January 2020 - Favorite World Press

The FWP weekly digest of wondrous wildlife happenings
and other interesting items from the natural world

Creatures to meet | Things to learn
Things to do

Lisa S. French

Woylies and Kalutas and Nabarleks, Oh My!

2-minute read

Not only is Australia home to some of the world’s most extraordinary wildlife, it’s also a top contender when it comes to delightfully distinctive creature names. If you’ve ever puzzled over the origins of some of the country’s more curious animal monikers like those given to the mini-marsupials woylie, kaluta, and nabarlek, here’s a quick look at the who and the why behind what’s in a name.

Although Europeans had their own ideas about what to call the feathered, furry and scaly they encountered when they began their settlement of Australia in 1788, the Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders who had lived alongside native species on the island continent for over 60,000 years were well ahead of the new arrivals in the animal name game. The 500 clans which made up the population of indigenous peoples of 18th-century Australia had developed over 260 distinct languages and 500 regional dialects reflective of their unique cultures, close ties to the land, and custodial relationship with nature.

While a fair number of the animal names imported by European settlers that are in use today were inspired by similar-looking creatures in other continents such as emu from the Portuguese “ema,” and goanna from the Spanish “iguana,” indigenous names were passed down through thousands of generations and based on the experience and deep understanding gained from interacting with animals in their specific ecosystems and environments. Far from haphazard, indigenous ecological knowledge systems typically identified species based on purpose, relationship to other animals, age, and gender.

The Seussian-sounding indigenous names woylie, kaluta, and nabarlek originate from three different clans and languages. The extremely rare and now critically endangered brush-tailed bettong (Bettongia penicillata), or rat-kangaroo, was first dubbed woylie by the Noongar people of South West Australia. The name of nabarlek, given to the small, nimble hopper also known as the little rock-wallaby (Petrogale concinna), comes from the endangered Aboriginal language of Kunwinjku spoken by the Bininj Kunwok people, who live in the rocky terrain of West Arnhem Land in the northern part of the country. And the little red kaluta (Dasykaluta rosamondae), an auburn colored, carnivorous species of marsupial, the male of which heroically bears the burden of dying after mating, has a hybrid name: kaluta from the language of the Nyamal tribe of north-western Australia and the Latin rosa mundi, after Rosamond, King Henry II’s red-headed mistress.

Despite the fact that many of the commonly used names of Australian animals are those adopted by the Europeans, there is growing momentum to rechristen native species with names chosen from the country’s hundreds of Aboriginal languages and dialects. Brisbane biologist Tim Low, author of Where Song Began, points out that there is also a trend to incorporate indigenous names in the official scientific classification of species in recognition of the Aboriginal peoples’ language and cultural heritage which is as richly diverse as their country’s wildlife.

You can learn more about an ongoing project aimed at promoting indigenous knowledge of Australia’s flora and fauna from the Atlas of Living Australia. And if you’d like to read about the fascinating, sometimes comically contentious process of naming Australia’s bird species, check out Australian Bird Names: Origins and Meanings, by Ian Fraser and Jeannie Gray.

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Lisa S. French January 26, 2020

Adapting to Heartbreak

3-minute read

The rising numbers depicting the catastrophic loss and destruction caused by bushfires across Australia since September of 2019 are painfully difficult to comprehend: at least 28 people have perished, thousands have lost their homes, and an estimated one billion animals and at least 18 million acres (an area equivalent in size to the state of South Carolina) have been affected. Yet, even those heartbreaking figures fail to adequately reflect the long-term environmental impacts that may forever change the lives of many of the inhabitants of one of our most naturally beautiful and biologically rich island continents.

Australia is “megadiverse,” one of 18 countries representing 36 recognized global biodiversity hotspots and home to 600,000-700,000 species, including many which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. There are some you may have never heard of like the northern hairy-nosed wombat, spotted-tail quoll, and Julia Creek dunnart, as well as one you definitely recognize, the cuddly-looking creature most readily identified as a symbol of wildlife down under—the koala. A native resident of Australia for approximately 25 million years, the much-loved marsupial occupies the eucalyptus forests and woodlands of Queensland, Southern Australia, and two of the states hardest hit by the fires, Victoria, and New South Wales.

At the start of the 20th century, millions of koalas could be found across eastern Australia. As of 2018, the population was estimated to be somewhere between 47,000 at the low end and what is believed to be an overly optimistic 100,000. According to recent assessments, the number of koalas that have died or been injured in the 2019-2020 fires stands at approximately 30,000. The ongoing natural disaster that may have reduced the total koala population by more than one third in just a few short months has accelerated the decline of an animal species already facing urgent multiple threats to its survival.

Like many marsupials indigenous to Australia, koalas have evolved to survive the harsh environmental conditions of the arid and semi-arid landscapes of the driest inhabited continent on Earth. But rising average temperatures across Australia over the past five decades, resulting in more frequent and intense droughts and heatwaves, have severely compromised the koala’s ability to adapt. Exposure to prolonged high temperatures can lead to heat stress, dehydration and eventual death. A December heatwave in 2009 that wiped out an estimated one quarter of the koalas in the town of Gunnedah, New South Wales is just one example.

The tree-dwelling animals are primarily dependent upon various species of eucalyptus, or gum trees, for food, water and shelter. Adult Koalas eat a little over a pound of eucalyptus a day, also extracting moisture from the leaves. Because the leaves of drought-affected trees are less nutritious and produce less moisture, koalas need to eat more leaves to meet their daily dietary requirements, but habitat loss and fragmentation as a result of deforestation reduce the number of eucalyptus trees available to support populations. When forced to leave the safety of a tree-top refuge in search of food, water, or another suitable habitat as a result of climate-change-related impacts, the slow-moving marsupials also face the threat of feral dog attacks and car strikes.

In 2015, Australian researchers publishing in the National Academy of Sciences predicted that the effects of climate change will be magnified over the next few decades resulting in severe to catastrophic losses of wildlife. Just four years later, that prediction has become a reality. As the bushfires rage on, the fate of the koala and other rare and remarkable animal species hangs in the balance. By 2030, average temperatures in Australia are expected to increase by 1.5°C. The country will continue to be challenged by unprecedented physical manifestations of a warming world. Climate change mitigation, adaptation, and initiatives aimed at conserving biodiversity will continue to be critical to help ensure the wellbeing and livelihoods of the billions of people who depend upon the healthy functioning of ecosystems in Australia and around the world.

As the science of climate change evolves, we may take some comfort in its logic while making best efforts to develop adaptation strategies for ourselves and individual species, but when it comes to adapting to heartbreak, science has little to offer because there are many precious living beings on our home planet for which there are no substitutes once lost. Although we can’t reverse the irreversible or replace the irreplaceable, we continue to have hope, because hope may not point to a way back, but it can help guide the way forward. To quote author and historian Rebecca Solnit, “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency… To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable.”

You can help give hope to the suffering people and animals in Australia through these Charity Navigator rated organizations. And you can wear your heart on your sleeve for the land down under by purchasing a Fire Relief T-shirt for a limited time from our pals at For Love Of All Things (FLOAT). All proceeds go to support the recovery efforts of the Australia Koala Foundation.

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Lisa S. French January 14, 2020

We Can Dance If We Want To

2-minute read

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to polish your signature dance move (and we know you have one), researchers in Japan and Sweden offer some thought-provoking new insights into the ancient origins of your distinctive locomotive stylings. The integration of movement and sound, resulting in that splendid thing we do, known as dancing, is widespread across human cultures, dating back as far as 1.8 million years. While animals in the wild, including elephants, kangaroos, and rabbits produce drumming and stomping sounds to communicate, and some species of animals in captivity such as sea lions and parrots have been trained to move to a beat, it was believed that homo sapiens were unique in our ability to spontaneously produce rhythmic movements in response to musical sounds.

A recent analysis from Kyoto University exploring the biological foundation of music-induced movement in non-human primates points to a gradually developing connection between motor and auditory areas of the brain over millennia. In a controlled study, chimpanzees voluntarily responded to both random and regular beats with rhythmic swaying, implying a possible evolutionary link to musicality that may have developed from a common ancestor around 6 million years ago. Although male chimpanzees in the wild drum, make sounds with objects, chorus in groups, and display rhythmic movement in response to heavy rainfall, they have not been observed to interact in a synchronous manner with musical sounds. However, the chimpanzees in the Kyoto study did move toward the sound of the beat and engage by swaying, hand-clapping, foot-tapping, and vocalization. Unlike humans who show no gender-related differences in musical ability, consistent with communication hierarchies within their patriarchal societies, male chimpanzees were more likely to get into the swing of things than females.

Researchers at Lund University have come up with an alternative theory, that the roots of our rhythmic behavior, while still evolutionary, may lie closer to home—in our mother’s ability to walk the upright walk. Compared to the irregular gait of non-human primate quadrupeds like the chimpanzee, the footfall of human bipeds is evenly paced at around 120 beats per minute, mimicking universally recognized tempos. Because the consistent sound and vibration of the mother’s footfall is heard and felt by a developing human fetus beginning at about 24 weeks, this is thought to have a strong influence on the formation of musical abilities, more so than the sound of the maternal heartbeat which is similar across primates. The researchers have theorized that the cadence of footfall is encoded into the limbic system of the human fetal brain. This bit of grey matter is primarily responsible for emotion and memory, which is why it is believed we respond positively as newborns and in later life to musical rhythms because they closely resemble the sounds we perceived in the environment of the womb. If you get that “I know this one” feeling when you hear a regularly timed beat, you may have picked it up in the interior maternal soundscape before you were born courtesy of your mother who walked an average of 10,000 equally spaced steps in a typical day of roaming. And if you often feel compelled to get up to get down, you might have mom to thank for that as well.

While chimps appear to have some limited ability to move rhythmically, both studies indicate that humans are still top banana when it comes to synchronizing to a beat; however, further investigation may eventually reveal that we’ll have to make room on the dance floor for our swinging friends.

As a lucky member of the community of living beings who can dance if they want to, here’s hoping you find your idiosyncratic joy-inducing groove in 2020. Beaming out positive vibes of transformative change from Weekly Wondrous for a shiny New Year ahead. Would that not be nice!

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Lisa S. French January 6, 2020