Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Tara Tanaka has been isolating herself in her wildlife blind on her wetland property in Florida, and we are the beneficiaries: she sent two new videos. (Tara’s Vimeo page is here and her Flickr page here.)
Be sure to enlarge these before watching.
I’ll put her descriptions of the videos in indented text. First we see a lovely wood duck hen, or “woody” as they call them (Aix sponsa), in a video called “They just tuck their wings and fly right through the hole!” (Tara and her husband have erected a number of wood duck nesting boxes, from which the newly-hatched ducklings leap down to the water on the day of hatching.)
I’ve heard this for years – but here is the way that hen Wood Ducks enter a box or cavity – every time.
In this one, a red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) eats an individual of Amphiuma (a genus of aquatic salamanders):
The water level in our swamp is dropping very fast, and some wildlife, including fish, tadpoles and amphiumas (a type of salamander) are getting stranded in drying pools. This Red-shouldered Hawk has discovered that if it perches in a cypress tree that overlooks one of these areas, he can find easy meals.
I have exciting news: both Honey and Dorothy have started nesting and laying eggs, and I know where both of the nests are. The bad news is that Honey has nested on a ledge on the wrong side of the building (the “non-pond” side), and her nest is 2.5 floors up from a cement porch. That would mean that her ducklings would land on cement when they leap, and that’s not good at all. But don’t worry—Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) and the University of Chicago Facilities are on the problem, which won’t occur for another five weeks or so. I promise that the ducklings will have a soft landing.
But more about the eggs, and Honey’s nest, in a day or two. Here are some photos from Botany Pond.
First, here’s a video of the handsome and ever polite Wingman escorting Honey and Dorothy around the pond. Dorothy is in the lead at first.
Wingman is always on the watch. He often patrols the bank when the hens are feeding, neglecting to feed himself while he watches over the inseminated hens (I’m sure he’s the father of both broods). He’s clearly protecting his genes!
Here’s Dorothy standing on a second-floor ledge on March 30, the day before I spotted her nest. Can you see her? Her nest is now one floor above, on the north end of the building (to the left).
Here she is!
You can tell from the bill that this is Dorothy, for she has a black dot on the left side underneath the nostril.
THIS is where she’s building her nest:
Below is a video of how she’s doing it. Mallards aren’t great at making neat nests: they roughly scrape together grass, leaves and twigs, and usually always nest on the ground. But here we have a case of a wild, ground-nesting species adapting to an urban habitat by nesting in safe but rather inconvenient places (mallard ducklings aren’t well adapted for the big drop to the pond, though they do it okay). The one concession to comfort that a mother mallard makes is lining her nest with soft feathers that she plucks from her breast. We’re not at that stage yet.
Honey and Dorothy will both lay one egg a day until their clutch (about 10-15 eggs) is complete. Then they sit down tight on all the eggs so that incubation and development starts simultaneously for all the eggs. This in turn ensures that all the ducklings hatch within one 24-hour period, so they can all head (jump in this case!) to the pond with their mother. She turns the eggs just so with her bill, ensuring that they all are equally and uniformly exposed to her body heat.
In the case of Dorothy and Honey, their ducklings will hatch within a few hours of each other and leap off the ledge to the ground, with Mom in the pond egging them on by making calls that they’ve learned to recognize in the egg. Here you go—a rare video of Dorothy plucking dead leaves and twigs from the Virginia Creeper to make a nest (she chose that ledge because it has a lot of the plant material to form a scaffold for her eggs).
Since the hens are still laying, they are on the nest only when squeezing out an egg, and they’re eating and swimming the rest of the time. When all the eggs are laid, the hens will disappear from the pond for about 28 days and sit tight on the eggs until they hatch. They may fly down for a drink and a quick feed, but only for an hour at most. I will know they’re incubating because I won’t often see them, and that’s when I’ll begin timing the period until Facilities and I work together to build a landing cushion under both nests. We’ll have the cushions out about 4 days before the scheduled launches.
Dorothy making her nest:
In the meantime, the hens are enjoying their last days of childless freedom, disporting themselves in the water. But they remember that they evolved for one “reason”: to replicate their genes by making more ducks.
Honey (bottom) and Dorothy (middle) escorted by Wingman:
Although I feed them, they’re getting picky, favoring mealworms over duck chow. And they often dabble to get food from the bottom:
After lunch, as always, they head to the concrete rings for a preen, a drink, a scratch, and a nap:
The joys of duckhood! (Honey’s to the rear.)
Here’s the view of the pond (through Venetian blinds) that I have from my office. I can clearly see what’s going on down there: in this case all three ducks are resting on the center ring.
Here’s a log in Pennsylvania, filmed by Robert Bush over a year. In this five-minute film you’ll see nearly two dozen species using the log. I particularly like the wood ducks and bobcats. Note as well the kingfisher beating its catch against the log. Thanks to reader Richard for the link.
Even HuffPost can occasionally publish something useful. After all, they put up gazillions of pieces, most of them garbage, but occasionally, due to the law of large numbers, one of them might be useful. This is one example, though I already knew that the ten behaviors they singled out here were rude. Rather, I thought the piece was useful for those rude people I occasionally encounter in airports. Click on the screenshot to read:
Here’s there list of ten things not to do in an airport. HuffPost’s “tips” are in bold; my comments in plain type. At the end I’ll show one example of a rude person—someone most of you have heard of.
Not Tipping At Curbside Check-In. I rarely check luggage, but when I do (with Southwest at Midway), I give the guy two bucks. So I’m not guilty.
Holding Up Lines. What they mean is not to delay people by waiting until you’re at the front of the TSA checkpoint to get out your ID, or stand at the TSA machine, taking off your belt, shoes, etc. only at the last moment. Of course I am well prepared for this and never cause a moment’s delay. These are the same people who only get out their wallet or money at the grocery store checkout counter when they’re told the total, and fumble in their pockets or purses for loose change.
Pushing to the Front of Security. I’ve done this only once, in Calgary, Canada, when I was about to miss my plane and there was a line of roughly fifty people in front of me before security. I went to the front and asked permission of the lead passenger to go ahead. And I learned a lesson: the Canadian official said I had to ASK EVERYONE IN LINE FOR PERMISSION. So I went down the line and said loudly, “Is it okay if I move to the head of the queue? My plane leaves in a few minutes.” And, being Canadian, they all said “yes,” Ceiling Cat bless them! But I learned a lesson about Canadian politeness. That’s the only time in my life I’ve pushed to the head of any line, much less a security line. (As an excuse, Americans usually ask only the lead person, which is a cultural difference, not inherent rudeness.)
Blocking The Moving Sidewalk. This one really ticks me off: people will just block the moving sidewalk with their bodies and luggage, so I have to say “excuse me” to get by. Protip: STAND TO THE RIGHT AND DO NOT BLOCK THE MOVING SIDEWALK: LEAVE A LANE OPEN ON THE LEFT. Same on escalators.
Not Attending To Your Children. Not a problem for me.
Getting Angry With Kids. Ditto.
Complaining About Small Things. I’ve been subject to passengers who beef and kvetch and mutter to me when lines at check-in are slow, and it makes me dislike them. Nothing is gained by such kvetching. I may feel anxious, but expressing it to others is not useful to anyone.
Swarming The Boarding Area. Another thing I don’t like. If you’re in boarding group 3, don’t hover around the boarding line when group 2 lines up. You can be alert for when your group is about to board, and try to make it to the front of the line, but DO NOT HOVER.
Blocking Terminal Walkways. What they mean is do not walk three abreast in an airport terminal. Many is the time when I’ve been behind entire families: three or four people with their luggage, completely preventing you from passing (I walk fast). Be considerate.
Being Harsh with Airline Employees. This is the lesson I find most important. When planes are late, or delayed, it is not the fault of the gate agent. You may suspect that they are lying to you about the reasons for delays or about estimated boarding times, or are hiding other information from you, but accusing them of that is simply rude. These people have hard jobs and are always getting yelled at. Airline counters are the one place where you simply have to be polite—if for no other reason than the agents have power to treat you or mistreat you. And when they’re especially helpful, I tell them so. Believe me: they appreciate it, for airline employees are not allowed to talk back to customers, and so must internalize their anger. Don’t be one of those nasty people like the guy below!
If you want help or information on flight delays, I’ve found it very useful to message the airline on Twitter. They’ll often help you get another flight, or give you the skinny on what’s gone wrong. And the answers come quickly—often far more quickly than from the gate attendant.
And yes, here we see a video of Young Turk Cenk Uygur—I think I posted a different one a while back—that he made after he was delayed 4 hours on an American Airlines flight at LAX. You can watch him abuse the gate agents repeatedly, and to no avail. According to the Daily Fail (click on second screenshot below), Cenk was actually kicked off this flight after this behavior. That’s his reward for rudeness!
I swear, this guy is wound so tightly he’s going to have a stroke. . .
Cenk gets booted off (video after clicking on screenshot). He made and posted both of these videos himself. So he’s not only rude, but clueless. This does not make him look good!
I’ve never understood why Cenk is so popular. He’s angry, rude, obnoxious, and I don’t find him at all interesting as a journalist. Perhaps, like Bill Nye, he was good back in the day, but oy, what a schmegeggy he’s become!
Remember, folks, be especially nice to those people who have tough jobs and are liable to be yelled at by the public.
A paper just published by Dheeraj Mittal and colleagues in Ecosphere reports an Asiatic lioness (Panthera leo persica) that adopted a leopard (Panthera pardus) cub, nursing and feeding it along with its own two cubs for six weeks.
Asiatic lioness, leopard cub, and lion cub in the Gir Forest, India. Photo by D. Mittal.
As WEIT readers know, Asiatic lions survive in only a single relict population in Gujarat in northwestern India, where they coexist with leopards (but not tigers, which have been extirpated in Gujarat). As the only lions in all of Asia, they are carefully monitored by Indian wildlife biologists, and in December 2018 they spotted the leopard cub in the company of the lions. From the paper:
Contrary to the accepted understanding of lion–leopard interactions, in December 2018, we came across an adult free-ranging Asiatic lioness (Panthera leo persica) taking care of a leopard cub (P. pardus fusca) in addition to her own young cubs in the Gir forests of Gujarat, Western India (Fig. 1A). Over the course of the next one and a half months,we intimately monitored this lioness that was recorded to nurse the leopard cub and rear it as her own (Fig. 2). The leopard cub (a male of~2 months with characteristic blue haze in its eyes that indicated its very young age; Fig. 1B) was always found to be associated with the lioness: suckling from her, feeding from kills that she made, and playing with its foster siblings (Fig. 2). The prolonged duration and the ecological context of the observed foster care between these two sympatric and competing felids are bizarre and stimulate intriguing behavioral questions.
The New York Times interviewed one of Mittal’s co-authors, Stotra Chakrabarti of the University of Minnesota.
“The lioness took care of him like one of her own,” nursing him and sharing meat that she hunted, Dr. Chakrabarti said.
His new siblings, too, were welcoming, playing with their spotty new pal and occasionally following him up trees. In one photo, the leopard pounces on the head of one of his adoptive brothers, who is almost twice his size and clearly a good sport. “It looked like two big cubs and one tiny runt of the litter,” Dr. Chakrabarti said.
He has been studying the park’s lions for nearly seven years. This unlikely association “was surely the most ‘wow’ moment I’ve come across,” Dr. Chakrabarti said. His fellow researchers with an Asiatic lion conservation project in India, some who have been watching the big cats for decades, had “also not seen anything like this,” he said.
Sadly, the leopard cub was found dead after about six weeks. An autopsy revealed that it died of a congenital femoral hernia; it had not been abandoned or killed by the lions, and, given its condition, it was probably doomed from the start.
From an evolutionary perspective, rearing an allospecific cub would not be advantageous. Indeed, leopards and lions are competitors, and will kill one another as opportunity arises. But, to paraphrase Yoda, the Baby Schema is strong with this one, and the juvenile features of essentially all amniotes that elicit the “awwww” response in humans seems to work in lions, too. It leads in this instance to what Mittal el al. call a nonadaptive ‘reproductive error’.
Mittal, D, S. Chakrabarti, S.B. Khambda, and J.K. Bump. 2020. Spots and manes: the curious case of foster care between two competing felids. Ecosphere 11(2):e03047. pdf
Here’s an 18-minute video from an old (1990) BBC “Trials of Life” series, featuring of course the inimitable Attenborough. I recommend viewing, as the behaviors on display are simply amazing. Granted, parts of this are more than a little bit grim for its theme is predation and parasitism.
I had of course heard of potter wasps, but had no idea about what they did. The behavior of this wasp is stunning, with everything, from the construction of the clay pots to the procurement of a living caterpillar as food for its single larva, is coded for in a brain about the size of the period you make with a pencil.
Likewise with the bodysnatcher wasp, which digs hole, uses tools, and have an amazing sense of place.
And so with the other predatory and parasitic wasps. Then onto colubus monkey-hunting chimps, which you might want to skip if you don’t want to see primate carnage.
Don’t miss The March of the Lobsters at about 11 minutes in, though.
The carnage continues with killer whales vs. sea lions, and that, I admit, I found that a bit hard to take, especially when the orca plays with live prey.
But who ever said that life was easy for wild animals, or natural selection kind? It is, in fact, the gruesomeness of these behaviors that helped dispel Darwin’s belief in a benevolent deity. This is from a letter sent by Darwin to Asa Gray in 1860:
With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.— I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I shd wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. . .
Here’s a National Geographic video about the Golden snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana)—a pretty accurate description of its appearance. The baby comes in for some rough treatment when all the females want to hug it.
Here’s its range (it’s endangered because of habitat loss):
