Animal Uprising Thread

[MacCruiskeen]

(yes, a tree is an animal, or at least that one is.)

[seemslikeadream]

Ants trapped in nuclear bunker are developing their own society
By Richa Malhotra



Bunker mentality
Working for work’s sake
Wojciech Stephan
Keep calm and carry on building. That’s the motto of 100,000 or so wood ants stranded without food in a nuclear bunker until they starve.

Wood ants (Formica polyctena) typically build a cosy mound nest on the forest floor. They seek out the sugary secretions of aphids living on trees and supplement their diet with insects. Now, scientists have uncovered a population of wood ants that has sustained for years without food and light inside a bunker where temperatures are constantly low.

The ant population was discovered in 2013 by a group of volunteers counting bats overwintering in the bunker, which is part of an abandoned Soviet nuclear base near Templewo in western Poland.

Later, Wojciech Czechowski at the Museum and Institute of Zoology in Warsaw, Poland, and his colleagues, entered the bunker to study the ants more closely. They noticed that the wood ants had built a nest on the terracotta floor of the bunker – right below a ventilation pipe. Looking up through the five-metre-long pipe, they realised where the bunker ants come from.

A 60-centimetre-high wood ant nest sits on the forest floor directly on top of the ventilation pipe outlet. But because the metal cap over the ventilation pipe has rusted, ants can fall through from time to time.

It’s a one-way journey for any ant that falls into the bunker. They can scale its 2.3-metre-high walls but Czechowski and his colleagues realised that – for some reason – the ants never walk across the bunker ceiling and so are unable to reach the ventilation pipe to make it back home.

Doomed colony
So, how did they respond? “These ants gathered together and did what ants do,” says Terry McGlynn, an entomologist at the California State University Dominguez Hills, who was not involved in the study. “They built a nest and eked out an existence.”

Today that nest covers most of the floor of a chamber that measures three metres by one metre.

Czechowski and his colleagues have looked for evidence of a food source that the bunker ants could use, but haven’t found one yet. Rather, the ants seemed to be doomed to starve to death in pitch-blackness. They found ant corpses carpeting the bunker floor in layers a few centimetres thick and estimated the number of dead ants to be about two million.

Without any food, the individual bunker ants are probably dying at a rate faster than at the surface, the researchers think. But because there is a steady stream of new arrivals falling into the bunker, the colony has grown to a reasonable size.

This explains one of the unusual features of this nest. When the researchers dug into it to look for an ant brood they found none – no larvae, pupae or empty cocoons. The “colony” was queenless and lacked any males. This fits with the idea that it is no ordinary nest, but a strange nest-like structure that the worker population has instinctively built.

“This is kind of fascinating that such a huge non-productive nest could exist on its own, built solely from the ants that got trapped in the bunker,” McGlynn says.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/21 ... n-society/

[norton ash]

Blue Jays-Angels game delayed right now because bees have swarmed the field in Anaheim. Yeesh.

[Cordelia]

^^^
Not for the first time............


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sQdr7_fvf4

[Cordelia]

[battleshipkropotkin]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/squirrel-criticized-hospitalized-alderman_us_5834c2f6e4b09b6055ff773f

"Maybe Howard Brookins Jr. will think twice before he criticizes squirrels again.

In October, the alderman for Chicago’s 21st ward went on a public tirade about “aggressive squirrels,” griping that the furry critters kept eating through the city-supplied garbage cans.

But Brookins had no idea just how “aggressive” squirrels could be. On Nov. 13, the alderman found himself in the hospital with a skull fracture after a squirrel leapt into the path of Brookins’ bike, wrapping itself in the spokes and causing him to flip over the handlebars, The Star Tribune reports.

“I can think of no other reason for this squirrel’s actions than that it was like a suicide bomber, getting revenge,” he told the Tribune.

Some outlets, like the Chicago Sun Times, covered the incident but simply referred to it as a “freak accident,” apparently afraid to call radical squirrel terrorism by name.

Brookins posted about the accident on Sunday to announce that he would be unable to attend events in the near future as he was still recovering from his serious injuries.

Sadly, it appears that the squirrel did not survive the incident, based on the photo that Brookins posted.

The alderman has made the image his Facebook cover photo, as if to serve as a warning for squirrels who may try the same thing."

[seemslikeadream]

Beaver caught rummaging through Christmas items in Maryland store



Beaver walks into Md. store, finds only artificial Christmas trees, and proceeds to trash it

[PufPuf93]

Deer tries to mate with girl.

This is probably as dangerous as it is funny as the deer and antlers could cause serious damage.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBC37i86Rm0

[82_28]

Turkeys cause power outages in Oregon town

MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — A flock of wild turkeys, long considered menaces to one Oregon town, have sparked new ire after causing power outages in the eastern part of Medford.

The Mail Tribune reports that wild turkeys flying into Pacific Power Lines have been responsible for four morning outages in the last month, each time cutting off power for more than 1,600 residents and businesses.

Pacific Power spokesman Monte Mendenhall says the outages are definitely caused by the turkeys, though it's unclear how the utility will resolve the issue.

Unlike in rural areas, it is illegal to shoot or hunt within Medford's city limits. And trapping turkeys is thought to be difficult and time consuming.

State wildlife biologists say the power outages are a new symptom of the old problem of people feeding turkeys, allowing them to establish urban flocks.

http://www.9news.com/news/nation-now/tu ... /367602558

[Cordelia]

In the form of of my Maine Coon cross . He was pissed off because I nudged him away from me and reached up to whack me. Luckily I jerked my head back and his claw clipped me about an inch below my eye. He's a big guy with w/paws about the size of a lion cub's.



(A reminder to self that even highly domesticated pets can/will revert to type. )

[Iamwhomiam]

Maine Coons are beautiful! And so Large! A close friend lost one of two she's cared for last year, at 18, but she obtained a rescue so the survivor wasn't lonely.

[norton ash]

Maine Coons are the coolest cats evar.

[KUAN]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMT483KML64

[PufPuf93]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMT483KML64

My great uncle was murdered by his goat back in the 1950s when I was 5 or so.

He lived in a cabin on his gold mining claim and had a garden, orchard, goats, and a reputation as an eccentric.

When I was a child we lived not far from Willy and I actually have more memories of his car that sat in a yard for several years than Willy. Willy was butted in the head by one of his goats and severely concussed. My father worried because he was not around and went to Owl Mine where Willy laid mortally wounded. Dad took him to a hospital in Eureka on Humboldt Bay, then nearly a 4 hour drive. Willy soon passed away and never returned home.

[chump]

https://youtu.be/xd1mb5V9mLs


http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/rats/