In the James Bond movie Spectre there’s a reference to the cuckoo bird in two scenes. The evil villain Spectre leers: “I see you! Cuckoo!” when he detects Bond in the classic evil assembly room scene. In the other scene towards the end of the movie Spectre reveals why he considers Bond as a cuckoo. In order to understand the reference we must know the biology of the Common cuckoo bird (Cuculus canorus). The European common cuckoo is a well […]
Mountain lions were once thought to be solitary animals. They are feared and hunted by humans. New footage captured by motion-triggered cameras in secluded areas deep in the Wyoming Wind River range shows a mountain lion family and the animals’ previously unknown social bonds. In this short documentary produced by WildFutures, we also learn about how hard it can be to be a mountain lion. They face an increasing loss of habitat, harsh winters, trophy hunters and even predators. Like […]
On a field trip with students to the Pacific Coast, ecologist Robert Paine discovered a thriving community of aquatic organisms at Mukkaw Bay, at the tip of the Olympic Peninsula. The tide pools were full of green anemones, purple sea urchins, pink seaweed, bright red Pacific blood starfish, as well as sponges, limpets, and chitons. At the low tide rocky surfaces exposed bands of small acorn barnacles, and large, stalked goose barnacles, beds of black California mussels, and some very […]
Ecological theory predicts that by keeping herbivore populations under check predators can indirectly enhance growth of vegetation and can even alter local climate. The influential ecologist Robert Paine has demonstrated this phenomenon of keystone species on predatory starfishes and sea otters maintaining species diversity in coastal rocky communities in Washington. Directed and produced by Annie White, “A Wolf’s Place” tells the story of wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone national park in 1995. Wolves became locally extinct in much of the United […]
There are two species of beavers in the temperate zones of the world. North American (Castor canadensis) and Eurasian (Castor fiber) beavers were almost exterminated to extinction. These rodents are the largest after the tropical capybara that lives in wetlands of the South American tropics. Now bouncing back from extinction beaver populations are recovering under protection. Beavers are being recognized as keystone species by ecologists and conservation biologists. As habitat constructors and brilliant hydro-engineers, beavers can recharge water tables and […]
Galapagos archipelago occupies a special place in our quest to understand nature. It sits right on the junction of the Pacific ocean current where warm and cold water shifts. The nutrient levels reaching the islands by cold Humboldt current show a drastic decline when warm surface waters engulf the archipelago. The Galapagos lies at the southeast trade winds. When the current shifts the rainfall pattern changes drastically. The
Honeybees are fragile animals that have lost most of the traits that provide survival advantage in their wild counterparts. Public attention was particularly grappled when an experiment in the 1950s aiming to regain lost genes by hybridizing domesticated European honeybees with the wild African ones failed miserably. The experiment that started with good intentions lead to invasion of Africanized honeybees from Brazil to north all the way up to Texas. There’s clearly a disproportionately large emphasis on honeybees while neglecting […]
This short observation shows a spawning aggregation containing seven species of fish in a Bluehead chub (Nocomis leptocephalus) nest in Toms Creek, New River Drainage in Blacksburg, Virginia. These species are Mountain redbelly dace (Chrosomus oreas), White shiner (Luxilus albeolus), Rosefin shiner (Lythrurus ardens), Rosyside dace (Clinostomus funduloides), Central stoneroller (Campostoma anomalum) and Crescent shiner (Luxilus cerasinus). Bluehead chub with it’s impressive nesting behavior provides a rich natural history for ecologists. Brandon Peoples who recorded this short observation is a […]
The Chimpanzee is a heavily anthropomorphosized docu-feature movie targeting young audiences. It was filmed on multiple locations including Taï National Park in southwestern Ivory Coast, Ngogo and Kibale national parks in Uganda and Gabon by two British nature filmmakers Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield. Martyn Colbeck was the person behind the camera. Tim Allen did the narration. Filmmakers stitched the footage recorded in these locations and consolidated into a single story creating a drama around an orphaned baby Chimpanzee they […]
Here’s another fascinating piece of natural history from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. In this series of short observations staff producer and biologist Marc Dantzker breaks down the mating behavior and social interaction of the Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in five sections. Lekking or lek mating is a breeding behavior where males come together in a place and perform competitive displays to impress visiting females. While males do their “hello check me out” dances, females asses their qualities and choose […]
Jungles is the 8th episode of the BBC TV series Planet Earth. It makes a rapid tour around the tropical belt and highlights a few key phenomena and spectacular behavior including mating dance of bird of paradise, forest regeneration after a treefall, plant-animal interactions in the forest canopy, fig trees as a keystone species, primate territoriality, forest sounds, mating leaf frogs, water cycle through evapotranspiration, nutrient cycle through decomposition, food webs, parental care in insects, fungal parasitism, gliding calugos, carnivorous […]
Directed, edited and produced by Jeffrey Mittelstadt of WildSides the short documentary was made for Whale and Dolphin Conservation. North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) are highly endangered. Less than 500 North Atlantic right whales live in the wild. Close to 350 of them live in the East Coast of North America. The whale continues to be endangered but thanks to conservation measures like the acoustic stations its population more than tripled in a century. Apart from indirect negative Human […]
You can watch the gradual color change in this Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) from green to brown over 4 mins. Summer of 2011 was drier than usual in Athens, GA. Annual rainfall (37.11 inches) was lower than the 1981-2010 average (46.66 inches). The month of July was particularly hot. Average monthly temperature was 81.9 F (above 1895-2012 average of 80.0 F). Reptiles in such conditions have a rather fast metabolism and burn calories fast. This female lizard was a […]
The mosquito-transmitted disease malaria is killing around 600.000 people every year world wide alone. The year 2010 was a record peak with 1.2 million deaths. Mosquitos transmit so many diseases that they are arguably the most dangerous animals on Earth. They even act as vectors in transmitting parasites including the Human bot fly. Mosquitoes are a family of small, midge-like flies: the Culicidae. Although a few species are harmless or even useful to humanity, most are a nuisance because they […]
The Archerfish posseses one of the most complex feeding behavior among fishes. Complex feeding behaviors involving proto-tool use are common among marine fishes. Scientists have noticed such behavior in many wrasses, in black spotted tuskfish, (Choerodon schoenleinii) from the Great Barrier Reef; in yellowhead wrasses (Halichoeres garnoti) off the coast of Florida; and in a sixbar wrasse (Thalassoma hardwicke) in an aquarium setting. For instance, wrasses crunch sea urchins against corals and use anvils to smash food into more gulpable […]
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