#animalbehaviour — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #animalbehaviour, aggregated by home.social.
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'Regulars': Hitchhiking birds catch Sydney train commuters by surprise
By Shannon CorvoYou may have heard of snakes on a plane, but what about birds on a train?
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'Regulars': Hitchhiking birds catch Sydney train commuters by surprise
By Shannon CorvoYou may have heard of snakes on a plane, but what about birds on a train?
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'Regulars': Hitchhiking birds catch Sydney train commuters by surprise
By Shannon CorvoYou may have heard of snakes on a plane, but what about birds on a train?
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'Regulars': Hitchhiking birds catch Sydney train commuters by surprise
By Shannon CorvoYou may have heard of snakes on a plane, but what about birds on a train?
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'Regulars': Hitchhiking birds catch Sydney train commuters by surprise
By Shannon CorvoYou may have heard of snakes on a plane, but what about birds on a train?
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How to handle yellowjacket nests in garden beds https://www.allforgardening.com/1922178/how-to-handle-yellowjacket-nests-in-garden-beds/ #agricultural #AnimalBehaviour #AnimalProduct #AnimalProtection #apocrita #BeeColony #BeeHouse #beekeeping #bees #black #breeding #BreedingGround #BreedingSeason #Builds #BunchOf #caring #Colony #Cultivate #Cultivation #cutout #deserted #ecofriendly #EnvironmentProtection #exemptable #ExteriorView #garden #gardening #group #Hobby #honeycomb #hymenoptera #Many #ManyAnimals #nest #NestBuilding #NestingAid #NestingSite
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We're thrilled to welcome Dr Iliana Medina Guzman as a plenary speaker at #ABL2026! 🪲
How do camouflage and warning colours shape the evolution of species? 🦜 Dr Medina Guzman (uni. of Melbourne) combines field experiments, comparative analyses, and evolutionary biology to reveal how antipredator defences influence colonisation, dispersal, and even speciation. 🦋
🔗Register here to the conference: https://ablaoc.sciencesconf.org/
#BehaviouralEcology #Evolution #Macroevolution #AnimalBehaviour
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WOAAAHHHH!!! 😍🐋🥰
"Not only do sperm whales have a form of 'alphabet' and form vowels within their vocalizations but the structure of these vowels behaves in the same way as human speech, the new study has found".
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Alecia Carter and I are launching a new online seminar!
The aim is to bring together biologists & philosophers to explore the concept of animal agency.
A preliminary session will be held on 5 December.
Feel free share to anyone who might be interested!
#AnimalBehaviour #EcoEvo #PhilBio #behaviouralecology #Agency
https://www.animalinventiveness.com/post/new-seminar-series-agency-between-biology-and-philosophy -
Hello everyone !!!
I am trying to get my hands on this paper but have not been successful yet. Does anyone have access to old archives of Animals ?
I thank you in advance for your help 🙏🙏
#AnimalBehaviour #Baboon #jackal #biology #animals
#behaviouralecology -
African Forest Elephants Help Fight Climate Change
Discover the awe-inspiring role of African forest #elephants in the Congo Basin—nature’s master gardeners who literally shape the world around them! These gentle giants roam through muddy, mineral-rich paradises called baïs, fostering the growth of carbon-absorbing trees that make our planet healthier. By tending to these unique landscapes, they are the unsung heroes in the fight against climate change. Want to ensure these ecological architects keep doing their vital work? Join the movement to protect their habitat—say no to palm oil and adopt a vegan lifestyle! 🐘🌳#BoycottPalmOil #BeVegan #Boycott4Wildlife
https://youtu.be/s584AP-BYm0?si=Zrwc5CFFjAxAqmas
Take action by sharing this!
African forest #elephants 🐘 in #Congo 🇨🇩 are essential to fighting #climatechange 🌳💚 by capturing #carbon and dispersing seeds in the rainforest. Help them every time you shop, be #vegan #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/04/28/african-forest-elephants-unsung-heroes-helping-congo-fight-climate-change/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterGentle giant pachyderms #African forest #elephants 🐘🐘 are the unsung heroes helping #climatechange. They capture #carbon in the #DRC’s 🇨🇩🌳rainforest! Help them survive with your supermarket choices #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/04/28/african-forest-elephants-unsung-heroes-helping-congo-fight-climate-change/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterThis story was written by Leonie Joubert and originally published by Mongabay on August 15, 2023 and was republished under a Creative Commons licence.
The approach to the “village of elephants” in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic must be made in complete silence. Not even the faintest rustle of backpack on rain jacket should break the soundscape as visitors wade through the sometimes waist-deep swamp at the forest’s edge. The Indigenous Ba’aka guides must be able to listen for any signs of nearby elephants, so they can steer the visitors clear and avoid a close encounter with these giants. When a few pachyderms saunter out of the dense greenery, the Ba’aka shoo them away calmly.
The thick vegetation gives way suddenly to a baï. This is no mere watering hole. The sandy clearing stretches for half a kilometer, more than a quarter of a mile, in the otherwise unbroken canopy of the world’s second-largest tropical forest.
A handful of researchers camp out on a timber observation platform, overlooking a place that has drawn generations of elephants to its mineral- and salt-laden sand and muddy water. They document how the animals use their trunks or tusks to dig into the sand, eavesdrop on the animals’ conversations, and count the many other species that congregate here.
This is Dzanga baï, a meeting place for critically endangered African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) in the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas where these animals come together in huge numbers to dig for nutrients they can’t get from the otherwise abundant forests.
Baïs are unique to the Congo Basin’s forests, and new research is underway to understand the role these mineral-rich pockets play as a supplement to the elephants’ diet, how this sustains the animals’ population, and how they therefore contribute to the carbon-capture function of the forest.
Unlike the Amazon, the Congo Basin’s forests still have their original megafauna, elephants in particular. And they have these salt-rich clearings. Conservationists are beginning to understand the importance of elephants as forest gardeners here, and how their taste for certain trees and fruits has sculpted a forest that absorbs more carbon per hectare than the Amazon.
The Global Carbon Budget project estimated Africa’s total greenhouse gas emissions for 2021 at 1.45 billion metric tons. Every year, the Congo Basin’s forests soak up 1.1 billion metric tons of atmospheric carbon, storing it in trees and soil; in 2020 carbon credit prices, this service would be worth $55 billion.
Forest elephants, smaller than their better-known savanna cousins or even Asian elephants, prefer certain lower-growing, tasty trees. This picky browsing pressure creates gaps in the canopy that allow other, less palatable but carbon-dense species to reach tremendous heights. Elephants’ appetite for the fruit of these bigger trees then means they spread their seeds far and wide.
A 2019 study from the Ndoki Forest in the Republic of Congo (ROC) and LuiKotale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) estimated that if elephants were removed from these sites, the loss of their forest-shaping food preferences would reduce the forest’s carbon capture by 7%.
This finding makes a case not only to stop deforestation in the Congo Basin, but to protect the elephants too, as a way to slow climate breakdown, the study authors wrote.
Mouangi baï, a vast watering hole in the Republic of Congo’s Odzala-Kokoua National Park, is nicknamed Capitale because of the vast number of elephants drawn to its mineral-laden water, mud, and sand. Image courtesy Gwilli Gibbon/African Parks.Salt licks for elephants, gardeners of the forest
Mouangi baï is only about 250 km (155 mi) from Dzanga baï as the crow flies, but it takes a day or two to travel by road and river to get from one to the other.
Researchers with the conservation organization African Parks and Harvard University’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology are zeroing in on Mouangi and other baïs in Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the ROC, to clarify the link between baïs, elephants and the forest’s tree species composition.
Nicknamed Capitale by the locals, Mouangi baï in Odzala draws hundreds, maybe even thousands, of elephants, according to Gwili Gibbon, research and monitoring head at African Parks, which manages the park along with the ROC government.
“Mouangi is one of our largest and most renowned baïs,” Gibbon says.
At the intersection of two rivers, Mouangi is more than 1 km (0.6 mi) across and spans 91 hectares (225 acres). It’s the largest of a dozen of Odzala’s baïs that the African Parks and Harvard research collaboration is focusing on.
Odzala-Kokoua National Park extends across 1.35 million hectares (3.34 million acres), and while it has a few thousand baïs, often occurring in clusters within the forest, this ecosystem makes up only about 0.2% of the park’s footprint. Nevertheless, these clearings may be integral to the shape of the forest itself, which is why Harvard assistant professor Andrew Davies and doctoral researcher Evan Hockridge are teaming up with African Parks to understand the importance of the salty watering holes in supporting elephant populations, which then shape the forest mosaic.
The baïs are clearly a hotspot that elephants seek out for their rare minerals in an ecosystem rooted in the nutrient-poor soils typical of the region.
“The elephants use their tusks to scrape topsoil off in specific areas, and eat the finer dust on the surface,” says Hockridge, a landscape ecologist. “They also dig large mining sites or wells, as much as a meter [3 feet] deep.”
The animals’ excavations go even deeper at times, down to where water carries the salt in a more accessible form. The need to ingest the mineral-rich dust, mud and water keeps the animals returning to these sites.
An elephant digging for salt-rich mud in the Dzanga baï in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic. Image courtesy Jan Teede.But how the baïs formed in the first place — they’re present in the Congo Basin, but not in the Amazon — and why they remain clear of forest encroachment are still a mystery.
Hockridge says no one has tried to establish if the now-extinct megafauna of the Amazon once made similar clearings there, or if baï size correlates to the size of the animals visiting them.
“One hypothesis is that megafauna effectively create large, nutrient-rich, lick-like clearings. But it hasn’t been quantified that baïs are manufactured or maintained by megafauna,” he says.
The researchers say they hope to answer this puzzle: Do large mammals like elephants maintain and stabilize the baïs?
Anecdotes from the DRC might give the first glimpse of an answer, according to Harvard’s Davies.
“Baïs may be closing in the DRC, and it could be because the elephants are in a war zone, so they don’t have the big bulldozer effect,” he says.
The hypothesis is that if fewer elephants visit and maintain these clearings, the baïs will be swallowed up by the forest.
Gibbon’s African Parks team has set up experimental plots in the Odzala, where they’ve buried salt in the sand at a similar depth to which elephants excavate. Researchers are monitoring these sites to see if more animals will congregate around the plots, whether this impacts the vegetation cover in and around the baïs, and whether there’s a shift in the carbon-capture potential of the surrounding forests.
This study is centered in Odzala, although the researchers say they hope to expand the work into the Ndoki region of the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas.
Indigenous Ba’aka trackers work with researchers and tourist operators in various parks in Odzala-Kokoua National Park and the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas. Their knowledge of animal behaviour and forest life is essential to accessing these wildernesses. Image courtesy Jan Teede.Baïs have a busy social scene
It isn’t just elephants that congregate at the baïs. These watering holes have a bustling social scene.
Gibbon describes the flocks of African green pigeons (Treron calvus) that gather at Capitale at dawn and dusk; buffalo and several bird species that visit during daylight hours; and the hyenas that can be heard calling after dark as the elephants mine for salt.
Wildlife refuges like these in the Congo Basin are also home to the critically endangered western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), two unusual forest and swamp-dwelling antelope — the bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus) and sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekii) — as well as central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes), bonobos (Pan pansicus), and the endangered gray parrot (Psittacus erithacus).
The forests of Gabon, southern Cameroon and southern Central African Republic also have a high number of baïs, and the findings from these studies could eventually be extrapolated to give an idea of the implications for the Congo Basin more widely.
“The area that baïs’ cover is tiny, but they sustain the elephant population,” Davies says. “If our hypothesis is correct, without the baïs you’d have no elephants; without elephants there’s be no big trees with high carbon density, so carbon storage would go down.”
If the forest loses the baïs, it could lose more than just the elephants or see a change in its carbon-capturing treescape. The baïs would no longer draw the many other animals that thrive in these mineral-dense watering holes, and the tourists and environmental researchers drawn to them too.
Citation:
Berzaghi, F., Longo, M., Ciais, P., Blake, S., Bretagnolle, F., Vieira, S., … Doughty, C. E. (2019). Carbon stocks in central African forests enhanced by elephant disturbance. Nature Geoscience, 12(9), 725-729. doi:10.1038/s41561-019-0395-6
Banner image: Elephants dig for salt-rich mud in the Dzanga baï in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic. Image courtesy Jan Teede.
This story was written by Leonie Joubert and originally published by Mongabay on August 15, 2023 and was republished under a Creative Commons licence.
ENDS
Learn about other animals endangered by palm oil and other agriculture
Global South America S.E. Asia India Africa West Papua & PNGFrill-Necked Lizard Chlamydosaurus kingii
Grey Crowned Crane Balearica regulorum
Ecuadorean Viscacha Lagidium ahuacaense
Blue-streaked Lory Eos reticulata
Learn about “sustainable” palm oil greenwashing
Read more about RSPO greenwashing
Lying Fake labels Indigenous Land-grabbing Human rights abuses Deforestation Human health hazardsA 2019 World Health Organisation (WHO) report into the palm oil industry and RSPO finds extensive greenwashing of palm oil deforestation and the murder of endangered animals (i.e. biodiversity loss)
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Pledge your support#african #africanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #amazingAnimals #animalBehaviour #animalCommunication #animalIntelligence #bantrophyhunting #bevegan #biodiversity #boycottPalmOil #boycott4wildlife #boycottpalmoil #carbon #climatechange #congo #deforestation #democracticRepublicOfCongo #drc #elephant #elephants #forgottenAnimals #mammal #pachyderm #pachyderms #palmOil #palmOilDeforestation #theDemocraticRepublicOfCongo #vegan
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From black hole physics to theoretical behavioural ecology. John M McNamara giving an inaugural lecture in Budapest, Hungary: "The art of the state, modelling the endpoints of evolution by natural selection". (Don't miss the famous photos of Alasdair Houston and John from the 70s)
#Science #Biology #Ecology #Evolution #EvolutionaryTheory #EvolutionaryBiology #AnimalBehaviour #Behaviour #BehaviouralEcology #bird #ParentalCare #GameTheory #Lecture #Bristol
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CW: Long Hashtag List for the Life Sciences
Life Sciences Hashtags
• Animal Behaviour
#AnimalBehavior #AnimalBehaviour #AnimalCognition #AnimalPsychology #AnimalResearch #AnimalSocieties #AnimalStudies #BehavioralEcology #BehaviouralEcology #BehavioralScience #BehaviouralScience #CameraTraps #ComparativeCognition #CriticalAnimalStudies #Learning #Memory #PositiveReinforcement #Sociobiology #TrailCam• Astrobiology
#AlienLife #Astrobiology #Biosignatures #Cryosphere DeepIce #EarthScience #Exoplanets #GeoScience #Habitability #Karst #MicroHabitats #OceanWorlds #OriginOfLife #PlanetaryCaves #PlanetaryScience• Behaviour Science
#AnthroZoology #Behavior #Behaviour #Behaviour2023 #BehavioralScience #BehaviouralScience #Biopsychology #CognitiveDevelopment #ComparativeCognition #DevelopmentalPsychology #Ethology #Learning #Memory #Neuroethology #PhilosophyOfMind #PleasureActivism #Psychology #SelfOrganisation #SelfOrganization #SocialNetwork• Biochemistry | Group: @biochemistry
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Conservation activists suing Indonesian zoo could inspire global action on endangered species trade
In a court in rural #Indonesia, an environmental group recently filed a lawsuit of global importance. Their case is against a zoo in North #Sumatra that it’s alleged illegally exhibited threatened species, including Komodo dragons and critically endangered Sumatran #orangutans. The illegal wildlife trade is a multibillion-dollar industry that threatens species globally, from #elephants to orchids. Plants, animals and fungi are harvested from the wild and sold to customers around the world as attractions in zoos, as pets, for food, as souvenirs or as medicine. Help animals and #BoycottWildlifeTrade #Boycott4Wildlife
People caught trafficking wildlife are typically tried in criminal law cases, in which courts impose fines or prison sentences that punish the responsible parties in order to deter would-be criminals. But in this recent case, rather than seek punishment against the Indonesian zoo, the activists brought a civil lawsuit ordering the zoo to remedy the harm it allegedly caused by exhibiting these species illegally.
Lawsuit by activists against #zoo in #Indonesia for harm caused by illegally exhibiting endangered #species was successful. It’s a new way to protect #wildlife from illegal and cruel #trafficking #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife Images @CraigJones17 https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/04/03/conservation-activists-suing-indonesian-zoo-could-inspire-global-action-on-endangered-species-trade/
Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter This siamang has spent her whole life in this cage, a vision that was a true nightmare. Craig Jones Wildlife PhotographyA Sumatran tiger help in a tiny cage struggles to stay alive. Craig Jones Wildlife photography A captured Siamang and a captured tiger in Indonesia. Photos by Craig Jones Wildlife PhotographyIn the press release announcing the lawsuit, the North Sumatra Chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi Sumut) and Medan Legal Aid Institute said they were suing to cover the costs of care for one Sumatran orangutan confiscated from the zoo, and to fund monitoring of orangutan habitat to aid the recovery of their wild population. The resulting bill exceeds US$70,000 (£49,438). The typical criminal sanction for wildlife crime in Indonesia is around US$3,500.
One of the orangutans in the zoo before it was confiscated in 2019. Walhi North Sumatra, Author providedThe activists are also asking the zoo to publicly apologise and to create educational exhibits that explain how the illegal trade and use of wildlife harms nature and society. Surprisingly, these types of legal strategies that aim to repair harm – rather than punish perpetrators – have been largely overlooked by conservationists in many countries. The Indonesian zoo lawsuit could demonstrate the value of a new legal approach for protecting threatened wildlife.
Komodo dragons were illegally exhibited at the zoo. Anna Kucherova/ShutterstockHistorical precedents
The zoo lawsuit parallels landmark pollution cases, such as the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon oil spills, where the responsible parties (in these cases, oil companies) were sued by government agencies and citizens and required to clean up pollution, compensate victims and restore affected habitats. It is also similar to innovative climate change lawsuits that have argued for the world’s largest oil and gas companies to pay for building protective sea walls, and other measures which help mitigate the effects of global warming.
Similar legal approaches haven’t been a major part of enforcing conservation laws. But through our work in Conservation Litigation – a project led by conservationists and lawyers – colleagues and I are working to bring such lawsuits against offenders globally.
Many countries already have laws that would allow these lawsuits, including in biodiversity hotspots such as Mexico, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia. The 1992 UN Rio Convention called on states to “develop national law[s] regarding liability compensation for the victims of pollution and other environmental damage”. Although laws that oblige offenders to remedy environmental harm have been established already, the Indonesian zoo case is unique as one of the first times such a law has been applied to address wildlife crime. https://player.vimeo.com/video/510514912
The case could serve to influence public views and policies around biodiversity. This has been an important benefit of litigation in other areas, such as in cases against tobacco companies and opioid manufacturers.
Over the years, these lawsuits have secured compensation for healthcare costs, public admissions of guilt from executives and corrective adversiting to clarify earlier misinformation. These cases have not only benefited individual victims, but helped shift attitudes and reform public health policies and company practices.
The zoo lawsuit could achieve something similar by holding the zoo liable for downstream harms caused by its involvement in the illegal wildlife trade. By requesting public apologies and support for educational programmes, the lawsuit would not only seek to remedy harm to individual animals and species, but to help shape public perceptions and policy.
It’s also significant that this case is being brought by a non-governmental organisation (NGO). Governments can bring criminal cases against offenders, while the NGOs cannot. But in many countries, citizens and civil society groups are permitted to launch civil lawsuits in response to environmental harm, expanding the potential for public conservation action.
These types of lawsuits are often hindered by difficulties paying lawyers, corruption in legal systems and the intimidation of activists. With more than one million species potentially facing extinction, it’s important to recognise and support these rare cases which are testing new ways to protect the planet’s most threatened forms of life.
Jacob Phelps, Senior Lecturer in Conservation Governance, Lancaster University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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