Red Squirrel News Service

Too sad; don't read

2011-09-28T07:30:00.000-04:00

Washington Post article on the "growing at-home pet euthanasia movement that is beginning to relocate one of pet ownership’s most painful rituals, the final, one-way trip to the vet’s office."

2011-09-22T08:47:00.000-04:00

The Economist:

Pet care is booming in emerging markets, as the growing middle class stops buying dogs for security (or dinner) and starts doting on them. Nowhere has the fashion taken off as quickly as in Latin America.

PHOTO: Economist

Bird vs. Building

2011-09-15T08:45:00.000-04:00

How many birds has your building killed today?

The Times says an estimated one billion birds die, per year, crashing into buildings! What! "There are no easy fixes," says the article. Less reflective glass, patterns, nets, even glass with ultraviolet signals, are unappealing options for designers, though they've been implemented successfully in some cases, and may soon be required, by law, for new buildings in San Francisco.

Lighting also is a problem, at night, when bright lights can confuse birds.

But Glen Philips of the New York City Audubon makes a good point: "I hope there will come a time when putting up an all-glass building is like wearing a fur coat."

Dolphins may have names

2011-09-10T15:31:00.001-04:00

Except for the whole murdering for fun thing, dolphins are awesome. They may even call to each other using different whistles for different individuals - that is, names. (Well, it's not a whistle, it's a vibrating membrane. Ew!)

Each individual has an identifying whistle, which his friends copy, though they repeat it a bit differently, which suggests they're not just mimicking. In fact, pairs only use each other's whistle when they've become separated. Neat!

Crazy elks, murd'rous moose

2011-09-09T15:05:00.000-04:00

Wednesday night, a drunken moose (Eurasian elk) got herself stuck in an apple tree, which had to be pared back and winched down so she could curl up on the grass and pass out. She slept in, but seemed to be fine later the next day.

Apparently this is not uncommon in Sweden, where moose are known to indulge in fermenting apples. Sadly, their revels can end badly. Ingemar Westlund, 68, was just cleared of murder charges after police concluded his wife was killed by a moose, probably a drunk one. That moose remains at large.

A note here: BBC says “elk,” CNN says “moose.” Elk and moose are distinct members of the deer family, Cervidae, but their names are interchangeable. Except that you will know the Commie scum if they call a moose (Alces alces) an elk (Cervus canadensis)!

Final note: animals get drunk all the time. Elephants are even worse than moose, because they go stampeding through villages, over homes and people. They can even do harm to themselves, like our friend stuck in the tree.

Wild animals should be given a respectable distance even when they aren’t drunk, of course. But just like humans, unless you have some Excedrin and mimosas on hand, animals are deadliest during a hangover!

Love to Stephanie, thanks to Shamie.

More about Lolong, the lovable giant man-eating crocodile

2011-09-09T01:59:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week, residents of a farming township in the southern Philippines celebrated the live capture of a suspected killer: a one-ton, 20-foot, male saltwater crocodile. In case you’re wondering, that’s fucking huge. It took 100 people to hoist this amazing creature out of its creek - up which it was, presumably, sans paddle.

“Lolong” stands accused of eating a child two years ago, and may be responsible for a fisherman going missing in July. However, wildlife official Ronnie Sumiller says there’s an even bigger croc still on the loose.

Saltwater crocodiles can grow to 23 feet, and may live more than 100 years. Experts estimate that Lolong is 50 years old - since eating children and fishermen is a sign of midlife crisis in most crocodiles.

Crocodiles differ from alligators in a number of ways. Alligators have wider snouts, while a crocodile snout almost comes to a point. Alligators prefer freshwater, crocodiles are fine with saltwater. Gators play poker on Thursdays, crocs get togged up and enjoy a round of golf on Sundays. That’s just the way it is. Also, crocodiles are distinguished by two teeth that jut up outside the mouth like smug tusks. But the two share a common family tree - along with caimans and gharials, whatever those are - that appeared 84 million years ago.

So, they’re awesome. Should they be bound up with heavy ropes and posts and trucked off into captivity for being large carnivores? Probably not. According to The Philippine Star, Lolong’s already stressed out, muzzled and caged to be gawked at by crowds and taunted by children.

It’s great that there’s an even bigger one still at large ("Lo-longer"). I say let the monsters multiply!

One-ton croc captured in the Philippines

2011-09-06T08:53:00.001-04:00

Actually felt pretty horrible for this big guy, even though it's a nightmare!

Loukanikos the awesome Greek riot dawg

2011-06-30T09:16:00.006-04:00

Since 2008, Loukanikos has barked alongside protesters in Greece, where fears of a default have pressured the government to enact harsh austerity measures.

Loukanikos means "Sausage" in Greek. Story here.

Bottlenose murderers

2011-06-03T01:30:00.005-04:00

Don't let the bottlenose dolphin fool you. Behind Tersiops' innocent snout there's a cold killer.

“They just seem so quiet and nice,” says a jellyfish, one of the dolphins' neighbors. But reports continue to accumulate of cetaceans killing their fellow seafarers.

Why? What motivates them? It doesn't appear to be competition for food. Though it may just be for fun, a recent finding points to a new explanation. Mark Cotter and colleagues at Okeanis observed bottlenose dolphins chasing, ramming, and drowning lone harbor porpoises in the Pacific.

Since 21 of 23 dolphins were male, they must obviously have been murdering with that age old motive: sexual frustration.

Of mice and moths

2011-02-04T03:55:00.005-05:00

Yes, it's come to this: mice are being tested as explosive sniffers for airport security.

Israeli start-up BioExplorers "claims that trained mice can be better than full-body scanners and intrusive pat-downs at telling a bona fide passenger from a terrorist carrying explosives," says a recent article in New Scientist.

Mice apparently have a more acute sense of smell than dogs, and require less attention. They were conditioned to smell the traces of eight key explosives.

The same article reports that moths can be used as bomb detectors as well.

"Different chemicals produce distinct voltages on the antennae that the moths use to sense aromas, so the team wired up the moths to record these levels."

So, there you are, world, the absurd fixes you're willing to dream up in place of real solutions.

Nature's monsters

2010-09-07T09:45:00.004-04:00

Of course there's no such thing as ugly animals, but there's an entertaining attempt to treat the oxymoron in the New York Times: "A Masterpiece of Nature? Yuck!"

It stars the star-nosed mole (Condylura cristata), a tunneler and part-time swimmer from the low, wet parts of eastern North America. It is the world's fastest forager. Pretty much its whole face comprises the eponymous "star-nose," a wheel of eleven pairs of supersensative "tendrils," radiating around a mouth that's hungry for insects, worms, and other small invertebrates.

"The star-nosed mole's brain processes the information [from its pink, fleshy tendrils] at a very high speed, which approaches the upper limit at which nervous systems are capable of functioning," says Neurophilosophy blog at ScienceBlogs. "Approximately half of the brain is devoted to processing sensory information from the nose."

It's true, C. cristata may have brains, but it is not a classical beauty. See the Times for more pictures - both a slide show and reader submissions.

Other supposedly ugly animals:

The blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus), facing extinction;

Warthogs, "neither graceful nor beautiful..." (Phacochoerus africanus);

The manatee (Trichechus spp.), a bloated, mopey torpedo shunned by researchers;

And our own Sphynx cat, an inbred "gargoyle of human creation!"

Bedbugs take over

2010-09-01T20:18:00.003-04:00

Bedbugs (Cimex lectularis) are gross, creepy, and they're multiplying, virtually usurping power in New York City and the entire state of Ohio. But, as a great article from the New York Times points out, they don't appear to spread disease, and there may be more to fear from the pesticides used against them.

According to the article, few researches focus on this particular parasite; "most study grants come from the pesticide industry and ask only one question: What kills it?"

Those researchers that do specialize in bedbugs are charmingly kooky: "The classic bedbug strain that all newly caught bugs are compared against is a colony originally from Fort Dix, N.J., that a researcher kept alive for 30 years by letting it feed on him."

Since 2006, the fight has cost over $250 million nationwide, a vexing battle since the blood-suckers resist most pesticides. Currently, hope is fixated on propoxur, which the EPA warns may be carcinogenic, banning it for indoor use in 2007. Ohio, with four winners in Terminix’s top 15 bedbug-infested cities, is leading 25 other states in petitioning for an emergency exemption.

It’s a toss-up between dangerous chemicals: "authorities around the country have blamed house fires on people misusing all sorts of highly flammable garden and lawn chemicals to fight bedbugs," says the AP.

Maybe our blood-eating buddies are here to stay. They’ve even found their way into national politics.

Cracked.com spreads some healthy animal paranoia

2009-06-13T10:20:00.003-04:00

Have to admit, I'm a bit jealous of the animal coverage at Cracked.com, a magazine I stopped reading about 15 years ago. Their recent contribution to man's endless quest to understand his animalian brethren includes stories of a spiteful grizzly bear, a manipulative dolphin, crows taking over Japan, etc. etc. Plus they use funny curse words.

Jellies: Rulers of the sea??!!

2009-06-12T10:59:00.003-04:00

Terrible, just terrible. "Jellyfish threaten to 'dominate' oceans."

New methods for controlling these awful things include exploding them with sound waves. Apparently the species currently increasing are not generally considered to be edible. Darn.

I've written more about these menaces elsewhere. I don't want to think about it anymore today.

Tool-using rookies; a squirrelous video; uproarious wordplay

2009-06-05T09:50:00.007-04:00

Unlike their corvine cousins, rooks don't show off their tool-using ability in the wild, but that doesn't mean they're a simpler breed. Given appropriate conditions in the lab - and a "tasty morsel" like a waxworm to tempt them - rooks (Corvus frugilegus) can use various combinations of sticks and stones to dip their beaks in some treats. They can even modify a stick or a piece of wire to complete the task.

See the videos at BBC News.

"The interesting thing about the rooks is that they do not use tools in the wild," says the deliciously named Christopher Bird, the study's lead author.

"The upshot," says the Economist, "is that toolmaking, at least in crows, does not look like a specifically evolved ability but rather an extension of general intelligence. Perhaps wild rooks are not presented with a need to use tools, and so don’t bother."

Other non-primates - elephants, cetaceans, various birds and rodents - also use tools. There may be uncounted species among them like the rooks who just don't exhibit tool use in the wild, where it's unnecessary.

And here we have a delightful video of the lengths those rascally sciurids will go to for a treat or a candy bar - not so different, us and the animals, hmm?

Ten million years of tickling

2009-06-04T18:38:00.004-04:00

Should we ban animal-tickling? Apparently not. AP reports that upon comparison, the sounds evoked by tickling three human babies and 21 orangutans, gorillas, chimps, and bonobos, all appeared to be the same thing: laughter. I would have protested, but since they didn’t scream, strike out, and feel unendurably queasy, I think we can let this one pass. (Judge for yourself – videos below.)

Most importantly, researchers say the similarities suggest a common evolutionary origin, possibly back further than 10 million years. Other research has even shown a form of laughter in rats, and work continues outside the primate domain.

To see if they would cry, researchers fed the baby simians some red wine and showed them "The Notebook" starring Ryan Gosling.

Vids:

Animal Views at Washington Post

2008-12-24T21:37:00.003-05:00

Just go there immediately. Awesome pictures of elephants playing in snow (they look like they're laughing!), a baby hippopotamus (ADORABLE), a meerkat (meerkats are awesome), a cat in a Santa hat (NEVER out of season!)... Apparently the Post does this every week! Go go go!!

Fauna feed - various animal news, bad puns

2008-12-15T21:52:00.010-05:00

They're back! Goopy stinging groups of gobs given the deceptively poetic name "blooms" are overrunning seas too numerous to name, and costing fishing and tourism industries hundreds of millions of dollars over the past few decades. Jellyfish are swarming all across the globe, a phenomenon I reported on a while ago ("Jellyfish plague punishes the humans"), but never thought was so out of hand, turning fisheries and beaches into "veritable jellytoriums" in the newly invented words of ScienceDaily.

These jellyfish jams can be deadly but usually just stick to disrupting industry, commerce, and infrastructure. "[S]uspicion is growing that population explosions of jellyfish are being generated by human activities," such as pollution and global warming.

In other freaky news, LiveScience reports that a species of Panamanian termite has the world's fastest bite, clocking in at 157 chomp and awe mph. "Because a termite soldier faces down enemies inside a narrow tunnel and has little room to parry and little time to waste, this death blow proves to be incredibly efficient, though it works only over short distances."

The New York Times runs an article about fear among conservatives that the 1972 Endangered Species Act might be used as a "'back door' means of regulating the emission of gases that accelerate climate change."

They've also got a "radical" editorial out calling for a moratorium on bluefin tuna fishing - if only they could show a bit more radicalism (or at least backbone) on topics like the decision to invade Iraq!

For some real radicalism, we turn to PETA, which is "so very excited" to bring us good animal rights news from Bernalillo County, New Mexico. After pressure from citizens, the county council voted on a bill that, among other things, requires better living conditions for farm animals, and bans the sale of cats and dogs in pet stores. (And just a few days ago I found out I have to hate zoos too!)

Lastly, I found an oldish article on the New York Times site about service dogs trained by inmates of the maximum security Bedford Hills women's prison. The majority of the dogs go to Iraq War veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. (Do not read this article if you don't want to cry, and certainly don't watch the accompanying video - I almost cried and I barely have canine emotions, let alone human ones!)

Beware of Dog (silently judging you)

2008-12-14T18:55:00.007-05:00

Many will insist it's unfair to feed one dog and not the others looking on, even if it's your dog and your aunt has brought her smelly unruly doggy brood over for a visit. But however smelly they are, her dogs may in fact be indignant at your invidious gesture, at least judging from a study by the University of Vienna's Clever Dog Lab, out last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Here," says the abstract, "we investigated whether domestic dogs show sensitivity toward the inequity of rewards received for giving the paw [that's British for "Shake!"] to an experimenter on command in pairs of dogs." They showed that when one dog was rewarded for shaking, and the other wasn't, the neglected one would soon resist the command.

"Our results suggest that species other than primates show at least a primitive version of inequity aversion, which may be a precursor of a more sophisticated sensitivity to efforts and payoffs of joint interactions."

Detractor Clive Wynne, an associate professor in the psychology department of the University of Florida, told AP, "What it means is individuals are responding negatively to being treated less well."

They are, agrees evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff, co-author of the forthcoming book Wild Justice, "but it also means they are picking up on what being treated less well means, and that's really important. The animals are aware of being treated less well." No sources care to explain how those two interpretations differ.

"Until recently, psychologists believed most animals lacked the 'sense of self' needed to experience so-called secondary emotions such as jealousy, embarrassment, empathy or guilt," says the Times (UK).

Indeed, studies like this may be closing the gap we tend to think separates us from animals. "In two areas, we're unique," says Bekoff. "We're the only species I know of that cooks food and [we have an] incredible propensity for evil."

Meet the clever dogs of the Clever Dog Lab.

In related news, Florida animal welfare officials are warning against giving pets for the holidays, as returning such unwanted "gifts" after they become attached can be detrimental to their health.

"Animals can go through the same emotions people do," says one official.

New Species: Your name here

2008-12-13T03:05:00.005-05:00

Ain't found nothin since the last post. Probably something or other long extinct, some kind of bacteria, etc. But here's the really exciting news.

"Starting Monday," reports the Chicago Tribune, "Purdue University researchers will be auctioning off the naming rights to seven recently discovered types of bats hailing from Mexico, South America, Central America and Africa. And if the bats seem too 'last Christmas,' there's also a pair of yet-to-be-named Amazonian turtles up for grabs."

Indeed, "universities and ecological organizations across the country have begun to view the naming rights to new species of birds, bugs and mammals as a way to draw big bucks to fund their research."

Stephen Colbert already caught onto this I guess and made some good sarcastic self-conscious jokes about it. Feigning indignity at the naming of a trapdoor spider after Neil Young, he had the biologist fan who named it on the show for what I'm sure was a snippy chiding. He then proceeded to have a trapdoor spider named after him, no joke: Aptostichus stephencolberti.

John Bickham, Purdue professor who discovered the as yet unnamed bats, "said there are about 1.6 million known species of organisms, estimated to be only 10 percent of what exists on the Earth."

"'We're losing species every minute,' he said. 'People don't really understand the full impact of this. We're really talking about losing the organisms that may be necessary to sustain the foundation on which the Earth is built. And yet we don't even really understand them.'"

Elephants' lifespans drastically cut short by poaching

2008-12-13T01:23:00.006-05:00

Absent from my post below ("Zoos News") was a perspective that incorporates conservation and poaching — a glaring omission.

Six suspects stand accused in the US of working with "a trans-Atlantic ring that routinely sneaked ivory, much of it elaborately carved, out of three African countries — Uganda, Ivory Coast and Cameroon — that prohibit such exports and then slipped it past customs agents at Kennedy Airport..." according to the New York Times.

"Poaching elephants for their ivory is still the primary factor in the decline of their populations in Africa, wildlife officials say."

And in National Geographic is an article on the dizzying losses of elephants to poaching in Chad, a "massacre," in the words of one observer, that could wipe out the population within three years. The army helps guards and employees protect elephants in Zakouma National Park, but clashes with poachers can prove fatal.

A serious examination of these majestic megafauna's quality of life in our zoos should of course inquire into their lives at home, and their prospects for conservation there. Questions arise like how to shift priorities in impoverished countries where ordinary people have few options but to poach or starve.

And how do we reverse environmental degradations like global warming so that our friend Knut the polar bear won't be sent home to find all his ice melted?

Zoos News

2008-12-12T23:26:00.008-05:00

Lots of news out recently to more or less condemn zoos to animal cruelty's shit list, alongside slaughterhouses, vivisections, and puppy mills. Plenty of controversy, too, of course.

The big seller was out today, under headlines like "Free Dumbo! Zoos are bad for elephants" and "How zoos kill elephants." The New York Times balances it out with "Critical Report on Health of Zoo Elephants Debated," although its two sides are the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Findings from the study in question: "living in a zoo drastically shortens the lives of Asian and African elephants"; "bringing elephants into zoos profoundly impairs their viability." The numbers are hard to dispute, but the representative from AZA casts a smidgen of doubt on them.

There is also a warning out about weight problems affecting elephants' feet in British zoos.

More sadness as the economic downturn pressures the Berlin Zoo to try and send its polar bear superstar Knut packing:

"Like many zoos, the Berlin Zoo is caught in the economic downturn. Knut will need a mate but because of budget constraints, the Berlin Zoo cannot afford to expand his living enclosure. The place he has always called home will most likely have to sell him to another zoo." (I wrote here a little bit ago about the now official recession affecting puppies and kitties.)

There's a really compelling op-ed at the Guardian UK by Craig Redmond, the campaigns director for the Captive Animals' Protection Society. It puts Knut's story in the broader context of a "zoo industry" that "is happy to reap the benefits of money and publicity but not so keen to provide for the lifetime care of animals when they lose their appeal." Again, debatable. A look at the comments is pretty interesting. Redmond also weighs in today on the elephant lifespan study.

Other celebrity zoo critters:

"Colo, the first gorilla ever born in a zoological setting" – Columbia Zoo

New-born elephant baby, Samson, "plays with everything from sticks and leaves to big pumpkins and squash" – Maryland Zoo in Baltimore

Nipper, a dapper penguin from the Tennessee Aquarium, stars in his own commercials.

"Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in California has a White Bengal Tiger named Odin who dives for snacks of red meat...dazzles crowds," etc.

"At the National Aviary in Pittsburgh, Patrick the penguin paints. And, for a pretty penny, a piece can be commissioned."

- from ABC News

Pee-waves: Animals and Earthquakes

2008-12-11T14:14:00.006-05:00

Ran across an impressive and amusing article in the Washington City Paper tackling the enduring question of animals' and pets' supposed quake-sniffing abilities. Cecil Adams writes that researchers have posited all manner of earthquake-attendant phenomena that might relate to the strange behavior of animals right before a quake - but that also there appears to be no evidence of said "strange behavior."

Old news is good news

2008-11-22T09:27:00.005-05:00

It doesn't matter that this news is two years old (July 5, 2006). I found this absurd photograph on National Geographic after a Google image search for "frog":

The article, I'm sorry to report, has to do with a devastating monsoon in India that presumably was not nearly so whimsical.

New Species! Leaping lemurs, sea creepies, a gecko in gay Paris

2008-11-18T13:16:00.006-05:00

New species popping up all over the place!

From the treetops of Indochina and Sundaland will now be leaping three certifiably separate species of flying lemur, or "colugo." The colugos had been thought to comprise only two species, the Sunda colugo and the Philippine colugo. But upon comparison of DNA between Sunda colugos from mainland Indochina, Java, and Borneo, researches discovered each region had a unique species, having diverged as much as five million years ago.

Colugos glide using a membrane stretched between their appendages, like a flying squirrel. Apparently, their diversification "might be explained by the colugos' unusual way of getting around. While they have the most developed gliding membrane of any mammal, they are nearly helpless on the ground, leaving them incapable of crossing large open spaces that lack trees." Groups could easily have isolated themselves and had to settle down and speciate.

That's not to disparage these floating fellows, since they are the closest living group of mammals to ours, the primates.

Scientists from the seven year old Census of Marine Life met recently to discuss the 120,000 undersea species they'd documented thus far, including newly discovered blind lobsters, giant oysters, sea spiders the size of dinner plates, and the progenitor of many deep sea octopodes. Creepy pics, as usual, at Natty G.

Lastly, a new gecko with a dramatic tale, and the recently rediscovered pygmy tarsier from Indonesia, feared to be extinct since the 1920s.

Pics: Norman Lim, colugo; Sharon Gursky-Doyen, tarsier

First Dog not to be the last of Obama administration controversies

2008-11-10T16:00:00.008-05:00

Already, President-elect Barack Obama is making controversial decisions about his administration. Along with Rahm Emanuel, the new president will be bringing a puppy to the White House, a promise he made to his daughters at the outset of his campaign.

"You have earned the puppy that is coming with us," he told Malia and Sasha. Malia, whose allergies must be taken into account, asked for a "goldendoodle," some kind of hypo-allergenic poodle hybrid. But according to an American Kennel Club survey, the People would like to see a purebred poodle - America's eighth most popular dog - in the Obama White House.

Very likely the First Family will adopt. An unscientific Chicago Tribune poll showed a vast majority of readers prefer an unspecified shelter dog to any particular breed. PETA even wrote the Obamas a letter in July, stating, "Millions of Great American Mutts...are set to die in our nation's extremely overcrowded pounds and shelters for lack of good homes. When you are ready, please adopt a homeless pound puppy..."

The only administrations with no record of having a pet, according to the Presidential Pets Museum, are those of unknowns James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and Chester Arthur.

The Obama camp may have felt pressure this summer when an AP-Yahoo News poll showed McCain leading 42 percent to 37 percent among pet owners, while 63 percent of homes have a pet, according to an American Pet Product Manufacturers Association estimate. People without pets, a minority, favored Obama 48 percent to 34 percent.

John McCain has as many pets as he does houses, maybe, including two dogs, two turtles, a cat, a ferret, three parakeets, and "a bunch" of saltwater fish. "You usually connect with things you're familiar with," American Kennel Club spokeswoman Christina Duffney said to explain the poll results. Interestingly, pet ownership had no effect on Nader, who got 3% in both categories, as well as several others.

But most importantly, while the new president worries over the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and failing wars abroad, Chicago Tribune resident idiot John Kass asks:

"Who's gonna clean up the doo?"

AP-Yahoo News poll

"Presidential Pets"

This read's a 'Yawn'

2008-08-09T06:36:00.003-04:00

Yawning's mysteries: why do we do it? Why is it contagious? Well, we had better find out soon because it turns out we can spread yawns to our best friends, dogs. In fact, dogs can catch a yawn at higher rates than chimps or even humans, the LA Times reports today.

New Species: Legless lizards, dwarf woodpeckers, and Neil Young

2008-05-09T12:28:00.003-04:00

National Geographic bites my style this week with a photo gallery of newly discovered species in Brazil's Cerrado, a wooded grassland that's seen an increasing threat of urban and agricultural encroachment.

Most stories lead with the "legless lizard" discovered there, but we all know that that's just a snake. Among the fourteen new species found in the Cerrado are a tiny woodpecker, and a fat-tailed mouse opossum.

The discoveries, along with the documentation of several endangered species in the region, renewed a push by conservationists to develop a management plan for the area, according to MSNBC.

More important is a species of trapdoor spider, actually discovered in 2007, that has only just now been named - after Neil Young. The trapdoor spider is so named because it fashions a plug to cover the entrance of its burrow, and will wait under it to pounce at passing prey. Jason Bond named the spider Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi because he admires Young's music as well as his political activism.

New species: Weird creatures of the water

2008-04-11T12:55:00.003-04:00

This weekly feature has been anything but. We will just have to see what fate it meets as Red Squirrel News Service grows.

Tricky choice this time around: a haul of bizarre sea creatures off Antarctica should end up yielding plenty of new species, but none have been formally described yet; and an "odd, flat-faced fish" found in Indonesia looks sure to be declared a new species.

The Antarctic haul brought creatures to the light of day that range from cute to gross to terrifying to surreal.

"Weird-fish expert" Ted Pietsch will call the odd Indonesian anglerfish the "Maluku frogfish" if it's a new species - and if he publishes it first. Like other anglerfish, it can use it's fins like feet, and makes its own lures for prey. The specimen that's been observed is about four inches, and is symmetrically, "psychedelically" striped.

What's interesting is its flat face. "We've never seen a fish with remotely this kind of face," said one of its discoverers. It could have humanlike binocular vision, which, for fish, "is extremely rare."

Economic downturn sinks to new lows

2008-04-11T11:21:00.006-04:00

As the sinking economy drives more people out of their homes, non-human household members are suffering as well, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Some shelters are seeing an increase in animals received due to their owners' displacement. The owners either turn in their pets, or, more worryingly, leave them in the abandoned house or set them loose.

Also, shelters are receiving dogs, cats, and even horses, that owners can simply no longer afford to take care of. "We've had a lot of children in tears," said one shelter employee.

This trend, which can be expected to sharpen as the economic downturn drags more people into hardship, is especially painful coupled with another trend that sees pets taking an increasingly explicit role as members of the household. The pet industry is expanding substantially along with demand for luxury pet products, and traditional pet names are being replaced with popular human names.

"It's a reflection of the position that pets hold in a household," anthropologist Mary Thurston told USA Today. "They are integral members of the family, just like a child."

Moreover, pets may assuage feelings of loneliness in addition to boosting well-being.

Anthropomorphizing "pets, gadgets, or gods," can help people cope with loneliness and alienation. The presence even of a robotic dog can help lonely nursing home residents. Perhaps more concretely, the British Medical Journal published research in 2005 suggesting that "pet ownership is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease, lower use of family doctor services, and a reduced risk of asthma and allergies in young children."

"It's an interesting contrast that, in a country where there's still child neglect and child abuse, people are spending so much time and effort on dogs," said psychologist and author Eleanora Woloy.

"It speaks to so many people's needs that they want a warm, comforting presence and companion."

"The Magnificent, Ultraviolent, Far-Seeing Shrimp from Mars" (Wired Science)

2008-03-27T09:53:00.008-04:00

Wired Science recently ran a fascinating article on the mantis shrimp, or stomatopod - which is neither a mantis nor a shrimp.

"Four hundred million years after bushwhacking its own evolutionary path out of the Cambrian, the mantis shrimp is one of the world's freakiest animals," reads the blog.

How freaky? Well, it sees something called circular polarized light - a form of light that no other creature on Earth can perceive...

The mantis shrimp single-clawedly expands the realm of possible visual perception by thirty-three percent.

(The other types of sight are black-and-white, color and linearly polarized.)...

"They're enchantingly violent, [said researcher Tom Cronin] in an affectionate, almost paternal tone. "They catch other animals by either spearing it through the heart or smashing it to pieces. Unlike most predators that grab prey, these pummel it and destroy it. When they interact with each other over a burrow, they use their armored front appendages and smash each other on the face. Whenever they get into any type of situation, they smash things. You can't pick these up. They're really great animals to have around."

[Mantis shrimp can break through aquarium glass with a single strike from their powerful claws, says Wikipedia.]

Cronin seemed especially pleased that the shrimps' visual uniqueness would return them to the record books. "The movement they use to hit prey used to be the fastest movement made by any animal," he lamented. "But it turned out there was a jaw-snapping behavior in an ant that's even faster."

Stomatopods only get about a foot long, but apparently can mutilate small appendages with relative ease. But don't worry too much about your small appendages on your next trip to the Jersey shore, because mantis shrimp mostly stick to the beds of tropical seas, like between Africa and Hawaii.

"Pets Pampered with People Products" (LiveScience)

2008-03-11T19:56:00.006-04:00

With an alluringly alliterative title, Maryann Mott's article for LiveScience.com is a nice follow-up to my own pet industry post on this blog a little bit ago.

Check it out.

Pic: from New York School of Dog Grooming

World's Ugliest Animals

2008-03-10T12:41:00.007-04:00

LiveScience.com has a feature up to rate the ugliness of some pretty horrid animals, and it includes some little tidbits and cheapshots in the captions.

But I really think they missed some. A simple Google image search turns up hundreds of thousands of hits, and though some pics are dubious and some are just of disheveled dogs or unkempt kitties, I heartily recommend wasting some time perusing them.

Somehow LiveScience.com passed over the little freak pictured above. The Aye-aye, or Daubentonia madagascariensis, is the largest nocturnal primate, hiding its shame among the treetops under cover of darkness, poking its elongated middle finger into holes that it gnaws in trees looking for grubs. It can barely stand to be seen even by others of its kind - it's a solitary forager.

Lastly, I think LiveScience.com was way out of line calling the Brushtail Possum ugly:

Look at it! What were they thinking?

New species this week: Big loud bats, long extinct

2008-03-08T17:34:00.005-05:00

One of six new bat species recovered from fossils in Egypt may be the largest echolocating bat known to the animal kingdom. The species lived about 35 million years ago, and their discovery in Africa raises questions about the origin of their family.

Echolocating bats are called microbats, in contrast to the megabats which use smell to hunt, are on average larger, and comprise the fruit bats. The largest of the new species - whose names are as yet unreleased - could have had a two foot wingspan, while the largest megabat measures three feet across.

This vocal vespertilian would have been "loud" and "obnoxious" according to the study's lead scientist. "Just going by the large echolocating bats that I know that live today," he said, "many are very loud and very pushy and very boisterous...I am assuming these bats would have been, too."

It was hard choosing these long dead "boisterous bats" for the Species of the Week, especially with the discovery recently of a "thumb-sized" lemur-like monkey that lived even longer ago and ties extant primates for the title of smallest. The only living new species discovered recently was a Microbacterium that can live in hairspray, watch out!

Image: Bonnie Miljour

Get up to get down: Pet products fetch a pretty penny

2008-02-28T13:49:00.010-05:00

Although it topped the New Zealand record charts at Christmas, listeners gave "A Very Silent Night" "mixed reviews" when it was played on the radio. Some would "just lie down and did nothing," Bob Kerridge told Reuters, while one "physically attacked the radio when it was played and went quite berserk and totally destroyed it."

Kerridge is the chief executive of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the song is off of a CD recorded at frequencies only audible to dogs and sold in New Zealand to raise money for the organization. It contains an instrumental as well as a vocal version of "Silent Night", and sold for $3.93 a copy, raising around $17,300 from sales.

"Never having heard it myself," Kerridge admitted, "I don't know what they'll hear and of course I don't know how dogs hear music."

Well, 70 percent of dogs in kennels and 85 percent in households have experienced reduced stress after listening to what researchers call "doggie classical", a stripped-down interpretation of classical tunes to be released on compact disc March 1 along with a book entitled Through a Dog's Ear.

Dogs apparently did not enjoy the likes of Britney Spears or Metallica as much as Bach, Schubert, and Chopin.

And songs and CD's for dogs isn't the least of what has become a booming industry, according to figures reported February 26 by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association. The figures show pet owners spending an estimated $41 billion last year on their furry (or scaly) companions, almost double the expenditure in 1996, and expected to grow this year. About 63 percent of households are estimated to have pets, usually dogs, cats, or fish.

In the words of APPMA President Bob Vetere, "Pet owners and the companies providing pet products and services show no sign of letting up."

What's next? Food for dogs? Houses for dogs??

Special thanks to Meredith K.

Dog yawning photo: Inside Bay Area

"Squirrel a la Huckabee?" (Slate V)

2008-02-28T06:49:00.004-05:00

Slate V's Samantha Henig must have picked up on my previous post, and in this video asks how to safely cook a squirrel, and if it can be done in a popcorn popper, like Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee claims to have done in college.

New species this week: Devil frog from hell

2008-02-22T12:00:00.007-05:00

To celebrate the craziness of the animal kingdom, and because I have nothing better to do, I'll be picking a newly discovered species to highlight here each week on Friday.

The clear winner this week is Beelzebufo, "perhaps the largest frog ever to exist," according to the National Science Foundation. It lived 65 to 70 million years ago on what is now Madagascar and was "about the size of a beach ball." And with "an extremely wide mouth and powerful jaws," you would not have wanted to try and chase him around the pond.

Apart from the fact that the discovery may put the landmasses of Madagascar, India, and South America together as one in that time period, and apart from the titillating observation that Beelzebufo was likely "capable of killing lizards and other small vertebrates, perhaps even hatchling dinosaurs," most interesting are the monikers reporters have come up with for the big toad: "giant fossil frog from hell"; "Frogzilla"; "armored frog from hell"; and the tamer just plain "frog from hell". Well, the scientists that discovered the big bastard started it--their Latin name for it, Beelzebufo, means "devil frog".

The runners up this week include two new species of the fat, funny-shaped wobbegong (funny-named I might add) shark near Australia, and whatever's on three ships recently "returned from the Southern Ocean, their decks overflowing with a vast array of ocean life including a number of previously unknown species collected from the cold waters near the East Antarctic land mass." (Video here.)

Pic: SUNY-Stony Brook

Economy, war, health care...squirrel attack!

2008-02-11T14:01:00.001-05:00

Tim Russert, host of NBC's "Meet the Press", asked Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on Sunday, "Was it true...that he had fried squirrel in a popcorn popper in college?"

"Mr. Huckabee confirmed his prior squirrel consumption but appeared to back away from defending the flavor," says the Wall Street Journal. "'It's not the best thing in the world,' and doesn't really taste like chicken, he concluded."

Though the former governor of Arkansas' response lacked the bite most voters would like, still no other candidate has come out and taken a position on squirrels (of the rodent family Sciuridae) in America.

That very Sunday, before Huckabee made his bland statement on the issue, a squirrel entered a substation in Gentilly, Louisiana, tripping a circuit breaker and leaving 6,000 energy customers without power for nearly four hours.

Hardly a week before that a squirrel got into a transformer in Weston, Connecticut, causing an electrical fire and brief power outage.

In fact, squirrels frequently chew wires and meddle with transformers, causing power outages, fires, and even explosions. "New York officials report that squirrels cause power outages daily," according to one source. At least twice, the gray rodents have shut down the NASDAQ stock exchange.

"On average about twenty-five percent of all power outages nationwide...are inspired by suicidal squirrels," claims the web site "Daily Kos".

And voters needn't limit their concern to tree squirrels--burrowing ground squirrels can undermine the integrity of buildings and infrastructure. "A post-Katrina study," warns a California-based water supply and flood protection organization, "cited 'rodent burrows' as a pervasive problem with earthen levees in New Orleans."

OTHER PLACES TO WATCH OUT FOR SQUIRRELS

A baby grand piano.

My friend's pants in third grade.

Soup.

The cemetery.

England, where the destructive American gray squirrel, brought to the island in the 19th century, has turned out to be a viciously invasive species, routing the native red squirrel from its habitat and spreading a deadly pox among the survivors.

What will the Dipterans say?

2008-02-07T10:05:00.000-05:00

The universality of alcohol's effects appears to have been confirmed by a recent report from Penn State which showed that inebriated fruit flies not only lose motor control and eventually consciousness, but also their sexual inhibitions. In fact, the drunken males can become so sexually uninhibited as to switch teams and hit on their fellow males--"a novel type of behavioral disinhibition," insist the researchers.

Led by Kyung-An Han, the current study observed the sexual behavior of sober fruit flies first. When an amorous Drosophila melanogaster meets an eligible female, he gives her a tap, sings her a song, and proceeds to lick her genitals. With just the guys, this courting ritual is almost never observed, and when it's attempted it is usually strongly rebuked by the male courtee.

But things are different in the Flypub--the environment experimenters use to get their fruit flies drunk. It is essentially an ethanol-soaked cotton ball in the middle of the flies' container. The flies don't imbibe, they inhale the fumes. Han's team gave their flies a daily dose--Happy Hour at the Flypub--"to more closely mimic the drinking habits of alcoholics and chronic alcohol abusers."

Another way to get fruit flies and other airborne insects drunk is the inebriometer: a tall glass tube with several platforms attached to a pump for the introduction of alcohol vapor. The bugs start out on the top platform, where they'll remain in the absence of alcohol, but after a few "drinks" they'll start to tumble from one platform down to the next. Their crapulence is measured by the time it takes a pile of them to form at the bottom.

If you are worried about the effect this debaucherous research is having on Drosophila melanogasters' moral fiber, you should be aware that scientists have not stopped at ethanol and its unsavory effects: they've tested caffeine on the innocent flies and even crack cocaine!

Video: Fruit flies gone wild

Jellyfish plague punishes the humans

2007-12-02T22:11:00.000-05:00

Giant pink jellyfish are turning the Sea of Japan into an "ocean of slime," overwhelming Japanese and Korean fishermen, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The blobs, up to six feet across and 450 pounds, are called echizen kurage, or Nomura's jellyfish. "Blooms" like this had been observed only occasionally before 2002, but now have become an annual event. 500 million immature jellies drifted into the Sea of Japan each day in 2005.

Fish can suffocate in the swarms of jellyfish, or be marred by their slime, and fishing nets can be torn by their weight.

Another recent attack wiped out Northern Ireland's only salmon farm. The culprit there was the mauve stinger, noted for its purplish nighttime glow. A second pack (or "smuck" or "smack") appears to be on its way to Scotland.

Several factors appear to account for the rise of the cnidarian, and they are all man's doing.

Overfishing is slowly ridding the jellyfish of its main competitor, and its main food source, plankton, is nourished by increased pollution, leading to a "jellyfish spiral."

And of course global warming is encouraging the dispersion of jellies by warming the waters, as is the case with the mauve stinger, which formerly confined itself to the Mediterranean.

Professor Shinichi Uye, leading jellyfish researcher at Hiroshima University told the Wall Street Journal, "It's like a harmless living thing has been angered...The reason for its anger might lie with human activity."

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

We're smarter than the jellyfish: they have no brain.

We can eat them, for instance as ice cream or tofu.

"If the jellyfish are cut into three or more bits, they usually die and get eaten by other sea creatures," claims the Journal.

Attack them with barbed poles.

"Fishermen have also taken a trawl net and added a wire grill like a large potato masher at the trailing end: When the net is pulled through a swarm of jellyfish, they float through and are sliced up." (Wall Street Journal)