Richard Conniff's Blog, page 80

Tally Ho! Time to Hunt Humans

I’ m watching a show just now in which one of those snarky British television personalities travels hick America and makes fun of redneck ways.  Back in England, this is what used to be the heart of the fox-hunting season.  So the two things reminded me of a story I wrote a few years ago in England, with this update: Now that Mitt Romney ‘s no longer running for President, hunting humans could just be the perfect philanthropic way to give minimum wage employment to undeserving runners from the 47 percent.  Here’s the story:

It was an idea guaranteed to appeal to local foxes:  Put 30 or 40 English gentlefolk on horseback and send them hallooing across the countryside behind a pack of frantically baying hounds.

But have their prey be a human being.  Get the Queen of England herself to join in the fun.  Let the foxes, who are bored with this victim business anyway, become spectators, shouting encouragement and advice to the field:  ”Fine day for hunting, no?  Got a glimpse of your quarry just now.  Big strong redhead in a Gore-Tex jogging suit.  Went that way.”

The remarkable thing is that the proposal caught on with humans, in a modest sort of way.  At least five packs in England now hunt humans, according to Horse and Hound, the weekly hunt journal.  For a cap fee of 15 pounds, an outsider can, for example, join the Windsor Forest Hunt on a Saturday when the weather is fair to hunt down three upstanding citizens of the placid Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, or Surrey countryside.

Hunting humans is of course different from hunting foxes.  Among other things, it requires bloodhounds rather than foxhounds, as they have more experience in this line of work.  Over the last 600 years, the breed has acquired a reputation for fierce pursuit of sheep thieves, cattle rustlers, and other fugitives.  The notion that bloodhounds sometimes tear a victim to pieces has given them a ghoulish, man-hunting image.  With their inflamed eyelids, loose dewlaps and slobbering lips, they also look the part.

Hunting with bloodhounds has prospered, according to William Loyd, joint master of the Windsor Forest Hunt, because it is a more practical way of hunting in the modern world.  He is not talking about overpopulation and all that.  No, the problem with the more traditional foxhounds is that no one can control where they go because no one controls the fox they are pursuing.  This becomes awkward when the fox leads hounds and horses through winter crops, livestock, or a new suburb, or when, in the blind delirium of a hot scent, the hounds launch themselves onto a national motorway.  Since the 1950s, fox hunters have thus been abandoning territory within five miles of motorways and in developing areas.  Bloodhound hunts like the Windsor pack, which was founded in 1971, have moved into these openings.  They have been able to do so because a human runner, given a 20-minute head start, can lead a bloodhound pack on a carefully mapped-out two- or three-mile route, skirting all such modern hazards.  Moreover, says Loyd, “

We don’t do anything ghastly like killing a fox in the middle of the market.”

In truth, they do not kill anything.  The English gentry, while still known to dote on dogs and to disparage foxes, take a strong line against tearing the local citizenry to pieces.  The five hunting packs do not let their bloodhounds bite, much less kill.

Indeed, the hunters would have a hard time getting them to bite.  Bloodhounds have mellowed.  They retain their keenness for human scent, but over the course of a century or more the fierceness has been bred out of them.  Bloodhound fanciers tend nowadaysto deny that fierceness was ever a bloodhound trait.  When the hounds of the Windsor Forest Hunt catch their quarry, mayhem is so far from their minds that they generally lick him.  ”When the runner is found,” writes one follower of the hunt, “he is not torn to pieces, but greeted by dozens of wet tongues!  A wonderful sight!”  The hunt ends not in blood but in slobber.

For Loyd, this is a source of satisfaction, of course, but also of mild chagrin.  A former fox hunter, he worries that traditionalists “think we’re cashing in as a soft alternative to fox-hunting” and he tends, as a matter of form, to denounce animal rights protesters.  Still, he is aware that squeamishness and unrest about blood sports are increasing, and he does not ask followers of his hunt indiscreet questions about their lily-livered sympathies.  Queen Elizabeth herself abstains from the foxhunt.  But hunting with bloodhounds has earned her approval.  On one occasion, the Windsor Forest Hunt met by invitation in the royal park surrounding Windsor Castle and she joined several members of the royal family in the pursuit.  The Windsor pack has also won commercial support.  Quaker Oats supplies dog food (it is wise, if unsporting, to keep the hounds well fed) and features a bloodhound on its labels in Britain.

Finding victims is also a semi-commercial proposition.  The Windsor pack offers volunteers what Loyd discreetly terms “a small financial reward, as it were.”  Andrew Jennings, a 13-year-old from Bracknell, is a regular.  The rules call for him to wear an old t-shirt or other article of clothing for 24 hours beforehand and to avoid bathing.  The shirt gets tied to a stake at the starting point and serves as a scent object for the hounds.  Jennings then jogs off on the prescribed route, with the aim of getting to the finish just ahead of the hounds.

Bloodhounds are somewhat slower than foxhounds.  They also have “an unfortunate knack” for getting their hind ends stuck halfway through a hedge, Loyd says, and when this happens they “tend to give up and just moan.”  They are, finally, more sensitive than foxhounds.  Lilo Loyd, who is joint master of the Windsor pack with her husband, says that a sharp word or a crack of the whip causes them to “get sulky and stop working.”  This sort of hunting requires patience; it is terribly democratic.  But left to their own devices the bloodhounds are mad for the scent.  They hunt directly where the runner has gone, or on a parallel course a few feet away when the wind has caused the scent trail to drift.  As the hounds come closer and the scent gets warmer, they go faster and they bay wildly.  Followers of the hunt describe this as “beautiful music.”  But to the runners, it is “eerie, a most unearthly sound.”

Jennings says he has never pretended at such a moment to be Sidney Poitier escaping from the bloodhounds in “The Defiant Ones.”  And though he sometimes runs in the clumsy rubber boots known as “wellies,” which are the English equivalent of leg irons, he has never felt like Paul Muni in “I Was A Fugitive From The Chain Gang.”  Indeed, he sometimes indulges the bloodhounds.  Near the end, he may pause to let them catch up, so spectators can see him dash to the finish just ahead of the pack.  He notes that not all the spectators are human.  He often sees a fox along the route.  Usually it will run away, out of habit.  But sometimes, he says, a fox will sit down at a distance and simply watch, amazed but evidently content.  It is a scene worthy of a typing exercise:  ”THE QUICK BROWN FOX SITS ON THE SIDELINES AND CRIES, `TALLY HO.’”

The Unwild Wood

No room for Mr. Mole

Honestly, this stuff drives me a little nutty. It’s a press release that manages to kill the magic of forests and of a favorite children’s book in a single headline “

So, ok, if you are like me, you read Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows as a child and loved it for Mr. Toad, Ratty, Mole, and all the other characters, as well as for the wondrous, somewhat frightening, tangle of the Wild Wood.

Now some idiots are using all that to rationalize the idea of tree plantations, with all the trees uniformly spaced and lined up in perfect rows.   Probably with a regimen of herbicides to keep down the undergrowth.  So the wind will flow through the willows (get it?) and make more biofuel.

It just makes me want to call out Weasel, Stoat, Ferret, and Fox to rip their silly scientific flesh, except that none of these animals would ever go anywhere near such a forest.

To be fair, the actual scientific article never mentions the Grahame book.  So maybe it’s just another case of the damned press release writers screwing up the science.  But the science still promotes tree plantations at the expense of real forests.  And I just want some damned flesh here, preferably shredded.

I’ve posted a couple of articles lately on the perils of valuing nature only for the biofuel or other “ecosystems services” it provides.  There was this one about how an ecosystem services scheme just ended up providing cash for hunting wolves, and my own take on how things can go wrong when we put a price on nature.

So in that context, take a look at the press release from ScienceDaily and weep with me:

Jan. 18, 2013 — Willow trees cultivated for ‘green energy’ can yield up to five times more biofuel if they grow diagonally, compared with those that are allowed to grow naturally up towards the sky.

This effect had been observed in the wild and in plantations around the UK, but scientists were previously unable to explain why some willows produced more biofuel than others.

Now British researchers have identified a genetic trait that causes this effect and is activated in some trees when they sense they are at an angle, such as where they are blown sideways in windy conditions.

The effect creates an excess of strengthening sugar molecules in the willows’ stems, which attempt to straighten the plant upwards. These high-energy sugars are fermented into biofuels when the trees are harvested in a process that currently needs to be more efficient before it can rival the production of fossil fuels.

Willow is cultivated widely across the UK, destined to become biofuels for motor vehicles, heating systems and industry. The researchers say that in the future all willow crops could be bred for this genetic trait, making them a more productive and greener energy source.

The study was led by Dr Nicholas Brereton and Dr Michael Ray, both from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, who worked with researchers at Rothamsted Research, and the University of the Highlands and Islands’ Agronomy Institute (at Orkney College UHI). The study is published in the journal Biotechnology for Biofuels.

Dr Brereton said: “We’ve known for some time that environmental stresses can cause trees to naturally develop a slightly modified ‘reaction wood’ and that it can be easier to release sugars from this wood. This is an important breakthrough, our study now shows that natural genetic variations are responsible for these differences and this could well be the key to unlocking the future for sustainable bioenergy from willow.”

The researchers conducted a trial in controlled laboratory conditions on a rooftop in central London at the Gro-dome facility at Imperial’s South Kensington Campus. They cultivated some willows at an angle of 45 degrees, and looked for any genetic differences between these plants and those allowed to grow naturally straight upwards.

The team then looked for the same effect with willows growing in natural conditions on Orkney Island, off the northern-most coast of Scotland, where winds are regularly so strong that the trees are constantly bent over at severe angles. Their measurements confirmed that the willows here could release five times more sugar than identical trees grown in more sheltered conditions at Rothamsted Research in the south of the UK.

Dr Angela Karp at Rothamsted Research who leads the BBSRC-funded BSBEC-BioMASS project said “We are very excited about these results because they show that some willows respond more to environmental stresses, such as strong winds, by changing the composition of their wood in ways that are useful to us. As breeders this is good news because it means we could improve willow by selecting these types from the huge diversity in our collections”.

This work forms part of the BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre (BSBEC) where it is linked with other programmes aimed at improving the conversion of biomass to fuels. Coupled with work at Rothamsted Research, where the National Willow Collection is held, the new results will help scientists to grow biofuel crops in climatically challenging conditions where the options for growing food crops are limited, therefore minimising conflicts of food versus fuel.

About Willow Trees

Traditionally grown for wicker furniture and baskets, and an ancient medicinal plant whose chemical contents were the precursors to Aspirin, willows are now seen as important crops for energy and the environment. Willow requires less than a tenth of the fertiliser used for most cereal crops, and its shoots re-grow quickly after they are harvested. Environmental groups also say that willow plantations are also attractive to a variety of wildlife, making a positive impact on local biodiversity.

Source:  Nicholas JB Brereton, Michael J Ray, Ian Shield, Peter Martin, Angela Karp, Richard J Murphy. Reaction wood – a key cause of variation in cell wall recalcitrance in willow. Biotechnology for Biofuels, 2012; 5 (1): 83 DOI: 10.1186/1754-6834-5-83

Yes, I Will Look Stupid for Sex

Courtesy of the “I Fucking Love Science” web page, here’s a nice image of yet another male made to look foolish by the mating game.  It’s the Indian bullfrog (Hoplobatrachus tigerinus).

For more insight on how this drives female bullfrogs wild, or just makes them roll their eyes and mutter, “Brek-kek-kek-kek! Brek-kek-kek-kek!” (but not in a good way), check out the video: 

 

Did a Beetle Cause 15,000 Heart Attacks?

Belvedere Drive, Toledo, Ohio, before

That’s what a new study from the U.S. Forest Service suggests:

Evidence is increasing from multiple scientific fields that exposure to the natural environment can improve human health.  In a new study by the U.S. Forest Service, the presence of

And after. (Photos: Dan Herms)

trees was associated with human health.”

For Geoffrey Donovan, a research forester at the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station, and his colleagues, the loss of 100 million trees in the eastern and midwestern United States was an unprecedented opportunity to study the impact of a major change in the natural environment on human health.

In an analysis of 18 years of data from 1,296 counties in 15 states, researchers found that Americans living in areas infested by the emerald ash borer, a beetle that kills ash trees, suffered from an additional 15,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease and 6,000 more deaths from lower respiratory disease when compared to uninfected areas. When emerald ash borer comes into a community, city streets lined with ash trees become treeless.

The researchers analyzed demographic, human mortality, and forest health data at the county level between 1990 and 2007. The data came from counties in states with at least one confirmed case of the emerald ash borer in 2010. The findings — which hold true after accounting for the influence of demographic differences, like income, race, and education — are published in the current issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

” There’s a natural tendency to see our findings and conclude that, surely, the higher mortality rates are because of some confounding variable, like income or education, and not the loss of trees,” said Donovan. “But we saw the same pattern repeated over and over in counties with very different demographic makeups.”

Although the study shows the association between loss of trees and human mortality from cardiovascular and lower respiratory disease, it did not prove a causal link. The reason for the association is yet to be determined.

The emerald ash borer was first discovered near Detroit, Michigan, in 2002. The borer attacks all 22 species of North American ash and kills virtually all of the trees it infests.

The study was conducted in collaboration with David Butry, with the National Institute of Standards and Technology; Yvonne Michael, with Drexel University; and Jeffrey Prestemon, Andrew Liebhold, Demetrios Gatziolis, and Megan Mao, with the Forest Service’s Southern, Northern, and Pacific Northwest Research Stations.

 

Story Source:Geoffrey H. Donovan, David T. Butry, Yvonne L. Michael, Jeffrey P. Prestemon, Andrew M. Liebhold, Demetrios Gatziolis, Megan Y. Mao. The Relationship Between Trees and Human Health. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2013; 44 (2): 139 DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2012.09.066

Using the Smell of Rotting Meat to Find New Species

New breed of field biologist (Photo: Ernie Cooper)

Science magazine online recently reported a bizarre technique for finding new species:  By the smell of their rotting flesh.   The idea is to let carrion flies do the work of field biologists:

Even today, the distribution and abundance of many animal species remains poorly documented, and figuring out a habitat’s who’s who is no easy task. The terrain can be vast and difficult to traverse, and many creatures are secretive by nature. Traditionally, biologists have searched for the animals themselves, or for burrows, nests, footprints, droppings, and other traces—and all that searching can be time-consuming and costly. In recent years, they’ve been turning to labor-saving methods, such as setting out microphones, cameras, and traps that snag hairs, or studying animal DNA left behind in water or soil.

But why not just let someone else do the searching? Carrion flies—which include blowflies (family Calliphoridae) and flesh flies (family Sarcophagidae)—live around the world in virtually every terrestrial habitat occupied by vertebrates. Best of all, they’re abundant and much easier to capture than vertebrates—even dead ones.

“In the rainforest, many animals die each and every day, but it’s really rare to find a carcass,” says Sébastien Calvignac-Spencer, an evolutionary biologist at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin and lead author of the new study.

Calvignac-Spencer and colleagues collected carrion flies in two tropical habitats: Taï National Park rainforest in Côte d’Ivoire and dry, deciduous Kirindy forest in Madagascar. They began by analyzing flies they captured under mosquito nets shrouding dissected mammal carcasses of known species, showing that DNA from the carcasses could be retrieved from the flies.

They then trapped 115 flies at random in the two forests and found that 40% contained identifiable DNA fragments from a total of 20 mammal taxa, two bird species, and an amphibian. In Kirindy, the catch represented 13% of the documented mammal community. In Taï, the mammals aren’t fully cataloged, but the scientists turned up DNA from six out of nine known primate species and one very rare antelope, they report this week in Molecular Ecology. Those results are “remarkable” for a modest sample, according to a commentary in the same issue.

You can read the full article by Rebecca Kessler here.  She also mentions recent research using leeches for the same purpose.  Visit this website for more information on the dashing field biologist in the photo.

Would All Species Please Stand Up and Be Counted?

Estimates of how many species live on Earth generally range from 10 to 100 million.  But it’s basically guesswork, and the estimates do not count bacteria and viruses.   Here’s a story file about recent  attempts to census plant and animal species a little more accurately:

Bugs Reveal the Richness of Species On Earth (Jan. 11, 2013) — Researchers have carried out a survey of the biological diversity in a tropical rainforest. Their efforts have helped them find the key to one of the existential questions to which people have long …  > read more

Biologists Unlock ‘Black Box’ to Underground World: How Tiny Microbes Make Life Easier for Humans
January 3, 2013 — Biologists have unlocked the “black box” to the underground world home to billions of microscopic creatures. That first peek inside may well explain how the number of species in an ecosystem changes … > full story

For Every Species of Mammal, 300 Arthropod Species Lurk in Rainforest (Dec. 13, 2012) — During 2003-2004 scientists sampled the rainforest canopy from canopy cranes, inflatable platforms, balloons, climbing ropes and along the forest floor to collect a total of 130,000 …  > read more

Scientists Challenge Current Theories About Natural Habitats and Species Diversity
December 30, 2012 — How can a square meter of meadow contain tens of species of plants? And what factors determine the number of species that live in an ecosystem? This has been selected as one of the 25 most important … > full story

Who Are We Sharing the Planet With? Millions Less Species Than Previously Thought, New Calculations Suggest (June 2, 2010)— New calculations reveal that the number of species on Earth is likely to be in the order of several million rather than tens of millions. The findings, from an Australian-led study, are based on a …  > read more

Nasty Beast

Cape Buffalo (Photo: Keith Connelly)

To a dismaying extent, our faces make us who we are.  If you are born with a lowering brow, the world will never believe that you are at heart a happy-go-lucky guy.  Few animals on earth have a meaner, more malevolent face than the cape buffalo, and I am afraid they have the disposition to go with it.

“I am afraid.”  Yes, those would be the key words. Cape buffalo kill a great many people who wander in the African bush.  They like to catch you by surprise, gore you in the gut, and then hammer you into the earth relentlessly with that helmet-like boss on their foreheads.  You are not just dead.  You are pulverized.

The ranking of deadliest animals in Africa is an entertaining pastime, and Cape buffalo always find their way up near the top of the list, well ahead, for instance, of lions.

(With apologies, here’s a link to a really bad web site about Africa’s most deadly animals.  Just for starters,  mosquitoes do not rank second behind hippos.  By spreading malaria, they kill roughly 700,000 people a year.  The 80,000 or so hippos on the continent would have to score nine human deaths apiece per year just to stay in the game.  Which would be fun, of course.  But tiring.)

Anyway, Keith Connelly’s excellent photo brought this all back to me this morning, and I recalled the last time I was wandering with Cape buffalo, while reporting on rhinos in Kwazulu-Natal’s Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park:

We spot the droppings first, and then a lone bull out on a slope, browsing and looking characteristically angry and forlorn.

“The males in the herd change all the time,” says guide Jed Bird.  “A male comes in and all he cares about is breeding and pushing other males out.  He stops eating, and eventually he loses condition and some younger, stronger male comes and forces him out.  Then he goes off alone to feed.  It’s a jamming session, and he re-builds his condition so he can come back.”

The lone males are often wounded and bleeding, so they roll in the mud , or daga, to heal themselves.  Hence locals call them The Daga Boys.  “They’re the ones you have to watch out for.   Herds generally turn and run away, but the lone males can come at you, if you surprise them.  You just have to give them plenty of room and go around.”

This one watches us closely, his head swinging around to track our movements.  Cape buffalo are not just hostile, but also have extremely sharp vision, an unfortunate combination.  And they are persistently hostile.  They don’t just want to throw a scare into you.

They want to pound you into the dust and make you pay for every slight they have ever suffered. Everyone seems to know somebody who has been speared, or tossed, or pounded into the earth until dead by one of these things.   Later, as we are dropping down into a river bed, Bird spots one just ahead, lying like a massive rock in the dry sandy bottom.

He motions us back and we go around again.  Staying alive is good.

Audubon’s Photo Contest Winners

The Northern Flicker

Audubon gives its top prize to Alice Cahill, a 64-year-old photographer who started working with birds only last year.  You can check out the other contenders here.

 

Winners of the National Geographic 2012 Photo Contest

Grand-Prize Winner: The Explosion! The subject’s name is Busaba, a well cared for Indochinese Tigress whose home is at Khao Kheow Open Zoo, Thailand. I had taken many portraits of Busaba previously and it was becoming more and more difficult to come up with an image that appeared any different to the others. Which is why I took to observing her more carefully during my visits in the hope of capturing something of a behavioral shot. The opportunity finally presented itself while watching Busaba enjoying her private pool then shaking herself dry. In all humility I have to say that Mother Nature smiled favorably on me that day! (© Ashley Vincent/National Geographic Photo Contest)




2
First Place, Places Category: The Matterhorn, 4,478m, at full moon. (© Nenad Saljic/National Geographic Photo Contest) #




3
Viewers’ Choice for Places: Iceberg Hunters – Chipping ice off an iceberg is a common way for the Inuit community to retrieve fresh drinking water while on the land. During a weekend long hunting trip, we came upon this majestic iceberg frozen in place. It was a perfect opportunity to grab enough ice and drinking water for the remainder of the trip. (© Adam Coish/National Geographic Photo Contest) #




4
Viewers’ Choice for Nature: Tender Moment – Everyday in Mara starts with something new and different and day ends with memorable experiences with spectacular photographs. I was very lucky to sight and photograph Malaika, the name of this female Cheetah, and her cub. She is well known for her habit of jumping on vehicles. She learned that from her mother Kike, and Kike from her mother Amber. Like her mother she is teaching lessons to her cub. This is a tender moment between Malaika and her cub. I was very lucky to capture that moment. (© Sanjeev Bhor/National Geographic Photo Contest) #




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Honorable Mention, People: Captive – Yayasan Galuh Rehabilitation Center is an impoverished mental health facility based in Bekasi, Indonesia that hosts over 250 patients. Most come from poor families no longer interested in managing their condition, or are unable. Some patients are homeless, deposited after being taken off streets by police The only medical treatment received is for skin conditions. No assessments, psychotherapy or psychiatric medications is available. Over one third of the patients are shackled in chains. These measures are implemented to those thought to be violent, uncontrollable and dangerous. (© Wendell Phillips/National Geographic Photo Contest) #




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Viewers’ Choice for People: Expedition Amundsen – A race that follows in the path of the famous explorer Roald Amundsen brings the contestants to the Hardangervidda Mountainplateu, Norway. 100km across the plateau, the exact same route Amundsen used to prepare for his South Pole expedition in 1911 is still used by explorers today. Amundsen did not manage to cross the plateau and had to turn back because of bad weather. He allegedly said that the attempt to cross Hardangervidda was just as dangerous and hard as the conquering of the South Pole. The group in the picture used the race as preparations for an attempt to cross Greenland. (© Kai-Otto Melau/National Geographic Photo Contest) #




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Honorable Mention, Places: Eerie Eiffel – The gloomy winter day worked to my advantage to create this eerie feeling of the famous landmark Eiffel tower. (© Indra Swari Wonowidjojo/National Geographic Photo Contest) #




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First Place for People: Amongst the Scavengers – In Dandora, Kenya. At the end of the day women are allowed to pick through the dumpsite. (© Micah Albert/National Geographic Photo Contest) #




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Honorable Mention, Nature: Predation up close and personal – Near Komodo, Indonesia, I was surrounded by thousands of fish that moved in synchrony because of the predation that was happening. It was an incredible experience. (© Fransisca Harlijanto/National Geographic Photo Contest) #




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Honorable Mention, Nature: Red Fox catching mouse under snow – With his exceptional hearing a red fox has targeted a mouse hidden under 2 feet of crusted snow. Springing high in the air he breaks through the crusted spring snow with his nose and his body is completely vertical as he grabs the mouse under the snow. In Squaw Creek, Park Country, Wyoming. (© Micheal Eastman/National Geographic Photo Contest) #




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Honorable Mention, People: Chinese traditional dragon boat racing – Dragon boating is a Chinese traditional entertainment. As an aquatic sport to commemorate Qu Yuan, a patriotic poet in ancient China, it is usually held in festivals, which can be traced back to two thousands years ago. (© 关嘉城/National Geographic Photo Contest) #




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Honorable Mention, Nature: East of Iceland – Glacial ice washes ashore after calving off the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier on Iceland’s eastern coast. During the waning light of summer this image was created over the course of a 4 minute exposure while the photographer backlit the grounded glacial ice with a headlamp for 2 of those 4 minutes. (© Eric Guth/National Geographic Photo Contest) #




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Honorable Mention, Nature: Ursus arctos horribilis – This photo of a wild Alaskan brown bear digging on a game trail was taken with a homemade motion-controlled triggering device hooked up to my DSLR. Location: Bear Creek, Lake Aleknagik, Alaska. (© Jason Ching/National Geographic Photo Contest) #




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Honorable Mention, People: Stilt Fishing – Stilt fishing is a typical fishing technique only seen in Sri Lanka. The fishermen sit on a cross bar called a petta tied to a vertical pole planted into the coral reef. This long exposure shot shows how unstable their position is. (© Ulrich Lambert/National Geographic Photo Contest) #


Related links and information

Foolish Males

Geoffrey Miller, author of The Mating Mind, comments:  “… and in duck news, sexual selection makes males of yet another species look silly.”

I believe it’s a mandarin duck (Aix galericulata).