All posts in wildlife

Happy World Octopus Day!

October 10, 2017

Octopuses might not seem like the most charismatic of characters, but the reading I’ve been doing lately makes me want to do a deep dive and make an octopus best friend pronto.

In honor of World Octopus Day, Jer Thorp told a great story about getting to know an octopus on Storify.

A number of similar stories can be found in Sy Mongomery’s book, The Soul of an Octopus. Montgomery becomes friendly with a number of very different octopuses during the course of researching and writing her book, and she tells the story of each of them with a sensitivity and probing inquisitiveness worthy of an octopus’ tentacle. In this passage, she describes meeting Athena, the New England Aquarium’s octopus at the beginning of her research:

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Comments: 2 Posted by: Categories: Book, Molluscs, wildlife 0

If You’re Touching a Wild Animal, Something’s Wrong

October 6, 2017

Stories like this recent one from The Guardian drive me nuts. The article describes the practice of providing wild animals for tourists’ selfies in the Amazon, and what drives me crazy about the whole thing is that the industry preys, not only on the hapless, half-drugged, beaten-up animals (though that’s bad enough), but also on the tourists.

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Comments: 0 Posted by: Categories: Article, wildlife 1

St. Tiggywinkles

October 3, 2017

The world’s leading wildlife hospital is apparently called St. Tiggywinkles, and I can’t even.

OK, I would probably post the name of the place even if it had nothing to do with this site, but happily, it relates. I love these instructions on what to do if you find a baby bird on the ground, and I also love the woman who brought in a hedgehog because she noticed it was outside in the daytime, when hedgehogs are usually sleeping.

If the “people sphere” and the “wildlife sphere” end up covering each other like two condensation rings from the same glass set down in nearly the same place on an old wooden table, as I think is likely, then more education and engagement like this is needed. People and wild animals will continue to run into each other, crossing paths, lapping at each others’ habitats, causing havoc, and destruction, and even some cuteness along the way.

Comments: 0 Posted by: Categories: Hedgehog, UrbanWildlife, Website, wildlife 1

Earth Flattens Just A Bit More

October 2, 2017

It’s hard to imagine not being mildly thrilled at the idea of some wild-looking nudibranches washing up on the shores of the U.S., but the news isn’t all neon colors and new waving tentacles: these new arrivals are survivors of the 2011 Japanese tsunami, and they arrive as castaways. The nudibranches, sea slugs, and other creatures survived the tsunami’s wreckage by floating on plastic rafts over many thousands of miles and several generations, and they have no natural predators in their new homes.

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Comments: 0 Posted by: Categories: Article, Molluscs 0

Where the Animals Go

September 29, 2017

The quotation I posted one post back is from the book, Where the Animals Go, with which I’m currently obsessed. In Where the Animals Go, the two authors take a look at the movements of groups of animals, letting the animals themselves map areas and giving us insight into how they see their world.

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Comments: 0 Posted by: Categories: Book, wildlife 0

We can see how the lifeblood of the world's first national park also depends on protecting land outside its borders. And once you see that — once you see that twice a year elk are hoofing across 23 million acres of state, private, tribal, and federal boundaries on trails that predate them all — it's hard not to question our reasons for rending wilderness into so many scraps, each with its own agenda and regulations. Elk use the land as one big, interconnected system. Perhaps we might learn to do the same. -- Cheshire and Uberti, Where the Animals Go"

Where the Animals Go – It’s Jumping the Line on my Reading List

Bullfrogs_2017_09 from Blue Mot Mot on Vimeo.

Bullfrogs Near Dawn in the Tregaron Conservancy

September 25, 2017

Have you wondered what bullfrogs at dawn sound like? Definitely not like coyotes, I can tell you that (see previous post for reference), but still pretty great. Save yourself some sleep and get a listen here.

Comments: 0 Posted by: Categories: Frog, wildlife 0

Coyote Wild

September 24, 2017

Earlier this month, I found myself obsessed with this article on coyotes living in DC. I recently acquired a “camtraptions” camera trap photography gizmo to be able to (hopefully) capture animals remotely, as if I were a real scientist or National Geographic photographer (I am neither). I had planned to use the camtraption on something like raccoons or bats — maybe even a beaver if I got really lucky — but I never imagined I could potentially capture megafauna like coyotes in DC.

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Comments: 0 Posted by: Categories: Coyote, UrbanWildlife, wildlife 0
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