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This is like a yearbook of America's Bats. You can sort by state to see which bats are local to you and learn a bit about their life history. Only about 3% of total bat species are found in the US and Canada and doesn't include some incidental sightings. If you'd like to learn more about them, or if your child has a nonfiction book report, I highly recommend America's Neighborhood Bats by Dr Merlin Tuttle.

Image comes from this post by /u/Pondskimmer who was kind enough to give these tiny patriots a bat house. If you'd like to encourage bats to live near you, preserving habitat and erecting bat houses is a great project. This vendor has a list of likely bat house occupants.

I've posted similar facts in the past, but I wanted to do something fun for election day and an excuse to post a link to this RadioLab episode about quantifying life. It's a really fantastic episode and the last section focuses on the value of ecosystem services like pest control, water filtration, and pollination. It should be noted that bats are also a tourist attraction in some areas so they are pulling double duty.

Of course, the value of these ecosystem services provided fluctuates with the market value of the crops, but how can you put a price on all the durians?

Here's a study looking at bats and cotton in Texas. This was expanded upon in another paper:

>Assuming values obtained from the cotton-dominated agroecosystem in Texas, and the number of acres of harvested cropland across the continental United States in 2007, we estimate the value of bats to the agricultural industry is roughly $22.9 billion/year. If we assume values at the extremes of the probable range, the value of bats may be as low as $3.7 billion/year and as high as $53 billion/year.

The GSP for Vermont is roughly $29 billion now, but was $24.5 billion in 2007 which would put it right in line with the bats.

My favorite part of this was when they tried to assign a wage for the bats:

>With the price of cotton in 2001 at about $.0017 per boll, this means a single Brazilian free-tailed bat provides a service of $0.02 per night in mid-June, declining to close to zero by August.

This estimate may be a little out of date as its from 2011 and we've lost more bats since then.

If you are a school teacher and would like to do a section on bats, I highly recommend you contact Bat Conservation International and see if you can reserve the bat trunk. It's full of great activities, potential lesson plans, and some presentations and videos. I can personally vouch for it's goodness. I also found this activity guide for teachers last night while gathering sources for this post.

I ADORE pygmy goats! Lucky you! What sort of degree/program are you looking at for grad school?

Also, congrats on the pending nuptials! I got married 3 years ago and miss the wedding planning. It was so much fun! I highly recommend Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding. It will help you keep things in perspective and keep you from being distracted by all the wedding-related BS that is so prevalent today.

Yup! While there's a lot of pushback from the scientific community about ascribing emotional states to animals, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that non-human animals have affective states. Dr. Panksepp has done a lot of work on brain regions and pathways which control emotions. He's recently published a new book, about all of his work from the past few decades. Laughter has been found in a number of species, here's a paper about it:
Laughter in different contexts. And, bonus, here's a later paper from Panksepp with newer data on rat laughter.

I first heard from it from Last Chance to See, which is the least popular book Douglas Adams has written but the one he's the most proud of. So if anyone likes Douglas Adams, I think they owe it to themselves to read that book.

It also features the guy being shagged by the kakapo.

Check out this book if interested in more about this.

From the Publisher's Weekly review: "Prior to this book by Syracuse, N.Y., zookeeper Gucwa and Syracuse Post-Standard science editor Ehmann, no one had brought to the public's attention that elephants like to draw, and will, without training or reward, doodle spontaneously on the ground with a pebble or stick. In the case of Siri, a 13-year-old Asian elephant, her efforts were noted by Gucwa, her caretaker, who provided drawing materials and collected the results of her endeavors. Her drawings (50 of them are reproduced here) have been admired by artists such as Willem de Kooning and their significance discussed by evolutionists and cognitive researchers, some of whom affirm artistic intent of the drawings, while others attribute this activity to the animal's boredom. Interspersed with lore that demonstrates elephantine intelligence are relevant literary quotations. As de Kooning observes, "That's a damned talented elephant."

Source: National Geographic

Source: a great article on CNet.


A book link to "Cat Sense" (I've read it and really enjoyed it).

The photo is actually my own cat, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. :D

Hi all. Local here.



Quokkas live here:

http://www.experienceperth.com/destinations/rottnest-island



Come visit. It's awesome. Don't come in February - it's fucking hot. Don't come now, it's pissing down.



Also, if you want to read some great short stories from Perth, have a go of this book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Shark-Net-Memories-Murder/dp/0141001968/ref=tmm_pap_title_0



There is one in there which is all about Rottnest. You can read it on the plane. Don't worry, we don't get that many serial killers. We're still making TV shows about the one from the 50s :)

I read this book a little while ago and was pretty surprised by it. You might find it worth considering.

Chimpanzee Politics is an excellent read.

“Don’t Call Me Pig!”

Don't Call Me Pig! A Javelina Story

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1891795015/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_XfmtDb6DP66CX

check out I Am Leaper

Hey, it's Baader-Meinhof! Yesterday, I saw that the kids got this book, Pink is for Blobfish. I briefly flipped through it, checking it out, and one of the animals was the pygmy seahorse!

I always think of this book from my childhood when I see this animal referenced

I mean...

It's also present in some Pacific Northwest native cultures. There's even a famous (and excellent) book called I Heard the Owl Call My Name based on the superstition.

Apparently he made a cookbook

That would be incredibly stupid. If you did manage to get a wolf to breed with your dog instead of killing it, you would end up with useless mushing progeny. Sane mushers would breed their dogs with other sled dogs. That way they would get dogs with the mental and physical conformation a sled dog needs.

Another dog that is useless to mushers is almost any Malamute. They are way too large. Any serious work would quickly overheat their brains kill them. Ray Coppinger once said that if he had to choose between racing a team of Malamutes and racing a team of Dachshunds, he would choose the Dachshunds. They wouldn't go very fast, but at least some of them might survive.