via Lloyd’s Blog

Click on the image above to go to Flickr, where you can use the All Sizes link to get to various sizes to print your own.

Scientists from the universities of Padova and Trento demonstrated chicks’ ability to add and subtract objects as they were moved behind two screens.

Lucia Regolin, an author of the study said the animals “performed basic arithmetic” to work out which screen concealed the larger group of objects.

The researchers raised the chicks with small plastic balls and used their instinct to be with the group to test their hypothesis. The chicks could remember which screen hid the larger number of balls and ran to it when released from their observation box. Check out the video on the BBC site…this looks like an experiment that teens could reproduce for the science fair.

Link: Baby chicks do basic arithmetic

We’d all be better off if we spent more time watching animal babies.

At 200 feet, the first pilot, Chris Gullikson, was perfectly visible in his trike’s open cockpit. He was wearing his whooping-crane costume, a white hooded helmet and white gown that looked like a cross between a beekeeping suit and a Ku Klux Klan get-up. Gullikson and the other trike pilots were going to pick up the 14 juvenile whooping cranes that they were, little by little, leading south for the winter.

How do they imprint the juvenile cranes? Check out this video:

There’s lots more where that came from, on the Operation Migration YouTube Channel. Enjoy!

Links: Rescue Flight from the NY Times and Operation Migration on YouTube

via Lloyd’s Blog.

Livestock guardian play: All this commotion caused pains to our guard animals, especially to the older pair of burros, which don’t like any change at all. But the fun part to watch was the introduction of new sheep into the herd and how the guardians respond to that.

Read more and see more photos of Livestock guardian play (From Stephen Bodio’s Querencia.)

I know it’s evil of me to spoil the good feeling, but I can think of another reason why a dog would pull something off the road.

Via @dalepd

Whatever the reason for no acorns, foresters and botanists are paying attention.

But they say they’re not worried yet. “What’s there to worry about?” said Alan Whittemire, a botanist at the U.S. Arboretum. “If you’re a squirrel, it’s a big worry. But it’s no problem for the oak tree. They live a long time. They’ll produce acorns again when they’re ready to.”

White oaks can live as long as 300 years. Faster-growing red oaks can reach 200. And it takes only one acorn to make a tree, he said, which in an urban area with little open space is often more than enough.

“This is probably just a low year, a biological event, and it’ll go away,” Zimmer said. “But if this were to continue another two, three, four years, you might have to ask yourself what’s going on, whether it is an indication of something bigger.”

Rumors abound about hungry squirrels. For lots of discussion about the topic, see the comments thread on this Boing Boing post, Bizarre absence of acorns in parts of the United States, where I first heard about this.

“The bladder-chewing guppy not enough for you? Can’t stop thinking about exploding ants, boyfriend-devouring she-monsters of the sea and blood-spurting lizards? Don’t worry – terrifying oneself is a common ailment of the intertubes. Unfortunately, there is no cure…but there is more to learn! Reader, prepare thyself. Your eyeballs are about to be flooded with some of the strangest, creepiest, crawliest endangered creatures on the planet. Warning: content best consumed as far away from bedtime as possible.”

(Via Boing Boing.)

via Stephen Bodio’s Querencia

“I put the moth light out last night, first time for a while, the weather just hasn’t been suitable and I’ve been busy. Very little in the way of moths came in before I pulled the pin, but I got dozens of assorted beetles including the first two ‘Christmas Beetles’.”

Link