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High up in the Ethiopian mountains lives the Gelada.  It lives nowhere else and although its closest living relative is the baboon, with its hairless face and short muzzle the gelada looks more like a chimpanzee.  Isolated in these remote Ethiopian Highlands (often called The Roof of Africa) this primate has developed a way of existence (one might call it a culture) all of its own.

To begin with the gelada is a graminivore which means that it only eats grass.  Fortunately, the highlands in which they live are cooler and a lot less arid than many parts of Ethiopia and they rarely experience any kind of food shortage.  They will also become granivorous when the grass is in seed.  In fact, they actively prefer the seed to the grass – it is probably a welcome change.

It must have been an awe-inspiring sight – millions upon millions of passenger pigeons flying across the American landscape.  Forest-loving (and living) pigeons were never seen alone – they would flock and migrate from the southern forest to their breeding grounds in the north.  The size of the flocks was so large that they would darken the sky, destroy tree branches with their weight (roosting literally on top of each other) and leave behind a carpet of passenger pigeon poop.  And then, they were gone.

There had been between 3 and 5 billion passenger pigeons in the USA and in the space of just a few decades there was just one left (in a zoo).  This endling – the name given to the last member of a species was known as Martha.  This is not only her story, of course, but that of her entire species.

This is the story of yet another clash between humans and birds – another which led to the extinction of a species that was once so numerous it was uncountable.  The reason for the extinction of the passenger pigeon is not as simple as you might think – it’s more than just being hunted to extinction.  This fascinating video by Bizarre Beasts posits that it was the telegraph and the railway that finally did for this bird – as well as (ironically) its own particular survival strategy which, until our arrival, had served it well for thousands of years.

There is much more to the pigeon than meets the eye (and more to their vision than we once thought).  This fascinating video by True Facts Educational delves into the bobbing heads question.  The answer is quite simple - they are only trying to keep their world still.  This video goes into much more detail than that, of course, but this is only the beginning.  It turns out that there are a lot of questions we could ask about pigeons, but are too distracted by our daily lives to go and seek the answer.  So, what other questions does this video ask?

First and foremost, something that we have seen countless times.  We all recognise the signs when pigeons are getting amorous.  There is the head bowing and the tail feather fanned out – and the female trying to get away at all costs.  The signals the male gives are very similar to those he displays when feeling aggressive, but they are part of an elaborate courtship dance.  You know he's got it right when the female allows a little beaking to go on (yes, you read that correctly – watch the video to see it in action!).   It isn’t some kind of pigeon French-kissing, though – it enables the giving of a gift.   That raises another question – why do their nests so often look like a hopeless mess, like they haven’t bothered to make much of an effort to give their eggs a place to call home?  There’s a good reason for that, too…

One thing that genuinely surprised me is the fact that most pigeons mate for life.  Their courtship rituals always look so random to me – but perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention!  When I watch them (with some amusement) in the local park, it all looks a little random, but their behaviour is far more sophisticated than it first appears. Watch the video below and discover much more about the humble pigeon – it might surprise you just how complex the behaviour of this bird we all take for granted truly is. 

The Malabar pied hornbill (Anthracoceros coronatus) is a striking bird to say the least, especially when it is in full flight.  As you can see from the picture, it has a large casque above its upper mandible.  A casque is thought to serve as a clue to others of its species about sex, maturity or even social status.  The casque of the male Malabar pied hornbill is, for example, larger than the females (the one in the picture is female).  The casque might also serve to reinforce the bird’s beak or even act as a call enhancer.  They have been observed being used in fights between members of the same species.  So, the function of a casque is more a hypothesis than a fact, but the above are the most likely reasons why birds have them. Image Credit

For me, the most fascinating aspect of the life of the Malabar pied hornbill, which is found in India and Sri Lanka, is the way that they raise their chicks.  The female lays the eggs in a tree hollow, which the male seals up with a home-made cement, leaving only a small hole through which he passes food to the mother and growing chicks. Although the bird is an omnivore, the main component of its diet (75%) is figs.  When the chicks grow too large for the female to remain inside the cavity, she breaks out, and then seals it back up again.  She joins the male in passing food through the little hole until the chicks are ready to fledge.  Fascinating!

Did you know that when it feels threatened, a slow loris can stay motionless, gripped onto a single branch, for hours? That isn’t the only remarkable fact about this animal, which is endangered.  Their single biggest threat is us – you can obviously see the attraction from the picture of the Javan Slow Loris above – and in their own habitat they are often taken as “living toys” for children.  They are also victims of the international global animal smuggling network and videos of them in captivity often get hundreds of thousands if not millions of hits. They look very passive and docile in the videos – and do you know why that is?  It is because their defense mechanism is to freeze – so what you are seeing in these videos is not a slow loris happily joining in the fun, but an animal that is so scared that it has become motionless. Image

The video below is a TED-Ed Lesson by Stephanie A. Poindexter, directed by Reza Riahi and it focuses on the life of the slow loris in the wild, looking at when they diverged from other primates (an awfully long time ago) and how that defensive mechanism works when they are confronted with danger.  Although they are omnivores, they also love to eat tree gum – and it is thought that they sequester the toxins from the gum for their own use.  They are venomous – the only primate to hold that particular badge, and one of the few venomous mammals in existence.  They secrete the toxin from their armpits, mix it with their saliva and spread it on their teeth, so when they bit another animal, it will start a flesh-rotting process almost immediately.  They also spread it all over their coats, which makes it a highly effective anti-parasite balm. Some animals (like cats and civets) hate even the vaguest smell of slow loris saliva, so you can see how their venom has multiple uses.

So, if a slow loris ever adopts its venom pose (the very cute hands above its head that so many people think is the slow loris joining in the fun), accompanied by swaying and throaty noises, make a quick exit.  However, the “people” who work in the illegal trade of the slow loris do something unspeakable – they file down their teeth so the venom cannot be carried that way, or they remove the teeth altogether before selling the wretched animal on. It is mind-boggling to think that people want to keep slow loris as pets given the suffering that they go through and, let’s face it, that they are still potentially venemous. Having said that, wildlife researchers have revealed that the biggest victim of slow loris venom is, wait for it, other slow lorises.

This is a fascinating photograph, not only for the obelisk Position that the dragonfly has positioned itself in, but because of the name of the species – the Halloween pennant (Celithemis eponina).  It is native to North America and the West Indies. It gets its name because when it flies, these colours look a bit like traditional Halloween decorations (orange and black), especially when it perches with its wings held out like little flags. Image

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Wait... the obelisk position?  Here is the same dragonfly from a different angle. Basically, it’s doing a handstand (like the blue dasher above) and there are a few reasons why it might exhibiting this strange behavior.

How do I look in these?  That age old question about sunglasses is now not only restricted to our own species.  Now the dogs are getting in on the act too.  A surprise hit, it has been described as one of those money making ideas that should never have worked but in fact makes millions.

Species of animals change over time, some just a little but others quite a lot! Science took a while to catch up but in 1858 the idea of Natural Selection was put forward.  We have Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace to thank for that, because it’s been around ever since. Soon after, Darwin would publish “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, a book that shook educated society to the core. In fact, the theory of evolution was not taught in many schools because people disagreed with it - and there is still some dissent today (in some places!).

But how does natural selection work?  This hugely interesting video from the Natural History Museum in London takes the giraffe as an example. We know how well suited they are for survival, especially because of their long necks and tongues that help them pick off the juiciest leaves from even the tallest of trees.  They didn’t always have long necks and tongues – and the changes that happened to make it so are called adaptations. There is also the fact that every single member of one species is just a little different from all the others – and that’s called variation. This variation can sometimes mean that certain individuals have an advantage over others in their natural environment.

So, natural selection happens because animals with adaptations that make them  more successful are way more likely to survive long enough to produce offspring who will have the same adaptation.  SO, that’s why if you go back far enough, and encountered the ancestor of today’s giraffes, you will probably have great difficulty in recognising it as such.  To learn more about variation, adaptation and natural selection, look at the video below. It’s put forward in a very straightforward way which makes you wonder why it too so long for us to get to Darwin and his ideas.  I guess something is only obvious when it’s made obvious.

Some frogs spend their lives in the tree canopy and only come “down to earth” when it’s time to find a mate and breed.  They can live in the treetops because the environment is so humid that they do not have to rely on puddles or pools to get by. That is the case with the gliding leaf frog, and the way it gets itself back to the ground is quite spectacular.   The gliding tree frog (also known as the gliding leaf frog) is endemic to the humid forests of the tropical east pacific, in countries including Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador (but not spread throughout these countries).

They have huge webbed feet – and that’s just as well.  They use them, effectively, as parachutes.   Once they get to the ground the males begin to sing – to attract the females. This fills the surrounding forest with noise – so it is the female who makes the ultimate choice of which male she wants to mate with.   She always seems to go towards the loudest calls – this generally means a bigger frog! However, in order to get to her choice, she has to get past the other frogs who want to get overfriendly with her… and so she sometimes has to use her very large feet to kick unwanted suitors away. That is more difficult than it sounds, given that once attached, the male frogs are almost impossible to remove.

Watch some amazing footage of the gliding leaf frog in the video below.  To be honest, it looks like something of a free for all!

Although there are only a fraction of the suburban hedgehogs in the UK that were around even twenty years ago, life must go on.  This clip from the BBC documentary Secret Gardens shows a female hedgehog looking for a mate.  She really does have to search far and wide in order to find a mate, but eventually she succeeds!  This is a sweet story but sad too, as it underlines just how few of these lovely, harmless creatures are left in the towns and cities of the UK.

Perhaps, as is featured in the video, more effort should be put into creating hedgehog corridors, so that they can safely navigate routes between properties in order to find the love of their life (well, of the evening at least).   A little patience and a little help can go a long way – and it would be great to think that hedgehogs are considered when new houses are built too.  Sometimes, one has to wonder why people even build houses with gardens – they are in such a rush to pave them over that it is little wonder that the hedgehogs of England are becoming something of a rarity.

Did you know that 7.5 billion landbirds currently call North America home?  That’s an awful lot of birds, but here is a question – think about it.  When did you last see a dead bird?  The adult  mortality rate of songbirds is around 45% in their first year, so why is it we don’t see many (or any) dead birds?  So, what happens to birds when they die, when they fall off their metaphorical perch?

It seems that behavior changes when a bird senses that it is not long before it slips off its mortal coil.  They become lethargic and seek cover.  When a bird knows that its health is compromised it retreats to places where predators are unlikely to spot it.  It is an instinctive threat response – to hide because it even though it is on its way out, it still doesn't want to be killed by a predator.  So birds die in places that you can’t see into - dense foliage often covers them up after death.   Even if the bird dies in plain sight, the average time it is visible is about 30 minutes to 4 hours.  Scavengers get them. As well as insect action, cats and even other birds can come along and pick up the carcass.  Watch this fascinating video by Bird Whisper, which delves into more detail below.

This gorgeous bird is a brood parasite (like most other cuckoos), meaning females lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species. The picture is of a male (he has a bright yellow breast). During the rainy-season breeding period between September and March, a female can lay about 19 to 25 eggs. Although they do not need territory to raise chicks, male cuckoos still defend territories to attract mates. The species is widespread across sub-Saharan Africa. Image

Animals that are cave specialists are known as troglobites and can be counted as the most specialist species in the world – one species of angel fish troglobites lives only in two small cave waterfalls in Thailand.  To say that they have a precarious grip on survival in this day and age is putting it mildly.  Many of these species have lost the use of their eyes altogether as the sun never penetrates their cave dwellings. However, to become troglobitic can take thousands of generations. 

This fascinating video from BBC Earth, narrated by Sir David Attenborough looks at troglobites in general – those who have lost the pigment in their skin and also their eyes.  However, to compensate for their blindness, creatures like the Texas Blind Salamander has other senses fine-tuned to compensate for their lack of sight.  Take a look at this video – and discover more about the strange cave-dwelling species, who somehow manage to survive despite the odds being massively stacked against them.

This morning, as I walked to the shops, I spotted a crow.  That wasn’t hard because it was making a loud cawing sound – a proper South East London crow, indeed.  Perhaps there was a cat around, maybe it was trying to locate its mate, or it could have been defending its territory.  I’m not sure what was going on, but one thing was for sure – this crow was perched very precariously on a sapling in a planter.  Perhaps six foot tall, the young tree has been damaged (perhaps by the crow?), meaning that a bird, if it lands elegantly enough, can perch atop it.  Yet what bird would want to do that? This one, obviously.  I didn’t see it land, but the level of expertise it must have taken is astonishing.  I say this because I can’t even do a three-point turn very well, so I can’t imagine calculating angles with height involved too.

Still pondering these avian acrobatics, I reached home and popped the eggs I had just bought into the fridge. I discovered a single egg at its back, and I decided that, since the crow had given me a visual treat, I would give the ones that haunt my garden an edible one. Now, this isn’t something I do often.  Although I do like to see the bigger birds in my garden (the rivalries between the crows and the magpies are legendary for their riotousness, noisiness and general length!) I generally do not feed birds at all. I used to, but then read up on it and discovered that it could produce an over-reliance on feeders, not to mention that lots of birds congregating together isn’t necessarily good for their general health.

Some species don’t need males.  Take the New Mexico Whiptail Lizard for example.  There are no males in this species. So, of course, the sensible question to ask is how do they reproduce?  They use something called parthenogenesis which involves no males and no sperm.  The female can produce an egg all by herself.  The eggs will produce an all-female brood, clones of the other – who will go on to… you get the point.  While this does allow some species to rapidly increase their range, it does somewhat limit the genetic diversity of the species!

For a closer look at parthenogenesis, take a look at these videos created by the Natural History Museum in the UK.

Did you know that a health queen honey bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day in the peak season?  That is one busy queen – and running the whole colony on top of that must sap her strength somewhat.  But wait a second – does a queen bee actually run her colony?  That is what most people would naturally assume, but they would be wrong.  She doesn’t make any decisions about what goes on in the hive, she simply secretes a pheromone that reassures the other bees that she is still around and healthy to boot.  If she stops producing the pheromone the colony would quickly become chaotic.  The worker bees that make up 99% of the colony and they are really the ones who keep the colony together, through a variety of tasks that they do throughout their lives.

There is a strict hierarchy in a hive and that includes not just the workers, but drones too. These are the only males in the colony and – unfortunately for  them – they get thrown out of the hive when times get hard.  I suppose having one job (mating) is a plum one when times are good (except for one gruesome fact!). Find out all about bee hierarchies in this fascinating video. 

The ruddy duck is small compared to other ducks (even though their eggs are huge relative to their size), but once you have seen one, you won’t forget especially if you see a male in mating season (when his beak turns blue and he plumps his head feathers up to make himself look like he has horns!).  Although they come from North America, they are making some inroads into Europe.  Yet it’s when it comes to their courtship that these ducks become truly memorable! All Things Birdie explains why the duck makes these bubbles (yes, it’s the mating game again) and just as importantly how it is created to become the fascinating bubble display that you can see in the video below.  To our ears the mating call of the male doesn’t sound very attractive – it’s something like a belch, but I am sure the female ruddies just love it!  Find out more about the ruddy duck by watching the video. Image Credit

Over on our sibling site, Kuriositas, there is a  new article about the fascinating bird’s nest fungi.  Not only does it say what it does on the label (its correct name is Nidulariaceae so you can see why it got its common name), it has an intriguing way of ensuring its survival. In a world where many organisms rely on wind, wings or brute abundance to spread their offspring, bird’s nest fungi have evolved a system that turns rainfall itself into a delivery mechanism – precise, forceful and repeatable. A raindrop becomes a trigger, a launcher and a dispersal strategy all in one, converting something as ordinary as weather into a highly targeted reproductive event.  Find out more about it at Kuriositas, which also has a lovely gallery of images of the bird’s nest fungi. Image

Did you do a double take? This striking behaviour reflects the strong parental care (and perhaps patience) shown by female alligators during the early months of a juvenile’s life. After hatching, young alligators often remain close to their mother, who offers protection from predators and even other adult alligators. Resting on the adult’s head or back provides safety, warmth, and a vantage point above the water’s surface. Contrary to common belief, adult alligators do not indiscriminately attack everything nearby; feeding behaviour is context-specific. In this case, the adult recognises the juvenile as its own offspring and tolerates its presence, demonstrating an important survival strategy within the species.

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Snakes have been around for about 150 million years – which is a little longer than we have, that’s for sure.  One of the questions that snakes provoke from kids (of all sizes) is how on earth do they manage to eat things that look, to all intents and purposes, way, way bigger or longer than them?  How can this happen? It looks impossible.

Well, if you have been around for as long as snakes, you have the time to solve this kind of problem.  Plus of course, we sometimes look at problems from our perspective.  Our jaw bones are fused which means that we would not be able to get something ridiculously large in our mouths and down into our stomach (although I have seen people try at parties).  The jaw bones of the snake, on the other hand, are not fused.  They are still connected but by a ligament of such elasticity that their mouths can be dramatically stretched.  The gape can be large – even up to 180 degrees (and that has to be seen to be believed).  That always leads to another question – when a snake swallows something much bigger than itself, how come it doesn’t suffocate?

This and other questions are answered in the video below, a TED-Ed lesson by Niko Zlotnik, directed by Anna Benner and narrated by Adrian Dannatt.