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.
The American Badger (Taxidea taxus) is a carnivore in the family Mustelidae, which includes weasels, otters, and ferrets. Badgers were known to prey on moles, squirrels, mice, and other small mammals, often digging into their dens to nab them.
Badgers have also been reported to bury their prey underground. But what was not known, and is now reported by a journal and by National Public Radio (NPR), is that badgers will bury big carcasses killed by others—in this case, cows placed in the desert by Americans. Here’s part of what NPR said:
University of Utah researchers placed seven cow carcasses in Utah’s Great Basin Desert, and set up cameras to learn about the behavior patterns of local scavengers.
But a week later, researcher Evan Buechley returned to one of the sites and found no sign of the cow.
“And my first reaction was to be fairly disappointed,” he told The Two-Way. After all, it takes a lot of effort to drag a 50-plus-pound cow through the desert. Buechley explained that he thought maybe a coyote had taken the cow away.
This video shows a time-lapse sequence of the five-day burial (they could have done without the music!). And here’s my ode to the badger:
This is a busy badger:
He works both day and night;
Round and round the cow he digs,
Till the beast is out of sight,
More from NPR:
. . . .The video shows the badger working day and night for five days. Then, it built a den connected to the carcass and did not surface often.
“So it worked overtime for five days like really, really intensely, and then it just had a two-week feeding fest,” Buechley added.
What’s more, when Buechley went to check the next carcass, he found that it had also been almost entirely buried by a different badger. The foot remained tied to a stake, but otherwise it was “mostly buried,” he said.
The press release gives more details (e.g., the badger didn’t leave the food den once for two weeks and then kept coming back for several more weeks); the reference to the original paper (free access) is below.
Happy New Beer’s Eve! Yes, it’s a thing. It marks the day before the sale of beer became legal again when Prohibition ended.
In 1909 Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole along with Inuits Ootah, Egigingwah, Seegloo and Ooqueah.
In 1930 the Salt March, or Dandi Satyagraha came to its triumphant end in India. This was Gandhi’s nonviolent protest against the salt production tax levied by the British that attracted worldwide attention to the cause.
In 1974 Swedish supergroup ABBA won the Eurovision contest with their song Waterloo. I gather that the USA got to see the Eurovision competition for the first time in 2016, so now you too can share our trauma. ABBA was nevertheless the least worst thing to come out of it. But I kinda liked them, even when they were painfully uncool. Waterloo may have won, but we’re going to listen to Chiquitita.
Over in Poland, Hili is up to something.
A: Are you hiding from somebody?
Hili: No, I’m looking to see who is hiding from me.
In Polish:
Ja: Chowasz się przed kimś?
Hili: Nie, patrzę kto chowa się przede mną.
As a lagniappe, we have a really cute photo of a thieving squirrel courtesy of Don. He writes:
Our squirrel-proof feeder isn’t. The perching deck on the feeder is spring-loaded. The chickadees, nuthatches, finches, and even grosbeaks can light upon it without having their weight cause the lid to close. It works pretty well until late in the season when the red squirrels finally figure out how to hang by their hing legs from the top of the seed bin to avoid putting any weight on the perching bar. Then they can hang there munching away.
I’ve put some Vaseline on foil on the bin frame. That discourages them until the Vaseline eventually freezes or dries out, as it has here. In years past we’ve had flying squirrels (at night) visit the feeder. They’re such lightweights that they can sit directly on the bar like the birds. But we haven’t seen any of them in at least ten years.
Seeing as owls are Honorary Cats™, I think it’s worthwhile to call attention to a book published last month by Yale University Press: Enigma of the Owl, by Mike Unwin, with photographs by David Tipling. I’ve not seen a copy yet, but the publisher’s website says it’s “lavishly illustrated”, and an article in the New York Times bears witness to that, being accompanied by a small sample of wonderful photos. I was immediately drawn to the photo of the burrowing owl with a frog dangling from its beak, which on closer inspection appears to be half a frog (the other half may have already been swallowed). But I chose to show the following, because it brings out the owl’s cat-like nature.
A small owl in a big cactus. From NY Times, Rick & Nora Bowers/Alamy, via Yale University Press
The latest Jesus and Mo strip, called “code”, is based on a Mirror article about a new fracas in Britain. It seems that Cadbury, the confectionary company, dropped the word “Easter” from ads for its annual “Easter egg hunt,” in which Cadbury eggs are sequestered at various Natiinal Trust sites throughout Britain, with clues given to their location.
The latest ad (see below), does indeed call it the “Cadbury Egg Hunt,” which the company apparently didto appeal to children of all faiths. But that angered Prime Minister Theresa May, who said this:
“I’m not just a vicar’s daughter – I’m a member of the national trust as well.
“I think the stance they [Cadbury? National Turst? Both?] have taken is absolutely ridiculous.
“I don’t know what they are thinking about frankly.”
“Easter’s very important. It’s important to me. It’s a very important festival for the Christian faith for millions across the world.
As the Mirror notes, Archbishop of York also complained, but, as you can see below, the word “Easter” is right there in the ad.What’s everyone beefing about?
Lord, what a tempest in an eggcup! Anyway, here’s the Jesus and Mo take:
Claire Lehmann, editor of the true liberal website Quillette, made a 4-minute video on feminists’ growing celebration of Islamic “modesty culture”—a video that deserves wider airing. Yes, it’s put out by the right-wing site Rebel Media, but who else would sponsor and air a video like this?
Claire is in fact not at all a conservative, but a liberal in the classical mold. And it takes a classical liberal to make these simple points:
“Wearing a headscarf is not an achievement. It is certainly not a feminist statement.”
And her point about hijabophiles wanting attention is right on the money. Something has gone awry with feminism when it fetishizes and worships a symbol of male oppression. If a true patriarchy exists, it is Islam.
Here’s a dollop of photos taken around and in Rotorua, where I was magnificently hosted by artist Geoffrey Cox and his wife, radiologist Barbara Hochstein.
On the long intercity bus ride from Wellington (7.5 hr), we stopped for lunch at a cafe where, the bus driver said, they had famous “lamburgers”, made from ground lamb. Of course I had to have one, and it was great, served with grilled onions, tomatoes, a special dressing, and salad.It was a juicy burger, and more people should serve these in New Zealand. I washed it down with a banana smoothie.
Waiting for the bus to leave, I found a ram to pet in a field next to the cafe. When I put my knee through the fence, he butted me!
Late afternoon sun on Lake Taupo, a large caldera lake that is the largest lake in New Zealand.
Sunrise from Geoffrey and Barbara’s house on Lake Rotorua. It was a gorgeous home, with a fantastic garden filled with native plants and a lovely interior filled with art.
The birds are New Zealand scaup, also called black teal (Aythya novaeseelandiae). It’s an endemic species.
Among Geoffrey’s interests are moas, and he’s illustrated books on them. He makes models of their skeletons, which takes weeks of work, since every detail is accurate and worked out in advance. First, a bit on moas from Wikipedia:
The moa were nine species (in six genera) of flightless birds endemic to New Zealand. The two largest species, Dinornis robustus and Dinornis novaezelandiae, reached about 3.6 m (12 ft) in height with neck outstretched, and weighed about 230 kg (510 lb).When Polynesians settled New Zealand around 1280 CE, the moa population was about 58,000.
Moa belong to the order Dinornithiformes, traditionally placed in the ratite group. However, their closest relatives have been found by genetic studies to be the flighted South American tinamous, once considered to be a sister group to ratites. The nine species of moa were the only wingless birds lacking even the vestigial wings which all other ratites have. They were the dominant herbivores in New Zealand’s forest, shrubland and subalpine ecosystems for thousands of years, and until the arrival of the Māori were hunted only by the Haast’s eagle. Moa extinction occurred around 1300 CE – 1440 CE ± 20 years, primarily due to overhunting by Māori.
Moa species names and numbers are in flux, as several species, once thought distinct, were found to be highly sexually dimorphic, with females 1.5 times as large as males and weighing up to three times more. Copulation must have been difficult!
Here’s Geoffrey with his handmade clay model of the giant moa Dinornis. You can have Geoffrey make one of these for you—or nearly anything else—by going to his webpage:
A smaller moa; sadly, I’ve forgotten the species but I’ll ask Geoffrey:
H0w big were they? Below is a figure from Wikipedia. Given the lack of land mammals in New Zealand when the Maori arrived about 1280 AD, these birds would have been tempting targets, and easy to hunt. With drumsticks like these (the Maori didn’t eat much of the other parts), it’s no wonder all species were driven extinct in about 100 years of hunting.
Here’s Geoffrey’s preliminary sketch for the big moa model shown above. Tons of preliminary work go into the planning:
Moas lacked even external vestiges of wings, which even kiwis have. They were, in effect, the world’s only two-limbed vertebrates. The wing bones would have been attached to these bones underneath the ribs:
The moa’s tiny tail:
Geoffrey has done the artwork for three entire series of New Zealand postage stamps. One was of the extinct birds of New Zealand, and here’s a first day cover of the giant moa. The stamp itself is embedded in the portrait, center to the right:
A cast of the skull of a giant moa, with a $2 New Zealand coin for scale (about the size of an American quarter). This was made from a rubber mold used on a real moa skull in an Auckland museum. Surprisingly, many moa bones survive, though not many entire skeletons or the fragile skulls. Geoffrey even told me that two entire moa eggs, shells intact (but empty) were found by Europeans floating in a river in New Zealand.
Geoffrey also has a moa foot, with three big toes in front and a much smaller one in the rear. The bones are genuine except for one replica bone and all the claws:
Geoffrey’s model (see coin for scale) of the fearsome talon of a Haast’s Eagle (Harpagornis moorei), a giant raptor that made its living by preying on hapless moa. When the moa went extinct,the eagle did, too. After having killed a moa, the eagle could consume it at leisure since there were n0 other carnivores to steal its prey.
Geoffrey will make you a replica of almost any creature by special order. Here’s his lovely model of the skeleton of a Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius).
