underhuntressmoon:

20legsand4tails:

draikinator:

X X X X X

be nice to puppers

Fucking THANK you for this post!! Ive been waiting for the “dominant alpha” theory to die out. It gets me so heated i swear!!!

It’s so ridiculous that people insist on applying an incorrect theory about wolves to dogs, and then try to apply it to humans too

“The concept of the alpha wolf as a "top dog” ruling a group of
similar-aged compatriots,“ Mech writes in the 1999 paper, "is
particularly misleading.” Mech notes that earlier papers, such as M.W.
Fox’s “Socio-ecological implications of individual differences in wolf litters: a developmental and evolutionary perspective,”
published in Behaviour in 1971, examined the potential of individual
cubs to become alphas, implying that the wolves would someday live in
packs in which some would become alphas and others would be subordinate
pack members. However, Mech explains, his studies of wild wolves have
found that wolves live in families: two parents along with their younger
cubs. Wolves do not have an innate sense of rank; they are not born
leaders or born followers. The “alphas” are simply what we would call in
any other social group “parents.” The offspring follow the parents as
naturally as they would in any other species. No one has “won” a role as
leader of the pack; the parents may assert dominance over the offspring
by virtue of being the parents.

While the captive wolf studies
saw unrelated adults living together in captivity, related, rather than
unrelated, wolves travel together in the wild. Younger wolves do not
overthrow the “alpha” to become the leader of the pack; as wolf pups
grow older, they are dispersed from their parents’ packs, pair off with
other dispersed wolves, have pups, and thus form packs of their owns.

This
doesn’t mean that wolves don’t display social dominance, however. When a
recent piece purporting to dispel the “myth” of canine dominance
appeared on Psychology Today, ethologist Marc Bekoff quickly stepped in.
Wolves (and other animals, including humans), display social dominance,
he notes; it just isn’t always easy to boil dominant behavior down to
simple explanations. Dominant behavior and dominance relationships can
be highly situational, and can vary greatly from individual to
individual even within the same species. 

Source

Why are sea otters so important?

noaasanctuaries:

Sea otters are what’s known as a keystone species: their foraging and feeding behaviors have a major effect on the health of their ecosystem. 

In Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, sea otters often spend their time in kelp forests, where they feed on invertebrates like sea urchins. Without the sea otters, sea urchin populations can get out of control – and since sea urchins eat kelp, that can spell trouble for the kelp forest ecosystem.

Off the coast of Washington state, sea otters were hunted to local extinction by the early 1900s. But in 1969 and 1970, a few dozen were reintroduced.

Since then, the sea otter population on the outer coast of Washington has grown to approximately 1,600 animals! 

Researchers in Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary and NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center are now working to assess how this adorable species’ recovery has affected the nearshore ecosystem. 

Check out our video to learn more about their research!

Carbon dioxide is also killing our oceans

micdotcom:

According to two new papers from universities in Australia and the United States, our oceans, and the animals living in them, might be in real trouble if we don’t cut back on our carbon dioxide emissions. Human greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly acidifying our oceans, which in turn will cause entire ecosystems to break down. 

World’s largest natural sound archive now fully digital and fully online.

cornelluniversity:

“In terms of speed and the breadth of material now accessible to anyone in the world, this is really revolutionary,” says audio curator Greg Budney, describing a major milestone just achieved by the Macaulay Library archive at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. All archived analog recordings in the collection, going back to 1929, have now been digitized and can be heard at www.MacaulayLibrary.org

“This is one of the greatest research and conservation resources at the Cornell Lab,” said Budney. “And through its digitization we’ve swung the doors open on it in a way that wasn’t possible 10 or 20 years ago.”

It took archivists a dozen years to complete the monumental task. The collection contains nearly 150,000 digital audio recordings equaling more than 10 terabytes of data with a total run time of 7,513 hours. About 9,000 species are represented. There’s an emphasis on birds, but the collection also includes sounds of whales, elephants, frogs, primates and more.

“Our audio collection is the largest and the oldest in the world,” explained Macaulay Library director Mike Webster. “Now, it’s also the most accessible. We’re working to improve search functions and create tools people can use to collect recordings and upload them directly to the archive. Our goal is to make the Macaulay Library as useful as possible for the broadest audience possible.”

The recordings are used by researchers studying many questions, as well as by birders trying to fine-tune their sound ID skills. The recordings are also used in museum exhibits, movies and commercial products such as smartphone apps.

“Now that we’ve digitized the previously archived analog recordings, the archival team is focusing on new material from amateur and professional recordists from around the world to really, truly build the collection,” Budney said. “Plus, it’s just plain fun to listen to these sounds. Have you heard the sound of a walrus underwater?  It’s an amazing sound.“ 

Sample some fascinating Macaulay Library sounds:

Earliest recording: Cornell Lab founder Arthur Allen was a pioneer in sound recording. On a spring day in 1929 he recorded this Song Sparrow sounding much as they do today

Youngest bird: This clip from 1966 records the sounds of an Ostrich chick while it is still inside the egg – and the researchers as they watch

Liveliest wake-up call: A dawn chorus in tropical Queensland, Australia is bursting at the seams with warbles, squeals, whistles, booms and hoots

Best candidate to appear on a John Coltrane record: The indri, a lemur with a voice that is part moan, part jazz clarinet

Most spines tingled: The incomparable voice of a Common Loon on an Adirondacks lake in 1992

Most erratic construction project: the staccato hammering sounds of a walrus under water

Most likely to be mistaken for aliens arriving: Birds-of-paradise make some amazing sounds – here’s the UFO-sound of a Curl-crested Manucode in New Guinea

There’s an immense intellectual pleasure involved in making identifications, and every time you learn to recognize a new species of animal or plant, the natural world becomes a more complicated and remarkable place, pulling intricate variety out of a background blur of nameless gray and green.

Helen Macdonald – Identification, Please

What a marvelous cooperative arrangement—plants and animals each inhaling each other’s exhalations, a kind of planet-wide mutual mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant cycle powered by a star 150 million kilometers away.

Carl Sagan, ‘Cosmos’ (via scientificphilosopher)

fromquarkstoquasars:

Climate Change Spells Trouble for Bumblebees

Bees thrived for 50 million years. Now, they’re dying in droves. To protect our biosphere (and economy), we need to know why.

New research may have just unveiled part of the puzzle…
http://bit.ly/1DaYOLv

birdandmoon:

Bogs are beautiful.

Original on my site | Patreon

teded:

Our planet’s diverse, thriving ecosystems may seem like permanent fixtures, but they’re actually vulnerable to collapse. Jungles can become deserts, and reefs can become lifeless rocks. What makes one ecosystem strong and another weak in the face of change? The answer, to a large extent, is biodiversity.

Happy Earth Week! 

From the TED-Ed lesson Why is biodiversity so important? – Kim Preshoff

Animation by TED-Ed