penguins
gregladen | September 9, 2014There is a new book out on Penguins: Penguins: The Ultimate Guide written and edited by Tui De Roy, Mark Jones, and Julie Cornthwaite.
It is a beautiful coffee table style book full of information. All of the world's species are covered (amazingly there are only 18 of them) and there are more than 400 excellent photos. The book covers penguin science (science about them, not by them). There is also quite a bit about their conservation.
The layout of the book is interesting. The last section of the book, by Julie Cornthwaite includes portraits of each species, and a compendium of…
gregladen | July 7, 2014When I first became a regular user of Linux, several years ago, I tried out different text editors and quickly discovered that emacs was my best choice. By coincidence, about that time I ran into an old emacs manual written by Richard Stallman in the dollar section of a used booksore. In that edition, near the end of the book, was a section on “Mail Amusements.” This documented the command “M-x spook” which adds “a line of randomly chosen keywords to an outgoing mail message. The keywords are chosen from a list of words that suggest you are discussing something subversive.” (I note that the…
dr. dolittle | June 15, 2012
Image from Wikipedia: "Adélie Penguins on the ice-foot at Cape Adare in the Antarctic. Photo taken in 1911 or 1912 by George Murray Levick, a member of Robert Scott's Terra Nova Expedition. Published in Scott's Last Expedition (1913). Dodd, Mead, and Company. New York. Volume II. Page 87. Also published in Levick, G. Murray (1914). Antarctic Penguins: a study of their social habits. New York: McBride Nast and Company."
According to the report on the Discover Magazine website, George Levick, a surgeon and zoologist, went on an Antarctic expedition with Captain Robert Scott (the Terra Nova…
grrlscientist | May 21, 2010tags: Pay Attention to Penguins, birds, penguins, environment, global warming, ethics, climate change, Dee Boersma, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
Think of penguins as ocean sentinels, says Dee Boersma -- they're on the frontlines of sea change. Sharing stories of penguin life and culture, she suggests that we start listening to what penguins are telling us.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on…
grrlscientist | September 10, 2009tags: researchblogging.org, global warming, climate variation, climate change, penguins, El Nino, marine zoning, P. Dee Boersma
Adélie penguins, Pygoscelis adeliae, and chicks.
(a) Adélie penguin chicks may get covered in snow during storms, but beneath the snow their down is warm and dry. (b) When rain falls, downy Adélie chicks can get wet and, when soaked, can become hypothermic and die.
Images: P. Dee Boersma.
According to an article that was just published in the journal BioScience, penguin populations are declining sharply due to the combined effects of overfishing and pollution…
zooillogix | August 20, 2009...and American couple John and Steve, who are trying to have a baby themselves, created a truly inspiring tribute video and shared it with Zooillogix.
Visit John and Steve Are Having a Baby for more info.
grrlscientist | August 3, 2009tags: penguins, humor, funny, animation, streaming video
Below the jump is an amusing video, that asks the question, "Do Penguins Fly?" and makes an unexpected discovery [2:15]
grrlscientist | July 30, 2009tags: humor, funny, penguins, streaming video
This amusing little video reminds me of something .. life, perhaps? How about you? [1:33]
zooillogix | July 16, 2009Whether you call them Little Penguins or Fairy Penguins, the name rightfully suggests that this species is not the most formidable of their flightless family. In fact, standing at about only 16" high, they are the smallest of all penguins. Therefore it might not be surprising that they are picked on by other species.
The "McFly" of the penguin world
Well wedgies are one thing, but a string of grisly fairy penguin murders, nine so far, has prompted Australia to break out the big guns, literally. Two professional snipers have been dispatched to a national park near Sydney Harbor to even the…
zooillogix | April 23, 2009Festo is officially my new favorite company, supplanting Gama-Go even with their squid wallets. With a seemingly limitless budget to create non-commercially viable robots, Festo is run by Morgan Freeman, who now goes exclusively by the moniker Lucius Fox.
As if flying death jellyfish weren't enough, Festo now brings us flying death penguins... Death March of the Penguins if you will.
Lucius you sly bastard.......
edyong | January 28, 2009The emperor penguin - caring parent, extreme survivor and unwitting movie-star - could be marching to extinction by the turn of the next century. In its Antarctic home, the penguins frequently have to deal with prolonged bouts of starvation, frosty temperatures of -40 degrees Celsius, and biting polar winds that blow at 90 miles per hour. And yet this icy environment that so brutally tests the penguins' endurance is also critical to their survival. This is a species that depends on sea ice for breeding and feeding.
So what will happen to the emperor penguin as Antarctica's sea ice shrinks,…
bleimanb | December 1, 2008A pair of gay penguins at Polar Land in Harbin, north east China has taken to stealing the eggs of straight couples and leaving rocks in place to fool their victims. The penguins, named Anderson Cooper and Clay*** by the zoo keepers, have been outed by their fellow penmates and have since been ostracized by the flock. Fearing for the stress levels of the flock, keepers have taken Anderson and Clay out of their enclosure and segrated them alone in a pen of their own.
"Did you see little miss happy feet the other day? That new beak gloss was a travesty against all things good in this world…
zooillogix | September 16, 2008I'm sitting in the keynote speaker session listening to Nigel Martin, host of Prehistoric Park, Penguin Safari, Shark Week and other Discovery/Animal Planet shows, discuss the parallels between his job and that of zoo and aquarium employees.
He offered a number of examples including figuratively transporting people to places and introducing them to animals they could never have met otherwise. Without knowing these animals, viewers and visitors won't support conservation efforts, so the logic goes.
Listening to him speak, I could not help but also notice contrasts between his work and that of…
grrlscientist | July 2, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, global warming, climate variation, climate change, penguins, El Nino, marine zoning, P. Dee Boersma
Adélie penguins, Pygoscelis adeliae, and chicks.
(a) Adélie penguin chicks may get covered in snow during storms, but beneath the snow their down is warm and dry. (b) When rain falls, downy Adélie chicks can get wet and, when soaked, can become hypothermic and die.
Images: P. Dee Boersma.
According to an article that was just published in the journal BioScience, penguin populations are declining sharply due to the combined effects of overfishing and pollution…
zooillogix | May 1, 2008As reported in the May 2008 Journal of Ethology, researchers in the sub-antarctic Indian Ocean on Marion Island, recently observed some fascinating and disturbing behavior. A young adult Antarctic fur seal was witnessed forcing itself upon an adult king penguin for upwards of 45 minutes. While young adult fur seals are known for aggressive sexuality that sometimes spans species between pinnepeds, this is the first documented case of a seal "[bridging] the level of vertebrate class in their copulatory attempts." i.e. getting it on with a freakin penguin.
The seal was first spotted subduing the…
edyong | March 11, 2008
Some of us have enough trouble finding the food we want among the ordered aisles of a supermarket. Now imagine that the supermarket itself is in the middle of a vast, featureless wasteland and is constantly on the move, and you begin to appreciate the challenges faced by animals in the open ocean.
Thriving habitats like coral reefs may present the photogenic face of the sea, but most of the world's oceans are wide expanses of emptiness. In these aquatic deserts, all life faces the same challenge: how to find enough food. Now, a couple of interesting studies have shed new light on the…
zooillogix | June 5, 2007A species of endangered sea lion has suddenly acquired a taste for a rare penguin in New Zealand, causing heated debate amongst Kiwi conservationists and scientists. Sea lions breeding on the Otago Peninsula have taken to devouring yellow-eyed penguins. The good news is that male sea lions do not seem to have a pallet for the birds. The bad news is that female sea lions may eat up to thirty yellow-eyed penguins per year a piece.
Scientists from the New Zealand Department of Conservation are trying to set up a breeding ground for the sea lions on the Otago Peninsula. Succeeding means having…