Tag Archives: wildlife

Purr-sonality

Posted on April 2, 2011 by

As any pet owner will tell you, lots of non-human animals have their own personalities. Even within the same species, individual animals can have specific behavioral traits, such as tendency to be shy or playful. In the case of zoo … Continue reading →

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Levitating Sea Lions

Posted on January 20, 2011 by

The title might be a bit of a stretch, but the punch of it approximates how astonished I was to see the sea lions of the Santa Cruz Wharf this past weekend. Before a sunset dinner on Sunday, I was … Continue reading →

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Science hype

Posted on December 5, 2010 by

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration is notoriously good at finding means for justifying its science budget, sometimes deploying what amounts to science fiction (see vintage hype image gallery in a separate post). Mostly, though, it’s simple hype. All … Continue reading →

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Download Firefox, help cute cubs

Posted on December 4, 2010 by

I love red pandas. These house-cat-sized cuties spend most of their lives in trees of the temperate forests of the Himalayas. Despite their name and a penchant for bamboo, red pandas are thought to be more closely related to weasels … Continue reading →

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Helping out one of the least of these, my brothers

Posted on November 11, 2010 by

I am a world-changer, at heart. I have led a privileged life, not without its challenges; but it still provides a stable place from which I feel an obligation to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Sometimes, you never … Continue reading →

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Otter things have happened, it’s a big universe

Posted on October 31, 2010 by

Nads is on a roll and I thought I’d share a set of my own loose associations triggered after my facebook status update netted a comment by an astronomer. My original caption: “See, otters. OR It otter be illegal to … Continue reading →

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Four fun facts about sea otters

Posted on October 29, 2010 by

1.     Sea otters have the densest hair of any mammal – around 900,000 hairs per square inch (140,000 hairs/cm2)[1]. That’s more than 500X denser than the hair on the human scalp, which averages at 1600 hairs per square inch (250 … Continue reading →

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Otter tracking and random titbits (parasites, sharks and Darth Vader)

Posted on October 28, 2010 by

I got a little taste of the perils of field research when some of us got drenched by a wave where the researchers first set up. They assured us they’d never experienced something like that in over 10 years. Once … Continue reading →

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