WASHINGTON— The Xerces Society and Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent today to sue the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s secretive Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for failing to properly consider harms to endangered species caused by insecticide spraying across millions of acres of western grasslands. APHIS oversees and funds the application […]
Tag: Ground Squirrel
POLL: Should the use of strychnine for killing wolves be banned?
Health Canada is launching a review this spring on whether strychnine should be used to kill wolves. The Government of Alberta uses the poison to keep dwindling caribou herds alive. Alberta Trappers Association president Bill Abercrombie says strychnine is a horrendous way to kill an animal. “Strychnine initiates convulsions and the animal basically goes into […]
How Do Squirrels Deal With Cold? They May Not Feel It Like Us
Do hibernating animals get cold? It might seem like a simple question, but scientists have long wondered exactly how bears, bats, snakes, and many other creatures can wait out the winter without freezing to death. According to a new study, that may be because hibernating animals don’t feel winter’s chill in the same way that […]
Narwhals Wearing Heart Monitors Reveal Danger of Human Encounters
Normally when an animal is scared, it either remains very still and slows its heart rate and metabolism in hope that danger will pass—like a possum playing dead, in an extreme case—or the body revs up to power a “fight or flight” response. But when narwhals get caught in fishing nets, surprisingly, they do both. […]
Mongolia – 12th May (Day 5) – Dalanzadgad and Gurvan Saikhan National Park
After some early morning birding around the guest house at Dalanzadgad which produced much the same as yesterday including Isabelline Shrike,Pallas’s Bunting, Red-throated Thrush and Long-toed Stint we packed our bags and headed into the Gurvan Saikhan National Park around 45 minutes away. Citrine Wagtail- Gurvan Saikhan National Park Isabelline Shrike – […]
How sea otters help save the planet
Charles Darwin once mused on the impacts that predators could have on the landscapes around them. In particular, he wondered – in On the Origin of Species – how neighbourhood cats might affect the abundance of flowers in the fields near his house at Downe in Kent. He concluded the animals’ potential to change local […]
Video: Squirrels Mask Scent with Rattlesnake Skin
In the popular TV series “The Walking Dead” humans can hide from zombies by covering themselves in zombie guts, masking their scent. The California ground squirrel (Otospermophilus beecheyi) uses a similar tactic to hide from a major predator, the rattlesnake, which relies on smell to track down its prey.
Swainson’s Hawks Are Threatened in California
The Swainson’s Hawk (Buteo swainsoni) is listed as threatened in California. Its numbers have declined significantly in parts of the western United States; and in the western Canadian prairie, reproduction of the Swainson’s Hawk has dropped since the mid-1980s, following a decline in its main prey species, Richardson’s ground squirrel. In 1995, satellite telemetry was […]