Dogs
gregladen | November 13, 2015Years ago I proposed a theory (not anywhere in print, just in seminars and talks) that went roughly like this. Humans hunt. Dogs hunt. Prey animals get hunted. Each species (or set of species) has a number of characteristics such as the ability to stalk, track, kill, run away, form herds, etc. Now imagine a landscape with humans, wolves, and game animals all carrying out these behaviors, facilitated with various physical traits. Then, go back to the drawing board and redesign the system.
The hunting abilities of humans and dogs, the tendency of game animals to herd up or take other…
gregladen | October 8, 2014UPDATE: They killed the dog.
UPDATE: I'm adding this here because it is my current post on Ebola. Thomas Eric Duncan, the person who became symptomatic with Ebola in Dallas, had died at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital (according to news alerts).
A nurse's assistant in Spain caring for Spanish nationals returned with Ebola from West Africa contracted the disease, gaining the dubious distinction of being the first person to be infected with Ebola outside of that disease's normal range in West Africa, Central Africa and western East Africa. There is speculation that she contracted the…
gregladen | November 27, 2011Why would you want a field guide to all of the carninvores? They live everywhere, so there is no reason to carry around a field identification guide with ALL of them unless you were going everywhere in the whole world on one trip!
Yet, there is such a field guide, Carnivores of the World (Princeton Field Guides), and the truth is, this is ONE OF THE COOLEST BOOKS I'VE EVER SEEN! All the carnivores (almost) in one book. Interestingly, it turns out to be possible. There are fewer than three hundred species of terrestrial carnivore in the whole world, and that is fittable in a single book…
gregladen | August 20, 2010This is the most challenging time of year for duck watching. But it may be easier than one thinks to bump into a wolf in the forest.
We've been exploring the western side of the north-central part of the state, in and around Itasca as far west at Tamarack Wildlife Refuge, where we saw several fine herds of tamarack clustered in the usual low flat areas they prefer.
Duck watching this time of year is very hard. In the beginning of the season the males are in full bloom. Females found near males are almost always of the same species. (Unless the male is a mallard. They do not…
gregladen | July 5, 2010Does your back yard slope up, away from your house, or does it slope down?
The likelihood that your yard slopes one way or the other ... statistically ... depends in large part on what region you live in. (Here I'll be speaking mainly of the US, but the principle applies broadly.) If you live in New England, your yard is more likely to slope up. If you live in the Midwest/Plains, your yard is more likely to slope down
This is because in New England, we humans build our settlements around rocks. Because there are rocks. (If you don't believe me, note that all the famous rock farms are in…
gregladen | June 22, 2009To a dog, a balloon is a rock that floats.
To a dog, a lever is a perch for stoats.
To a dog, particle decay1 is not about nooks
To a dog, gravity is just another way to puke.
To a dog, a quantum is a kibble
To a dog, a quark is to nibble.
To a dog, where the yard ends begins the cosmos
To a dog, periodic tables2 iz a no-nos.
To a dog, dark matter is what cats must do
To a dog, string theory is for cats too.
To a dog, it is better to sleep
To a dog, don't tickle the heap.3
____________________________Notes1Bone munching2Do not take food off the table. Periodically.3A veiled reference to "…
gregladen | May 30, 2009Katz:
Dawg:
OK, so the Dawg obvoiusly wins. Let's give the katz one more chance:
gregladen | May 9, 2009Under the present circumstances, it is clear that I now have to tell my one Welsh Corgi story. This is about a corgi named Dillon.
Dillon was Irv and Nancy DeVore's Corgi. (Irv was my advisor in graduate school.) They had two corgi's, Dillon and another one with a similarly Welsh name that I can't recall at the moment. One or both of them came from amateur breeders whom I happen for entirely unrelated reasons to know, who in turn get their corgis directly from the Queen of England. Or the Queen of England gets her corgi's from them. I can never remember.
Anyway, you all know what a…
gregladen | November 8, 2008Obamadog. Barack Obama's first serious mistake since the election.
Many of you heard the question at President Elect Obama's first news conference, which was mainly about the economy, regarding what kind of dog the girls would be getting as per a deal apparently made some time ago. The only safe answer to that question would have been to give the secret signal that cuts the power feed to the cameras, then have the reporter bagged and dragged out of the room and appropriately disciplined. But no, instead, Obama answered the question and he even discussed details ... the dog needs to be…
gregladen | November 6, 2008Coming back to the research base camp, one day, in the Ituri Forest (DR Congo) the first thing I noticed was that our cat was quite dead and even stiff. Her neck had been broken by some sort of carnivore, but strangely, she was not eaten. A leopard or some other creature would have eaten her.
Then I heard the news of six men all bitten by a rabid dog. Four goats were also bitten, and some chickens were killed. The drama that ensued over the next few days goes far beyond what I could present in a blog post (perhaps a novella) so I'll tell you the rest of the story some other time. The…
gregladen | May 6, 2008A recent study of dog genetics, published in PLoS, seeks to improve the quality of genetic research by better understanding the underlying patterns of genetic variation at the level of specific dog breeds.
Sometimes we are interested in the evolutionary relationship between two "species" or populations, and genetics can be helpful. The more different the genetic sequence between two populations, the more distantly related they are (on average) and thus we can construct phylogenies ("family trees" of species or groups).
Sometimes we are interested in finding genes that are linked to…
gregladen | March 12, 2008The big, bad wolf could use a few friends. If western states remove the gray wolf from protection under the Endangered Species Act--a decision currently under debate--consequences could be grave. Wyoming and Idaho announced they would reduce their populations of approximately 300 and 700 wolves, respectively, by 50 percent and 80 percent.
Amidst the debate, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) researcher Dr. Kim Berger is speaking out on behalf of an unsuspecting wolf ally: the pronghorn antelope, North America's fastest land animal. In a study published in the latest issue of the journal…
gregladen | March 5, 2008Several years ago, I had a conversation with a friend who at that time, like me, spent a lot of time in the Adirondacks in Update New York. This was in the 1970s. He had spent a week or so on cross country skis on the north slope (facing Canada) the previous winter. On his second or third day into the mountains, he picked up the trail of a large canid. He followed the trail for three days, and during that time the track of this dog-like animal did not veer even slightly. The animal was simply walking south. It did not veer back and forth, sniffing and peeing on things, inspecting and…
gregladen | February 26, 2008Hunting Wolves; Killing Elephants
The Bush administration on Thursday announced an end to federal protection for gray wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, concluding that the wolves were reproductively robust enough to survive.
"Wolves are back," said Lynn Scarlett, the deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior, in a telephone conference call with reporters. "Gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains are thriving and no longer need
A coalition of wildlife and environmental groups dismissed the government's claims and announced plans for a lawsuit to reverse the decision, which is…
gregladen | November 20, 2007
This is a photograph of three Great Pyrenees dogs harassing a brown bear in Northern Norway. This photograph was downloaded by me some time ago from a web site that seems to no longer exist. I'd love to know if anyone knows where this web site is now, or
if the documents previously available on it are still available somewhere.
[This is a repost from Gregladen.com]
The story goes like this: Apparently, in this region of northern Norway, brown bears that normally reside in a reserve or park had started to wander into cattle farmland. This would be alarming because a) cattle farmers do…