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?

A round Tuit, backyard birds, and a talking whale

I spent another rainy afternoon watching my backyard birds, and trying to get a photo of the nuthatch with not much luck. But I did get a junco; a noisy photo, what with the poor light, but better than none.

Junco and finch and sunflower seeds

Elegant robin back, with creeping Jenny and dying maple leaves.

Finch again, watching me over her shoulder

Steller's Jay. Checked out the garden, took a drink, and left again. They never stay long.

I've been thinking. Rainy days are good for that. I remember that I used to do a weekly links post. I think I stopped when I could just retweet them instead, but it's not quite the same; I don't bother explaining why I'm passing them along, just lazily click, "Retweet", and forget about it. So I'll start up again here.

And for a long time, I've been wanting to do a post about the bloggers I find helpful or inspirational, but never get around to it.

Here's one. No more excuses.

I think I'll do it in bits and pieces, maybe one with every link post.

And while I'm on the topic, have you seen the talking whale video?

Video and story on YouTube.

The study details the case of a white whale named NOC who began to mimic the human voice, presumably a result of vocal learning. ... "The whale's vocalizations often sounded as if two people were conversing in the distance," says Dr. Sam Ridgway, President of the National Marine Mammal Foundation. "These 'conversations' were heard several times before the whale was eventually identified as the source. In fact, we discovered it when a diver mistook the whale for a human voice giving him underwater directions." ... How this unique "mind" interacts with other animals and the ocean environment is a major challenge of our time.

And from the BBC:

"Our observations suggest that the whale had to modify its vocal mechanics in order to make the speech-like sounds," said Sam Ridgway, president of the National Marine Mammal Foundation and lead author on the paper.