Photo credit: Drishti Hoskote
Bird of the Day: Whiskered Tern (Hesargatta Lake, Outskirts of Bangalore)
Photo credit: Drishti Hoskote
Christmas Tree Facts From the BBC
Credit: Larry Michael / NPL. Via the BBC
Although Organikos is a non-denominational blog, there is no doubt that Christmas is an important holiday in many of the places we work, like Kerala and Costa Rica. This year, Stephanie Pappas from the BBC shares some interesting secrets about Christmas trees that you probably didn’t know, and can read below:
Each Christmas, families gather around evergreens, real or fake, to celebrate the season.
But what holiday revellers may not realise is just how incredible these spruce, fir and pines can be.
In the wild, evergreen conifers survive drastic temperature swings, grow to towering heights and create ecosystems that shelter strange and wonderful creatures.
Here are some the secrets of Christmas trees and their tough, tenacious lives.
Christmas trees can turn to glass
Here’s a party trick not to try without the proper safety equipment: drop a sprig of Siberian spruce (Picea obovata) or Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) in a vat of liquid nitrogen, at a temperature of -196 degrees Celsius. Providing you’ve pre-chilled the plant to -20 degrees Celsius or so, the sprig will survive.
Bambi, or Rudolph?
Woodland caribou in the United States were decimated by overhunting and logging. Now they face additional challenges. Photo: Joseph N. Hall under a Creative Commons license. Via Cool Green Science.
Cool Green Science, The Nature Conservancy’s blog that we have started visiting to find more of our kind of news, has re-run their post from last year on the conflict between populations of caribou and white-tailed deer in North America. Matt Miller reports:
Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed Reindeer versus Bambi: yes, it sounds like a really bad holiday special. Maybe the worst ever.
Don’t worry; that’s not the case here. But along the Canada border in northern Idaho and eastern Washington, a struggle is playing out pitting the real-life counterparts of Rudolph (caribou) and Disney’s Bambi (white-tailed deer).
The quick version: woodland caribou, the rarest large mammal in the “lower 48” states have faced dramatic changes in forest habitat. White-tailed deer, drawn by the new habitat, have moved in and thrived.
The large numbers of deer have drawn more predators, notably mountain lions. And those mountain lions prey on the less wary, easier-to-kill caribou. An already beleaguered caribou population faces what may be its final straw.
In this case, Bambi wins. But there is nothing simple about this story, not really. For conservationists, it raises far more questions than answers.
Bird of the Day: Red-breasted Parakeet
Kaziranga National Park, Assam
Biomechanics Exhibit at the Field
Animals that move through air and water have evolved a variety of wing and fin forms, as well as sleek, streamlined shapes that harness the power of fluid dynamics for propulsion. © Ernie Cooper 2012, macrocritters.wordpress.com
Every day, just using any part of our bodies to move, see, talk, or eat — among countless other activities, we are enjoying the biomechanics that have evolved to perform the functions necessary to survive. An exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago called, “The Machine Inside: Biomechanics” will be closing on January 4th, so this post is more of a celebration of the exhibit than an invitation to check it out. If you won’t be in Chicago before the 4th, they have a great website with photos and a good video.
Imagine if your jaws could crush over 8,000 pounds in one bite, your ears could act as air conditioners, and your legs could leap the length of a football field in a single bound. From the inside out, every living thing—including humans—is a machine built to survive, move, and discover. Beginning March 12, 2014, investigate the marvels of natural engineering in The Machine Inside: Biomechanics. Explore how plants and animals stay in one piece despite the crushing forces of gravity, the pressure of water and wind, and the attacks of predators. Using surprising tactics, creatures endure the planet’s extreme temperatures, find food against fierce competition, and – without metal, motors or electricity – circulate their own life-sustaining fluids.
Teaching, Reading, Books, And The Art Of Heroic Generosity
Third-grade teacher Nikki Bollerman, 26, won a contest that gave her students books for the holidays. When she also won $150,000, she decided it should go to her school. YouTube
No matter how much we talk about books, or libraries, or teachers, or reading, we are not sure. We hope we would do the same as Ms. Bollerman. The fact that we are not sure is the real reason why this story is a must share, must read. We like her decision very much and will do our best to follow her lead:
One thing’s for sure: Nikki Bollerman believes in her school and the kids who go there. How else to explain Bollerman, 26, giving a $150,000 windfall to the Boston area public charter school where she teaches third grade?
The story comes to us from member station WBUR, which reports that Bollerman’s generosity got the attention of Mayor Marty Walsh, who met with her and some of her students Monday.
“I want to thank Nikki for your kindness and your humility, and you are certainly a shining example of great things to the city of Boston,” Walsh said. “We are grateful for your hard work and generosity. You have inspired lots of people with your selfless act.” Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Spotted Owlet Trio
Lalbagh Gardens Bangalore, Karnataka
Forests Are Life
We are happy, for the sake of the next generation(s), to read this news:
Restored Forests Aid Climate Change Efforts
Driven by a growing environmental movement, corporate and government leaders are making a fresh push to slow the cutting of rain forests — and eventually to halt it.
Winning Wildlife Photography of 2014
2014 Wildlife photographer of the Year invertebrate category winner: ‘Night of the deadly lights’ by Ary Bassous (Brazil). Photograph: Ary Bassous/2014 WPY. Via The Guardian.
We’ve always loved wildlife photography, and the explosion of competitions over the web in the last decade has created the type of arms race for the best shot in which the audience always wins. Folks over at The Guardian know what’s up: they’ve compiled some of the most amazing wildlife photographs from various competitions over the course of 2014, so we have an even greater pool of shots to enjoy.
Wilbur, Come To Kerala!
Wilbur Sargunaraj sings about life in his family’s ancestral village in India. Produced by Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR and John W. Poole/NPR.
Tirunelveli, as the crow flies, is not so far from the Raxa Collective office in Cochin. Much closer than the location of the average reader of National Public Radio (USA)’s website, or the typical viewer of these videos on YouTube. They ring true with southern Indian sense of hospitality, so we hereby invite Wilbur to our neck of the woods:
Who is that man in a white shirt, black necktie and what appear to be blue plaid pajama pants? And why is he running around a village tasting and drinking all kinds of food?
That’s Wilbur Sargunaraj. He calls himself “India’s first YouTube star.” His videos about life in India have drawn more than a million views. And now he’s made some very first-class videos for NPR’s Goats and Soda blog: “Dunk-A-Chicken: The Village Way” and “The Village Way: Food.” (Well, he says they’re first-class, and who are we to argue?) Continue reading
Humans Have DNA For Making Feathers
Siberian Turkamanian Eagle Owl by Chris Paul. Via NatGeo.
We’ve always found feathers fascinating, both from an aesthetic and a biological perspective. Recently, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s bird guide website AllAboutBirds uploaded an interactive page solely focused on feathers, which is quite a wonderful mine of interesting information, cool animation, and amazing videography. But now, about a month late, we’ve learned that DNA researchers working on the genetic recipe for feathers have found that the sequences responsible for most of the steps involved in creating feathers are actually much, much older than feathers themselves. This indicates that we humans should have a sizable chunk of the feather-making genetic recipe as well! Carl Zimmer reports for the Phenomena section at National Geographic’s website:
Feathers are like eyes or or hands. They’re so complex, so impressive in their adaptations, so good at getting a job done, that it can be hard at first to believe they evolved. Feathers today are only found on birds, which use them to do things like fly, control their body temperature, and show off for potential mates. The closest living relatives of birds–alligators and crocodiles–are not exactly known for their plumage. At least among living things, the glory of feathers is an all-or-nothing affair.
Tacacori, Costa Rica
Bird of the Day: Yellow-throated Euphonia
The Second Annual Thevara Badminton Tournament
The 2014 edition of our neighborhood sporting event of the year officially kicked off this evening, with two Raxa Collective representatives sharing the stage with two politicians, a priest and the neighborhood association’s leadership (who graciously invited Raxa Collective to join in again) prior to the first match. We look forward to announcing the champion on December 31. Continue reading
The Oceans’ Invertebrates, Inveterately Out of This World
Clockwise from top left: a white phantom crab, a fuzzy red-spot crab, a frilled anemone Phymanthus, a red-eye Medusa Polyorchis penicillatus, a tiger cowrie Cypraea tigris and a three-lined nudibranch Flabellina trilineata. Credit Susan Middleton via NYTimes
We are no strangers to the fantastic sights of the deep sea — not only because of shallower personal experience but certainly also due to the wonders of the web. But the images captured by Susan Middleton look to be confirmation of how amazing invertebrate life can be in the oceans. Her new book, Spineless: Portraits of Marine Invertebrates, the Backbone of Life, includes around 250 photographs of these magnificent creatures, and we look forward to exploring them more in person. You can read Dana Jennings’ review of the book for the New York Times below:
As we stand on the thin crust of this watery planet, our gaze tends to roam from horizon to heavens. We often neglect the riot of life that seethes and thrives below us, especially in the still mysterious depths of our oceans.
A New Break for Alaska’s Bristol Bay
Helicopter view of the area surrounding Bristol Bay, Alaska. Still image extracted from WH.gov video linked below.
We’ve hosted a good number of Alaskan “bird of the day” photos here, and we share the near-universal affinity for the charismatic Arctic mammal that is the polar bear. Two years ago, Carol Browner and John Podesta wrote an open letter on Bloomberg.com opposing any more drilling in the Arctic, and now we’re happy to announce that President Obama signed an executive order last week that bans exploration for oil and gas in Bristol Bay until another president chooses to counteract the order in the future. Read coverage by Peter Baker for the New York Times below:
Mr. Obama first put the ecologically sensitive area of the Bering Sea — home to an important population of whales, seals and sea lions — off limits to oil rigs in 2010, but that restriction was set to expire in 2017, several months after he leaves office. With the new executive memorandum that he signed in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Mr. Obama made the ban permanent unless a future president acts to reverse it and allow leasing of the waters of the bay.
“It is a beautiful natural wonder, and it’s something that’s too precious to us to just be putting out to the highest bidder,” Mr. Obama said in a one-minute video announcing his decision, which was posted on the White House website.
Bird of the Day: Willet (Sanibel Island, Florida)
photo credit: Stephen Crafts
Fruit Bats Can Echolocate With Wing-beats
Lesser short-nosed fruit bat. Photo by Anton Croos via National Geographic.
Bats represent an enormous amount of the mammal species alive today, but we still have a lot to learn about them. We have direct experience with a particularly large species of fruit bat called the Indian flying fox or Greater Indian Fruit Bat, and we’ve also learned earlier this year about insectivore bats in Thailand that can protect rice paddies from pests. Now we hear that fruit bats, contrary to prior scientific belief in much of the bat-biology community, can also use sonar echolocation to navigate the way insect-eating bats do. Whereas all insectivorous bats use vocal projections of sound to echolocate and find prey, most fructivorous bats have large eyes that they use to locate fruit or nectar. Three species of the fruit-eaters, however, have now been shown to use a very crude and relatively inaccurate form of echolocation using clicks created by their wingbeats. National Geographic writer Ed Yong reports:
Together with Sara Bumrungsri and Yossi Yovel, [Arjan Boonman] studied the cave nectar bat, as well as the lesser short-nosed fruit bat and the long-tongued fruit bat. He found that as the animals flew in a pitch-black tunnel, they all made audible clicks. The clicks aren’t accidents of flight. The team showed that the bats can adjust the rate of these sounds, and they click more furiously when flying in the dark than in dim light. Perhaps they actually use these noises to find their way around.
Goats, Sheep, Dairy
The photographer thought it was a goat. The photo editor thought it was a goat. Sure looked like a goat to the author of this post. It turns out to be a sheep, in Dakar, Senegal. Claire Harbage for NPR
From a strictly culinary vantage point, those of us at Raxa Collective who are not vegetarian are at least slightly more inclined to lamb than to mutton (though this dish is a favorite); but we find ourselves in goat territory more often than in sheep territory. And in goat territory, from a productive agriculture vantage point, we are focused on dairy rather than meat. From the time we started paying close attention to goats we have also been wondering whether sheep might be adaptive to the same territory, and this post got us thinking further along those lines:
So perhaps you noticed a post I wrote last weekend about how you know if your goat is happy. Yes, scientists do study that.
The story had a cute picture of a goat at the top, taken by a photographer in Dakar, Senegal. The farmer told the photographer that the animal was his “goatie.” And to our untutored eyes, it looked like a goat.
And then NPR’s ruminant-wise Africa correspondent, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, send me an e-mail with the subject: “MARC, THAT’S A PIC OF A SHEEP, NOT A GOAT!”… Continue reading
Aliens vs. Ice Giants
Photo by Marko Korošec in Slovenia. Via thisiscolossal.com
This may look like a still from the trailer of a fictive blockbuster Aliens vs. Ice Giants, but it’s actually a photograph of nature on Mount Javornik in eastern Slovenia by Slovenian weather photographer Marko Korošec. Earlier this December, after periods of high winds, fog, and freezing temperatures, Korošec visited Mount Javornik and found everything covered in a deep layer of hard rime. Rime, or rime ice, is frost created on objects when water vapor freezes quickly. So in the photo above, perhaps a tree or small stone formation was being buffeted by freezing winds and fog, which accreted ice crystals on the structure that grew over time. The ice spikes, which apparently measured over three feet long in some cases, are formed by the continued winds that sculpt the rime into thin points.
Horseshoe Crab, An Awesome Creature Facing Awesome Challenges, Creating Awesome Challenges
This is not the first time we have read about the various reasons to appreciate the horseshoe crab, though apparently we have only posted on small feature on them before. However, they play a critical role in the livelihood of another creature from a different part of the animal kingdom, as this story in the Washington Post describes:
“We had actually attached small devices that tracked their migrations,” explains Niles, “and they made 6 day flights without stopping to get to the Delaware Bay. So they would arrive completely bereft of energy, their weight would be sometimes far lower than their fat free weight, which meant they were burning muscle to get to the Delaware Bay. And the horseshoe crabs were laying eggs in such density that there was no work involved.” Continue reading
Organikos 