Brown bears (Ursus arctos) are native to an expansive home range, including Eurasia and North America. Their diet consists of a wide variety of foods like meats, berries, and other plants. They perform a behavior called caching, which is where they hide food to save it for later; they will often need to guard their…
Creature Feature: Native Freshwater Mussels
California’s freshwater streams are home to a surprising variety of shellfish. Clusters of bivalves nestle themselves among the small pebbles and overhangs of riverbeds, sometimes almost indiscernible from their surroundings. Though these organisms may not be in the spotlight, each one of the species plays an important role in riparian ecosystems. None are more important…
Throwback Creature Feature: Wild Turkey
We’re talking turkey in this throwback post from 2018!
Sunday sketch: the Yeti crab
The Yeti crab (Kiwa hirsuta) live in what are called cold seeps, which are areas of the ocean floor where there is a plethora of sulfides and methane that seep from fissures in the ground. In order to thrive in these harsh conditions, Yeti crabs have an epibiotic relationship with bacteria that live on the…
Field Frame Friday: Foxes and Food
Island Foxes (Urocyon littoralis) inhabit the California Channel Islands. Over the course of the last 150 years or so, the ecology of each island has changed substantially, leading to different outcomes for different fox populations. The fox above is from Santa Cruz Island, where the population is currently healthy, although the foxes there are famous…
Sunday sketch: Badger behavior
The European badger (Meles meles) has a reputation for being a feisty creature, likely due to their territorial nature during the breeding season, when these animals are quick to fight one another. However, during the rest of the year, European badgers are very social, spending time grooming one another and denning together. Art by @miri_leshem_pelly…
Creature Feature: Gursky’s Spectral Tarsier
For our Halloween Special, we dive into the dark jungle to take a closer look at this mysterious, bug-eyed insect eater…
Sunday Sketch: Magical moths
The polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus), is a giant silk moth, with eyespots on its wings. The moth uses these spots to perform a distraction display to threaten predators, which essentially makes the insect appear larger and more threatening to whatever is trying to eat it. The moth gets its name from the Greek myth of the…
Creature Feature: Querequequé
Incognito, understudied, and onomatopoetic…spot this week’s creature!
Field Frame Friday: Salmon Salutations
To recreate natural conditions for rearing fish, salmon can be kept in cages deployed in streams within their native habitat. When setting out to check on the fish and cages, researchers load their equipment onto a jon boat and get their daily exercise by paddling up and down the river. [Photo by Ken Zillig][Caption by…
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