Walking bats!
Bats are the only mammals that can fly. Not only that, did you know that some bats walk too? Of the 1,100 bat species known today, the lesser short-tailed bat and the American common vampire bat (the only mammals that feed entirely on blood!) are the only two known to walk on the ground. Watch a video of the lesser short-tailed bats walk, climb and hunt.

The recent discovery of fossils of an extinct walking bat in northwestern Queensland, Australia, suggests that today’s lesser short-tailed bats descended from 20-million-year-old Australian relatives.

Chimp plans stone attacks on zoo visitors

A male chimpanzee in a Swedish zoo planned hundreds of stone-throwing attacks on zoo visitors, according to researchers. Keepers at Furuvik Zoo discovered that the chimp collected and stored stones that he would later launch toward onlookers. (No one was injured.) Also, the chimp learned to recognize how and when parts of his concrete enclosure could be pulled apart to make further projectiles.

The findings were reported in the journal Current Biology. There has been scant evidence in previous research that animals can plan ahead. Crucial to the study is the fact that Santino, a chimpanzee at the zoo in the city north of Stockholm, collected the stones in a calm state, before the zoo opened in the morning. He threw the stones hours later in an "agitated" state – displaying his dominance to zoo visitors.

This suggests that Santino was anticipating a future mental state – an ability that has been difficult to definitively prove in animals, according to Mathias Osvath, a cognitive scientist from Lund University in Sweden and author of the new research. Read more at BBC News.

Submitted by Meg Bakewell, Ph.D. student.

Chimps invent brush-tipped tool

Wild African chimpanzees invented a new and improved brush-tipped tool to gather more termites to eat, according to a new study in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters.

Co-author Josep Call told Discovery News that chimps first uproot the stem of a plant "or use their teeth to clip the stem at the base and then remove the large leaf from the distal end by clipping it with their teeth before transporting the stem to the termite nest."

At the termite site, "they complete tool manufacture by modifying the end into a 'paint brush' tip by pulling the stem through their teeth, splitting the probe lengthwise by pulling off strands of fiber, or separating the fibers by biting them," added Call, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology.

Call and colleagues observed this process while conducting surveillance at termite nests located at Goualougo Triangle, Republic of Congo. Chimpanzee populations elsewhere are known to do something similar, only with plain-tipped sticks. The scientists determined the brush-tipped tool does a better job, however, since it retrieves more termites.

Birdie boogie!
Another ability long-thought to belong solely to humans, like tool-use or counting, does in fact occur in other species, according to two new studies, published in Current Biology. In this case, it is the capacity to move rhythmically with music. Studying two different birds the research groups found that the birds weren’t just moving randomly or mimicking owners, but actually changing the tempo of their movement to match the music—in other words, dancing. Watch the YouTube video. Read the news written by Jeremy Hance on Mongabay.com. Read the Harvard University press release.

Have you seen this tree?
While walking around near downtown Ann Arbor, Birgit Otte of U-M’s Department of Astronomy saw the tree pictured here. She had never seen it before and wondered what it was. Her curiosity led her to write to EEB for assistance.

Professor Paul E. Berry replied “This is Tamarisk or Salt cedar, genus Tamarix and likely the species Tamarix ramosissima. It is native to Eurasia and is a serious invasive plant in drier areas of the western U.S., but in our neck of the woods it just stays in place."


Submitted by Birgit Otte, U-M Department of Astronomy, photos: Otte

Diet Coke and Mentos: An explosive combination!

The "Mentos effect" occurs when a Mentos mint, the cult candy associated with dorky 1990s commercials, is dropped into cola, especially diet cola, and usually Diet Coke (although some claim that Diet Pepsi works just as well). The cola immediately fizzes over with geyser-like force, and clips of the reaction, including some choreographed Mentos effect "performance art" have cropped all over sites like YouTube.

But what causes it?

Brian P. Coppola, an Arthur F. Thurnau chemistry professor at the University of Michigan answers this question in this Ann Arbor News article "Frothy mystery: mentos plus diet cola equals drama" by Tracy Davis.

Submitted by Tracy Davis, Ann Arbor, Mich.

An American Robin backyard mystery
This fun fact was prompted by a question from Shirley Spence in Monroe, Mich. who watched this spring as one nest full of robin’s eggs hatched and then two weeks later, to her surprise, new eggs appeared. Because a new nest is built for each brood, she is wondering if the same robin is recycling its nest or if another robin may have come along to take the easy route to residency.

Robert Payne, U-M professor emeritus of zoology and curator emeritus of birds, guesses that the same female laid the eggs because robins are pretty territorial about their nest. Payne says, “Not to worry, dad will look after his young when they leave the nest" so mom can focus on the new hatchlings.

Robin ramblings
Many people consider robin sightings the first real sign of spring but the truth is American Robins spend much of the winter in their usual spring and summer locales. American robins – up to hundreds of thousands of them – can gather in a single winter roost, spending less time in yards where more people notice them. The number of robins present in the northern parts of the range varies each year with the local conditions. Some travel to their more southern ranges for part of the winter.

Females sleep on the nests and males gather in roosts during the summertime. As young robins become independent, they join the males in the roost. Female adults go to the roosts only after they are done nesting. An American Robin lays between three to five eggs per clutch and can produce three successful broods in a year. About 40 percent of nests successfully produce young. A quarter of those fledglings survive until late fall. About half of the robins alive in any year will make it to the next. Fortunate robins can reach the ripe old age of 14.

The cup-shaped nest is built by the female, who weaves together the outer foundation with long coarse grass, twigs, paper, and feathers. She lines the inner bowl with mud, smearing it with her breast and then adding fine grass or other soft material to cushion the eggs. The nest can be located on the ground or high up in trees, but most commonly five to 15 feet above ground in dense bushes, in the crotch of trees, or on window ledges or other human structures. In northern areas the first clutch is generally placed in an evergreen tree or shrub, and the later clutches are laid in a deciduous tree.

Dewey, T. and C. Middlebrook. 2001. "Turdus migratorius" (On-line), Animal DiversityWeb. Accessed July 01, 2008.
Sallabanks, R., R. James. 1999. American Robin (Turdus migratorius). Birds of North America, 462: 1-20.

Submitted by Shirley Spence, Monroe, Mich., bottom photo: Shirley Spence

Special thanks to Shirley who loves the fun facts page!

Organic agriculture can feed the world
Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food on individual farms in developing countries, as low-intensive farming on the same land, according to new findings which refute the long-standing claim that organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global population. Low-intensive farming includes many of the traditional methods of peasant cultures around the world. Modern organic methods help enhance fertility and manage pests through recently established ecological discoveries.

Researchers from the University of Michigan found that in developed countries, yields were almost equal on organic and conventional farms. Catherine Badgley, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Ivette Perfecto, professor of natural resources and environment, are co-authors of the paper along with Michael Jahi Chappell, graduate student of ecology and evolutionary biology and several other current and former graduate and undergraduate students from U-M.

In addition to equal or greater yields, the authors found that those yields could be accomplished using existing quantities of organic fertilizers, without putting more farmland into production.

Read the U-M News Service press release
Read an article online at foodfirst.org by M. Jahi Chappell

Picture this: You vs. the chimp

Think chimps are chumps when it comes to serious mental powers like short-term memory? Think again. A new study says that young chimpanzees can significantly outperform you at some short-term memory tasks. Scientists even have the video to prove it. Read on, then watch that video.

Rules of the Game

First, researchers in Japan taught six chimps--three 5-year-olds and their mothers--to recognize and order the numbers 1 through 9. Then they taught them to play a memory game. In the game, the numbers would appear randomly on a video
screen. The object was to touch them in order: 1, 2, 3, etc. But there was a catch. As soon as the chimps pressed 1, the rest of the numbers disappeared, covered over by white boxes. So they had to remember where they had seen the numbers and touch the white boxes that covered them.

Remarkable Results

Not only could the chimps do this just as accurately as college students, they could do it faster, too. So the scientists devised another test, to see who could remember and order five numbers that flashed on a screen for justfractions of a second. Result? Another chimp win. Lead researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa says that chimps seem to
have something akin to "photographic memory," at least for short-term tests. Don't believe it? Well, then, we've got a way for you to test yourself against the chimp and see who comes up champ. Just click the link below for a video test.

Test yourself against the chimp here

by Steve Sampson, KnowledgeNews.net, used with permission