Video: True Facts about the beaver

So I got lots of writing done today, but most of it was for a fantasy novel that’s not going to be available for at least a year (though maybe some stuff sooner for patrons?). Long story short, I’m wiped, so I’m going to lean on Ze Frank again, to continue my ongoing campaign for a human-beaver partnership.

There are a couple of things in that video I never knew, including the fact that beavers apparently build dams because one of their common ancestors hated a very particular kind of noise made by flowing water, to the point where the entire species seems to structure its life around putting sticks on the noisy water to make it stop.

Dinosaur fight!

I’ll probably have something more substantive up later today, but I wanted to share this picture I saw on twitter.

The image shows a Canada Goose in the foreground, as though the photo was taken from just over its shoulder. You can see a bit of its body, in the bottom right corner, and its neck snaking in from the righthand side. Its head and neck are black, and its cheeks are white. Its bill is slightly open. In front of the goose is a small stretch of rippled green water, and then a log. There's a Green Heron standing on the log, one big yellow foot facing the goose, the other apparently facing the first foot, with the heel/

For those who can’t see it, The image shows a Canada Goose in the foreground, as though the photo was taken from just over its shoulder. You can see a bit of its body, in the bottom right corner, and its neck snaking in from the righthand side. Its head and neck are black, and its cheeks are white. Its bill is slightly open. In front of the goose is a small stretch of rippled green water, and then a log. There’s a Green Heron standing on the log, one big yellow foot facing the goose, the other apparently facing the first foot, with the heel sticking awkwardly out to the side. Its folded wings are blue with some white edging, its belly is gray, and its long, fuzzy, purple neck is fully extended towards the goose. There are a couple white lines running along its throat. Its head is a similar blue to its wings, with the sharp, blue-black beak open to reveal a pink mouth. Its eyes are bright yellow with black pupils, and staring ferociously.

This post has a cat picture!

Today was lovely, and I had to wait outside for a delivery, so I decided to bring His Holiness out with me. I chatted with neighbors and read about swamps, and he explored the village and had some salad. We live in a cul-de-sac sort of arrangement (it was literally the only flat we could get – the rental market in Dublin is not OK), which means that our singularly un-athletic cat only has two ways to get out, and has shown little interest in either of them. That means we get to let him explore a bit, and eat grass to his heart’s content.

Our recent trip the the vet confirmed that his hips became a bit deformed in his childhood on the street, and that he needs to lose a couple kilos. We’ve been regulating his food intake for a while, since it became clear early on that his fondest ambition is to become Orb. Apparently it hasn’t been enough, so we’ve scaled back a little more, and I’m trying to let him out more so he’ll get exercise. We’ve tried string, laser pointers, and all the other stuff, and he’s just too lazy to actually put in the effort.

But put him outside? The amount of tail twitching alone probably burns a calorie or two. He’s got his favorite clump of grass, but he samples all around the village. I was worried initially that he might eat something unhealthy, but he’s shown no interest at all in anything but grass. The dude just wants his salad.

He’s shown a great deal of interest in birds, but this area is filled with more athletic cats than he, so while I do monitor him, I’m not particularly worried that he’ll catch one. He’s a great companion, but a mighty hunter he is not.

The image shows a British Shorthair cat with stripey shoulders and head, white legs and neck, and a white muzzle. His white fur looks velvety soft (it is), and his white paws have a little dirt on them. He is lounging on grass dappled by sun and shade

Taking a break between circuits of the village

 

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

The health benefits of… plastic pollution?

Oh boy, that’s a fun headline, isn’t it?

A couple weeks ago, I talked about the minor misery of how every bit of good news we get these days seems to be some form of, “well, it’s not as bad as we thought”. This isn’t one of those stories. From everything I can tell, plastic pollution is still a huge problem, both for the biosphere, and for ourselves. As I’ve said before, we don’t just need to deal with climate change and habitat destruction, we also have a global cleanup project ahead of us that will likely be the effort of multiple generations at least. Mine waste, landfills, electronic waste, runoff, and the list just goes on and on.

That said, another major theme of this blog is the importance of finding ways to work with nature, and to get nature to work with us. The biosphere is changing in response to everything we’ve done over the last few hundred years, with bacteria evolving to eat substances that never existed before we made them. Things like that are likely to be useful when dealing with plastics, and it turns out that evolution in response to plastic pollution might actually have some beneficial results:

Scientists estimate between 5 and 13 million metric tons of plastic pollution enter the oceans each year, ranging from large floating debris to microplastics onto which microbes can form entire ecosystems. Plastic debris is rich in biomass, and therefore could be a good candidate for antibiotic production, which tends to occur in highly competitive natural environments.

To explore the potential of the plastisphere to be a source of novel antibiotics, the researchers modified the Tiny Earth citizen science approach (developed by Dr. Jo Handelsman) to marine conditions. The researchers incubated high and low density polyethylene plastic (the type commonly seen in grocery bags) in water near Scripps Pier in La Jolla, Calif. for 90 days.

The researchers isolated 5 antibiotic producing bacteria from ocean plastic, including strains of Bacillus, Phaeobacter and Vibrio. They tested the bacterial isolates against a variety of Gram positive and negative targets, finding the isolates to be effective against commonly used bacteria as well as 2 antibiotic resistant strains.

“Considering the current antibiotic crisis and the rise of superbugs, it is essential to look for alternative sources of novel antibiotics,” said study lead author Andrea Price of National University. “We hope to expand this project and further characterize the microbes and the antibiotics they produce.”

This is still preliminary research, but it makes sense to use environments that never existed before to find antibiotics that nothing can resist yet. Obviously this in no way changes the urgent need for environmental cleanup, but it’s a good reminder to pay attention as we’re doing it, and learn as much as possible from the process.

We’ve inherited an absolute shit-show of a world. We live in the proverbial “interesting times”, but it’s worth remembering sometimes that can throw something good our way.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Oh yeah? You’re a cuttlefish fan? How many visual processing systems do they use to camouflage themselves?

The answer is two. Probably? Possibly?

Ok, so maybe it’s not a fair question. Apparently the most accepted answer is that they relied on a small handful of variations, without much room for judgement or finesse. The problem is, as the press release notes, cuttlefish seemed to have a lot more going on than would be needed for an “easy” answer like that.

A new study by City, University of London and others suggests that the European cuttlefish (sepia officinalis) may combine two distinct neural systems that process specific visual features from its local environment, and visual cues relating to its overall background environment, in order to create the body patterns it uses to camouflage itself on the sea floor.

This is in contrast to previous research suggesting that the cognitive (brain) processes involved are much simpler, in that the cuttlefish adopts one of only three major types of body patterns to visually merge with its background. However, that does not explain why the animal possesses about 30 different body pattern components it could use to achieve this.

I am by no means an expert on evolution, but in general, if I see some part of an organism that’s taking up energy without any apparent purpose, I assume that there is a purpose that I just don’t know about. That’s part of why I’m predisposed to believe the more complex system – it seems like a simpler answer overall.

The  study explored whether the cuttlefish uses a cognitive process that is triggered by specific, visual features in its environment and which warrants the number of body pattern components it possesses.

Like their cephalopod relatives the octopus and the squid, cuttlefish are masters at blending in with their environments, which is largely attributable to the way their brains are able to control how pigments in special cells called chromatophores on their skin are displayed across their bodies.

In the study, 15 European cuttlefish were independently acclimated to a small water tank in which they were randomly exposed to either a uniform, grey background, or one of seven backgrounds with detailed, patterned features (e.g., small black squares, small white squares, white stripes).  The animals’ camouflage responses to these visual cues were photographed with a camera, and then analysed to see which of the 30 body pattern components appeared activated across the sample of test subjects.

So 15 isn’t exactly a huge sample size, but as the researchers note, this is a preliminary study. Based on these results, the next step would be to get funding for a more rigorous investigation. This isn’t enough to give us a clear answer, but it does seem to create a compelling outline.

The analysis included a statistical technique called ‘principal component analysis’ (PCA) which searches for clusters of responses in the observed data and attempts to largely explain it with a reduced set of key characteristics of the data.

The results of the PCA found that a few key characteristics did not explain most of the variability in the experimental data, but which would have been expected if the cuttlefish were employing a cognitive system which was expressing only three body patterns. Instead, the findings were more in line with a system whereby the whole range of the animals’ body pattern components could be activated, but selectively and in limited numbers, in response to the patterned feature they had been visually exposed to in the water tank.

Whilst the study findings are preliminary, they are in line with a model in which European cuttlefish do employ a cognitive system that processes specific visual features of the environment,  and which is used in combination with a system which responds to the visual background overall. Furthermore, a model in which the visual feature system is implemented in a hierarchical fashion (i.e., when needed, to fine tune a basic response to the overall background), in order for the animal to create the myriad camouflage responses used on the sea floor.

Honestly, I hope I hear more about this soon. One of the novels I’ve got on the back burner would benefit a lot from a better understanding of how cuttlefish do what they do. Another reason I want to believe the more complex answer is that it would fit that story much better. I also think it helps explain why some cuttlefish are able to write poetry. On that note, I’ll leave you with an explanation of the current understanding from a few years ago:

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Nature says Happy Pride Month!

I’ll have something else up today, but I wanted to share this incredible rainbow waterfall with y’all. I know the tweet says “potentially sensitive content”, but that’s bullshit, and we can talk about why that might be some other time, perhaps

Edit: Turns out I was wrong. I got sidetracked by other projects, so this is all you get from me until tomorrow.

For now, enjoy the pretty video:

 

I’m gonna make a pollinator garden!

I’m often slow to do new things, but when I’m already feeling overwhelmed – as I was with the international move last year – I become downright glacial. I’ve been meaning to do some gardening since we moved here, but I’ve had trouble getting around to actually DOING it. Now, I’ve decided that I’m going to get a set of window boxes, and plant a pollinator garden on the roof of our storage shed. I’ll share pictures of the process as it goes forward, but for now I wanted to talk about why I’m doing this.

On the surface, it’s obvious, right? Insect populations around the world seem to be in a state of collapse, and that includes the ones that pollinate not just our food crops, but also the many wild plants that inhabit the ecosystems around us. There’s very little I can do about global use of pesticides, but I can at least try to make the landscape a bit more hospitable. There are a lot of flowering plants in my neighborhood, which is very nice, but I honestly don’t know if they meet the needs of everything that might be living around here. At the very least, adding another patch of flowers should help.

That’s not the only reason I’m doing this, though. I’m mainly doing it for my personal mental wellbeing. With everything going on in the world, it’s hard not to be consumed by apathy and despair. From what I can tell, the best counter to that is to find some way to take action. It’s not because the actions of any individual are going to change things, or even the idea that “if we all do it the world will be saved”. It’s more that our brains have a much easier time contemplating problems if we feel like something is being done about them. The more certain of that we are, the easier it is to think about something terrifying, like climate change. If the “something” that’s being done is being done by us, then there’s zero question about whether something’s being done, right? Because we’re the ones doing it.

So I’m gonna make a pollinator garden.

I’m also looking into things like neighborhood or river cleanup groups, because while I’d be perfectly happy with the life of a hermit, I feel I ought to practice what I preach. This may not be the most important work I could do, but I think it could help me make good connections, and get a better idea of what sort of thing I might prefer doing if this approach doesn’t work out

For the garden, I’m going to start by researching local pollinator species, and looking for gaps I might be able to fill. I’m also going to get some window boxes to put on top of my portion of the storage shed, as that seems like it might be a nice, out-of-the-way spot. I’m not sure if it gets enough sun, but I suppose that’ll depend on what seeds I can get. I can also see it out of the window of my workroom, so it should be pretty easy to keep an eye on the plants and see how they’re dong. I’ve seen a few bumblebees around this spring and summer, but nothing like what I’d expect for the weather, or the number of flowers around. I don’t know if that means my contribution won’t make a difference, and it feels a bit too little/too late, but I might as well try. I’ll also take pictures of the project as it develops.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Golden flying salamanders? In your redwoods? It’s more likely than you might think!

When I was in college, a fellow student bought several “flying” geckos to look into how much they actually steered while in the air. I honestly don’t recall what the verdict was, but I think they did fall differently when blindfolded. Helping with this research project also gave me a small insight into the exotic pet trade. These geckos were all wild-caught, and they all had worms when they arrived. In the end, seven of ten died before an effective treatment was found, and one not long after that. I’m sure that the stress of capture and transportation made everything worse. At the end, I took the two surviving geckos as pets, and they lived with me for about another year before dying.

It was always fun to see them catching the moths I gave them, and to watch them seemingly teleport from one side of the terrarium to the other, and it was fascinating to watch them steer towards the best landing spot (either the slanted sheet that was used as a net below the balcony, or the person holding that sheet). The way various lizards and frogs have evolved to be able to glide and navigate in the air has always fascinated me, but I have to admit that I never expected to hear of an arboreal, gliding salamander.

Salamanders that live their entire lives in the crowns of the world’s tallest trees, California’s coast redwoods, have evolved a behavior well-adapted to the dangers of falling from high places: the ability to parachute, glide and maneuver in mid-air.

Flying squirrels, not to mention numerous species of gliding frogs, geckos, and ants and other insects, are known to use similar aerial maneuvers when jumping from tree to tree or when falling, so as to remain in the trees and avoid landing on the ground.

Similarly, the researchers suspect that this salamander’s skydiving skills are a way to steer back to a tree it’s fallen or jumped from, the better to avoid terrestrial predators.

“While they’re parachuting, they have an exquisite amount of maneuverable control,” said Christian Brown, a doctoral candidate at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa and first author of a paper about these behaviors. “They are able to turn. They are able to flip themselves over if they go upside down. They’re able to maintain that skydiving posture and kind of pump their tail up and down to make horizontal maneuvers. The level of control is just impressive.”

The aerial dexterity of the so-called wandering salamander (Aneides vagrans) was revealed by high-speed video footage taken in a wind tunnel at the University of California, Berkeley, where the salamanders were nudged off a perch into an upward moving column of air simulating free fall.

“What struck me when I first saw the videos is that they (the salamanders) are so smooth — there’s no discontinuity or noise in their motions, they’re just totally surfing in the air,” said Robert Dudley, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology and an expert on animal flight. “That, to me, implies that this behavior is something deeply embedded in their motor response, that it (falling) must happen at reasonably high frequencies so as to effect selection on this behavior. And it’s not just passive parachuting, they’re not just skydiving downwards. They’re also clearly doing the lateral motion, as well, which is what we would call gliding.”

I always love it when scientists discover something new about a species they thought they knew. I also love discovering animals with cool metallic coloring – just look at this little amphibious gold nugget!

A blue-gloved hand holding a salamander. The salamander looks to be a little bit longer than the width of the hand, and its skin is mottled black and metallic gold.

A wandering salamander found in Humboldt Co., California. (Photo credit: Christian Brown)

I think this story is really cool, and there’s more in the article I linked. I wanted to focus on one bit in particular. See, I’ve noticed that when it comes to discerning the evolutionary purpose for a given trait, I feel like one of the questions on any dichotomous key would have to be “does this conserve energy?”

Brown suspects that their aerial skills evolved to deal with falls, but have become part of their behavioral repertoire and perhaps their default method of descent. He and USF undergraduate Jessalyn Aretz found, for example, that walking downward was much harder for the salamander than walking on a horizontal branch or up a trunk.

“That suggests that when they’re wandering, they’re likely walking on flat surfaces, or they’re walking upward. And when they run out of habitat, as the upper canopy becomes drier and drier, and there’s nothing else for them up there, they could just drop back down to those better habitats,” he said. “Why walk back down? You’re already probably exhausted. You’ve burned all your energy, you’re a little 5 gram salamander, and you’ve just climbed the tallest tree on Earth. You’re not going to turn around and walk down — you’re going to take the gravity elevator.”

I’m of the opinion that life exists because it’s better at breaking things down than non-life. On a cosmic time scale, the entropy “lost” in the development of life is “regained” as we break down our environment to survive. That said, conserving energy is still a big concern for most organisms, so if there’s gonna be an arboreal salamander, it absolutely makes sense that controlled falling would be preferable to all that bothersome climbing.