Testy Tim

He gets testy only if you try to steal the seed from him.

Testy Tim Titmouse

I sit in my outdoor tub, watching birds come to the feeder. When I'm in a meditative mood, beholding birds is one of the more absorbing activities that I enjoy. There is always an interesting example of bird behavior to observe—and sometimes a taste is offered that appears to be just enough different from the norm that it captures my imagination and causes my speculative mental juices to flow.

Tonight I'm witnessing a group of half a dozen tufted titmice visiting the feeder—swooping down more or less together, grabbing sunflower seeds and then flying off more or less together into the evening air. In a few minutes they return and resume feeding. They pay each other little attention, except for the fact that they hang with one another in this loosely-defined flock. It's safer for them, as many eyes do better at spotting threats than do just two.

Then there's the oddball in this small flock, whom I will call Testy Tim. He seems more interested in his fellow group members, than the seeds. He suddenly attacks another titmouse—excreting a squeaky, threatening shout that drives the other bird off. At random moments Tim aggressively charges another compatriot, chasing it away.

What is going on here? Tim's behavior, it seems to me, is untimely. Such belligerent conduct in early spring—when territory and breeding pairs are being established—is normal. But not this time of summer. Mates have been selected long ago and most offspring bred; now it's time to mellow out in the summer's heat. But not Testy Tim.

What's got Tim's goat? Why is he acting so pugnacious? Did he just get jilted by his lady? Is this a temporary affliction? Did something just happen that's got his testosterone flowing? Did he just pick a fight with a bird who was superior to him on the pecking order, and he won—with his success now surging through his veins like piss and vinegar? Or might he be a recent fledgling—and like an overconfident teenager, is engaging in foolish behavior, inviting an older, more worldly bird to put him in his place?

Tim is asking for his comeuppance, I'm thinking. He's the single belligerent bird in this harmonious group; the others may decide to gang up retaliate at any moment. They seem uninterested in facing Tim down, however. Maybe it's just too much of an effort in the hot evening sun, to deal with his attacks? Maybe Tim will soon get it out of his system and calm down?

The titmice once again fly off in their group—with Testy Tom trailing behind. Things quiet down. In a few moments I hear a titmouse ferociously scolding. Could it be an elder who is chewing out Tim—advising him to chill out? Has Tim's juvenile behavior earned him a well-deserved dressing down?

I don't see any more titmice, as dusk settles in and quiet prevails. Did Tim finally calm down? Did the others just head for bed, hoping that tomorrow will be a more agreeable day? I'm left alone with my musings, to create my stories.

June Beetle

A June beetle photographed in July. (Click to expand.)

Crustacean Cognition

As far as mental acuity goes, crustaceans have been considered to be near the bottom, when evaluating the brains of various families of animals. Crustaceans are arthropods, which include other simple critters like insects and spiders. In particular, crustaceans are hard-shelled animals (the root of the word crustacean is “having a crust”), such as lobsters, crabs, crayfish, and shrimp. Until a couple of years ago, many scholars thought that the brains of crustaceans are so primitive that they can't even feel pain. This allowed seafood lovers to plunk a live lobster in a pot of boiling water, conscience free, believing it to be so stupid that it did not suffer. Now we know better.

A recent scientific finding coming out of the University of Bordeaux shows us that crustaceans are not only able to feel pain, but possess an even greater cognitive ability: they also feel stress. In fact, the study showed that their tiny brains are influenced by some of the same chemicals that our massive human brains respond to. Ahh, I love it... one more belief about the uniqueness of the human species gets shattered. We keep finding evidence that narrows the gap between us and all the other animals. And here's yet another one.

The research conducted by the French scientists conclusively showed that crayfish can experience rudimentary emotions. How? When they gave crayfish a mild electric shock, the creatures hid in dark corners of their aquarium—unlike their unshocked brethren, who did not hesitate to boldly venture into the light. And the shocked crayfish behaved as if they were stressed or shy.

Wondering what might be going on chemically within the tiny crayfish brain, the researchers guessed that it could be due to elevated levels of serotonin—which also affects the moods of humans, when a serotonin imbalance occurs in our brains. When they injected the stressed crayfish with a drug used to treat anxiety in humans, the critters calmed down and began venturing into the light. Crayfish on Prozac!

I don't think that these results imply that we need to begin training crustacean shrinks to counsel depressed lobsters and crayfish. But they do tell us that yet one more mental barrier between us and simple animals has been dismantled. It makes sense that all animals—including humans—have many mental similarities, given that we all have evolved from the same primitive ancestor that came into being some 3.5 billion years ago. We're all together!

Beauty

It's hard to beat the beauty of a marigold in full bloom. Click to enlarge.

Ain't Like an Ant

The previous posting described some interesting ways in which our human behaviors are similar to ants: they “domesticate” other critters and milk them, they farm, and they “sing” as they work. It's enlightening to open ourselves to the fact that other forms of life on Earth bear a greater resemblance to us than we've long thought. We've historically tended to place our species on a pedestal—greatly elevated from other critters. We've viewed ourselves as much closer to the gods. In the modern era, however, we have come to understand that there is far less of a difference between ourselves and simple creatures... such as ants.

When ants form a colony something very sagacious emerges: a level of intelligence that can rival human capabilities. It is useful to find ourselves toppled from our self-imagined pedestal, and realize the similarities and unity of all life on Earth. After all, every one of us has evolved from the very same primal life form. We're just different branches and twigs on the same tree of life.

While describing a few similarities between humans and ants in the previous post, I think it's also interesting to consider some ways in which we ain't like ants. They are unique little critters who possess some remarkable qualities that we can't begin to imagine. If only we had some of their skills...

We have language, giving us a sophisticated form of communication. Ants may not be able to talk as we do (How could a mandible purse its lips?), but they “speak” to each other in a very sophisticated language: they use dozens of different types of pheromones to communicate. They combine various kinds of pheromones to give each other various kinds of messages. The most common use is to lay down a pheromone trail that guides sister ants to a stash of food, the garbage dump, burial grounds, or the way back home.

Ants' pheromone chemicals are incredibly potent—they need to be, when you think about one tiny ant laying down a path over several yards long. In fact, scientists have demonstrated that just a single milligram of pheromone (less than a thousandth of an ounce!) can lay down an ant trail that would circle the Earth 60 times!

While humans tend to come in one size, some ants (even of the same species) may be 200 times larger than others (depending on the individual duties of each of them in the colony)! Each size ant has its specific job within the colony, and they cooperate beautifully, to accomplish their sophisticated tasks. Think how a human being, 200 times larger than another human of the same species, would treat its tiny relative.

When it comes to the subject of sex, humans and ants could hardly differ more. The colony is composed entirely of females—all sisters, the daughters of one queen. When a nascent female ant mates with a male (who immediately thereafter perishes), she becomes a queen who stores the sperm in her body for 10 years and more, to fertilize millions of eggs. Not much of a sex life!

So the next time you spot an ant trotting across the floor, you might ponder the various ways it is like us (farming, domesticating other critters, and singing as they work), as well as the ways we are alien (pheromone communication, size, and sex). Ain't life's variations grand?

Mother of an Ant

Well... maybe sister of an ant. My, what pincers you have! (Click to enlarge.)

Am Like an Ant

Ants are fascinating creatures, which is why one of my mentors, E.O. Wilson—a distinguished professor and researcher at Harvard—has devoted many decades to the study of their behavior. Wilson was one of the first scholars to describe an ant colony as a “superorganism,” which defines the colony as exhibiting an intelligence and cognitive ability that is far beyond the capabilities of any one ant. Scientists refer to this phenomenon as an “emergent” quality. It is a capability that no human theory or model can predict—it's almost as if it magically appears when a large number of simple creatures cooperate.

We humans tend to look down upon lowly ants as primitive creatures, because any single ant is rather rudimentary, when compared to one of us. An ant doesn't have much of a brain and its behaviors are extremely limited. Yet a colony of ants can perform acts that are strikingly similar to us. Here are a few examples.

Some ant species herd and milk bugs, rather like we herd and milk cattle and sheep. Some ant species are very sophisticated farmers—they are, in fact, considered to form highly-civilized farming communities. Millions of years before we humans discovered agriculture, these ants evolved into accomplished farmers. They are commonly known as leafcutter ants. They harvest leaves of plants (or portions of leaves), which they cut and drop to the ground, where sister transporter ants carry the fragments back to the “farm.” It's not the leaves they are interested in, but the fungus that they cultivate on the leaves and then consume. Our human ancestors could have learned a trick or two about farming from these ants.

Have you ever hummed a tune, as you engage in some routine task? Well, ants do it, too. As the leafcutter ants scissor away at a leaf, they “sing” by rubbing body parts together (sort of like crickets). But these little singers are smart—their singing helps them in their surgical efforts, by assisting their mandibles (their chewing mouth parts) to cut a leaf more efficiently. But they also sing for help. If one ant gets trapped, it cries (oops, sings) out for its sisters to come to the rescue.

We may look at a tiny ant and experience it as an alien critter, but it's more like us than first meets the eye. If we take a closer look—as E.O. Wilson has done all his life—we begin to understand the similarities in our behavior. I may look down upon it, but in many ways I am like an ant.

Next time: ways we ain't like an ant.

Moving Soon

A flock of grackles resting, talking noisily, just before flying off together to feast again. They seem to be auditioning for a part in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds".

Migration Mysteries

Humans have watched animals come and go for millennia, mystified by what was going on. The ancients noted that some birds who are common in the summer are never seen in the winter, but come round once again in the spring. Since our ancestors tended to stay put in one locale, they had little idea of where those species of birds went, before they returned.

One of the first scholars to speculate on the annual movements of birds was Aristotle, who—some 2300 years ago—decided that Greek swallows (who disappeared over the winter) dove into lakes and ponds and slept the cold months away, buried in mud. He also claimed that the redstart (an African songbird with a red belly) transformed itself into a robin (with its red breast) in the fall, then back into a redstart in spring. Such was the stature of Aristotle that these beliefs persisted for over 2000 years.

So, only relatively recently (beginning in the 18^th century) have we come to understand that some bird species migrate seasonally—primarily seeking sources of food. An insect-eating thrush spending its summer in New England is bound to starve if it attempts to overwinter there, so evolution has taught it to fly to Latin America for the winter, to feast on bugs down there.

The astonishing feats of many migrating birds have been documented—but many mysteries remain. They are gradually being solved with sophisticated scientific studies. The distances they travel boggles the mind. The Arctic tern flies 20,000 miles from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back! It's the long-distance flight champion of birds.

The seasonal destinations of migrating birds is now pretty well known, through the use of various scientific tracking devices, but many riddles remain about how birds do it. How does a thrush leave its hollow in the woods of New England, fly to a certain hillside in Panama, and return to the same hollow next spring? It is known that birds use a spectrum of techniques—the Earth's magnetic field, the position of the sun and stars, landmarks such as rivers and mountains, even following roads—but specifically how a given species does it is still being sorted out.

Birds are not the only migrators, however. Whales seasonally journey up to 12,000 miles, but are tough to follow, since they do it hidden underwater. The Monarch butterfly travels from as far north as Canada to one specific mountainside in Mexico.

Then there are other mysterious movements made by some critters that are not necessarily seasonal, but still remarkable, in that they travel significant distances and unfailingly return home. Honeybees use various landmarks, as well as the sun's position, to return to their hive and describe to their hivemates the exact location of the pollen and nectar they've found, using the “waggle dance.”

Recent scientific studies have shown that pesky garden snails plucked from the veggies they are chewing on and transported up to 60 feet away, will navigate back and resume their meal. I learned years ago that a box turtle we found dining on our tomatoes and then carted several hundred feet into the woods, would just be back the next morning. That's a better homing instinct than I have! A few times I've wandered as little as a half mile into the forest and became disoriented. Good thing I have never tried to walk to Panama... I'd never come back!

Bored

Two kinds of borers: Pine borer larva (top) and white oak borer beetle (bottom).