Archive for the Wild Animal Lessons Category

It’s that time of year again in New England when the fireflies flash their distinctive calls as they court members of their own kind. On clear,  moonless nights, they look like low-lying twinkling stars. On foggy ones, the tiny points of light become fuzzy golden globes zipping around the yard and garden.
Although we humans with [...]

 
It’s that time again, time to do an ethological analysis of the American political process to see how we measure up to lower life forms. Alas, so far and once again, not so good.
In animals, the goal is to produce viable young, and ensure their survival. This is a two-step process. First males and females [...]

I heard a news report the other day about how climate change is precipitating a burst of mass wildlife extinction. That’s hardly surprisingly and not really even news any more. And those who prefer to remain in denial about any modern human contribution to this can rightfully claim that such mass extinctions have happened before.
What [...]

Does the phrase “frozen zoo” conjure up as many images for you as it did for me when I first heard it? If it makes you think about wildlife on the north and south pole, you’re indirectly right in that the future on those species may very well depend on the zoo–even though it’s located [...]

Are there times you look at your pet and think you don’t know anything about animal behavior? Well, click here and read about this study and I bet you’ll find yourself thinking, “Gee, I knew that! ”

Several weeks ago I was in WalMart’s huge parking lot in Claremont, NH around 7 a.m. That morning was what is becoming a typical December one in that it was damp, grey and foggy. As I trooped from my distant parking space toward the store, I heard geese overhead, but I couldn’t see them. As [...]

it’s always fun to teach animal behavior during an election year and see how humans measure up to animals when it comes to picking leaders. The most glaring difference is that Nature and evolution reward those who get the job done using the least amount of energy. That got me thinking about two things. One [...]

I don’t know what topic described in this article fascinates me more: that dogs have been trained to locate right whale scat in the middle of the ocean to help scientists learn more about these animals, or the wealth of information that scat provides. Granted it didn’t come as a surprise that whale scat smells, [...]

Two articles from the National Geographic website remind us of the elegance of new species creation. In the first, a new DNA study suggests that human and chimpanzee lines split from apes much earlier than previously believed, and that interbreeding occurred much longer than previously acknowledged before the two species diverged. This is significant because [...]

Gimme one of those bird brains, please! Follow this link to an interesting study of pigeon behavior that proves that they’re subconsciously/innately/insert your favorite word for accepting or rejecting animal intelligence here able to think in logarithmic terms. If you’re one of those mathematically challenged folks like I am, you might ask, “Who cares?”  However, researchers [...]