Category: Parental behavior
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On the whale-watching trip in Monterey Bay we were lucky enough to see not only humpback whales but also blue whales – the largest animal that has ever lived. The humpbacks and the blues both had calves with them. We had the happiness of seeing that these species were reproducing, and of glimpsing (barely) their…
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The story about the smelly babies isn't true. Birds don't reject their nestlings if people have handled them and gotten human scent all over them. Most birds can't smell much, anyway. (But don't say this around a vulture. Or a kiwi. Or a fulmar.) I don't know how this story got started, but I certainly…
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Earlier this year, a wildlife rescue center took in a mute swan (Cygnus olor). Mute swans aren't native birds. In North American we have tundra swans, whooper swans, and trumpeter swans. Some people buy mute swans, the lovely birds of classic European imagery, and place them on ornamental water to make it even more ornamental.…
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In Fort Jackson, Louisiana, the little bird having the oil washed off was struggling passionately. I couldn't figure out what it was. Not a gull, not a tern – could it be a rail? No, surely not. I was told it was a black skimmer. But I've seen skimmers (Rynchops niger). They don't look…
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Researchers in the Serengeti were quantifying the hunting behavior of female cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus). They measured the proportion of the day spent hunting, hunts started per hour, proportion of hunts which were successful, and time to complete a hunt. They recorded the age of the cheetahs' cubs if any, and how her hunting behavior changed…
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According to the newspaper Daffy Duck reads, “The TASMANIAN DEVIL is a powerful, vicious, evil-tempered brute… hungry at all times… it will eat anything but is especially fond of wild duck.” In creating the character of Taz, Warner Brothers was building on precedent. The person who described the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisi) for science, in…
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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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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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