Label: Animals

May 16, 2011

I visited my friend Max and his family this weekend. Max is a first grader who loves to know everything he can about arachnids…..that is the scientific word for spiders. I thought he (and probably lots of my other readers!) would like this science news story about Tarantulas and how they climb safely.

Tarantulas are quite heavy, at least for spiders. They can weigh up to 1.75 ounces (50 grams), and their bodies are very delicate. So, climbing is possibly one of the riskiest things an adult tarantula can do. "They wouldn’t survive a fall from any height," explains Claire Rind, an arachnologist from the University of Newcastle, England. Rind ran a series of experiments, putting tarantulas into an aquarium, tilting it straight up, and then using slow motion microphotography to film the spiders’ feet as they held on. She also used a microscope to look at the moulted exoskeletons from her Mexican flame knee tarantula, Fluffy (yes, she saved them all!), and discovered tiny, silk-producing openings all over the spider’s feet.

She discovered that when a tarantula slips, it saves itself by shooting silk threads out of its feet to grasp the surface it is climbing. Sound like anybody you’ve ever heard of?

Photo: International Society of Arachnology

May 14, 2011

Have you ever seen a baby hawk being fed its breakfast? You can watch live footage right now on the hawk cam. Only one fledgling has survived, but it is growing so quickly that I find myself keeping the window open on my desktop so that I can watch. If you click on this photo, it will take you to the live webcam.

Sometimes you have to wait a little while, if the mother is sitting on the baby to keep it warm. But, the wait is worth it, I promise. What a cutie!

May 13, 2011

Yesterday, we drove along winding roads through the hills in Dutchess and Columbia counties, in New York State. It’s very agricultural up here, with many horse and dairy farms.

Spring is the season for animal babies and we saw many calves and foals in farms along the roads. This calf is two to three months old and follows its mother everywhere. Where mom goes, baby is not far behind.

Spring is an amazing season of quick changes. Trees and bushes leaf, and the color of the leaves changes from a pale yellow-green to a darker green in a few weeks. Flowers bud on apple trees and on forest floors as if by magic. Birds are singing. Butterflies are flitting from one bush to another. It feels as if you’re in a nature movie, but this is real life and it happens every spring.

Years ago, Rachel Carson, a scientist and naturalist, wrote a book called Silent Spring. It was about the dangers of using too much and the wrong kinds of insecticides. The "silent spring" referred to the bad effects of insecticides upon birds. Every time I hear birds singing in the spring, I give silent thanks to Rachel Carson, a wonderful nature writer who also provided me with the inspiration to become a writer. 

I often travel with Seymour as he walks in nature and photographs, and thought that it would be fun for readers to see what was going on "behind the camera" while Seymour was taking the photograph above. This herd was very curious, poking their heads through the fence and nuzzling to see if he had any food for them!

May 11, 2011

A student named Makayla M. wrote today and asked: 

"Do you think that macaroni penguins are weird or cool? What is your favorite animal in the world?

I think all penguins are cool, don’t you? Macaroni Penguins are so unusual, with those magnificent, bright-colored feathers on their heads. You can probably find my book PENGUINS in your school library, and you’ll find a page in there that tells you how the Macaroni penguin got its name. (Hint: It has nothing to do with pasta.)

I can’t tell you my favorite animal because then the other animals would attack me!

(Photo from PENGUINS, by Seymour Simon. CollinsSmithsonian Books, 2007) 

Note to students Using the "ASK SEYMOUR SIMON" button: Please take your time and be sure that you enter your email address correctly. If it is misspelled, I can’t reply to you, so you never get an answer to your question. Type your email in, and then check your work! Thanks.

May 10, 2011

Regular Seymour Science readers know that we do this every Tuesday…...and isn’t this trumpetfish photo a beauty?!

I am particularly interested in the trumpetfish (Aulostomus maculatus) these days because I am working on a new book about CORAL REEFS. Trumpetfish live in coral reefs, and they often swim vertically (straight up and down, as you see here) as a way of camouflaging themselves. They want to blend in with tall coral like sea rods and pipe sponges so that they can sneak up on unsuspecting prey. They catch their food by lying so still that they look like a stick, and then sucking up passing fish into their mouths.

These fish grow to be about 36 inches (just under one meter) long. If you spread both your arms out as wide as they can go, that is about the size of a full-grown trumpetfish.

Photo: Nick Hobgood 

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May 6, 2011

If you are reading this morning, click on the "play" button to watch baby hawks being born. I’ve just seen both parents standing on the edge of the nest while the first, tiny fledling squeezed out of its shell. Amazing sight to see!

Update at 10:41 am Eastern Time from Liz Nealon (Seymour is speaking in Illchester Elementary School, Ellicott City, MD this morning).

Two babies are safely hatched. I managed to grab this screen capture photo of the one remaining egg, plus a tiny baby, when the mother bird got up to clean it!

May 6, 2011

        Joey LaMountain, a middle school student in Cape Coral, Florida, was in his kayak in the Orange River when he saw something unusual - a manatee with a crab trap attached to its right flipper.  "Whenever it’d show up for air, we saw the buoy come up too," he said.

The quick thinking 12-year-old, whose mom is a volunteer at Manatee Park, grabbed his cell phone called Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission’s emergency hotline. Then he waited for divers and directed them to her exact location.

This week the manatee, now nicknamed Tang-Lee was set free - fully recovered. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission said that the middle schooler’s quick thinking was particularly important because the state has had a record 218 manatee deaths statewide after last January’s cold snap.

"It feels really, really good," Joey said.

Photo courtesy WBIR.com

May 5, 2011

What do you find every Thursday on the Seymour Science blog? Our favorite video of the week, of course!

Did you ever get to the middle of the afternoon and feel very, very sleepy? Like you might just want to roll over and take a quick nap?

We think that this panda might have been feeling exactly this way!

May 3, 2011

 Seymour Simon is in Howard County, Maryland schools all this week. And, whenever Seymour is out in schools, we know that everybody starts using the website like crazy! So, we’ve decided to run a one-week contest.

We’ve changed the rules of our contest a bit, but the basic idea remains the same. One lucky winner (chosen randomly from everyone who writes) will win a personally autographed copy of Seymour Simon’s book, BABY ANIMALS.

Here is what you need to do to enter:

Look at this picture, of a mother and baby hippopatomus. Tell us what a baby hippo is called, and if you give us the right answer, you could be the winner!

Click on comments at the bottom of this article to give us your answer. The contest ends at midnight, Sunday, May 8^th, so write to us soon. Tell us what school you go to, and don’t forget to include an email address (it is ok to use your parent’s or teacher’s email), so that we can get in touch with you if you are our winner.

This contest is open to Seymour Science readers all over the world, but it’s a special treat for Columbia, Maryland students, so get writing!!

Good luck!

May 3, 2011

 Do you know the expression: a watched pot doesn’t boil? It means that when you are impatiently waiting for something natural to happen, you should chill out, relax and let nature take its course.

Have you been watching the Hawk Cam that we blogged about last week? We have, and it has been feeling kind of like waiting for that pot to boil. It is hard to be patient, because we are so eager to see these babies! 

I checked in today just as Violet rose to take a break, and was able to snap this very cool photo of the hawk eggs. I guess that confirms that they still have not hatched.

The babies are expected to be born in the next few days. If you want to watch and wait along with us, click on this video any time. It is not every day that you can observe something like this up close.

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