ANCIENT TREES: Giant Floridian cypress older than Jesus burned down by a woman smoking meth

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Buck

Image of The Senator via Kyle May on Flickr

Sadly, a woman burned down a unique pond cypress known as “The Senator” while she was smoking meth. The giant tree “was the oldest pond cypress tree in the world, and was believed to be the fifth-oldest tree on the planet.” The incident should be a wake-up call for government officials who are charged with protecting some of our most valuable, unique natural landmarks.

Apparently, the behemoth was also a victim of neglect by government officials. More via the Orlando Sentinel:

Police say a 26-year-old hooked on meth lit the fire because she needed some light to see while she got high.

But there’s another culprit in this tragedy.

The crime against The Senator started decades ago, when Seminole County let Big Tree Park become a haven for drugs and prostitution while doing next to nothing to protect one of the oldest trees on the planet.

Officials with the Sheriff’s Office have long acknowledged the park’s seedy after-hours reputation.

There was no concerted effort to stop the mischief that went on there after dark. No security cameras. No lights. Cursory patrols. Only a fence around The Senator’s base, and apparently not a very good one considering what happened in January.

NEW SPECIES of diminutive chameleon discovered in Madagascar

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Buck

Images: “(A) adult male on black background, showing orange tail colouration; (B) juvenile on finger tip; (C) juvenile on head of a match; (D) habitat along a small creek on western flank of Nosy Hara, where part of the type series was collected.” More on this remarkable discovery can be found at the journal PLoS ONE.

Brookesia is a genus of chameleons endemic to Madagascar. Recently, the smallest-known species of Brookesia was described — Brookesia micra — and it “reaches a maximum length of just 29mm.” It is known “only known from two sites . . . on the small island of Nosy Hara, northern Madagascar.”

The genus Brookesia contains some of the smallest-known reptiles on the planet, and they are leaf-litter specialists. Due to their diminutive size and the habitat in which they are found, these chameleons are very difficult to locate. Undoubtably, there are more species of leaf chameleons awaiting discovery, and perhaps there are even smaller Brookesia awaiting discovery. More via BBC:

The research team, led by Dr Frank Glaw from the Zoologische Staatssammlung in Munich, have a specialist knowledge of Madagascar’s dwarf chameleons having described other species in the past.

They conducted fieldwork at night during the wet season in order to find the easily overlooked animals.

“They mostly live in the leaf litter in the day… But at night they climb up and then you can spot them,” said Dr Glaw, explaining that the animals moved up into branches to sleep.

The scientists carefully scanned the most likely habitats with torches and headlamps to find roosting sites.

They found the smallest species on a remote limestone islet and believe it may represent an extreme case of island dwarfism.

This phenomenon occurs when a species becomes smaller over evolutionary time in order to adapt to a restricted habitat such as an island.

According to Dr Glaw there could have been a “two-island effect” in the case of B. micra.

“It is possible that the big island of Madagascar has produced the general group of dwarf chameleons and the very small island has produced the tiny species,” he told BBC Nature.

Continue reading this article at the BBC.

Video: Dr. Frank Glaw talks about the difficulty of finding the tiny leaf chameleons.

VIDEO: Lil’ Drac learns how to fly

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Buck

Lil’ Drac, the orphaned short-tailed fruit bat, is growing up quickly! He now eats solid foods and knows how to fly. You can follow Lil’ Drac’s progress here, or you can adopt a bat from the Bat World Sanctuary.

VIDEO: Orphaned short-tailed fruit bat enjoys rocking himself back and forth after his mealtime

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Buck

Here’s an adorable video of an orphaned short-tailed fruit bat, affectionately named Lil’ Drac, that’s being hand-raised at the Bat World Sanctuary:

Why was Lil’ Drac abandoned by his mother?

Lil’ Drac is an orphaned short tailed fruit bat (Carollia perspicillata). His mother was yet another casualty from zoo closures which are occurring across the US. Sheis a young mother who was stressed from the conditions in which she was kept, combined with the additional trauma of being captured and transferred to a new and unfamiliar environment. Consequently, she abandoned Lil’ Drac after he was born. He was found on the padded floor of the indoor flight enclosure at Bat World Sanctuary, curled up in a little ball.

You can keep up with Lil’ Drac’s progress here, and you can sponsor a bat in need here.

Hat tip to Kevin.

VIDEO PICKS

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Buck

Here are some interesting videos of nature, science, and other things that you might’ve missed over the past few weeks:

Video: Oklahoma earthquake causes birds & bugs to take flight:More via the National Weather Service:

An earthquake whose magnitude is initially set at 5.6 by the United States Geological Survey… occurred in central Oklahoma near Prague at 10:53 PM CDT, on Saturday evening, November 5th. This animation shows how some evidence of the earthquake was even seen by radar, as birds and bugs were detected taking flight to escape the shaking on the ground. Thanks to NWS Lubbock for first bringing this to our attention.
Video: 1,500 year old sequoia falls, igniting debate:
Video: A surfer is almost swallowed by a humpback whale:
Video: A hole is blasted at the base of the Condit Dam on the White Salmon River, which allows the river to flow “unimpeded by a dam for the first time in 100 years“:
Video: Swarming birds over the River Shannon in Ireland:
Video: When is a moth like a hummingbird?

More via Science Friday with host Ira Flatow:

A hawk moth (Manduca sexta) feeds by hovering in front of flowers and slurping nectar through a proboscis, basically a body-length straw. To understand how these moths keep such a precise position in the air, Tyson Hedrick, a biomechanist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tried destabilizing moths in a variety of different ways and tracked their responses using high speed cameras.