Justin Gregg's Blog, page 3

It’s time to figure out just how smart honey badgers really are

A few weeks back, honey badger fever gripped the internet after a video surfaced of Stoffel the honey badger escaping his enclosure at the Moholoholo Rehabilitation Centre in South Africa. The clip, which is taken from the BBC documentary Honey Badgers: Masters of Mayhem, shows Stoffel (and his honey badger girlfriend) unlocking gates and using [&hellip

Dolphin Social Smarts on PBS

The third episode of Nova’s Inside Animal Minds series explored the idea that social living might have allowed intelligence to blossom in some species  – like dolphins, elephants, and the great apes (including humans). The episode focused a lot of attention on dolphin smarts, so if you’re a dolphin aficionado, you’ll love it! You can [&hellip

Media stuff you shouldn’t miss

A new series will be premiering on PBS on April 9th called “Inside Animal Minds.” I will make my television debut as a talking head on all three episodes, which will also feature footage of the Dolphin Communication Project‘s research with wild Atlantic spotted dolphins near Bimini, The Bahamas. Judging from the video teaser, it [&hellip

Recent Interviews

Hey there interweb friends, A couple interviews came out this week concerning my research and dolphin stuff. I was interviewed on SETI’s Big Picture Science podcast, which looked at  intelligence in humans, dolphins, plants, and machines – pretty cool stuff! Here’s an excerpt of my Big Picture Science interview. And check out my (video) interview [&hellip

Unsolved mystery: What are those weird bumps on the heads of humpback whales?

It may seem strange to you, but baleen whales are actually covered in hair. Not a thick layer of fur like your family cat, but a smattering of around 100 fragile hairs dotted along their jawline. In most species, you can barely see these hairs with the naked eye. But on the humpback whale, you [&hellip

Has the United States resumed whaling? Unintentionally, yes.

Thanks to pressure from former whaling nations like the United States, the International Whaling Commission adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982. Three decades later, only a handful of countries – including Norway, Japan, and Iceland – continue to actively hunt and kill whales for commercial profit. Experts argue, however, that despite the anti-whaling [&hellip

Five places where you can swim with giant ocean predators

Looking for the ultimate wildlife encounter? Here’s a list of places where you can get in the water and swim alongside some of the ocean’s largest – and sometimes deadliest – predators. See the full list over at Earth Touch

Svalbard’s glaciers are dying – and they’re taking a fragile ecosystem with them

There are 3,000 polar bears living in Svalbard, and every last one of them wants to eat your babies. If you’re a ringed seal, that is. And thanks to global warming, there’s nothing the seals can do to stop them. Svalbard is a sparsely populated Norwegian archipelago buried deep in the Arctic. It is a [&hellip

Is trophy hunting hastening the polar bear’s demise? The answer might surprise you.

When the news broke recently that a trophy hunter paid $350,000 for the opportunity to kill a critically endangered black rhinoceros, a groundswell of outrage surged through the media. But this record-breaking permit fee, which is slated to be donated to anti-poaching efforts, is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of dollars [&hellip

Six Ocean Animals You Never Knew Used Tools

There are more examples of ‘tool use’ in the animal kingdom than you can shake a stick at. And what do we mean when we refer to animals using tools? Tool use involves manipulating an object to improve the “form, position, or condition of another object, another organism, or the user itself.” Examples include capuchin [&hellip