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bunrabFrom the magazine New Scientist, 22 April 2006:
The article goes on to describe how the urban environment is more stable, with more predictable sources of food and water, and thus insects may be active year round, as are other animals. Birds may breed too early, fooled by lots of food that mimics a productive spring. Sea turtles get confused and head toward the bright lights from beachfront development, rather than toward the water, and night-migrating birds fly into brightly lit buildings. (For example, the "Light Pollution Building" as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
landley calls it, in Austin - the Frost Tower is so garish at night, it even occasionally causes car crashes on the highway as distracted drivers look over and go "What is that thing that looks like a giant lighted nose-hair clipper?") So anyway, biologists can watch adaptation happen before their eyes. For example, in the Netherlands, urban great tits (a bird, people, a bird!) sing at a higher pitch than their country cousins so that their songs stand out better against the city noise, which tends to be at a lower frequency.
There, that's enough science for the moment.
I just got my hair cut, finally, and it was about time! My head is several ounces lighter.
No, wait, there's more from New Scientist:
You'll note it doesn't address what happens if the hamster suddenly decides to take a nap, which often happens with hamsters! Still, I think this is evidence that things must be getting back to normal in Serbia, if they've got time for hamster games...
Evolution gets busy in the urban lab
-Bob Holmes
"It's the wild west of evolution and ecology," says Joel Brown, an ecologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Evolution is operating with a vengeance in the urban environment as animals struggle to adapt to novel conditions and cope with "evolutionary illusions."
An animal is said to be in an evolutionary illusion or trap when it does something it has evolved to do, but at the wrong time or in the wrong place. The concept may help explain why so many squirrels get squashed on city streets, says Brown. For millions of years, squirrels have evolved to cross open spaces as quickly as possible without wasting time watching for predators that they would not be able to escape anyway. "Ordinarily, that was a very sensible thing to do," he says. "But as an urban squirrel crossing four lanes of traffic, that's a bad idea."
The article goes on to describe how the urban environment is more stable, with more predictable sources of food and water, and thus insects may be active year round, as are other animals. Birds may breed too early, fooled by lots of food that mimics a productive spring. Sea turtles get confused and head toward the bright lights from beachfront development, rather than toward the water, and night-migrating birds fly into brightly lit buildings. (For example, the "Light Pollution Building" as
landley calls it, in Austin - the Frost Tower is so garish at night, it even occasionally causes car crashes on the highway as distracted drivers look over and go "What is that thing that looks like a giant lighted nose-hair clipper?") So anyway, biologists can watch adaptation happen before their eyes. For example, in the Netherlands, urban great tits (a bird, people, a bird!) sing at a higher pitch than their country cousins so that their songs stand out better against the city noise, which tends to be at a lower frequency.There, that's enough science for the moment.
I just got my hair cut, finally, and it was about time! My head is several ounces lighter.
No, wait, there's more from New Scientist:
Attack of the giant rodent
Imagine pitting yourself against a giant man-eating hamster. That is the theme of "Mice Arena," an augmented-reality computer game in which your opponent is a real, live animal.
The live - though normal-sized - hamster is housed in a tank fitted with infrared sensors that track its motion as it chases a tasty piece of bait. Its movements are mimicked by the monster hamster on your computer screen, which is chasing an avatar representing you, the player. When you evade the monster hamster on screen, actuators move the bait around the tank to evade the animal. The game ends when your avatar is caught.
The game is the work of researchers at the Emerging Art and Architecture Research Group in Serbia and the Mixed Reality Lab at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
You'll note it doesn't address what happens if the hamster suddenly decides to take a nap, which often happens with hamsters! Still, I think this is evidence that things must be getting back to normal in Serbia, if they've got time for hamster games...
