conservation
grrlscientist | March 11, 2010tags: fish farming, aquaculture, piscivory, bird sanctuary, foodie, ethical eating, permaculture, agriculture, poverty, hunger, Dan Barber, TEDTalks, streaming video
Chef Dan Barber squares off with a dilemma facing many chefs today: how to keep fish on the menu. With impeccable research and deadpan humor, he chronicles his pursuit of a sustainable fish he could love, and the foodie's honeymoon he's enjoyed since discovering an outrageously delicious fish raised using a revolutionary farming method in Spain. My one complaint about this video is that the speaker never once identifies either of…
grrlscientist | March 8, 2010tags: education, public outreach, BirdNote Radio Program, Bird Note, birding, Bird Watching, birds, nature, environment, conservation, NPR, National Public Radio, Seattle Audubon Society, mp3
Are you trapped on a crowded subway or in a traffic jam of honking, stinking cars? If so, you might be interested to know that you can transport yourself to a different world, a cool green space where you can feel the earth breathe in time to the music of birds. Your personal vehicle is BirdNote, a 2-minute radio program about birds and nature.
"We want to help people connect to the natural world and…
laelaps | March 5, 2010
A jaguar (Panthera onca). From Flickr user Prosper 973.
One year ago this week Macho B was euthanized. He had been captured in mid-February of 2009, the only known jaguar living inside the United States, but after he was caught and fitted with a radio collar his health quickly deteriorated. When he nearly stopped moving he was recaptured, taken to the Phoenix zoo, and put to sleep when it was discovered that he was suffering from irreparable kidney failure.
At first it seemed as if his capture was a lucky accident, but a later investigation by the Fish and Wildlife Service found that the…
drorzel | February 16, 2010Boskone this past weekend was held at the Westin Waterfront in Boston, which has these funky double showerheads that they charmingly call the "Heavenly(R) Shower" (hype aside, they are very nice showers). The picture at right is courtesy of lannalee on Twitter, as I didn't bring a camera.
Why am I telling you this? Because there was a sign glued to the wall in the shower that read:
Refresh yourself, restore our world
One of your Heavenly(R) Shower heads has been turned off in an effort to minimize water usage and protect one of our most precious natural resources.
The smarmy enviroweenieness…
grrlscientist | February 12, 2010tags: faith-based birding, mass hysteria, endangered species, extinct species, conservation, politics, Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Campephilus principalis, IBWO, ornithology, birds, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has posted a reward of $50,000
to be given to anyone who can provide "video, photographic, or
other compelling information and lead a project scientist to a
living wild Ivory-billed Woodpecker."
Mass hysteria is that strange psychological phenomenon where a group of people experience the same hallucination at the…
grrlscientist | February 8, 2010tags: environment, education, conservation,animal welfare, dancing bears, India, sloth bear, Kartick Satyanarayan, TEDTalks, streaming video
Traditionally, the Kalandar community of India has survived by capturing sloth bear cubs and training them to "dance" through extreme cruelty. Kartick Satyanarayan has been able to put an end to this centuries-old practice, and in so doing discovered a lesson of wider significance: make the practitioners part of the solution.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers…
milhayser | February 2, 2010
Fossils offer a rare glimpse into the past, as lifeforms we could scarcely imagine are preserved long after their day in the sun. But fossilization requires very specific conditions, and few things that die are turned to stone. On Living the Scientific Life, GrrlScientist presents Haplocheirus, a theropod with "three toes, a birdlike keel-shaped chest and a long beak," but also "small teeth, like a dinosaur." This creature bolsters the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs through independent lines. On Not Exactly Rocket Science, Ed Yong discusses fossilized dinosaur fuzz, which…
grrlscientist | January 26, 2010tags: Story of Stuff, environment, pollution, climate change, global warming, recycling, social commentary, cultural observation, planned obsolescence, perceived obsolescence, fashion, advertizing, social psychology, streaming video
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental…
grrlscientist | January 13, 2010tags: conservation, reptiles, King Cobra, Ophiophagus hannah, Gharial, Gavialis gangeticus, water pollution, Romulus+Whitaker, TEDTalks, streaming video
The gharial, Gavialis gangeticus, and king cobra, Ophiophagus hannah, are two of India's most iconic reptiles, and they're endangered because of polluted waterways. Conservationist Romulus Whitaker shows rare footage of these magnificent animals and urges us to save the rivers that sustain their lives and our own.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers…
kthompson | January 10, 2010So you know how there aren't as many members of some species as there once was, and in fact some species that used to exist no longer exist? Well, some folks still haven't gotten the message.
In an attempt to bring more recognition (and funding) to the conservation cause, some mighty fine Zartists are collaborating on the Endangered Species Print Project. The project houses artwork that depicts endangered animals, but the print-run of each species' piece is limited to the number of individuals thought to still exist. For instance, a Zooillogix favorite: The Vancouver Island Marmot.
...…
grrlscientist | January 7, 2010tags: evolutionary biology, immunology, immune response, antibodies, parasite, avian pox virus, Poxvirus avium, nest fly, Philornis downsi, birds, ornithology, Darwin's Finches, Medium Ground Finch, Geospiza fortis, Ecuador, Galapagos Islands, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper
A male Medium Ground Finch, Geospiza fortis, sits on a tree branch in Ecuador's Galapagos Islands.
Image: Jen Koop.
People often view the Hawaiian islands as a tropical paradise, the ideal vacation site, but you wouldn't agree with this assessment if you happen to be a bird. According…
grrlscientist | January 6, 2010tags: Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator, Trumpeter Swan Restoration Project, conservation, endangered species, Harry Lumsden, Beverly Kingdon, Ray Kingdon, streaming video
Thanks to the efforts of volunteers with the Trumpeter Swan Restoration project, the endangered Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator, population in Ontario, Canada now numbers over 1,000. This video shows the three species of swan on Swan Lake, and shows how the birds are tagged so they can be individually tracked. Long time volunteers Harry Lumsden, Beverly and Ray Kingdon feed the swans at Lasalle Park in Burlington.
grrlscientist | December 31, 2009tags: Forest of Ecstasy: Vanguard, illegal drugs, safrole oil, ecstacy, XTC, X, methylenedioxymethamphetamine, MDMA, rainforest, Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia, conservation, endangered species, documentary, streaming video
Do you think that making and using illegal drugs are victimless crimes? Think again! Deep in a remote Cambodian rainforest, criminals are setting up illegal factories to produce safrole oil, the raw ingredient for the illegal Schedule I drug, ecstasy (methylenedioxymethamphetamine or MDMA). Adam Yamaguchi joins armed forest rangers on a search and destroy mission.
grrlscientist | December 28, 2009tags: Fencing Flamingos, ornithology, ecology, endangered species, food webs, research, field work, Marita Davison, Jennifer Moslemi, Jamie Herring, streaming video
"Fencing Flamingos" follows the work of Marita Davison, a PhD student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, and her collaborator Jennifer Moslemi as they study flamingos in the rugged high-Andes of Bolivia. The harsh conditions made it challenging to make the video, Davison says, but it's been worth it. "We've had more people see the video than I'll ever have reading a journal article that I write." The video…
grrlscientist | December 16, 2009tags: conservation, endangered species, Shark Finning, Sea Shepherd, human behavior, television, streaming video
This is a television commercial by the Sea Shepherd. It is an appeal to stop finning sharks. Shark finning refers to the cruel practice of capturing sharks and slicing off their fins. Shark fins are a Chinese delicacy -- they are the main ingredient in shark fin soup. Since shark meat isn't worth the cost of transporting the massive shark bodies to market, the finless animals are thrown back into the water, alive. Without its fins, the shark cannot swim, so it sinks beneath the…
tetrapodzoology | December 11, 2009
More thoughts on the ZSL meeting 'The Secret World of Naked Snakes', held on Monday 7th December. In the previous article I discussed Mark Wilkinson and David Gower's presentations [for relevance of pic used above, read on].
Alexander Kupfer was up next, and provided an excellent overview of reproductive diversity, viviparity and parental care in caecilians (his talk was titled 'Yummy mummy: skin feeding and caecilian reproductive biology') [images above, from Wilkinson et al. (2008), show mother Siphonops annulatus looking after, and feeding, babies]. Caecilians exhibit five different…
tetrapodzoology | December 10, 2009
On Monday 7th December the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) hosted the one-off event 'The Secret World of Naked Snakes' (part of the ZSL's 'communicating science' series): a whole meeting devoted entirely to those bizarre, poorly known, limbless, worm-like amphibians, the caecilians. The meeting was attended by over 100 people, which really isn't bad going, especially when some of the organisers expressed fears that the event would only be attended by (to quote David Gower) "A handful of caecilian freaks".
Ken Livingstone [shown here] - former Mayor of London and well-known amphibian…
tetrapodzoology | November 23, 2009As a Tet Zoo regular you'll know and love the remarkable limbless amphibians known as caecilians.
In case you don't know, caecilians have sensory tentacles, sometimes have protrusible eyes, sometimes lack eyes entirely, often exhibit sophisticated parental care [maternal skin-feeding is going on in the middle image above], are incredibly long-bodied yet often lack tails, sometimes possess large, anatomically complex, eversible male sexual organs, and so on and so forth. Should you need to know more, please visit the links below. Due to their fossorial habits, a very confused taxonomic…
grrlscientist | October 12, 2009tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Zebra Finch, Poephila guttata.
Image: orphaned [larger view].
Birds in Science
Low-quality females prefer low-quality males, at least in the avian world. This is according to research published in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, testing female zebra finches' taste in males. As adults, the low-quality females showed a preference for the songs of males of the same quality, and for the male birds themselves. Evolutionary biologists previously thought that females would always opt for the best male available.
A…