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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp> \u003cem>Barn owls swoop down on rodents and swallow them whole – gophers, voles and mice, gone in a few gulps. But how do they keep down all that food? Well, they don’t. In a few stomach-turning steps, they transform the varmints into compact balls of fur and bones known as pellets.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Scarfing down their food \u003cem>whole\u003c/em> keeps barn owls moving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, these hungry birds gotta eat and there are lots of little rodents to hunt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barn owls need a hole to nest in, and when a tree isn’t available, they’ll use a building. Or an owl box, like this one in California’s Napa Valley. Scientists keep tabs on the owls inside. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winegrowers invite barn owls to raise their young in the boxes because owls are pest control machines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I mean, a barn owl family can kill about 3,500 varmints a year. They don’t take ’em all out, but they can make a dent. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They particularly like gophers, like this stunner right here. Their constant tunneling damages roots and irrigation lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then there’s voles, which gnaw on the grapevines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This 2-week-old owl already has the hang of it. But how the heck does it keep down all that food?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, it doesn’t. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meet the owl pellet. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Check out this furball. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And here’s a jaw. Gnarly!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The secret to turning this into this is its stomach. It has two chambers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first one oozes digestive juices, like our stomach. The second one – the gizzard – squeezes the remains with powerful muscles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fats and proteins get absorbed. The fur and bones become tightly compacted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After about eight hours in the gizzard, the result is one of these beauties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For researchers like Laura Echávez, from Cal Poly Humboldt, pellets are forensic evidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She carefully dissects them to find out how many pesky gophers and voles the owls took care of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laura (off camera): The tail still has skin on it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This unlucky rodent had a small skull. It could be a vole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then she examines the teeth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laura (off camera): The teeth are actually looking more like a gopher’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re kind of circular, surrounded by a white ring of enamel. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the first and second teeth are joined by a bridge. Classic gopher trademarks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laura (off camera): If it’s a gopher, it’s a very young one, because this is on the small side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes more than one carcass is crammed into a single pellet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This one had two gophers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cbr>\nADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003cbr>\nRead about the ongoing research on barn owls in Napa Valley by students at Cal Poly Humboldt in the lab of professor of wildlife \u003ca href=\"https://wildlife.humboldt.edu/people/matthew-johnson\">Matthew Johnson\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And learn more details on these raptors from the \u003ca href=\"https://www.barnowltrust.org.uk/barn-owl-facts/\">Barn Owl Trust\u003c/a>, a nonprofit group in England working to protect them. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winegrowers love barn owls for their prolific appetites. But researchers still don’t know whether vineyards are an ideal place to raise an owl family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Christian Cortez, a researcher at Cal Poly Humboldt, studies young owls to see how well they’re growing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After covering their head to calm them down, he takes a drop of blood, and plucks a feather. They will tell him if the owlet is getting enough to eat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers want to know, do owls have enough open space to hunt in? \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And do the toxic chemicals Napa winegrowers sometimes use to kill rodents end up hurting the owls too?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As scientists explore these questions, we’ll find out if barn owls are really getting a good deal.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]\u003cem>With their short tongues, Valley carpenter bees can’t easily drink the nectar from tubular flowers. So they use powerful mandibles to slice into the blooms and steal it. It’s called nectar robbing, since the plants don’t get the benefit of being pollinated by the enormous bees.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Like all busy bees, this huge female Valley carpenter bee is always on the go. But she has a secret life of crime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As she forages, she splatters pollen across her cheeks and forehead. That sloppiness helps pollinate flowers and crops, like blueberries and eggplants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But she also happens to be an accomplished nectar thief. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some flowers, like this salvia, have nectar that’s hard to reach with the bee’s short tongue. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s easy for a hummingbird to get at the nectar because it has a long beak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, she takes a shortcut by slicing an incision at the base of the flower … sneaking the nectar out through the back door. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a selfish indulgence called nectar robbing. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The flower rarely gets pollinated this way because the bee doesn’t get close enough to rub pollen onto the plant’s reproductive parts. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The carpenter bee stores the stolen goods in her crop – a pouch near her stomach. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While she’s busy thieving, nearby this enormous golden male hovers around the same shrub for hours. He’s hoping to catch her attention with his fitness display. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also known as the teddy bear bee, he’s almost as big as your thumb, but he’s all show. He doesn’t even sting. He’s staking out his tiny territory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Occasionally he lands, releasing pheromones to mark his spot with a flowery aroma to entice the ladies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once in a while his efforts pay off. They mate quickly and discreetly. She’s simply too busy to linger. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just like their name suggests, carpenter bees are skilled woodworkers. The female bee uses her powerful mandibles to tunnel into dead wood – like logs or tree trunks. Mama bees lay their eggs and provide food for the developing offspring in these chambers. The bees may return to the same nest for generations, expanding and renovating year after year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carpenter bees don’t have a queen, and they aren’t as social as honeybees, but several bees may room together in a nest.\u003cbr>\n[pullquote]\u003cbr>\nADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003cbr>\nThe UC Integrated Pest Management Program offers guidance on \u003ca href=\"http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7417.html\">how to prevent carpenter bees from making their home in yours\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes they carve their homes in structures made by humans, giving them a bad rap. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it turns out carpenter bees do play an important role in our ecosystem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They still pollinate many flowers and crops the usual way, but even their crime sprees benefit some members of the neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other insects and pollinators – like this honeybee – take advantage of the incisions left behind. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the flowers lose out on this racket. They’re unlikely to get pollinated by the nectar robbers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would be better for the plants if carpenter bees entered the front door like respectful visitors. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But despite their rather dodgy reputation, you have to admire their creativity.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cem>With their short tongues, Valley carpenter bees can’t easily drink the nectar from tubular flowers. So they use powerful mandibles to slice into the blooms and steal it. It’s called nectar robbing, since the plants don’t get the benefit of being pollinated by the enormous bees.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Like all busy bees, this huge female Valley carpenter bee is always on the go. But she has a secret life of crime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As she forages, she splatters pollen across her cheeks and forehead. That sloppiness helps pollinate flowers and crops, like blueberries and eggplants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But she also happens to be an accomplished nectar thief. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some flowers, like this salvia, have nectar that’s hard to reach with the bee’s short tongue. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cbr>\nADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003cbr>\nThe UC Integrated Pest Management Program offers guidance on \u003ca href=\"http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7417.html\">how to prevent carpenter bees from making their home in yours\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This summer, as you cool your bare feet in a stream somewhere in California — or almost anywhere in the world, really — you might feel a painful nip. The menacing culprit: a giant water bug.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lurking just below the surface of that flowing creek or refreshing pond, these bugs resemble enormous aquatic ticks, with googly eyes and praying mantis arms. And although they won’t seek you out for an attack, they also won’t hesitate to take a defensive bite if you get too close, earning them the nickname “toe-biters.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979488\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1979488 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/DL909_giant_water_bugs_label.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Several species of giant water bugs lurk in ponds and streams throughout California, like this \u003cem>Abedus indentatus.\u003c/em> \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They puncture the skin with dagger-like mouth parts, and have a bite known as one of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(10)00039-6/fulltext\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">most painful of any insect\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — sharp and stinging like a wasp’s. You may not even get a chance to spot the offending insect before it dashes off, but you’ll undoubtedly be left with an indelible impression. And a swollen, throbbing toe.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or, if you go chasing water bugs, like I did while researching this story, it could be your thumb that takes the hit. Ankle-deep in a cold stream near San Jose, I grabbed a submerged rock, flipped it over, and instantly felt a piercing jab. Sharp pain radiated out from the puncture site, marked with a red dot. I watched as my thumb swelled, gradually turning shades of blue and purple. The perpetrator and I locked eyes for only a second before it darted off like an aquatic bandit. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979475\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1979475\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/DL909_giant_water_bugs_toebiter.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In some parts of the world, giant water bugs are nicknamed “toe-biters” due to their notoriously painful bites. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Giant water bugs are recognized around the world. In Brazil, they’re known as “escorpião d’água” (water scorpions). They prowl rice fields and other wetlands throughout Asia, where they’re \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eatingthaifood.com/how-to-eat-a-giant-water-bug-maeng-da-thailand/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">considered a delicacy\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: One Thai dish serves water bugs with wings removed and bodies pulverized. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“You get this kind of a green lumpy substance that looks like guacamole, but doesn’t taste like guacamole,” says Robert Sites, an entomologist at the University of Missouri. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sites describes the dish as quite tasty, with a nutty flavor. And it sometimes includes a useful prop. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“If you get one of the legs, you can use that as a toothpick,” he says. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Several species live in California’s ponds and streams, and most measure about the length of your thumb. When park rangers in the Santa Monica Mountains found healthy populations of giant water bugs near popular swimming holes in 2018, they \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.newsweek.com/beware-giant-toe-biting-water-bugs-rangers-warn-1088848\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">warned the public\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to beware of their particularly unpleasant bites. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But our toes aren’t what water bugs are after. Giant water bugs prey on other aquatic insects, as well as animals as large as turtles, snakes and even ducklings — one naturalist in the 1800s even recorded one ambushing and devouring a woodpecker. Using their powerful, vice-grip legs, they subdue their victim before stabbing into it and injecting venom that liquefies the insides of their prey. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They wait for everything to dissolve, and suck it back out,” says Chris Goforth, an entomologist and manager of citizen science at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. “Almost certainly, it’s still alive when it’s being eaten.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979476\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1979476 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/DL909_giant_water_bugs_eat_fish.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A giant water bug injects a fish with paralyzing digestive enzymes before slurping out the liquefied insides. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite their aggressive and predatory nature, giant water bugs might just be the most responsible fathers in the insect world. In some California species, dad will haul his eggs around piggyback style for weeks, until they hatch right off his back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Parental care is unusual in itself,” says Sites, “but then actually attaching the eggs to the males — that’s another layer of complication.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979477\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1979477 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/DL909_giant_water_bugs_eggs_eye_spots.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Male giant water bugs in the \u003cem>Abedus\u003c/em> genus, like this \u003cem>Abedus indentatus\u003c/em> in California, carry their eggs around piggyback style throughout their development. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After mating, a female climbs onto the male’s back to lay row after row of eggs, gluing each one with a gooey substance oozing from her reproductive glands. Mom’s work ends here, and she swims off to prowl the shadows for her next meal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But for dads, their job has only started. Most insects leave their eggs defenseless, relying on sheer numbers to get some of them through to hatching. By carrying the eggs on their backs, giant water bug dads can dodge predators and keep an eye on their babies. They’ll carry these eggs for weeks, shuttling them to the surface for air like an insect minivan. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They’ll just bob up and down, ever so slightly,” says Hope Klug, an ecologist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “With the movement, they’re making sure that each individual egg is getting some oxygen to help it develop.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After several weeks, the eggs have doubled in size and turned a milky white color. Suddenly, a pair of eyes is visible through each egg casing: The nymphs inside are getting ready to hatch. Within a few days, a transparent nymph pushes through, face first, unfolding its long limbs as it emerges. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979478\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1979478 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/DL909_giant_water_bugs_egg_hatch.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A nymph emerges from its egg casing after weeks of being shuttled around on dad’s back. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once it’s fully hatched, the nymph quickly swims away. If dad catches it, his instincts will kick in. Despite the weeks of careful parenting that he dedicated to ensuring the eggs’ survival, his offspring are now fair game as a tasty snack.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sabrina Mendoza-Espinoza, who cares for more than a dozen water bugs on display at the San Francisco Zoo, put it this way: “They’ll go after anything that moves.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Including their own children. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Giant water bugs — aka \"toe-biters\" — pack one of the most painful bites of any insect. But they make the best dads ever. Rather than leaving the survival of his eggs to chance, dad will haul them around piggyback style for weeks, until they hatch right off his back. ",
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"title": "Don't Go Chasing Water Bugs | KQED",
"description": "Giant water bugs — aka "toe-biters" — pack one of the most painful bites of any insect. But they make the best dads ever. Rather than leaving the survival of his eggs to chance, dad will haul them around piggyback style for weeks, until they hatch right off his back. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This summer, as you cool your bare feet in a stream somewhere in California — or almost anywhere in the world, really — you might feel a painful nip. The menacing culprit: a giant water bug.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lurking just below the surface of that flowing creek or refreshing pond, these bugs resemble enormous aquatic ticks, with googly eyes and praying mantis arms. And although they won’t seek you out for an attack, they also won’t hesitate to take a defensive bite if you get too close, earning them the nickname “toe-biters.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979488\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1979488 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/DL909_giant_water_bugs_label.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Several species of giant water bugs lurk in ponds and streams throughout California, like this \u003cem>Abedus indentatus.\u003c/em> \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They puncture the skin with dagger-like mouth parts, and have a bite known as one of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(10)00039-6/fulltext\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">most painful of any insect\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — sharp and stinging like a wasp’s. You may not even get a chance to spot the offending insect before it dashes off, but you’ll undoubtedly be left with an indelible impression. And a swollen, throbbing toe.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or, if you go chasing water bugs, like I did while researching this story, it could be your thumb that takes the hit. Ankle-deep in a cold stream near San Jose, I grabbed a submerged rock, flipped it over, and instantly felt a piercing jab. Sharp pain radiated out from the puncture site, marked with a red dot. I watched as my thumb swelled, gradually turning shades of blue and purple. The perpetrator and I locked eyes for only a second before it darted off like an aquatic bandit. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979475\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1979475\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/DL909_giant_water_bugs_toebiter.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In some parts of the world, giant water bugs are nicknamed “toe-biters” due to their notoriously painful bites. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Giant water bugs are recognized around the world. In Brazil, they’re known as “escorpião d’água” (water scorpions). They prowl rice fields and other wetlands throughout Asia, where they’re \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eatingthaifood.com/how-to-eat-a-giant-water-bug-maeng-da-thailand/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">considered a delicacy\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: One Thai dish serves water bugs with wings removed and bodies pulverized. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“You get this kind of a green lumpy substance that looks like guacamole, but doesn’t taste like guacamole,” says Robert Sites, an entomologist at the University of Missouri. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sites describes the dish as quite tasty, with a nutty flavor. And it sometimes includes a useful prop. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“If you get one of the legs, you can use that as a toothpick,” he says. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Several species live in California’s ponds and streams, and most measure about the length of your thumb. When park rangers in the Santa Monica Mountains found healthy populations of giant water bugs near popular swimming holes in 2018, they \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.newsweek.com/beware-giant-toe-biting-water-bugs-rangers-warn-1088848\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">warned the public\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to beware of their particularly unpleasant bites. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But our toes aren’t what water bugs are after. Giant water bugs prey on other aquatic insects, as well as animals as large as turtles, snakes and even ducklings — one naturalist in the 1800s even recorded one ambushing and devouring a woodpecker. Using their powerful, vice-grip legs, they subdue their victim before stabbing into it and injecting venom that liquefies the insides of their prey. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They wait for everything to dissolve, and suck it back out,” says Chris Goforth, an entomologist and manager of citizen science at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. “Almost certainly, it’s still alive when it’s being eaten.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979476\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1979476 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/DL909_giant_water_bugs_eat_fish.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A giant water bug injects a fish with paralyzing digestive enzymes before slurping out the liquefied insides. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite their aggressive and predatory nature, giant water bugs might just be the most responsible fathers in the insect world. In some California species, dad will haul his eggs around piggyback style for weeks, until they hatch right off his back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Parental care is unusual in itself,” says Sites, “but then actually attaching the eggs to the males — that’s another layer of complication.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979477\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1979477 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/DL909_giant_water_bugs_eggs_eye_spots.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Male giant water bugs in the \u003cem>Abedus\u003c/em> genus, like this \u003cem>Abedus indentatus\u003c/em> in California, carry their eggs around piggyback style throughout their development. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After mating, a female climbs onto the male’s back to lay row after row of eggs, gluing each one with a gooey substance oozing from her reproductive glands. Mom’s work ends here, and she swims off to prowl the shadows for her next meal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But for dads, their job has only started. Most insects leave their eggs defenseless, relying on sheer numbers to get some of them through to hatching. By carrying the eggs on their backs, giant water bug dads can dodge predators and keep an eye on their babies. They’ll carry these eggs for weeks, shuttling them to the surface for air like an insect minivan. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They’ll just bob up and down, ever so slightly,” says Hope Klug, an ecologist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “With the movement, they’re making sure that each individual egg is getting some oxygen to help it develop.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After several weeks, the eggs have doubled in size and turned a milky white color. Suddenly, a pair of eyes is visible through each egg casing: The nymphs inside are getting ready to hatch. Within a few days, a transparent nymph pushes through, face first, unfolding its long limbs as it emerges. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979478\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1979478 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/DL909_giant_water_bugs_egg_hatch.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A nymph emerges from its egg casing after weeks of being shuttled around on dad’s back. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once it’s fully hatched, the nymph quickly swims away. If dad catches it, his instincts will kick in. Despite the weeks of careful parenting that he dedicated to ensuring the eggs’ survival, his offspring are now fair game as a tasty snack.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sabrina Mendoza-Espinoza, who cares for more than a dozen water bugs on display at the San Francisco Zoo, put it this way: “They’ll go after anything that moves.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Including their own children. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Meet a Great Dad From the Animal World: The Poison Frog",
"headTitle": "Meet a Great Dad From the Animal World: The Poison Frog | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Deep in the Peruvian rainforest, a brilliantly colored frog lays one hand gently on top of a small clump of gelatinous eggs. Using his delicate sense of touch, he’s feeling for the embryos inside. This poison frog father has been guarding his eggs for weeks as they develop, waiting for the tadpoles to emerge. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“When tadpoles get older, they move inside, kind of like a baby moves in a belly,” says Billie Goolsby, a Ph.D. student at Stanford University. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Poison frog dads often take the lead on raising their young, says Kyle Summers, an ecologist at East Carolina University. One species, known as the mimic poison frog (Ranitomeya imitator), is the only known example of monogamy in amphibians, and Mom and Dad raise the tadpoles together.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Goolsby studies the mimic poison frogs to understand how parents communicate with their offspring, as well as how parents work together as a team to care for their young. These devoted frogs might just offer us lessons about successful parenting that we can apply to our own families. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Teamwork is everything,” says Goolsby.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It all starts when Mom lays eggs on the forest floor. Dad fertilizes them and watches over them as they develop. Once they hatch, he squats next to each tadpole as it squirms up his leg and onto his back, taking each one on a \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">piggyback ride\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to their own tiny puddle of water. He’ll search for just the right spot, often depositing them at the heart of leafy bromeliads, where tightly overlapping leaves — think of a pineapple — collect and pool rainwater. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKiShWFEpuc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dad has to ensure that his babies are separated, because these tadpoles are cannibals. “They’re highly aggressive,” says Lauren O’Connell, a biologist and Goolsby’s Ph.D. adviser at Stanford University. “They have a very small water pool, not a lot of resources, and they will defend this area to the death.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The skin-to-skin contact with dad during the piggyback ride also transfers important microbes to the tadpole. “Basically, it’s a way to seed their tadpoles with a microbiome,” O’Connell says. “It changes a lot about how they look and the kind of microbes that they have.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once Dad has found a home for each of his tadpoles, he starts making the rounds. He’ll travel from tadpole to tadpole every day, ensuring that his babies are hydrated and checking on their growth. Tadpoles recognize their parents by smell, and their brains will light up with dopamine when they sense Dad nearby. If they’re hungry, they’ll start wiggling around to beg for food like a puppy enthusiastically wagging its tail. But Dad can’t feed them on his own, so he’ll stay by their side and \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">call to Mom \u003c/span>incessantly with a high-pitched trilling sound until she arrives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He sings for her to come and provide an egg meal,” Goolsby says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWAAzRRAP-M\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Mom sees the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFnRDgRBfYc&ab_channel=ScienceNews\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">tadpole begging\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, she’ll dive into the pool and produce an unfertilized egg for it to eat, “like a protein shake basically,” O’Connell says. “Mom comes, and the tadpole basically has to dance for their food.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mom is making a huge investment in each tadpole by feeding it her unfertilized eggs instead of using those to produce more babies, but the tadpoles are far more likely to survive because of it. Being cared for by their parents until they can morph into frogs supercharges their growth, and these eggy “protein shakes” help them reach metamorphosis much faster. The quicker they can grow legs and move about on their own, the safer they are from predators, such as fishing spiders, who seek out vulnerable tadpoles for a quick meal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fortunately for the tadpoles, their parents leave them with a defense against prey. As the tadpoles munch on the eggs, they’re getting more than just nourishment — these are poison frogs, after all, and each egg is loaded with alkaloids that make the tadpoles toxic to eat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“And so not only are they giving them nutrition, they’re chemically defending them,” O’Connell says, “and so they’re less likely to get eaten.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFnRDgRBfYc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After several weeks of careful parenting, the tadpoles emerge from their pools as froglets. The dedication and teamwork of these frog parents is essential: In studies where the dads were removed, tadpole survival declined by 70%. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“To have your offspring survive,” says Summers, “it becomes really important to have the participation of both the mother and father.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These frogs are toxic, but they’re called mimic poison frogs because they imitate the look of other poison frogs living nearby. In a clever disguise, they take on the swirling or striped patterns of three different species, all brilliantly colored in vibrant hues of green, orange, yellow and blue. This helps predators in an area learn to avoid them all — and it’s an effective strategy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">During her fieldwork in the tropics, O’Connell has asked local community members which animals they’ve seen eating poison frogs. She says their response is always a resounding, “Oh, I’ve never seen anything eat those frogs.” Whereas nontoxic frogs offer opportunistic predators like birds and snakes a tasty snack, and only 20% make it to the next year, “poison frogs can live for 14 years,” says O’Connell.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In fact, poison frogs are some of the most toxic animals in the world. They don’t actually produce their own poison, but get it from their diet of ants and mites, absorbing toxic alkaloids and concentrating them in glands under their skin. They can have around 50 different toxins, but the “cocktail” can change throughout their lives based on shifts in their diet. Special proteins bind up the toxins to protect their own nervous systems from the poison, “like toxin sponges,” says O’Connell. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The researchers think one of the reasons the mimic poison frogs evolved to have such intensive parental care is their limited resources. The pools of water where the tadpoles grow up are so small that they’d have no food if Mom didn’t provide eggs for them to eat. And \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dad’s role is extra important because of how much work it is for Mom to produce eggs. With the tadpoles in day care with Dad, Mom can spend her time eating and looking for food. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I think it’s really interesting that there’s this one ecological factor that may drive monogamy in these frogs — the pool-size factor, which really kind of focuses attention on the importance of biparental care,” says Summers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to Summers, parental care like this isn’t just critical for survival — it’s also linked to better outcomes for the frogs when they become adults. “Biparental care allows for childhood, and childhood allows for the evolution of a bigger brain and more sophisticated intellectual abilities. Basically, you have the time to become a better adult,” he says. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Goolsby agrees that these frogs can offer up lessons about successful parenting that apply across species — even for people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“This species is so fascinating because there’s no models on how parents work as a team,” she says. “That’s a very understudied component of biparental care, but it’s core to so many care strategies.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Goolsby spends hours watching frog couples care for their young for her research, and she sees some distinct parallels between these nurturing amphibians and human families. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“What’s interesting is that they’re like new parents. So you know, when they’re trying to raise their first babies and then the male loses the tadpole or can’t get it right when he’s trying to hydrate them and guard them — it’s like trying with your first child. And it’s very difficult.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But like any dedicated father, she says, he keeps trying.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I think that they’re like humans, where they don’t get it right the first few times or they learn by mistake. And then they improve.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"description": "Deep in the Peruvian rainforest, a brilliantly colored frog lays one hand gently on top of a small clump of gelatinous eggs. Using his delicate sense of touch, he’s feeling for the embryos inside. This poison frog father has been guarding his eggs for weeks as they develop, waiting for the tadpoles to emerge. “When",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Deep in the Peruvian rainforest, a brilliantly colored frog lays one hand gently on top of a small clump of gelatinous eggs. Using his delicate sense of touch, he’s feeling for the embryos inside. This poison frog father has been guarding his eggs for weeks as they develop, waiting for the tadpoles to emerge. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“When tadpoles get older, they move inside, kind of like a baby moves in a belly,” says Billie Goolsby, a Ph.D. student at Stanford University. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Poison frog dads often take the lead on raising their young, says Kyle Summers, an ecologist at East Carolina University. One species, known as the mimic poison frog (Ranitomeya imitator), is the only known example of monogamy in amphibians, and Mom and Dad raise the tadpoles together.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Goolsby studies the mimic poison frogs to understand how parents communicate with their offspring, as well as how parents work together as a team to care for their young. These devoted frogs might just offer us lessons about successful parenting that we can apply to our own families. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Teamwork is everything,” says Goolsby.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It all starts when Mom lays eggs on the forest floor. Dad fertilizes them and watches over them as they develop. Once they hatch, he squats next to each tadpole as it squirms up his leg and onto his back, taking each one on a \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">piggyback ride\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to their own tiny puddle of water. He’ll search for just the right spot, often depositing them at the heart of leafy bromeliads, where tightly overlapping leaves — think of a pineapple — collect and pool rainwater. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/GKiShWFEpuc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/GKiShWFEpuc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dad has to ensure that his babies are separated, because these tadpoles are cannibals. “They’re highly aggressive,” says Lauren O’Connell, a biologist and Goolsby’s Ph.D. adviser at Stanford University. “They have a very small water pool, not a lot of resources, and they will defend this area to the death.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The skin-to-skin contact with dad during the piggyback ride also transfers important microbes to the tadpole. “Basically, it’s a way to seed their tadpoles with a microbiome,” O’Connell says. “It changes a lot about how they look and the kind of microbes that they have.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once Dad has found a home for each of his tadpoles, he starts making the rounds. He’ll travel from tadpole to tadpole every day, ensuring that his babies are hydrated and checking on their growth. Tadpoles recognize their parents by smell, and their brains will light up with dopamine when they sense Dad nearby. If they’re hungry, they’ll start wiggling around to beg for food like a puppy enthusiastically wagging its tail. But Dad can’t feed them on his own, so he’ll stay by their side and \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">call to Mom \u003c/span>incessantly with a high-pitched trilling sound until she arrives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He sings for her to come and provide an egg meal,” Goolsby says.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/jWAAzRRAP-M'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/jWAAzRRAP-M'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Mom sees the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFnRDgRBfYc&ab_channel=ScienceNews\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">tadpole begging\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, she’ll dive into the pool and produce an unfertilized egg for it to eat, “like a protein shake basically,” O’Connell says. “Mom comes, and the tadpole basically has to dance for their food.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mom is making a huge investment in each tadpole by feeding it her unfertilized eggs instead of using those to produce more babies, but the tadpoles are far more likely to survive because of it. Being cared for by their parents until they can morph into frogs supercharges their growth, and these eggy “protein shakes” help them reach metamorphosis much faster. The quicker they can grow legs and move about on their own, the safer they are from predators, such as fishing spiders, who seek out vulnerable tadpoles for a quick meal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fortunately for the tadpoles, their parents leave them with a defense against prey. As the tadpoles munch on the eggs, they’re getting more than just nourishment — these are poison frogs, after all, and each egg is loaded with alkaloids that make the tadpoles toxic to eat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“And so not only are they giving them nutrition, they’re chemically defending them,” O’Connell says, “and so they’re less likely to get eaten.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/FFnRDgRBfYc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/FFnRDgRBfYc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After several weeks of careful parenting, the tadpoles emerge from their pools as froglets. The dedication and teamwork of these frog parents is essential: In studies where the dads were removed, tadpole survival declined by 70%. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“To have your offspring survive,” says Summers, “it becomes really important to have the participation of both the mother and father.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These frogs are toxic, but they’re called mimic poison frogs because they imitate the look of other poison frogs living nearby. In a clever disguise, they take on the swirling or striped patterns of three different species, all brilliantly colored in vibrant hues of green, orange, yellow and blue. This helps predators in an area learn to avoid them all — and it’s an effective strategy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">During her fieldwork in the tropics, O’Connell has asked local community members which animals they’ve seen eating poison frogs. She says their response is always a resounding, “Oh, I’ve never seen anything eat those frogs.” Whereas nontoxic frogs offer opportunistic predators like birds and snakes a tasty snack, and only 20% make it to the next year, “poison frogs can live for 14 years,” says O’Connell.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In fact, poison frogs are some of the most toxic animals in the world. They don’t actually produce their own poison, but get it from their diet of ants and mites, absorbing toxic alkaloids and concentrating them in glands under their skin. They can have around 50 different toxins, but the “cocktail” can change throughout their lives based on shifts in their diet. Special proteins bind up the toxins to protect their own nervous systems from the poison, “like toxin sponges,” says O’Connell. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The researchers think one of the reasons the mimic poison frogs evolved to have such intensive parental care is their limited resources. The pools of water where the tadpoles grow up are so small that they’d have no food if Mom didn’t provide eggs for them to eat. And \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dad’s role is extra important because of how much work it is for Mom to produce eggs. With the tadpoles in day care with Dad, Mom can spend her time eating and looking for food. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I think it’s really interesting that there’s this one ecological factor that may drive monogamy in these frogs — the pool-size factor, which really kind of focuses attention on the importance of biparental care,” says Summers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to Summers, parental care like this isn’t just critical for survival — it’s also linked to better outcomes for the frogs when they become adults. “Biparental care allows for childhood, and childhood allows for the evolution of a bigger brain and more sophisticated intellectual abilities. Basically, you have the time to become a better adult,” he says. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Goolsby agrees that these frogs can offer up lessons about successful parenting that apply across species — even for people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“This species is so fascinating because there’s no models on how parents work as a team,” she says. “That’s a very understudied component of biparental care, but it’s core to so many care strategies.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Goolsby spends hours watching frog couples care for their young for her research, and she sees some distinct parallels between these nurturing amphibians and human families. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“What’s interesting is that they’re like new parents. So you know, when they’re trying to raise their first babies and then the male loses the tadpole or can’t get it right when he’s trying to hydrate them and guard them — it’s like trying with your first child. And it’s very difficult.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But like any dedicated father, she says, he keeps trying.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "This Freaky Fruit Fly Lays Eggs in Your Strawberries",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]\u003cem>The spotted wing drosophila may look like a common fruit fly, but it’s so much worse. Just as strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries are ripening in the field, this fly saws into them and lays her eggs inside. The growing maggots turn the fruit into a mushy mess. Could a wasp and its own hungry maggots save the day?\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>You’ll never delight in this juicy raspberry, if this fly gets its way. It’s called a spotted wing drosophila because the male has dark spots on its wings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Common fruit flies are maddening enough, crawling around and feeding on your overripe bananas. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their spotted wing cousins are way worse. They ruin blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries at their mouth-watering prime, before they can ever reach your kitchen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Out in the strawberry patch, this female spotted wing drosophila is ready to lay some eggs. She uses this tool, called an ovipositor, to cut into the fruit. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her ovipositor is long and has two rows of teeth. Much more impressive than the common fruit fly, which uses a smaller, smoother ovipositor to lay eggs on rotting fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The spotted wing drosophila uses the extra cutting power to dig a hole into firm fruit while it’s still in the field. Then she pushes her egg in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>See that tiny white string she left behind? It looks like one of the strawberry hairs, but that’s how the egg will breathe. Kind of like a snorkel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within three days the egg hatches into a squirmy maggot. It makes itself at home – in this case, in a blueberry. The maggot transforms into a pupa at the fruit’s surface, where it breathes through two star-shaped tubes called spiracles. All this mucking about in the pulp ruins the fruit, so it never makes it to market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These flies cost farmers millions all around the world. They’re originally from East Asia. Growers have to spray insecticides to kill them. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why scientists are introducing a less toxic option. They’ve invited an old enemy from Asia to take the fly down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote]\u003cbr>\nADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003cbr>\nRead about \u003ca href=\"http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn74158.html#:~:text=Spotted%20wing%20drosophila%20(SWD)%2C,crops%2C%20especially%20in%20coastal%20areas.\">the impact of the spotted wing drosophila fly in California\u003c/a>, in this sheet prepared by the UC Integrated Pest Management Program. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a 2018 videotaped talk, UC Berkeley entomologist Kent Daane describes \u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/KVTGmDo2LLQ\">the sleuthing that led him and his colleagues to a parasitic wasp, \u003cem>Ganaspis brasiliensis\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which will soon be released in the U.S. to control the spotted wing drosophila. The wasp is featured in the Deep Look video above.\u003cbr>\n[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This parasitic wasp is even tinier than the fly, but just as determined to lay her eggs. Her favorite spot is inside a fly’s growing maggot. She can feel vibrations that lead her to a fly maggot moving below the fruit’s surface.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She slides a thin needle into the blueberry and injects an egg straight into a maggot. The wasp egg hatches. But instead of killing the fly maggot right away, it waits for it to plump up and develop a hard casing. Then the wasp maggot devours the fly and grows into an adult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that’s left of the fly is its casing, from which the triumphant wasp emerges. It’s a boy! You can tell by the long antennae.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists have been raising these wasps in labs in the U.S. Soon they’ll be released into fields across the country. Based on their research, scientists say the wasps will almost exclusively target spotted wing drosophila and the occasional common fruit fly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The wasps can cut down the number of flies, but only up to about half. So, farmers will still need to use some pesticides. They’ll be playing a game of whack-a-mole to prevent flies from turning our scrumptious berries into mush.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cem>The spotted wing drosophila may look like a common fruit fly, but it’s so much worse. Just as strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries are ripening in the field, this fly saws into them and lays her eggs inside. The growing maggots turn the fruit into a mushy mess. Could a wasp and its own hungry maggots save the day?\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>You’ll never delight in this juicy raspberry, if this fly gets its way. It’s called a spotted wing drosophila because the male has dark spots on its wings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Common fruit flies are maddening enough, crawling around and feeding on your overripe bananas. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their spotted wing cousins are way worse. They ruin blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries at their mouth-watering prime, before they can ever reach your kitchen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Out in the strawberry patch, this female spotted wing drosophila is ready to lay some eggs. She uses this tool, called an ovipositor, to cut into the fruit. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her ovipositor is long and has two rows of teeth. Much more impressive than the common fruit fly, which uses a smaller, smoother ovipositor to lay eggs on rotting fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The spotted wing drosophila uses the extra cutting power to dig a hole into firm fruit while it’s still in the field. Then she pushes her egg in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>See that tiny white string she left behind? It looks like one of the strawberry hairs, but that’s how the egg will breathe. Kind of like a snorkel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within three days the egg hatches into a squirmy maggot. It makes itself at home – in this case, in a blueberry. The maggot transforms into a pupa at the fruit’s surface, where it breathes through two star-shaped tubes called spiracles. All this mucking about in the pulp ruins the fruit, so it never makes it to market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These flies cost farmers millions all around the world. They’re originally from East Asia. Growers have to spray insecticides to kill them. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why scientists are introducing a less toxic option. They’ve invited an old enemy from Asia to take the fly down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cbr>\nADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003cbr>\nRead about \u003ca href=\"http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn74158.html#:~:text=Spotted%20wing%20drosophila%20(SWD)%2C,crops%2C%20especially%20in%20coastal%20areas.\">the impact of the spotted wing drosophila fly in California\u003c/a>, in this sheet prepared by the UC Integrated Pest Management Program. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a 2018 videotaped talk, UC Berkeley entomologist Kent Daane describes \u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/KVTGmDo2LLQ\">the sleuthing that led him and his colleagues to a parasitic wasp, \u003cem>Ganaspis brasiliensis\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which will soon be released in the U.S. to control the spotted wing drosophila. The wasp is featured in the Deep Look video above.\u003cbr>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This parasitic wasp is even tinier than the fly, but just as determined to lay her eggs. Her favorite spot is inside a fly’s growing maggot. She can feel vibrations that lead her to a fly maggot moving below the fruit’s surface.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She slides a thin needle into the blueberry and injects an egg straight into a maggot. The wasp egg hatches. But instead of killing the fly maggot right away, it waits for it to plump up and develop a hard casing. Then the wasp maggot devours the fly and grows into an adult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that’s left of the fly is its casing, from which the triumphant wasp emerges. It’s a boy! You can tell by the long antennae.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists have been raising these wasps in labs in the U.S. Soon they’ll be released into fields across the country. Based on their research, scientists say the wasps will almost exclusively target spotted wing drosophila and the occasional common fruit fly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The wasps can cut down the number of flies, but only up to about half. So, farmers will still need to use some pesticides. They’ll be playing a game of whack-a-mole to prevent flies from turning our scrumptious berries into mush.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "From Mountain Lions to California Condors, Oakland Zoo Celebrates 100 Years",
"headTitle": "From Mountain Lions to California Condors, Oakland Zoo Celebrates 100 Years | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/centennial\">The Oakland Zoo is celebrating its 100th birthday \u003c/a>— a milestone the East Bay institution that houses 850 animals is marking with \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/centennial/events\">centennial celebrations for the public throughout the year\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Nik Dehejia, president and CEO of the Oakland Zoo, the zoo’s longevity has extra meaning in the context of conservation in the United States. “It was only 50 years ago that the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States started,” he says. “It was only 50 years ago that the Endangered Species Act started the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species, a multinational governmental agency committed to protecting the species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So we are constantly learning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keep reading for more on the Oakland Zoo’s most recent wildlife conservation efforts — including the April rescue of mountain lion cub Rose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[gallery type=\"slideshow\" size=\"medium\" columns=\"2\" link=\"file\" ids=\"1979426,1979427,1979428,1979430,1979429\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Rescuing mountain lions\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>You may have heard about Rose, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CeFA0b-MoV3/\">the rescued mountain lion cub \u003c/a>that hikers spotted in San Mateo in early April. She was only 5 or 6 months old when, critically ill, she was sent to the Oakland Zoo for rehabilitation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She literally was skin and bones,” said the zoo’s vice president of veterinary services, Dr. Alex Herman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Herman and her team provide preventive, emergency, reproductive and geriatric care for all the animals in the zoo, focusing not just on their medical needs but on an animal’s emotional and social welfare. Her team also provides care for a lot of rescued wildlife in California, like Rose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979392\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1979392\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"A photo of Rose, the rescued mountain lion during her initial check-up at the Oakland Zoo. \" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photo of Rose, the rescued mountain lion during her initial checkup at the Oakland Zoo. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Oakland Zoo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Rose is the 18th orphaned mountain lion to be treated at the Oakland Zoo. When she first arrived, Rose was anemic, meaning she had a very low red blood cell count. So Herman gave Rose a blood transfusion, using blood from one of the zoo’s healthier mountain lions, Silverado.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We like the red blood cell count to be between 30 and 40%. She was at 9%, which is not consistent with life,” said Herman. But “she jumped up to 23, and went up from there after the transfusion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swH9qGX6aDk\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While saving her life by providing intensive care was the priority for the veterinary team, after that “we really needed to work on her well-being and her welfare, so that she could exist with humans in a comfortable way,” said Herman. Because Rose is still too young to go back into the wild, especially without a mother, the current focus for Herman and her team is to ensure she’s less fearful of interacting with people — and can grow to see it as a positive experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At some point, we’d like to develop a re-wilding system so that we can send these baby mountain lions back out into the wild,” said Herman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979406\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1979406\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. Alex Herman, VP of Veterinary Services at the Oakland Zoo and her team examine Rose, the rescued mountain lion.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr. Alex Herman, vie president of veterinary services at the Oakland Zoo, and her team examine Rose, the rescued mountain lion. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Oakland Zoo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mountain-lion-wanders-classroom-california-high-school-officials-say-rcna31484\">The most recent rescued mountain lion\u003c/a> was discovered in a classroom at Pescadero High School on Wednesday and, like Rose, was sent to the Oakland Zoo for health evaluations. Although a little older than Rose, that mountain lion is still too young to be able to survive on his own in the wild. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/oakzoo/status/1532172043659014144\">Follow the Oakland Zoo’s updates about this mountain lion on Twitter.\u003c/a>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n\u003cp lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">We just received another rescued mountain lion. This 6-8 month old male was discovered at Pescadero High School. (Students and staff were safe and had been dismissed from school at the time). \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(thread) \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/fo5ZSXO0HT\">pic.twitter.com/fo5ZSXO0HT\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Oakland Zoo (@oakzoo) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/oakzoo/status/1532172043659014144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 2, 2022\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>In California, these intelligent alpha predators frequently get struck by cars. Most mountain lion cubs that lose their mothers when they’re less than 1 1/2 years old can’t survive on their own. “The adult cats don’t abandon a baby mountain lion. Their parent wouldn’t do that unless they were killed,” said Herman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Herman encourages the public to support any efforts for \u003ca href=\"https://wildlife.ca.gov/News/wildlife-conservation-board-funds-environmental-improvement-and-acquisition-projects2\">wildlife corridors being created \u003c/a>in order to protect these animals. Read more from the Oakland Zoo \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/wildlife-conservation/mountain-lions-2\">about conservation efforts for mountain lions\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Releasing California condors\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Oakland Zoo currently has two resident condors on its campus — and they’re part of the California Condor Recovery Program, in which the zoo is a key veterinarian partner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the mid-’80s, only a couple dozen condors were left in the wild. Their population crashed catastrophically due to habitat loss, the use of the insecticide DDT, and the most significant cause: lead toxicity. Condors end up consuming lead ammunition pellets when they eat the carcass of an animal that someone hunted and left behind. The ammunition causes devastating lead poisoning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979403\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1979403\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A California Condor sits in a tree at the Oakland Zoo on May 25, 2022.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1278\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A California condor sits in a tree at the Oakland Zoo on May 25, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After pulling the last remaining condors into captivity, an alliance of zoos and other organizations in 1986 started \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/wildlife-conservation/condors\">a captive breeding program\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of this program, these condors are tracked and checked for blood lead levels, and if they show signs of lead toxicity, they’re treated through chelation — a process that removes lead from their bloodstream. These efforts have proved to be a success. There are now more than 500 California condors currently in the wild or in captivity. The Oakland Zoo says that since 2014, it’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/wildlife-conservation/condors\">treated and released 45 California condors\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 27, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CeEfu_2FH2J/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">third California condor was released\u003c/a> at the new Northern California Condor Restoration Program (NCCRP). The program is a collaborative effort between the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Yurok Tribe to \u003ca href=\"https://www.yuroktribe.org/yurok-condor-restoration-program\">restore condors to Yurok ancestral territory and the Pacific Northwest\u003c/a>. The California condor is sacred to the Yurok Tribe and their territory in Redwood National Park. The tribe has been working for years to get a new release site in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the first condor release site that’s really looking at not just the ecological impact of having condors gone from the diverse ecosystem, but the cultural impact of having them gone, too,” said Herman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CeEfu_2FH2J/\">https://www.instagram.com/p/CeEfu_2FH2J/\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n\u003cp lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Soaring with joy as a third condor was released into the wild from the new Northern California Condor Restoration Program facility in the Yurok territory north of Eureka.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the first female condor to fly free in Yurok Country since 1892! \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/qB1sn0aIXW\">https://t.co/qB1sn0aIXW\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Oakland Zoo (@oakzoo) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/oakzoo/status/1530241362737606656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 27, 2022\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>You can support the protection of California condors by refraining from littering, picking up trash when you’re in nature and switching to non-lead bullets when hunting. You can also go condor spotting and spread the word about these spectacular animals. \u003ca href=\"https://www.fws.gov/species/california-condor-gymnogyps-californianus\">Read more about ways to help California condors.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Caring for endangered rabbits\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Riparian brush rabbits — or, as Herman calls them, the “gardeners of the ecosystem” — do a lot for the native plants around the San Joaquin River, in addition to being a protein source for alpha predators higher up in the food chain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Herman and her team have been vaccinating these endangered rabbits against the rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV2).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re really glad that we had this two-year window of time to prepare these endangered rabbits for this, because the virus has been slowly creeping north in California — but now it’s been found in their locale,” said Herman. “So we’re hoping that they can weather the storm with the help of the vaccine that we trialed and then really helped administer as well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Read more from the Oakland Zoo \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/wildlife-conservation/riparian-brush-rabbit\">about how to support efforts to conserve these cottontail rabbits\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Oakland Zoo at 100\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Oakland Zoo is an accredited member of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.aza.org/\">Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA)\u003c/a>, the national organization that sets the highest standards for animal welfare for zoos and aquariums. And Dehejia, president of the Oakland Zoo, says he’s also grateful for the zoo’s partnership with medical facilities at UC Davis and other locations, which allows the zoo to provide the best care possible to its animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s that interdependency and that connection that allows us to collectively be successful,” he said. “The future of animals and people: It’s in our hands, so we have to do it together.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979389\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1979389\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Oakland Zoo CEO Nik Dehejia speaks with KQED reporter Sarah Khalida Mohamad at the Oakland Zoo on May 25, 2022.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Oakland Zoo CEO Nik Dehejia speaks with KQED reporter Sarah Mohamad at the Oakland Zoo on May 25, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Dehejia is also focused on the Oakland Zoo’s outreach and educational programs to create awareness, action and future stewards of the environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many of our visitors haven’t had a chance to come up to the zoo [before],” said Dehejia. “So we’re trying to expand that opportunity, make the zoo accessible to all.” \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/school-programs\">Learn more about the zoo’s school programs.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The zoo spends approximately $2 million per month to run its operations, and the care provided to animals is critical. The zoo serves a thousand meals a day, with some animals receiving two or three meals each day, and then there’s medications and dietary plans to keep track of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So it’s a very complicated and complex operation to run just from an animal care standpoint,” Dehejia said. “That’s something that we will never compromise on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking to the future, Dehejia says there’s “a lot that we’re looking forward to in the next hundred years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On future goals, Dehejia said “certainly, continuing to create a thriving environment for people to come and experience here at the zoo. But [also] how we can help protect land, protect our waters and give people continued hope.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979391\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1979391\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr. Alex Herman, vice president of veterinary services, sits outside the veterinary hospital at the Oakland Zoo on May 25, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Alex Herman, a lot of the Oakland Zoo’s work remains less visible to the public. “Some people aren’t aware of the real boots-on-the-ground conservation work that we do,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Not just saving individual animals like the mountain lions, but field-testing a vaccine that might save an endangered species, like with the riparian brush rabbits,” Herman said. “And also a real commitment to community education.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Herman hopes people will continue to appreciate these animals — or, as she calls them, “charismatic demigods.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The world that they inhabit is different from ours. And equally — if not more — important, we need them so much to be,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To join in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/programs-and-events/centennial-birthday-celebration-at-snow-park\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oakland Zoo’s centennial birthday celebration\u003c/a>, you can head down to Snow Park in downtown Oakland on Sunday, June 5, for free family-friendly entertainment and interactive activities.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "On the centennial of the Oakland Zoo, we look at its latest wildlife conservation efforts.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/centennial\">The Oakland Zoo is celebrating its 100th birthday \u003c/a>— a milestone the East Bay institution that houses 850 animals is marking with \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/centennial/events\">centennial celebrations for the public throughout the year\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Nik Dehejia, president and CEO of the Oakland Zoo, the zoo’s longevity has extra meaning in the context of conservation in the United States. “It was only 50 years ago that the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States started,” he says. “It was only 50 years ago that the Endangered Species Act started the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species, a multinational governmental agency committed to protecting the species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So we are constantly learning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keep reading for more on the Oakland Zoo’s most recent wildlife conservation efforts — including the April rescue of mountain lion cub Rose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Rescuing mountain lions\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>You may have heard about Rose, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CeFA0b-MoV3/\">the rescued mountain lion cub \u003c/a>that hikers spotted in San Mateo in early April. She was only 5 or 6 months old when, critically ill, she was sent to the Oakland Zoo for rehabilitation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She literally was skin and bones,” said the zoo’s vice president of veterinary services, Dr. Alex Herman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Herman and her team provide preventive, emergency, reproductive and geriatric care for all the animals in the zoo, focusing not just on their medical needs but on an animal’s emotional and social welfare. Her team also provides care for a lot of rescued wildlife in California, like Rose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979392\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1979392\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"A photo of Rose, the rescued mountain lion during her initial check-up at the Oakland Zoo. \" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam2-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photo of Rose, the rescued mountain lion during her initial checkup at the Oakland Zoo. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Oakland Zoo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Rose is the 18th orphaned mountain lion to be treated at the Oakland Zoo. When she first arrived, Rose was anemic, meaning she had a very low red blood cell count. So Herman gave Rose a blood transfusion, using blood from one of the zoo’s healthier mountain lions, Silverado.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We like the red blood cell count to be between 30 and 40%. She was at 9%, which is not consistent with life,” said Herman. But “she jumped up to 23, and went up from there after the transfusion.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/swH9qGX6aDk'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/swH9qGX6aDk'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>While saving her life by providing intensive care was the priority for the veterinary team, after that “we really needed to work on her well-being and her welfare, so that she could exist with humans in a comfortable way,” said Herman. Because Rose is still too young to go back into the wild, especially without a mother, the current focus for Herman and her team is to ensure she’s less fearful of interacting with people — and can grow to see it as a positive experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At some point, we’d like to develop a re-wilding system so that we can send these baby mountain lions back out into the wild,” said Herman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979406\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1979406\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. Alex Herman, VP of Veterinary Services at the Oakland Zoo and her team examine Rose, the rescued mountain lion.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/OaklandZooInitialExam-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr. Alex Herman, vie president of veterinary services at the Oakland Zoo, and her team examine Rose, the rescued mountain lion. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Oakland Zoo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mountain-lion-wanders-classroom-california-high-school-officials-say-rcna31484\">The most recent rescued mountain lion\u003c/a> was discovered in a classroom at Pescadero High School on Wednesday and, like Rose, was sent to the Oakland Zoo for health evaluations. Although a little older than Rose, that mountain lion is still too young to be able to survive on his own in the wild. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/oakzoo/status/1532172043659014144\">Follow the Oakland Zoo’s updates about this mountain lion on Twitter.\u003c/a>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n\u003cp lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">We just received another rescued mountain lion. This 6-8 month old male was discovered at Pescadero High School. (Students and staff were safe and had been dismissed from school at the time). \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(thread) \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/fo5ZSXO0HT\">pic.twitter.com/fo5ZSXO0HT\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Oakland Zoo (@oakzoo) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/oakzoo/status/1532172043659014144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 2, 2022\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>In California, these intelligent alpha predators frequently get struck by cars. Most mountain lion cubs that lose their mothers when they’re less than 1 1/2 years old can’t survive on their own. “The adult cats don’t abandon a baby mountain lion. Their parent wouldn’t do that unless they were killed,” said Herman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Herman encourages the public to support any efforts for \u003ca href=\"https://wildlife.ca.gov/News/wildlife-conservation-board-funds-environmental-improvement-and-acquisition-projects2\">wildlife corridors being created \u003c/a>in order to protect these animals. Read more from the Oakland Zoo \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/wildlife-conservation/mountain-lions-2\">about conservation efforts for mountain lions\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Releasing California condors\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Oakland Zoo currently has two resident condors on its campus — and they’re part of the California Condor Recovery Program, in which the zoo is a key veterinarian partner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the mid-’80s, only a couple dozen condors were left in the wild. Their population crashed catastrophically due to habitat loss, the use of the insecticide DDT, and the most significant cause: lead toxicity. Condors end up consuming lead ammunition pellets when they eat the carcass of an animal that someone hunted and left behind. The ammunition causes devastating lead poisoning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979403\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1979403\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A California Condor sits in a tree at the Oakland Zoo on May 25, 2022.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1278\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56242_023_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A California condor sits in a tree at the Oakland Zoo on May 25, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After pulling the last remaining condors into captivity, an alliance of zoos and other organizations in 1986 started \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/wildlife-conservation/condors\">a captive breeding program\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of this program, these condors are tracked and checked for blood lead levels, and if they show signs of lead toxicity, they’re treated through chelation — a process that removes lead from their bloodstream. These efforts have proved to be a success. There are now more than 500 California condors currently in the wild or in captivity. The Oakland Zoo says that since 2014, it’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/wildlife-conservation/condors\">treated and released 45 California condors\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 27, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CeEfu_2FH2J/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">third California condor was released\u003c/a> at the new Northern California Condor Restoration Program (NCCRP). The program is a collaborative effort between the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Yurok Tribe to \u003ca href=\"https://www.yuroktribe.org/yurok-condor-restoration-program\">restore condors to Yurok ancestral territory and the Pacific Northwest\u003c/a>. The California condor is sacred to the Yurok Tribe and their territory in Redwood National Park. The tribe has been working for years to get a new release site in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the first condor release site that’s really looking at not just the ecological impact of having condors gone from the diverse ecosystem, but the cultural impact of having them gone, too,” said Herman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CeEfu_2FH2J/\">https://www.instagram.com/p/CeEfu_2FH2J/\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n\u003cp lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Soaring with joy as a third condor was released into the wild from the new Northern California Condor Restoration Program facility in the Yurok territory north of Eureka.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the first female condor to fly free in Yurok Country since 1892! \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/qB1sn0aIXW\">https://t.co/qB1sn0aIXW\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Oakland Zoo (@oakzoo) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/oakzoo/status/1530241362737606656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 27, 2022\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>You can support the protection of California condors by refraining from littering, picking up trash when you’re in nature and switching to non-lead bullets when hunting. You can also go condor spotting and spread the word about these spectacular animals. \u003ca href=\"https://www.fws.gov/species/california-condor-gymnogyps-californianus\">Read more about ways to help California condors.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Caring for endangered rabbits\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Riparian brush rabbits — or, as Herman calls them, the “gardeners of the ecosystem” — do a lot for the native plants around the San Joaquin River, in addition to being a protein source for alpha predators higher up in the food chain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Herman and her team have been vaccinating these endangered rabbits against the rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV2).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re really glad that we had this two-year window of time to prepare these endangered rabbits for this, because the virus has been slowly creeping north in California — but now it’s been found in their locale,” said Herman. “So we’re hoping that they can weather the storm with the help of the vaccine that we trialed and then really helped administer as well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Read more from the Oakland Zoo \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/wildlife-conservation/riparian-brush-rabbit\">about how to support efforts to conserve these cottontail rabbits\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Oakland Zoo at 100\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Oakland Zoo is an accredited member of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.aza.org/\">Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA)\u003c/a>, the national organization that sets the highest standards for animal welfare for zoos and aquariums. And Dehejia, president of the Oakland Zoo, says he’s also grateful for the zoo’s partnership with medical facilities at UC Davis and other locations, which allows the zoo to provide the best care possible to its animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s that interdependency and that connection that allows us to collectively be successful,” he said. “The future of animals and people: It’s in our hands, so we have to do it together.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979389\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1979389\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Oakland Zoo CEO Nik Dehejia speaks with KQED reporter Sarah Khalida Mohamad at the Oakland Zoo on May 25, 2022.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56225_006_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Oakland Zoo CEO Nik Dehejia speaks with KQED reporter Sarah Mohamad at the Oakland Zoo on May 25, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Dehejia is also focused on the Oakland Zoo’s outreach and educational programs to create awareness, action and future stewards of the environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many of our visitors haven’t had a chance to come up to the zoo [before],” said Dehejia. “So we’re trying to expand that opportunity, make the zoo accessible to all.” \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/school-programs\">Learn more about the zoo’s school programs.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The zoo spends approximately $2 million per month to run its operations, and the care provided to animals is critical. The zoo serves a thousand meals a day, with some animals receiving two or three meals each day, and then there’s medications and dietary plans to keep track of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So it’s a very complicated and complex operation to run just from an animal care standpoint,” Dehejia said. “That’s something that we will never compromise on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking to the future, Dehejia says there’s “a lot that we’re looking forward to in the next hundred years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On future goals, Dehejia said “certainly, continuing to create a thriving environment for people to come and experience here at the zoo. But [also] how we can help protect land, protect our waters and give people continued hope.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979391\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1979391\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/06/RS56236_016_KQED_OaklandZoo_05252022-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr. Alex Herman, vice president of veterinary services, sits outside the veterinary hospital at the Oakland Zoo on May 25, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Alex Herman, a lot of the Oakland Zoo’s work remains less visible to the public. “Some people aren’t aware of the real boots-on-the-ground conservation work that we do,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Not just saving individual animals like the mountain lions, but field-testing a vaccine that might save an endangered species, like with the riparian brush rabbits,” Herman said. “And also a real commitment to community education.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Herman hopes people will continue to appreciate these animals — or, as she calls them, “charismatic demigods.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The world that they inhabit is different from ours. And equally — if not more — important, we need them so much to be,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To join in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandzoo.org/programs-and-events/centennial-birthday-celebration-at-snow-park\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oakland Zoo’s centennial birthday celebration\u003c/a>, you can head down to Snow Park in downtown Oakland on Sunday, June 5, for free family-friendly entertainment and interactive activities.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Those precious silk garments in your closet were made by the caterpillar of a fuzzy, white moth — thousands of them. Silkworms spin a cocoon with a single strand of silk up to 10 city blocks long. Humans have bred these insects into weaving machines that can no longer survive in the wild.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This fuzzy moth has wings, but it will never fly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why? Because we humans made it that way.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a domestic silk moth. It looks almost nothing like its wild cousin.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For 5,000 years humans have bred silk moths, changing the course of their evolution to be their own unique species. All because we covet their shimmering threads. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The silkworm — this moth’s caterpillar — spits out an extraordinary fiber. It’s ideal for making everything from satiny sheets to glamorous gowns to terrible ties. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But we don’t just love it for its looks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Silk is one of nature’s strongest fibers. The thread is thinner than a human hair, but for its weight, it’s five times stronger than steel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The silkworm begins its life snuggled in a tiny, translucent egg. The hungry caterpillar nibbles its way out. It’s raised on a farm where it can chomp and chomp and chomp. Here they’re feasting on ground-up mulberry leaves.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Each larva starts out smaller than the date on a penny and in just a few weeks it’s as long as your finger. Now this plump caterpillar can get to work on its next phase of life: making its cocoon. It secretes a liquid from a spinneret on its head. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As soon as the solution touches the air, it becomes a pliable fiber. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What we know as “silk” is a long, unbroken strand constructed primarily from two proteins. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The inside is fibroin — it’s the structural center. The outside is sericin — the glue binding it all together. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The larva spins raw silk for two to three days straight. The end result is a single string of silk, up to 10 city blocks long. This tiny shelter maintains just the right humidity and temperature for the caterpillar to transform into a moth. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once the cushy casing is complete, farmers harvest the raw silk. For most silkworms in captivity, this is where their journey ends.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They die when manufacturers boil, steam, or dry them out in the sun. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Silk harvesters unspool the single thread of silk that makes up each cocoon. If they were to let the moth hatch, it would break the valuable thread.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It takes up to two thousand unbroken cocoons to make one silk dress.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, a few lucky pupae are allowed to continue developing, and become moths, so they can spawn the next generation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After centuries under our watch these industrious weavers can’t fly, and their camouflage is gone, so they wouldn’t last long in the wild. They can hardly move. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once outside the cocoon, a flightless male must seek out a female quickly because they only have a few days to live. So they now rely on us to make sure they find a mate and reproduce.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Silk production is a multibillion-dollar global industry. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s not just for fashion and luxury.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Silk fabric is a natural insulator, yet it also allows air flow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Silk is used in modern medicine to stitch together wounds, stabilize bones, and even replace tendons inside our bodies.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, our relationship with the humble silkworm continues — as it has for millennia — at least until we figure out how to make silk as well as it can.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But we don’t just love it for its looks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Silk is one of nature’s strongest fibers. The thread is thinner than a human hair, but for its weight, it’s five times stronger than steel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The silkworm begins its life snuggled in a tiny, translucent egg. The hungry caterpillar nibbles its way out. It’s raised on a farm where it can chomp and chomp and chomp. Here they’re feasting on ground-up mulberry leaves.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Each larva starts out smaller than the date on a penny and in just a few weeks it’s as long as your finger. Now this plump caterpillar can get to work on its next phase of life: making its cocoon. It secretes a liquid from a spinneret on its head. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As soon as the solution touches the air, it becomes a pliable fiber. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What we know as “silk” is a long, unbroken strand constructed primarily from two proteins. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The inside is fibroin — it’s the structural center. The outside is sericin — the glue binding it all together. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The larva spins raw silk for two to three days straight. The end result is a single string of silk, up to 10 city blocks long. This tiny shelter maintains just the right humidity and temperature for the caterpillar to transform into a moth. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once the cushy casing is complete, farmers harvest the raw silk. For most silkworms in captivity, this is where their journey ends.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They die when manufacturers boil, steam, or dry them out in the sun. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Silk harvesters unspool the single thread of silk that makes up each cocoon. If they were to let the moth hatch, it would break the valuable thread.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It takes up to two thousand unbroken cocoons to make one silk dress.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, a few lucky pupae are allowed to continue developing, and become moths, so they can spawn the next generation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After centuries under our watch these industrious weavers can’t fly, and their camouflage is gone, so they wouldn’t last long in the wild. They can hardly move. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once outside the cocoon, a flightless male must seek out a female quickly because they only have a few days to live. So they now rely on us to make sure they find a mate and reproduce.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Silk production is a multibillion-dollar global industry. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s not just for fashion and luxury.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Silk fabric is a natural insulator, yet it also allows air flow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Silk is used in modern medicine to stitch together wounds, stabilize bones, and even replace tendons inside our bodies.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, our relationship with the humble silkworm continues — as it has for millennia — at least until we figure out how to make silk as well as it can.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "From Giant Isopods to Glowing Jellies, This New Monterey Bay Aquarium Exhibit Features Deep-Sea Creatures Never Seen Before",
"headTitle": "From Giant Isopods to Glowing Jellies, This New Monterey Bay Aquarium Exhibit Features Deep-Sea Creatures Never Seen Before | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The midnight zone begins half a mile beneath the ocean, and is an area so deep that no sunlight can reach it. Few humans have seen the animals who live there — until now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A groundbreaking exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium is bringing deep-sea animals from the midnight zone up to the surface and into public view for the first time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s really cool about this exhibit is that we are the only humans on Earth right now that are likely looking at some of these animals,” said Allen Protasio, exhibit guide at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='small' citation='Samantha Muka, aquarium historian and professor, Stevens Institute of Technology']‘We should be completely astounded by the technological things that they’ve done. It probably couldn’t have been done even 10 or 15 years ago. It’s that cutting-edge.’[/pullquote]The midnight zone is cold and dark, and can only be explored by remote operating vehicles (ROVs) controlled by pilots in submarines. The deep sea is rich with strange and often bioluminescent creatures, many of them delicate and unable to withstand the drastic transition to the low pressure, bright lights and high temperatures at the surface. Monterey Bay researchers have experimented for over a decade with ways to bring elusive deep-sea life safely up from the depths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exhibit takes visitors on a descending tour of the abyss, starting with a model of Monterey Bay’s underwater canyon. Some parts of the canyon are more than a mile deep, and the canyon comes remarkably close to shore. Visitors can meander through a darkened gallery of tanks displaying gelatinous creatures from the shallower end of the midnight zone, known as the midwater, which ranges from 650 feet to 3,300 feet deep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979270\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1979270\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A rust-colored crab with an oval body and white markings on its shell and legs rises up on four legs, two legs extended out above and in front of its body like an orchestra conductor. The crab is on a sandy floor inside an aquarium, with models of whale bones on the ground and looming in the background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Japanese spider crab is the size of a small dog. \u003ccite>(Tyson V. Rininger/Monterey Bay Aquarium)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the midwater gallery, screens show dazzling ROV footage of shimmering bioluminescence. A goopy string adorned with stingers — a creature known as a siphonophore — floats suspended in its tank.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tommy Knowles, a jellyfish expert and one of the scientists who developed the exhibit, described his favorite midwater creature — a crimson dome bedazzled with ridges of strobing rainbow lights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the bloody belly comb jelly, Lampocteis,” Knowles said. “It’s one of the most delicate jellies in the world. It’s like a sparkly bowl of Jell-O.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Knowles and other scientists tinkered with the acidity, light and temperature to achieve conditions that were just right for each deep-sea animal on display.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We should be completely astounded by the technological things that they’ve done,” said Samantha Muka, aquarium historian and professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. “It probably couldn’t have been done even 10 or 15 years ago. It’s that cutting-edge.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the deep sea is known for its high pressures, the aquarium scientists found that some deep-sea creatures could survive the ascent if they were given time to acclimate to the lower pressure and higher temperatures, not unlike the delicacy required when human divers return from high-pressure depths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979302\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1979302\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Inside a deep sea exhibit, black boulders looking like pieces of charcoal, pocked with lines and small holes line the ground. Growing on these boulders are tall, pale orange corals with trunks like a tree and branches like a curved fan. \" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2.jpg 1044w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Corals and sponges that grow on underwater mountains, or “seamounts” develop so slowly that damaged habitats could take centuries to recover. Drilling, mining, and fishing can put corals, sponges, and the animals they shelter at risk. \u003ccite>(Tyson V. Rininger/Monterey Bay Aquarium)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They’re the only people right now that know how you can push these animals, like the plasticity of their pressure needs at the moment,” said Muka. “They already know more about those deep-sea animals than we’ve ever known about them ever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it took years of trial and error to figure out each deep-sea creature’s specific requirements, achieving low-enough oxygen levels proved to be a particular challenge. Many deep-sea creatures from an area known as the oxygen minimum zone need as little as 5% of the oxygen found at the ocean’s surface to survive. Some displays required developing new methods to strip oxygen out of seawater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had to use equipment that I don’t think has ever been used in aquariums before,” Knowles said. “It was used in food production, for stripping gasses out of liquids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exhibit is more than a technological marvel or a way to show off exotic animals. In addition to educating the public, it serves as a reconstructed ecological system that allows scientists to study deep-sea environments without the expense and difficulty of submarine voyages. This combination of public outreach and basic science is a hallmark of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re basically setting up a long-term laboratory for those scientists to be able to study those organisms,” Muka said. “In some sense, it is the ultimate reason for the public aquarium to exist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because it is so challenging to access and study, deep-sea biology is still in its infancy. Although scientists are only beginning to understand deep-sea environments, those environments are already under threat from human influence, such as deep-sea drilling, mining operations, climate change and microplastic pollution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deep-sea creatures feed on marine snow, tiny flecks of rotten flesh and other debris that drift down and eventually reach the sunless depths. But now, much of that snow is made up of tiny bits of microplastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To demonstrate how microplastic pollution affects deep-sea animals, the exhibit includes an interactive game that shows how hard it is for these animals to survive. Players take control of different deep-sea creatures and must avoid getting eaten or stung, all while chasing down and gobbling up bits of marine snow. If a player survives the game, the screen displays the percentage of plastic they consumed along with their marine snow meals — often more than half.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As those plastics break down smaller and smaller, they get into the food chain,” said Protasio. “And these deep-sea critters may not be able to distinguish between what’s marine snow and what’s microplastic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the deep end of the exhibit, visitors reach the muddy plains of the sea floor, studded with microhabitats. In one seafloor tank, spiny Japanese spider crabs the size of small dogs crawl over a model of a sperm whale skeleton settled into the mud. Cartilaginous ghost sharks lurk, and elephant fish probe for food with their long snouts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='small' citation='Tommy Knowles, jellyfish expert, Monterey Bay Aquarium']‘In one sense they’re so foreign to us, they’re very alien. But in another sense, they are earthlings.’[/pullquote]While every other animal in the exhibit lives behind glass, giant deep-sea isopods with 14 legs huddle in a touch tank. They look like roly-polys from your garden, except they’re ghostly pale and as big as bread loaves. Isopods can thrive in a vast range of depths and environments, from just 550 feet below the surface to as deep as 7,000 feet. They can switch between crawling along the muddy plains of the seafloor to swimming with muscular flaps called pleopods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because the deep sea is so different from what we’re used to, it can seem far away, and has often been compared to another planet. The creatures who call it home, with their many limbs and glowing, gelatinous bodies, might strike some visitors as otherworldly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In one sense they’re so foreign to us, they’re very alien. But in another sense, they are earthlings,” said Knowles. “I feel like the alien, coming in with my submarine with bright lights. They’re probably wondering, ‘What is that?!’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Monterey Bay Aquarium has successfully brought a glimpse of the midnight zone into the light. The exhibit provides scientists with new tools to keep learning about the earthlings who call it home, and reminds us just how close we are to our deep, dark neighbors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The midnight zone is cold and dark, and can only be explored by remote operating vehicles (ROVs) controlled by pilots in submarines. The deep sea is rich with strange and often bioluminescent creatures, many of them delicate and unable to withstand the drastic transition to the low pressure, bright lights and high temperatures at the surface. Monterey Bay researchers have experimented for over a decade with ways to bring elusive deep-sea life safely up from the depths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exhibit takes visitors on a descending tour of the abyss, starting with a model of Monterey Bay’s underwater canyon. Some parts of the canyon are more than a mile deep, and the canyon comes remarkably close to shore. Visitors can meander through a darkened gallery of tanks displaying gelatinous creatures from the shallower end of the midnight zone, known as the midwater, which ranges from 650 feet to 3,300 feet deep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979270\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1979270\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A rust-colored crab with an oval body and white markings on its shell and legs rises up on four legs, two legs extended out above and in front of its body like an orchestra conductor. The crab is on a sandy floor inside an aquarium, with models of whale bones on the ground and looming in the background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Whalefall_Japanese_crab_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Japanese spider crab is the size of a small dog. \u003ccite>(Tyson V. Rininger/Monterey Bay Aquarium)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the midwater gallery, screens show dazzling ROV footage of shimmering bioluminescence. A goopy string adorned with stingers — a creature known as a siphonophore — floats suspended in its tank.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tommy Knowles, a jellyfish expert and one of the scientists who developed the exhibit, described his favorite midwater creature — a crimson dome bedazzled with ridges of strobing rainbow lights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the bloody belly comb jelly, Lampocteis,” Knowles said. “It’s one of the most delicate jellies in the world. It’s like a sparkly bowl of Jell-O.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Knowles and other scientists tinkered with the acidity, light and temperature to achieve conditions that were just right for each deep-sea animal on display.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We should be completely astounded by the technological things that they’ve done,” said Samantha Muka, aquarium historian and professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. “It probably couldn’t have been done even 10 or 15 years ago. It’s that cutting-edge.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the deep sea is known for its high pressures, the aquarium scientists found that some deep-sea creatures could survive the ascent if they were given time to acclimate to the lower pressure and higher temperatures, not unlike the delicacy required when human divers return from high-pressure depths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1979302\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1979302\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Inside a deep sea exhibit, black boulders looking like pieces of charcoal, pocked with lines and small holes line the ground. Growing on these boulders are tall, pale orange corals with trunks like a tree and branches like a curved fan. \" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/05/Deep_sea_Tyson-V.-Rininger-resize2.jpg 1044w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Corals and sponges that grow on underwater mountains, or “seamounts” develop so slowly that damaged habitats could take centuries to recover. Drilling, mining, and fishing can put corals, sponges, and the animals they shelter at risk. \u003ccite>(Tyson V. Rininger/Monterey Bay Aquarium)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They’re the only people right now that know how you can push these animals, like the plasticity of their pressure needs at the moment,” said Muka. “They already know more about those deep-sea animals than we’ve ever known about them ever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it took years of trial and error to figure out each deep-sea creature’s specific requirements, achieving low-enough oxygen levels proved to be a particular challenge. Many deep-sea creatures from an area known as the oxygen minimum zone need as little as 5% of the oxygen found at the ocean’s surface to survive. Some displays required developing new methods to strip oxygen out of seawater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had to use equipment that I don’t think has ever been used in aquariums before,” Knowles said. “It was used in food production, for stripping gasses out of liquids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exhibit is more than a technological marvel or a way to show off exotic animals. In addition to educating the public, it serves as a reconstructed ecological system that allows scientists to study deep-sea environments without the expense and difficulty of submarine voyages. This combination of public outreach and basic science is a hallmark of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re basically setting up a long-term laboratory for those scientists to be able to study those organisms,” Muka said. “In some sense, it is the ultimate reason for the public aquarium to exist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because it is so challenging to access and study, deep-sea biology is still in its infancy. Although scientists are only beginning to understand deep-sea environments, those environments are already under threat from human influence, such as deep-sea drilling, mining operations, climate change and microplastic pollution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deep-sea creatures feed on marine snow, tiny flecks of rotten flesh and other debris that drift down and eventually reach the sunless depths. But now, much of that snow is made up of tiny bits of microplastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To demonstrate how microplastic pollution affects deep-sea animals, the exhibit includes an interactive game that shows how hard it is for these animals to survive. Players take control of different deep-sea creatures and must avoid getting eaten or stung, all while chasing down and gobbling up bits of marine snow. If a player survives the game, the screen displays the percentage of plastic they consumed along with their marine snow meals — often more than half.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As those plastics break down smaller and smaller, they get into the food chain,” said Protasio. “And these deep-sea critters may not be able to distinguish between what’s marine snow and what’s microplastic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the deep end of the exhibit, visitors reach the muddy plains of the sea floor, studded with microhabitats. In one seafloor tank, spiny Japanese spider crabs the size of small dogs crawl over a model of a sperm whale skeleton settled into the mud. Cartilaginous ghost sharks lurk, and elephant fish probe for food with their long snouts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]\u003cem>Acorn barnacles might look like jagged little rocks at low tide, but they have a surprisingly wild sex life. These crusty little animals — related to crabs and shrimp — have the longest penis of any animal relative to their body size. It’s up to eight times the length of the barnacle itself!\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Finding a date is hard enough in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s especially tricky when you’re stuck to a rock in the middle of the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, acorn barnacles don’t get discouraged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These crusty little animals actually have a pretty wild sex life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At low tide each one is sealed up inside its own miniature fortress – shielded by a ring of armored plates. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two central plates press together to form a water-tight seal so they don’t dry out in the open air. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re ready and waiting for the tide to rise so they can get down to business. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But first they need to freshen up a bit. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The barnacle unfurls eight pairs of delicate feathery legs called cirri, which they use to absorb oxygen from the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The legs filter out plankton and debris churned up by the waves, bringing the catch inside to the mouth\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They may not look like it from the outside, but beneath their shell, it’s easier to see that barnacles are crustaceans related to crabs and shrimp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a nice meal, it’s ready for some action. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The little barnacle lets loose the longest penis of any animal – relative to its body size of course – stretching up to eight times the length of the barnacle itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this penis has skills. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It can taste and smell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the tip can feel around, probing to see which neighbors have ripe eggs inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it finds what it’s looking for the barnacle delivers sperm to fertilize the eggs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barnacles aren’t exactly prudes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pretty much everyone is fair play. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because they’re all hermaphrodites, simultaneously male and female.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes it’s one-on-one, sometimes more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barnacles are nurturing parents, too. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They hold on to their fertilized eggs and protect them until they hatch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These cuties are their baby larvae called nauplii. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the young barnacles’ chance for adventure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They roam the sea searching for food and growing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If they survive long enough the barnacle larvae mature into cyprids. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At this stage the barnacle doesn’t eat. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cyprid’s only mission is to find the ideal spot to glom onto before it starves. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Having survived the trials of youth, the barnacle settles in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now it’s time to get to know the neighbors.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Peregrine falcons typically mate for life, although survivors will seek a replacement after a mate dies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Grinnell was attacked by other falcons last fall and spent nearly three weeks in a wildlife hospital recuperating, while other rivals courted Annie. But he returned and observers felt that the couple was bonding again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then in February, Annie vanished from her gravel nest and was briefly presumed injured or dead before returning nearly a week later. Her disappearance made local headlines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The falcon researchers said they had never seen a female vanish suddenly during peak breeding season and then suddenly return.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Peregrine falcons are considered the world’s fastest birds. They can reach speeds of 200 mph during a hunting dive known as a stoop. The American birds were declared endangered in 1970 because of ingesting prey poisoned by DDT and other pesticides; the chemical caused the falcons to produce thin-shelled eggs that couldn’t survive until hatching. However, recovery programs brought the bird back from potential extinction.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/RTNZmnD27is'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/RTNZmnD27is'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003cspan class=\"c-message__sender c-message_kit__sender\" data-qa=\"message_sender\" data-stringify-type=\"replace\" data-stringify-text=\"María Fernanda Bernal\">María Fernanda Bernal and Kevin Stark contributed to this report.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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