Not Quite A Bird Brain - Corvids Can Clean Up Our Mess!

There are lots of clever animals out there and in fact the task of even trying to define whether an animal is intelligent or not is a difficult process in of itself. But I’m sure you all know and will agree that the 126 species which are found within the Corvidae family all exhibits some form of intelligence. 

Corvidae’s or corvids for short are a family of birds in which you can find species such as crows, ravens and jays. As a family they can be found across the world on every continent apart from Antarctica and many of them regularly perform tasks which can be construed as intelligent. This intelligence can be attributed to the fact that some species of crows possess a brain to body weight ratio equal to that of great apes, whales, dolphins and porpoises. As a family they do range in size and colour with the smallest weighing only 41g and the heaviest being the thick-billed raven sometimes exceeding 1400g. They are non-migratory however some populations have been known to temporary relocate to other regions where the conditions are better, a behaviour which is usually driven by food shortage.  

Now there is a reason I have chosen to write about corvids today as I have heard about a Dutch start-up company which have come up with an environment idea using crows. Their idea is to use crows to pick up the billions of cigarette butts which are thrown onto the ground each year. This is a real problem as in 2016, 258 billion cigarettes were produced in the USA alone, now while some of these would have been disposed of responsibly many would have simply been dropped. Add this to the fact that it takes 18months – 10 years to degrade depending on the environmental conditions they become a huge problem.

The Start-up plans to release trained crows which have learnt to bring these butts and other small bits of rubbish to a special station where it would then be weighed and scanned and dropped into a collection pot whilst some food would be released for the bird. This is an idea which has already been proven to work. Also the beauty of it is that hopefully by releasing a few birds which have been trained to litter pick others will observe this behaviour and then copy in order to benefit from the free food.

There are people who question whether we should be using animals to collect our rubbish. This is understandable as it will affect their natural behaviour stopping them from foraging in the ‘natural’ method. Saying this however corvids have been observed using bread crumbs to catch fish and dropping nuts and other food items into roads so they are easily broken open by vehicles, so when you look at these events you can see that humans are already affecting corvids behaviour. There is also another issue with the fact that the cigarette butts could be easily ingested and then kill the birds. So I’ll let you decide what you think but I think that this is a good idea.

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Check out this video from Oren Hasson

Check out this video from Adventure sports network

Plastic In The News - Your Coffee Is About To Get Even More Expensive

So I’m still going on about plastic at the minute but that’s only because of what’s been happening in the news over the last week or so.

First of all an announcement from China has stated that it will no longer be importing plastics from other countries to recycle. This is serious as currently China is importing and recycling around 500,000 tonnes of UK plastic waste annually, and we’re not the only country to send our waste there. As in 2016 alone China processed 7.3 million tonnes of plastic which is over half the total amount recycled globally in 2016.

This new import ban is understandable as China as an industrial country is heavily polluted and although a large amount of business was conducted thanks to the importation then breaking down and recycling of plastics. So not only will foreign

exports such as the UK suffer and have to look for other countries such as Malaysia or Vietnam to take in and process their waste or deal with it themselves, so of the Chinese population will have to undergo changes as their source of income adapt. But I think it is right as if China wishes to ban plastic imports as it shows that they wish for their country to develop and are taking environmental factors into consideration.

As well as this news the UK ministers have also brought up today that they wish to impose a 25p “latte levy” per disposable coffee cup used in the UK. This is thought to be widely welcomed by many as currently the UK throws away 2.5 billion coffee cups a year.

This is mainly due to the fact of their composition as they are cardboard with an plastic lining to waterproof the container. This is effective and cheap to produce but it does make them extremely difficult to recycle as these elements have to be separated. As of this moment there are only two processing plants in the UK capable to undertake this process which limits the amounts which can be recycled.

Ministers have said that they hope that this new levy will help to encourage people to make use of reusable cups instead of the one use items.

Disposable cups also help bring up the fact that some commonly used products are extremely difficult to break down to recycle. Such as Pringle cans, those trays used in food packaging and Lucozade sport bottles all because they are made up of several different core components.

Hopefully these announcements will have the desired effects.

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Check out this video from RedBull

All Rivers Lead To The Sea - And They Take Their Plastic With Them

Continuing with the recent themes of our oceans there is an upcoming conference I’d like to bring to your attention.

A meeting of a UN Climate Change conference is planning to attempt to tackle plastic pollution in the sea.  Currently it is prohibited for a vessel to dump waste plastic overboard in any waters, both national and international waters. However there are presently no laws to make countries monitor and control the plastics entering the sea from land, through either rivers or being blown and dumped on beaches.  

This is a major issue as a 2015 study estimated that around eight million tons of  the 275 million tons of plastic generated annually enters the oceans from the land every year. It is also believed that this number is likely to increase tenfold by 2020. To put 8 tons in another way it’s the equivalent of five carrier bags per square foot of coastline globally, which is a staggering idea.

Hopefully when they meet some agreement can be reached in order to control this source of pollution at least to some degree. Unfortunately passing international laws is extremely difficult with countries such as the US not officially agreeing to them but sometimes volunteer to consider the option of abiding by them with not legal commitment which is at least a step in the right direction. 

All of this is continuing the UN commitment to significantly reducing plastic pollution by 2025. We can only hope that they achieve their goals in time.

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Check out this video from United Nation

Christmas Is Round The Corner - This Is An Ideal Gift!

With Christmas just round the corner and the idea of Christmas shopping in the front of most people’s minds, even though I’m sure most of you like me has only thought about it so far and has not actually bought anything yet.

I’ve come across this company through Facebook and from a look into it they look like an idea gift to give in this festive season.

4Ocean is a company which has been set up by a couple of surfaces who wanted to make a difference. They are attempting to reduce the 1.4 billion pounds of rubbish which enters the world’s oceans each year. They achieve this by selling bracelets, with the proceeds from each sale guaranteeing the removal of one pound of rubbish from the oceans.

So far their website (at time of publishing) says they have managed to remove 200,115 pounds from the oceans across the globe targeting both coastal beach clean ups and offshore regions at the same time.

So go check out their website at the link below and maybe give your friends and family a gift that also benefits the planet. 

4Ocean - get your Christmas shopping done here

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Check out this video from 4Ocean

Check out this video from Primitive Technology

It's More Than Just A Fish - Whale Sharks

If you live in the UK I’m sure you’ll know that currently the BBC is airing a new series of Blue Planet II which is well worth watching if for some unknown reason you aren’t already. It was last nights episode on the open ocean and featured the animal I’ll be writing about today.

The Whale Shark as stated in the program is a little understood creature, we are yet to unravel the complex stages and behaviours of these creatures. Saying this we do know some interesting information on whale sharks.

As a species they are mainly found within the Indo-Pacific region with 75% of their population being present there whilst the other 25% can be found in the Atlantic Ocean. This being said studying these population reductions has led to scientist believing that Whale Shark numbers have fallen by over 50% in the last 75 years and they are currently categorised as endangered on the IUCN red list. These declines have been related to three main reasons. Fisheries are making up a large part for this decline, fishing for Whale Sharks is mainly undertaken in the South China Sea. Another cause is due to bycatch as it is believed that the presence of Whale Sharks indicate that there are Tuna around and so upon sighting, nets are set and inevitably Whale Sharks gets caught a

s well. A final reason is from vessel strikes, with the trade routes becoming increasingly busy as the need to transport goods intensifies more and more Whale Sharks are being found in shipping lanes. This is exacerbated as Whale Sharks regularly feed at the surface making them more vulnerable to collisions.

Whale Sharks can grow up to 20m long and reach a weight in excess of 34,000kg, and all of this mass is sustained by microscopic creatures. As it is well known Whale Sharks are filter feeders and filter out plankton and krill from suspension. They are capable of processing 6,000L an hour which passes over many thousands of teeth like structures. Whilst most of this feeding takes place at the surface where blooms are frequently found they can also dive over 700m to feed where blooms have gathered due to nutrient rich upwelling providing suitable conditions for their food sources.

It is possible to be able to identify individuals from their unique pattern of white spots on their backs. Thanks to this and tracking tags more and more has been learnt about Whale Shark behaviour in recent years. However we currently still don’t know all that much about their life whilst they are young this is because we are yet to find a Whale Shark nursery. It was suggested in Blue Planet however that as hundreds of Whale Sharks gather round the Galapagos Islands whilst pregnant that they could be giving birth in the depths around these islands so as to allow their young to avoid predation from there sharks.

In an attempt to protect Whale Sharks for future generations many larger fisheries have ceased target based fishing. As well as key coastal feeding areas such as Ningaloo reef (Australia), Gladden Spit (Belize) and many others in an attempt to provide suitable conditions to encourage population growth.  Hopefully these steps and an increased knowledge of these amazing creatures will result in the stabilisation of Whale Shark populations, leading to population growth in the future.

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Check out this video from BBCWorldwide

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Mass Factory Shutdown - Breath That Fresh (ish) Air

An announcement from China earlier this week may mark the first of many steps which need to be taken to help improve the mess we’ve made of this planet. A crackdown by Chinese officials has led to the temporarily closure of more than 80,000 factors. These factories and some of their managing directors have also been charged with criminal offences for breaches in emissions over the last year which effect air quality. This is all part of China’s Communist party attempting to hit it’s 2017 pollution target, and so with that in mind they have shut forty percent of their factories.

There are currently two significant environmental targets China is hoping to reach within set time frames which are related to air quality. The first of which being to reduce the concentration of hazardous fine particulate matter such as soot, smoke and liquid droplets produced from industry to 35 micrograms per cubic meter by 2035. Whilst the other target is to reduce their overall emissions from manufacturing by 30% as of the end of 2017, a target which was announced in 2013.

China is yet hit their target of the 30% reduction by the end of 2017 and so may have been a contributing factor for these mass closures of factories, and although they have left it till almost the very end of 2017 it is a good sign that they have started to take action.

These closures have clearly had effects on companies as they have been forced to stop production and can’t complete orders, and people are having their jobs affected. However it is believe by the masses to be a good thing. This is because air pollution in China is believed to be attributing to somewhere between 700,000 -2.2million deaths a year, so increased air quality will have a significant effect of life expectancy of the Chinese people, especially in urban areas.  In places such as Beijing the PM2.5 scale which is used to measure the concentration of hazardous fine particulate matter reached as high as 976 micrograms in early October. This occurs when weather conditions result in static air so without the aid of wind dispersal the particulates build up rapidly. This is a concern as the World Health Organization puts the maximum healthy exposure at 25 micrograms.

Annual median concentration of PM2.5

China unfortunately is not the only country known for having extremely poor air quality within its urban areas but it is not on its own. Other cities, mainly across the developing world have similarly poor air quality. A 2016 study claimed that 80% of cities have air quality which did not fall within the World Health Organizations guidelines. This included cities such as Delhi (India) at 122 micrograms, Al Jubail (Saudi Arabia) 152 micrograms, and Zabol (Iran) 217 micrograms.

So hopefully this is the first of many steps for China to manage to improve their air quality, and once these temporary closures are sorted the overall outcome is a more positive one.

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Check out this link which gives real time global air quality

https://waqi.info/

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Need To Find Some Explosives - Are Rats The Answer

So as a species I’m sure that most of you will consider what I’ll be writing about today a pest or vermin which spread disease. The reason I’m going to be discussing this species today is actually because of a program I was watching on Netflix the other day.

Rats are an amazing group and there are actually 51 different species within the group Rattus, some of which are endemic to certain areas such as the Polynesian rat whilst others have been transported across the world mainly through human activities such as the brown rat. The brown rat has a range which covers nearly the entire world and this is due to them stowing away on ships during the age of expansion.

There is however a certain species I was planning on writing about today and that is African giant muroid rodents. This species as the name suggests can originally be found across Africa and is currently causing all sorts of problems as an invasive species in the Florida Keys were a private breeder allowed several to escape and are believe to be the source of the 2003 monkeypox outbreak in the area. Usually however they are found in colonies made up of around twenty individuals in forests or thickets. They feed on vegetables, insects, crabs and invertebrate and use their pouches to carry large amount of food back to their burrows.  They have rather poor eyes sight and so usually depend on an excellent sense of smell.

pouched rat, which isn’t actually a true rat but are from a branch of

It is in fact its sense of smell which has brought them to my attention.

What does a dog; bee and pouched rat have in common? 

There are all used as search animals to smell things which have been hidden such as money, drugs and in the case of the pouched rat explosives. That’s right pouched rats are being used in different areas of the world to sniff out landmines. For instance in Cambodia there are teams of them attempting to clear the millions of lost mines due to years of conflict. This is important work as in 2013 there were 3,308 casualties worldwide from landmines and most of these casualties were made up of children or farms.

Rats are an ideal animal for this jobs as they are highly intelligent as well as being light enough to be able to walk over the mines without setting them of by accident. An individual is able to search over 200 square meters in 20 minutes. This is achieved by the rat being on two ropes to guide it in a grid like pattern to efficiently search the area.

Since 1997 APOPO (the Belgium non-profit organisation) has helped clear 13,200 mines in Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola and Cambodia (2015), which has opened up a vast area of land which was previously too dangerous to enter.

Not only are the pouched rats able to smell explosives they can also be trained to sniff out tuberculosis which has a how other load of benefits for humans. So although rats can spread disease (not as much as you might think though) there are some out there working to help humanity correct its mistakes.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this link from BBC Earth