Wants and wishes

...My argument is [that] because we don't understand animal consciousness, we ought to be opening our eyes to the possibility that a great range of animals, not just mammals, not just birds, maybe invertebrates are conscious as well. It seems to me that by saying we don't understand consciousness, you're not closing off animals' consciousness. You're not denying animal consciousness altogether. You're just simply saying we don't know and therefore it might exist in a much wider range of animals...

That's Marian Stamp Dawkins speaking. She is Professor of Animal Behaviour at Oxford U., and the author of Why Animals Matter. This conversation is titled, What Do Animals Want?

A couple of excerpts:

What we really need is a much more scientific basis for animal welfare than just an anthropomorphic argument. I began to think, how can you define animal welfare in a way that's scientific, that actually leads to proper evidence so the decisions we make are based on good evidence? I came up with a really very simple definition of animal welfare. Which is that the animals are healthy, and that they have what they want.... 

... there's something more to animal welfare than just not dying of a disease. That more is, in my view, what the animals, themselves, want. Do they want access to water; do they want access to cover? Do they want to be with each other? Obviously we can't necessarily give them everything they want. But we can at least find out what it is. If somebody's going to argue such-and-such improves animal welfare, I would say well, what's the evidence that it either improves their health or it gives the animals what they want? If you can't show that, then however much you think you might want it, it doesn't seem to me that it actually improves animal welfare at all.

Read the entire article (or watch the video: 35 minutes.)

And what does a dragonfly want? Supper! And it takes less than a second to catch it. Watch the Science Nation video. And don't miss the frustrated frog (about 49 seconds in); hilarious, if not so much for the frog.

How does a baby bird make his wants known? Well, sometimes, his mother gives him a password. Even before he's hatched out of the egg!

Colombelli-Négrel et al. show that superb fairy wrens go one step further by singing a specific incubation song to their in-egg embryos, which helps them to oust parasitizing cuckoo chicks that have not learned the brood's “password.” To ensure that both parents are in the know, females also incorporated their incubation song into begging calls given to their male partners, resulting in males also being more parental to chicks singing the right song.

 The entire (brief) article is at ScienceMag.org. I think registration is required, but it's free and fast, and gives you access to years of interesting science news.

And on to the wishes pretty pictures! First up; a whole passel of brilliant sea spiders. They're not really spiders, but Pycnogonids, but they sure look spidery. And yes, we have them in BC, too, but sadly (for me) not in the intertidal zone. These, for example, live at a depth of 2200 metres (1.4 miles).

Vent sea spider. Photo from Wikipedia.

Pycnogonids are so small that each of their tiny muscles consists of only one single cell, surrounded by connective tissue.

 More pics: I am always impressed by PSYL's photography; from insects to birds to scenery, he brings it all to life. He was recently working in the extreme north of the Yukon (about 1500 miles north of here, in the Vancouver area), and posted photos of a hike around Ivvavik. Beautiful country, a must-see!

My son-in-law motorcycled up to Inuvik, just a few miles east of there, this summer; did I mention that here? I followed him on Google maps. They had sent one of their trucks up the highway, and I could "stand" on the road and see the country he was driving through. I so wish I could make the trip myself!. All that wide-open space; all that brilliant colour, and the northern lights overhead!

Back to the topic at hand; PSYL's final photos are of tors. I had never heard of these; they're like huge rock walls marching across the landscape. Wikipedia explains how minerals deposited in granite cracks have persisted over millenia, while the granite eroded away to gravel, leaving the huge mineral walls behind.

One final link: someone is missing a large tub of scallop guts. Have you seen it?

Remembering a Chilcotin summer

I don't think I ever posted these photos of a lake by the side of the road to Bella Coola.

Unnamed lake, near Nimpo Lake, Bella Coola Highway

Yellow scum and brown ducks

The ducks and waterlily leaves

I can't identify the ducks; they're mostly brown, with darker brown heads, dark bills.

A rapport* of hermits

Hermit crabs are absurdly misnamed. Here's what Dictionary.com says about "hermit":

her·mit  [hur-mit]
noun
1. a person who has withdrawn to a solitary place for a life of religious seclusion.
2. any person living in seclusion; recluse.
3. Zoology . an animal of solitary habits.

#1 is irrelevant; as far as I can tell, hermit crabs are not religious. #2 refers to humans, but the idea of seclusion is there. #3 would be the definition applied. But hermit crabs are anything but reclusive; "solitary habits" do not suit their lifestyle. They're gregarious, love company, and do not do well alone. One website even mentions that they appreciate a mirror for added company; I will have to supply mine with one.

When we find them on the beach, it is usually in a crowd, sometimes of a hundred or more, including several distinct species; they do not seem to have any tribal leanings.

To stock my tank, I brought home several handfuls of hermits; now there are about 16 hermits, hairy hermits, grainy hand hermits, and greenmarks**, living in the aquarium. (There may be more; every now and then a shell like a grain of rice starts walking about; it's been borrowed by a hermit so small I didn't realize it was there.)

Stacked hermits

These are four of the larger ones, hanging out together. When I first saw them, all three smaller ones were piled on top of the weight lifter in the big whelk shell. He is a grainy hand hermit, recognizable by the red antennae, and the bluish legs. The other three are hairies (dotted-line antennae, possibly blue knees); greenmarks have red antennae and orange stripes on the legs, and are much smaller.

The shore crabs, now; they are the true hermits. Each one lives alone in his little hideaway; coming face to face with another, they raise their pincers in a challenge: "Back off!"

* A collective noun for a group of crabs is "cast"; a cast of crabs. I couldn't find one for hermits, so I've invented one.

**Hairy hermits are Pagurus hirsutiusculus; Grainy hands, Pagurus granosimanus; Greenmarks, Pagurus caurinus.

Winter casualty

It's been suddenly cold these last two days. There was ice on the birdbaths this morning, and the bushtits are swarming around the suet feeder. On the wall outside the front door, three little brown moths seemed to be sleeping, but when I touched one, it fell free and floated to the ground. Frozen and dead, or dying.

I nudged a second one into a bottle. It was moving, barely, then revived as it came inside to the warmth. But not for long; before I got around to taking its photo, it was lying inert. It's time; the moths have lived out their lifespan, fed, played, hopefully found mates and started the next generation; now it's time to leave. I just felt sorry that I had awakened this one and prolonged its dying. 

Such big eyes you have!

The moths are about an inch across the wingspan. They lay flat on the wall, wings opened completely. This one, when it died, was holding his wings together, and they seemed locked in place; I couldn't lay it flat without tearing the wings.

So tiny, so fragile they seem! And yet, so sturdy, so patient, so amazingly tough. To sleep out in the cold, night after night, until their blood freezes; imagine it!

(Sure, they're cold-blooded, but think of the merry bushtits; slightly bigger than a dragonfly, hot-blooded, huddled in a tree while the sap freezes, fueled by a smidgen of suet and a bug or three. I am continually humbled by these creatures.)

Eight-legged hobbit?

Hermit crabs live in borrowed snail shells. "True" crabs hide themselves under rocks, or bury themselves up to the eyestalks in the sand. But one of my little crabs has taken a hint from the hermits.

I provided an assortment of shells for the hermits; whatever I could find or had collected from other sources. Some are from local beaches, some from Mexico and Central America, a few from unknown shores, shells I picked up in garage sale lots.  But hermits have their likes and dislikes; some will accept even non-shell outfits, made of glass, broken bottle caps, or even Lego (look!) but many have very specific tastes. Mine, hermits from Boundary Bay, will only wear discarded shells from local species of marine snails: whelk, mud snails, or periwinkles. Everything else is invisible to them, so far.

One of the smaller shore crabs discovered a broken shell ignored by the hermits, and moved in.

Hobbit house* shell, from down south, is about 1 1/2 inches across.

The shell makes a great shelter; front and back doors, complete privacy, no maintenance. The crab stays inside most of the time, even when I pick up the shell as I clean the aquarium, or when larger crabs push it around. He comes out when I provide crab treats, only to grab his share and retreat to eat it in his own space.

I was surprised, a couple of days ago, to see him out of the shell, digging busily deep in the sand a couple of inches away. I watched. After a minute, he surfaced carrying a large white stone, which he carried over to his home shell, and deposited in the doorway. There were already several others there, in both openings.

Front door, back door, with privacy screens. He's well hidden inside.

The stones fell out when I tidied the aquarium yesterday, but he's since added a new sandy floor inside and three fresh stones at the doors.

*It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats ... J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

A taste of summer

The rain stopped. The sun came out. It was even warm! We went to Crescent Beach while it lasted.

A glorious summery day!

At high tide, the beach is a mere strip between warm yellows and cool, cool blue.

Runner and train at the Point

Blinding sunlight gives black shadows, starry specks

Splashed stones in the sunshine

Yellow, orange, blue

A tangled mess of wild roses enlivened by so-yellow leaves and red rose hips

Detail of a wind-polished stump

Too-bright light eats a hole in my finger.

I couldn't resist posting that last one, even though the photo is ruined. The sun was low and far too intense for my eyes or the camera sensor, so I was shielding the lens with my hand until I could see the horizon. But the sun bit right through my finger, apparently. Chomp! And I didn't feel a thing!

Granny Dressup, Smiley the Elk, and a Snarky Princess

Still rescuing old, forgotten photos ...

Every place we go, we always visit the antique/secondhand/thrift stores. No telling what we'll find, and each location has its own quirks. At Willow Point, in Campbell River, LJ's  Past and Present Curios is a favourite. The owner has three stuffed BC mammals. (She's not responsible for what's happened to them in the past, she says, but at least she can give them a good home now.) She loves to dress them up with her wares, trying to fit their personality.

Granny Otter, with her reading glasses and shawl.

A cheerful elk. Not For Sale, the sunburst on his nose says. Sometimes the antlers serve as jewelry  holders.

How do you tell the difference between an elk (Canadian usage) and a moose? The moose is bigger, although you can't see the size here. But the moose also has a heavy, drooping nose (see here); the elk is more deer-like.

In Europe the moose is called an elk. And the elk is a wapiti. Which is a kind of deer. Latin is better; the same everywhere. Alces alces is the moose. (Yes, you can translate that to Elk elk. Just to keep you properly confused.) And the elk (our elk) is Cervus canadensis. Cervus means "deer".

The snarky Princess. I think she's an ermine or weasel.She's standing on the counter, maybe 16 inches tall.

The animals are pets, after a fashion. They are not for sale, but their clothes are. This summer, they were outfitted differently.

Facebook in the sky

"Tree has poked you. Poke back?"

Laurie delights in taking these. His trees love the moon, it seems.

Oyster Bay, Vancouver Island, 2009.

Happy Thanksgiving, ...

... y'all down south, there!

Evening sky in Strathcona, and our neighbour's warm light.

A Skywatch post.

Singing tree

Among my old hopeless photos, I found this one:

Dead tree,  Chase Valley

I've kept this photo, first on paper, then scanned for the computer, for about 10 years. It was a poor photo; too dark, taken from too far away (but it was as close as we could get without gear), with a competing sky behind the tree. Even cleaned up now, it's not very clear. But it was "our" tree, with a story to tell.

We were staying in a friend's cabin in the hills near Chase, BC. We were basically shut in there; we had no phone, no internet, no neighbours; all around us was scrub bush and evergreen forest, innocent of humans for the most part. Our companions were nuthatches, chickadees, scrub jays and squirrels, hanging around because I was providing seeds and peanuts. There were beaver down by the creek, and we saw a few of those birds that run underwater, the dippers.

To go into town, we had to drive along the bottom of a narrow valley, on gravel roads for part of the way. The view: trees, trees, trees, and the occasional small farm on the bottom land along Chase Creek. I don't remember passing more than one or two cars in the entire time we were there.

Eventually, we would come to civilization; a miniature town hall, seemingly abandoned, a wooden bridge or two, a turn-off down Turtle Valley Road. (That one has a name on the map; our road doesn't.) Then a narrow ravine, a sharp curve, a bit of a slope downwards, and suddenly the world opened in front of us. This was the valley of the river that runs from Little Shuswap Lake, just around the corner, to Kamloops to the west. The fields were lush and bright green, glowing in the sunlight, the river like a mirror held up to the sky. Across the valley the hills started again, rising gradually, melting into a blue haze in the distance. We had to stop to look, often.

And there was the one lone tree, well down the side hill, but still towering overhead.

It was dead, long dead, but still bore life. Every time we stopped, the whole tree was singing and twittering. Sometimes, we saw tiny birds flitting from branch to branch, always dark shadows against the brightness of the sky. We never saw them up close; they remain unidentified. They never seemed to leave the tree; why would they? It was a never-ending source of goodies, bugs and seeds waiting for a forest fire to get them started growing, and free for the eating. No wonder the birds sang!

Eventually we'd tear ourselves away, down into town for groceries and hardware (Laurie was doing some construction work) and a stop at the second-hand book store; then back up that long hill, and we'd dive into the shade of the ravine and the creek valley until next time. The tree stood like a sentinel, watching us return, the birds still twittering madly.

The last time we stopped, to say goodbye for now (but it's been 10 years!) a hawk was perched in a tree above us on the hillside, watching the tree. Next link in the food chain, but I hoped he'd soon go elsewhere.

Is the tree still there? I can't be sure. On the Google satellite photo, there's a dark stain where I think it was. If that's it, I'm sure it's still twittering away.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next: I found a whole folder full of trees against the sky. I'll see how many I can rescue.

Rainy day sampler

I have a hard drive full of old photos, most too bad to be used, some with possibilities; but these get lost in the undergrowth. Following Ted McRae's example, I've been sorting them out and rescuing those I can, now that I have newer software and am slowly learning to use it.

Here's a random assortment of the most recent recovers, in no particular order. (Blogger's choice, and I didn't interfere.)

In a dry summer, an angel dreams of days when her pool was full. York Road, Campbell River, 2009.

Is that a ... turtle?!  Photo from Laurie's old film camera, pre-2006. Boundary Bay.

Rotting ball, White Rock beach, April 2009.

I posted this on the blog in August of 2010; I think it's a feather duster worm. The photo was messy and dark, but a few quick tricks with Elements (Ted's first two) brought it to life.

Same worm, clearer pose. It's about an inch and a half long.

Lion, in the jumbled entrance of a house in Finn Slough. The background camouflaged the lion in front; a pity, because I think he's beautiful. I finally figured out how to use the selection tool, masked the lion, and blended the mess. Simple, now I know how. October, 2010.

Signs in the corner of a store window in Strathcona. April, 2011.

1980s photo, taken with one of those little Kodachromes, much faded with age. Scanned and cleaned up, it's passable. This is my younger son rototilling a patch of swamp land we were draining and reclaiming. Wonderful soil! That first year, I had 7 boxes of tomatoes to can.
Firvale, the Bella Coola valley, BC.

Straw "painting" I brought back from Mexico in the 1970s. Cheating here; I threw out all my old photos, and took a new one now that I have a better camera and a decent flash. For the first time, the straw came out as straw, and Elements cleaned up the edges nicely.

I've done a batch of scanned family photos, which I've uploaded to Facebook, and umpteen worm photos; these I will store for reference material for the next time I find another. The weather people threaten us with two solid weeks of rain: I don't care; I'm having fun!

In a clump of moss

Seven years ago, my daughter gave me a miniature iron birdbath, suitable for a miniature succulent. I left it in a corner until I could buy a plant for it, but when I looked next, it had a lush, green mound of native moss growing, so I let it be. The moss grew there happily until this very dry summer, when it turned brown, shrivelled, and finally blew away in a lump when the fall winds came. It came to rest behind some plant pots and I left it again, until I do the final fall clean-up in the garden.

I noticed it again today; it was full size and bright green again.

I brought it in to look it over in the light. It's in full leaf, and the fruiting bodies are standing tall above it. And climbing on a stem was a bright, white spark.

Sporophytes on red stalks. With the light spots, they look like long-necked, long-beaked birds.

A mini-aphid. With the flash, it was pure, burnt-out white; here I am using the flash at 1/16 normal strength, with a diffuser added.

It has something clinging to one antenna. The two up-pointing "tails" are  little tubes, called siphunuculi. They may help with defense.

Heading down into the moss jungle.

Rear view.

The moss (and aphid) is now outside again. Tomorrow, I'll replant it in the birdbath.

Spying on Spio

I've been staring at a worm so long these last two days, getting to know its habits and likes, I almost think I should be giving it a name. Everyone else does; some call it the Jointed Tube worm, some the Three-jointed TW, or the Jointed Three Section TW, some say it's a Bamboo worm. It's a Spiochaetopterus costarum*; I'll call it Spio for short.

It hates lamps and flashlights, but doesn't mind the flash, and has built a new tunnel right up against the glass, so I've managed to get a few photos.

Under the sand, there doesn't seem to be a sheath. The two tentacles (or palps) go up through the little sand tube. (The red tentacles are an observant grainy hand hermit, and what looks like his one big eye is a limpet on the glass.)

Seen up close, this is a polychaete, a bristle worm. Along both sides, it has a series of little paddle feet (parapodia, meaning "beside feet"), here sprouting out of the centre of each ringed section. These may end in bristles; I zoomed 'way in, but I couldn't be sure.

The parapodia are clearer here.

If you look closely, you can see that its belly is to the left in the first photo, and to the right in this one. The worm is constantly moving inside its tunnel, swinging itself back and forth to enlarge the tunnel. The paddles operate in a series, so that it looks like waves moving downwards, more or less the same movement as a millipede walking, but from front to back. (The millipede looks as if the feet were moving back to front. They aren't.) And except that the worm stays in place, unless it's disturbed, in which case it retracts deep into the tunnel, shrinking down its entire length instantly.

A closer look at the sections and the parapodia.

It quickly moves to a new location if a crab starts digging, but doesn't mind the hermits, who just wander about, picking up tidbids and nibbling on them. They don't touch the worm's tentacles; fair's fair.

From around the web: The worm's sheath is a coating of mucus. The sand would be stuck to that. Those papery tubes that turn up on the beach at low tide, an inch or two long, are remnants of these sheaths, left behind when the worm retracted for protection deep into the sand. Waves or animals rip them off, but no-one is harmed; the worm makes himself a new one. Overnight, as this one did the other day.

Buzz says, "Palps extending from tube remove waste from tube.
(The worm) feeds using cilia to produce water current and captures food with mucus balls.

As the worm grows, the tube will probably lengthen; we see them on the beach, up to about 4 inches long. The tube, not the worm.)

Long ago, we found a bamboo worm dying on Crescent Beach, this one identified tentatively* as Axiothella rubiocinta, the Red-banded bamboo worm. It was about 6 inches long.

A. rubiocinta does not have the two tentacles, and it has exactly 22 segments. I counted the ones I could see on mine; there are 25 or 26 visible. They make sand tubes, larger that Spio's, and often live in communities containing both species.

Bamboo worm, Crescent Beach

Worm, Campbell River

*"Tentatively". All my id's are tentative. Give me another 20 years or so to learn. Meanwhile, corrections are appreciated.

Choice location

Nothing better than a sunny car roof on a cold day.

Cat with yellow-green eyes, Beach Grove

Sometimes I wonder what they're thinking.

From my store of forgotten photos. October, 2009

Life's little mysteries

Some interesting links for you:

The Northwest Dragonflier answers the question, "How do dragonflies manage to fly and mate at the same time?" The Foot High Club. (Didn't you always wonder about that?)

What lives in your belly button? More than you would expect. Guest post in Scientific American by Rob Dunn.

And why is this good news? Carl Zimmer, writing for the NY Times, explains.

The project and other studies like it are revealing some of the ways in which our invisible residents shape our lives, from birth to death.

And what is a cormorant doing with a camera? CBC News, Saskatchewan (Canada).

Do worms have teeth? HuffPost Green.

And my own volunteer worm: this little critter has built himself a tube near the glass of the aquarium. He showed up two days ago, and that night the largest crab dug up his home site, right down to the floor. What one destroys, the other builds; the newest tube is longer than the previous one.

Two-tentacled tubeworm, Spiochaetopterus  costarum.

He's much larger than any I've seen feeding so far; the tentacles are about 1/2 inch long.

The first one to show up here, two years ago, was microscopic, too small for the camera; I had to draw it.

I have tentatively identified it as the three-sectioned tubeworm, which lives in this area, but I have my doubts. This little critter coats his tube with grains of sand; the photos of S. costarum show it with a sheath that looks like fabric with the seams (many seams) turned outwards. (Sample photo)

My own links: here's one, eating. And a worm genius.

So, another mystery. If I scrape off the sand, will I find a separate tube inside? Or is the sand glued on too tightly to be removed without killing the worm? I'll have to invent some way of checking that out.

Savita

I had planned to post a bunch of interesting links tonight, but after today's news, I don't have the heart for it. Instead, read this and weep: a young woman in Ireland dies in agony when doctors refuse to help.

From CBS: Savita Halappanavar, miscarrying at 17 weeks, denied life-saving abortion.
The medical details, from a medical student in India.
Doctors weigh in.
Another doctor. What would have been appropriate treatment?
Ireland speaks up. Thousands protest in the streets.

The old U2 song keeps running through my head:

I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes
And make it go away

How long...
How long must we sing this song
How long, how long...
...

Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday

(U2 was singing about an incident in 1972, but some of the lyrics apply here. Savita died on Sunday.)

(On YouTube, with complete lyrics)

And there's an echo: a too-often ignored Bible verse, memorized decades ago.

He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8, KJV

Where is the justice for Savita? The mercy?

How long ...?

Pampas grass?

Ornamental grass catching the sunlight, by the shore in Beach Grove.

As far as I can figure out, it's a variety of Pampas grass, less feathery and darker than the kind we usually see.

With the head of a dragon

Learn something new every day; they tell you it will keep you young. I don't know about that, but at least it keeps me interested.

I've been learning how to swap backgrounds on my photos. I keep forgetting the commands, so I worked far too long on it last night to do a blog post afterwards. Here's what held me up:

An antique jade turtle with a dragon's head, a Chinese symbol of longevity. It's a tea or sake pot that holds about a shot glass of liquid; the smaller turtle is the lid. I photographed it on a white sheet, for easy selection, then pasted a design from a card over the sheet, taking on the contours of the fabric.

This is fun! Not exactly appopriate for insect and bird photos, unless I mention at the time that the background has been changed, but it may be helpful when the insect in question prefers the wood of my desk to the leaf I have so carefully provided.

Garfield the hermit

Seeing eye to eye with a crab:

"Freckles"

"Peachy"

Did you notice the eyes?

Crabs' eyes are on stalks; the shore crabs' eyes are a graceful paisley shape.

Freckles on a raft of Turkish towel.

Hermit crabs' eyes are stalked, too. But they come in many shapes; round, vertical ellipses, even U-shaped. My hairy hermits have oval eyes with long, horizontal irises, with the pupil at the top; a heavy-lidded, world-weary, Garfield* the cat sort of eye.

"Moi seul sens ce tourment." (See Henri, Paw de Deux)

*Or Henri; watch for 1:30.