We recently added bees to our menagerie (ongoing photos here). Which means we’re making sugar syrup for two kinds of critters now, so I made this handy cheat sheet to hang in the kitchen.
Click on the image above to go to Flickr, where you can use the All Sizes link to get to various sizes to print your own.
As reported by the BBC, Baby chicks do basic arithmetic:
Scientists from the universities of Padova and Trento demonstrated chicks’ ability to add and subtract objects as they were moved behind two screens.
Lucia Regolin, an author of the study said the animals “performed basic arithmetic” to work out which screen concealed the larger group of objects.
The researchers raised the chicks with small plastic balls and used their instinct to be with the group to test their hypothesis. The chicks could remember which screen hid the larger number of balls and ran to it when released from their observation box. Check out the video on the BBC site…this looks like an experiment that teens could reproduce for the science fair.
Enjoy this video of Clouded Leopard cubs born at the National Zoo:
We’d all be better off if we spent more time watching animal babies.
From the New York Times, we have Rescue Flight: a story of helping Whooping Cranes along on their migration.
At 200 feet, the first pilot, Chris Gullikson, was perfectly visible in his trike’s open cockpit. He was wearing his whooping-crane costume, a white hooded helmet and white gown that looked like a cross between a beekeeping suit and a Ku Klux Klan get-up. Gullikson and the other trike pilots were going to pick up the 14 juvenile whooping cranes that they were, little by little, leading south for the winter.
How do they imprint the juvenile cranes? Check out this video:
There’s lots more where that came from, on the Operation Migration YouTube Channel. Enjoy!
Links: Rescue Flight from the NY Times and Operation Migration on YouTube
Enjoy!
Here’s some beautiful photographs of animals. The slide show is being credited to Arturo Medina, but information on the photographer isn’t readily available and the appearance of Lime Cat makes me think that this might be a collection of work by various photographers. Regardless, it’s a visual treat:
via Lloyd’s Blog.
Tara and Bella are best friends forever at the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee:
I’m fascinated by animals who work as guardians to livestock. Here’s a post from Cat Urbigkit about her beautiful Akbash dogs who share duties with some guard burros.
Livestock guardian play: All this commotion caused pains to our guard animals, especially to the older pair of burros, which don’t like any change at all. But the fun part to watch was the introduction of new sheep into the herd and how the guardians respond to that.
Read more and see more photos of Livestock guardian play (From Stephen Bodio’s Querencia.)
Here’s some amazing road-cam footage of a dog helping to save another dog who had been hit on the highway. (Hard to watch that footage of the first dog being hit, but amazing to see the other dog helping.)
I know it’s evil of me to spoil the good feeling, but I can think of another reason why a dog would pull something off the road.
Via @dalepd
Critter Geek
