White terns (Gygis alba) don’t build nests for their eggs! They usually find a fork in a branch and stay on their egg during incubation (Miles 1986). The chicks are born with adapted feet to cling to the branch while the mom goes searching for fish dinners. [Photo by Nick Chudeau; Caption by Karli Chudeau]…
Creature Feature: Vampire finch
Darwin’s finches gone bad!
Sunday Sketch: Opossum Nipples
Did you know that the Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) has 13 nipples – 12 arranged in a circle with one in the middle? They are also North America’s only marsupial. Spooky! Sketch and fact contributed by Victoria Farrar Source: Whitson, M. 2017. “Didelphis virginiana: Life History.” Accessed 10 October 2018, available from Encyclopedia of Life, http://eol.org/pages/328501
Field Frame: World Lemur Festival
Happy world lemur festival! The Indri is the largest of the living lemurs (although there used to be lemurs as big as gorillas!). Adults live in pairs and sing duets each morning, which can serve to improve group cohesion (Giacoma et al., 2010) and defend their forest territory (Pollack, 1986). Their name in Malagasy, Babakoto,…
Sunday Sketch: Manatee Mammaries
Armpits may be a ticklish place for humans, but for manatees (Order: Sirenia), armpits are good for nursing young! Manatees are mammals and nurse their offspring with mammary glands that are located under the pectoral flippers for over a year. Sketch and fact contributed by Karli Chudeau Source: Berta, A. (2012). Diversity, Evolution, and Adaptations…
Field Fiasco: Fabric Fiesta!
Doing field research in a foreign country comes with many issues that you might not encounter in the United States—having to pack all of your equipment to meet airline regulations, adapting to a new culture, and speaking multiple new languages are all challenges I have had to overcome in order to study social relationships in…
Sunday Sketch: Goats and Smiles
If you want to befriend a goat, better say cheese! New research shows that goats can distinguish between human happy and sad faces, and prefer the pictures of humans that smile! When presented with images of the two facial expressions, goats spent 50% more time approaching and nudging the happy-face photos. This has important implications…
Field Frame Friday: Living that island life
Native to Aldabra Atoll in the Seychelles, Aldabran Giant Tortoises (Aldabrachelys gigantea) don’t have to deal with predation, and with an abundance of tropical food, warm weather, and environmental protection, they spend their days grazing vegetation in the morning, and snoozing on beaches in the afternoon, taking dips into shallow pools of water to regulate their temperature. These tortoises are one way that local land plants disperse their seeds (Hnatiuk, 1978).
Transgenerational Plasticity: Lamarck’s Redemption
Dust off any high school biology textbook, flip to the evolution section, and you’ll see the stoic, world-weary face of Charles Darwin, father of evolutionary theory. His book On the Origin of Species laid the foundation for concepts, such as natural selection, that shape how we understand evolution and species diversity today. Pair his work…
Field Notes: Kiddie pools in Mongolia
This summer I was part of an international-interdisciplinary team studying a social-ecological system in the Selenge River Valley of northern Mongolia. I know: that’s two hyphens too many, but hang in there, there were also the largest salmon in the world, sheep as far as the eye could see, and crispy yogurt chips. There were…
theethogram.com 