Bats: Not So Spooky!

In the spirit of the spooky season, I give you: bats! Traditionally associated with vampires and Halloween, sucking blood and getting tangled in human hair, I know I don't have to convince you Young Naturalists that bats are extremely awesome and not at all scary once you know a little bit about them.

The Hinterland Who's Who website has a great fact sheet about bats, plus cool video clips, and even instructions on how to build a bat house. Check it out!

A couple of cool things I learned:

• Canada has 19 recorded species of bat, 17 of which are regular residents
• Bats can live to be over 30 years old! Ontario has the record for the oldest in Canada: a 35 year old little brown bat.
• Canadian bats typically eat somewhere between 50% and 100% of their body weight in insects every night.

Enjoy! And have a spooky and safe Halloween.

flying squirrels: September 2009 program summary

For those of you who were not able to make it to the first meeting in September, Kristina has very kindly written up a summary of events!

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Young naturalists from Laurel Creek and Guelph along with their parents and leaders gathered in the Laurel Creek Nature Centre. The air was full of excitement, and kids rushed for front row seating as soon as the lights dimmed. Steve the “Crazy Flying Squirrel Guy” as he introduced himself began his presentation for the eager audience. He told a story, explaining that he thought everything important had already been discovered, but if you just sit quietly in the forest, you can learn new things just by observing. When it came to introducing the stars of the night, his flying squirrels, he let the kids guess at where they were. He surprised the audience when he declared they were in his shirt. Shrieks and giggles of delight came from the younger part of the crowd when he pulled out a little gray creature that filled his palm. After being introduced to his two flying squirrels, Sabrina and Scooter, Steve explained more about the species and how special they are. Emphasis was placed on the fact that Sabrina and Scooter are not pets, they are wild animals. There are two species of flying squirrels in North America although many people never realize it because they only live in heavily wooded areas and come out at night. The presentation was enlightening about many aspects of the flying squirrels, and even included an interactive skit. Volunteers got costumes to show how important flying squirrels are, spreading an important species of mushrooms with their droppings. The grand finale was a gliding demonstration by both Scooter and Sabrina. They were timid at first but gladly glided to their “mom” Steve. It was a fantastic new experience to see and learn so much about a species rarely seen.

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Thank you Kristina!

If anyone is interested in learning more about flying squirrels, check out Steve's website for videos, activity pages, nest box plans and tonnes more.

new primate species discovered in Germany!

Paleontology is a very interesting area of natural science. As a naturalist, I love to think about the plants and animals that were alive on the planet thousands and millions of years ago, and it's interesting to me to think about how different (or similar!) our current natural world is.

I thought I'd point to this article about a very cool new discovery in Germany: a new genus of [extinct but fossilized] primate believed to be at some point in the evolutionary scale between early primates and early humans. It's named after Darwin (her species name is Darwinius masillae) and the discovery is published in what is known as an "open access" scientific journal -- that is, it's free to anyone who wants to read it and learn about this very cool discovery. I haven't linked directly to the article, but you can find it from the page I've linked to. It's pretty long and very dense, so I kind of like the condensed version myself!

I like this story in particular because it's both about a nifty new paleontological discovery as well as being from a group of scientists who want to share their discoveries freely with the world. Awesome.

ferrets and mole-rats and flamingos, oh my!

Has anyone been to the National Zoo in Washington? I've never been but I've heard it's wonderful. They have a great website, too, and I've been poking around there in the past couple of days because someone sent me a link to their ferretcam!

The ferretcam is a webcam trained on the home of Georgia, a black-footed ferret. They're one of the most endangered mammals in the world, and Georgia gave birth to a baby, called a kit, six days ago. Right now the kit looks rather like a little white sausage with four stubby legs. Georgia spends most of her time sleeping, because ferrets are nocturnal, but the kit is quite active so there's often something to see.

You can also access other webcams from the National Zoo's website, and there are a lot of very, very cool animals to see. In addition to the webcams, they have some great information on their site about animals from all over the world, good photos, and all sorts of activities and fact sheets.