Biodiversity encompasses all life on Earth: from the adorable birds in your backyard to the terrific trees that provide shade each summer, the fresh fish in your tacos to the sneaky squirrel that tries to snag your snack . . .
Category: California Natives
Creature Feature: California ground squirrel
California ground squirrels choose bravado and spunk to protect themselves from rattlesnakes.
Sunday Sketch: Otter Pockets
In stark contrast to humans, otters have successfully achieved gender equality when it comes to pockets. Both female and male otters have baggy portions of loose skin under their forearms that they can use to store various items. These pockets are often used to store food for later, but are also home to rocks that…
Field Notes: Breaking up (with your study species) is hard to do!
They say you never forget your first love, and I know that to be true…for birds. If you’re a regular reader of the Ethogram, you know that we put our hearts and souls into our study species. I’m often asked “Why that bird?” and while it’s easy to respond “Because they’re awesome!” there are actually…
Field Frame Friday: Food poisoning continues to curse California condors.
Did you know that this scavenger gets food poisoning, but maybe not in the “rotten meat” way you think. In the 1980s, California condors (Gymnogyps californianus) were considered extinct in the wild due to many factors, but largely from unintentional lead poisoning from bullet fragments left in terrestrial animal carcasses. Due to captive breeding there…
Field Frame Friday: Garibaldi neighbors respect the “no trespassing” signs.
Garibaldi (Hypsypops rubicundus) are territorial fish. Males will clear bottom territories and combat other fish and even SCUBA divers that come too close to their territory. However, it is uncommon that there is intraspecfic aggression; Garibaldis generally “respect” each other’s territories, so there is no need for aggression within species. [Photo by Nick Chudeau and…
Field Frames Friday: Is this habitat too hot, too cold, or juuuuust right?
California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) choose their habitats based on having optimal thermoregulation (maintaining their body temperature). Some of their preferred habitat characteristics include large, flat rocks, lighter surfaces, and protected coastlines from wave action. These features allow California sea lions to easily perform thermoregulation behaviors such as basking on large flat surfaces (like the…
Sunday Sketch: Learning to pick your battles
Northern elephant seal harems (Mirounga angustirostris) are a cacophony of noises with males vocalizing at each other and occasionally getting into physical battles; what information is coded within those noises? Researchers at University of California, Santa Cruz used playback experiments (i.e. recording vocalizations and then playing the vocalizations back to other individuals) to discover that…
Creature Feature: Eastern Pacific harbor seal
These young harbor seals must learn many important life lessons before graduating to their independent sea lives!
Creature Feature: Mexican Free-tailed Bat
Batshit crazy. Batty. Bats in the belfry. Blind as a bat. A cursory examination of these idioms does not exactly paint a pretty picture of the collective opinion of our winged mammalian relatives. Bats, however, have a slew of fascinating behavioral and morphological traits that should elicit awe and recognition. The Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida…
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