Selected end-of-summer animal news briefs

Cricket

Despite fewer fireflies in my area this season, the summer singers are coming on strong, and I’m happy to hear them.  Among the insect carolers, cicadas are day-timers, while crickets and katydids perform at night.  (Grasshoppers are often mentioned as chorus members too, but I don’t know when they get going or how they sound.) 

Insects are the big attraction at a September 9 festival all about these creatures we couldn’t do without.  An area event (Pennington, NJ), the festival guarantees fascination, if you trust my reactions in previous years.  A standout to me was a live Madagascar hissing cockroach (2-3 inches long), among other attractions. 

Madagascar hisser

So much for positive terrestrial news.  Meanwhile, in coastal waters off New Jersey, (many) pods of (many) dolphins have been reported.  With growing activism to protect right whales in the same waters, the dolphin presence is happy news. 

Then there are sharks, featured in my last post here as threatened, rather than threatening.  Of course, this was bound to happen: One shark missed the memo, and soon after, a woman swimming off Rockaway Beach, Queens was badly bitten by a shark.  (She has had surgeries and will survive.)  https://tinyurl.com/mvs5z65b

Two more aquatic news briefs: First, the American Museum of Natural History, where I recently went for the shark exhibit, is showing a film on blue whales – the world’s largest animals -- on its big screen.

Blue whale

For serious whale-ophiles content to watch it on home devices, it’s also available on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR1vVqk2BZY

And, following up on coverage here of the long-extinct colossal shark, the megalodon, still another ancient and extinct sea creature made news recently: a giant whale closer in appearance to a manatee than to whales as we think of them, who lived some 39 million years ago. 

Thought to rival blue whales in weight if not appearance, Perucetus is believed to represent “an early branch in the evolutional tree of whales,” with a small head, paddle-like tail, big, barrel-shaped middle and the look of tiny arms.  Like “a mammoth manatee,” it’s theorized to have “drifted lazily through shallow coastal waters” – a dramatic contrast to today’s sleek, fast-swimming divers, the blue whales. https://tinyurl.com/939v93s6

Ancient, extinct whale

For me, the most surprising fact in the story was that whales evolved from dog-sized land mammals about 50 million years ago: wholly aquatic whales came after that.

Maui disaster, black bears, animal hero & poor pigs  

Maui is on our minds since the horrific wildfires there.  Human interest stories all over the place, and finally one about Maui’s animals, including pets.  Everything happened so fast and, for many people, so inescapably – all even moreso for island animals.  Here’s one early overview.   https://tinyurl.com/chkp6jrh

Closer to home (and New Jerseyans’ hearts), another animal made the news recently: New Jersey’s black bears.  With the announcement that bear hunts will resume, Gov. Phil Murphy totally abandoned any semblance of his pre-election pledge to stop them.  There’s so much to say and do about Murphy’s political treachery, all bound to start next month.  Be ready!

"Life" for many pigs

Two newspaper columns this summer deserve mention and being read.  The earliest, about Peter Singer, described how long this philosopher-professor-activist-author has been writing and acting on behalf of animals.  His story and its results are worth knowing about and utterly awe-inspiring.  (His newest book, Animal Liberation Now [“The definitive classic renewed”] is available.)   https://tinyurl.com/3b7ues84

The second column is about pigs, mercilessly victimized by humans . . . forever, it seems.  Long before chickens came to be seen as “people food,” pigs were on the menu.  Their lives today are described in this column: https://tinyurl.com/ya7v56hz

Take a break!

To make the most of season’s end, savor summer singers while you can (We’ll really miss them next January!), enjoy dolphins at the shore and do your favorite things.  Time-out time for me starts right now -- back next month.

#

To comment on this or any blog post here, please go to 1moreonce.blogspot.com.

 

  

Sea-monster appeal & a worldwide holiday

It’s a monster, swimming right toward you!  It’s at least 50 feet long, with teeth that won’t quit, in a giant mouth you could stand upright in . . . briefly.  It’s “the biggest predator fish of all time”: a Megalodon!

But not to worry: this beastie has been extinct for 3.6 million years.  It lived ages before people, dinosaurs and even trees.  Its shark ancestors evolved 450 million years ago and survived four mass extinctions, including the one that killed most dinosaurs.

The question is, whether today’s sharks can survive the next mass extinction – the one caused by humans.

All of this is why New York’s American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) now features a shark exhibit, starring sharks prehistoric-to-present . . . with an uncertain future.  The Megalodon figured prominently in the long line of sharks (but, thank the power, not in our present-day waters).     

To simulate that frightful fish, the museum constructed a model of the first 30 feet of its length, with its giant head facing those entering the exhibit, which also includes more models, both moving and still images and text about sharks of all kinds in all history. 

(Reading about that “Meg model” in the works long ago fascinated me, prompting numerous references here to that fish, its kin and the museum’s shark exhibit.  In late July, I finally got there to see it all for myself: a thrill of a trip.) 

The exhibit’s interactive displays show (1) why sharks are such good swimmers (calling for equipment we don’t have: fins and a tail); (2) comparative danger to humans of sharks and other creatures (mosquitoes were clearly the most dangerous); (3) today’s three most dangerous-to-people sharks, who are behind most of the 10 or so annual deaths from shark bites; (4) what makes the great white shark so deadly; (5) how to fend off a shark. 

These days the shark to fend off would not be the whale shark, at 65 feet long, but the great white, now the biggest and most powerful predatory fish on earth.  Able to reach 21 feet in length, it comes with  about 300 huge serrated teeth and myriad killer skills.  

The saddest Q & A of the exhibit: why are sharks now endangered?  They’re killed as “bycatch” in nets and long lines; they’re killed for their fins that go into soup; and they’re killed through sport fishing, pollution and climate change.  A fate so horribly undeserved.  

(“Sharks” runs at the AMNH through Monday, Sept. 4, 2023 (Labor Day). Visit AMNH.org for details on the museum, its exhibitions and buying tickets.  Museum entrance requires a timed ticket, with an additional exhibit fee.)  

D.C. 'biter dog'

Poor Commander, the German shepherd who lives with the Bidens in the White House and the latest pet to have bitten people.  Was it his nature or his situation?  Will he be moved away for rehab and/or a calmer life?  Here’s what one columnist, cited here before, has to say about why dogs bite.   https://tinyurl.com/3au5strd

Arts & crafts 

I’ve seen art shows of objects made from trash or warfare memorabilia (“Trench Art”!).  Now how about a new and plentiful material for creative people to work with: 3-oz. metal cat food cans?  They clatter around in a recycle bag before pick-up day, then they’re gone.

Given a second life (after all, cats have nine of them), what could these cans become or be used for?  Could they somehow provide enjoyment -- beyond what their contents have already done?

If you can make it happen, please do.  Send me a photo of your creation made from cat food cans and I may show it here.  

Home boys

Two kids who know and love the sound of a cat-food can being opened are Billy and Jersey Summers.  And beyond that, they love the cans’ contents, both their own and each other’s. 

Jersey, for instance, seems to know from another floor when I’ve left the kitchen or even turned my back on the two bowls in different corners.  Suddenly, he’s working out on whatever Billy had left for a return visit.  

And Billy will casually saunter over to nose around in Jersey’s bowl, ostensibly on his way from the water bowl.   “So it goes”. . .    

#