[despazito]

revised my chicken post, still very basic but its an intro to appearance

[currentsinbiology]

Dolphins Use Targeted Echolocation To Plan Their Hunting Dives 

The central challenge of dolphin existence is that your oxygen is on the surface and your dinner is in the deep. Hang out breathing air too long and you’ll starve. Dive too deep for food and you’ll drown.

To thrive, dolphins must use their oxygen wisely. A new study of one type of dolphin suggests they do that by carefully planning each dive, using information from previous dives to predict where food might be.

The study, published Wednesday in the Journal of Experimental Biology, used a relatively new technology to record the locations and vocalizations of 33 Risso’s dolphins as they swam and hunted off San Clemente Island in Southern California. Researchers led by Patricia Arranz of the University of La Laguna in Spain used suction cups to attach small recorders to the dolphins.

[sciencenewsforstudents]

The last wild horses aren’t truly wild

The ancestor of today’s domesticated horses remains a mystery after a new analysis of ancient horse DNA.

When it comes to wild claims, hold your horses.

Free-roaming Przewalski’s horses of Central Asia are often called the last of the wild horses, the only living equines never domesticated. But a new genetic analysis of ancient horse bones suggests that these horses have a tamed ancestor after all, making them feral rather than wild.

[wildlifewednesdays]

A baby elephant at Boras Zoo in Sweden chases birds, falls on his front and runs to his mom!

Play is an important part of many species’ childhood. It teaches them basic skills important for later survival like agility, hunting, and sparring while in the relative safety of friends or relatives. This baby elephant definitely got out of his comfort zone by reaching out to another species!

[wildlifewednesdays]

A baby elephant at Boras Zoo in Sweden chases birds, falls on his front and runs to his mom!

Play is an important part of many species’ childhood. It teaches them basic skills important for later survival like agility, hunting, and sparring while in the relative safety of friends or relatives. This baby elephant definitely got out of his comfort zone by reaching out to another species!

[wildlifewednesdays]

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An albino miniature aquatic turtle!

[wildlifewednesdays]

In the deserts of Namibia, water is perhaps the scarcest resource. Animals of this size are rare because they require enormous quantities of food and water per day. Yet these elephants have found a way to survive. They acquire water from the plants they eat, resorting to gymnastics to reach the most nutritional branches. Only plants with the deepest roots can survive in desert conditions like these. Because the elephant digestive system is very inefficient, elephants are on a constant search for food.

And when there aren’t enough plants around, elephants have the unique ability to sniff out underground water - a trait likely passed down as knowledge in families. Once they pinpoint a good source, they dig until they reach the moisture. They siphon out the sandy water and are then able to drink out of the clean well. These wells are a lifeline for many other desert inhabitants as well.

(gifs from NatGeo WILD’s Destination WILD Namibia)

[currentsinbiology]

Oceans suffocating as huge dead zones quadruple since 1950, scientists warn

Ocean dead zones with zero oxygen have quadrupled in size since 1950, scientists have warned, while the number of very low oxygen sites near coasts have multiplied tenfold. Most sea creatures cannot survive in these zones and current trends would lead to mass extinction in the long run, risking dire consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on the sea.

Climate change caused by fossil fuel burning is the cause of the large-scale deoxygenation, as warmer waters hold less oxygen. The coastal dead zones result from fertiliser and sewage running off the land and into the seas.

The analysis, published in the journal Science, is the first comprehensive analysis of the areas and states: “Major extinction events in Earth’s history have been associated with warm climates and oxygen-deficient oceans.” Denise Breitburg, at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in the US and who led the analysis, said: “Under the current trajectory that is where we would be headed. But the consequences to humans of staying on that trajectory are so dire that it is hard to imagine we would go quite that far down that path.”

A fisherman on a beach in Temuco, Chile that is blanketed with dead sardines, a result of algal blooms that suck oxygen out of the water. Photograph: Felix Marquez/AP