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Cave animals just might be some of the strangest animals on Earth. Adapted to living somewhere with little to no light and practically no vegetation, these animals have evolved to survive in extreme environments and the results are often unbelievable.
A troglobite is an animal that exclusively live in caves and has adapted to its dark surroundings. Most troglobites cannot survive outside of the cave environment. Interestingly, while they never leave the cave environments, their lives are dependent on the world outside of the cave. Roots growing from plants above the surface, streams flowing from outside the cave and trogloxenes, and animals that use caves for shelter but travel outside the cave for nourishment are the only things that make life inside of caves possible. Roots allow nutrients to drip into the caves, streams bring in fresh food and dead animals and trogloxenes provide nutrient-rich feces and corpses that feed bacteria, insects and fungi that serve as the base of the cave’s food chain.
Because caves provide such a stable environment, many troglobites have lost the ability to adapt to temperature and humidity changes, which means most of these animals can only live in specific parts of their caves and many of them are endangered because they cannot branch out of their territory. Most troglobites survive in caves with humidity levels between 95 to 100 percent, but those that live in tropical areas deal with higher temperatures that result in more evaporation, thus, lower humidity levels.
There are currently 7,700 known species of trilobites, but because scientists estimate that 90% of caves are still undiscovered due to a lack of visible entrances, many animals living in caves have yet to be discovered. Just recently, scientists discovered 225 new caves and 30 new species in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California.
Because there are so many cool cave animals, this article is really long, resulting in a two part series. This is part one, so if you’re hunting for part two, you can find it on my blog, Rue The Day.
Images via Arne Hodalic [Wikipedia] and pfulton [Flickr]
While they may not spend their entire lives in caves, bats are one of the most important supporters of cave ecosystems. Their feces, dropped food and dead bodies provide food for insects, bacteria and fungi that support the carnivores in the cave. In some caves, the bat droppings pile up as high as one hundred feet. The guano is incredibly nutritious, making it a good cornerstone of any cave diet. In fact, a quarter-pound of it has more nutrients and protein than a Big Mac.
Bats are the only mammals in the world that can fly, but there are so many types that they actually represent twenty percent of all mammal species. Their ability to fly has enabled them to become some of the most widely distributed mammal groups in the world. They live everywhere on earth except a few isolated islands, the Arctic and the Antarctic.
While the stereotypes says all bats are blind, none are actually blind. Their small, underdeveloped eyes provide enough visual cues to help the bats navigate their routes beyond the area their echolocation can reach. Some species can even see ultraviolet light.
more …
GETTING GOOSED
The events of January 15, 2009, gave new meaning to the fear of flying. At 3:27PM, a flock of Canada geese struck an outbound plane leaving LaGuardia, blowing out both engines and sending the aircraft plummeting to the ground. The incident made a hero of Captain Chesley Sullenberger, who safely piloted the plane into the Hudson River, but it also made Canada geese out to be small, feathered suicide bombers.
The truth is, Canada geese populations in the United States have skyrocketed since 1960. Today, America is home to more than 4 million of the birds. Why the sudden spike in numbers? The geese thrive on trash. Landfills and estuaries provide them with so much food they can live in one place year-round, instead of migrating. And because there’s lot of garbage surrounding New York’s airports, many geese call the Big Apple home. During the past two years, there have been more than 200 instances of Canada geese flocks colliding with airplanes that were landing or taking off near JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark.
Following the “Miracle on the Hudson”, state and federal authorities have worked to deter the birds from nearby flight paths. They even enlisted the help of wildlife biologists, who’ve tried all sorts of tricks. They’ve cut the grass near the runways to undesirable lengths and played goose distress calls over the airport loudspeakers. More aggressively, they’ve trapped geese by the hundreds and euthanized them. So far, the geese have not counterattacked. Not yet.
(Image credit: Flickr user Alanna@VanIsle)
MIKE THE HEADLESS CHICKEN
When a Colorado farmer named Lloyd Olsen botched the decapitation of his rooster in 1945, he didn’t realize he’d given birth to a legend. For the next 18 months, Mike the Headless Chicken ran around with his head cut off. Operating with only one ear and most of his brain stem, Mike made the best of the situation. Before long, he was earning his owner thousands of dollars a month touring as a sideshow. The rooster’s only real handicap was that he didn’t have a mouth, so he had to be fed through an eyedropper directly into his neck. Sadly, while being fed one night, Mike choked to death. His legacy lives on, however. In his hometown of Fruita, Colorado, “Mike’s Festival” is held every third weekend in May. Events in his honor include the “Run Like a Chicken with Your Head Cut Off” 5K and a “Pin the Head on the Chicken” contest.
(Image Source: Mike the Headless Chicken)
DUCK, DUCK, SHUTTLECOCK
In 2006, professional badminton players noticed something strange. Their shuttlecocks, which routinely whiz around the courts at speeds of 150 mph, weren’t moving so fast. The phenomenon was especially strange because the process of making a shuttlecock is highly controlled. Each feather in a premium shuttlecock is hand-selected from the left wing of a goose, and each goose can supply only two quality feathers, at most!
So what caused the change? The avian flu. When geese began transmitting the disease, Chinese manufacturers switched to using duck feathers. Luckily, our fine feathered friends have been on the mend, returning smiles to the faces of badminton players everywhere.
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The above article by David Goldenberg is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the November-December 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine.
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!
Remember Meowmania, the site that make our cats go crazy? The creator, Jacqueline Steck, is back with Birdmania, which you can click and click to make your home or office sound like an aviary. Link -via Metafilter
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These parakeets belong to Inner Huckleberry, who submitted this rad photo to Cute Overload, where you can get a closer look. Link
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Perhaps 100 millions birds die every year in the United States due to collisions with glass. Ornilux, a new type of glass made by the German company Arnold Glas, may provide a solution. It has an ultraviolet coating that birds can see, but humans can’t under normal conditions.
The latest version of the glass, called Ornilux Mikado, received the “red dot” award this year from the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen, Germany. Judges noted that the glass uses the same techniques that spiders use to keep birds from flying through and destroying their webs.
Link via Geekosystem | Photos: Arnold Glas
The Birds and the Bees T-Shirt by Mike Jacobsen – $14.95
Birds do it, bees do it … but did they ever do it together? From the twisted imagination of Mike Jacobsen of See Mike Draw, here’s The Birds and the Bees T-Shirt over at the NeatoShop: Link
More T-shirts by Mike | Other artist designed T-shirts | More Funny T-Shirts
See also: 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits
You know how your Mom always said, “If your friends all jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?” Apparently, the dinosaurs did just that. The Film Board of Canada presents this charming 1995 film by Munro Ferguson. Not intended for use as a science lesson. -via Everlasting Blort
The pictures we see of birds and other wildlife affected by the Gulf oil spill are heartbreaking. What should we do about them? Some wildlife experts advocate euthanizing instead of cleaning individual birds.
“Kill, don’t clean,” recommends Silvia Gaus, a biologist at NationalPark Wattenmeer (Wadden Sea National Park) in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Unfortunately, despite some short-term success in cleaning birds and releasing them into the wild, few, if any, have a chance of surviving even for a few months, reports Ms Gaus, who has worked as a biologist for 20 years.
“According to serious studies, the middle-term survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1 percent,” Ms Gaus explained. “We, therefore, oppose cleaning birds.”
Blogger and evolutionary biologist GrrlScientist took a closer look at those serious studies and found the survival rate of oiled birds depends on a number of factors, and can be as high as 100% among some populations. She advocates making the effort to clean and release birds.
I disagree with Ms Gaus’s gloomy policy. Because all people use oil or oil-related products in some form, I maintain that it is both ethical and responsible to try to save as many oiled birds and other wildlife as we can. Some wildlife management professionals argue that cleaning oiled birds isn’t worth the monetary cost and effort since little or no impact can be made on a species level. But actually, we don’t know this to be true. Additionally, I ask you; what amount of money and effort is too much, and who should be making those decisions anyway? Further, what do we, as scientists and as a society, gain by trying to save these unfortunate animals? Certainly, I think it is imperative to develop our technology to the best level possible so we can use it to help all birds, whether their populations are doing fine or they are threatened or endangered, so we are capable of helping them in the sad event that they are impacted by an oil spill. This requires that we continually refine and improve our techniques and equipment to do the job properly.
There is much more information on previous spills and bird survival rates at Living the Scientific Life. What do you think? Should we leave oiled birds to their fate, euthanize them, or wash and rehabilitate them one by one? Link
(Image credit: Paul Buck/EPA)
Red-collared lorikeets in Australia exhibit signs of drunkenness at the end of the rainy season, most likely brought on by drinking fermented nectar. They behave much the way humans do when inebriated only with a little less screeching and more flapping of wings. The only thing sadder than a drunken lorikeek is a lorikeet with a massive hangover from swilling plonk. Sweetened porridge and fresh fruit for breakfast the morning after sets them straight.
Link
International Penguin Day occurs on April 25, but don’t confuse this day, which marks the start of the Antarctic penguins migration period, with Penguin Awareness Day, which takes place on January 20. There seems to be no reason for the date of Penguin Awareness day, but International Penguin Day was started years ago when researchers in the Naval Weapons Center in California first observed the migration patterns of Antarctic penguins.
Personally, I can’t think of anyway to celebrate my favorite birds in all their formal-wearing glory then to go into a little detail about the birds and their fascinating lives. While the holiday marks the migration period of Antarctic penguins, we at Neatorama don’t like to discriminate, so we’ll be talking about all penguins in general rather than focusing on just those from the very far south.
Almost every wild penguin lives somewhere in the southern hemisphere with the exception of the Galapagos Penguin, which lives in the area it is named for. While many people envision penguins living in frigid conditions, only a few actually live so far south and many live in rather temperate zones. For the most part, the larger penguins live in cooler areas and smaller ones live closer to the equator.
Rock Hopper Penguin image via Ben Tubby [Flickr]
That’s not how it’s always been though. Prehistoric species of penguins were sprawled across the southern hemisphere with no distribution based on size. One giant penguin species lived only 1250 miles south of the equator. Prehistoric Penguins were so different in size that there was even a 6 foot tall penguin called the Nordenskjoeld’s Giant Penguin and a 173 pound species called the New Zealand Giant Penguin.
These days though, the largest species of penguin is Emperor Penguin, which grows to around 3 and a half feet tall and 75 pounds. These are arguably the most famous penguins around as they are not only the largest, but some of the small handful of penguins that live in Antarctica. You may remember these guys as the stars of March of the Penguins.
The species is also unique for being the only penguin to breed in the middle of the harsh Antarctic winter at temperatures as low as -40 degrees. They are also the only penguins that leave the incubation duties to only one sex and one of only two species to lay only one egg at a time –most deliver two at a time. The females lay an egg and then the males incubate the egg on their feet while the females return to the sea over the next two months to feed. The males huddle in a large circle and rotate each individual’s time in the center.
When the eggs hatch, the males have normally fasted for over 115 days. When the mom’s return, the males leave the new-born chick with their partner and take their turn to go feed. When the chicks are strong enough, they huddle amongst themselves for warmth while the mothers and fathers feed and eventually they begin to grow their adult feathers and join the feeding process around the summer time.
While all penguin species have a somewhat high mortality rate amongst the young, Emperor Penguins have the highest rate of death during the chick’s first year. In fact, 90% of all of the chicks will die during this time.
Image via ianduffy [Flickr]
On the other side of the spectrum is the Little Blue Penguin (a.k.a. the Fairy Penguin), which grows only 16 inches tall and weighs a little over 2 pounds. These little ones are much less famous than their massive Emperor cousins, even so, you may recognize these little ones as the inspiration for the Linux logo –the creator of Linux was bitten by a Little Penguin while in Australia and the memory stayed with him through his life.
Because they are so small, they are not well adapted to frigid weather and they instead live in Australia and New Zealand and do better in areas free from cats and foxes. They have also been spotted in Chile and South Africa, but researchers aren’t sure if they are part of a colony or somehow ended up in the countries.
Little Blue Penguin image via CrazyCh3m [Flickr]. Linux image via Larry Ewing
Penguins tend to be monogamous each year, but they will often find a new mate each consecutive year. In species such as the Emperor Penguin, the lack of year-to-year monogamy (only a 15% rate) is believed to be due to environmental pressures that limit the amount of time they have to search for their past partners. Some of the penguins in warmer climates, like the Little Blue Penguin, do stay loyal to their partners until one of the mates dies.
Females are the ones who select their mating partner and in many cases, females will compete for an attractive male partner.
As for the eggs themselves, penguins have some o the smallest proportioned eggs of all birds when compared with the size of the parents. The Little Blue Penguin lays eggs that are only 4.7% of its weight and the Emperor Penguin’s eggs are only 2.3% of their total weight. The eggs also have some of the thickest shells, which weigh between 10-16% of the egg’s weight (it takes the Emperor Penguin chicks about 2-3 days to hatch out of their shells) and they have some of the largest yolk ratios of all birds –the yolk takes up 22-31% of the egg volume.
Image via Jerzy Strzelecki [Wikipedia]
Aside from mating, penguins have a very high level of social interaction and all penguins communicate through visual and vocal displays. Their vocal calls not only help the penguins choose mates, but also lets them find their mate and their nest when they come back from feeding. The penguin females often show a great level of empathy for one another; when one mother loses a chick, she will often attempt to take one from another’s nest, but many of the nearby females will usually help defend the mother.
Penguins have a lot of human friends and all species are protected even though some species are at no risk of extinction in the near future. Perhaps part of the reason we connect with the birds, besides their inherent adorableness, is the fact that they are rarely afraid of humans.
Many species of penguins, particularly those from the Antarctic, have no fear of humans at all because they have so few predators on land. While seals attack by the water, the few air and land predators penguins sea will only eat chicks and eggs. For this reason, people who visit penguin habitats are often surprised to see the birds will often approach them out of pure curiosity.
This comes in handy in zoo and research facilities because the researchers can often get close to the birds without having to worry about throwing off the animal’s natural behavior patterns.
For one specific African penguin living at the California Academy of Sciences, this met an additional benefit when he started to go bald, which left him shivering in his tank. The keepers first tried to warm Pierre up with a heat lamp, but he still couldn’t enter the water, which is a major part of any penguins life (most species spend anywhere from 50-70% of their lives in the water). Eventually, one of the biologists, Pam Schaller, realized that if wet suits keep humans warm in frigid temperatures, it might just work for little Pierre. The modified suit worked brilliantly and Pierre was quite happy to have his life back as he frolicked with his 19 friends in the tank’s pool.
Image via Roux [Wikipedia]
The reason poor Pierre was so cold when he started losing his feathers comes down to a unique aspect of penguin anatomy. The birds aren’t kept warm with a layer of blubber (although the Emperor Penguins are benefited by being so large), but mostly by their waterproof feathers. The feathers trap air, which insulates their body and helps them to float.
While they can’t use their wings to fly, they instead work as flippers and penguins are great swimmers accordingly. Their style of swimming looks surprisingly like flight in other birds and they can reach speeds of 17 miles per hour, although most stay closer to 5 miles per hour during their swims. Most penguins do not swim very deeply and only dive for a minute or two, but the Emperor Penguin has been recorded going as deep as 1,800 feet for up to 22 minutes. No matter how deep they swim though, penguins have to return to the surface to breathe and most of the smaller species will leap in and out of the water like porpoises to breathe.
While underwater, penguins occasionally play, but they mostly swim to eat. Their main sources of food are krill, fish and squid. While it seems like their stark color contrasts would make them an easy target for underwater predators, since they largely stay near the top of the water surface, all the underwater predators (like orcas, seals, sea lions and sharks) can see is a white belly, which blends in with the water surface. From above, their dark backs help them blend in with the depths of the sea.
Penguin’s eyes are well adapted for seeing under water as, well as the rest of their bodies. In fact, a supraorbital gland allows them to filter excess salt from their blood stream and release it from their nasal passages.
In a way, it’s quite fortunate that penguins have so few predators in the land and air. When they cruise on the land, their wings and tails help them keep balance, but they waddle quite a bit. Many penguins will also toboggan along the snow to help them move quickly and with minimal energy.
Image via ken2754@Yokohama [Flickr]
Sources: Discovery, Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, Seaworld
A variety of birds may use their crests and protruberant feathers to feel their surroundings. Studies were conducted on auklets, who breed in dark, rocky crevices.
The researchers placed individual auklets into a dark experimental maze, designed to resemble a natural crevice, and recorded how often they bumped into things. Both crested and whiskered auklets bumped their heads 2.5 times more often if their feathers on their heads had been artificially flattened.
When the ornithologists then compared the lifestyles of birds with their feather patterns, they found that “Birds that live in complex, cluttered habitats and are active at night tend to have a greater probability to express such facial feathers.”
Cat owners will not be surprised by this news, since whiskers serve an equivalent purpose.
Coincidentally, this week National Geographic is reporting the existence of a tentacled snake whose head appendages are used to find prey in murky lakes at night.
Link.
If you have a serious phobia of frogs, rats, bees or snakes, you probably shouldn’t read WebEcoist’s article on the most invasive species in the world. On the other hand, if you don’t have any phobias, it’s fascinating to know just how devastating a pair of bunnies ended up being to Australia and how Florida and other areas of the South are being taken over by released and escaped Burmese pythons.
BIRD film from Andrew Zuckerman Studio on Vimeo.
To help promote his illustrated book, Bird, Andrew Zuckerman directed this short video of birds from around the world. Shot against a glorious white background, the film captures the beauty of our feathered friends, mirroring the photos in his book. A must-see for bird lovers.
Possibly the most beautiful pigeon too, the Victoria Crowned is not at all what you might expect when used to the hordes that haunt our towns and cities. Thanks to the Dodo becoming defunct, these turkey sized blue niceys are the largest pigeon on the planet. They have a rather odd secret too. Birds don’t produce milk to feed their young, right? Well, these do! Unfortunately, these birds seem to be dying out in the wild for several reasons. The facts that they 1. aren’t afraid of people and 2. taste good do not bode well for their survival.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
In this clip from National Geographic’s Wild Chronicles, two filmmakers study Johnny Rooks, predatory birds sometimes called Flying Devils, in the Falkland Islands. Meanwhile, the birds are having fun with the filmmakers!
“It’s all very amusing, of course. Unless it’s your campsite.”
It is not my campsite, and you will most likely find it as amusing as I did. Link -via Digg
See more adventures from National Geographic’s Wild Chronicles.
This picture of birds on wires by photographer Paulo Pinto looks like music notation. So Jarbas Agnelli naturally wanted to find out what that music sounded like.
Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn’t the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating.
-via Bits and Pieces
The Maleo bird of Sulawesi has a unique way of looking after its young – if looking after is how it could be described. It buries its eggs and abandons them, having nothing more to do with their rearing. The chicks, however, have a trick up their sleeve. As soon as they hatch and emerge in to the sunlight they are, amazingly, able to fly.
Beneath the red hot sand of an Indonesian island’s beach something stirs. A large egg is hatching and soon the newborn creature will dig its way out to the surface and take its first gulps of fresh air. This sounds as if it should be a young turtle, thrusting its flippers sideways as it makes its desperate lurch towards the ocean. It is not, however. This is a bird. More remarkable still is that when it emerges the chick will already be able to fly.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
So, we all knew about Mentos and Coke (thanks, Jamie and Adam), but I didn’t know that Alka-Seltzer could, in fact, kill a bird or that apple seeds have cyanide! See for yourself!
As we get older, it’s easier to logically dismiss some of the outlandish claims we heard as kids—never really needing to investigate if there’s any truth behind them. But some of these assertions—like whether eating too many carrots will turn you orange or if rice really does harm birds when ingested—tend to keep us guessing far into adulthood. To satisfy our curiosity (and yours) we’ve done research that debunks or confirms common food-related fables.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ahammel.
The remarkable Rainbow Finch is found in Australia yet there are only around two thousand of them left in the wild. Although conservation attempts are ongoing the question now seems to be whether or not this beautiful species will persevere for very much longer in its own original habitat.
There is something about the Rainbow Finch that makes it look like an animal made up, using Photoshop, for an April Fool joke. The colors seem too bright to be real and each garish hue ends abruptly to be replaced by one equally as preposterous for a wild animal. The main part of its body looks like some psychedelic Neapolitan ice cream.
Link – via webphemera
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
Now you can control the bird traffic in your backyard with a neat wooden birdhouse that looks like a traffic light.
This traffic-sign yellow birdhouse includes an entrance in each “light,” three shelves for nesting and openings at the back for easy cleaning. Bird-safe paint. Hanging wire included.
The product is available from Uncommon Goods for $40.
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