The epic 30,000-kilometre (18,641-mile) migrations of a small songbird called the northern wheatear
The researchers found that the birds take between two and three months to get from their breeding grounds in the Arctic to sub-Saharan Africa. And even though they weigh just 25 grams – slightly more than a robin – they cover an incredible 290 kilometres (180 miles) every day.
‘We had an idea birds from Alaska migrate as far away as Africa, because there had been sightings in the Pakistan, Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. But we were astonished to find that’s the case,’ says Dr Heiko Schmaljohann from the Institute of Avian Research in Germany, a member of the study team.
‘It’s the only songbird that links the Arctic with Africa. The vegetation in the two is completely different,’ he adds.
Scientists have long known that northern wheatears have one of the largest ranges of any songbird in the world – they breed over a huge area of the Arctic, in eastern Canada, Greenland, Eurasia and Alaska.
But the birds are made up of two separate subspecies that appear never to meet. One subspecies breeds in eastern Canada, Greenland and Iceland, while the other uses Eurasia and Alaska.
And despite sporadic reports of sightings in North America, nobody has ever seen either subspecies spending the winter in the Americas, even though this might seem the obvious choice for Alaskan wheatears. This suggests that all wheatears from across the Arctic somehow make their way to Africa.
Tough and cute - The northern wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe) weighs no more than 2 tablespoons of salt and can make roundtrips spanning some 18,000 miles. Credit: Heiko Schmaljohann.
According to the tracking devices the researchers used the Alaskan wheatears fly overland to eastern Africa to spend the winter there, covering about 13,500 km (8388 miles). On the other hand wheatears from eastern Canada and Greenland cover around 3500 km (2174 miles) getting to western Europe, grappling with the stormy north Atlantic on the way, before making their way to Africa.
Climate junk science attack machine took donations from major corporations
A libertarian thinktank devoted to discrediting climate change received funds and other support from major corporations including some publicly committed to social responsibility, leaked documents reveal.
The inner workings of the Heartland Institute were laid bare on Tuesday night after an “insider” emailed confidential documents detailing its strategy and fundraising network to DeSmogBlog, which monitors industry efforts to discredit climate science.
Much of Heartland’s work to discredit climate change is funded by a single anonymous donor, the papers reveal. However, a 2012 fundraising plan also indicated that Heartland has in the past received funds from a host of major corporations for other projects – including companies that publicly support action on climate change.
Along with tobacco giants Altria and Reynolds America, and drug firms GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Eli Lilley, major corporations have given over $1.1m in the past two years to the institute, and are planning to give another $705,000 this year.
Slick looking junk science book promoted by radical climate change deniers
Among other items on the agenda of junk science promoters and think-tank The Heartland Institute was strategizing ways to get teachers to promote the denial of climate science. I would give some of these corporations some slack. Microsoft for instance claims they thought Heartland was going to use the money to study trade policy. Microsoft has given money to genuine climate change initiatives, to help farmers for instance, deal with the effects of global warming. Some of the other companies seemed to have given Heartland money without knowing the specifics of what the money would be used for. That seems a little like corporate double-talk. In light of this scandal perhaps they will be a little more careful about who they give donations.
Students and guppies tend to look at number groupings in much the same way – Evidence for Two Numerical Systems That Are Similar in Humans and Guppies
In this study, we compared the ability of undergraduate students and guppies to discriminate the same numerical ratios, both within and beyond the small number range. In both students and fish the performance was ratio-independent for the numbers 1–4, while it steadily increased with numerical distance when larger numbers were presented.
Conclusions/Significance
Our results suggest that two distinct systems underlie quantity discrimination in both humans and fish, implying that the building blocks of uniquely human mathematical abilities may be evolutionarily ancient, dating back to before the divergence of bony fish and tetrapod lineages.
Those that have a prejudice towards human cognitive abilities, don’t feel sad, people ultimately do a little better than guppies,
In contrast, in both fish and students, discrimination in the small number range was not dependent on ratio and discriminating 3 from 4 was as easy as discriminating 1 from 4. Likelihood ratio analyses indicate that the lack of ratio effect is 3.68 times more likely than the alternative hypothesis in fish and 3.67 times in students. As a consequence, the discrimination of larger numerical ratios, 0.67 and 0.75, is easy in the small number range for both species, but becomes relatively more difficult (among students) or even impossible (among fish) when confronted with large numbers.
So if a human and a guppie were both looking at a jar of jelly beans, given time to study the jar, students are more likely to find that the jar consists of approximately 10% green jelly beans. This all sounds either like a lot of fun or silly, but being able to judge numbers in portion to other numbers comes in handy. One of the reasons that our elected leaders make bad decisions is that some of them have the same mistaken impression about proportions of the population, budget and spending as the people who elected them
Both movies and television have a tendency to portray scientists as white middle-aged males. Not always and such stereotyping has gotten better. It might help recruit more scientists if kids saw people who represented them as actual scientists – What a Scientist Looks Like, Learn how today’s scientists are working to update people’s perceptions of science
Yukari Hotta’s big CUBE puzzle for kids.
I can’t seem to go any place on the web and not see this story, but just in case anyone missed it, World’s Tiniest Chameleons Found in Madagascar
