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All in Animals
Researchers in the UK have spent hours watching great apes – gorillas, bonobos, orangutans, and chimps – spinning on ropes and vines, apparently internationally inducing dizziness. Of course this inspired a study, “Great Apes Reach Momentary Altered Mental States By Spinning,” published in the journal Primates.
It’s a girl. The Metro Richmond Zoo in Moseley, Virginia received a delightful early Christmas present this year: 16 pounds of pygmy hippopotamus. That’s what she weighed at her first neonatal exam, three days after she came into the world on December 6, to Iris and Corwin. The zoo issued the birth announcement on the 22nd and has yet to name the baby girl.
Winners of this year’s Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are in and we think they are in fact funny. The comic possibilities of wildlife tend to fall into set categories. There are the photos of slapstick in progress – a 3-month-old lion cub falling out of a tree, for example, which happens to be this year’s overall winner. “It was probably his first time in a tree and his descent didn't go so well,” said photographer Jennifer Hadley.
Animals that organize in social groups occasionally experience friction, as when competing for food, living space, mates. When conflicts arise between two group members, a third-party intervention can smooth things over to the benefit of all. Pigs appear to be pretty good at conflict mediation.
We’ve known for some time that the Toxoplasma gondii parasite can infect the brains of rodents, forcing them via mind control into fatal encounters with predators. Now scientists have observed that wolves infected with T. gondii are also altering their behavior, in their case by taking more risks.
ZSL Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire, England has introduced a new giraffe to the world, six-foot-tall Wilfred, born on Remembrance Day (Veterans’ Day, across the pond). The new arrival is named after World War I poet Wilfred Owen.
Turns out humans aren’t the only animals who like to bop to a beat. Researchers in Japan played some jams for rats and found that they too like to groove when the song is right. “Rats displayed innate — that is, without any training or prior exposure to music — beat synchronization most distinctly within 120-140 bpm (beats per minute), to which humans also exhibit the clearest beat synchronization,” explained Hirokazu Takahashi from the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology.
Ornithorhynchus anatinus is one odd duck. With a tail like a beaver’s, webbed feet, nostrils that can clamp shut for underwater foraging, this egg-laying mammal seeks prey by detecting electrical fields using receptors on their bills. Having no nipples doesn’t stop them from nursing their young, which feed through pores in mama’s skin.
A barred owl in Hansville, Washington has a territorial feud ongoing with a local woman. The aggressive bird has attacked her twice – silent swoops from above that result in painful smacks to the back of her head – and biologists say such avian sorties will become more common.
It’s that time of year when humans foist Halloween upon their pets by making them wear costumes – dogs dressed as pumpkins or hotdogs or even as cats, the final indignity.
Observing the natural world every day is a task that is always educational, often wondrous, and sometimes a little gross. Case in point, an article published this week in the Journal of Zoology: “A review of nose picking in primates with new evidence of its occurrence in Daubentonia madagascariensis.”
A female African lion named Zuri has raised eyebrows (and other bodily hair) at the Topeka Zoo & Conservation Center. For the past two years the 18-year-old has been growing a mane, just like a dude.
When you hear birds sing, it’s always a good idea to stop and listen. New research published in Scientific Reports demonstrates that birdsong reduces both anxiety and irrational thoughts.
When the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition rolls around, there’s always (at least) one image of a species we had never seen before. In this year’s competition – the 58th by the UK’s Natural History Museum – that animal is the houbara of the Canary Islands.
Fat Bear Week is over at Katmai National Park and the winner is … this big boy. Bear 747 took the honors!
In Germany a wild boar piglet was separated from her peers, probably when the group (called a “sounder”) crossed a river. Fortunately the lone pig found some friends in a herd of cows, which have now adopted her as one of their one.
As Florida continues assessing the damage wrought by Hurricane Ian, there’s one bit of good news: Ernest Hemingway’s Key West home has weathered the storm unscathed and, more importantly, so have the 59 cats that live there.
Alameda County has banned the rodeo spectacle of “wild cow milking,” in which lactating beef cows are separated from their calves, chased around an arena until roped and tackled into submission, then forcibly milked. The Mercury News calls this barbarism “one of the sport’s more popular local events.”
Researchers at the Universities of Hong Kong and Würzburg, Germany have addressed a question that no one asked, “How many ants are there on Earth?” The answer: 20 quadrillion. It’s difficult to grasp the enormity of such a number. The authors of the study that painstakingly added up the ants call it “20 thousand million millions, or in numerical form, 20,000,000,000,000,000 (20 with 15 zeroes).” The researchers warn that figure is a “conservative” estimate.
Certain small mammal species – shrews, voles, stoats, weasels – shrink their brains and other organs in wintertime, a strategy that helps them conserve energy when food is scarce. Now the European mole (Talpa europaea) has been found to deploy this same weird adaptation.
