Category: Animal behavior
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Before coming to Palmer, we knew that sheathbills are ingenious seekers/thieves of every possible scrap of nourishment, and that seals are one source of opportunity for them. We'd read of sheathbills eating bits out of seal poop, snipping off scabs and dead tissue from seal wounds, and even of sheathbills snatching milk from the…
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For many years my friend Mary Lynn Fischer lived with QuickView, an Arctic Fox (Alopex lagopus). Quickie's immediate family had been raised for the exotic pet trade; her ancestors just before that were bred for fur farms; and before that they had been wild. Quickie herself was both tame and wild. When you came over…
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I was reading Tupai: A Field Study of Bornean Treeshrews by Louise H. Emmons because that is the kind of thing I like, and learned about the absentee maternal system found in some treeshrew species. First I should say that treeshrews are the same as tree shrews, and the closing up of the word is…
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It's hard work being high on the food chain, and predators are always looking for labor-saving ways to catch prey. In national parks in Kenya, the lions have not only gotten blasé about trucks full of ecotourists, they've started to use them as cover. They'll sneak around behind a vehicle and then rush out to…
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My sister took this photograph. (Click on it for a better look.) It shows Sky, a Thoroughbred mare, and her first foal. The foal's about 5 minutes old. Because it was her first foal, Sky had no idea what was happening when she went into labor. First she felt bad, and then she felt really…
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Often when a cat does something in secret, it's a wicked thing. A certain cat belonging to a relative recently discovered how to enter a lidded hamper full of clean folded laundry, urinate on the laundry, and leap out without knocking over the hamper or otherwise being detected. Until my relative wanted a clean shirt.…
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