Virtual Vacation to Japan and Northeast Asia

February 28, 2008

This week I've been thumbing through a really beautiful book by Tadao Shimba entitled A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Japan and North-East Asia (Yale University Press, 2007). The striking photographs, taken by Shimba, who is an internationally respected birder and natural history photographer, represent over 1,500 wild birds found in Japan, Korea, north-east China, and the Russian far east.

I put together a little slideshow of some of the book's images. (The music's by www.pacdv.com/sounds/.) Like real vacations, and the weekend, it ends all too abruptly. But stick around for the last note and definitely the last image. The book's senior editor from London, Jim Martin, and I agree that the last photo, in particular, is a winner. If you think pigeons aren't much to look at, check it out.

And, before you click, here's the bird lineup:

white-tailed eagles
little curlew
Saunder's gull
varied tit
Japanese green woodpecker
chestnut bunting
black-naped tern
Japanese grosbeak
white-bellied green pigeons

Sharks and People Shop the Same Way

The next time you visit a supermarket, consider how much you have in common with sharks, tuna, cod, sea turtles and penguins. These marine creatures, and more, all shop for food the same way that you do.

Let's say you're looking for soup. You probably start with the soup aisle. If you don't find what you're looking for there, you go to another place. Unless you really get off on food shopping (which I sort of do) you probably don't wander down each and every aisle looking for soup.

Sharks and marine predators follow the same logic, according to scientists from the Marine Biological Association and the University of Plymouth. They monitored the sea critters through use of electronic tags that charted movements. They determined that the sea predators foraged using a series of small motions interspersed with larger jumps to new locations. This would be like you going from the soup aisle to the store's deli section.

The tiger shark in the below Shark Week '07 clip was obviously craving a bit of turtle (soup). WARNING! This footage is not for turtle fanciers or the feint of heart.

Bats Radiate Animal Magnetism

February 27, 2008

The phrase "animal magnetism" may hold more truth than previously thought. Scientists from the University of Leeds and Princeton just discovered that big brown bats use a magnetic substance in their bodies that functions like a compass. The substance, magnetite, enables them to sense Earth's magnetic field. Like compass-toting scouts or campers, the detection then aids with navigation. And get this- most birds and mammals, including humans, have magnetite in their cells too. For some reason, though, we seem to have lost the ability to use it to find our way home, much to the relief of GPS car device manufacturers.

I have to wonder that, like perhaps our sense of smell, we still retain the ability, but our minds are busy handling other functions and thoughts. Remember the study not too long ago, for example, that had humans on their hands and knees sniffing the ground like dogs? We didn't perform too badly, although it was just announced yesterday that dogs can sniff through concrete, so our sniffing skills would likely never match those of canines.

Bats, as well as birds, beat us at natural navigation. Here's a big brown bat captured right when it encountered a wax moth. Something tells me the moth was a goner in frame two.

Faux Fidos As Good As Real Dogs?

February 26, 2008

Robotic dogs alleviate loneliness and offer companionship just as effectively as real canines, according to a new study conducted by Saint Louis University researcher William Banks and his colleagues. For the study, they introduced both a fake doggie and a real one to three nursing homes. The faux mutt was Aibo, a Sony-made robot that looks like a 3-D cartoon. The real pooch was a medium-sized, gentle dog named Sparky.

38 nursing home residents answered questions to assess their levels of loneliness after they spent time with the dogs. A control group did not see any pets, fake or in the flesh. Analysis of their responses found little difference, except that those who were introduced to any kind of dog had lower levels of depression than those who remained pet-less.

“There is a lot of loneliness in nursing homes and animal-assisted therapy – whether from a dog or a robot – is one answer for addressing that,” Banks said, adding that robotic dogs benefit staff because they require next to zilch maintenance.

A robotic dog could even save lives.

“This health companion could follow a person in his home, giving reminders on when to take medication or sending out an alert when a person has suddenly gone from a vertical position to a horizontal one,” he said. “A person could get tired of a robot following him around. But if you could change that inanimate voyeur to a personal part of his life and a companion, that could be entirely different.”

I can see where such a robot could be like one of those "I've fallen and I can't get up" devices. No doubt robotic chums are the wave of the future, but wouldn't you rather have a real dog, bad breath, flatulence poop and all? The gentleman here offers a different perspective.

Here's What Vikings Really Looked Like

February 25, 2008

"Vikings have more fun" could have been a horse cart bumper sticker during the Viking Age from 750-1050 A.D. Swedish archaeologist Annika Larsson has just determined that the intrepid Norse wore vivid colors, flowing silk ribbons and glittering bits of mirror, and that their lifestyle probably matched this more free spirited look. You have to put your mindset back 1,000 years to imagine what impact the styles had on conservative Medieval folks who later forbid such clothing. Even archaeologists were aghast when they saw women's clothing clasps in graves. "Traditionally (the placement of the clasps) has been explained by the clasps having fallen down as the corpse rotted. That sounds like a prudish interpretation, said Annika Larsson, who took the below photos of the human "Viking models."


Now maybe it's just me, but that fellow's garb reminds me of an Icelandic horse, which isn't a bad thing at all.

Animals were very integrated into Viking life, with archaeological remains showing that typical livestock animals were raised then, such as goats, sheep and pigs. We also have the Vikings to thank for developing, through selective breeding, the Norwegian forest cat

and the Border collie, which many regard as the world's most intelligent breed of dog. Given how cool the Vikings were, the dogs were indeed smart to hang around them. Here's one such canine giving sheep "the eye," an intimidating look to tell them just where to go.

Beavers Ease Droughts; A Blast from the Canadian Television Past

February 22, 2008

With their busy, dam-building ways, beavers seem to have a calling for work. If ever there was an example of a purpose driven life, it's the life of beavers. Now University of Alberta at Augustana researcher Glynnis Hood has determined that beavers help us, and entire ecosystems, by easing the effects of drought through their activities.

When beavers and their dams are around, the presence of open water in a region increases by up to 9 times. Thanks to beavers, even the most severe droughts may not desiccate landscapes and the creatures they support. In our infinite wisdom (not), we humans are infilling and draining wetlands to make way for urban and industrial expansion, removing beaver colonies in the process. We are therefore ensuring worse problems related to drought for us.

By leaving beavers be, the new research determined beavers recharge groundwater reserves, provide water for livestock and provide habitat and water resources used by amphibians and land animals.

Since the study was from Canada, I thought I'd share this classic moment from Canadian TV, which has long since been parodied.

And, because we're heading into the weekend, here's one of the parodies:

Get Inside An Ape's Head

February 21, 2008

Great apes imagine, suggests intriguing new research by cognitive scientist Tomas Persson, who will present a related paper on his findings tomorrow. Much of the theorizing comes down to the question—Do apes represent? That sounds like a rap term, and the two meanings are actually connected, but it refers to whether or not great apes can create, understand and interpret representations of reality and maybe even fiction too.

Consider a photograph. If you look at a picture online, it's both a representation of something or someone as well as being just a lit thing on your computer screen. Persson discovered that bonobos, which are closely related to chimpanzees, not only understand that photos represent reality, but that they can interpret these images and fill in any missing information. They're able to tell that a still photo of someone running does indeed represent motion, for example.

Now how do we know what apes know? The bonobos actually "told" Persson what they saw in the photos, since the apes had received prior language training. (Presumably this was by using sign language or through some kind of computer word recognition.)

“This is the most promising evidence yet that you don’t have to have a human brain to understand pictures as representations," he said. "But many studies remain to be done before we will know the extent of this ability in apes."

I wonder if bonobos daydream? The photo here sure looks like they do.

A Dinosaur Footprint Hunter's Guidebook

February 20, 2008

Dinosaur footprint hunter Ray Stanford has found over 900 Cretaceous era animal tracks right in the vicinity of the Discovery Channel headquarters. Washington D.C. likely also was once teeming with dino life, with over a dozen species alone located in nearby Maryland.

If you'd like to test your skills at finding fossilized dinosaur footprints, here are some suggestions from Stanford:

1. Start by reading a good book on the subject. He recommends books by Dr. Martin Lockley, such as Tracking Dinosaurs: A New Look at an Ancient World (Cambridge University Press, 1991).

2. "Focus on what the site has to offer, instead of looking for specific types of footprints," Stanford advises. "You'll probably be surprised by what you find."

3. Stream beds that have suffered recent erosion, such as from human activities or storms, may yield footprint-containing rock, or what are called "floats" by geologists and other rock hounds. Floats are pieces of track-bearing substrate that hydrodynamically dislodged from their natural stratigraphic context during stream bank flooding.

4. According to eHow, good places to start looking are Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, Connecticut; Holyoke, Massachusetts; Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, Texas; or Mill Canyon/Copper Ridge Dinosaur Tracks in Utah.

5. If you are in the Colorado area, consider joining the Dinosaur Trackers Research Group at the University of Colorado at Denver.

6. Study existing dinosaur tracks. Here are a few of Stanford's:

7. Finally, for a less adventurous, but no less interesting, hunt, check out your local natural history museum. The Smithsonian and other museums, for example, house impressive dino tracks.

"Frog from Hell" Changes Dino Era World View

February 19, 2008

A frog that grew to about the size of a basketball was just discovered in Madagascar by University College London and Stony Brook University researchers. Dubbed Beelzebufo, meaning "the frog from Hell," the ancient amphibian lived 70 million years ago. (illustration by Luci Betti-Nash)

Since the frog previously was thought to only have lived in South America, researchers now believe Madagascar, India and South America were all once connected, at least until late in the Dinosaur Age. UCL's Susan Evans, who helped to find the froggy fossil, said that in life, it would have resembled "a slightly squashed beach ball with short legs and a big mouth." Although it mostly consumed insects and small vertebrates, like lizards, there's a chance it munched on hatchling or juvenile dinosaurs too.

How Your Ancient Ancestors Affected Your Height

February 18, 2008

Although human height varies a great deal, the average height among societies remains mostly consistent across the board. As a result, the average Pygmy, for example, is much smaller than the average Croatian. New research conducted by Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology researchers Robert Walker and Marcus Hamilton found that the past population density and location of our ancestors contributed to these size distinctions. If your distant ancestors lived in a crowded place with limited resources and a higher incidence of disease, you have a greater likelihood of being short, according to the findings. That's because natural selection favored earlier maturation and earlier births to combat the possibility of dying before reproduction.

Conversely, if your distant ancestors lived in less densely populated areas that were more open, like tundra, savanna and desert regions, you have a greater likelihood of being tall. Colder climates also seem to favor big people, probably because, by their very nature, these places result in less population density. But lifestyle also comes into play. Pastoral groups, such as the Maasai and other nomadic herding tribes, also tend to be tall.

Numerous studies and surveys over the years have documented the average height of people based on the country in which they live. Taking those into account, here is a rough listing of the rankings, starting with the tallest. The average adult male Croatian is just over 6 feet tall while the average adult Indonesian was reported as being just over 5'2".

1. Croatia
2. Netherlands
3. Iceland
4. Germany
5. Sweden
6. Norway
7. Estonia
8. Canada
9. Australia
10. Finland
11. Belgium
12. U.S.A. (ranking represents the national average, as heights varied widely among different ethnic groups within all of the listed countries)
13. Spain
14. U.K.
15. Lithuania
16. New Zealand
17. Poland
18. Italy
19. Israel
20. France
21. Switzerland
22. Malta
23. Korea
24. Portugal
25. Argentina
26. Singapore
27. Japan
28. Taiwan
29. Cote d'Ivoire
30. China
31. Brazil
32. Gambia
33. India
34. Philippines
35. Vietnam
36. Indonesia

Bigger tends to be better when it comes to fertility rates in small scale societies, such as in existing hunter-gatherer groups. For most people, however, size is what you make of it, as 5'3" basketball superstar Muggsy Bogues, the shortest person to ever play in the NBA, proved. (Nature photo.)