Everyday Biophilia

I have several types of trees around my house; a red maple, a couple of white oaks, and an enormous black walnut. The black walnut ( Juglans nigra ) has come to play a bigger part in my day-to-day affairs than perhaps any other single tree I’ve ever been around.  (Black Walnut Info) This time of year, early fall, while the leaves are turning, the walnuts begin to drop from the tree. Unfortunately, my parking space is right underneath. It’s a good thing my car is elderly and worth basically less than a dinner for two, because over the last couple of years so many walnuts have dropped on it that the roof and hood now have the rough contours of a golf ball. On one memorable occasion I had inadvertently set the car alarm and in the middle of the night a walnut landed on the vehicle with enough force that it set off the klaxon and light show. My neighbors were, quite naturally, miffed. People have said black walnuts are worth money and I should collect them as they fall, but I don’t h...

Human beings are aesthetic creatures. The argument has been made that our evolved predisposition to make determinations about beauty is the very thing that separates us from other animals. We make aesthetic judgments every day; about cars, fashion, architecture, books, food, movies, you name it. We also form aesthetic opinions about the living world around us. Every aspect of the nonhuman world – from trees, to birds, to jellyfish, to fungi, to mammals – evolved into the forms, colors, and tendencies we see today. If we elect to call a hyena ugly, or ill-tempered, or just plain yucky, we are evaluating aspects of the hyena that it has no control over whatsoever. All of this probably seems quite obvious. An animal neither knows nor cares if it is being stood up for. But I wanted to throw it out there before talking about the marabou stork, a creature that is often referred to as the ugliest bird alive. (Marabou Stork. Showing Off Its Good Side.) Big Boss Bird Why exactly does the...

How much time do you devote to thinking about poop? I don’t mean your own personal poop, or even the poop of your personal pets. I mean poop as a phenomenon that spans the natural world. Meta-poop, if you will. Almost every living thing out there takes in some form of nourishing substance, and a little while later says Aloha to the unneeded bits. And the organisms on our little space marble have evolved a startling array of defecatory diversity.  Let’s  take a gander at few of the many crappy ways Nature has found to move the mail, and what to do with the mail once it has reached journey’s end. Throughput When animals do the doo-doo, it can hit town in shapes and conditions that give one pause. Take wild turkeys. A male of the type produces J-shaped turds, while a female’s deposit is shaped rather like an obese Slinky with a melanin disorder. Some snake poo is readily identifiable, not just because it contains bits of bone and hair, but because it greets the world as an ob...

Question: Have you ever tried to crack open a coconut? Using just your hands? No machete, no hammer and chisel, no quarter-stick of dynamite, just good ol’ grip strength and the will to succeed? Well, it’s damn difficult. Unless, that is, you are a member in good standing of the hermit crab species Birgus latro , colloquially known as the coconut crab. Among these stalwarts, opening coconuts is but the work of a moment. Coconut crabs inhabit islands in the central Pacific and Indian oceans. They are known primarily for two traits. First, they can easily open and dine on the meat of coconuts, and second, they are absolutely gigantic. Some lesser known facts about these plus-sized crustaceans: They can climb trees; they do not partake exclusively of coconuts; they have a habit of stealing stuff; they detect scents with mammal-like precision; and certain superstitious people believe that eating coconut crab works as an aphrodisiac. (It doesn’t. At all. In any way. Aphrodisiacs are in y...

The “lone wolf” trope has permeated Western culture for what feels like forever (or at least since Reagan was in office). It is meant to connote notions of going it alone and rugged individuality . Lone wolves don’t need anyone’s help to tackle dangerous situations or, indeed, to face any of life’s travails. Lone wolves wear a lot of leather, ride motorcycles sans helmets, can bullseye a bad guy’s noggin from all the way over there, and can kick your ass using any and every type of martial art practiced in the entire history of kicking people for fun and profit. Lone wolves are strong, vigorous, mysterious, and unknowable. Here’s the thing. Being an actual lone wolf – as in an actual wolf that is not a member of an actual pack – pretty much sucks, and our version of the idea is tediously idealized nonsense. The governing reality in the life of wolves (red and gray) is that they are very social animals – the most pack oriented of all canids, with the possible exception of hyena...

Over the course of our long history, we humans have from time to time taken it upon ourselves to designate some animals as pests, and to declare that they must be controlled. Our reasons for wanting to exert our authority over these animals are myriad, but generally boil down to the idea that the animals are either eating or damaging something, and we would prefer that they discontinue doing so. We have attempted to control pests in a bunch of different ways. One of which is the introduction of predator species, in the hope that they will predate upon our pests and send them packing. It’s an idea that looks good on paper, sounds even better around a conference table, but is all too often disastrous in practice. Today we are going to take a look at some of these introduced species (sometimes referred to as “biocontrols”) with an eye toward understanding what they were meant to do versus what they actually did. We’ll begin with one of the most notorious. Cane Toad ( Rhinella mari...