It’s baking hot in New York, which can only mean one thing for the city’s small mammal population: it’s splooting season. This week, with temperatures reaching 95F (35C), the city’s parks department urged residents not to worry about the health of squirrels seen sprawling on the ground, legs extended behind them like a person whose […]
Tag: Marmot
Russia cracks down on marmot hunting after suspected bubonic plague cases
Russia has stepped up patrols to stop people hunting marmots near its border with China and Mongolia after the countries reported possible cases of bubonic plague, which can be carried by the animals. Authorities in Bayan Nur, a city in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia, issued a warning on Sunday after a hospital reported […]
New research suggests, zoos and aquariums in Canada do little to protect endangered creatures in the wild.
A study published in the Canadian journal, Facets recently, begins positively enough. It acknowledges that the thirty Canadian zoos and aquariums represented by CAZA, a private, non-profit charity, do try to be leaders in researching this field. And, they do take part in programs aimed at species survival by breeding animals in captivity, then re-introducing […]
Mongolia – 18th May (Day 11) – Barig Mountain to Sangiin Dalai Lake
We were up at 05:15 to the sound of screaming Saker Falcon, packed our bags and after a quick coffee headed back up Barig Mountain at 06:00 for a last try for Hodgson’s Bush-chat. After climbing the steep grassy and rock strewn slopes of the mountains in the vehicles we parked at the summit and […]
Alpine Marmot (Marmota marmota)
On my 3 day hiking adventure in the national park of Switzerland and it’s surroundings, I was lucky enough to video capture some marmots (Marmota marmota). My journey includes the beautiful Val Mora. A pristine valley sitting between two high rising mountain ranges in the canton of Grisons, Switzerland. The alpine marmot (Marmota marmota) is […]
So plague-y, but so cute.
Lookit this little yellow-bellied marmot friend. Lookit! So what if he might carry the plague, he’s freaking adorable. I’ve seen a few around here, but this is the smallest one I’ve ever seen (also, the least mangy). Update kinda: I’m down in SE ID at the moment following sage-grouse and trying to learn all the […]
Alpine Marmots
From the same family as the squirrels, this creature is symbolic of our mountains and lives in an altitude between 800 and 3 000 meters. It was successfully reintroduced in Pyrenees in 1948, as it had totally disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene period. It hibernates 6 to 7 months a year without stocking food […]
Long winter’s nap
Grab forty winks. Saw logs. For a species that’s habitually short on shut-eye, we humans sure have come up with myriad ways to talk about it. We also spend a lot of time and money studying sleep, or the lack thereof. Yet, in spite of decades of inquiry, researchers still don’t have a good fix […]