Nature yays

[Tusky]

I guess this animal was more of a landl *pause expectantly for gales of laughter*

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-45084802

[Jubal]

Ooh, the thing with the flies is really interesting in a grim sort of way.

[Glaurung]

All the aminals that crossed a log on a guy's trail cam in Pennsylvania.

Fascinating - many thanks. Quite a surprise that things like the bears, which could just wade the river, nevertheless choose the log to cross instead.

[Jubal]

things like the bears, which could just wade the river, nevertheless choose the log to cross instead.

This incidentally means I got the behaviour of the owlbear in my book unexpectedly accurate



In nice news, my native county has a new piece of wildlife back in town, with two female beavers being reintroduced to a site near snettisham (males hopefully to follow in the autumn):


Link:
https://www.lynnnews.co.uk/news/beavers-released-at-a-west-norfolk-site-is-a-major-step-for-largest-rewilding-project-of-its-kind-in-east-anglia-9107074/



Also I recently learned why wrynecks are so named and it's unutterably weird and fascinating. Have a watch:

This behaviour combines with their greek name of iunx and association with witchcraft (the Greek mythic Iunx was a nymph who cast a love spell on Zeus and was turned into a magic bird as punishment) to give us the modern word jinx for a curse/spell.

[Jubal]

This is nice - rediscovery of a rare elephant shrew species after half a century

A little-known mammal related to an elephant but as small as a mouse has been rediscovered in Africa after 50 years of obscurity.

The last scientific record of the "lost species" of elephant shrew was in the 1970s, despite local sightings. The creature was found alive and well in Djibouti, a country in the Horn of Africa, during a scientific expedition.

Elephant shrews, or sengis, are neither elephants nor shrews, but related to aardvarks, elephants and manatees. They have distinctive trunk-like noses, which they use to feast on insects.

There are 20 species of sengis in the world, and the Somali sengi (Elephantulus revoilii) is one of the most mysterious, known to science only from 39 individuals collected decades ago and stored in museums. The species was previously known only from Somalia, hence its name.

Rest of article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53820395

[Jubal]

An even longer run rediscovery, the Black-browed babbler:

Black-browed babbler found in Borneo 180 years after last sighting

Exclusive: Stuffed specimen was only proof of bird's existence until discovery in rainforest last year



In the 1840s, a mystery bird was caught on an expedition to the East Indies. Charles Lucien Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoleon, described it to science and named it the black-browed babbler (Malacocincla perspicillata).

The species was never seen in the wild again, and a stuffed specimen featuring a bright yellow glass eye was the only proof of its existence. But now the black-browed babbler has been rediscovered in the rainforests of Borneo.

Two local men, Muhammad Suranto and Muhammad Rizky Fauzan, chanced upon a bird they did not recognise in Indonesia's South Kalimantan province in October last year and managed to catch it. They photographed the bird, released it, and reported their find to birdwatching groups.

Experts from the region confirmed the bird's identity, noting its strong bill, chocolate colouring and distinctive black eye-stripe. Unlike the taxidermied specimen, the live bird's iris was a striking maroon colour.

Article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/25/black-browed-babbler-found-in-borneo-180-years-after-last-sighting

There have also been renewed rumours of Thylacine sightings on camera traps recently, though apparently one such sighting has been reviewed and assessed to be a pademelon. Finding thylacines would be amazing if true but I'm remaining very sceptical from what I've read so far.

[Jubal]

Interesting piece on apes and speech:

https://www.science.org/content/article/why-monkeys-can-t-talk-and-what-they-would-sound-if-they-could

The famed parrot Alex had a vocabulary of more than 100 words. Kosik the elephant learned to "speak" a bit of Korean by using the tip of his trunk the way people whistle with their fingers. So it's puzzling that our closest primate cousins are limited to hoots, coos, and grunts. For decades, monkeys' and apes' vocal anatomy has been blamed for their inability to reproduce human speech sounds, but a new study suggests macaque monkeys—and by extension, other primates—could indeed talk if they only possessed the brain wiring to do so. The findings might provide new clues to anthropologists and language researchers looking to pin down when humans learned to speak.

"This certainly shows that the macaque vocal tract is capable of a lot more than has previously been assumed," says John Esling, a linguist and phonetics expert at the University of Victoria in Canada, who was not involved with the work.

[Jubal]

I found this today which is super interesting: ibises aka the bin chickens of Australia have worked out a strategy for eating cane toads successfully without getting poisoned, which is pretty cool (and potentially helpful given what a nightmare cane toads have been for Australian ecosystems.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-63699884

[Glaurung]

I think this counts as a "nature yay": a four-year timelapse video of the US Geological Survey's Kilauea summit webcam. It's striking how quickly the deep crater left after the 2018 collapse fills up again.

[Jubal]

Yes, barring a mutual friend of ours deciding to finally become active on here I think we probably don't have the activity for a separate Physical Geography Yays, so Nature Yays seems right.

And that is super interesting!



An entry from me is that despite the war the Ukrainians are managing to push ahead with some interesting rewilding work including reintroduction efforts to expand the population of my beloved European Field Hamsters: https://rewildingeurope.com/news/second-group-of-hamsters-released-on-the-tarutino-steppe/ Which is excellent news!

[Jubal]

First ever pictures of a live Attenborough's Long-beaked Echidna! Nobody was quite sure if they were extinct or not and the species was known from a half century old dead specimen in a museum. They live in the remote Cyclops Mountains in Papua.

Scientists have filmed an ancient egg-laying mammal named after Sir David Attenborough for the first time, proving it isn't extinct as was feared.

An expedition to Indonesia led by Oxford University researchers recorded four three-second clips of Attenborough's long-beaked echidna.

Spiky, furry and with a beak, echidnas have been called "living fossils".

They are thought to have emerged about 200 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Until now, the only evidence that this particular species Zaglossus attenboroughi existed was a decades-old museum specimen of a dead animal.

"I was euphoric, the whole team was euphoric," Dr James Kempton told BBC News of the moment he spotted the Attenborough echidna in camera trap footage.

"I'm not joking when I say it came down to the very last SD card that we looked at, from the very last camera that we collected, on the very last day of our expedition."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67363874

[Spritelady]

How lovely! What an adorable creature!!

[Jubal]

Long-beaked echidnas generally (there are three species: Western, Eastern, and Sir David's) are fascinating creatures. They have a sort of comforting yet melancholic ponderous look about them, I think.

[Jubal]

Important whale news!





https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68358414

Scientists have worked out how some of the largest whales in the ocean produce their haunting and complex songs.

Humpbacks and other baleen whales have evolved a specialised "voice box" that enables them to sing underwater.

The discovery, published in the journal Nature, has also revealed why the noise we make in the ocean is so disruptive for these ocean giants.

Whale song is restricted to a narrow frequency that overlaps with the noise produced by ships.

"Sound is absolutely crucial for their survival, because it's the only way they can find each other to mate in the ocean," explained Prof Coen Elemans, of the University of Southern Denmark, who led the study.

[Jubal]

Look at this little guy! It's a newly discovered type of longhorn beetle from Australia, which has been given its own genus Excastra: it may have evolved to mimic having been killed by a fungus as a way of deterring predators, which is amazing.

Actual article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-68622828