Seahorses (Hippocampus spp.) which are fish, have an unusual reproductive system. The males get “pregnant”, meaning that they carry the eggs, which are deposited in the male’s pouch by the female and then fertilized there. (Note: this doesn’t mean that seahorse males are “females”, or that there are more than two sexes!) We don’t really know why males gestate the eggs, but we do know that females produce eggs faster than males can gestate them. This means that, unlike most animals, females compete for the attention of males. Here’s a birth; National Geographic says that 2,000 babies are being born. Wikipedia says that the babies can be as few as 5 or as many as 25.
That’s your biology of the day; and I am sorry that for the next few days I won’t be posting much.
Who knew that magnetic fields could be so useful?
Everything in the Universe spins. Galaxies, planets, stars, and black holes all rotate, even if just a bit. It comes from the fact that the clouds of scattered gas and dust of the cosmos are never perfectly symmetrical. But the Universe as a whole does not rotate. Some objects spin one way, some another, but add them all up, and the total rotation is zero. At least that's what we've thought. But a new study suggests that the Universe does rotate, and this rotation solves the big mystery of cosmology known as the Hubble tension.
Today we have the birds of British Columbia by reader Paul Handford. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them,
I suspect that “endless mountains and forests” come to mind for many when envisioning what British Columbia, in Canada’s far west, but, as well as those dominant aspects of BC’s landscape, the south-central portion of the province, between the Coast and Rocky mountain ranges, is pretty dry, given that it sits in the rain-shadow caused by the Coast Ranges that capture much of the moisture from the moist air-masses that roll in off the Pacific Ocean.
Accordingly, this part of BC supports a mix of dry grassland and sagebrush at lower elevations— much of it along the river valleys— with woodlands and forest higher up. So it’s a diverse region, and very beautiful— as is all of BC.
These pics are from around our home in the hills on the outskirts of Kamloops, and the surrounding area.
Bohemian waxwing, Bombycilla garrulus. S. Thompson river valley:
Lazuli bunting, Passerina amoena. Valleyview trails:
Western tanager, Piranga ludoviciana. Barnhartvale:
Clark’s nutcracker, Nucifraga columbiana. Barnharvale:
Common Raven, Corvus corax. Dallas-Barnhartvale Nature Park:
Steller’s jay, Cyanocitta stelleri:
Chipping sparrow, Spizella passerina:
Dark-eyed Junco, Junco hyemalis:
Vesper sparrow, Pooecetes gramineus:
Pine grosbeak, Pinicola enucleator:
Red crossbill, Loxia curvirostra:
Tree swallow, Tachycineta bicolor: