Inspiration - Can a robot make an animal show its true colours?

Does a baboon ever snore when it sleeps? Does a penguin ever glide down a hill purely out of joy? Does a manta ray ever perform a corkscrew manoeuvre?

Natural animal behaviour is notoriously hard to pin down, as many frustrated biologists have experienced in the field. Including me. Why? You’d think you only have to find the animal you want to watch and then keep your eyes peeled. Well, it’s because us biologists have an obsession with natural behaviour, the stuff animals do when they are completely among themselves.

And there you have the problem, by simply being present you’re disturbing the natural environment of those animals and as an effect also their behaviour. Once you’re physically present, you can never be sure whether you are observing natural, normal behaviour anymore. When that certain baboon keeps staring at you, you can be reasonably sure it is not. Even when you let the animals get habituated to your presence, it is never said they go completely back to their former routine. When observing an animal like, for example, an earthworm, something that is not particularly sensitive to your presence, you’ll interfere with ground vibrations when you move, attack risk by birds etc etc.

So what do you do?

With the evolution of digital cameras we are getting a step closer to taking a more hands-off approach. We can take ourselves out of the picture and put in a (disguised) camera that photographs or films the animals for us. Camera traps are an old and well-established method of capturing elusive mammals like the black panther in the Amazon.

We’re sacrificing a lot by using cameras instead of our own eyes howe. For example, a camera doesn’t have neck muscles that can move its lens freely up or down, left or right. You just hope it captures the animal when it is ‘behaving’.

Maybe some of you remember the BBC documentary from 2000 ‘Lions – Spy in the den’. David Attenborough takes people on a journey into a lion’s den with the help of ‘boulder cam’. A motorised camera with microphones all disguised as a rock. It provided a new, fascinating insight in lion behaviour.

Lion cubs are curiously investigating the boulder

cam when it appeared near their den

For an introduction to Lions – Spy in the den, check:http://www.jdp.co.uk/programmes/Lions-Spy-in-the-Den&f=boudlercam1.flv&n=The%20Cubs%20Meet%20Bouldercam


Are robots the future?

Reasonably new technology, known as bionic engineering, has the potential to take this idea even a step further. Now widely used for robotic arms and other handling technology, a German company has experimented in recent years with animal shapes and forms. What they came up with is truly inspiring.











The goal behind this technology is to learn from nature. The overall idea resides in that nature, in billions of years of natural selection, has done the trial and error process for us. It has provided us with the most adapted, most varied and most effective shapes and designs possible. So why not learn from it? While building these animal robots, the designers have found many ways to implement the natural structures into elegant, functional engineering feats.

But that is not particularly why I feel inspired about it. These robots are on a level of perfection that makes them ideal spies. Infiltrating the natural environment as one of their own, manoeuvrable and indistinguishable. It is not like the boulder cam, getting close, but still an outside observant. It could take us truly inside animal populations and observe their true colours. To me, that is an exciting prospect!

Black and White Future

Welcome to the International Year of Biodiversity! I sincerely hope most of you have heard this before by now, as we’re almost five months through it.

Photo by Michael Nichols

Perfect opportunity to put some attention on

one of the most charismatic emblems of biodiversity, the giant panda, the poster child for all endangered species.

However, as most of us seem to acknowledge the image of the black and white bear as a conservation flagship, knowing it as the emblem for WWF since 1961, science has been very slow to take up its cause in earnest.

After a promising start in 1985, it seems the scientific world forgot about the giant panda, although the rest of the world didn’t. Panda science became a solely Chinese undertaking and a much overdue Panda conference in Beijing in 2000 showed they worked their magic flying below the Western radar.

A study published this week in Biology Letters by a joint team from China and the US gives an overview of how far science has come since then and we can expect to happen to this bamboo lover.

Scientific Progression
The main predictor of whether the giant panda will use a certain area as habitat turns out to be age of the forest that is on it. Old forests are perfect for pandas, not only have they been undisturbed, they also contain the large trees pandas use to construct their big, panda-sized dens. Without these, the females are forced to raise their cubs alive in less desirable rock caves.

Unfortunately, the ban on logging throughout the pandas range is just about to expire. It is up to the officials of the Chinese State Forestry Administration to decide what to do with this new insight in the importance of old-growth forests.

There is no debate about whether panda habitat has been disappearing fast in the last decade. But there is also some good news. China’s visionary ‘Grain-to-Green’ policy is working to convert cultivated land on steep slopes back into forests and grassland native to the areas. And it seems the first results are emerging. Also, at least in one of over 50 newly made panda reserves, Guanyinshan, panda habitat has been reported to re-establish itself. This is promising, but it needs to be told that in another key reserve the vegetation seems to be doing the opposite. Time will tell.

Whether this newly emerging panda habitat will offset the changes likely to occur due to climate change is very unclear. Theoretical models show that climate alterations alone may cause the loss of 35-40% of all panda habitat in the next 80 years.

Map by Adelaide Zoo.

An overview of historic and current distribution of the Giant Panda in China shows how much habitat has already been lost. Main factor is the clearing of forest for agriculture, timber and firewood. The pandas are also forced out of the valleys because of human population growth which makes their remaining habitat extremely fragmented. They have more and more trouble migrating. Pandas are illegally poached for their pelts or even caught in traps that were set for other wildlife.

New Developments

So how many are we protecting? That is the notoriously unanswerable question science is still grappling with. There are certainly no more than 3000 animals alive in the wild, most likely a lot less. There are around 240 giant panda living in captivity within China and another 27 outside the country. All in all.. it’s not much. Zoo’s are working together however, to set up a solid breeding program for this very difficult-to-breed species and become the conservation organizations they state to be.

Recently, the Chinese government has lifted the decade-long ban on radio-collaring giant pandas.

This research method is very widely used on all sorts of large vertebrate species, especially on large felines and canines. It puts a specially made collar on the animal that doesn't disturb their normal activities and is fitted with a GPS transmitter. It gives essential insight in the territory size, movement patterns and key habitat areas animals use.

Only four pandas have been fitted with these collars to date but already interesting information begins to trickle in. A female in breeding season was observed to disperse 50km outside her home range for example. This might have large implications on how mating strategies and gene flow work in the panda world. If you look for a mate a lot further than you usually go, you have a big chance to find a panda that is not related to you in any way and make genetically very strong offspring. In a population as small as this, that is essential!

Further research with radio collars will proof to be necessary for further management and policy making.

Although science has waited long to become involved with the Giant Panda, it seems it is determined to make up for lost time. Combined with the already massive public appeal, financial and institutional support from China an abroad, the future of the Panda seems to get a good chance.

Where did Australia’s Giant Reptiles go?

A supersized kangaroo, standing about 3 meters tall and weighing over 200 kilograms, a massive ancestral duck (or ostrich, it is still debated), over 2 meters tall, a wombat the size of a rhino and the largest marsupial ever to walk the earth, aptly named: ‘pouch lion’. These are but a few of the giants that roamed Australia until the late Pleistocene (~125 to ~12 thousand years ago).

This was also the home of one of the largest lizards that have ever existed, Megalania, a monster over 5 meter long, looking similar to a very large Komodo dragon.

None of these animals survive today. Most of Australian megafauna appears to have survived until 51 to 40 thousand years ago after which they suddenly disappeared.

Artist impression of past Australian megafauna, Roberts&Brook 2010, Science.

Extinction Factors

Estimated is that early aboriginal ancestors arrived in Australia between 60 and 45 thousand years ago. Could human impact be the driver behind the demise of the giants? It is likely.

Giant animals breed very slowly, so disturbance of the balance is easy. Even the hunting of juveniles at a rate of one kill per person per decade, something called ‘imperceptible overkill’, could have been the cause. Also, humans are known to disturb habitat, most likely by burning vegetation in this case.

On the other hand, it might have been climate change after all. Australia was drying up during that time. It had been since eight million years ago. The problem is that a dry climate is perfect for creating large lizards and combined with the ever expanding size of their prey, prehistoric Australian lizards got beefier over time – culminating in the titanic Megalania.

Also, the Australian megafauna was well adapted to dry conditions, having survived repeated droughts, before they disappeared during a period with a relatively benign climate.

Climate, humans, both or a third unknown reason? The jury will be out on this one for a while. What is certain though, is that since September 2009 Megalania is not the only ancient supersized lizard in Australia anymore.

Megalania Family

Scott Hocknull, senior curator of geosciences at Australia's Queensland Museum, studied three fossilised bones found in Western Timor Island, part of Indonesia. He was astounded to find that the bones were belonging to a 4 meter long lizard, but neither belonging to a Komodo dragon nor to a Megalania. The bones are dated to the middle of the Pleistocene period, which means the lizard lived alongside both other large giants. More fossils and more study will confirm whether it is indeed a new species.

This new analysis also showed several Komodo dragon bones, at least 300.000 years old have recently been found in Australia. The study reveals that this, among other evidence, builds a strong case for Komodo dragons having originated and evolved their giant size in Australia along the other lizard giants.

How the Komodo dragon managed to survive in Indonesia while it disappeared in its native country where all other megafauna also got extinct is another riddle.

New Blood
A riddle that just got a little more complicated again. In the beginning of April 2010 a new study of the University of Kansas reported of the finding of a new giant lizard species, Varanus bitatawa. In a heavy populated area in the Philippines this monitor lizard of about 2 meter long has managed to remain hidden for science until 2009.

A Varanus bitatawa lizard on its home island of Luzon in the Philippines.
Photograph by Joseph Brown for National Geographic

The discovery has been an enormous surprise for the scientists, it is extremely rare to discover such a large vertebrate species. The lizard has escaped scientific detection by living most of its life high up in trees, living solely on fruit and being incredibly secretive.

But while scientists weren’t aware of its existence, it didn’t come as a surprise for the local tribe who have been hunting the animal for meat as a delicacy. This was also what tipped the researches off in 2001 when they saw photographs of the hunters with their prey.

The team thinks it likely that there are more unknown monitor lizards hidden in the forests of the Philippines. Hopefully they can be found before the disappearing rain forest habitat is completely gone, including its inhabitants.

These large lizards are very likely to be related to the Australian giants. They may be able to shine a light on what triggered the extinction event the other megafauna has experienced and how these remaining species have survived.

Lizards facing dark times

Siesta in the shade during the hot parts of the day. The image conjures thoughts that are lazy and pleasant. Not so much for the global lizard population. For them it means death.

A new study, published in Science, predicts that almost 40% of all global lizard populations will be extinct by 2080. Why? Global warming.

Sinervo and his team of researchers from the University of California have build an elegant, simple computer model based mainly on the body temperature lizards need to be active and the temperature of the environment. The model calculates the risk of extinction for over 1200 lizard species around the globe.

Lizards are, just like all reptiles, cold blooded. This means they cannot regulate their own temperature like we can. They rely on the temperature of the environment to warm them up or cool them down, either by basking in the sun for a while or search for shelter. Their body can tolerate a certain range of temperatures in which it can be active. If their body is too cold they are inactive and if it gets too hot they suffer from heat stress and water loss like we do, eventually dying.

Heating it up

The problem arises with rising temperatures due to global warming and is simple: when it gets warmer lizards will spend more time in shelters and less time hunting and foraging. This results in too little energy to survive.

Spring temperatures seem pivotal as they interfere with breeding season. The study found that in areas where spring temperatures forced the lizards to shelter only about 4 hours a day they survived. When spring temperatures were forcing the lizards to seek cover for most of the day, they went (or already were) extinct.

‘That much downtime means the lizards will pretty much be starving to death and not laying eggs’ said Sinervo in an interview with National Geographic.

Future Predictions

His team put this information, combined with climate data back to 1975 and global warming predictions, into the computer model and calculated the amount of hours lizards would be incapacitated due to heat as well as the hottest temperatures for different parts of the world in the past, present and future.

The results accurately predict various extinctions that have already happened in different parts of the world. It also predicted in a disturbing 39% extinction of global lizard populations and a 20% extinction of all lizard species by 2080.

Areas that seem especially vulnerable are Madagascar and the Amazon. The Madagascan chameleon, Furcifer pardalis, that is shown on this blogs header is one of the reptiles at risk.

Another group at high risk is the live-bearing lizards: the lizards that bear live young instead of laying eggs. Their ecology forced them to develop somewhat lower body temperatures as high temperature might harm the offspring.

Extra Considerations

Although these results are strong and extremely disturbing, some scepticism is necessary. Evidence of local extinction is notoriously hard to find as you might just as well misinterpret a shrunken population that you haven’t detected as being extinct. Time will tell whether this study interpreted right.

Also, populations might move, finding cooler habitat where they aren’t as constricted in foraging time. This trait wasn’t included in the research. But it is worth a short comment.

As easy as it might sound to just move into a cooler habitat there is a catch. Cooler climate is found when moving away from the equator towards the poles or moving up a mountain. But what about the species that already live in those areas? Competition between new arrivals for space and for food might put even more stress on the population that was native to the colder climate and already had a problem with finding an even cooler climate. Moving might be the solution for one species, it might also be the sped-up death of others.

Header photo by Jean-Louis Vandevivère

Welcome!

Welcome to the Popular Biology blog. After reading through Science, a very well-known scientific journal, yesterday the idea of this blog was born. Too much interesting, mind-boggling research is lost in the abyss of scientific journals where no-one else but the scientists can reach them, or care to look for them for that matter. There is much to discover out there and you’d be surprised how much has already been researched, if somebody bothered to tell you.

I do not hold the illusion I am able to bring you all the latest in science, especially sciences not related to my field and I definitely don’t think I am the only one trying to. There is a whole host of popular scientific magazines, TV-channels, blogs, internet sites, newspaper sections and books in existence that all shine their lights on science. I aspire to be a part of that and passionately feel I have a responsibility as a scientist to do so. As a curious person though, I reckon it is simply entertaining to let nature amaze you time and time again. Enjoy!