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.

Thanks for reading!

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.

Thanks for reading! 

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.

Thanks for reading!

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

Thanks for reading!

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.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from BBCWorldwide

 Check out this video from KayakSessionTV 

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.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this link which gives real time global air quality

https://waqi.info/

Check out this video from

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

A Second Failed breeding Season - Adelie Penguins

For the second time in three years the Adelie penguin colony found in the east of the Antarctic has failed to successfully raise a single chick from an estimated 36,000 chicks. This is a tragic event.

The Adelie penguin is the known for being one of the most southerly breeding bird in the world and can be found along the Antarctic coast from October to February. They are easily identifiable as their entire heads are covered in black plumage with the adult penguins also having a thin circle of white around each of their eyes. Currently the Adelie penguin is marked as least concern on the IUCN red list as of a 2016 survey by BirdLife International.  This assessment is actually an improvement compared to the 2012 study where as a species they were defined as near threatened but with the recent failed breeding season the jury is out their current classification. Luckily as the Adelie penguin has a lifespan unto 16 years so as long as the adults survive a failed breeding season can easily be overcome but if their frequency increase that’s when populations can fall.

So it is mainly believed that the failure of this breeding season was down to reduced number krill which Adelie penguin’s primary food source is making up to 98% of their food during certain times of the year. The penguins have been seen to feed at depths of 150m under the surface.  Currently the WWF is calling for a ban on krill fishing in the area around the colony which would at least help to relieve this particular pressure on the Adelie penguins. Ideally there would be the creation of a new marine protected area where no or at least very limited fishing would take place and so benefit not only the Adelie penguins but other species in the area.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from the BBC

Help The Planet - From Your Sofa!

So I actually found out about this while sitting in my lounge on youtube. It was one of those thirty second adverts which you can skip after five seconds, however unlike almost all the other adverts I watched it to completion for once.

The product which was being advertised was a new search engine called Ecosia. It functions exactly the same as google except the advertising revenue which it generates as you use the search engine is put towards planting trees across the world.  A cool feature of it is that the is a real time counter of how many trees they have managed to fund as a collective but also a personal count of how many searches you have undertaken in the top right. According to Ecosia it takes on average 45 searches for you to create enough funds to plant a tree.

So a few facts about Ecosia as a search engine, they claim to currently process 56 searches a second with over 5.5 million active users. Which are some big numbers and at the current time of writing this they have planted 14,606,959 trees which is amazing. Now as a search engine it is never going to replace Google in most people eyes as they currently have 1.17 billion users with 40,000 searches a second but is they could achieve even a 1/20 of these numbers it would create something massive. 

So if everyone was to use this search engine in conjunction with Google it would start to make a real difference.

So go check it out and get planting those trees (through proxy)

https://www.ecosia.org/

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from Ecosia

Amur leopard - A Zoo Where You Never See The Exhibit

I’M BACK!!!

So it’s been a while but here’s another post I hope you’ll enjoy.

I recently saw this post about the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s Highland Wildlife Park and thought I'd bring it here. They are about to receive a pair of Amur leopards which they hope to be able to breed from, and in turn release these cubs into the wild in Russia.

This article in particular caught my eye as the article went on to say that the society was planning on keeping these animals off show in a specially designed enclosure. The aim of this isolation is to be able to rear the cubs wild so as not to familiarise them with humans, making it possible for reintroduction into Russia to be an option. This is a brilliant concept and isn’t the first time a strategy such as this has been employed but it does help to signify the commitment the society has to conservation. As although many Zoos do focus on conservation and education they are business and so need to make money and receive charitable donations to remain open. Restricting access to exhibits particularly large carnivores which are usually attract large crowds will reduce the revenue. So it does help to reinforce a zoos commitment to conservation as well as getting them a lot of good advertisement through it.

So a bit of information on the Amur leopard and the reasons why the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s Highland Wildlife Park has taken these step in an attempt to help in the survival of the species.

Currently there are believed to be fewer than 70 wild leopards. This is an extremely low number but believe it or not the population has actually doubled in the last seven or so years , with the estimated population in 2007 being 30. As a species they were driven to almost extinction due to human activities putting them under pressure through, unsustainable logging, forest fires, farming, and industrial developments. Along with being hunted mercilessly for many years for many products such as highly prized fur, and to make up parts of traditional Asian medicines.

Amur leopards mainly inhabit mature forests in the far east of Russia and north-east china, it is also possibly that a few animals might also exist in North Korea but clearly due to diplomatic issues its hard to conduct surveys to confirm this.

They feed mostly on roe deer and sika deer but will also take other mammals such as badgers and hares.  To feed on their prey carcasses they have evolved specially adapted tongue which has been covered in denticles. These are tiny hook shaped structures which are used to help the leopard scrape meat from bones and so effectively making the most out of every kill.

Thanks for reading!

The news article from BBC 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-39666713

Check out this video from northkiteboarding

Weekly Article – Super Grass!!

Following on from my post on Monday about greenhouse gases there has been some potential good news on the methane front.

A group of researches in the Denmark are developing a new type of genetically modified grass which will be easier for the cows to digest. This will therefore reduce the amount of burps cows are producing and so their overall methane output will be reduced. This product has been given £1.6 million by Denmark’s environment and food ministry in the hope that it will create a partial solution to our methane problems.

http://www.b.dk/nationalt/nyt-graes-skal-reducere-svinende-ko-boevser

There have been many attempt in the pass to attempt to develop a method to reduce the amount of methane that cows produce. There are people currently working on a method to change the digestive system of cattle to reduce the methane creating bacteria in their stomach along with many other methods. Let me know what you find.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from  Red Bull 

Fact File 010 - Deadly Gases Which Keep Us Alive!

Greenhouse gases is a term which is thrown around a lot in today media and in most cases people just assume that when this is said people are talking about CO2 but this isn’t the case. Hopefully you’ll know a bit more about greenhouse gases by the end of this post.

• So the exact definition of a greenhouse gas is – a gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect by absorbing infrared radiation. So basically for a gas to be a greenhouse gas it just needs to capture heat and prevent it from leaving earth’s atmosphere. There are countless different greenhouse gases from the well-known ones such as carbon dioxide (CO₂) and Methane (CH₄) to water vapour (H₂0) and even ozone (O₃) so it’s important to remember without ozone, water and several of the other greenhouse gases we wouldn’t be able to inhabit the earth.

• Methane has a global warming effect far greater than that of carbon dioxide! The exact figure varies across different sources of information but an article published in Scientific America in 2015 put the number at 86x greater than carbon dioxide. Methane has a greater effect due to its differences from carbon dioxide means that it is capable of absorbing different frequencies of infrared radiation and so it collects energy which would have ordinarily passed through the layers of carbon dioxide. This is because a methane molecule contains 4 C-H bonds while carbon dioxide has 2 C=O bonds and it is these bonds which absorb different frequencies of infrared radiation. So as the number of methane molecules increases the amount of this energy being absorbed will increase until it reaches a saturation level so that is why methane has a higher effect as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide as an individual molecule as there are fewer of them as they have a larger amount of infrared radiation to absorb, but overall carbon dioxide as a sum total possess a greater effect currently on the global climate.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-gas-is-methane/

• Carrying on with the theme of methane the sources of it may surprise you of the main sources of this gas. The main contributor which many people might know of is from domestic live stock or more primarily cattle. Apart from that however there is a large amount of methane produced in rice production which creates 31 million tonnes annually. As well as other human derived methods of methane creation such as biofuels and waste decomposition there are already huge stores of it held in certain areas of the world. These are known as clathrates and are found either in areas of high pressure (ocean floors) or in permafrost’s the problem with these stores however is they are slowly releasing the methane they are storing. This is a never ending circle as well, as when the gas is released the climate increases and the process speeds up. This at some point soon is going to reach a certain stage a line is going to be cross and a methane belch will occur which will be irrevocable.  Can you think of any other sources of methane gas?

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from Run Steep Get High

Jumping Spiders - Hunting Superstars!

Many of you reading this might have a fear of these creatures and if you haven’t heard of this specific family I’m going to be talking about today you maybe inline for a few extra nightmares.

Today I’m going to be talking about spiders or more specifically Jumping Spiders or spiders which are part of the family Salticidae. These are an amazing group of arachnids which contains more than 5800 different described species, which makes up around 13% of all spider species. They are found almost globally in tropical forests, mountain ranges and intertidal zones, with the only exceptions being Greenland and the Antarctic.

One of the things which sets jumping spiders apart from

other spider species is the positioning of their eyes, jumping spiders like every spider has 8 pairs of eyes but unlike other spiders the majority of these eyes are mounted facing forward on their heads. This sounds rather simple and common however what it allows is extremely important. With forward facing eyes jumping spiders are able to get a decent idea of distance due to their eyes providing depth perception between themselves and other objects. This is important for jumping spiders as unlike other groups of spiders they are not a sit and wait predators, they actually go out and hunt for their prey. They are active the most during daylight hours due to their reliance on their eyes for hunting.

 As it is apparent in their name jumping spiders actually pounce on their prey. They achieve this by use of a weird internal hydraulic system, as instead of having muscles in their legs they use pressure to extend their legs. This novel method of jumping has allowed some of these spiders to be able to jump or pounce up to 50 times their own body length. This is extremely impressive as they can range from sizes of 1-22mm.

As mentioned jumping spiders don’t actually use webs to capture their prey and so this leaves them with an issue. Once they have successfully managed to capture a prey item they only have limited time to subdue them before they escape. The jumping spiders solution to this issue is that they have developed fast-acting venom which will almost instantly incapacitate their prey. You don’t have to personally worry about this however as due to the fact that these prey items are so small that only people who have an allergic reaction to the bites which will have any issues, most of us will just experience some mild discomfort for a short while.

Hopefully this post has helped you if not overcome your fear of spiders at least allowed you to understand what amazing creatures they are.

Thanks for reading!

Just a side note- a while ago Australia had to ban a children's program which encouraged them not to be scared of spiders which would harm them. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/11411098/Australian-broadcaster-bans-unsuitable-Peppa-Pig-episode-featuring-a-friendly-spider.html

Check out this video from BBC

Weekly Article - New Species And Record Highs!

The marine world is still relatively unknown to us due to many different factors such as it’s size, depth and general conditions (eg pressure) exploration has never been an easy task, because of this there is generally a near constant stream of new discoveries to do with the oceans and that is what part of this weekly article will be about.

The first article which has recently come out is the culmination of a 20 year study in Hawaii and has found that the algae meadows found among the mesophotic coral zone which can range from 30-150m in depth have the highest species diversity known within any marine environment. The study also found that half the fish species below the depth of 70m are endemic to areas surrounding Hawaii and with further research they found in the north-western waters 100% of the fish species were solely found in Hawaii at those depths. The results of this new study are extremely important in terms of conservation as now the extent of species diversity is known within these waters, hopefully they’ll be a greater effort in an attempt to keep them as natural as possible.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/04/scientists-discover-hidden-world-of-hawaiis-coral-twilight-zone?CMP=twt_a-world_b-gdnworld

Sadly from the good news to terrible, recently the global CO2 level has passed 400ppm (parts per million) for a whole month. Now this is a big step up as I’m sure if you look at a lot of school text books you’ll see this figure quoted as 380ppm so this new figure is a large increase which is nothing but bad news in my eyes and will have many unknown implications.

http://400.350.org/

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from Thomas Paterson

Fact File 009 - Forest Feasts!

The seasons are defiantly starting to change from summer to autumn here in the Northern hemisphere now, well in the UK at least as it was 0^oC this morning when I got up. This means that the harvest of many edible plants and berries are coming to an end whilst others are coming into their season. There is always food to be found in the wild if you know where to look for it, so today's fact file we’ll be focusing on this.

• Apples are available almost everywhere around the world with hundreds of different varieties grown for the consumer market. Some of the main species being: Pink Lady, Braeburn, and Gala, what you might not know about them however is each of the trees which grow a specific species is genetically identical to all the others. This is because they are all clones of the original tree.  As when a tasty tree was found it would be cloned through grafting clippings onto other trees so as to produce more fruit. These cuttings would fuse with the host tree and make use of their root system to provide nutrients necessary for survival. You may also be interested to know that a lot of the trees which line road systems are apple trees and this is due to cores being thrown out of car windows.

• Mushrooms are another source of food which can be found throughout the world, but one which is steeped in caution in some cases for good reason. However in the UK there are several thousand species of fungi, with only a very limited few having disastrous results if consumed. The edible species produce their fruiting bodies different stages of the year so if you are willing to do the research there can always be some available to you.

• Although it is now seen as a bit of a hobby in most of western culture hunting gathering societies were the only way of being successful before the domestication of crops and animals.  In a lot of these societies there is a visible split of labour with men focusing on large game whilst women gather more plants. The women in these groups overall provide a larger net income of food in these groups while men provided smaller amount of critical protein so each sex is as valuable as each other. It has also been passed down through aboriginal tales that older members of the group used to be the first to try a new food source so as to assess whether it is edible or not. So in these societies every member had a important role to play.

Just a disclaimer make sure you are 100% certain that what you have picked is what you believe it to be before you consume it.

Thanks for reading!

Check out these links for foraging information and remember there are lots of groups and course out there which provide information on foraging.

http://www.wildfooduk.com/articles/wild-mushrooms-for-beginners/

http://www.wildfoodschool.co.uk/urban/wfsurbanguide.pdf

http://www.countryfile.com/countryside/top-10-foraging-courses

Check out this video from Adrenaline Channel 

Reserves - Where Should They Be Put?

I regularly post information on this blog about the effects of climate change and new data which is attempting to map out the extent of climate change. There has also been posts about how climate change is effecting the conservation of some species, but in this post I want to talk about it all in a wider context whilst focusing on one subject.

Nature reserves and National parks, are areas which sadly are a must in today’s world if there is any hope of certain niche species continued existence and it is these I want to write about today.

A lot of issues surround the creation of these areas: economic, social and environmental to name just a few but in this post climate change will be the primary issues we’ll be addressing. The problem with climate change and the positioning of reserves isn’t not a simple answer as it will be constantly evolving as the climate changes.

So the main issue is where exactly do you place the reserve? This may sound like a rather simple question as you put it in a site so it encompasses as much of the targets species range as possible right? This would be the answer if it wasn’t for climate change!

The problem lays in the fact that as the average global temperature the natural range of the species which needs conservation is constantly shifting primarily towards the poles. So a decision needs to be made do you protect an area which encases the animals current range? It’s projected future range? Or a bit of both? Throw in other problems like habitat destruction creating fragmentation and conflict over other reasons and that is why many reserves take years of planning and arguments to actually locate.

The problem is extended even further when you are attempting to protect a species which either migrates or possesses a large range. Then a decision needs to be made of which section do you protect, which area does the animal come into conflict with humans the most? This was seen in several species of birds for instance like the Spoon-billed Sandpiper which winters in the warmer climate of Myanmar where it is hunted and so the numbers returning to Europe in the spring where significantly reduced. So for a species such as this work is needed in Asia if the population decline is going to be stop.

Overall there are more questions than real information in this blog post but I wanted to write about it so as to bring just some of the issues the creation of reserves have to overcome to people attention.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this link about the Spoon-billed Sandpiper

http://www.eaaflyway.net/wordpress/documents/WSG_117_Zockler_Hunting-SBS-in-Myanmar.pdf

Check out this video from Serrasolses Brothers (just as background this paddle usually takes 3 days)

Weekly Article - Reservoirs The Secrets Which Lie Below

I’ve written about dams in a previous blog post which I’ll link at the bottom, in this post I addressed a number of issues dams cause and their benefits however recently a new piece of information has become known. It turns out that combined the world’s reservoirs creates more greenhouse gasses than Canada.

This became apparent thanks to a literature review of more than 200 different studies published in BioScience. This study deduced that one gigaton of carbon dioxide is reduced from reservoirs annually as well as other more ‘potent’ greenhouse gasses such as methane. It is believed that these emissions occur from different sources depending on the age of a reservoir. Primarily it is sourced from the decomposing of organic matter which was present when the area was flooded, and secondly from the material which is halted in its journey down the river.

This information is important as currently many different countries are building multiple reservoir in an attempt to combat water depth and with their emissions being 25% higher than previously estimated it is a visible proportion of the total global emissions.

Check out my post on dams

http://littlechangestoday.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/dams-way-forward-or-step-in-wrong.html

Check out this articles

http://www.popsci.com/man-made-reservoirs-are-emitting-more-greenhouse-gasses-than-we-thought?src=SOC&dom=fb

I will update this post when the original source material becomes available

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from Noticanarias

Fact File 008 - Cells, The Lego Of the Natural World!

If you have ever been taught any biology in school you’ll have probably learnt about cells, you may even remember that the mitochondria are the ‘power house’ of the cell. Hopefully however this fact file will help you to learn a bit more about the building blocks of every single organism on this planet.

• Amazingly most of the cells which make up your body aren’t the same organism as you. In fact 95% of the cells which make up a human body are bacteria. The vast majority of these cells are found within the digestive tract and are about ten times smaller than human cells. This is important as although lots of people know a lot of the body is made up of bacteria the overall mass of them isn’t larger than the mass of the fewer human cells.

• Even individual cells in an animal are not of the same origin so to speak. There are in fact two different of DNA found within the cell. There is the DNA found in the nucleus DNA which is a combination of parental DNA while the before mentioned mitochondrial DNA is only maternal DNA. This is due to the fact that in the fertilisation process the mother provides the egg (first cell) which contains all the organelles.

• The largest cell in the human body is the female gamete (egg) and this is about 1mm in diameter. This however is tiny compared to the largest known single cell organism, there is an aquatic alga called Caulerpa taxiforlia which has been observed to grow to lengths of 30cm, which is completely insane when you think about it.

• Finally I want to talk about Caenorhabditis elegans, or C.elegans, which is a type of nematode (roundworm). This is used as a model species for biological research because of the fact that the exact numbers of cells which make up this organism at different stages of their life cycle are known (959 somatic cells in one sex and 1031 in the other). This has allowed us to learn about cell lineages. If you want find out more about any of these fact I’d suggest you start with this one as you’d be amazed what C. elegans has taught us.

Thanks for reading!

Check out these videos from RedBull

Alkaline Tilapia - Life Is All About Balance!

Life in the natural world is always in the balance, animals are forever calculating the risk of a task verse the reward. For instance predators attempting to take down large prey have to face the risks that they could become injured attempting to bring down their prey whilst if they succeed they gain a large reward which will sustain them for a longer time. Whilst on the other side of the scale herbivores have to weigh up the time they spend feeding verses the time they spend looking for predators.

In some cases the risks can be almost constant and extreme while the reward is simple surviving; this is the case for the Alkaline Tilapia. This fish which is found in Lake Natron in Arusha Tanzania and inhabits one of the more extreme aquatic environments found on this planet. Lake Natron is a salt and soda lake which often has temperatures which exceed 40⁰C and due to its high levels of evaporation a pH greater than 12 so hence the fish’s name.

The scientific name of this Tilapia is Alcolapia alcalica and it is part of the Cichlidae family which has 2,000-3,000 individual species in and can be found in lakes across Africa. These fish have evolved over time to be able to cope with these extreme environments which are found in the lakes, but even they have to run the risks the lakes can posse daily. As well as the high levels of salinity found in the lake which is a problem in itself they also have to cope with the many hot springs which release water into the lake and sustain it, sometimes these springs temperature can exceed temperatures above boiling.

These springs are important for the Tilapia as they input nutrients into the lake and so large algal blooms grow round them and this is what the Tilapia feed on. These springs also mark the area of risk which the Tilapias have to face. They need to get close enough to the springs to feed on the algae but can only remain close to the springs for a few seconds before retreating to cooler water so as not to be boiling alive.

So the risk is death while the reward is life when it ‘boils’ down to it. The risks can vary though, the nearer to the spring the greater the algal growth so the pay of is better  with individuals which venture further towards the springs being stronger and in better condition but if they get the timings wrong it's game over. But this is something that the fish have to face daily.  

The Tilapia isn’t the only species which inhabits Lake Natron however it is also famously the breeding ground for 2.5 million lesser flamingos (and this is probably where you've heard of it before). These flamingos benefit from the lake as it provides a secure environment to raise their chicks safely away from predators whilst they have to grow thick scales on their legs so as to avoid alkaline burns from the water.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from GoPro

Weekly Article - Humans Or Heat?

Although it has been known for many years that humans are a significant influence in the decline and extinction of large mammals historically, it has only ever been considered one of the factors to take into account though.

Is this right though?

Well a recent (ish) study claims that the pressure applied large mammals declines because of climate are not overly significant. They suggest that humans were the sole cause of their decline.

This creates two opposing theories however; one which claims climate change caused the extinction of large mammals after the last ice age, while another believes that it was due to human influences that these creatures were lost. The climate change theory tends to believe that the larger mammals were not capable of keeping cool in the higher temperatures post ice age so they overheated and died. This study which states humans are to blame, draws on date which shows losses were greater in Euroasia and other areas where the human populations began to develop at an increasing rate while they were less effected on other continents such as Africa.

This is an extremely interesting topic and if you want to learn more about it check out this link here

http://scitech.au.dk/en/current-affairs/news/show/artikel/climate-not-to-blame-for-the-disappearance-of-large-mammals/

Or find the original article here                                                                   

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1787/20133254.full?sid=b5c45bc1-1b57-451a-be57-36286fb77aae

Thanks for reading!

Check out this link from TheGingerRunner

Or if you don't have long enough to watch that, check out this clip from WYMT Television