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.

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