Falling back: an autumnal verse

Tonight we turn the clocks back an hour, and invoke a little sooner the crisp and quiet nights of late Autumn. It's a time of shortening days and lengthening shadows, and it puts me in mind of a poem I wrote quite a few years back.

Caught up in the solitude of an empty house, I lay in bed and watched the silhouettes of back-lit branches dance against my walls. There was something magical in the interplay of moonlight, wind and trees at that moment, and I tried to capture the sense of it in the following irregular lines.

Shadowed Box
By Francis Scudellari

This shadowed box of light,
moon projected on my wall,
a moving portrait, screened,
hung above my head,
is my soul
entertainment
as I lie
through the night;
a stick-dance stage upon which
my beloved
ghosts will play.
Now lurking behind folds of cloth,
their jagged silhouettes
will burst forth
only in closed
eye sleep,
to dance in spell-cast dreams,
and beckon me
toward that portal
through which,
if I find my belief,
I might step,
only to be washed away
with morning
and the sun's flooding rays.

Security threats: frogs, farms, polluters and immigrants

Today the Federal government decided to file suit against my home state of Illinois because the legislature had the impudence to try to protect our large immigrant community from the department of Homeland Security's political posturing (see the L.A. Times story U.S. sues Illinois over immigration law). In August, llinois enacted a law prohibiting state businesses from using E-Verify, the Fed's system for checking the citizenship of prospective employees, until DHS fixes its flawed data.

Businesses enrolled in E-Verify are required to fire any employees whose citizenship status isn't resolved within 8 business days. Because the system's databases contain significant inaccuracies, technical delays could lead to loss of jobs for US citizens as well as undocumented workers.

Michael Chertoff, who heads DHS, has declared himself the agency's new sheriff with a mission of corralling the black-hatted cynicism that he believes characterizes Americans' attitudes toward immigration policy. The tough talk is just a rhetorical sleight of hand meant to throw us off the path of the real villainy taking place in our country. It's the Bush administration's latest attempt to use the poor and disenfranchised immigrant as a war-on-terror straw man.

Who poses the bigger threat to our safety and well being: a hard working immigrant trying to make his or her way in our country, or the greedy corporations who take advantage of lax environmental law enforcement to pollute our land, air and water? I think most Americans would recognize the latter grouping as the more dangerous scofflaws, but cracking down on them would mean risking the administration's political base.

As I've written about previously, the Feds were more than willing to turn a blind eye to the circumvention of EPA regulations by British Petroleum, which was needed to expand their Indiana refinery (see B(ig) P(olluter) of Lake Michigan: A few jobs, a lot of harm). No administration tough guy stood up to challenge an action that threatened to further contaminate one of our country's largest sources of fresh water.

Nor are they likely to act on the new scientific evidence that the spike in frog deformities is being caused by runoff from industrial farming practices (see the Reuters story Frog deformities blamed on farm and ranch runoff). Asking our politicians to make the connection between pollution, frogs and the implications on human health would require far too much thought on their part. It's much easier to search out targets for the scapegoating of our social ills.

Maybe a mass exodus of frogs toward the U.S. border would get their attention. We'll have to build a wall to keep the slimy little green traitors from getting out. Oh wait, we're already doing that.

Life imitates art: Big birds and little men

Recently, the science-related headlines seem to be plucked from our favorite fictional titles. Whether it's the discovery of new planets and solar systems, Martian oceans and caverns, giant penguin bones, or hobbit-like fossils, the mind reels at the echoes with our favorite stories and fables. It's ripe material for me to speculate on the nature of myth and the power of the human imagination.

The news story du jour is of an ancient bird species called Argentavis magnificens that 6 million years ago glided over the pampas of present-day Argentina. Weighing over 150 pounds with a 23-foot wingspan, it's fun to imagine the great birds wheeling through the sky in search of prey (see Ancient American bird was glider from BBC News). It also puts all of us Lord of The Rings geeks into a reverie recalling the giant eagles J.R.R. Tolkien described coming to his heroes' rescue.

This comes on the heels of the discovery of the remains of a hobbit-like hominid that lived in Indonesia as recently as 18,000 years ago. Homo floresiensis was described as small, big-footed, and inhabiting caves, and the story put all hobbit-o-philes into a hopeful tizzy that their favorite fictional creatures might have a basis in fact. There is a new book on the discovery that is reviewed at American Scientist Online (see Choosing One's Relatives); and if you think I'm exaggerating how seriously some take such news, in my online wanderings to research this post I found out about a book called Quest for Middle Earth that treats Tolkien as history (see the press release Is the Lord of the Rings Real History?).

So, what's going on here? Are these discoveries really proving that Tolkien was writing about real-world events? Was there a Middle Earth inhabited by supernatural elves, orcs, hobbits and wizards? Did the author's creative subconscious tap into a lost history of our world that informed his mythical account? Did Frodo Baggins exist? Of course not, but asking such questions illustrates an important point. It's in the realm of myth that these stories have their true power, and trying to re-interpret them within the context of science actually diminishes them to the point of absurdity.

The story Tolkien created in the Lord of The Rings series has captured the imaginations of generations of readers, leaving a lasting impression. There are important cultural lessons in its fictive universe, warning us of the corrupting influence of greed and the dangerous grip of the lust for power. Written as the implications of Industrialization began to manifest themselves more clearly, and describing the Faustian bargain of apparent social progress coming at the expense of our natural environment and spiritual well-being, the novels can be seen as an urgent call to action on many levels. Tolkien's story has the power of truth on a cultural and moral level, but that doesn't mean it is a scientific account of physical reality.

If you couldn't tell, my rambling post is meant to reveal parallels to the current controversy over Intelligent Design. Creationists get very angry with folks who describe the Bible as myth, as if that depiction relegates it to insignificance. These literalists like to argue that Genesis is a historical record of the Earth's creation, proving our planet to be a mere 6,000 years old. In the face of the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, such claims actually undermine the Bible's relevance. The real power of the Garden of Eden story is as metaphor, and all of its readers should appreciate the artfulness of its imagery, which emotionally and spiritually captures the moment humanity gained consciousness.

As much as devotees may want to believe in a real hobbits and talking serpents, the characters of both Tolkien and Genesis only make sense within the bounds of our imagination. It's fun to mix fable with fact, literature with science, but each has its own separate and critically important role.

Favorite Song of the Day: Can't Find My Way Back Home

There's been a lot of news coverage recently about the mysterious disappearance of honey bees in the US. Scientists have labeled the phenomenon "Colony Collapse Disorder," but they're still not quite sure what's causing CCD.

No matter what's behind it, CCD threatens both our environment and our food supply, as the fruits and vegetables we consume depend on the pollination performed by bees.

Here's a smattering of headlines from local papers across the country:

• Local beekeeper feeling sting from disease attacking his bee colonies (Shelby Promoter, Montana)


• In Sussex, demise of honey source worrisome (New Jersey Herald)


• Idaho beekeepers keep an eye on mysterious phenomenon (Twin Falls Times-News, Idaho)


• Rockland orchards, beekeepers stung by shrinking honeybee population (The Journal News, New York)


• Ex-councilwoman mounts battle against Colony Collapse Disorder (San Mateo County Times, California)

I don't know if there's any connection, but Zephyr at the Climate of Our Future blog pointed me to an article that describes a similar die off of bumblebees in Britain. There the decimation is caused by eco-unfriendly farming practices and it too threatens to have devastating social, economic, and environmental consequences (see Bumblebees could face extinction from BBC News).

Back stateside, the June Wired includes a story about a University of Montana entomologist who is trying to discover clues to CCD by listening in to the sonic quality of bees' buzzing. It mentions that scientists posit one possible culprit is a build up of pesticides in the hives, contaminating the bees and messing up their navigational systems.

Here is an excerpt, and a link to the full text:

Can a Tiny Microphone Save the Bees — and the Food Supply?
By Greta Lorge

Colony collapse disorder looks even more ominous. The alarm was first sounded late last year, when entire colonies started disappearing, practically overnight. There were no signs of attack on the hives, no dead bees, and very few clues. Soon, Bromenshenk and other experts were fielding phone calls from befuddled beekeepers across the country. Some had lost up to 90 percent of their bees.

Researchers have begun looking at several possible explanations: a newly evolved parasite or virus, poor nutrition, or stress-induced immune suppression. Chemicals could also be to blame. Neonicotinoids, a relatively new class of agricultural pesticides, are known to cause disorientation in insects. Their long-term effects on bees are unknown, but they could build up in the hive and, over time, reach concentrations that might impair bees' navigational abilities. The bees may leave the hive to forage and simply be unable to find their way back.

Read full article

The last sentence conjures a sad image ... worker bees flying around endlessly and aimlessly in orchards and farms, desparately trying to find their way back home. It brought to my loosely associative mind the old Blind Faith song sung by Steve Winwood: Can't Find My Way Home. I can just imagine it playing to a video of lost honey bees hopping from flower to flower, hoping to find their hive just past the next one.

Can't Find My Way Home by Steve Winwood

Come down off your throne
and leave your body alone.
Somebody must change.
You are the reason
I've been waiting so long.
Somebody holds the key.

But I'm near the end and
I just ain't got the time
And I'm wasted and
I can't find my way home.

Come down on your own
and leave your body alone.
Somebody must change.
You are the reason
I've been waiting all these years.
Somebody holds the key.

But I can't find my way home.
But I can't find my way home.
But I can't find my way home.
But I can't find my way home.
Still I can't find my way home,
And I ain't done nothing wrong,
But I can't find my way home.

Peering into the universe, searching for a mate

Astonomers announced today the discovery of 28 new planets outside our solar system. None among the large number of previously unobserved heavenly bodies are comparable to our home orbiting rock. That will disappoint some who peer up into the sky in the hope of finding another world like ours, one that could nurture life — our own, or others'.

Maybe that pursuit is driven by loneliness, or the desire to understand how we ended up here, or an inkling that we're running out of time on Earth and have to seek out other homes. Whatever the motivation, it's a search that will need to go on a lot longer, and chances are we may never find another Earth — so we should do our best to preserve the one we have.

Here is an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times coverage of the story:

Array of new planets found, but none like ours
By John Johnson Jr

HONOLULU — An international team of astronomers on Monday announced the discovery of 28 planets outside the solar system, the greatest single haul since the first so-called exoplanet was found 12 years ago.

Still eluding the planet hunters, however, is the much-longed-for Earth replica, a planet like ours that could nourish some kind of life, allowing humans to feel a little less lonely in the cosmos.

Read the full article

What's the likelihood of finding another Earth in the infinity of the universe? Mathematically it's possible, just as theoretically Nature could produce identical snowflakes. In each case, the existence of a matched mate remains a mere abstraction.

Pursuing my world as snowflake conceit inevitably led me to ask the question: Exactly why is each snowflake different? Truth be told, scientists don't fully know. Digging into the archives of Wired magazine, I found the following partial explanation in the 2001 article "What Makes a Snowflake Unique?":

By growing snow crystals in the laboratory under controlled conditions, the research team discovered that they develop differently depending on the temperature and how wet the air is.

A typical snowflake begins by forming around a speck of dust. From this unassuming beginning it grows into a tiny hexagonal prism, just a few microns in size. The initial symmetry of the snowflake results from the intrinsic molecular structure of ice.

As the crystal grows, it's often blown about in the sky. The air and temperature around the crystal are constantly changing. Snowflakes are extremely sensitive; even a small change in these conditions can lead to different growth patterns.

The final shape of the crystal reflects these growth conditions. The longer the snowflake is blown about in the skies, the more complex the resulting snow crystal.

"No two crystals have the same history so they don't grow in the same way," said Libbrecht.

And, he added, no two have ever been the same, or ever will be.

We're told as kids that like snowflakes, no two humans are supposed to be alike. The description of how the vagaries of temperature and the changing winds shape ice crystals is certainly a lovely little metaphor for the evolution of our own appearance, personalities and consciousness. I think that comparison may extend to our world as a whole — through a special combination of circumstances life arose here and the Earth as we know it took shape. Can those conditions be reproduced in the vast reaches of space? The search goes on ...

Here's one more metaphor: Mathemeticians say that an infinite number of monkeys banging on keyboards over an infinite amount of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. That may be true in theory, but I already have a serviceable volume of all the bard's plays. It'll be much easier for me to preserve the one I have, than wait millennia for those abstract monkeys to get me another. But that doesn't mean the little apes should stop typing, or the dreamers stop hoping.

Proof of a virgin birth ... in Sharks

Today, a group of scientists reported the virgin birth of a hammerhead shark in an Omaha zoo. The process of asexual reproduction, also known as parthenogenesis, has been observed in some species of insects, reptiles, birds and fish, but this is the first real proof that it also occurs in sharks. As if we males weren't feeling useless enough these days ...

No word yet whether three wise sharks have shown up with gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Here are excerpts from the story that appears in the Washington Post:

Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone, Researchers Find
By Juliet Eilperin

A team of American and Irish researchers have discovered that some female sharks can reproduce without having sex, the first time that scientists have found the unusual capacity in such an ancient vertebrate species.

Their report that sharks can produce asexually through the process known as parthenogenesis is being published online today in the British journal Biology Letters. Researchers have observed parthenogenesis in certain species of birds, reptiles, amphibians and bony fishes, but the new finding suggests that vertebrates' ability to reproduce without sex evolved much earlier than scientists had thought

Read full article

Cicada Brood XIII: Coming soon to a tree near me

If I appear less than responsive over the next few weeks, it's not because I stopped caring about you. It's just that my senses have been overwhelmed by the buzzing of the cicada swarms soon to emerge from their 17-year slumber.

Other than the constant noise the males emit to attract partners (can't blame a fella for trying after 17 years of sucking on tree root sap below ground), and occasionally flying into the inattentive walker, the insects are harmless.

I've heard rumblings in the neighborhood about creatively dealing with the situation in a culinary fashion. There are even recipes readily available on the Internet (here's a PDF of a whole cicada cookbook). Cicadas are related to crawfish and shrimp, so I'd prefer something with a little cajun spice to it.

Swarms of cicadas emerging in Midwest
By TARA BURGHART, Associated Press Writer

CHICAGO - Coming soon: Brood XIII. It sounds like a bad horror movie. But it's actually the name of the billions of cicadas expected to emerge this month in parts of the Midwest after spending 17 years underground.

The red-eyed, shrimp-sized, flying insects don't bite or sting. But they are known for mating calls that produce a din that can overpower ringing telephones, lawn mowers and power tools.

Brood XIII is expected across northern Illinois, and in parts of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana. Cicadas live only about 30 days as adults, and their main goal is mating.

They don't harm humans, although they are clumsy and might fly into people. Birds, squirrels and pets, especially dogs, love to eat them, and they are high in protein.

Read the full article

Favorite Mammals Episode X: Planet of the apes

Episode X: Food for Thought is the last segment in the BBC's Life of Mammals (LoM) series, and in it the producers go ape. The focus is on the largest of the primates, the great apes, and their characteristic abilities to mimic behavior and to invent tools. Such talents make it easier to pass down knowledge through the generations and create "cultures."

Here are the main players in this final chapter:

Orangutans - In capitivity these large, tree-dwelling apes can learn to use our carpentry tools and LoM shows them playing with saws and hammers. In the wild they have a schematic knowlege of how to navigate the forest and can track the dates that various fruits ripen. They're usually loners in the wild, but that's the result of food scarcity rather than a lack of sociability (there are humans who can certainly relate). In Sumatra, for example, where the food is more plentiful, Orangutans live in groups and have shared intelligence -- fashioning tools to get at harder to reach food.

Chimpanzees - Said to be human's closest living relatives, LoM gives us a glimpse into the life of a Chimp colony in Uganda that is one of the largest known. The group interactions range from tranquil social grooming to the more violent repercussions of male rivalry. The males in the colony form organized hunts where bonds are created and alliances firmed up. The social relationships and politics within the community are complex and still not well understood, but they seem to mirror our own with a more primative brutality.

Humans - The series asks the question, What made our ancestors rise on two feet, stand upright, and walk? One theory postulates that it was a changing climate where trees became scarcer and primates had to walk or wade longer distances between them. There's also the possibility that early humans stood upright in order to pursue four-legged prey across these newly formed grasslands. In an amazing sequence, LoM follows members of an African tribe from the Kalahari desert who practice the ancient and mostly forgotten art of the "persistence hunt." Using their intelligence as a weapon, they track and pursue a Kudu for miles until the animal collapses from exhaustion. It's a chase that early humans embarked on knowing that on two-legs they could endure longer than their prey.

As the series draws to a close, it summarizes human development in order to reach conclusions about our future. The early human hunters eventually learned to domesticate animals and crops. They traded in their migratory life to settle down and create farms and cities. In these new societies, not everyone had to be involved in food production and some could devote themselves to the arts and sciences that reshaped the world. Mastery of the food supply allowed humans to thrive and spread to all corners of the earth. But as the human population has increased to over 6 billion, its in danger of over-reaching the limits of the earth's resources.

The series suggests that the only way to fix this situation is to control our population growth. Of course Nature has its own ways of checking populations, and that's a scenario that we should try to avoid. If we are to do so, we'll need to use our "big brains" to develop the sustainable technologies that can help us either more efficiently meet the needs of our growing population or expand to previously inhospitable climes -- such as the oceans or outer space.

Just like our great-ape relatives, we'll need to rely on our proven abilities to learn and innovate in order to succeed. We may even find ourselves evolving new abilities in order to adapt to the challenges ahead.

Favorite Mammals Episode IX: Big groups, big brains

Episode 9: The Social Climbers is the penultimate in the BCC's Life of Mammals series. It focuses on the brain power of monkeys and larger primates who have developed intellects that solve the problems of their environments by passing on "cultural" traditions, using tools, and navigating the difficulties of group dynamics.

The stars of the episode include:

Capuchins - These proto-typical monkeys are shown rummaging through the forest with characteristic curiousity. Their brains capture, process and communicate to others any valuable lessons learned on their various ventures. We see them put to use two particular generational discoveries: how to open closely closed-up clams and the benefits of anti-septic leaves that they rub on their bodies to heal and protect against bug bites.

Toque Macaques - From Sri Lanka, these monkeys have a complex society that's been carefully studied. It's a rigid class system that bestows great priveleges on the highly ranked, and to navigate through the political and sexual dynamics of the society requires a lot of strategizing. They're certainly not stupid, as Senator George Allen's "macaca" insult at a debate last year might have implied, but they are also not very democratic.

Baboons - These primates inhabit the grasslands that developed as the rain forest receded 10 million years ago. Residing in such open spaces makes them more vulnerable to predators, and to compensate for that they live in large groups. The group dynamics here reward males who develop friendships through social grooming and who take care of the group's females and young -- certainly a more admirable meritocracy than the macaques.

Gelada - These primates live on the highlands of Ethiopia and form the largest herds. They are also the only grazing primates -- scooting on their rear ends to pick grass with their fingers. Males conduct show battles (including the very attractive lip flip) to establish social dominance, and the winners lord it over "harems" of females. Since their hands are preoccupied with grass-picking, rather than grooming to form social bonds the Gelada "talk" to each other with vocal chatter that might give clues to how our own ancestors' first developed language.

One of the most interesting details noted in the show is that scientists have discovered a direct correlation between primate brain size and group size. Social complexity requires a more developed intellect, and the environmental conditions that drove primates out of the trees and into the plains may have been the key evolutionary moment that led to our own development of language and eventually consciousness.

Favorite Mammals Episode VIII: Swinging through the trees

I'm up to Episode 8 of the BBC documentary series Life of Mammals (LoM) and it's making its inevitable march toward describing those animals dearest to our hearts: humans. The progression means first going up into the trees with the primates, before descending back down to the terra firma of grasslands as our ancestors once did, at least according to the history that we happy US few who believe in evolution accept (more on that later).

"Life in the Trees" focuses on the myriad of monkeys and other mammals who have made a living feeding on the bounty of the forest canopy. What drove mammals of various kinds up into the trees? There is safety from predators in the branches, but there's also an extraodinary variety of food and it is that search for sustenance that models behavior and creates the impetus for physical adaptation.

The episode features non-primates of various kinds that have evolved traits to help them clamber up and down trees, or better yet jump and fly between them. From the rubbery pads of a Hyrax balancing on twigs in Kenya, to the strong forearms and sharp claws of a Sun Bear clasping trunks, getting up in the air to snack on fruits and leaves was the easier task. There are the more drastic modification of a skin membrane that helps a Flying Squirrel glide and a Fruit Bat fly between branches, and this overcomes the need to retreat back down so that life can be led exclusively above ground.

As for the primates, the show gives us excellent examples of tree huggers who use grasping thumbed hands and big-toed feet to move around the forests with amazing ease. Infra-red shots are used to capture the movements of two nocturnal animals: the Slender Loris of India and its African relative the Bush Baby. The Loris uses slow movements to sneak up on its prey in silence, and has the peculiar trait of urinating on its hands as it moves along. The Bush Baby uses the speed of incredible leaps to catch its targets unaware. Both have large forward pointing eyes to help judge distances.

The island of Madagascar, as some might know from the animated kids movie of the same name, is the home to an array of Lemurs. LoM focuses on the Sifaka and the way it moves about from tree to tree, pushing off from one trunk with its powerful back legs and then twisting its body in mid-air to get in position to land. More amusing is the way the Sifaka runs when it needs to travel on the ground. Unable to get the same push off as from a tree, it takes small hops with its hands in the air.

Finally LoM shows us Gibbons, which are the fastest flightless animal in the canopy. These small apes of Asia quickly swing from branch to branch aided by long arms and a ball joint in their wrists. Their effortless maneuvering reminded me of Spiderman's high-speed web-swinging in the movies. They might make good stunt doubles, or models for CGI.

I'll post about Episode 9 tomorrow, and there is a primacy of monkey business to come.

Favorite Mammals Episode VII: Adapting to the water

Episode 7 of the BBC's Life of Mammals series is titled "Return to the Water" and it is one of the most interesting segments to me because of the extreme adaptations that these animals have made in order to carve out a niche in watery environments.

The degree to which they've adapted varies, as does their lifestyles. The Desman, an insect eater that is mostly closely related to a shrew, has a "snorkel" similar to an elephant's trunk and webbed feet. It swims along river beds snatching up prey amidst the gravel and pebbles but spends equal amounts of time in and out of the water.

The Sea Otter spends all of its time in the water -- eating, sleeping and breeding there. Mostly closely related to the weasel, it has adapted to life in the water by developing thick insulating fur and feet that act as paddles. To stay in place and protect its territory while it sleeps, it wraps itself in kelp. And, in one of my favorite scenes from the series, we see how they've figured out an ingenious way to open their favorite food: oysters. They pick up a rock from the bottom of the sea, rest it on their stomach, and bang the oyster against it -- all the while floating casually on their backs.

Sea Lions and Seals have limbs that have evolved into flippers, bodies that are more streamlined for swimming, and layers of blubber for insulation. They are descended from an animal somewhere between a weasel and a bear, and breed and birth on the land/ice but spend the rest of their time at sea.

Manatees have lost even more of the typical mammal traits and spend all of their time under water in creek beds. They are thought to have a common ancestor with the elephant, and are large, slow moving grazers with limbs that are completely adapted to swimming.

The most incredibly evolved sea mammals are of course the great whales. It's hard to imagine, but scientists believe that they were originally a deer-like, land-based animal that returned to the sea. Over millions of years whales evolved the equipment they needed to lead a life in the water. There are vestigal leg bones still present in the Blue Whale, buried deep in the muscle, but most other traces of their past have disappeared. They are the largest animal ever to have existed on the earth, and that size is directly attributable to a life at sea, as no bones could have supported such bulk on land.

It makes you wonder what humans might evolve into if we were forced to live at sea ... maybe the concept of a mermaid isn't so farfetched.

Favorite Mammal Episode VI: The Raccoon Dog

Episode Six of BBC's Life of Mammals is entitled The Opportunists and it features omnivores -- those animals who have diversified their diets so that they can more easily adapt to changes in their environments (and avoid the fate of specialized eaters like the Giant Panda when loss of habitat occurs).

My favorite animal among this grouping is the Raccoon Dog found in East Asia -- what can I say, I'm fond of dogs. It is the only member of the dog family that hibernates during the winter. Also interesting is that it's the female of the species who hunts up food for the pups while the father takes care of them back at their den. The video includes some nice footage of the mother returning to her young with various tidbits (meat, eggs, etc.) for them to fight over while she goes back out for more.

Other highlights of the episode include:

• The Babirusa, a usually solitary wild pig from the Sulawesi forest, socializing on a river bank.
• A Skunk sightlessly feeding on baby bats that had fallen from a cave ceiling, and then finding a chance for love in the unexpected place.
• Grisly Bears diving into streams to feed on Salmon as they spawn in Alaska.
• A Raccoon using its sensitive hands to feel the bottom of a creek bed in search of food (including delicately evading the pincers of a crayfish while grabbing it).
• A rat carrying its young one-by-one to a more elevated hole as a sewer fills up with water.

Favorite Mammal Episode V: The Bush Dog

Episode Five of the BBC's Life of Mammals features The Meateaters -- the various cats and dogs who hunt for their sustenance.

My favorite among these predators, and one that's probably the most rare, is the South American Bush Dog. It is the only member of the dog family that has webbed feet. The St. Louis Zoo, which I've visited, has bush dogs, and their web site's South America page (from which I got the photo here) includes a short video of one swimming. You can also get much more info about the bush dog from Wikipedia's article, which has some good external links.

Other highlights from the episode:

• A Marten jumping from branch to branch chasing birds.
• A Fennec Fox deftly trying to subdue a venomous snake
• A Cheetah using its tremendous speed and agility to chase down a Gazelle

Favorite Mammals Episode IV: Mole Rats, Beavers, and Capybara

Continuing my cataloging of cool animals from the BBC's Life of Mammal series, I've got three interesting ones to highlight this post. The fourth episode of the series is titled The Chisellers, and it deals with some very adaptable rodents. Here are my favorites, which inhabit very different environments and have correspondingly very different behaviors.

The Naked Mole Rat

These little animals from East Africa are the only hairless rodent, and they have some other very unique traits:

• Like social insects, there is a queen who breeds and worker rats who are sterile and handle the digging of tunnels and procuring of food.
• Their lips seal behind their protruding teeth to prevent dirt from flying in their mouths as they dig.
• They can walk equally fast both backward and forward.

The Beaver

It's not a very exotic choice (at least to those of us in North America), but it's engineering feats make it one of the most amazing animals on the planet. The video has some amazing footage of Beavers at work building and maintaining a dam, felling trees, storing branches in the refrigerating cool waters of the lake they created, and passing the winter in their well-insulated lodge. It's a very industrious little creature. It also has an amazing capacity to hold its breath underwater, a trait that serves it well in eluding its predators, and doing its day-to-day tasks.

The Capybara

This is the largest rodent in the world at about 4 feet long and 110 lbs, and it resembles an overgrown guinea pig. The Capybara is indigenous to South America. It is as fast as a small horse on land, but also well-adapted to water so that they can navigate the flooded grasslands during rainy season.

Favorite Mammal Episode III: The Gerenuk

Speaking of heads in the clouds, here's an animal that can get pretty high trying to eat its favorite food, the leaves of the Acacia tree: The Gerenuk.

Episode 3 of the BBC's Life of Mammals is entitled "Plant Pradators" and it deals with the multitude of mammals who eat vegetation in its various forms, and the unique challenges this diet creates. The instincutal intelligence that's evolved for these animals is quite impressive, allowing them to uniquely adapt to their environments. One example of this are the Elephants who have become salt miners, scraping cave walls with their tusks in order to compensate for the mineral diffeciencies caused by their usual plant eating ways.

And then there's the small Pika from the Canadian Rockies, which looks like a round-eared rabbit, and collects plants with varying degrees of toxicity to build up its winter stores (the poisons preserve the vegetation through the cold, so the least toxic plants are eaten first and the most toxic toward the end of the season).

As for the Gerenuk, it's one of several animals who eat different strata of the Acacia, ranging from the small Dik-Dik to the majestic Giraffe. It's able to reach branches that animals of comparable size, for example the Impala, can't because of the Gerenuk's ability to swivel on its hips and stand upright. Now that's one intelligent design!

Favorite Mammal Episode II: The Pangolin

Episode two of the 2002 BBC series Life of Mammals is entitled "Insect Hunters" and it takes a look at various shrews (woodland and water), moles, hedgehogs, anteaters and bats (essentially shrews with wings). Of these, one of the most interesting to me is the African Pangolin (pictured at left, courtesy of the African Wildlife Foundation). A body covered with hard keratin scales give it the look of a small dinosaur as it ambles along on its hind legs.

Here are a few interesting facts about Pangolins:

• They are toothless
• Their ears have special valves to keep ants out
• They roll themselves into a ball to defend themselves
• They have anal scent glands like skunks
• They swallow small stones to help their digestion
• They have very long tongues (up to 16 inches) and sticky saliva

You can read more about Pangolins at:

AWF Pangolin Page
Answers.com Pangolin Page

Other cool little insect hunters (linked to more info):

The Golden Mole (a "sand swimmer")
The Star-nosed Mole (has 22 little "arms" protruding from its nose)
The Sengi or Elephant Shrew (creates tidy trails on which it sprints to evade predators)

An introduction to the Echidna

I'm watching DVDs of the BBC series The Life of Mammals with David Attenborough (see the IMDB listing for more details), which takes a very long and interesting look at the huge variety of animals in the mammalian class.

The first episode deals with the mammals who are closest to those that evolved 200 million years ago, Monotremes (egg-layers) and Marsupials (pouches). There are only two surviving monotremes: the Platypus and the Echidna. I'd never seen or heard of the latter, and it's pretty damn cool looking, in my humble opinion -- a cross between a hedge hog and an anteater.

The Answers.com Echidna page has info on the animal from a number of different sources. The photo here is courtesy of the Ryan Photographic website, which has some really cool Nature shots.

I'll probably put up info on other animals as I watch the rest of the series.