Harris Hawk at the Dinosaur Hotel!

A few times now, I have mentioned the fantastic dinosaur-themed renovation that the folks over at the Best Western Denver Southwest.  Complete with life-sized models, museum quality casts lining the hallways, and a pool in the shape of the Western Interior Cretaceous Seaway, this is a hotel that paleo-fans of all ages won't want to miss!  Another awesome thing they do is a weekly raptor show on Saturday's at 5:00 PM.  I don't mean raptor like Velociraptor (which would be both amazing and terrifying at the same time), I mean bird of prey raptors.  But don't be too disappointed: they are still really super cool!  I went for the first time last Saturday, and was blown away by both the birds and the knowledge and passion of the presenter, Anne Price.  I plan on sharing many of these birds with you, and today I am going to share one of my favorites from last week, the Harris hawk!

In this picture, you can see the Harris hawk is not too happy about the great-horned owl being held by another volunteer about ten or fifteen feet in front of it!

There are three different subspecies of the Harris hawk, and this one was native to the Sonoran desert, in the American southwest.  Although sometimes the other sub-species will live in more forested areas, this particular type of Harris hawk prefers a desert life.  

Due to the fact that much of what lives in the desert is spiny, the Harris hawk learns from a very young age how to pick spikes and thorns out of its feet, especially the spines of the saguaro cactus.  This particular cactus is SO huge and so integral to the surrounding ecosystem that it is illegal in Arizona to either harm or destroy a saguaro cactus!

When abbreviated, the scientific name of the Harris hawk, Parabuteo unicintus, spells "P. u."

Unlike many raptors, the Harris hawk is a very social bird, hunting cooperatively in packs often numbering four or five individuals.  These packs, or family groups, will often have one or two of the birds fly down low to flush out prey, and once the prey is on the move, the rest of the pack will swoop in for the kill.

 

Since it is so darn hot in the Sonora Desert,  the adult Harris hawks are forced to shield their nests, with their offspring inside, with their outstretched wings to keep them from cooking alive.  If the "shield-bird" has to move, for whatever reason, an aunt or an uncle or just another member of the pack will instinctively swoop in to take up the shielding duties!  

I feel like since the Harris hawk lives in groups, it would be more tolerant of other birds.  Since they kept the Harris hawk out almost the entire time, even while the other three birds were out, this would make sense.

You can see in the picture above and the picture below that, while the Harris hawk wasn't too bent out of shape because of the presence of the great-horned owl, it wasn't necessarily super excited about it.  I mean, let's face it: if you or I were a hawk in the presence of this incredible owl, I might be a little nervous, too!

Like in most other birds, the Harris hawk is pretty much full-sized when it leaves the nest, since it has to be able to fly, feed, and take care of itself.  When their entire volume is taken into account, the young apparently are often bigger than the adults!  I don't remember exactly why that would be, but most likely due to the fact that the young have just been sittin' around on their heinies, and their parents have been working their heinies off to feed and care for them.

As you can sort of see in the picture below, the innermost toe claw of the Harris hawk, and most (if not all) hawks, is much larger than the other two forward-facing toe claws.  As you can probably see in the picture above, the hallux, or backwards-facing claw, is also much larger than those other two forward-facing claws.  I don't recall if this is a feature seen in other raptors, I'll make sure to ask this Saturday!

I also have a short video that I took there of the Harris hawk.  You can see how it looks, get a good size comparison, and listen to a little bit of the information that Anne has to say about it!

Here is a second video where the Harris hawk is featured, however briefly.  Although it features the red-tailed hawk, at one point the hawk poops on the floor, which unfortunately happens off camera!

Finally, here is another video in which the Harris hawk makes an appearance.  You can see when the camera pans over to the Harris hawk (the cinematography, by the way, is reminiscent of Star Wars or Planet Earth or something like that) that the Harris hawk, like we talked about before, is not terribly happy about the great-horned owls presence so close to it, but it is tolerating it nonetheless.  Despite the fact that it doesn't feature the Harris hawk all that much, it's still a really cool video, and will give you a hint for what's in store for later posts!

Make sure you check out the website for the Raptor Education Foundation by clicking HERE, and checking out the Facebook page for the Best Western Denver Southwest by clicking HERE!  

23-Fact Tuesday: The Polar Bear!

Everyone loves polar bears, so today, for the birthday post of Brooke Harrower, we are going to be taking a 23-Fact Tuesday look at them!  Allons-y!

1.  Despite the fact that the polar bear can be quite a fierce animal, it can also be very playful and gentle.  For proof, click HERE to see a very cute video of polar bears playing with sled dogs!

2.  A group of polar bears is called a celebration.

3.  In an attempt to safely film polar bears up close and personal without disturbing them, one production company resorted to an interesting array of spy cameras.  To see an awesome video of the polar bears playing with the spy cameras, click HERE.

4.  As we saw in the previous video clip, the polar bear is quite the curious animal.  It has to be, to survive in such harsh conditions!  The polar bear is also a lot smarter than many other bears, as can be seen in a comparison of a few different bear brains, below!  Look at how much larger (comparatively) the brain of the polar bear is than that of the American black bear!  Also keep in mind that more wrinkles=a greater surface area=a smarter animal!

5.  Unlike the color of its fur, the skin of the polar bear is actually jet black!

6.  Despite the fact that they are often erroneously pictured together, it is almost entirely impossible for penguins and polar bears to meet naturally in the wild, as no penguins ever really make it past the Equator, with the Galápagos penguin living the furthest north, right on the Equator!  For more information on the subject (as well as some really funny stories) click on the link HERE, to check out a page on the awesome blog March of the Fossil Penguins.

7.  As you can see in the video clip HERE, filming the polar bears for the excellent BBC series Planet Earth could be quite a challenge (see the full post HERE), especially when they come knocking at your door!

8.  The polar bear is the largest extant (still living, opposite of extinct) mammalian carnivore.  The males can grow up to a whopping 1,500 pounds! 

9.  It occurs to me as I eat this delicious cherry popsicle that the polar bear must have some sort of special evolutionary adaptation to prevent brain freeze as it consumes a cold and frozen meal.  Research should be done into this.

10.  Polar bears, after their emergence from their dens following the harsh Arctic winters, have been observed sledding down the hills on which the dens are associated.  Some scientists believe that this action is solely intended to clean the fur, but many others (myself included) believe that it is probably more for fun!  Check out the video HERE.

11.  The polar bear is native to only five countries.  These are Russia, Denmark owned Greenland, Norway owned Svalbard, Alaska, and Canada.

12.  The polar bear is a descendant of the grizzly bear, and was once thought to have diverged from the grizzly possibly only even around 70-100,000 years ago.  Others are more conservative in their estimations, as DNA analysis on one particular fossil specimen indicates that the polar bear diverged from the grizzly bear around 160,000 years ago.  It now seems more likely that the age of divergence of was much earlier in time than even 100,000 years ago, and polar bear fossils dating from earlier than that (round 115,000 years ago) have actually been discovered.

A picture of one of the grizzly bears at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo doing what the zookeepers call the "Yoga Bear."  This was from the behind the scenes experience that my dad, grandma and grandpa, my friend Masaki and I got to do with Kelley Parker a few months back!  Photo Credit: Masaki Kleinkopf.

Another picture of one of the grizzly bears at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo doing what the zookeepers call the "Yoga Bear."  This was from the behind the scenes experience that my dad, grandma and grandpa, my friend Masaki and I got to do with Kelley Parker a few months back!  Photo Credit: Masaki Kleinkopf.

13.  The oldest polar bear fossil known to science, the lower jaw of a male, was discovered in 2004.  It's age is thought to be between around 110,000 and 130,000 years old. 

14.  The scientific name for the polar bear, Ursus maritimus is "sumitiram susru" spelled backwards.  This means absolutely nothing and is really not that exciting, unless you are me and think it's funny and clever to spell things backwards and make stupid jokes about it.

15.  Algae, while not threatening to a polar bear in any significant way, can be extremely hard to wash out of the bears fur.  So therefore, in the summer of 2008 when three bears at Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Japan got a bunch of algae stuck in their fur, they were green for the entire summer!  True story!

16.  The polar bear is a fantastic swimmer, aided by its streamlined body and skull as well as its partially webbed feet, and have been spotted swimming strongly in open waters as much as 200 miles from the shore!

17.  The polar bear will consume a wide variety of foods, including everything from seals to walrus, beluga whales to bowhead whale carcasses, birds, and even kelp!

18.  The polar bear is labeled as "Vulnerable" by the IUCN, a position which may deteriorate in years to come with the further melting of the ice caps.

19.  Hybrids of the polar bear and the grizzly bear, sometimes called grolars, have been known to occur both in the wild and in captivity, a further testament to the close genetic relationship between the two bears.

20.  Baby polar bears are possibly some of the cutest animals on the planet, as can be evidenced by the picture below of baby Anori from Germany's Wuppertal Zoo.

21.  Humans are the only animal that hunt polar bears.

22.  So well protected against the cold is the polar bear that they can quickly overheat, even when the temperature is below zero!  In order to combat this, the polar bear will try to avoid running and will rest for many many hours at a time.  Maybe my cat's a polar bear.

23.  Polar bears, like myself when Windows Movie Maker refuses to work, have actually been observed by scientists to throw tantrums when they fail to catch their prey!  The bears have been observed growling disappointedly, kicking piles of snow, and even throwing ice chunks!

Happy birthday Brooke, hope you enjoy!  And remember, if you have a birthday coming up, just email me the date at cuyvaldar123946@gmail.com with the date and your favorite animal, and I will do my best to get a post in!

The Making of Planet Earth: The Snow Leopard

It was obviously not an easy feat for BBC to get all of the footage that they needed for their fantastic television series "Planet Earth," narrated by the equally fantastic David Attenborough.  Clearly, some segments would be easier to film than others.  One of the goals of "Planet Earth" was to get as much unique, never-before-filmed events and creatures, which would clearly make things a bit more difficult.  Below are listed some of the scenes that had apparently never been seen before on television.

1. The oceanic whitetip shark.
2. A piranha feeding frenzy, being filmed while the cameraman was actually in the water.
3. Arctic wolf hunt filmed from a helicopter.
4. Starving lions attacking and killing an elephant in the dead of night.
5.  Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico, U.S.
6. Amur leopard mother and cub in the Primorye region of Russia.
7. Bactrian camels in the Gobi desert in Mongolia eating snow to keep from getting dehydrated.
8. "The highest-ever aerial footage of Mount Everest and the Karakoram."
9. African wild dog hunt filmed from a helicopter.

And, finally, the subject of today's post:

    10. A snow leopard hunting a markhor in Pakistan.

The snow leopards are another one of my favorite animals, but due to their elusive nature, they are very difficult to capture on film.  Much more difficult than they are for poachers to capture them, anyhow.  Hunting in large part for their fur has greatly reduced the wild population, forcing the IUCN to list them as "Endangered."

Due to their elusive nature, and their difficulty to film, the "Story of the Snow Leopard," if you will, proved to be a most excellent candidate for the "Planet Earth Diaries" (which I generally refer to on this blog as "The Making of Planet Earth."  For the DVD release, a ten minute or so long "making of" feature was included, highlighting the difficulties of each shoot.  Below is the list of the episodes of Planet Earth, and what their respective "Making Of" featurettes talk about.

The chart.  The Shallow Seas episode, with the
Planet Earth Diaries about the great white shark hunts, is filmed by Big Car Diary co-host Simon King.

When it came to filming the snow leopard, the makers of "Planet Earth" first turned to veteran cameraman Doug Allan, the same man who filmed the polar bears.  But after a few months of fruitless searching (in Nepal, I believe), all he had to show for his work were a few long distance shots, too far away to be of much use.  There were plenty of signs of the snow leopard being around, however.  One of my favorite things to hear from the entire "Planet Earth" series came from this predicament.  The film crew would track the snow leopard by following its footprints in the snow, in the hopes of getting close enough to learn more, or to even film it.  However, they would follow the tracks in a large circle, until they were seeing signs of human footprints too: their own.  The snow leopards were following them!

"Planet Earth" then decided to film along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, but were not allowed to, as the search for Al-Qaeda was taking place there, and only news crews were allowed in.  One year later, however, the "Planet Earth" crew were granted access, in December of 2004.  Below is a link to part two of the "Planet Earth Diaries" about the snow leopard.  The first part was unfortunately taken off of youtube, but anyways, here is the second part.

Planet Earth Diaries: Snow Leopard Quest Part 2

Below is another fascinating video of the snow leopard: the first ever snow leopard/markhor hunt recorded on film.  SPOILER ALERT: and don't you worry you animal lovers out there; the video has a happy ending for the markhor, but not so for the snow leopard.

First Ever Snow Leopard/Markhor Hunt

Redington Beach on Dwellable

The Making of Planet Earth: The Polar Bear

First of all, don't forget to scroll down and look at today's official post, about the three-toed sloth! 

I almost forgot to tell you all about another very interesting video clip about the polar bear, from "The Making of Planet Earth."  The clip below, narrated by David Attenborough, features the challenges that the main cameraman Doug Allan, aided by his field assistant Jason Roberts, came up against when it came to filming the polar bears in Norway.  Not only is the video quite interesting, it gets amusing towards the end, as well!

Filming the Polar Bears

Below is a picture of cameraman Doug Allan.  In the picture below, he is staked out, attempting to film the snow leopard, one of my absolute favorite animals.  This elusive cat proved quite difficult to film, and, hopefully, sometime in the next few weeks I can talk about the difficulties the crew of Planet Earth encountered when it came to filming the snow leopard in the wild.

Animal Spotlight: The Polar Bear

The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is the world's largest extant, terrestrial carnivore, with males growing up to 1,500 pounds.  Like many animals that spend a good amount of time in the water, their feet are partially webbed to aid in swimming.  Although the fur of the polar bear is white, to help it blend into the ice and snow when it is hunting seals, its skin underneath is black, to aid in heat absorption.

In the picture above, it certainly looks like the polar bear is just enjoying itself, and having a good time.  While both of these may be true, the polar bear is actually cleaning its fur, presumably after a kill, given the blood-stained snow off in the left of the picture.  Below the picture is a link to a video clip from BBC's "Planet Earth," narrated by one of my personal heroes, David Attenborough.  In the video, make sure to watch for the fur cleaning.

This is the link to the Planet Earth link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwZH_aT0FGI

The polar bear, due to its immense size and lack of natural predators, fears nothing, humans included.  This, coupled with a natural, and insatiable, curiosity, often brings bears and humans into contact.  The video clip below is from another BBC show, called "Polar Bear: Spy on the Ice."  I first saw this show when we were in South Carolina this summer, and found it really interesting!  This clip is one of my favorite parts from it.

Polar Bears Attacking Spy Cameras:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvduCPXO_FE

Finally, we have another interesting YouTube video that I discovered today.  Watch and enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE-Nyt4Bmi8

The polar bear's range covers five different countries: Russia, Denmark owned Greenland, Norway owned Svalbard, Alaska, and Canada.