Leap for Leaping Animals

Today is February 29, Leap Day.  In recognition of this day, a day that comes around only once every 4 years, I wanted to highlight animals that leap, jump, hop, and all things related.

So, why do animals leap, jump, or hop?

Some do so to get from one place to another.  An animal that does this is the kangaroo.

Animals can hop, or stot, to flee predators.  An animal that does this is the gazelle.

For those that do the attacking, animals can pounce to catch their prey.  An animal that does this is the lynx.

Animals can jump because of migration.  Salmons do this during their salmon run upstream to spawn.

Animals can jump to communicate.  Whales jump, or breach, and it's always quite the sight to see.

Happy Leap Day!

Following Animal Tracks

When winter arrives, the world gets covered in snow.  Everything that was once exposed, now gets hidden away.

But not so.  Not everything gets hidden.  Animals review themselves through the tracks they leave behind.

You can discover what animals have traversed these paths.  Not only can these tracks tell you what animals are around, but they can tell you the animals' routes and what they were doing, whether they were walking or running.  Did these tracks lead somewhere - did they lead to a tree where the animal then scurried on up, did they lead to a tunnel where the animal then hid underground - or did they end abruptly, as in, did the animal succumb to another animal's meal.

The most useful way to identify animal tracks is by gait (the track pattern of the animal), and by straddle (the width between the track patterns).  Both of these strategies combined will help narrow and identify the animal.  The actual print itself is not a sure way of identification, as clear, well-formed prints are hard to come by.

Here are a few resources from the Canadian Wildlife Federation to help you get started:

• Discovering the World of Animal Tracks 
• Tracking Down Winter Wildlife

The Silent Sound of Snowfall

A fresh blanket of snow brings about an air of tranquility to the scene.  All is calm.  All is bright.  All is silent.

This is because snow absorbs sound.

Sound travels in waves.  When there is fresh, fluffy snow on the ground, the sound waves are absorbed, and sound is buffered.  When snow melts or freezes, it becomes smooth and hard.  Sound waves are then reflected off the hard surface and becomes audible.

The next time you find yourself under a fresh snowfall, take a moment, to enjoy the the silent moment.

Following the Sun(flowers)

For those of us in the northern hemisphere right now, the days are short, and the nights are long.  We're yearning for more sunlight.  Sunlight is right around the corner.  Until then, think of sunflowers!

Have you ever noticed that sunflowers follow the sun?  This motion of following the sun throughout the day is heliotropism.  Heliotropism is a form of phototropism, where an organism responds to light (either towards the light, or away from the light).

In the mornings, sunflower heads face towards the sun in the east, and follow it throughout the day, where they finally end in the west. They then reposition themselves to face the sun again by morning.  Once the young flowers reach maturity, they remain east-facing towards the sun.

The mechanisms of how they do it, are due to circadian rhythms, or their internal clocks, which tells the plant what to do during a 24-hour cycle.  In this case, it signals the growth rate of the plant's stem:  during the day, the side facing east grows (and moves the sunflower head towards the west), while at night the side facing west grows (and moves the sunflower head towards the east).  At maturity, the sunflower head remain facing the sun in the east, which warms up the flower, thereby helping them attract pollinators.

Have a look at this research article published in Science, or watch this video produced by Science that explains it.

Keeping Our Great Lakes Great

On October 10, I attended a presentation at the Toronto Public Library, "Protecting the Greatness of Our Great Lakes" by Mary Kate Whibbs, biologist, educator and Aqua-Links Coordinator at the Toronto Zoo.

There are five Great Lakes.  From West to East, they are: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario.  They are situated between Canada and the United States, except for Lake Michigan, which is entirely in the United States.

The Great Lakes provide us with fresh drinking water, food, recreational opportunities, electricity, and other economic advantages.  The Great Lakes Basin supports a diversity of plants, fish, and wildlife.

However, there are many things that threaten the health of the Great Lakes.  These include: invasive species (such as sea lampreys and zebra mussels), toxic algae blooms, microplastics, pollution runoffs, as well as a lack of connection and appreciation of the Great Lakes.

On a government level, there are laws and government strategies that are in place to protect the Great Lakes, which include:

• Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement 
• Canada-Ontario Agreement 
• Fisheries Act and the Aquatic Invasive Species Regulations under this Act
• Ontario’s Provincial Fish Strategy 

On an individual level, there are things we can do to help to protect the Great Lakes.  These include:

• volunteering plant shrubs and trees to support habitat near the shoreline
• collecting water samples to send to the lab for analysis through Lake Ontario Waterkeeper 
• donating
• conserving water/reducing water usage 

For more information on the Great Lakes, check out these resources:

• Great Lakes Protection website from the Government of Canada
• Great Lakes Strategy website from the Government of Ontario

Environmentalism Through Film: Planet in Focus

Films that bring about public awareness to environmental issues, and explore the world in which we live, are spotlighted at the annual Planet in Focus film festival.

Planet in Focus is an international environmental film festival that takes place this year from October 15 to 20 in Toronto.  It was established in 1999 and heads into its 20th year this year.

The festival showcases films that not only focus on the environment, but on how we - humanity, and how we live - impact it.  The goal of this festival is to enlighten, engage, and entertain audiences, through thought-provoking films.

For more information, or to purchase tickets, visit their website.

Hurricanes and Their Names

We are in the middle of hurricane season, which runs from May 15 to November 30.  Hurricanes occur in various tropical cyclone basins around the world, and there can be more than one occurring at the same time.  To help identify storms and provide warnings for emergency preparations, information must be disseminated as quickly and accurately as possible.

In the past, people have assigned names to storms in various ways.  Later, when storms were given latitude and longitude coordinates, though while accurate, it proved to be confusing as numbers and technical terms were not easy to remember.

In the early 1950s, a system of naming Atlantic tropical storms by a phonetic alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie) was developed by the US National Hurricane Center.  In 1953, the system changed to using female names, and by 1978-1979, both female and male names were used.  Today, the system of assigning names is maintained by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Tropical storms are given names when they have a wind speed of 39 miles per hour.  If the storm increases to a wind speed of 74 miles per hour, it is then called a hurricane.

There are lists of tropical storm names developed for the various basins around the world. 

For storms that occur in the Atlantic, there are 6 lists of names, each with 21 names, in alphabetical order, and alternating between female and male names.  The lists are used in rotation, and repeated every 6 years.  However, when a storm is so deadly or damaging, the name is retired from the list as using it again would be insensitive and inappropriate for those who were greatly impacted.  A new name is then added in its place.  If there are more than 21 storms, they will then take on names from the Greek alphabet.

To learn more about hurricane names, including history, lists of current and retired names, and procedures for naming them, check:

• the National Hurricane Center
• the World Meteorological Organization