Procavia capensis spotting!

What's round and furry and brown all over?

Why, a hyrax of course!

Commonly known as dassies, hyraxes (hyrax-i?) are a permanent fixture on Table Mountain.

Today, I--along with four other lovely ladies from the house--took the big step of climbing up Table Mountain, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World!*  It was, breathtaking. So beautiful and magnificent. The flora at the top of the mountain was extremely diverse, ranging from the Climber's friend, or Cliffortia ruscifolia, to the Wagon tree, or the protea nitida.

Most importantly... we found this little guy up at the top just nibbling away at some plants--their diet consists primarily of grass and leafy plants, but can also eat insects and grub--and hopping around from rock to rock:

Photo Cred: Ali Magg

While rock hyraxes are supposed to extremely sociable and vocal critters, they were not really in the mood for talking today. Unfortunately, we did not to get to hear any of the 21 different vocal signals that they are known to produce including a high trill that is made when hyraxes feel threatened. A hyraxes "song" (as these vocalizations are called)  can vary by geography and scientists have found that there there exists some kind of a syntactic structure. Most importantly, scientists have discovered that the variety in the hyraxes song can reveal characterizing information.


PB


* By 'climbing up Table Mountain', I meant took a gondola up to the top of the mountain.

The biggest tragedy.

Cheetahs:
The fastest animals in the world-
Breaking even at 75 miles per hour-
Will soon meet their doom.

Many evolutionary adaptations have allowed cheetahs to reach such unbelievable speeds. For one, their hearts and lungs are enlarged in order to circulate oxygen efficiently. Respiratory rates can increase from 60 to 120 breathes per minute when the cheetah hits full speed during a pursuit.

Sadly, none of these adaptations will allow cheetahs to evade their impending doom.
After surviving mass extinction 10000 years ago during the last ice age, humans have finally done the inevitable--the cheetah is now a permanent fixture on the endangered species list. With 10000 cheetahs remaining in Africa's wild, scientists predict that without efficient, targeted action, the cheetah could be extinct by the year 2030. As in 17 years from now. As in within our lifetime.

The Cheetah Conservation Fund hopes to increase the cheetah's range by creating corridors that allow them to roam freely. There has been discussion of reintroducing cheetahs to former range countries such as India. Check out the Cheetah Conservation Fund's website to learn about more ways to help save the cheetah: http://www.cheetah.org/ !

PB

Look at those cute faces. They may soon become a thing of the past.

Did sick kids make me invincible?

A few days ago I had a conversation with someone (don't remember who) about how we felt like working with kids at our service-learning placements had improved our immune systems. I've personally interacted with a fair number of runny-nosed students and my roommate was sick last week, but I haven't gotten sick, and normally I catch colds pretty easily. I've heard a little about how exposing young children to less-sterile play environments can boost their immune system function later in life and wondered if something similar was happening here, so I decided to look into it.

Turns out I was misinformed—exposure to pathogens and microbes doesn't provide an appreciable boost in our immune systems' ability to fight off sickness faster, and it doesn't seem to help us avoid getting sick either. What it does do is help regulate our immune systems' first-line response: inflammation. Exposure to germs and viruses as a child can improve our immune systems' capacity to handle allergens, asthma and other inflammation-causers, lowering the amount of inflammation we experience and many of the detrimental side effects it can cause to our bodies.

Studies have shown that only bugs associated with "dirtiness" end up helping improve our immune systems—respiratory infections seem not to have any positive effect. exposure to fecal matter in particular seems to lower levels of c-reactive protein, which is a key component in human inflammatory response.

one idea that can help explain this positive effect is that humans, in some cases, may have evolved in response to colonization by bacteria and viruses. the selective advantage of inflammation repression conferred by pathogen presence may have helped some of our ancestors survive long enough to reproduce while those whose bodies didn't experience reduced inflammation may have died sooner, failing to reproduce.

more information here, it's super cool!:
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex_health/2010/03/which_dirt_should_your_baby_eat.html

alec

Seagulls eating garbage in Cape Town

Hello All!

I just went to my final service learning placement for the quarter and I wanted to share some of my observations about the different animals that live around the elementary school where I have volunteered for the past two months.

Firstly, the students eat tons of food during their interval, and accumulate lots of trash. They put all of their garbage on the floor, then when school is in session, there are lots of seagulls that come feast on all of the rubbish. This inspired me to do a bit of research. Are these animals actually benefiting from the garbage left on the ground? Or are these humans causing more harm than good?

There are a TON of different types of seagulls in Cape Town. Here you can read more!
http://carolinabirds.org/HTML/AF_Gull.htm


After a bit of research, I noticed that the typical seagull diet is made up of mainly fish, mollusks, and worms. The processed foods that the seagulls would be eating out of the garbage is not good for their digestive system. They can actually die after eating too many flour-based products. This means that the snack foods that the children are leaving on the ground are probably most harmful to the seagulls. That being said, should we worry about the wellbeing of such an abundant animal? There is no shortage of seagulls in Cape Town, and they do not provide a direct benefit to the tourism industry like rhinos and elephants do. This means that there aren't many initiatives currently designed to pick up trash to benefit the seagull population.

This research really made me think about the ethical reasons behind animal conservation foundations. Which animals are important to save and protect? Which animals could we do without? Is it our place to help all animals?

As far as I'm concerned, the trash on the floor is pretty gross, and I think it needs to be cleaned up as soon as possible!

Cheers,
Brittany

http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/hazmat/articles/trash.html