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

Unlike their Asian elephant cousins, both male and female African elephants grow tusks over the course of their lifetimes which they use for defense, debarking and moving trees, and digging for roots, salt, and water. These long incisors used as tools for daily living have made elephants targets of ivory poachers across the continent of Africa for centuries and to devastating effect. While it is extremely rare for male African elephants to be born without tusks, the 3 to 4 percent of wild female African elephants that never grow tusks have a distinct evolutionary advantage as they are more likely to survive periods of intense poaching. Scientists believe that through the process of natural selection, tuskless female elephants are passing this trait on to their daughters. As intensely hunted big tusked male elephants, known as tuskers, are eliminated from the population through poaching, the offspring of smaller tusked males and tuskless females spread the tuskless trait.

Researchers are now studying tuskless populations in heavily poached areas across Africa to determine what this growing phenomenon means for the future of the species. According to Dr. Joyce Poole of Elephant Voices, 51 percent of 200 adult females 25 years or older in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique that survived the rampant poaching that took place during the 15-year civil war are tuskless. Since the civil war ended in 1997, 32 percent of female elephants born in Gorongosa are tuskless. In the early 2000s in Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa, 98% of 174 females were also observed to be tuskless. While current populations of tuskless elephants appear to be healthy and thriving, scientists are continuing to study the impact of tusklessness on both individual and group behaviors as well as on other plant and animal species in their native ecosystems. Through critical ongoing research, we’ll learn more about how these iconic, highly intelligent, and empathic animals are continuing to evolve and adapt to the growing human-induced pressures that impact their survival.

For breathtaking photos of some of Africa’s last great tuskers, check out Land of Giants by Will Burrard-Lucas.

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Lisa S. French March 19, 2019

Swinging Sifakas

You’d have to travel all the way to the island of Madagascar off of the eastern coast of Africa to find the wooly, wide-eyed, white-helmeted Coquerel’s sifaka in its native habitat. One of nine species of lemurs, these diurnal (active in day and night) highly intelligent primates, known as prosimians, evolved millions of years before monkeys and apes, their simian relatives. Primarily treetop dwelling herbivores, the long-legged sifaka is impressively agile, propelling itself distances of over 30 feet as it leaps and swings through the canopy of its dry forest home. For graceful ground travel, sifakas employ a two-legged sideways hopping movement, using their elegantly outstretched arms for balance. Sifakas other amazing creature features include a horizontally projecting set of lower front teeth used for grooming known as a “tooth comb” and a handy secondary tongue which helps keeps that tooth comb spic and span. Living in matriarchal social groups of three to ten animals, sifakas maintain contact with their troop known as a “conspiracy” through various vocalizations including the distinctive shi-fakh, shi-fakh sound from which this lemur species gets its name. Due to 90% loss of their forest habitat and increased hunting of culturally sacred lemurs for food, Coquerel’s sifakas have declined by more than 50% over the past 30 years. As of 2018, all nine sifaka species are listed by the IUCN as critically endangered. To learn how you can support conservation of the Coquerel’s sifaka and other lovable lemurs both in the U.S. and Madagascar, swing on over to the Duke University Lemur Center.

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Lisa S. French March 10, 2019

Angel Oak tree, Johns Island, South Carolina

Tree of the Year

It’s tree award season! Nature lovers across Europe are currently casting their votes at Tree of the Year.org for the lovely, leafy presence with the most interesting story. You can find out which sculptural marvel, soothing spot of shade or safe haven for songbirds wins the title of top tree on March 19. The Tree of the Year contest is sponsored by The Environmental Partnership Association which supports community-based projects working to protect the environment and build support and capacity in local communities. The contest was created to encourage people to get involved in local environmental protection and to promote old growth trees as integral to cultural and natural heritage. Tree of the Year is aiming to go global so you may soon have the opportunity to nominate and vote for a marvelous maple, perfect pine or beautiful birch in your community. In the meantime, you can help create more carbon-storing candidates in the U.S. by planting a tree with Frankie and Peaches.

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Lisa S. French February 22, 2019

The name "pangolin" comes from a Malay word that means "one who rolls up".

World Pangolin Day

To celebrate World Pangolin Day, we pulled together a few interesting facts about these remarkable Asian and African mammals to raise awareness and impress your pangolin-party pals. Pangolins are shy, solitary, nocturnal animals that range in size from about three to 73 pounds and make their homes in forests, grasslands, and savannahs. Although the eight species of pangolins are also known as “scaly anteaters”, and do indeed eat ants as well as termites and other insects, they are genetically more closely related to cats, dogs, and bears. However, unlike carnivores, pangolins do not have teeth so can’t chew their food. Their stomachs are lined with keratinous spines which, combined with stones they swallow, help to pulverize the insects they’ve captured with their long sticky tongues. A pangolin tongue can be up to an impressive 15 inches long, which comes in handy when probing inside of an anthill or termite mound in search of dinner. Pangolins can eat up to 20,000 ants and termites a day (that’s 70 million a year), helping to protect forests from destruction.

Most of a pangolin’s body is covered by overlapping scales also made from keratin, the same protein that forms human hair, nails, and rhino horn. These sharp-edged scales, which make up about 20 percent of a pangolin’s body weight, protect it from predators. When under attack a pangolin curls into a tight ball and extends its scales to shield its vulnerable undersides.

Because their meat is considered a delicacy, and their scales are believed to have magical and medical properties, pangolins have become the most trafficked animal in the world. Sadly, as a result, all eight species are currently listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as threatened with extinction. Check out this rare footage of a giant pangolin doing a bit of tree-hugging and find out what the African Wildlife Foundation is doing to help ensure the world’s only scaly mammal is not lost forever.

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Lisa S. French February 16, 2019

Leave it to Beavers

When it comes to naturally efficient ecosystem engineering, leave it to beavers. The largest rodents in North America, growing up to four feet long and weighing up to sixty pounds, these primarily nocturnal, web-footed, paddle-tailed dam builders help create the critical wetland habitats that 85% of all North American wildlife depend on for survival. When a beaver gets down to buck-toothed business, it can cut down as many as 200 softwood trees a year for food and dam building. It takes about five minutes for a beaver to chomp through the trunk of an 8-foot tree and about a week to build a 35-foot dam. These water barriers form ponds that protect the beaver colony from predators and provide underwater access to the family lodge, a dry, cozy den where males and females rest, nest and raise baby beavers, known as kits. Beaver-built ponds help to increase biodiversity by providing pooled water, plant life and shelter that attracts and supports creatures great and small including frogs, salmon, trout, ducks, heron, deer, and elk.

Beaver ponds also protect against a parched planet by trapping carbon, capturing rainfall and storing groundwater. Ranging in size from small woody clumps to 2,800-foot long mega-barriers, beaver dams contribute to water purification by filtering silt and pollution and capturing run-off from fertilizers. By transforming the landscape with their stick, stone and mud constructions these remarkable, semiaquatic ecosystem engineers create environmental benefits for wildlife, people and planet. Busy beavers indeed!

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Lisa S. French February 15, 2019

Tiger Love

You can help protect endangered wildlife with your Valentine’s Day sweetie-grams: prettify your post with a Save Vanishing Species first class, semipostal, fundraising stamp depicting a magnificent Amur tiger cub. Net proceeds from the sale of these stamps support Multinational Species Conservation Funds, benefiting African and Asian elephants, great apes, rhinoceros, tigers, and marine turtles. You can purchase these sticky little lifesavers, created by artist Nancy Stahl, here.

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Lisa S. French February 7, 2019

Sky Vacuums

Because trees convert carbon dioxide into food for growth, they are one of the planet’s most naturally efficient ways to store carbon. One tree can absorb as much as 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year and sequester one ton of carbon by the time it reaches 40 years old. Trees actually get better at storing carbon with age. Old-growth forests, which have developed for at least 120 years without disturbance, contain over 300 billion tons of carbon. That’s 600 trillion pounds of CO2 not floating around sneakily warming the atmosphere! You can help us plant more handy, leafy sky vacuums by joining the FWP Frankie and Peaches Kindness Crew.

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Lisa S. French January 31, 2019

Night Pollinators

According to a report from the World Wildlife Fund, more than a third of crops globally are partially pollinated by animals. Lucky for us, these farmer’s helpers work around the clock. When busy bee and bird pollinators say goodbye to the day, night pollinators like the common fruit bat swoop in for the second shift. Bats pollinate over 500 species of plants including eucalyptus, mango, clove, cocoa, banana, and avocado.

In addition to helping keep humans stocked in delightful tropical fruits and all-important chocolate, these furry fliers play a critical role in maintaining the health and functioning of rainforest ecosystems. They can also contribute to natural reforestation of the tropics through “what goes in, must come out” seed dispersal. In case you were wondering, pollination by bats is called chiropterophily—chiro for hand, ptero for winged and phily as in tendency toward. Those of us with a tendency toward mangoes say keep up the good work little, wing-handed friends.

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Lisa S. French January 28, 2019

Beaked Builders

With his glossy blue-black plumage and striking violet eyes, the male satin bowerbird really stands out in a flock. As if purple peepers weren’t enough to grab attention, the bowerbird has evolved to develop quite a flair for design and construction in order to compete for female interest. And apparently, the competition is pretty stiff. Male bowerbirds are evaluated by females based on their ability to build a complex structure or bower made from twigs and dried grass. Once the walls of the U-shaped bower are complete, objects carefully chosen for artistic impact, including flowers, berries, shells, feathers and brightly colored bits of plastic, are precisely placed around the base of the bower to increase the overall appeal.

Bowerbirds that beautify with berries get the added advantage of a local crop to harvest from for redecorating when discarded fruits grow into plants. Native to Australia and New Guinea, each of the twenty species of these masters of avian architecture works with a species-specific color palette. To showcase his design chops, the satin bowerbird prefers to accessorize in shades of blue, perhaps as a complement to his feathered finery. If you’re still honing your decorating skills don’t worry, it took millions of years for the bowerbird to get this good. You can learn more about the satin bowerbird and other clever winged creatures in The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman.

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Lisa S. French January 24, 2019

Strategic Squirrels

If you’ve ever watched a squirrel gather and bury nuts in preparation for winter and assumed the flurry of activity was completely random, scientists at the University of California at Berkeley have discovered that there is a cognitive strategy behind all of that bushy-tailed toing and froing. It appears that squirrels have the ability to organize information about their winter food inventory using a memory device called “spatial chunking” which enables them to bury and retrieve nuts in scattered locations according to size, type, and even nutritional value. To ensure they find their carefully categorized nuts as they left them, these crafty critters have also mastered fake burying—or the squirrel spoof. By pretending to dig and cover storage holes while slyly hiding treasured nuts away from spying eyes, squirrels keep their crunchy cache safe from potential poachers.

However, even the most strategic squirrels lack perfect memory and about three-quarters of buried nuts are never retrieved. The good news is those forgotten nuts grow into trees which provide food and habitat that other animals also depend upon for survival. And when you ’ve enjoyed the shade of a mighty oak, hickory or walnut tree a squirrel may have had a paw in the planting. If you’d like to show your squirrel appreciation, there’s actually a day for that, January 21. In honor of forest generating squirrels, go nuts!

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Lisa S. French January 21, 2019