No vestige of a beginning

What I say: I feel like everyone is mad at me.

What I mean: I got the impression that one specific person is mad at/dissatisfied with/disappointed in me and that feeling has bled over into my perception of literally all other people, because emotionally I cannot grasp the concept that negative feelings or reactions to me are not 100% universal, and as I mostly define myself by what other people think of me I can barely imagine what it feels like to be an individual with free-standing feelings and depth of character separate from what is decided by the judgement of others, thus enforcing the idea that when one person is upset at me then everyone is, because when someone else decides what I am it becomes true.

I spent a year looking for this post.

Wolf vs dog intelligence test 

Wolf researcher Zsófia Virányi at the Wolf Science Center in Austria wants to test how domestication has effected dog’s intelligence. It’s wolf vs dog in the battle for a piece of cheese!

(Excerpt from BBC’s show Bang Goes the Theory - Series 6 Episode 8)

Mexican wolf captured in Chiricahua area of Arizona

March 31st, 2017 - Crews with the Interagency Field Team (IFT) captured a female Mexican Gray wolf on private ranch land in southeastern Arizona, according to a recent Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD) release.

The female wolf is part of the ongoing reintroduction effort. She was relocated to the Sevilleta Wolf Management Facility in New Mexico where it is reported she is in good health. This female was born in 2016, as part of a captive breeding program in Cananea, Mexico and was released in October 2016 in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico some 90 miles from the international border, according to the release.

She was first sighted in Arizona on March 19, by an AGFD wildlife manager and again on March 22 by ranch employees, before she was caught on March 26.  

According to the release when this wolf was spotted on March 22, she did not retreat from the people when they tried to haze her out of the area. Officials believe the wolf was alone and no further wolf sightings have been reported.  

Reporting parties at first stated the wolf was wearing a radio collar. AZGFD crews searched by air on March 22, but could find no signal coming from the collar and later determined that it was non-functional. Her last collar transmission was on Feb. 14, 2017 only 21 miles south of the border with New Mexico.  

Ranchers in the area where she was found reported livestock deaths, and according to the release the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service – Wildlife Services investigated eight livestock carcasses between March 22 and 27 to determine the cause of death. Results showed that only one animal had been killed by a wolf. According to reports four died of natural causes, two of unknown causes and one was unable to be investigated due to deterioration of the carcass.

The rancher whose livestock was confirmed killed by a wolf can apply for compensation through the Arizona Livestock Loss Board. Additionally, area ranchers can receive funding to implement actions to minimize wolf-livestock interaction through Defenders of Wildlife and the Mexican Wolf Fund.

“We were decisive in our management actions because this wolf was young, alone, genetically important, and not affiliated with another pack,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southwest Regional Director Benjamin Tuggle. “Future management actions may differ based on the circumstances of each scenario.”

The area in Arizona where the wolf was captured falls within the federal Mexican Wolf Experimental Population Area (MWEPA) in the U.S. According to the release in 2015 the designation was revised and provides flexibility for managing the Mexican wolves as part of an experimental population.  Before 2015 the MWEPA ran from Interstate 40 south to Interstate 10 in Arizona and New Mexico, the new revision extended the southern boundary to the international border to provide more flexibility for management in the area.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), along with the AGFD, the Mexican government, and New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, are reviewing biological information for the development of a revised Mexican wolf recovery plan. That review focuses on recovery south of I-40 and into Mexico with the expectation that populations in the two countries will be connected.   Mexico has been a partner in the recovery of the Mexican wolf since the two countries established a binational captive breeding program in the 1970s to halt the extinction of the Mexican wolf. The Mexican government began re-establishing Mexican wolves back into the wild in 2011, following their elimination from the wild in Mexico in the 1980s.

The Mexican wolf recovery program is a partnership between the USFWS, AGFD, White Mountain Apache Tribe, USDA Forest Service, USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service – Wildlife Services, and several participating counties. The IFT is responsible for the day-to-day management of the Mexican wolf population and includes field personnel from several of the partner agencies.

For more information on the Mexican Wolf Reintroduction Program, visit www.fws.gov/southwest/es/mexicanwolf or www.azgfd.gov/wolf.

Source

Are ravens responsible for wolf packs?

April 11, 2017 - Scientists who watched wolves on Isle Royale in Lake Superior came up with the raven-wolf pack theory after puzzling over a question: Why do wolves hunt in large groups when a single wolf can take down a moose?

To find a possible answer, John Vucetich and Rolf Peterson of Michigan Tech and Thomas Waite of Ohio State University examined 27 years of wolf observations on Isle Royale in northern Michigan. Isle Royale, 45 miles long and up to nine miles wide, sits in the northwest lobe of Lake Superior. A national park, the island supports a population of a few dozen wolves and hundreds of moose. Peterson studied the wolves for more than 30 years, and the researchers used observations from Peterson and his co-workers in the present study.

Peterson’s team witnessed a single wolf killing a moose 11 times, which weakened the notion that wolves hunt in packs because of the difficulty of killing a moose without help. Vucetich, Peterson and Waite used the years of data from the Isle Royale wolf study to calculate that — in terms of energy burned and meat gained — wolves would do best hunting in pairs.

A 1,000-pound moose is much more than two wolves can eat right away, and that’s where the ravens come in. In a study published in Animal Behaviour, the scientists detailed these facts about ravens found by other scientists: Individual ravens can eat and carry away up to 4 pounds of food per day from a large carcass. Ravens were responsible for moving half of a 660-pound moose carcass from a kill site in the Yukon, Canada.

During the 27 years of Peterson’s wolf observations used in the recent study, ravens were present at every wolf kill, often within 60 seconds of a moose’s death. Noted raven researcher Bernd Heinrich has suggested that ravens evolved with wolves, with ravens possibly leading wolves to moose or caribou, and then later feeding upon the carcasses torn open by wolves.

That the wolf pack exists because of ravens is a new idea, supported by the group’s “conservative assumption” that wolves lose up to 44 pounds of food per day to ravens while feeding upon a carcass, and that a pair of wolves loses about 37 percent of a moose carcass to ravens while a pack of six wolves loses just 17 percent.

Ravens sneak in to eat or carry away scraps of moose flesh and organs while wolves are feeding or resting away from the carcass, and the more ravens there are (researchers have counted up to 100 near kill sites), the harder it is for wolves to chase them off.

The urge not to die by starvation may drive wolves to kill “approximately twice as many large prey as would be needed in the absence of ravens,” the scientists wrote. They also wrote that 85 to 90 percent of carnivore species hunt alone, and the wolf pack might not exist if not for the pesky, bold raven.

A version of this column first appeared in 2004. Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.

Source

Picture by Lassi Rautiainen

By ulla r.

Rilo Kiley is one of my favorite bands of all time.

I know I’ve found love when I don’t feel like I have to perform a made up identity for them