Yay octopus!!!!

octopus steals my video camera and swims off with it (while it's Recording) from Victor Huang on Vimeo.

If the octopuses using coconut shells as tools didnt convince you to stop eating them, this totally will! Look how smart he is!

Marine Reserve Success!

Researchers found that marine reserves around the world are indeed successful in both raising the number and sizes of fishes within the protected boundary. The same data does not seem to extend to macrofauna, however. The success of any given reserve is also dependent on proximity to large human populations and how the local culture regards law enforcement. Remote areas with little poaching are much more successful in repopulating.


This map shows the locations of protected marine environments that encompass corals. Note the size of the dots is not an indication of the size of the reserves. In some cases, they are very small.

I found this map on THIS page which is a review of the global state of coral reefs from NOAA. I havent read it, but it looks good. By good, I mean comprehensive, not feel-good. Right.

Respect your Elder (Animals)!!

This is a really cool list of animals that live a very long time, including a sponge that can live up to and over 1500 years! One of the other cooler stories is that there are whales with 200-year old ivory spear tips in their skin that are still swimming around!!

Screw Responsibly, Save a Manatee!

I volunteered to distribute condoms for The Center for Biological Diversity's Endangered Species Condoms project. The project aims to raise awareness about the correlation between human overpopulation and the rising extinction rate on our planet. Apparently 50% of births in the United States are unplanned and the Center also is promoting education to women, who ultimately make these decisions about their bodies. I think the project is mostly a cute way to introduce the idea to the nation's social consciousness, that overpopulation is indeed a problem. We are on the way to hit 8 billion people by 2020, after all. And the sixth mass eukaryotic extinction is undeniably caused by humans. Not only do we encroach upon animals environments to live, but also to produce food and items and maintain our excess level of consumption.

The animals featured are the polar bear, snail darter, spotted owl, American burying beetle, jaguar, and the coquí guajón rock frog!!

The Oceans, they are a-changin'

A gross sea slime produced by algae blooms is bogging down sad sea birds, forcing them onto the beaches where they die of predation or hypothermia. Such algae blooms are produced when there are unusually high local levels of nutrients; basically when things are out of whack. SO, what is up? There have always been algae blooms in the ocean, part of the cyclical nature of life, however this appears to be different. That's all. And THEN, a giant algae monster raises from the sea and consumes the plastic continent!!!

This reminds me... People talk about metabolic engineering of bacteria, I specifically talk about making organisms that eat plastic and oil and whatnot (& turn them into diamonds, but thats not really very practical (although it would make for an attractive beach!)). But of course theres the whole question of introduction of engineered organisms into the environment, and gene transfer between bacteria and archaea is really rather easy, so is something like this REALLY ok?! I don't know...

Super Cool Old Lizard Gets It On

A 110-year old Tuatara, which are lizards from New Zealand, had a cancerous tumor removed from his genitals that was making him grumpy, and subsequently mated successfully, producing 11 eggs. His name is Henry and look how cute they are! They can live to be 250 years old, and they look pretty frickin awesome, if you ask me. Look how their tails and legs are all intertwined in the scaly throes of lizard passions. Of course, there are not very many of them alive now, which is true of most things we do not eat (and also for some that we do).

Real Life Lumas!

There were hundreds of species discovered off the coast of Tasmania, Australia using a deep sea submersible vehicle. This is a picture some Marginaster sea stars. I think they are cute and look kind of like Lumas from Super Mario Galaxy. These ones look significantly harder than the ones in Mario Galaxy, although they look just as magical.

Aural Induction of Ovulation in CHEETAHS

We always knew that they say females are more aural than males when it comes to sexual arousal, BUT it has just been discovered that ovulation in female cheetahs is induced by a certain "stuttering bark" made by male cheetahs. This is super exciting because female cheetahs do not have regular reproductive cycles and this is a problem in captive breeding programs. With this new, super-exciting news, now we can hopefully get those lady cheetahs pumping out the eggs and gettin' new BABIES!

Apparently this sort of sex-linked vocalization is very rare in mammals, and is sometimes observed in birds. Go to the National Geographic page to hear the male cheetah stutter-bark. Its very froggy sounding to me. Strange. But kind of cute.

A Word of Warning from Endangered Species

This article from the National Geographic Magazine is definitely worth the read. It is a sad (to me) story about the Endangered Species Act, the challenges it has faced in the past and must overcome in the future.

And definitely make sure to check out the stunning photo gallery that accompanies the article, which includes pictures of the ocelot, the extinct dusky seaside sparrow, and the yellowfin madtom, among others. I don't say 'stunning' lightly, and maybe you might not experience the same feeling, but the diversity on earth is mind-blowing to me (and sad when threatened, which is all the time now).

I would also like to mention that the article says that the building of the Kennedy Space Center overtook critical habitat of the now-extinct dusky seaside sparrow. For shame, Science.

Asiatic Cheetahs

Previously unbeknownst to me, there are cheetahs living in Iran. It is approximated that about 60 adults live on the centra plateau. In this picture, there is a female and her FOUR cubs, which is a pretty damn high number for such old looking cubs. Hopefully, since Iran has placed protection on them, they can grow in numbers. I can't imagine that there is much competition with other large carnivores for food in this region. This does, however, make me more uneasy about potential nuclears being used in the region.

Poor Loris! :(

I have just learned from a youtube video and its comments that people are capturing live lorises, which are endangered, to be sold as pets. Apparently they often kill the mothers, and the babies are unable to groom themselves. Slow lorises have poisonous glands; the poison of which they mix with their saliva to deliver upon biting an attacker. As a result, the teeth are knocked out before they are sold, leaving the animals unable to properly eat. A lot of them die from disease. The slow loris in this video is obviously scared shitless. I don't really know how we are going to be able to stop horrible stuff like this from happening. :( :( :(



The most sickening part of this video are the comments by people who want to know how to find one in their country to buy. Disgusting.

China Needs to Enter the 21st Century

WHY?! Tiger numbers have decreased and most animals in India are on protected reserves, so now poachers are targeting leopards and selling their parts as Tiger parts for traditional Chinese medicine. A TIGER PENIS WILL NOT HELP YOUR SEX LIFE.

GOD. I'm sorry, it makes me very angry. How the fuck are we going to fix this problem? The Chinese are responsible for SO MUCH poaching of endangered animals, its sickening. And the Japanese need to stop eating fucking Bluefin Tuna before those go extinct too.

Megafishes!

I learned about the Mekong Giant Catfish back when I took Limnology at Univ of Wis Madison. This Zeb Hogan person is the hardcore megafishes advocate that lives to protect these fishes. Megafishes are huge freshwater fishes that are all critically endangered because their huge size is attractive for fisherman and their slow growth-rate. There are megafishes on most of the continents and efforts are ongoing by the National Geographic Society and WWF to protect them. Here is a lovely slideshow of Megafishes. On this page, you will also find links to other Megafishes articles. I think Megafishes are pretty fucking awesome.

Back From Extinction!

YAY! A tiny primate believed to have been extinct for 80 years has been rediscovered in Indonesia! It's called a pygmy tarsier! And they didn't even have to clone it from frozen cells!

This guy is also cute, but he was never extinct. I think he is a roach?

Cloning Mammoths?

This is straight out of a science fiction. We are now able to clone a mouse from frozen brain tissue. It's crazy!! People are talking about using it to clone endangered species that haven't bred yet. This is important because every individual of an endangered species is genetically distinct, and that diversity is important for maintaining a healthy population. If only we had some frozen dinos lying around.... Honestly, we should really be getting to work, searching the permafrost and melting glaciers, in case a potential subject melts out! It's too bad Michael Crichton died recently, he may not have heard about this yet, and I'm sure he would have liked it.

Rice farming the way it should be.

Yay Ducks! Some Chinese farmers are putting ducks back in their fields to help fertilize, clear weeds, and eat pests!

Eat Sunlight, Not Oil

THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLE YOU WILL READ. Maybe not ever. But very important. This is not related to the most important video you will ever watch, over in the sidebar of the blog. Honestly, it is probably more important. ANYWAY. On To It.

My summary of important points in the article since it is long and I know people are lazy (you know who you are):

INTRO
Food policy has been focused over the last few decades on maximized food production. The policies of yesterday will no longer work today because we have the more complicated issues of health care, energy independence, and climate change to deal with, and they are all, SURPRISE!, interrelated. It turns out that the current food system uses 19% of the fossil fuels consumed in this country, and also releases ~37% of our greenhouse gases, which is more than any other sector. What has made our food so cheap in the recent past is this dependence on oil, which has lead to the production of chemical fertilizers, and pesticides, and allowed the use of machines and transportation to process and transport food. This all SUCKS because food is made from sunshine, dammit, the cleanest, freest, most abundant energy of all. Cheap, crappy, processed food is the cornerstone of the Western diet, AND is the sole cause of many of our problems, like obesity, diabetes, heart problems, etc. But you all knew that. So stop eating processed foods if you want to live and be healthy. AND good to the environment. One of the other problems with our food system is the transportation aspect, where we import a lot of our food, which leads to a problem in food security. The author notes that over 30 nations worldwide have had food riots in the past several months. So this ain't no joke. In short, we need to get people off of fossil fuels and back on sunshine.

BACKGROUND
Our food system provides cheap, abundant calories. The downside is low nutritional value. Cheap energy allowed for the creation of monocultures, where only corn and soy were grown, to the detriment of the diversity farmed in prior generations. This was the result of a series of government initiatives, whereby the WWII munitions industry was reworked to produce fertilizer and pesticides, and the government subsidized crops like corn, soybeans, wheat and rice. The government money allowed these grains to be sold cheaply. Animals could now be raised more cheaply on this cheap grain, and factory feedlots were born from factory farms. Animals, whose waste was once used as fertilizer and could till the feeds wi' their feets, now produced waste which became pollution, an ongoing problem. FURTHER, cheap energy made it economical to start shipping food around, all over the world, to be processed and consumed far from the fields. All in all, we're running out of cheap energy, so this process must change, regardless of how you feel about your health or the environment.

GOAL #1: Resolarizing the Farm
The good news!: The government has a lot of say in what happens in the fields. Right now, farmers can't receive government subsidies if they also grow "specialty" crops (ie anything with any nutritional value). What we are ignoring is that diversity on farms would make chemical fertilizers and pesticides less necessary. This is proven in smaller scale alternative farmers here, and in large scale productions in China and Argentina. There, farmers rotate fields between 5 years of grazing land for cattle, and 3 years of grain, without relying on any chemical fertilizer. The author suggests that subsidies be given to farmers based on the number of different crops they grow, or the number of days per year that their fields are green (farmers used to plant cover crops in the fall to retain fertility and reduce erosion).

Also, COMPOST! He suggests a municipal composting program which would benefit local farmers, AND cut down on landfill waste. He also mentions that research into perennial grains that can be grown like prairie grasses, which promotes biodiversity in the fields, and reduce the need to fertilize and till! (As I understand it, seed companies have been very into "annualizing" seeds so farmers have to buy every damn year). Animals and crops together again, circle of life!


Animals right now live in what amounts to crowded cities of animals. Three things made this situation possible: the availability of grain which is cheaper to buy than grow, routine use of antibiotics to permit crowding, and the lack of waste treatment requirements by the feds. This permits factory farms to dump waste loaded with antibiotics, instead of requiring them to clean up their waste like any other industry. This situation is also a waste of water, as one pound of beef from these factories takes 5000 gal of water to produce. INSANE. The author also makes the case that meat is far too cheap now, and should cost the real price of raising a grass-fed, healthy animal, which would lead to less meat consumption, thereby transferring gains to our health, the environment and water conservation.

Will sustainable farming feed the world? Basically, it has to, because we have no choice. Organic farmers get 80 to 100% of conventional yields off their fields and significantly more during drought years. World agriculture is not yet at even these levels of productivity, and if we all were to apply these principles, food supply could increase by 50%. This type of farming is also complicated, and will require more farmers to be trained. The author suggests programs which will train a new generation of farmers in ecological farming - "more highly skilled small farmers in more places all across America." This would also include curbing out-of-control urban sprawl to save land for farming.

Idea #2: Regional Food Economy
We need to build the infrastructure to support regional, diverse food by supporting stores and markets that purchase locally. Regionally obtained food is fresher, requires less processing and engineering, and thus is more nutritious. Decentralizing the food system also protects our food system from threats and accidents that can contaminate our food supply. Luckily, this move towards regional food is already happening, with growing farmers markets and community-supported farms. The author suggests supporting this further with grants to build indoor farmers markets for year-round use, decreased regulations for smaller-scale operations and local meat-inspections agencies. He also suggests the government have a strategic grain reserve, like the one for oil; increase regional purchases of food within government agencies, like for school-lunch programs, prisons, and the military; and to redefine food as meaning something with nutritional value, which would effectively tax junk foods (Ha!).

Idea #3: FOOoood Culture
In order to make all this work, Americans need to be on board and stop eating crappy junk foods! We can create a healthy school lunch program. One of the cooler ideas is providing grants to culinary school graduates to work in a school lunch program and get real, healthy cooks in the kitchen. Public-health campaigns from the surgeon general about the dangers of unhealthy food would help curtail consumption, as it did for smoking. Food labels could even include that amount of oil wasted in the production of your food to promote eating low-energy-cost foods. A bar code system could also be used to call up data about a particular food source, such as pesticides used on plants and drugs used on animals. He also suggests cameras in the farms and slaughterhouses so that people are more connected to where their food comes from.

The President and White House chef should also provide guidance and set an example of healthy eating and living, with a chef's blog about recipes and where the food comes from. The author suggests tearing up part of the White House lawn to put in a garden, as Eleanor Roosevelt did in 1943. Back then, Americans followed suit, and by the end of WWII, a staggering 40% of produce was from home gardens. Excess crops could be donated to local charities and foodbanks. This self-reliance can be equated to home-schooling to gain support from conservatives who tout family values. Who doesn't love eating with the fam' around the kitchen table, anyway?

In the end, the author (Michael Pollan, I suppose I should mention his name), successfully argues that even though our food is cheap, it is "unconscionably expensive."

And even though this post is very long... I am going to post ONE MORE LINK to a picture and article about the dwindling water sources in America. The picture shows how draining the aquifer dropped the LEVEL OF THE GROUND by 30 feet. Unreal.

UPDATE: Here is another blog talking about Pollan's argument about meat consumption. He makes good points himself. Meat is not cheap. Also, I am posting a MUTTS comic strip the creator, Patrick McDonnell, is doing to promote awareness for Prop 2.

Sweetest Fish EVER

DUDE! This fish is awesome. Let me explain. The fish I am speaking of is the Antarctic icefish, which lives in supercooled minus 2 C water. This fish has No swim bladder, a demineralized skeleton, AND its blood is clear, due to the LACK OF HEMOGLOBIN. Scientists are studying how its proteins fold at this frigid temperature. A new grant was obtained for comparing its skeleton development to a normal fish in hopes of elucidating the demineralization process, which is similar to osteoporosis. THE COMPLETE LACK OF HEMOGLOBIN in these fishes only exists in this family of species of all the vertebrates in the world. These fish absorb oxygen directly from the water because of its increased solubility in cold water. UNREAL. AMAZING. These fish are my new heroes. I mean, the protein folding problem is cool enough, but then throw in the lack hemoglobin?! Crazy. Another thing: it takes 9 MONTHS for their eggs to hatch. That seems like a crazy long time for a fish. Watch, the Japanese are going to get a taste for these fish and drive them to extinction because theyre so slow growing.

As you might expect, these fish are highly evolved for their niche. Scientists have noticed that the winters are less drastic at the Antarctic base where they visit the fishes. That's right, folks, this wonder of the world could disappear if their oceans warm up enough. So SAD.

Yay! These are OUR lakes, bitches!

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Compact has successfully been passed, ensuring responsible regulation of their waters by the bordering states, and to prevent the water from being stolen by remote cities/states, like what has happened to the Colorado River. The National Wildlife Federation has more information about conservation in the Great Lakes region.

I took a limnology class in college, which was very interesting, and we learned about things like this, as well as other super interesting things. I actually thought about going into it for a while, but the actual work didn't seem very exciting. Not that sittin in a lab all day growing up and crystallizing proteins is, but whatever.

IN ADDITION, NWF has answers to important conservation issues by the presidential candidates. They are limited to 200 words per answer, so its not terribly heavy reading. Just looking at it, it appears as though Obama has given longer, but more thoughtful answers, with actual policies stated! So, yay. Obama believes in conservation!!! The last question asks what animal they would want to be; McCain answers a jaguar, but sadly, Obama doesn't answer directly :/

Fishes Post!

This post is all about fishes! (With some doom n gloom thrown in, of course)

First! Scientists have been watching some ciclids evolve in Lake Victoria! From what I understand (I didnt read the journal article, but I DID download it!), some of the fishes are changing to a reddish color, thus have red pigmented eyes and can better see red? And other fishes are turning bluer. The strange thing is that both populations are in contact with one another, and that this selection is occurring by female preference towards the colorful males. In any case, fully expect a crazy fundie person to claim that they made up the data and that proof of evolution in process has to be false! (BTW, that whole sequence of articles is highly entertaining. The back-and-forth between the prof and the crazy person, etc)

Second! Some sweet-ass fishes that live 5 miles beneath the surface of the ocean! They were captured on video tape swimmin' around and bein' cute, much more actively than you would expect these deep-sea fishes to be. These are the deepest fish ever captured on tape! They "see" with little vibration sensors on their noses. They kind of look like big tadpoles. Anyway, the incredible thing about them is the PRESSURE on their little heads! I personally calculated the pressure at 7.7 km for you, and I came up with roughly 746 atm! OR 75561325 Pa! Which is nearly 11000 pounds per sq inch!!!! Amazing adaption. (You are all free to check that calculation. I readily admit I do not often do fluid statics calcs) I also want to mention that when they tried to bring one up to the surface a while ago, it died before it got there, so maybe it NEEDS this pressure, OR they weren't very gentle with it on the 5 mi elevator ride up!

Anyway, SUPER CUTE! Like little gollum fish!

Heres some doom n gloom to damper all the cuteness. Apparently the world will be "extinct" by 2050. All these poor fishes MAY live through the environmental catastrophe we have caused. Those ciclids might make it, since they're also evolving. Anyway, seriously, stop consuming, people!