animals

Wild Animals Keep our Cities Clean

- Adam Clare

CBC’s ecological science show is taking an unorthodox look at the vermin and critters in our cities by showing how they help us. On Jan. 31 The Nature of Things will air the episode, trailer above, all about how animals have adapted to urban environments and how those animals end up helping humans. It’s a neat approach to animals that otherwise get a bad reputation.

In Toronto, we join urban wildlife behaviour expert Suzanne MacDonald and Toronto Wildlife Centre Team Leader Andrew Wight on their hunt for the elusive opossum. Opossums are native to the southern United States, but in recent years, climate change has extended their habitat north to Canada. They look fierce and foreboding but they are one of the shyest scavengers of all. We discover how they help make our cities healthier by eating our refuse – they can even digest bone. They also eat and eliminate disease-laden ticks.

In Manhattan, we meet a team of young entomologists and learn the importance of ants in keeping city streets clean. There are over 2,000 ants for every human. The pavement ant, a rarely studied species, picks up and eliminates the food that people drop. These foraging ants can lift over ten times their weight and eat as much or more than rats in the city. Unlike rats, they do not transmit human diseases.

Check it out.

Cats do Care

- Adam Clare

cat

Cats have got a reputation of being uncaring pets that are dumber than dogs. In some cases this reputation is well-earned; however, for most cats they do care and they want you around. It’s taken animal researchers some time to figure a simple approach to testing if cats care, but they did it. They simply took a test used to see if infants and pet dogs care about their human companions and just ran the same test with cats. The conclusion is that yes, cats do are about you.

The key finding was that the cats fell into these subsets of attachment at roughly the same rates as dogs and infants. Around two-thirds clearly displayed a secure attachment to their owners, while most insecure cats were clingy and remained stressed. Subsequent experiments showed that these results stayed largely the same for the same group of cats six weeks later, as well as for a new group of older cats past the age of one.

Because of the similarities between cats, dogs, and human babies in their attachment styles, the authors said, it’s likely that the same intrinsic attributes and traits that make dogs and babies go puppy-eyed for their caregivers aren’t wholly unique to them. Cats bond to us, too, just in their own, not always apparent way.

Read more.

Cats Actually Like Humans

- Adam Clare

cat

It might seem that your cat dosen’t care about you, but that’s not the case. After years of false allegations that cats don’t care about humans we know have empirical evidence that the opposite is true. Cats actually like humans!

Researchers at Oregon State University offered 38 cats a choice between food, a toy, an interesting smell (catnip, a gerbil) and attention from a human.

Thirty-seven percent preferred food to anything else. Eleven percent liked toys, and one cat was preoccupied with the smells of catnip and gerbils.

But 19 of them — half! — preferred the company of humans above all, choosing them over other entertainment possibilities.

Read more.

Capturing Animals in 3D for the Future

- Adam Clare

thanks co.exist!
We are witnessing one of the largest extinction events in history because people deny that climate change is happening. Regardless of the deniers and the death of entire species we can do something that will help the future of humanity: getting as much information about those species as we can while they are alive.

One way to understand species is to just look at them. That’s exactly what some people are doing, they are capturing a “Noah’s Ark” of 3D digital images of animals before they go extinct.

The photographs are captured quickly, though the researchers are tweaking the system so it will eventually work even faster. “The current design is for animals that are willing to pose for a second or two for a photograph,” says Irschick. “But we’re moving toward systems that would work with a moving animal.”

There are 4,000 frog species in the world, and the team plans to start by digitally preserving 40 to 60, working as quickly as possible. For one species they planned to scan—Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog—the last known individual in the world died in September.

Read more.

A Beer Six Pack Meant For The Oceans

- Adam Clare

Saltwater Brewery is a beer company that makes the oceans better while selling beer. Most breweries sell their beers in six packs attached by plastic rings and those rings often end up in the ocean chocking sea life and otherwise causing harm to the ecosystem. What Saltwater has done is create a new six pack ring that breaks down in the water and can even feed some aquatic life!

The rings are also 100 percent biodegradable and compostable, which just ups the product’s sustainability game.

The brand says that the innovative design is as resistant and efficient as plastic packaging. The only drawback is that edible six-pack rings are more expensive to produce. But the company hopes that customers will be willing to pay a little more in order to help the environment and animal life.

Read more.

Scroll To Top