Taima the Seattle Seahawk and the Genus Buteo

For those of you who watching the Broncos/Seahawks game right now, you might have noticed clips of a random bird of prey flying around which, if you're anything like me, that was the highlight of the entire game.  Named Taima, the bird is the mascot for the Seattle Seahawks football team, an augur hawk (Buteo rufofuscus).  Although sometimes referred to as the augur buzzard, I prefer the name augur hawk, as buzzard is sometimes a bit of a confusing name.*  According to the Seahawks website, Taima has been the "first one out of the tunnel" prior to every game.**  The augur hawk is one of the most common hawks in Africa, and inhabits an enormous portion of the eastern and central part of the continent.  Open plains, grasslands, and forests are the augur's preferred habitat, fairly similar to its close North American cousin, the red-tailed hawk (Buteo jaimaicensis).

The broad-winged hawk (Buteo platypterus) is one of the smallest members of the genus, and a hawk that's involved in a very interesting new project, the aptly named "Broad-Winged Hawk Project."  Similar in many ways to the OCEARCH shark tracking project, the BWHP is using satellite telemetry technology to track broad-winged hawks on their migration from Pennsylvania, all the way down to Central and South America.  You can join in the tracking fun by clicking on the link HERE!  Several of the nestling broad-wings were from pretty close to where my friend Zach Evens's cabin in Pennsylvania was that we visited in August!

There are a ton of other hawks in the genus Buteo besides the red-tail, augur, and broad-wing, several of which we've talked about here on the blog, such as the red-shouldered hawk (B. lineatus), rough-legged hawk (B. lagopus), and the Swainson's hawk (B. swainsoni).

A rough-legged hawk on the hand of Anne Price, the Curator of Raptors for the Raptor Education Foundation at one of the raptor shows at the Best Western Denver Southwest!

*In the Americas, a buzzard typically refers to a vulture, while in the Old World, buzzard is often attributed to members of the genus Buteo, of which the augur hawk is a member.  We Americans tend to refer to buteos simply as hawks, which is part of what can lead to this confusion.

**For those of you not in the know, the tunnel is not a metaphorical tunnel, and instead refers to a legit tunnel that leads from the locker room onto the stadium.

Works Cited:

Fun Fact, A Look Ahead 8/18/2012

First off, I have to apologize for getting behind a bit, I have been a bit busy!  I have pushed back (or is it forward?) the promised posts from the last couple of days, so here is today's "A Look Ahead," with what I think is the most interesting "Fun Fact" yet!

Sunday:  Perfume-Loving Lions and Record-Breaking Cheetahs - Lions from the Denver Zoo fawn over the men's perfume "Obsession," while Sarah the cheetah become the world's fastest animal!

Monday:   The Sounds of Star Wars - Chewbacca may look like a bear, but was he voiced by one, too?

Tuesday:  The Salton Sea - Learn about how just a few people in southern California were able to severely alter their natural surroundings.

Wednesday: Learning Latin Roots - Common roots in scientific names in animals, as well as a few interesting and humorous ones!

Thursday:  Fossil Penguins:  Aptenodytes ridgeni and Pygoscelis tyreei - Finding out about more fossil penguins, these closely related to some alive today!

Friday: Animal Spotlight:  The Aye-aye - One of my favorite animals, the aye-aye, is featured in this "Animal Spotlight."

Saturday: The Loch Ness Monster....Fact or Fiction? - Spoiler Alert:  It's Fiction

Fun Fact:  If America didn't attack Japan with atomic bombs in World War II, the Japanese might have come under siege by bat.

Although I originally thought this to be a hoax, it certainly appears as if this is real.  I have found information on it on multiple sources.  And it is actually a brilliant plan too!  Here is what happened:

 On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, bringing the United States into World War II.  When Pennsylvanian dentist Lytle S. Adams heard the news on the radio, he thought back to his trip to New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns, and their extensive bat population.  He then thought up his idea for the "bat bomb:" strapping small, incendiary devices to thousands, perhaps millions, of bats, and releasing them over a strategic city in Japan.  The bats, as they would anywhere else in the world, would try to find cover in buildings, trees, and whatever nooks and crannies they could find before daybreak.  Then they would ignite the incendiary devices.  "Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of forty miles in diameter for every bomb dropped," he said.  Luckily for Adams, he knew Eleanor Roosevelt, and contacted her with his idea.  The White House actually liked it.  Said a Presidential memorandum: "This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but is worth looking into."  

Now, animal rights activists, beware.  Obviously, this plan is not very kind to the animals, and involves all sorts of animal cruelty.  To get the bats shipped, they forced them into a hibernation by sticking them into ice cube trays.  Next, the bats would be loaded into what essentially looked like a bomb-shell, consisting of 26 trays, with each of the trays containing compartments that would hold 40 bats.  Dropped from 5,000 feet, parachutes would deploy at 1,000 feet, all while the bats were awakening from their hibernation.  They would then fly off and roost, and then set the city on fire when the time was right.
Bats were the ideal creatures for this project, too.  They are nocturnal, so the Japanese would be hard-pressed to figure out what was going on.  They occur in simply massive numbers, so obtaining a great deal of them would not be super problematic.  In many caves, bats occur in the millions.  Furthermore, when bats are hibernating, they require no food, and therefore need little care when it comes to cleaning up little messes.  And finally, and perhaps most importantly, bats can carry more than what they weigh in flight, making them the perfect candidates for carrying bombs.  

The plan was to send 10 B-24 bombers, each with around 100 shells chock-full of bats, would fly from Alaska, and release around 1,040,000 bats over the cities of Osaka Bay, such as Osaka, Amagasaki, Hannan, Kobe, Sakai, and Nishinomiya.  However, the weapon experienced a few changes of hand, most notably to the hands of the Navy in August 1943, following an incident near Carlsbad, New Mexico, where bats were accidentally released.  They roosted under a fuel tank, and set fire to Carlsbad Army Airfield Auxiliary Air Base.

The project was ultimately canned in 1944, when it was learned that the bat-bomb project would likely not be operational until about halfway through 1945.  It seems likely that the atomic bomb is what caused the projects termination, even after an estimated $2 million was spent on it.  But who knows?  Perhaps this is REALLY what is going on at Area 51.