Can elephants feel seismic waves?

Scientists have known for years that elephants can communicate. By using low frequency vocals, called rumbles, elephants can 'talk' with eachother, sometimes communicating from very long distances.

But the new question being asked by some scientists is: can elephants feel those rumbles in the earth?

Biologist Dr. Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell from the Oakland Zoo wants to find out. After studying elephant activity in Africa, she noticed that elephants would raise and lower their feet when interacting with one another. She realized that these elephants were using seismic waves felt through their feet to send messages.

O'Connell-Rodwell and her team have been creating mini-earthquakes for an elephant (named Donna) at the Oakland Zoo to monitor her responses to different seismic activities.

Check out this National Geographic video about the study on YouTube:

I've always been fascinated by weird animals. Especially those with out-of-the-ordinary genetics.

Transcaucasian mole vole. Image Courtesy of Heike HimmelreichOne of my favorites is a little burrowing mammal called a Transcaucasian mole vole. These guys live in the Caucasus Mountains of Armenia, Iran, Turkey, and Azerbaijan. There they are born, live, have babies and die. All without a Y chromosome.

This is really bizarre. In most mammals, two X chromosomes usually means that the animal is female and an X and a Y means the animal is male. All mole voles have a single X chromosome. So technically, there shouldn’t be any males running around. And yet, clearly, there are.

So what distinguishes a boy mole vole from a girl mole vole genetically? No one really knows.

In most mammals, the Y chromosome causes a fertilized egg to turn into a male because of the SRY gene. This gene starts a cascade of events that eventually results in a male.

One possibility would be if the SRY gene happened to move to another chromosome. There are certainly cases of this happening even in humans.

If this were the case, then maybe a different chromosome has the SRY gene in mole voles. Maybe there are versions of the gene that work and versions that don't. Now we have a gene no different than an eye or hair color gene.

Good model but it isn't true. Scientists have looked but it appears that these little guys don't have an SRY gene. They make the male/female decision in a completely different way.

Most likely somewhere along the way a gene mutated so that it could now determine the sex of these mammals. When this happened, the loss of the Y didn't matter much and so it was lost. The mole vole evolved into a Y-less mammal.

Of course, if any chromosome had to go it would be the Y. It has been under constant attack ever since it distinguished itself from the X chromosome 200 or 300 million years ago. It has gone from being one of the biggest chromosomes with 900-1400 genes to a bit of DNA with around 80 genes.

There are even active discussions about whether the Y is on a death spiral in all mammals. Soon we may all be mole voles. Or be gone. Some of my recent posts elsewhere on this topic:

Males going extinct?
Fish that change gender

Photo by: Melissa Batson

And how they put a snare in the plan for chimps and humans to live together.

In the Budongo Forests of Uganda, a large group of Chimpanzees, named by researchers The Sonso Group, attempt to thrive in their natural habitat, eating plants and small prey. At the same time, humans who live around the forest are also trying to survive, working at places like the local sugarcane plantation and living in straw and mud houses. For food, they set out into the forest with small snares and aim for duiker and or pig.

Most of these snares are made from wire. As chimpanzees walk through the forest, their hands or feet may become trapped in the snare. In two of the forests where chimpanzees are studied, researchers have observed up to 25 percent of chimpanzees are maimed due to snare injuries. More die.

This problem is typical all over the world. How do the chimps and people live together? How do elephants and people live together? Wolves and people? Mountain Lions and Bay Area people? Though solutions seem impossible at times, I am impressed by many of the solutions, one being that of the Budongo Snare Removal Project.

In January 2000, the Jane Goodall Institute in collaboration with the Budongo Forest Project initiated a snare removal program in the Budongo Forest Reserve. The objective is to reduce the number of snares set, reduce the number of animals caught in snares and traps, and increase the number of local people who obey wildlife laws and understand the need for protecting wildlife.

Teams of two men locate and remove snares. After the first year of operation, they found that the number of snares being set within the grid system of the research area dropped. The census teams found heavy poaching and illegal activities were being carried out in the southern end of the forest reserve, so the team near the research site extended their range.

A new education center reaches out to the local community and provides education around ecology, wildlife and the treasure that is the chimpanzees.

The Oakland Zoo adopted this project in 2001 and the support covers the salaries for four field assistants, two educators, two eco-guards, and allowances for transportation and bike repair, gum boots, rain gear, backpacks, and compasses.

Funds raised at an annual fall lecture and silent auction and on Primate Discovery Day go toward this project.This year’s Primate Day is September 27^th and the lecture, featuring Shirley McGreal, is on October 2^nd.

The Oakland Zoo also supports connection and awareness of this project by visiting the site in Uganda. Teens will be traveling there in July and adults will embark on the journey (including gorilla trecking) in October.

More spots are available on this once in a lifetime adventure. For details, email: amy@oaklandzoo.org.

It's rather mind-boggling to walk into the storage rooms at UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. The rooms hold all manner of skulls, skeletons, pelts, and entire specimens that are intact in jars and drawers. I was there with Gabriela Quirós, the producer of the QUEST story "Resurveying California's Wildlife – 100 Years Later". The Museum is generally not open to the public, except on Cal Day, which is the University's annual open house celebration. Monica Albe, the Museum's bubbly Senior Museum Scientist, accompanied by her equally enthusiastic fellow scientist, Allison Shultz, gave us a tour.

The Museum contains over 640,000 specimens of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals and 50,000 tissue samples that have been specially preserved since the turn of the last century. It's considered to be the largest university museum collection of its kind in the country. While it may even seem a bit disconcerting at first to see this enormous collection– especially the specimens that have been stuffed to be appear more life-like– the historical importance of the collection is tremendously significant.

Many of the specimens were collected in the early 1900's by the Museum's first Director, Dr. Joseph Grinnell, a zoologist who realized how quickly the environment was changing under the influence of human civilization. He set out to meticulously document various regions in California by amassing specimens and creating field notes, photographs, maps, letters and other archival materials. Grinnell understood how valuable this information would be in the years to come to future generations who wanted to learn more about our ever-evolving landscape. Present-day scientists are able to utilize this information for climate change research and can even extract DNA to perform genetic tests.

Monica is the Museum's preparator and oversees its Specimen Preparation Laboratory for UC Berkeley students. Veterinary hospitals or park employees donate specimens for her and her students to work on and she has a special license that allows her to collect any roadkill that she finds. The Museum usually preps specimens in three ways in order for scientists to have several options of study available to the: anatomy and biology (specimens that are prepared with taxidermy methods), skeletons, and entire specimens preserved in fluid. Monica even has a collection of dermestid beetles that help to completely clean the skeletons.

The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology is celebrating its 100th birthday this year and has several special centenary events to commemorate the occasion!

Watch the "Resurveying California's Wildlife 100 Years Later" TV Story online, as well as find additional links and resources. Don't forget to see the behind-the-scenes photos from this story.

Jenny Oh is an Associate Producer for QUEST on KQED Television.

newly discovered Rhynchocyon udzungwensis
the grey-faced sengiAlthough enigmatic new species of insects are fairly common discoveries, many large animals have already made an appearance on the species list. Charismatic animals such as mammals are one of the most documented on the planet and it is now very rare to find a new species in this day and age. Yet in March 2006, Galen Rathbun of the California Academy of Sciences, along with Francesco Rovero of the Trento Musuem of Natural Science and a team of collaborators, confirmed a new mammal species – Rhynchocyon udzungwensis, or the grey-faced sengi. Their discovery was recently published in the February 4 issue of The Journal of Zoology.

Sengis are commonly known as elephant-shrews. They were first associated with elephants because of their long flexible snouts that resemble that of an elephant's trunk. Moreover, recent molecular research has shown that sengis have more in common with elephants that the shrews they were originally associated with. Their closest relatives include elephants, sea cows, and the aardvark. Until now only 15 species of sengis were known to science. In 2005, the new sengi was first caught on film. Francesco Rovero of the Trento Museum of Natural Science had been setting up camera traps inside the remote Ndundulu Forest in Tanzania's Udzungwa Mountains in order to survey the region's forest mammals. When the camera recorded the unfamiliar sengi, he sent the photos to Rathbun for identification. Rathbun was sought after for his expertise – he has studied the ecology, social structure, and evolution of sengis for more than 30 years. Rathbun believed the sengi to be a new species and embarked on a two week expedition with a team of colleagues in March 2006 to confirm his belief.

There were a few setbacks confirming the new sengi species. Rathbun had planned their trip for the dry season but the rains came early making the shrew harder to spot. The size of the sengi also posed a problem as the traps that were brought proved too small for the giant sengi. The grey-faced sengis weigh close to 1.5 pounds which is 25 percent larger than any other documented sengi. Therefore, more traditional twine snares had to be built to contain the giant sengi. Victory prevailed and the team was able to catch 4 animals and make 40 observations thus confirming the new species. "This is one of the most exciting discoveries of my career," Rathbun says. "It is the first new species of giant elephant-shrew to be discovered in more that 126 years. From the moment I first lifted one of the animals into our photography tent, I knew it must be a new species – not just because of its distinct coloring, but because it was so heavy!" More information about this expedition and other Academy expeditions can be found at http://www.calacademy.org/academy/expeditions/.

Cat Aboudara is the Special Projects Manager at California Academy of Sciences and works in the public programs division. The Academy is a wonderful fit for her because of her curiosity about the natural world and her experience in working with native California wildlife.