A jaguar approaching a camera trap. Image from Smithsonian Wild.
This wonderful website, Smithsonian Wild has fantastic camera trap photos from around the world!
Category: Follow Me
Brandon Ballengée collecting amphibians. Image from greenmuseum.org.
Brandon Ballengée is an artist that has collaborated with scientists to create hybrid environmental art and ecological research projects. Being the frog nut that I am, I particularly appreciated his work with deformed frogs. You can find out about this and more by Brandon here. And of course, as always, you can find out how to save the frogs here.
A goldfinch eating at a birdfeeder. Image taken at the San Francisco Zoo.
Two recent studies have found that bird feeders can negatively alter breeding behavior. Birds fed during breeding season also had significantly smaller clutch sizes and in some cases, a reduced percentage of hatched eggs. As we’re heading into spring, it’s recommended that people remove their bird feeders just for the breeding season and continue to use them during the difficult winters. Read more about these studies here.
This jellyfish will light up when attacked and can be seen for 300 feet. Image by Steve Haddock of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
Find some more amazing biolumenescent creatures here.
Paratrechina longicornis. Image by April Nobile/Antweb.org.
How does this ant mate with its relatives and avoid the genetic consequences of inbreeding? Find out how here.
A bull shark. Image taken by Albert kok.
The flood in Australia has caused wildlife to move about quite a bit. Several people have reported seeing bull sharks, passing by McDonald’s and the butcher shop on its way down what was formerly a busy street, but became a street covered in 26 feet of water.
This is not really surprising. Well maybe a little. But bull sharks live in really shallow, coastal parts of the ocean and frequently head up river into fresh water. They’re one of the few sharks that have no trouble living in fresh water for quite a while. They’ve been reported as far as 2,220 miles up the Amazon river and 1,800 miles up the Mississippi! Because they live in such shallow water and in rivers, streams and estuaries, they come into contact with people often. They are commonly thought of as being one of the top 3 most aggressive shark species. Given their size and proximity to humans, I suppose it makes sense. The other two are the great white shark and the tiger shark and they don’t come across people as much. And of course I feel obligated to point out that you are more likely to be killed by cows (yes cows) or by being struck by lightning than you are likely to be killed by a shark.
A vampire flying frog. Image by Jodi Rowley/Australian Museum.
A new species of frog was discovered in Vietnam by Jodi Rowley of the Australian Museum. The adults have webbed feet, which they use to glide; this helps them to live high up in trees. The tadpoles of this species have black fangs and are the first fanged tadpoles known to science. Find out about this discovery here and here.
A dead blackbird, one of about 3,000 found in Arkansas in a mass bird kill. Image by Stephen B. Thorton.
The seemingly random death of wildlife across the world has captured the attention and imagination of people everywhere. It started with the death of 3,000 black birds in Arkansas . That same day, between 80,000 and 100,000 fish were found dead about 125 miles away from the birds. Many of these fish were missing their eyes. Is that a clue?
Dead fish found missing their eyes. Image by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
A few days later, fishermen in Brazil happened upon this:
Fish kill in Brazil. Image from Parana Online.
Over 100 tons of fish showed up dead off the coast of Parana, including sardine, croaker and catfish.
Still, more reports came, from Chesapeake Bay:
A Chesapeake Bay fish kill. Image from the Maryland Deptartment of the Environment.
Two million dead fish, spot and croakers, were found in Maryland. Officials wonder, is it the record cold temperatures?
What if we fly over to New Zealand?
A New Zealand fish kill. Image by Geoff Dale.
Hundreds of dead snapper found at Little Bay and Waikawau Bay, again many with their eyes missing.
Tired of seeing dead fish? Well, then let’s check out the mass death in England:
England's crab death. Image from the Thanet Coast Project.
40,000 dead crabs have washed up near Kent, England.
More bird deaths followed, including hundreds of dead doves with a “mysterious blue stain in their beaks” and 50 or so dead birds were found in Sweden. 150 tons of tilapia washed up in Vietnam. So, what’s going on? And don’t tell me about fireworks. Seriously.
Well, mass die offs of animals have been happening for a long time. The U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center has been tracking them since the 1970’s. 95 mass wildlife deaths have occurred in the last 8 months and there is an average of 163 events reported every year. Often they are the result of disease, parasitism or pollution. Sometimes no one knows. The past 8 months included 900 turkey vultures in the Florida Keys, 4,300 ducks in Minnesota, 1,500 salamanders, 2,000 bats and 2,750 sea birds in California. The current ones that have gotten so much attention aren’t even the biggest ones. in 1996, 100,000 ducks died in Canada. The causes of many of these deaths have been figured out. In fact, the crab kill in England has now happened 3 years in a row.
What’s changed this time is that our new awesome social media outlets, such as twitter, facebook and (ahem) blogs have allowed for people to learn about all of these events and for them to be seen on a global scale. And maybe the first one happened on a really slow news day. So this has finally grabbed people’s attention and people are trying to make sense of this phenomenon, which many are hearing about for the first time.
Some examples of the mass kills I’ve come across before include several cited by Rachael Carson in her book “Silent Spring,” which studies showed were related to pesticide use; in Ron Fridell’s book “Amphibians in Danger: A World Wide Warning,” the author describes how the amphibian decline I’ve been talking so much about first became recognized when a young herpetologist found a mass kill of frogs; and in the book “And the Waters Turned to Blood” by Rodney Barker, the author talks about how fish kills occurred with regularity in North Carolina. Disturbingly, these fish kills were linked to a dinoflagellate that released a toxin that caused serious problems in humans, including memory loss and disorientation.
So mass animal deaths have been occurring for decades, but that doesn’t mean that they are all together a natural phenomenon or that people shouldn’t take an interest. These examples I’ve mentioned led to the discontinuation of the worst pesticides as well as stricter studies on new pesticides being produced, the discovery of the UV radiation effects on frogs and the chytrid fungus and an advisory for fishermen to avoid working when there has been recent fish kills in North Carolina. It simply means that the “end of the world” hysteria is perhaps a bit exaggerated.
Want to know about some of the strangest mass deaths every to occur? Check this out. Seriously, follow that link because it is awesomeness.
A caterpillar with a nematode infection. Image taken by Peggy Greb.
Here’s the problem: If you are a parasite and the animal you are parasitizing gets eaten then you get eaten too. This worm has a solution. It changes the color of its caterpillar host and makes it undesirable to would be predators, like robins. Normally a pale color, this caterpillar will turn pink-red. Find out more about this special little trick here.
Previously, not much has been found about parasites manipulating their hosts to avoid predation. In fact, the opposite has been seen-using chemical mind control to alter the host animal’s behavior to increase the likelihood of it being eaten so that the parasite might move on to the next stage of its life cycle. Or my personal favorite, the worms that live inside grasshoppers and then, once again using molecular mimicry and chemical mind control, compel them to leap to their watery death so that the parasite can live out the remainder of its life free swimming in a stream or river.
White ibises from the University of Florida.
A five year study by the University of Florida shows that a diet containing relatively small amounts of mercury causes male ibises to nest together. Since mercury finds many ways into our environment, this can negatively impact the number of young ibises hatched in the wild.
This makes me wonder about other species of birds as well. In particular, I wonder about the San Francisco bay area, my hometown, because the bay contains high levels of mercury due to gold miners using mercury to separate the gold from the rock. Could this be altering the behavior of our birds? And what about the other wildlife? Me thinks this needs more investigation.
A note: This in no way implies anything at all about human sexual orientation. Humans physiology is dramatically different from the physiology of birds and studies on the effects of mercury on humans found no change in sexual behavior.
Find a good news article about this study here, or the actual publication here.
Backyard Zoologist 
