One of the wonderful effects of our ever-increasing technological know-how is that we can now explore worlds that we have never been able to visit before. No, I don’t mean distant planets, but worlds that exist right here on Earth – isolated mountaintops and valleys, the canopies of the cloud forests, and inhospitable regions previously inaccessible. But perhaps the most amazing new universe we have discovered on Earth is that of the ocean. The ocean covers 75% of the surface of the earth, but until recently, we have never been able to explore its depths. We have had to make guesses about what it is like at the bottom of the sea, and what might live there, based on tiny bits of information – a carcass washed ashore, a strange creature brought up by fishermen, a skeleton of something we can’t identify.

But due to huge advances in underwater technology, robotics, and imaging systems, we can now visit the deep parts of the ocean. We can now go down to the sea floor in many areas, in depths of such crushing pressure and total blackness that we had always thought that nothing could survive there. The premise that we humans operated on was that nothing could survive without sunlight of some type, and that the pressure would be too great for life to succeed. We envisioned the sea floor as a desolate, empty expanse of rock and sand.

And how wrong we were! The lower depths of the ocean are absolutely teeming with life, in shapes and sizes previously unimaginable. Consider the giant squid. This creature was known only from a few incomplete carcasses brought up by fishermen, and for some time was considered a creature of legend, not even real. But now we have seen amazing underwater footage of this animal, confirming the existence of an animal that can reach over 40 feet in length. The giant squid lives deep in the oceans, only rarely surfacing, and it wasn’t photographed until 2004, with video footage taken in 2006, only five years ago. Other animals only recently discovered include an octopus that imitates other fish, so as to sneak up on its prey (the mimic octopus); a crab covered with spines that look like hair; a snail that construct its shell out of iron and is magnetic; and a fish that has a completely transparent head and can rotate its eyes 90 degrees, from looking straight ahead to looking directly overhead. There are tube worms eight feet long that live in volcanic vents on the ocean floor, at temperatures of over 600F. Jellyfish with tentacles 12 feet long swarm under the Antarctic ice; and eerie glow-in-the-dark fish with huge teeth patrol the ocean floor. Some of the new discoveries are so strange that no one is even sure if they are plants, animals, or something not yet defined.

While most humans dream about the possibility of life on distant planets, deep-water biologists are discovering new forms of life right here on our own planet. Every discovery they make expands our ideas of how life evolved, what conditions can support life, and how we categorize life. While looking to the stars and dreaming of new life is fun, what is even more amazing is looking to our oceans and actually finding it.

In honor of Endangered Species Day, May 15, I have reposted two of my previous articles that address this critically important issue. (Don't worry, I don't make a habit of reposting, and we will have new content next Thursday, as always.)

Orange Band was a Dusky Seaside Sparrow, a small and somewhat drab bird that lived in the Florida wetlands. He was named for the orange identification band on his leg, and he lived to be very old for a sparrow – he was at least eight years (the amount of time he had been in captivity) and possibly as old as twelve. Either way, an ancient age for a sparrow.

Perhaps Orange Band knew, somewhere deep within him, that he carried the weight of his entire species, and that his death would sound the knell of extinction. In 1987, Orange Band died, and with him died the Dusky Seaside Sparrow. He was the last of his kind, and the Dusky Seaside Sparrow is no more.


In Robert James Waller’s book of essays, “Old Songs in a New Café”, he writes a thoughtful and heart-felt essay about Orange Band, made even more poignant now by the fact that Orange Band was still alive when he wrote it. I am ashamed to admit that I don’t remember the essay that well, only that it moved me, but part of it that I remember is Waller wondering what it would be like to be Orange Band. Not to be a sparrow, necessarily, but to be the last of your species, and to know that the light of the whole history of your species’ time on earth would go out with you.

We all worry about the extinction of species in the abstract. But for a moment, let’s imagine the extinction of man. Not in a Will Smith “I Am Legend” kind of way or in a “nuclear holocaust kills everyone” kind of way, but in the way that most species go extinct: quietly, with little or no fanfare, with no one to witness the final death. A quiet, unnoticed, everyday vanishing.

Imagine yourself, perhaps sitting in a field, your back up against a warm brick wall, or maybe you are under a shady tree. The world is going along without you, there are still birds and fish and trees, there is just no place for you left in that world. There is no place for you to live, no place that welcomes you, no place that you can call home. You haven’t seen another of your kind since childhood, maybe never. You don’t know what happened, or when, or how it came to be that the earth no longer has a place for you. All you know is that you’re tired, and it’s time to put down your burden.

Of course, Orange Band was not thinking these thoughts, because he was a sparrow. And the last Golden Toad, the last Pyrenean Ibex, the last Hawaiian Crow, the last Baiji Dolphin, the last Red Colobus Monkey (all extinct within the past ten years) were not thinking those thoughts either. But since they couldn’t, maybe we humans owe it to them to think those thoughts for them.

Here is one last thing to think about: The Dusky Seaside Sparrow did not go extinct due to being hunted, the cause of so many extinctions. No one wanted his feathers, no one wanted to eat him, no one particularly even wanted him out of the way. The species went extinct due to habitat destruction, the single largest cause of extinctions today. And in a horrible irony… the habitat was destroyed to make way for the Kennedy Space Center. We humans killed off a bird in our quest to fly. We didn’t know we were doing it, and by the time we realized it was too late.

The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) is the international scientific body that tracks the statistics relating to endangered species. At the end of each year, the IUCN compiles all the data for that year and compiles the “Red List”, a listing of endangered and critically endangered animals. The list also contains comparisons to prior years, so that the progress of each animal can be traced over time. In order to create the list, they do ongoing studies of each animal that they are evaluating and determine the overall population, how much that population has increased or declined, and what the ‘normal’ populations of the animal should be. Based on these statistics, they assign each animal a category. The categories are: Extinct, Extinct in the Wild, Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable, Lesser Risk Conservation Dependent, Near Threatened, and Least Concern. Of these categories, an animal in the Extinct in the Wild, Critically Endangered, and Endangered groups is considered ‘threatened’.

So in 2008, how have we done in preserving our threatened species and preventing others from moving into threatened status? Sadly, we have not done well at all. Better than other years, maybe, but overall our efforts to protect endangered species continues to fall woefully short.

There was some good news in 2008. Thirty-six endangered mammals increased their numbers and moved down a category. The re-introduction of the black-footed ferret, formerly extinct in the wild, was declared successful, moving it from Extinct in Wild to Endangered status. The wild horse, as well, moved from the Extinct in Wild to the Critically Endangered group. Several species of whale moved from Lesser Risk/conservation dependent to Least Concern; seven species of bat left the threatened list and moved into the Nearly Threatened or Least Concern groups. The Indian Rhino made it from Endangered to Vulnerable, and the African Elephant made it from Vulnerable to Nearly Threatened.

Thirty-six mammals sounds like a good number – until you realize that 143 mammals showed a decline in numbers sufficient to move them up a category. Seven bat species left the threatened list… but 21 joined it, with three more upgraded from Vulnerable to Endangered. The Indian Rhino was downgraded, but it was too late for the Western Black Rhino, the Javan Rhino, and the Sumatran Rhino, all considered Extinct in the Wild. Eleven monkeys moved to threatened status, in addition to another three that moved from Vulnerable to Endangered. Twelve squirrels also joined the threatened list. A total of sixteen mammals were upgraded to Critically Endangered level, including the Woylie (a type of bettong), which made a leap from Least Concern to Critically Endangered in one year.

Birds fared worse. Only two species showed any improvement, and 23 moved up on the list, six of them moving from Endangered to Critical. Reptiles had no improvement at all, and four tortoises, a turtle, and a crocodile moved into the Critical category. Information on amphibians is not yet finalized, due to difficulties with the statistics from South America.

So, what can we do? There are countless ways that every one of us can help. We can all try to live a little more lightly on the earth, consume a little bit less resources, to help prevent habitat loss, one of the main causes of extinction. We can donate time or money to organizations working to help, such as the World Wildlife Fund or the Nature Conservancy. We can do our best to educate our friends and family about conservation issues. We can be careful where and how we go on vacation, to limit our impact on potentially fragile environments. And we can keep an eye on our own backyards – make them wildlife friendly, if possible, or at least make them as close to the natural environment in your area as possible. And be kind to the little guys, as well – insects and worms deserve their place in the world, too.

Most of all, do not give up. The 38 species that gained some ground may not sound like much, but for those 38 species, the world has gotten a little better, a little friendlier, a little safer. And that, after all, is the goal we all strive for, for ourselves and for our animal brethren. So Happy Endangered Species Day to you, and while you are celebrating, raise a glass to yourself and all the people like you, who helped to bring a happier 2008 to the Wolverine, Black-footed Ferret, Juan Fernández Fur Seal, Guadalupe Fur Seal, Bowhead Whale, Southern Right Whale, Humpback Whale, European Bison, Spanish Ibex, Walia Ibex, Przewalski's Gazelle, Pyrenean Chamoix, Gray Whale, Ryukyu Flying Fox, Pohnpei Flying Fox, Samoan Flying Fox, Rafinesque's Big-eared Bat, Townsend's Big-eared Bat, Geoffroy's Bat, Gray Myotis, Western Quoll, Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroo, Western Brush Wallaby, Burrowing Bettong, Daintree River Ringtail Possum, Herbert River Ringtail Possum, Wild Horse, Mountain Zebra, Indian Rhinoceros, Black Lion Tamarin, African Elephant, Eurasian Beaver, Greater Stick-nest Rat, Shark Bay Mouse, Western Mouse, Speckled Ground Squirrel, Washington Ground Squirrel, Little Spotted Kiwi, and Marquesan Imperial Pigeon.

Bats are fascinating, and beautiful, animals. Even leaving aside the total coolness of flying, they also have some amazing hardware. A bat, using echolocation, can detect something as fine as a human hair from 50 feet away. And all those stories about bats getting caught in people's hair - either not true or an isolated horrible accident. Bats that eat insects fall roughly into two groups - gleaners and flyers. Gleaners take insects that have settled on something else - for instance, they will swoop close to a heat source (like one's head) because the heat source will have attracted insects that are likely sitting or hovering near your head. They also swoop by flowers, and many desert flowers stay open at night for this specific reason - they attract insects, which attract bats. The bats, the gleaners, stick their heads into the flowers to get the insects. The pollen in the flowers comes off on the bat's head, and the bat carries it to the next flower, thereby pollinating the plants.

The other type of insect-eater, flyers, they eat insects on the wing - they are the ones you see swooping, apparently randomly, at night. They are hunting insects, swooping after them and catching and eating them mid-flight. Bats have very high metabolisms and need to consume pounds of insects each night, which they do. Bats are a much more effective form of insect control than anything man-made.

In the rain forests in South America, many trees and plants have fruits that specifically attract bats - guava and bananas are examples. The fruit-eating bats (which do not use echo-location) are attracted to these kinds of fruits and will eat them off the trees, then as the bats fly around, the seeds from the fruit will process through the bats and be spread around the forest. It is estimated that bats provide about 80% of the pollinating and reforesting in the rain forests. They are many kinds of tree and fruit seeds that will not germinate unless they have passed through the digestive system of a bat first.

Vampire bats, the most feared of this generally harmless species, have an astonishingly complex social system, one that pretty much has scientists stumped for an explanation. Female bats (who congregate in what are called "maternity roosts", all of the mothers and babies together) appear to be totally altruistic - that is, they will share their food if another bat is ill and hasn't gotten anything to eat, and they will also nurse babies that are not their own. Most scientists feel that social systems in animals operate on a pretty strict system of either hierarchy (I give you food because you rank above me and I am currying favor, or I give you food because you rank below me and I want you to do something for me) or reciprocity (I give you food with the expectation that you will give me food later). But bat colonies are huge and there seems to be no correlation between bats giving food and receiving it - a bat will give food to another bat and never get food from that bat, ever. A bat will nurse a baby that is clearly not her own, and never have her young nursed by any other bat. So it seems that bat society either functions on a reciprocal system so complex that we humans can't grasp it, or bat society is in fact truly altruistic. If so, it would be pretty much the only model of such behavior in the animal world.

If only humans were so caring. The bat population in the US is way down, due a couple of things. One of them is simply people going into caves. When bats hibernate, they store up just enough energy to get through the winter and to get themselves woken up in spring. But when cavers come through the caves and disturb them, they wake up. Then they go back to sleep, but they no longer have enough energy to last, so they don't wake up again - they die of starvation in their sleep. And since the cave explorers don't really see the effects, they have no idea what they have done, and continue tromping through the caves and disturbing bat populations. Then after a few years they say "You know, there used to be a ton of bats here, I don't know where they have all gone..."

The other threat to bats is the lack of protection for species that migrate. Mexican Free-tails, which migrate to Mexico in the winter, are often killed by local people who fear them, and also they ingest toxic doses of DDT and other pesticides from the insects that they eat. Then, during their migration, as they are flying over the Pacific, they drop out of the sky, dead from DDT. Again, since people don't see masses of them dying, they don't really know. It's only recently that we humans have begun to understand the threats facing bats, and to take positive action to protect them.

It is often the case, with books on wildlife, that one can either get a book with wonderful photos, but not much in the way of content, or a densely written book with possibly a few nice photos. “Birds in Flight”, by Carrol L. Henderson, is one of the few that successfully combines both. This is a really lovely and fascinating book.
The subtitle of the book is “the art and science of how birds fly”, which is a very succinct and absolutely correct description of the content. It starts out with an amazing photo gallery of birds in flight – not just soaring eagles and other common images, but close-ups of the birds that capture the exact position of their wings as they go about their business. A black vulture coming in for a landing shows these somewhat ungainly birds in a beautiful rush of feather and feet; a swan taking off from a misty lake vibrates with power and majesty. The gallery, however, is not just a series of photos. It also introduces various types of birds and their various types of flight – birds of prey, water birds, etc.

The gallery lays the groundwork for the next section, titled “Avian Aerodynamics”, gets into further detail of exactly how flight works – thrust and drag, lift, forward motion, and so on. There are more beautiful photos to illustrate each of these components to flight. The explanations and photos not only show us the basic of how birds fly, but of how anything flies, and the author ties in how the study of birds relates to the history of human flight, and how our increasing understand of bird flight continues to inform our own technology.

The photographic feast for the eyes continues as the book explains how the structure of various part of the bird contribute to flight – not just wings and feathers, but tails and feet and heads and necks. There are incredibly fascinating descriptions and photos of various birds taking off and landing, soaring and diving, hovering and darting. Each type of flight is explained and lavishly illustrated.

All in all, this is one of the best wildlife photography books I have seen in a long time. The photos are all fresh and new and show us perspectives never before seen of birds in flight. The cover alone is just stunning – a series of photos of an owl swooping down to catch prey. The text is interesting, easy to read, and contains not only a complete and detailed explanation of how birds fly, but little-known and fascinating facts about the various birds.

I highly recommend this book for any lover of wildlife, birds, or people simply interested in the mechanics of flight.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s film “The Birds”, actress Tippi Hedren tries desperately to escape from wildlife run amok, in the form of killer birds. In her real life, wildlife comes to her, escaping from human greed and short-sightedness. Ms. Hedren is the founder and driving force behind Shambala, a sanctuary in the California desert that is home to some 80 exotic cats, all of them rescued from conditions ranging from inappropriate to unspeakably horrible. A beautiful shaggy-maned lion, sprawled in the sun, was the pet and guard dog of a local drug dealer. A nearby leopard was being kept in an apartment by a well-meaning but clueless dentist. Many of the animals were purchased as infants by people besotted with their furry charm, and having no idea what it takes to raise such an animal.

The lives of most of the big cats bred and sold in the US end in tragedy. Purchased by private owners who are either unaware of their needs, or unconcerned, they live out lives of quiet desperation, in roadside zoos, as backyard ‘pets’ in small enclosures, or, as in the case of one leopard at Shambala, being kept in a closet all day. When the owners realize that they can no longer take care of the animal, or simply become bored with it, they often abandon it, or sell it to someone else, equally unprepared, and the animal begins the slow spiral from one bad situation to the next.

A few, a lucky, lucky few, find their way to Shambala, an accredited sanctuary that promises them a home for the rest of their lives – a home where they will have space to roam, warm beds to sleep in, high-quality food to eat, and a life free of harassment by humans. But places like Shambala are few and far between, and there will never be enough space and resources to care for all the animals rescued from the pet trade. In addition, while Shambala is a accredited sanctuary, the words ‘sanctuary’ and ‘rescue’ are frequently used by breeders, sellers, and other participants in the pet trade, in order to make the public think that they are providing a service to the animals. Some of the tigers currently at Shambala came from a ‘rescue’ in California that was found to be breeding and selling animals to canned hunts and as pets. When the facility was raided by authorities, they found a ‘horror show’ – cats crammed into tiny cages, eating their deceased cagemates, up to their bellies in feces and urine, the place so overcrowded that cubs were being stuffed into air conditioning vents and kitchen cupboards to prevent them from being cannibalized by the starving adult cats.

This is the sad beginning of many pet big cats in the US, and their lives usually end in the same sad way – in despair and illness. See my previous articles on public safety issues and humane issues regarding pet big cats, and what you can do to help stop this trade. In the meantime, please visit the website for Shambala to learn what else you can do to help.

The Cats of Shambala

When Travis the chimp viciously attacked a woman outside his home earlier this year, the entire country was transfixed by the story. There was an immediate public outcry about private ownership of primates, and the state of Connecticut moved aggressively to ban primate ownership in the wake of the tragedy. A federal bill to ban primate ownership by private individuals is now before the Senate. There is no doubt that this legislation is badly needed as a public safety issue.

But… the attack by Travis was one of only two in the last decade, the other being the attack on the owner of Moe the chimp in 2006. Private ownership of chimps is relatively uncommon, and already illegal in most states. While having chimps as pets is undoubtably dangerous, there are pets that are much, much more dangerous that are still perfectly legal in many states.

Between 1990 and today, 21 people were killed by big cats that were being kept as pets, and maulings by captive big cats have become so common that they rarely make national news anymore. Consider: from January 2008 to present (April 2009), there have been 20 documented maulings of people by large cats being kept as pets (this includes animals being kept in non-accredited or substandard ‘zoos’ and ‘sanctuaries’). Yet none of them garnered national attention. In October of 2008, a liger (a cross between a tiger and a lion) mauled a keeper to death in front of an audience of attentive pre-schoolers in Oklahoma, at a faux ‘sanctuary’. In November, a sixteen-year-old girl was mauled by a cougar in Miami, requiring two hours of surgery to repair her wounds, and another fifteen year old girl had a finger bitten off by a tiger in Virginia. In December a pet bobcat mauled a store Santa at a photo session at Petsmart. In January a 32-year-old woman was mauled by a jaguar at a private zoo in Maryland, and in February, less than a week after the chimp attack, a lion being kept in a junkyard mangled the arm of a man who attempted to pat it.

These are not isolated incidents. There have been almost 200 reported maulings of humans by big cats being kept as pets since 1990, and an unknown (but probably quite large) number of maulings that are not reported. Many private owners of these cats lie about their injuries if they need treatment (a breeder of Savannah Cats recently bragged on a message board that he had been severely bitten by his serval, but told the ER personnel that he had gotten tangled in barbed wire) and encourage paying guests to their ‘zoo’ or ‘sanctuary’ not to report any injuries, telling people that if they report their injuries, the animal will be killed
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These animals are not only beautiful, fascinating, intelligent – they are dangerous. They are apex predators, at the top of the food chain, and they are simply not meant to be pets. There is no ‘safe way’ to keep one as a pet – just because you hand-raise it and love it, does not mean it loves you back. And even if it does, it can kill you with a casual swat intended as play. Worse still, it can kill someone else.

In 2003, actress and animal welfare activist Tippi Hedren co-authored a bill called the , Captive Wildlife Safety Act which passed unanimously and was signed into law, which bans the transfer of exotic cats across state lines by and for private individuals. She has now co-authored a new bill, The Federal Ban to Stop the Breeding of the Exotic Felines for Personal Possession, which will make it illegal for private individuals to breed exotic cats (accredited zoos and other legitimate institutions are exempt from the proposed law). These two laws combined have the potential to put a serious dent in the pet trade in exotic felines. Please write to your congressman and senators in support of this incredibly important bill.