animal behavior Archives - Page 5 of 7

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

1-minute read

Bird-wise, it’s been a pretty exciting week here in the Big Apple! In an extraordinary occurrence and much to the delight of nature-deprived city dwellers, on Wednesday, a strikingly beautiful snowy owl flaunted its feathered finery in Manhattan’s Central Park. For a wild creature not accustomed to a flock of camera-wielding humans, the lone owl appeared to maintain an unruffled bird-i-tude despite all of the additional attention.

Why the unusual NYC stopover this particular January? Although some snowy owls spend the entire year on their breeding grounds in the treeless Arctic tundra, others migrate to southern Canada and the northern United States in winter, sometimes traveling as far south as Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas. While New York State is within the avian predators’ normal fly zone, they typically bypass Manhattan. According to Cornell University and Scientific Reports, during migration, snowy owls are most often found in agricultural fields, and along shorelines of oceans and lakes. What the birds look for in a home away from home is owl chow—primarily, small rodents. The large owls may eat more than 1,600 lemmings a year—about 4.5 a day, in addition to other rodents, rabbits, birds, and fish. During seasonal migration, snowy owls follow food resources, adjusting their flight trajectory based on environmental conditions to arrive back in the Arctic at the right time for successful breeding. Because rodents cluster together under snow, the owls may prefer to hunt over snow-covered terrain, although they can also locate prey in snow-free areas.

Well, we did have a dusting of snow here on Wednesday. Plus, the Central Park ball fields make for an appealing, tundra-esque landing site. And when it comes to rodents, yeah, we can certainly help out with those. Whatever the specific reason for the park pit stop, this owl lover was glad to have the feathered fellow nearby and hope it swoops in again at its earliest convenience! FYOI (for your owl information), we’re expecting snow again on Monday—fingers crossed for a return visit. Keep your eyes and ears peeled, New Yorkers!

To learn more about the snowy owl, we highly recommend the beautifully photographed, aptly named Snowy Owl by Paul Bannick. If you’d like to live an owl-friendly life, and who wouldn’t, the International Owl Center offers some useful tips to help welcome and protect the beloved birds. And to receive alerts for all rare bird species in your area, be sure to sign up for notifications from eBird. Happy birdwatching!

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Lisa S. French January 29, 2021

Charitable Chimps and Helpful Humans

2.0-minute read

We don’t typically associate spontaneous acts of altruism with members of the animal kingdom. Taking action that relieves suffering or improves the life of another without receiving any benefit has long been thought to be a uniquely human trait. As it turns out, chimpanzees also get by with a little assistance from their selfless friends. Rather than operating on the basis of “you scratch my back, I’ll share my banana,” chimps are willing and able to go out of their way to lend a helping hand without receiving any immediate or long-term primate perks in return.

Although many social behaviors of chimps like grooming, food sharing, and consoling are driven by expectations of reciprocity from relatives or members of their troop, researchers at the Max Planck Institute discovered that chimpanzees also make an effort to help out, without training or reward, even if the ape in need is a stranger. In the German study, 12 out of 18 chimpanzees born in the wild watching an unknown chimp struggle to open a chained door leading to food would move from their resting place to unhook the chain and give the hungry chimp access without begging or bullying for a share of the treat.

So, what motivates helping without the possibility of payback? And is there a relationship between the altruistic behaviors in charitable chimps and helpful humans? Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania studying how humans process the consequences of our actions believe that we may receive an internal reward for being kind or avoiding the guilt or shame of not helping. However, people who are motivated by positive altruism, which is solely for the benefit of others, tend to have greater innate empathy that provokes an emotional response when faced with the suffering or need of another person. They offer assistance even if it requires self-sacrifice. Those lower in empathy were more likely to help only when there was no other option. Apparently, the happy-to-help crew are also happier for helping, benefiting from enhanced mood and life meaning and a greater sense of self-efficacy and competence with the added bonus of improving society and humanity as a whole. Altruism – good, and good for you!

While humans have the capacity to empathize and cultivate cultural norms that promote altruism, we can’t be certain why chimpanzees make an effort to do the right thing with no benefit to themselves. Perhaps they aim to avoid shunning from chimp society, or maybe they are also able to identify with the emotional state of another living being in distress and then feel compelled to act. For now, the answer seems to be that they help simply because they can.

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Lisa S. French January 16, 2021

The Platypus: You Could Even Say It Glows

1.5-minute read

As quirky creatures go, the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is a pretty tough act to follow. The web-footed, duck-billed, paddle-tailed, venom-producing water dweller is one of only five egg-laying mammals on Earth. Although the ancient, semi-aquatic oddity has been paddling around the streams, lakes, and lagoons of eastern Australia for around 110 million years, researchers have only recently discovered another unusual platypus-ian trait—biofluorescence. Platypus fur contains special proteins that absorb sunlight and re-emit it as a blue-green glow under ultraviolet (UV) light.

Why the need for built-in brightness? Because the platypus is primarily active at night, scientists believe its biofluorescence could be an adaptation to the murky, low-light underwater world it inhabits. By absorbing rather than reflecting UV light, the fluorescent fur of the platypus may help keep it hidden from the prying eyes of predators with UV sensitive vision. Navigating in stealth mode could be especially important to the animal’s survival, given that it closes its eyes and ears underwater and can’t see or hear when trouble is headed its way.

While St. Nick’s reindeer could probably do with a break, it looks like he won’t be hitching a submersible sleigh to a team of platypuses anytime soon. Unlike Rudolph’s blinking, bright-red nose, the nocturnal animal’s blue-green fluorescence isn’t visible to the naked human eye.

You may also be interested to learn that the platypus doesn’t glow it alone. Fluorescent substances that emit light in shades of yellow, green, red, blue, and pink have also been found in the bones, fur, and skin of birds, reptiles, amphibians, and other night critters, including the flying squirrel, which glows hot pink and the water opossum, which glows purple.

Blue platypuses, pink flying squirrels, and purple opossums! We might have to spring for a UV flashlight!

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Lisa S. French December 7, 2020

Problem-Solving Primates

2-minute read

Humans are innately skilled at choosing the right object for the task at hand. We’re able to comprehend that using a banana to hammer a nail or a colander to serve coffee won’t end in a good result. Primates are also capable of using objects as tools, but how do they decide which object will help to achieve their goal? What do they understand about how the world works?

Harvard scientists researching the evolution of knowledge in New World primates studied cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) in captivity to determine how they perceive what makes an object useful as a tool to acquire food. Presented with the challenge of obtaining a food pellet using one of two hooks, the tamarins consistently chose the one that would provide the easiest access with as little modification as possible. The primates perceived that a change in a hook’s color and texture was irrelevant to the task, but a change in size or shape could mean the difference between snack versus no snack. The tamarins seemed to understand which object worked best as a tool and which design features affected functionality. Clever cotton-tops!

Scientists believe that tool use is more likely to emerge in primate species like tamarins that rely on embedded food sources to survive. While the Harvard study provided new insight into tamarin tool use for snack acquisition in captivity, understanding how the animals obtain food in their natural habitat is critical to their conservation in a world undergoing rapid environmental change.

In July 2020, researchers observing primates in São Paulo, Brazil published the first record of spontaneous tool use in the wild by a member of one of the most endangered primate species on the planet—the black lion tamarin (Leontopithecus chrysopygus). The squirrel-sized, luxuriously maned tamarins live in Morro do Diabo State Park in the coastal Atlantic Forest and depend on a diet of tree gum, fruit, and protein-rich insects. According to the new research, like its captive cotton-top cousins, the black lion tamarin seemed to instinctively know which object worked best to extract food, using a small sharp stick to harvest bugs from hard-to-reach places under tree bark. That’s pretty impressive, given that the mini-monkeys don’t have opposable thumbs!

Despite their penchant for problem-solving, tamarins can’t prevent the ongoing loss of their rainforest habitat. Threatened by the double-whammy of deforestation and climate change, the black lion tamarin was believed to be extinct until 1972. There are now only about 1000 of the rare animals left. The Atlantic Forest, where black lion tamarins make their home alongside 21 other primate species, 260 amphibians, 138 mammals, and 6000 plant species, is one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on our planet, but only 7% remains. Although the Atlantic Forest has been designated as one of the critical regions on Earth by the World Wildlife Fund and is listed as a World Heritage Site, it is still under threat.

You can learn about efforts to save the Atlantic Forest and all of its inhabitants from WWF. And if you’re especially interested in primates, you can get more info about the masterful monkey ways of cotton-top and black lion tamarins, as well as other highly intelligent species from the New England Primate Conservancy.

Oh, and don’t forget to participate in the annual celebration of successful food acquisition in the wild—Fat Bear Week. You can cast your vote for the best representative of brown bear plumpitude through October 6.

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Lisa S. French October 2, 2020

Hummingbirds: They’re Cool Like That

1.5-minute read

When it comes to achieving a serious level of avian chill, according to research from the University of New Mexico, South American hummingbirds are in a league of their own. These mini masters of hovering flight can significantly lower their overnight body temperature and rate of metabolism to ensure they live to fly another day. This short, inactive state, referred to as torpor in biology lingo, is similar to a very compressed period of hibernation. For hummingbirds that live in cold, high-elevation habitats, having the ability to enter a state of deep torpor is essential to their survival.

Researchers studying torpor as an adaptation to extreme environments in six species of tropical hummingbirds native to the Andes recently recorded the lowest body temperature to date amongst birds—3.26 °C in the black metaltail, aka Mettalura phoebe. By comparison, the body temperature of animals that hibernate for many days or weeks, like bears, groundhogs, and hedgehogs, drops to about 5 °C.

So why have these zippy, little nectar sippers developed such an exceptional chill skill? For an animal that weighs between 2 and 4 grams and has the highest mass-specific metabolic rate of any vertebrate, surviving in a cold, wet, low-oxygen environment is no small feat. To maintain its body mass, a hummingbird’s daily intake of nectar can exceed its total weight. According to the National Park Service, an average man would have to eat 285 pounds of meat daily to maintain his weight if he had the tiny bird’s metabolism. That’s one Whopper patty a minute for 19 hours! Plus, sustaining hovering flight of up to 4,000 wing beats per minute at 4,000 metres above sea level takes an incredible amount of energy.

To help maximize their fat reserves, Andean hummingbirds boost their caloric intake before bedtime and roost in thermally insulated caves, but torpor is their survival superpower. The more time hummingbirds spend torpid overnight, the lower their energy loss. Apparently, hummingbirds that deeply chill while they snooze don’t lose, and that energy conservation is one of the primary reasons why these mesmerizing creatures can persevere in harsh mountain environments. Isn’t evolutionary adaptation remarkable!

Speaking of hummingbirds, if you’d like to give your back-to-school brain a rest why not take a crack at the Audubon Hummingbird Wing Beat Challenge! Gather the kids or your favorite avian-loving adult(s) and see if you can flap your arms as fast as a hummingbird beats its wings. Start slow and try to match the American crow’s 20 wing beats per 10 seconds and then see how close you can get to the 500 wing beats of the broad-tailed hummingbird. Full disclosure, we only made it to 50 before we strained muscles that we didn’t know we had, but we bet you can top that. Happy flapping!

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Lisa S. French September 19, 2020

And The Answer Is Beavers

1.5-minute read

Conservation quiz: Which plant-eating members of the animal kingdom have been directing their big, buck-toothed energy towards the task of healing the planet? According to a study in south-central Sweden, beavers going about their day-to-day dam building business are helping to increase biodiversity that is essential to the functioning of freshwater ecosystems.

By constructing mud and stick barriers that increase water levels, the paddle-tailed environmental change agents are engineering pond habitats that support a 50% greater variety of plants and animals than similar beaver-free wetlands. While you might think a pond is a pond is a pond, according to environmental researchers, there are subtle differences in beaver ponds that make them hospitable to more species of fish, birds, insects, amphibians, and plant life. What’s good for beavers is good for biodiversity. And what’s good for biodiversity is good for people and the planet.

Beavers can be found throughout North America, and small populations exist in Scandinavia, Germany, France, Poland, and central Russia. Following their extinction in Sweden in the 1890s, beavers were reintroduced from neighboring Norway between 1922 and 1939. Dams built by the imported animals helped to expand wildlife habitats and increase resilience to both droughts and floods. Over the past half century, more countries have jumped on the bring-back-the-beavers bandwagon, including England, which recently reintroduced the industrious creatures to the wild after 400 years.

While beavers can’t stop freshwater biodiversity loss on their own, at a time when flora and fauna are decreasing at an alarming rate, wider implementation of beaver-based wetland-engineering is a holistic way to protect and restore ecosystems for a healthier biosphere.

By the way, if you’ve ever wondered why beavers have tangerine-colored teeth, it’s not because they’re tree stained. The keystone species’ incisors are handily reinforced with iron to help them gnaw through even the toughest tree trunks with ease. Beaver on, aquatic architects!

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Lisa S. French September 9, 2020

A Fish with Tooth-Covered, Retractable Eyeballs? Meet the Whale Shark!

2-minute read

If you’ve been celebrating Shark Week by binging and cringing your way through Jaws 1-4, you’re probably thinking that the massive teeth of those fictional fish are pretty darn scary. Well, maybe not the teeth so much as their limb-chomping potential. Now imagine a real-life shark with close to 3,000 teeth in its five-foot-wide mouth and a couple of thousand more covering its eyeballs. Talk about the fear factor! Except the real-life shark with all of those teeth is the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), and despite being about the size of a big yellow school bus, the primarily plankton-eating fish is quite a gentle creature.

While sharks are a notoriously toothy bunch, scientists at the Okinawa Churashima Research Center studying optical adaptations in vertebrates recently discovered that the whale shark has tiny teeth where they didn’t expect to find them—around its iris. So why does the whale shark need eye armor? Unlike most vertebrates, the fish has no eyelids to protect its small, protruding peepers from underwater hazards. The oak leaf-shaped tooth-like projections, known as denticles, shield the shark’s eyes from abrasions as it travels the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans in search of the large quantities of food that it needs to survive.

As if that evolutionary adaptation weren’t freaky enough, the whale shark has another unusual eye protection mechanism to compensate for its lack of lids. If the situation calls for it, the whale shark can retract its eyeballs into its eye sockets. One eye retraction event observed by researchers was in response to camera strobes. It seems that despite being popular subjects for underwater photographers, whale sharks are no fans of the flash. Although a few other lidless species, including electric rays, guitarfish, and leopard frogs can also tuck in their eyeballs, the whale shark’s retractable, armored eye combo is fairly rare.

Sadly, like many shark species, the whale shark is threatened with extinction. The global numbers of the large, slow-moving fish have more than halved over the last 75 years as a result of overfishing, bycatch (see video), and propeller strikes. The whale shark is now listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as endangered. As recently reported in Science, sharks are now functionally extinct in the waters of eight countries.

Even though these dentally well-endowed creatures may look like they can handle whatever comes their way, sharks still need all of the support that they can get when it comes to protecting their habitat. You can learn more about these fascinating fish and what you can do to help keep them safely in the swim from Ocean Conservancy. And you can track migrating whale sharks in real-time via satellite courtesy of Conservation International.

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Lisa S. French August 15, 2020

Bickering Bats

2-minute read

Although hanging out in tightly packed clusters comes naturally to fruit bats, apparently, proximity breeds crankiness in the furry night fliers. Tel Aviv University scientists studying the purpose and meaning of Egyptian fruit bat chat have concluded that they’re big on bickering, routinely calling out their roost mates on personal boundary violations. While the highly social and vocal animals may be a universally quarrelsome bunch, the researchers found that the fruit bat’s everyday disputes have to do with four specific intraspecies deal breakers. Analysis of close to 15,000 vocalizations recorded over 75 days showed that the winged mammals frequently engage in squabbles about food, roosting spots, sleeping arrangements, and unwanted advances.

Bats air their grievances face to face, directing tiny tongue-lashings at perceived offenders—no passive-aggressive, behind-the-bat grumbling for these creatures. Using state-of-the-art acoustic processing techniques, researchers were able to identify who was complaining, what they were complaining about, and who they were complaining to. Based on the tone and intensity of the confrontation, they were also able to predict the outcome with a fair degree of accuracy. As you might expect, the animal’s arguments ended in one of two ways: reconciliation or separation. It seems that even between fruit bats, when it comes to effective conflict resolution, it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.

So to cut back on bat bickering: paws off the personal mangoes, respect the roosting space, one bat per bunk, and romance by invitation only. Because fruit bats have feelings too, and they’re not shy about expressing them.

In addition to being eager, albeit cranky communicators, bats are also very important pollinators. Over 300 species of fruit depend on them for pollination. If you’re a tropical fruit-o-phile, you have bats to thank for your mangoes, bananas, guavas, and agave. You can get more bat facts and learn what scientists are doing to make sure that the only mammals capable of true flight live to pollinate another day at The Nature Conservancy.

By the way, if you’re in need of some nature-based soul soothing, the talented artists at Shika Shika music collective have produced another mood-boosting birdsong mix to help you get your groove back. The non-profit, crowd-funded digital album was created to raise awareness of the plight of some of our planet’s most threatened winged inhabitants. A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America & the Caribbean features the black catbird, the Jamaican blackbird, the bearded screech owl, and other tropical beauties on background vocals. Have a listen!

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Lisa S. French August 7, 2020

The Flower Whisperers

2-minute read

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it — Ralph Waldo Emerson

According to a remarkable and hopeful new ETH Zurich study, bumblebees experiencing pollen deprivation resulting from climate change have learned to garden as if their hives depend on it—and they do.

Global heating is creating a seasonal mismatch between flower resources and the emergence of bumblebees in spring. No flowers, no pollen, no bees. A scarcity of the pollen that bee larvae and worker bees need to survive can negatively impact reproductive success and prevent queen bees from establishing new colonies. Heatwaves and uncommonly warm temperatures have already reduced populations by 46% in North America and 17% in Europe.

The upside (we love upsides!) is that bumblebees may be developing coping strategies to adapt to our new environmental reality, and they’re actually helping flowering plants adapt along with them. The Swiss study found that brainy bumbles have adopted a hive-saving, pollen gathering workaround to coax blooms from plants weeks ahead of schedule. By cutting distinctively shaped holes in the leaves of tomato and black mustard plants, bumblebees substantially accelerated their flowering time by an average of 30 days, approximately 25 days earlier than mechanically perforated plants. When available pollen was limited, the rate of plant perforation was significantly higher and only minor when pollen was plentiful.

Researchers believe that by helping to correct the mismatch between bloom time and hive emergence, the perforating activity of these furry little problem solvers may increase the resilience of plant-pollinator interactions to the destructive impacts of global heating. Given that about eight percent of plants rely on bumblebees for pollination, including eggplants, tomatoes, blueberries, and potatoes, we’re grateful for their efforts to bee the change.

IN SOLIDARITY

Like the flower and the bumblebee, we humans are interconnected. At Favorite World Press, we believe that our shared humanity and our faith in the strength of diverse communities are more powerful than the forces that aim to divide us.

FWP and our tree-planting partner American Forests stand in solidarity with the Black community and support organizations doing essential work to achieve social justice and ensure sustainable transformation. Because the best time to help create a more equitable world, where everyone has an opportunity to flourish, is now.

You can learn more about the mission to create a fair and just future here:

Advancement Project and the Equal Justice Initiative, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Campaign Zero .

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Lisa S. French June 6, 2020

Do You See How I See You?

2.5-minute read

One aspect of this lockdown situation that we hadn’t anticipated, out of a long list of things that we hadn’t anticipated, because we’ve never done this before, was the staring. The uninterrupted (except by naps), somewhat guilt-inducing house cat staring. Since we’ve been “inside,” we can’t shake the feeling that we’re being watched—and that’s because we are. Watched from the bookshelves, watched from the windowsill—from the stairs, from the hallway, from inside the closet. Those innocent gold-green eyes track our every move and seem to be saying, “We’ve noticed that you are here all of the time now. Since you are here all of the time now—umm, more food?”

The cat staring got us thinking about eyes in general and pupils of eyes in particular and why cat pupils are shaped differently than human pupils. As it turns out, pupil shape is primarily a function of the predator-prey relationship—whether a species hunts or is hunted, is an herbivore or a carnivore, and what time of day it’s active. Through evolutionary adaptation, animals have developed optical superpowers that will maximize the odds of finding food or minimize the odds of becoming food.

According to researchers at UC Berkeley, ambush predators like house cats, tigers, and crocodiles that are either nocturnal or hunt both during day and night are highly likely to have vertically slit or vertically elongated pupils. Animals more likely to become prey like sheep, horses, and goats tend to have horizontally elongated pupils. Pupil shape is an adaptation that increases survival in the environment where a species evolved. Vertically elongated pupils give ambush predators laser-sharp focus on vertical shapes and greater perception of depth and distance so they can choose the ideal path to their next meal. The horizontally elongated pupils of prey species enable them to have a nearly panoramic view ahead and behind to detect approaching predators and make a quick getaway. Both vertically and horizontally slit pupils can expand up to 300 times for better vision in low light.

The location of eyes on an animal’s head also determines how they perceive depth and distance. Ambush predators with frontally-placed eyes like cats and tigers combine visual information from both eyes to home in on their target. Scientists believe some prey animals with lateral eyes that don’t have overlapping fields of view, including pigeons, quails, and doves, bob their heads to visually perceive their environment. However, head movement in ambush predators with lateral eyes like crocodiles would give away their position and potentially cost them their lunch. To compensate, their eyes have a structural advantage that projects images through different parts of the pupil, allowing them to better focus on prey.

Interestingly, height is also a factor in pupil shape. The UC Berkeley study found that in general, the taller the predator, the more rounded the vertically elongated pupils, which is why tiger pupils are closer to oval, and low-lying crocodiles have pupils that are vertical slits.

Bottom line, should you ever find yourself to be an object of intense interest for a wild one with vertically slit pupils, consider proceeding immediately to extreme social distancing.

And what about the vertically slit pupils of the staring house cat then? Well, even if you’re an indoor, purr-prone, domesticated descendant of wildcat predators and your prey comes out of a can and that can has to be opened by non-prey with opposable thumbs—evolutionary optical adaptations still dictate that you keep your eyes on the purveyor of the prize.

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Lisa S. French May 6, 2020