Baby Baboon’s Frightening Encounter with Lions Ends With a Heroic Twist

This is one of the most remarkable wildlife interactions that I have come across in my time. The photographs are amazing, but it’s the touching behaviour of the animals involved that makes this story so unique.

Photographer Evan Schiller and Lisa Holzwarth were on a game drive in the northern Botswana’s Selinda area when they came across a big troop of baboons charging through the bush.

“30-40 baboons were heading in our general direction making a lot of noise,” Lisa recalls.

The baboons were obviously frightened by something and they all scampered up trees, shouting, alarming, and making a big scene. It quickly became clear what the problem was: two large lionesses came out of the tall grass and rushed the baboons into the trees, soon joined by two more lionesses.

“Between the baboons shrieking and the lionesses communicating with deep guttural roars, it was a mad scene,” Lisa says.

But then the real chaos began! One brave baboon descended the dead tree and tried to make a run for it… but got snapped up in the jaws of a lioness.

The lioness grabbed a female baboon on the run. But there was something else there… As the baboon lay dying in the jaws of the lioness, a little baby (less than a month old) slowly disengaged from its mother’s body. Photograph by Evan Schiller

Instinct took over and the baby tried to make a go for a tree, but did not have the strength to climb. At this point the lioness noticed the “little guy” and went over to investigate. Photograph by Evan Schiller

Instead of snapping the baby up in a deadly movement, she started to play with the baboon. Photograph by Evan Schiller

The lioness was inquisitive and gentle at the same time. Photograph by Evan Schiller

“The baby was showing signs of physical harm and fatigue from the whole ordeal. The lioness picked the baby up in her mouth—it was in agony watching the baby’s ordeal—and I kept on turning off the video option on my camera because it was hard to record.”

After a while she picked up the baboon softly in her mouth and walked away, then settled down with the baby between her paws. Photograph by Evan Schiller

In a strange behavioural twist, the baboon started to try and suckle the lioness. Photograph by Evan Schiller

What happened next blew our minds – the baby, in another instinctual moment, held onto the lioness’ chest and tried to suckle…

Photograph by Evan Schiller

The lioness got distracted—this time by two male lions who arrived on the scene. Their advances, however, were met with aggression by the lioness. Was she defending the baby baboon? Or just uninterested in their mating advances? Photograph by Evan Schiller

Here’s where it gets interesting: Waiting in a nearby tree is a big male baboon, who is obviously intent on saving the baby. The male lions were causing such a ruckus that it presented a short window of opportunity for the brave hero to descend the tree, grab the baby and head back to safety.

“I was touched by how gently the father baboon held this little baby who was in tough shape after its ordeal.” 

The heroic male baboon, having just saved the baby from the lions, cradled him in his arms. Photograph by Evan Schiller

The father baboon had to make a move. Holding the baby, in all sorts of contorted positions, he tried numerous times to climb down the tree. He tested the lionesses’ interest with each descent. Photograph by Evan Schiller

The baby baboon was really struggling with the heat and the father baboon really needed to get him into the shade. Finally, with the combination of daring courage and the lions own desire to take cover in some shade, he was able to dash to the safety and shade of a neighbouring tree.

And what happened to the baby? It seems the little guy survived with the help of his troop. He was alive and safe in his father’s arms when Evan and Lisa left.

“No matter what,” Lisa says. “The young baboon remains an inspiration to me—and a reminder, that life is fragile and no matter how much we fight to control its outcome, all we can do is live in the moment.”

ORIGINAL: NatGeo

by Paul Steyn in Cat Watch

April 3, 2014

Video: Fish leaps to catch birds on the wing

The waters of the African lake seem calm and peaceful. A few migrant swallows flit near the surface. Suddenly, leaping from the water, a fish grabs one of the famously speedy birds straight out of the air.

Les Gibbon/Alamy. An African tigerfish caught on the Lower Zambezi River.

Source: Nature (see link below) 

“The whole action of jumping and catching the swallow in flight happens so incredibly quickly that after we first saw it, it took all of us a while to really fully comprehend what we had just seen,” says Nico Smit, director of the Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa.

After the images did sink in, he adds, “the first reaction was one of pure joy, because we realized that we were spectators to something really incredible and unique”.

This is the first confirmed record of a freshwater fish preying on birds in flight, the team reports in the Journal of Fish Biology1. Rumours of such behaviour by the African tigerfish (Hydrocynus vittatus), which has been reported as reaching one metre in length, have circulated since the 1940s. But Smit says that his team was “never really convinced by the anecdotal reports”. So, when they set out to study of the migration and habitat use of these animals in a South African lake in the Mapungubwe National Park, near the border with Botswana and Zimbabwe, they were not necessarily looking for fish flying out of the water.

Nevertheless, during their time at the lake, the researchers saw as many as 20 successful fish strikes on barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) every day. These ranged from pursuits by fish at the surface, followed by leaps, to direct attacks from deeper water.

Smit says that this remarkable behaviour has been under the radar until now because the study of freshwater fish in Africa is very limited. “We hope that our findings will really focus the attention on the importance of basic freshwater research, and specifically fish behaviour,” he adds.

    Nature
    doi:10.1038/nature.2014.14496

References
    O’Brien, G. C., Jacobs, F., Evans, S. W. & Smit, N. J. J. Fish Biol. 84, 263–266 (2014).

SOURCE: NATURE

Tigerfish swallows swallows after grabbing them out of the air over African lake.

Daniel Cressey

09 January 2014

ORIGINAL: Science Dump
by Jur
01/12/2014

Fox Dives Headfirst Into Snow | North America

A red fox pinpoints field mice buried deep beneath the snow, using his sensitive hearing and the magnetic field of the North Pole to plot his trajectory. 

ORIGINAL: Discovery 
Nov 19, 2013 

Why Mantis Shrimp is my new favorite animal

ORIGINAL: Oatmeal

Additional notes from the author

This comic was inspired by this wonderful podcast about color from RadioLab. If you've never listened to RadioLab, today should be the day you start.

If anyone knows of an aquarium that houses a mantis shrimp, please let me know. I'd love to visit.

ABC News: Tiny Shrimp Terrorizes Aquarium

LA Times: Claw of peacock mantis shrimp possible model for body armor

Wired: Mantis shrimp eyes might inspire new high-def devices

Lastly, a big thank you to Jane C. Daugherty for proofreading this comic for me. If you want to learn things from the most awesome librarian this side of the North American tectonic plate, follow her on Twitter.

Eciton burchellii, the swarm raider

ORIGINAL: Myrmecos.net

Feb 7th, 2011

by myrmecos. 

Eciton burchellii is, according to Wikipedia, “the archetypal species of army ant“. Insofar as this is the most-studied species, and the ant that dominates the nature documentaries, I suppose the moniker is true. 

Yet, the biology of E. burchellii is not terribly representative of army ants. It is an outlier, an ant whose behavior has diverged in significant ways from its relatives, even from its congeners. 

media and minor workers stream towards the front 

The primary difference is gustatory. Most army ants boast a fine-tuned pallate, favoring the brood of particular ant genera. E. burchellii is vulgar by comparison. It’ll eat just about any sort of animal protein. Spiders? Katydids? Lizards? Termites? Ants? They’re all good. 

a submajor worker carries a spider 

media workers pull a termite from a rotting log 

Corresponding to the broad diet, Eciton burchellii‘s foraging behavior is a radical departure from the army ant norm. For being an “archetypal” army ant, its raids ironically lack the military precision of other species. 

An overhead depiction of an Eciton burchellii swarm raid (from Rettenmeyer 1963) 

Instead of tight, focused columns that concentrate the ants’ efforts at a single point at the raid front, E. burchellii’s raids are messy, diffuse affairs. Foragers spread out in a swarm, casting a vicious stinging, biting net for animals too slow to escape. The strategy isn’t great for capturing concentrated food sources like another ant colony, but it works well for a generalist’s lunch. 

Raids set out in the morning with a swarm front near the overnight bivuoac. As the day progresses, the swarm moves through the forest for a distance about that of a football field. The back end of the swarm organizes into a series of converging trails to funnel captured prey back to the bivouac, so that by mid-day the swarm from above looks rather like the figure at left. Last night’s video featured one such trail. By nightfall the ants are back in the bivuoac, where, depending on the development of their larvae, they either regroup to march to a new bivouac site by morning, or they stay put and launch a new raid in a different direction the following day. 

Eciton burchellii raids are fascinating to watch, but they aren’t indicative of how most army ants behave. The fame of this one species is partly an artifact of the degree to which its unique biology intersects with the cognitive quirks of our own species. 

These ants are large, they forage above ground, and their sprawling raids cover extensive areas. And they raid primarily during the day, when we humans tend to walk about in the forest. That they catch our attention may be due as much to our biology as to theirs. 

[photos 1,2,4 taken at Jatun Sacha; 3,5 at Maquipucuna]

Boom in Wind Energy Threatens Migrating Hawks

ORIGINAL: Adventure-Journal

by JOHN BERRY HIGH COUNTRY NEWS

SEPTEMBER 18, 2012

On a Friday evening in the middle of August there isn’t much traffic along Franklin Boulevard, an old agricultural road that now cuts through 20 miles of Sacramento, California, suburbs. We’re looking for birders along its half-mile length but don’t see anybody or even a parked car.

When a farmer drives his pickup out of a field and stops to lock a gate, I walk over and ask whether he’s seen any hawks or bats in the neighborhood. He sure has, he says, because his family has farmed nearly 400 acres of this land for six generations. They’re Mexican free-tailed bats, he says, and there are 30,000 to 40,000 of them roosting under the bridge right now. The hawks gather when it’s time for the bats to emerge, and we’ll hear them, he assures me.

As if on cue, a Swainson’s hawk screams.

By the time we park and get across the road, four or five Swainson’s have begun circling low over the riparian oak woods. We stand at the bridge’s railing and peer at the floodplain below. A few bats shoot out. Soon a stream of the tiny mammals pours down from under the bridge, and the stream becomes a torrent. Bats swirl into a great boil before making a dash for the nearest oaks, where they rise into the canopy and form ribbons that wind westward into the orange sky.

That’s what the hawks were waiting for. I spot a bird positioning itself above the nearest ribbon of bats, and then it plunges through, talons outstretched. A bat, still flapping, gets caught in a talon. The hawk quickly dispatches the bat and veers back for another pass. Now there’s action all around with thousands of bats unspooling into four great ribbons to fly through this gauntlet of Swainson’s hawks. No, it isn’t only hawks. Two peregrine falcons have joined the hunt. Within minutes all the raptors have bulging crops.

Turning my binoculars toward the distant lead bats, now far out over the valley, I wonder how much longer this remarkable hunt can last. Despite the recession and the efforts of local conservation groups, Sacramento continues to sprawl, gobbling up farmland, grassland, and woodland to spit out legions of McMansions, retirement communities, and strip malls. With each advance of the developers’ bulldozers, Swainson’s hawk habitat is destroyed.

But a more immediate threat may come from the wind. Famous for their long-distance migration of more than 10,000 miles, Swainson’s hawks follow the wind as far south as the Argentine pampas. Energy companies also follow the wind. Seven wind farms have been built in the isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico, near a stretch of the flyway used by the vast majority of Swainson’s hawks. Thirteen more are in development. Erecting thousands of wind turbines along a major migration corridor would seemingly fail a fundamental requirement for bird-safe wind energy: correct siting. A World Bank document about one of the Tehuantepec wind farms states that “avian impacts are not expected to be significant,” but a case study of another wind farm admits “concern about the potential cumulative impacts of the many additional wind farms planned in the same general area.”

Of course, the dangers posed by wind energy don’t lie just south of the border. California has its own wind farms, and some are notorious for their raptor mortality. Several wind farms — comprising more than 700 turbines — have already been constructed in the Montezuma Hills of Solano County, an important part of the Swainson’s hawk’s historic breeding range.

Reviewing a draft environmental impact report for the latest proposed wind farm there, Friends of the Swainson’s Hawk, a wildlife advocacy group, warns, “Over time, the project could have a significant impact on the range of the Swainson’s hawk in California through higher than natural mortality rates and loss of foraging habitat used by nesting Swainson’s hawks to feed their young.” The project would be relatively small at just 50 turbines on about 3,000 acres, but it can only ratchet up the pressure on this threatened, distinctive population of Swainson’s hawk. Some unknown number of birds will be killed each year; more habitat will be lost.

After 25 minutes, the bat exodus is coming to an end. We walk down the bridge, following the last bats across the Mokelumne, and almost run into a peregrine flying toward us. Startled, the bird banks and heads upriver into the night. We turn back toward the car. “Wow,” says my mom, “that was incredible.”

Environmental coverage made possible in part by support from Patagonia. For information on Patagonia and its environmental efforts, visit www.patagonia.com. In affiliation with High Country News. Photo by Shutterstock

What are Oppossums?

ORIGINAL: Bittelmethis

Posted by Jason Bittel

26 Jun 2012

OPOSSUMS: SURVIVAL MACHINES

The opossum is a waddling, mostly nocturnal creature that looks like a cross between a bleached raccoon and a cartoon rat. If you live in North America, you’ve likely seen scores of them as road kill, a sad fact that does nothing to discourage the opossum’s reputation as one of the dumbest animals on earth.

Despite their ubiquity, most of us don’t know a whole lot about them. For instance, did you know the opossum is the only marsupial north of Mexico? Or that they are smart enough to be litter-trained? Or that they very rarely contract rabies, due to a low body temperature?

If you answered no to any of the above, let’s make a deal. I’m going to geek out about opossums for the next ten minutes. Let’s call it an Opossum Opus. And if you’re good, I’ll reward you with a video of Marci the Opossum chowing down on some chicken.

THE OPOSSUM DIET

They’re not fast or pretty, but opossums are, as a species, rather badass survivalists. And a lot of that has to do with being opportunistic omnivores. In other words, opossums subscribe to the Les Stroud school of thought – Eat Anything That Does Not Kill You. This includes:

A variety of insects, earthworms, slugs, snails, crayfish, lizards, frogs, small rodents (primarily mice and rats), young rabbits, small birds, eggs, grasses, vegetables, fruits, berries, grains, human garbage, and carrion (dead animal material).

What’s more, opossums have powerful, well-developed jaw muscles for chomping through tough stuff like snail shells and, oh I don’t know, bones. They eat a lot of freaking bones. (Wildlife rehabilitators have found opossums fed a diet with an insufficient calcium-to-phosphorus ratio develop crippling Metabolic Bone Disease. Therefore, if you’re trying to rear an orphaned opossum, stop feeding it hotdogs and turn it over to the authorities.)

Opossums also eat snakes. Poisonous snakes. Which brings us to:

OPOSSUM DEFENSES

What the opossum lacks in swagger and grace, it more than makes up in grit. Truth be told, the opossum is a brick grit-house.

Exhibit A: Opossums are pretty much immune to snake venom.

And not just the neighborhood riffraff, like the eastern diamondback rattlesnake with which they have co-evolved. We’re talking timber rattlers, cottonmouths, Russell’s vipers and common Asiatic cobras. We know this because scientists rounded up a bunch of nasties and forced them to bite a bunch of unfortunate opossums, the latter of which responded like it was a mild bee sting.

Using high-pressure liquid chromatography, scientists then sought to identify what makes opossums so damned special. They found it to be a small protein, which they named Lethal Toxin-Neutralizing Factor (LTNF). Like the name suggests, these proteinase inhibitors grab onto and neutralize venoms. Rather like antibodies going after antigens, only LTNF is a naturally occurring opossum protein – not an antibody.

“This is pretty rad,” said the scientists, “but it could be radder. Better kill some rats.” (Scientists are always trying to kill rats; no one knows why.)

So they took some rats and injected them with LTNF, then pumped them full of otherwise lethal doses of venom from Thailand cobras, Australian taipans, Brazilian rattlesnakes, scorpions and honeybees. But the rats just laughed in their faces.

“Dude,” said one scientist, “we have to kill these rats. Do you watch AMC’s Breaking Bad?” The other scientists nodded of course because everybody watches Breaking Bad. So next they tried to kill the rats with ricin, an extremely lethal poison made from castor beans. (How lethal? Just ask Georgi Markov, the real-life Bulgarian defector killed by a ricin umbrella gun. That’s right, I said ricin umbrella gun.)

Alas, the ricin was a no-go. The now-snooty rats danced Ring Around the Rosie. 

“That’s it!” screeched the lead scientist. “It’s time to release the botulinum toxin. Surely this will conquer the awkward opossum’s super serum!” But after many maniacal laughs and a few bolts of lightning, the rats were still alive.

(The paper does not mention what became of the super rats. I can only assume they went on to write “The Secret of Nimh” while the evil scientists lost their rat-killing grant.)

Exhibit B: Despite the rumors, opossums rarely get rabies.

Opossums often get a bad rap for being disease-ridden. But this is probably more to do with their short life span and propensity to eat garbage than anything else. For opossums are actually rather disease-resistant.

According to Dr. William J. Krause (University of Missouri, Dept. of Pathology & Anatomical Sciences), opossums “appear to be resistant to many viral diseases such as distemper, parvovirus and feline hepatitis.” Scientists think a slightly lower body temperature than other similar mammals might play a role. It may also have something to do with the reason we very rarely find rabid opossums, as the virus prefers a toastier climate for its frothy escapades.

Exhibit C: Opossums don’t just “play” dead.

The one thing everyone knows about opossums is the way they “play dead.” But this defense mechanism is far more biologically complex than that time you “played a tree” in your high school’s rendition of The Wizard of Oz. (Not your best work, by the way.)

Playing dead or “apparent death” is a last resort defense maneuver. When confronted, opossums will first bear their teeth, hiss and puff up – anything to make a predator think they’re bigger or meaner than they really are. (Though it should be noted, opossums have kicking canines capable of considerable damage.) They will also high-tail it up a tree when given the option.

In the event that none of this works, opossums come equipped with self-destruct codes. Arms clutched, tongue lolling, they roll onto their side and go catatonic. They may also defecate and release a green, foul-smelling liquid from two paracloacal glands near the base of their tail. And they remain like this – despite being poked, shaken or bitten – anywhere from a few minutes to six hours. Interestingly, young opossums seem to use the trick more than old ones.

Unfortunately, we don’t know much about what’s going on in the opossum’s brain during feigned death. Studies using electrocardiograms (ECGs) and electroencephalograms (EEGs) have found their brainwaves to look much the same whether awake or passed out. (I’d make a Lindsay Lohan joke here, but I don’t want to misconstrue these findings to mean opossums are overpaid idiots.)

Exhibit D: Opossums take a lickin’.

Most predators are highly adapted to track and kill live prey. Once something looks dead and smells like whatever comes out of a paracloacal gland, they seem to lose their appetites and mosey on. But not always.

Sometimes a predator will still take a few nibbles of a catatonic opossum, just to see if maybe it’s something capable of being choked down – like me with vegan food. To combat all this trauma to a defenseless body, opossums seem to have developed a heightened ability to heal.

In a study published in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases, researchers inspected road- killed possums for signs of bones that had been previously broken but since healed. (I.e., not broken by the car that killed them.) Their painstaking work revealed possums to have “a considerably greater frequency of healed fractures” than nonhuman primates, viverids and water voles – other animals to undergo similar research. What’s more, an amazing 31% of the opossums showed signs of having four or more such healed injuries. 

However, living to fake-die another day has its costs. With a femur like that, you know the guy on the right wasn’t winning any races.

THE AWESOME OPOSSUM: PART 2

There’s more where that came from. Click on over to Part 2 of the Awesome Opossum Opus, where we’ll talk marsupial sex, teamwork among opossum sperm, and the cutest little marsupial babies you’ve ever seen. 

But for now, you’ve earned this. Go, Marci, go. 

(Skip to 2:04 for the good stuff. Nevermind the lurking old man nipple.)

A big hats off to William J. and Winifred A. Krause and their e-book, “The Opossum: Its Amazing Story” – published by the Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Missouri. Much of the bangarang for this post comes from this excellent read.

Image credits: Luke Skywalker Opossum, Fierce Baby Opossum, Asiatic Cobra, Broken Femur

Killer Canadian coelacanth discovered

ORIGINAL: CosmosMagazine

The fast-swimming coelacanth Rebellatrix chasing smaller species of fishes in the Early Triassic ocean west of Pangaea. Credit: Artwork by Michael Skrepnick.

LONDON: Canadian scientists have discovered a fossilised ‘rebel’ coelacanth fish with an unusual body shape that suggests it was a fast-swimming predator.

The finding suggests that contrary to popular belief, coelacanths, the so-called ‘living fossils’, have undergone significant morphological change during their history.

“Rebellatrix divaricerca, most importantly, shatters the commonly held notion that coelacanths were an evolutionarily stagnant group,” said Andrew Wendruff from University of Alberta, in Edmonton, one of the researchers who discovered the fossil and lead author of the paper published in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology.

Dramatically different to other coelacanth

The largest specimen of Rebellatrix, though partial, shows that it grew upwards of 1 meter in length. Credit: Photograph and drawing by A. Wendruff

“Rebellatrix is dramatically different from any coelacanth previously known, and thus had undergone significant evolutionary change in its ancestry,” he said.

Until the 1930s coelacanths were thought to have been extinct since the Late Cretaceous period, around 70 million years ago, when dinosaurs were still alive on Earth.

However, in 1938 a fisherman in Africa caught a living coelacanth. The most striking thing about the newly discovered fish was that their body plan differed very little from ancient fossil specimens resulting in the fish being referred to as ‘living fossils’.

Rebel without a cause

The modern coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae, and most of the fossil specimens discovered to date have broad, flexible tails suitable for moving at slow speeds and lying in wait for prey.

In contrast, “the forked tail of Rebellatrix indicated that it was a fast-moving, aggressive predator,” said Wendruff.

“Rebellatrix was able to search actively for the fishes that it preyed upon and catch them at high speed,” added Mark Wilson, co-author of the study and fellow University of Alberta researcher.

Wendruff and Wilson found the R. divaricerca fossil in the Lower Triassic Sulphur Mountain Formation near Tumbler Ridge in the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, Canada.

It is thought to be from the Early Triassic period, approximately 250 million years ago. The closest coelacanth fossil in age is known as Alenypterus. It dates from the Mississippian period and is at least 70 million years older. It also has a very different body plan that is more similar to that of living coelacanths than that of Rebellatrix.

Prior to findings such as Rebellatrix, scientists believed that coelacanths have changed little over time, but this now seems unlikely.

“The similar body forms are not a result of close relationships,” said Wendruff. “Nature is constantly recycling ideas, body forms and structures. This is referred to as convergent evolution. Many times there is one particular form that is most efficient for a particular function.”

When asked about why Rebellatrix evolved such a different body shape to other members of the coelacanth family, Wendruff suggested that as the mass extinction event that happened just before the beginning of the Triassic period wiped out 90% of marine life Rebellatrix could have evolved to fill a newly vacant predator ‘niche’ in the marine ecosystem.

Forked tail before it's time

“Large predators seem to be particularly vulnerable during such intervals, so this extinction might have 'opened the door' for coelacanths to explore new functional roles,” said palaeobiologist and coelacanth expert Matt Friedman from the University of Oxford in the UK.

The newly evolved body form was not successful, however, because “while other fork-tailed fishes appear later in the fossil record, Rebellatrix and its descendants are noticeably absent. This leads us to believe that Rebellatrix was a dead end in the evolution of cruising predation,” said Wendruff.

Friedman said: “this discovery adds to a growing view that coelacanth evolution was more nuanced than textbook portrayals would suggest.”

He added: “It is the latest in a series of finds over the past decade or so that have shown coelacanths didn't just have a static evolutionary history when it came to body form. Rebellatrix, with its unusual tail fin and body proportions, can be added to other anatomical 'experiments' in coelacanth history, including eel- and leaf-shaped forms.”

Wendruff believes that other unique forms of coelacanth have yet to be found and that “in the future they will have many more surprises in store.”