Wild & Wondrous - 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

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 Trillion Trees! A Trillion Trees!

1-minute read

Good news alert!

In the midst of converging global challenges-COVID-19, climate change, biodiversity loss, and economic upheaval, there is a light at the end of the tunnel—and it’s green!

Our planting partners at American Forests have teamed up with the World Economic Forum to launch the U.S. Chapter of 1t.org. The goal of the collaboration is to conserve, restore and grow one trillion trees by 2030, creating millions of jobs to help ensure equitable environmental progress towards a green recovery.

This hopeful news for people and the planet also means cleaner air and water, more action on climate change, greater tree equity for our cities, and expanded habitat for the wild ones. What’s not to like?

American Forests and 26 diverse organizations have collectively pledged 855 million trees so far, as well as investments in mapping technologies and carbon finance. Planted across the United States from sea to shining sea, those 855 million trees will store more than 500 million tons of carbon dioxide. In case you’re wondering, that’s equal to the annual emissions from 108 million cars. Bring on the lovely, leafy sky vacuums.

FWP is delighted to contribute to this big tree-planting effort in our small press way, and if you’re feeling it, you can help too. Every time you buy a print or e-book from the Frankie and Peaches: Tales of Total Kindness series, we’ll thank you very much by planting one wildlands tree. If you’d really like to dig in and participate in the global greening movement, you can volunteer and share ideas through the 1t.org digital platform UpLink. We’re all in. Hope to see you there!

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Lisa S. French August 27, 2020

To Bee or RoboBee

3-minute read

Sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia;
where bees pray on their knees, sing praise
in pear trees, plum trees; bees
are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them. — Carol Ann Duffy

Keep your eyes peeled, autonomous robotic bees may be coming to crop-fields near you. Measuring about half the length of a paper clip and weighing in at less than one-tenth of a gram, the insect-inspired microbots were developed by scientists at Wyss Institute to replace rapidly dwindling populations of bees, the world’s natural food crop pollinators.

While a global fleet of Robobees may sound pretty cool from a tech-wow perspective, when it comes to substituting pollinating machines for the real deal, researchers at the Centre for Agri-Environmental Research and Institute of Bee Health say not so fast. Before we roll out tiny red carpets to welcome substitute bees to the planet, according to an analysis published in Science of the Total Environment, we should consider a simpler, more holistic solution—protecting our natural pollinators and the landscapes they depend on for survival.

In the debate around bees versus Robobees, it turns out that replacing live bees with pollinating machines is not that straightforward. Bees have been honing their sophisticated sensory abilities and specialized pollination skills for over 130 million years in response to the unique shapes, scents, and colors of hundreds of thousands of flowering plants. While microbots may be capable of pollinating easy-access plants like sunflowers, the innate expertise of bees is hard to replicate across diverse crop species.

Not only are bees adaptable and super-skilled at their jobs, they also work for free, contributing between $235 to $577 billion to annual global food production. In contrast, robotic bees are pricey. At an estimated cost of $10 per microbot, replacing the billions of bees needed to pollinate crops with machine bees would run in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And unlike live bees, robotic bees need maintenance. Rather than creating a new machine-bee rental and repair industry, scientists argue that restoring pollinator habitats would be a far more cost-effective way to support food production. At a time when we are aiming to reduce our global carbon footprint, the environmental impact of manufacturing, distributing, and disposing of fleets of robotic bees could be enormous.

And bees don’t go about their important business in isolation. They’re critical components of biodiversity, helping to maintain the balance of environmental systems that support life on Earth. Replacing diverse pollinators with a single microbot is a risky business. It’s not clear what impact swarms of machine bees may have on the delicate interdependent workings of nature. The adage when you fix one thing, be careful not to break something else comes to mind.

The idea that we can address environmental problems by replacing elements of the natural world with technology-based substitutes is not a new one. As the guardians of the planet, we have the ability to transform our relationship with nature and apply innovative, emerging technologies to map, monitor, protect, and restore rather than replace. Because beyond their much-appreciated bottom-line contributions to food security, bees are iconic and beloved members of the community of life and play an important role in human culture and well-being.

How components of nature are valued depends on who is doing the valuing. We treasure these industrious insects not just for their productivity but also for their poetry. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of watching a pollen-flecked bumblebee drowse in a dahlia, we think you’ll agree that there are some things in life for which there are no substitutes. It’s just better with bees—tiny, perfect soul anchors for a world in flux.

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Lisa S. French August 24, 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

Crushing the Extinction Curve

2.5-minute read

Are there just about enough elephants? What is the right number of rhinos? Is there such a thing as an appropriate population of polar bears?

As we continue to monitor coronavirus numbers amidst the current round of hotspot whack-a-mole, conservation scientists are paying close attention to another important set of planetary health figures—rising extinction rates among the estimated 2 million documented species that make up the natural world. From the littlest lemur to the biggest tusker elephant, regardless of size, the unique genetic make-up of every species contributes to the diversity of life. And it’s that biological diversity that keeps our ecosystems stable and functioning, which is a really good and necessary thing for the well-being of all of Earth’s inhabitants.

Protecting and preserving the interdependent members of interconnected ecosystems is a massive, multi-faceted challenge. Is there a single target number that we should aim for that can be applied across millions of species to ensure that we can all keep on keeping on? Like the web of life, it’s complicated. Every species loss reduces diversity and weakens the web to varying degrees.

Scientists calculating how many species we can afford to lose have come up with a clear numerical goal to raise public awareness so that biodiversity conservation can be front and center as we make plans to protect nature better post-pandemic. According to their June 2020 report, the current rate of extinction is estimated to be up to 2,000 species a year—much higher than it should be so that Earth can continue to function as we like it. To help reduce extinctions everywhere on the globe, and to ensure that there is a place for everything and everything is in its place for proper planetary functioning scientists are recommending that we don’t exceed 20 extinctions a year across all species and ecosystems. From 2,000 to just 20.

Can we do it? To quote the stoic’s stoic, Marcus Aurelius, “…if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.” Through international cooperation, conservationists believe it is within our reach to reduce the number of species extinctions globally. As a case in point, despite a very turbulent year that has all but eliminated the tourism that provides critical support to conservation groups in biodiversity hotspots, Big Life Foundation continues to crush the megafauna extinction curve in Kenya. One of the most effective conservation organizations in Africa, Big Life protects and secures wildlife in 1.6 million acres of some of the most important natural habitat left in the world. And through the development of programs that benefit local communities, including critical health and education initiatives, Big Life also supports the people who will support conservation into the future. Winning hearts and minds through clever community-based conservation for healthy people on a healthy planet—most definitely humanly possible.

You can find out what’s currently happening on the ground in Kenya from Big Life’s conservation scientist Jeremy Goss and head of security Craig Millar here. If you would like to explore the strikingly evocative wildlife photography of Big Life co-founder Nick Brandt you can do that here. And if you’ve got any headspace left to monitor non-COVID-19 numbers, you can keep tabs on 95% of species known to science at the Catalogue of Life.

Before we go, we’d like to bid farewell to the smooth handfish. The last of its fish-fingered kind has officially departed the planet—the first modern-day marine fish to be declared extinct. We just got to know you, but we miss you already.

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Lisa S. French July 29, 2020

Dolphin See, Dolphin Do

2-minute read

While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery amongst humans, for dolphins, believed to be the second most intelligent creatures on Earth, copying the behavior of finned friends is very much a practical matter—it’s all about upgrading fish acquisition skills.

According to new research from scientists working with the Dolphin Innovation Project at Australia’s Shark Bay Marine Reserve, the clever cetaceans are making the most of their ability to absorb and apply knowledge by forming alliances outside of their families and learning specialized tool-using techniques to increase the day’s catch.

Like many young in the animal kingdom, bottlenose dolphin calves typically pick up foraging know-how from their mothers. However, the Shark Bay study revealed that the cognitively advanced animals recognize a good idea when they see one—even if it doesn’t come from mom. The dolphins are also motivated to learn tool-based foraging innovations from social interactions with non-parental adults. This marine life mentoring has resulted in the spread of an ingenious prey capture strategy known as shelling.

By observing and imitating others, a small group of dolphins in Shark Bay have learned how to trap prey in large gastropod shells, lift the shells above water, and shake them to dislodge and devour the fishy contents. This is how they do it.

Researchers believe the dolphins may have developed the trap and shake method of foraging to adapt to environmental change. For two years following a 2011 heatwave that caused a reduction in food supply impacting their reproduction and survival, the dolphins’ shelling behavior increased by 50%. By taking advantage of opportunities to interact and learn from other adults, the Shark Bay dolphins increased their resilience to life-threatening ecosystem stressors. Who’s a super-smart, social-networking aquatic mammal!

By the way, the Shark Bay Marine Reserve is located in Useless Loop. Is there a better town name? Well, there might be, but we haven’t come across it!

If you’d like to help ensure bottlenose dolphins can keep on being their big-brained, tool-using selves, you can contribute to the mission-critical conservation of marine habitats by participating in Plastic Free July, a global movement to give up the indestructible stuff and return our oceans to their prior state of pristine. Feeling motivated to reduce your use of plastic at home, school, and work? You can get all sorts of inspiring ideas about how to cut it out from the good people at the Plastic Free Foundation.

As a powerful visual reminder of how much plastic ends up in our oceans (8 million metric tons a year!), the talented artists at Oregon’s Washed Ashore Project have created a menagerie of 80 beautiful and thought-provoking wildlife sculptures constructed from debris collected from local beaches. If you’ve ever wondered what a shark, seal, or sea turtle built from bottles, buckets, and gumboots might look like, wonder no more. You can take a peek at Washed Ashore’s current art to save the sea exhibits here.

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Lisa S. French July 15, 2020

Calling All Tree Lovers

1.5-minute read

We thought we’d start off this unusually unusual July with a celebration of something cool and comforting and lovely and leafy—trees—ahhh! We write about trees and plant trees and tend to trees because well, we’re tree people and because they’re the unsung green heroes of the planet. We believe in giving nature credit where credit is due, and so do our planting partners at American Forests, which is why since 1940, they’ve sponsored a national hunt to locate and crown the most colossal of America’s trees.

So if you’re looking for a perfect activity to help you keep your social distance during the dog days of summer, it’s officially tree-tracking season, time to hit the lonesome trails, and keep your eyes peeled for a massive marvel in your local field, forest or national park. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, and we hope that you will, is to locate, measure and nominate the largest tree you can find to American Forests’ National Register of Champion Trees. Learn how to propose a potential champion, then gather your tree’s photos, facts and figures and submit your awe-inspiring specimen for consideration beginning October 1, 2020. Not only will you be contributing to forest heritage, you’ll also be helping scientists learn more about how large, old-growth trees capture and store carbon and filter water.

If wandering in one of 419 U.S. national parks in pursuit of gargantuan trees is on your safely-able-to-do list, you can also share your unique photographic point of view in the federal recreation lands photo contest. Check out rules, recent snaps, and previous winners here.

And if you’d like to find out which trees were the 2020 favorites of our nature-loving friends in Europe, you can read the winning stories of the Guardian of the Flooded Village, the Gingko from Daruvar, and the Lonely Poplar at the aptly named European Tree of the Year.

To borrow from EU environmental expert Ladislav Miko, we celebrate trees and get to know their stories to learn why they are important for us as humans. Tree lovers and tree admirers create a good society of people.

We always knew being a citizen of nature would come in handy.

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Lisa S. French July 6, 2020

Protecting Forests to Prevent Pandemics

1-minute read

As we live with the daily reality of how rapidly and efficiently the frustratingly tenacious coronavirus has been spreading from points A to Z, a new study from Stanford University shows how protecting forests can help prevent the future transmission of zoonotic (i.e., animal to human) disease.

Close to 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases originate in animals. When proximity and interactions between humans and wildlife increase as a result of ongoing deforestation and habitat loss, the spread of zoonotic disease becomes more common. To reduce the risk of future virus outbreaks, researchers recommend planting forest buffer zones to create natural barriers to disease transmission, protect biodiversity, and provide alternative sources of food and fuel to forest-dependent communities. In a nutshell, to create safe roaming room for wild ones and help keep people and planet healthy—add trees.

If the unrelenting pandemic news cycle leaves you inert and feeling generally out of sorts, we empathize. During challenging intervals, we take comfort in knowing that there is still tremendous beauty to be found in the world, and difficult circumstances can sometimes inspire people—big ones and little ones—to create their own.

Until we cancel the coronavirus, hang in, stay safe, and be well!

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Lisa S. French June 30, 2020