Nibbles Video

The SF Chronicle just posted some video of Nibbles the angry Elephant Seal killing a harbor seal at the mouth of the Russian River. All because no one will mate with him. Pretty harsh.

Jump on the Bandwagon

There was a lot of excitement in the Bay Area when the Golden State Warrior's made the playoffs for the first time in 13 years, but after the game 1 upset in Dallas, the hype is in full swing. You can feel the energy in the air. Everyone wants to talk about the W's.

Tickets are impossible to get. Even Jessica Alba couldn't get game three tickets in Oakland and will only be coming to game four. Somebody has got to have an extra ticket for the girl. Via GSoM from a Marc Stein Column on ESPN.com

My sources in Hollywood tell me reliably that Jessica Alba has requested a ticket for Sunday's Game 4 in Oakland.

Yes: I'm well aware that Alba and Baron Davis are longtime pals. But I'll go out on a limb and say that it's still a rather momentous occasion when an actress of Alba's hotness, er, stature, wants to fly in for a courtside seat.

Alba, by all accounts, only hits Warriors games when they're in L.A. This will apparently be her maiden trip to Oakland . . . after she undoubtedly realized that even Jessica Alba would have a tough time scoring Friday night tickets for Golden State's first home playoff game in 13 years.

Will she be wearing her City Jersey? Everyone wants to be a Warrior's fan now.

Hyphy!

Tag Recovered

TOPP is reporting that the male GWS's tag has been recovered off of Mexico. They had to do an open ocean recovery when the tag quit floating towards the mainland. Take a look at the tag, when you follow the link. Amazing that they could locate that tiny tag in a huge ocean even with the GPS help.

Photos is of the actual shark that was tagged just like in the previous photos/posts.
Photo used under creative commons license: Jared Kelly

Panda Sex

This time real sex ... not gender. The Pandas at the San Diego Zoo mated today! A is baby expected this summer if all goes as planned. From the LA Times:

Stop the presses! Alert the bloggers! The two adult giant pandas at the San Diego Zoo mated Tuesday, zoo officials announced, raising hopes of an offspring this summer.

So far, Bai Yun and Gao Gao are two for two during their stay at the zoo under a loan from the Chinese government.

The pair mated in 2003 and the male Mei Sheng was born that August. They mated again in 2005 and female Su Lin was born that August.

In San Diego, where zoo animals are celebrities, the sex life of the pandas is followed closely by media and public. Female pandas are in season only two to three days a year, and not at all during years when they have young cubs.

I doubt the times was referring to this humble blog, but since Matt Yglesias, Panda blogger extraordinaire, is in vacation mode, we'll pick up the slack.

Photo used under creative commons license: ginsnob

Sumatran Rhino video

WWF released the first ever video footage of a Sumatran rhino, one the "world's most elusive animals." The video is from a camera trap and the rhino does not seem to like the camera.

Photo used under creative commons license: Nick Lawes

Amur Leopard

I was going to post on this study that came out a few days ago but was a bit behind. A new census estimates that there are only 25-34 Amur leopards left in the wild. A number well below what scientists feel is necessary to stay off extinction.

Also known as the Far Eastern leopard, the Amur has been painted into a deadly corner by habitat-slashing, conservationists said this week.

Weighing in at about 55 to 130 pounds (25 to 59 kilograms), the large cat once flourished along the Korean Peninsula, in the Russian Far East, and in northeastern China. But habitat fragmentation and the hunting of the leopard and its prey have eviscerated wild populations, conservationists say.

The Amur's long legs and long fur set it apart from other leopards, allowing it to prowl in deep snow and withstand Siberian cold.

The leopard's snow tracks were the basis of the census, which covered some 1,930 square miles (5,000 square kilometers) of Amur territory near Vladivostok

The researchers found at least 4 litters of cubs that left the researchers with some hope for the leopard.

And then the bad news today, where a female Amur leopard was found last Friday, shot and "beaten with a heavy object." She was left for dead, making it seem unlikely that she was killed by poachers for her pelt. This leaves only 6 female Amur leopards left. It sounds like she was not one of the four females with litters of cubs.

It is quite depressing to see the extinction of such an impressive animal happen right before our eyes.

There are only 10, 12 or about 200 Amur Leopards left in the wild, depending on who you cite and I assume on what is considered a "pure" Amur Leopard.

Some background on the Amur Leopard.

Photo used under creative commons license: Nick Lawes

Nibbles

Get Steven Spielberg on the phone ... this time it is a destructive, murderous, pinniped.

A rogue elephant seal nicknamed Nibbles has run rampant near the mouth of the Russian River in recent weeks, killing a dozen harbor seals, biting a surfer and jumping out of the water to attack a pit bull terrier on Easter.

One witness said the 2,500-pound male, who often lunges at his victims, is the most aggressive elephant seal he's ever seen.

"This bull does straight-out murder," said Keary Sorenson of Sebastopol, a former surfer who volunteers for government and nonprofit agencies in Sonoma County. "A week ago, I saw him chase down a female harbor seal, use chest blows to crush her, then bare his upper canine teeth and drive them down onto her head and back."
Warning signs have gone up on beaches near Jenner, and officials cautioned the public Monday not to swim or wade in the estuary waters around Goat Rock Beach or approach the big seal should they see him basking in the sun. Kayakers also have grown wary, scouting the estuary from overlooking bluffs before going for a paddle.

Honestly I think this might be scarier than a GWS.

Photo use: creative commons license mikebaird

Reptile Tattoos

Our friends over at LLL Reptile have started a Reptile Tattoo Gallery.

A few of them score a 10 on the unintentional humor scale, while others aren't so bad.

Aussie droughts

Via Brian Beutler ... via Thinkprogress ... via The Independant comes a story form Australia with real world global warming consequences.

Australia has warned that it will have to switch off the water supply to the continent's food bowl unless heavy rains break an epic drought - heralding what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation.
...
The Prime Minister, John Howard, a hardened climate-change sceptic, delivered dire tidings to the nation's farmers yesterday. Unless there is significant rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the principal agricultural area. Crops such as rice, cotton and wine grapes will fail, citrus, olive and almond trees will die, along with livestock.
...
Mr Howard acknowledged that the measures are drastic. He said the prolonged dry spell was "unprecedentedly dangerous" for farmers, and for the economy as a whole. Releasing a new report on the state of the Murray and Darling, Mr Howard said: "It is a grim situation, and there is no point in pretending to Australia otherwise. We must all hope and pray there is rain."

But prayer may not suffice, and many people are asking why crippling water shortages in the world's driest inhabited continent are only now being addressed with any sense of urgency.

The causes of the current drought, which began in 2002 but has been felt most acutely over the past six months, are complex. But few scientists dispute the part played by climate change, which is making Australia hotter and drier.

Environmentalists point to the increasing frequency and severity of drought-causing El Niño weather patterns, blamed on global warming. They also note Australia's role in poisoning the Earth's atmosphere. Australians are among the world's biggest per-capita energy consumers, and among the top producers of carbon dioxide emissions. Despite that, the country is one of only two industrialised nations - the United States being the other - that have refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto protocol. The governments argue that to do so would harm their economies.

Until a few months ago, Mr Howard and his ministers pooh-poohed the climate-change doomsayers. The Prime Minister refused to meet Al Gore when he visited Australia to promote his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. He was lukewarm about the landmark report by the British economist Sir Nicholas Stern, which warned that large swaths of Australia's farming land would become unproductive if global temperatures rose by an average of four degrees.

Faced with criticism from even conservative sections of the media, Mr Howard realised that he had misread the public mood - grave faux pas in an election year. Last month's report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted more frequent and intense bushfires, tropical cyclones, and catastrophic damage to the Great Barrier Reef. The report also said there would be up to 20 per cent more droughts by 2030. And it said the annual flow in the Murray-Darling basin was likely to fall by 10-25 per cent by 2050. The basin, the size of France and Spain combined, provides 85 per cent of the water used nationally for irrigation.

There is a lot to digest in this passage, but I think it is very important to see how quickly a government did an about face when global warming was staring them down. Now it is not to say that this drought will lead to the exodus of Aussies in the near future, but eventually, maybe 10 years, maybe 50, the Australian breadbasket, will longer be. The Australians will be forced to permanitley import large quantities of food. As African nations have shown, this is not a very good working stategy for a nation.

Photo used under creative commons license: bintibee

Global Warming Doubters

Here are links to a bunch of well-cited articles on LiveScience.com that really show how complete the consensus on global warming really is.

113 Nations agree that global warming is "very likely" caused by humans

Top CEOs feel that the Bush administration needs to do more about global climate change.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says there is a 90 percent likelihood that humans are contributing to climate change.

I will do some rereading of Hell and High Water and find other studies and quotes of global warming consensus among both the scientific and political communities. This book also tells how most of our climate modeling has been wrong in the past; wrong because it was too conservative and did not accurately reflect the many positive feedback mechanisms involved in climatology.

There is definitely controversy as to how fast our climate is going to change and how the changes will play out, ie. more droughts or more storms in certain areas of the globe, but there really is no controversy left as to the reality of global warming.

Photos via chicanerii Creative commons licensing

Time to end this thing

Even the most conservative (not in the political sense) polls show 60% of the American public want American Troops to be pulled out of Iraq. It is time to end this quagmire and quit putting our men and women in harms way, fighting a war that does not have a military solution.

And it hits home even harder when you know someone who was killed. I played on a PYSL team with Kawika Deleon, who was killed in Iraq earlier this week.

According to his mother, "'It wasn't patriotism that called him back,' Meyers said. 'It was the job.'"

Kawika left behind a wife and child.

Bearded Dragon Sex

A new study out of Australia says that bearded dragon gender is determined by a combination of genes and temperature. Under normal conditions gender will be determined by genes, much like in humans. However if the eggs reach a temperature above a certain threshold then embryos can actually switch sex in the egg and lean towards being heavily female by the deactivation of one of the sex-determining genes.

It had previously been assumed that an animal's gender could be determined either by genes or by temperature as an embryo develops but not by both.

In the case of the central bearded dragon, it appears that temperature can override genes that trigger male development.

The study is reported in the current issue of the journal Science.

Heat Deactivates Sex Gene

Eggs incubated at higher than normal temperatures of 93.2 to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (34 to 37 degrees Celsius) produced a strong bias toward female hatchlings, which outnumbered males by about 16 to 1.

The researchers linked this gender bias to a sex-determining gene that was deactivated when the lizards' nests became unusually warm.

This process results in female offspring, because the key gene was discovered on the so-called Z sex chromosome, of which male lizards have two and females only one.

Deactivation of the gene therefore turns a male (ZZ) into a female (WZ).

This is a very interesting finding. It really will revolutionize the way biologists look at sex determination, especially in reptiles and maybe even in birds.

Photo used under creative commons license: Schilling 2

Monterey Bay Aquarium

I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium for the second time since the new exhibit opened and it is really nice. The otters are of course the main attraction. They are damn cute and quite playful. River otters really do display well. If you just cannot wait to see the otters then head on over to their webcam.

But while you are there make sure you look around at the other new exhibits. Vine snakes, Vietnamese mossy frogs, Vietnamese giant frogs, and some amazing cichlid tanks. The plants alone in some of the tanks are a sight to see. Maybe you will even be lucky enough to see the Archer fish in action.

There is also a Aquarist Journal at the link above although no direct link to the journal. Show our friend Evan some love.

The MBA was nice enough to include us on their "Thank you" plaque pictured above.

Shark update

The tag from the Great White Shark that the Monterey Bay Aquarium released into the wild 3 months ago has popped up and sent out its signal to be picked up. The shark traveled all the way down the North American coast and was off the tip of Baja California when the transmitter popped off.

The electronic tag on our white shark popped free and reported in on Sunday, April 15, off the southern tip of Baja California-90 days and more than 1,100 miles south of the shark's release point in Monterey Bay. The first signals from the tag arrived by satellite after the tag floated to the surface on schedule, in waters southwest of San José del Cabo in Baja California, Mexico.

Details of where the shark traveled, including the water temperatures and depths he favored, will emerge over the next few weeks as researchers at Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University—our lead partner in the white shark tagging project—analyze data being transmitted by the tag.

The On TOPP of the World Blog, gives daily updates on the search for the tag and the information it will release. Very cool images and information. A must visit.

UPDATE: Image added. Photo credit RG

George Will is an Idiot

More excuses from the Washington elite concerning Global Climate Change. It is not their problem since they will be dead anyways in 50 years, and what about all those other countries, and Global Warming isn't real anyways so who cares.

And then you have blatantly misleading logic like this paragraph

Speaking of Hummers, perhaps it is environmentally responsible to buy one and squash a Prius with it. The Prius hybrid is, of course, fuel-efficient. There are, however, environmental costs to mining and smelting (in Canada) 1,000 tons a year of zinc for the battery-powered second motor, and the shipping of the zinc 10,000 miles -- trailing a cloud of carbon dioxide -- to Wales for refining and then to China for turning it into the component that is then sent to a battery factory in Japan.

Yes, zinc mining is dirty, so make it cleaner and still have batteries for the hybrids. Plus its been a while that threats of war were made over Canadian zinc, but maybe that is those crazy hokey lovers plan.

Or maybe because of cow farts you shouldn't eat ice cream.

Will purposely makes ridiculous arguments in order to make people think that all changes that could help out planet are ridiculous. Simple dishonest rightwing concept.

Nature designed us as carnivores, but what does nature know about nature? Meat has been designated a menace. Among the 51 exhortations in Time magazine's " Global Warming Survival Guide" (April 9), No. 22 says a BMW is less responsible than a Big Mac for "climate change," that conveniently imprecise name for our peril. This is because the world meat industry produces 18 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, more than transportation produces. Nitrous oxide in manure (warming effect: 296 times greater than that of carbon) and methane from animal flatulence (23 times greater) mean that "a 16-oz. T-bone is like a Hummer on a plate."

Ben & Jerry's ice cream might be even more sinister: A gallon of it requires electricity-guzzling refrigeration and four gallons of milk produced by cows that simultaneously produce eight gallons of manure and flatulence with eight gallons of methane. The cows do this while consuming lots of grain and hay, which are cultivated by using tractor fuel, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, and transported by fuel-consuming trains and trucks.

Ah the days when scientists used to be respected. A modern dark age we are in. And why exactly is "climate change" a "conveniently imprecise"?

The "D" word

The SF Bay area like much of the state of California may be facing a drought this summer. Counties are already asking folks to voluntarily cut back on their water usage in hopes of avoiding before madatory restrictions of up to 20%.

The SF Chronicle has some suggestions to reduce your water usage.

Shorter showers and less-frequent showers also save water. So does reusing water, buying an on-off garden hose nozzle, running washing machines and dishwashers only when full and turning off the faucet while shaving and toothbrushing. Also good is building a backyard rainwater cistern which, Pogorelskin said, is a fancy name for an old trash barrel.

or another good option

As for the double-occupancy shower, deputy operations chief Pam Jeane of the Sonoma County Water Agency said a drought is no time to be shy. The government fully approves of whatever consenting adults do to reduce consumption.

"Absolutely,'' she said. "Shower with a buddy. Everything helps.''

What can you do to reduce your water consumption for your reptiles and amphibians yet still keep them healthy and happy?

The best way is to reduce evaporation, or trap the evaporation. This can be done simply by placing a sheet of glass or plastic over the screen top of your cage. We also carry glass cages that have a 2/3 glass 1/3 screen lid for a $1 more than the conventional screen top cages. Do you have house plants that need water? If you do water them over one of your reptile cages. That way when water drips through the pot, it will fall right down into your reptile cage and be reused.

Some humidity loving species can be kept happy by keeping only one part of the cage humid. This works great for many tropical snakes. Give them a hide box full of wet water holding moss to climb into. That way you only have to keep the moss box moist and the rest of the cage can remain dry.

If you soak your tortoise and he leaves that special tortoise mess in the bath water, take that water out to your garden and water your plants with it. It even has built in fertilizer.

You can also use succulents as cage decorations. Cactus Jungle has great plants and herp knowledge so they can help you find the perfect drought resistant plants for your vivarium.

Cyclones in Madagascar

So I had heard nothing about his until tonight. Nothing from the main stream media, nothing from the herp world. Madagascar has been hit with one of its worst cyclone seasons in decades. In fact a record 6 cyclones struck the island. Many people have died and been left homeless. We can only imagine what the geckos and chameleons have gone though (Ambanja was hit particularly hard).

major h/t to Chris Mooney on this one.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

We fancy ourselves a literate bunch over here. We do have an EBV Book Club and all. So a sad day when one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century passes away.

We'll let the NY Times do the Obituary

The other new shirt

That is all ... resume your Imus discussions.

Sorry ... so sorry

To all like 4 readers out there ... sorry we haven't posted in a while. Um, I guess I have been busy, but really I should be able to find the time to slack from one of my three jobs and throw a post up here and there.

Will a pic of blue tree monitor suffice?




or how about a newly hatched cat gecko ...


More global climate change and herp news to follow.