The blog Tetrapod Zoology has become a regular stop in my surfing habits.
It’s chocked full of crazy interesting information about animals -common to rare, extant to extinct, and even imaginary to real. The best part about this blog is that it does no dumbing down. Evolutionary origins, research articles, and statistics are all presented in an easy straightforward manner.
“As you’ll no doubt already know, the remarkable morphology of the Matamata’s head and neck correlates with a remarkable feeding behaviour. Like various other turtles that lurk, concealed, on the bottoms of ponds, lakes and rivers, matamatas are (usually!) cryptic lunge-feeders that wait for small prey (typically fish) to come close…
Once the prey is within range, the Matamata engages in dynamic suction-feeding: a feeding Matamata gapes its jaws really wide (opening them to an angle of about 80°), and rapidly expands its throat to suck in a huge quantity of water – hopefully containing the prey. Structures normally present on the pleurodire palate (and apparently restricting their gapes to between 40-65°) have been strongly reduced (as discussed in the article on skull and hyoid anatomy). It’s fairly easy to get a Matamata to indulge in this behaviour if you tease it with bits of meat, or wiggle your fingers around in front of its face. Ordinarily, this sort of thing is only recommended when there’s a sheet of glass in the way, but it’s reported by people who have experienced matamata ‘attacks’ that their bites aren’t actually that painful. And they shouldn’t be, given the weak jaws, absence of beak tissue, and importance of suction and engulfment of water.”
About the blog author:
Darren Naish is a science writer, technical editor and palaeozoologist (affiliated with the University of Portsmouth, UK) who mostly works on Cretaceous dinosaurs and pterosaurs. He also messes around with swimming giraffes, fossil marine reptiles, British big cats and stuff like that. An avid interest in modern wildlife and conservation has resulted in many adventures in lizard-chasing, bird-watching and litter-collecting.
As an environmental educator, I often feel like I’m trying to make scientific information relevant and digestible to children and the general public.
The blog Information is Beautiful is a demonstration of how art and creativity transform dry data into something stunning, attractive, and readily meaningful.
“Sophia Tintori and Alison Sweeney talk about iridescence in squid. Audio production and animations are by Sophia, who normally studies siphonophores in the lab.”
Here is a video made by the Biology Class of Miss Baker:
Its really interesting to hear so many of the students say they would like to have people with science careers come into the classroom and talk to them about it. It seems like a no-brainer, but we are not doing it enough.
I wonder if local nature centers could engage with schools by using blogs/facebook/twitter etc. Maybe they could even partners with a local biology class to set it up and run the blog for a school year, or get a summer intern. If any organizations are interested in this idea and would like some help setting it up, please contact me.
Here are two interesting links relating to water ownership:
Here is an article from the LA Times about who literally owns the water in California and about the people who collect “someone else’s” water in rain barrels.
Here is a link to a Minnesota blog called CleaningUpTheRiver.com which encourages people to take ownership of local rivers through trash collection. The author marks the location of trash items (tires, safes, etc.) with GPS and then encourges people to go remove it = geo-trashing. Clever, huh?
This is a topic I’ve some professional familiarity with – I spent some time working with the DNR’s Adopt-a-River Program. Among many different ecological lessons, it was in that position that I learned the Minnesota Governor has a unique contraption at his (and hopefully in the future, her) disposal – a signing machine. Used to imprint the governor’s signature on duplicates – such as Adopt-a-River certificates, it somehow traces the governor’s original signature with a mechanical arm that holds a Sharpie. It works rather slowly and the poor soul assigned to monitoring the process (me) loses a few brain cells and gets a little loopy inhaling the Sharpie fumes. I inquired if some other writing utensil could be used, but was informed that the governor thought that Sharpie was the most “manly.” If I remember correctly, the machine is the only one like it in the nation.
Springtime always peaks my interest in phenology. Recently, I went to a local book seller and inquired if they sold phenology journals, the women at the book store asked if I had looked in the New Age section. Right away I knew her mistake, “Not Phrenology,” I said, “Phenology.”
Here is a list of phenology resources from people and organizations who definitely wouldn’t make the same mistake.
Project BudBurst is “is a national field campaign for citizen scientists designed to engage the public in the collection of important climate change data based on the timing of leafing and flowering of trees and flowers. ”
As you may now be noticing, there are two very non-Minnesota natural topics that I am enthusiastic about: volcanoes and ocean creatures. Minnesota being land-locked and not home to any active volcanoes means I need to get my fix via the web.
Therefore, I’m happy to announce the Eruptions Blog. This new addition to the web collection ScienceBlogs is written by “Dr. Erik Klemetti, a geologist who spends most of his professional time thinking about magma.” You can count on this blog to fill in you on the most recent volcanic activity.
