Cephalopodcast

April 27 is World Tapir Day. So go hug your nearest perissodactylid.

Today is World Tapir Day. I know, it’s the kind of celebration that can just sneak up on you out of the woods without you even knowing it. Which is the same kind of problem facing these creatures. They are disappearing from the forest without enough people noticing it.

I met a tapir once. It was at the Belize Zoo, and the tapir was kind of famous, if mostly locally. Her name was April. And profits from the sale of merchandise from the first Tapir Day celebration are going towards the Belize Zoo’s tapir conservation and education programs.

So what is a tapir? They are odd-looking herbivorous mammals that inhabit Central and South America and South-East Asia. In Belize they call them mountain cows, which seems apt if not exact. There are four species left in the world and all face threats from shrinking natural range.

As large herbivores, tapirs are invariably the first species affected by human encroachment into their territory, and amongst the last to return to regrowth forest. They require substantial tracts of undisturbed land to maintain a genetically-diverse population. Tapirs inhabit jungles, grasslands, swamps and cloud forests, yet each is threatened by human activity - be that mining, palm oil plantations, roads or settlements. They form an important part of the ecosystem as seed dispersers, and form one of the oldest surviving genera in the animal kingdom.

Despite their size, history and ecological importance, tapirs remain one of the least recognised species of animals. In comparison with other animals, tapirs feature little in the collective consciousness and are frequently misidentified by zoo visitors. Even in their home ranges, tapirs receive little attention, with exotic species featuring more prominently in zoos, children’s books and the media.

Resources

• Official World Tapir Day Web Site
• Tapir Day: Facebook Group
• Tapir Day forums: Help Name the Tapir Day mascot
• Tapir Day: eStore and Tshirts. Proceeds benefit the Belize Zoo.
• Teacher’s Guide to Tapirs: Tapirs of the World (PDF)
• The Belize Zoo also has a podcast.
• Flickr: skoop102’s all Tapir photoset, including cross-stitch and gingerbread tapir cookies.
• The Tapir Blog
• TAPIRS: The Tapir Preservation Fund (TPF) Blog
• The Tapir Gallery

Tapir Books

• The Tapir’s Morning Bath: Solving the Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest (Paperback) by Elizabeth Royte.
• Jungle Song (Hardcover) by Miriam Moss (Author), Adrienne Kennaway (Illustrator). A story set in a South American tropical rain forest for PreSchool-Grade 3.

Earthcast 2008 Web badge by Jason Robertshaw is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Webcast Around the Earth Day 2008

Earth Day is coming up on April 22 and the fine folks over at the Worldbridges.net community are celebrating by hosting a 24 hour webcast focused on the environment. Earthcast 2008 will feature live, interactive programs from educators, students and other citizens of the planet starting at midnight GMT.

The Other 71%

I am planning on covering one of the hours with a program focused on the other 71% of our planet’s surface. Guests for the program include Dr. Karen James from the Beagle Project and Kevin Zelnio of Deep-Sea News and The Other 95%. I also have feelers out to a few other ocean bloggers. If you know of anyone else who would like to join the conversation, let me know. More details on how to participate will be posted here in the coming days. Stay tuned.

What: This is intended to be a 24 hour long conversation about the health of our planet. We hope to have participants from around the world moderate an day long conversation. Potential guests could include local leaders, student environmental advocates, scientists/engineers, politicians, grassroots leaders, etc.

When: Tuesday, April 22nd 2008. We will follow the 24 hour GMT day (we’ll use the time in Greenwich, England as the standard for planning the time blocks).

Why: The goal is to help our participants (both listeners and moderators) form a more global perspective on the issue of sustainability and the health of the earth.

• Enviroscims: Earth Day 2008 24 Hour Webcastathon!
• Earthcast 2008 flyer (PDF)
• Dr. Karen James, The Beagle Project
• Kevin Zelnio, Deep-Sea News and The Other 95%

UPDATE: Rick MacPherson from Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice and Sunsets is now also on the ticket.

Eggcase from a skate. © J. Robertshaw

The Great Eggcase Hunt

With the coming of spring in the northern hemisphere also comes a time to hunt for eggs. But it’s not just about birds anymore. The folks over at the Shark Trust also want people to head to the beach to look out for the fecundity of fish.

Colloquially known as mermaid’s purses, eggcases are the protective capsules laid by skates and some rays**. Inside is a tiny baby skate and a big yolk sac. Typically the capsules have odd keels and horns to help them remain tangled in seaweed and camouflaged on the bottom. The young develop for several months before hatching out as miniature adults. But after hatching, the horny cases begin to breakdown and may come loose, washing up on the shore. Storms might also dislodge living ones from the bottom. If you find a lot of eggcases in an area, it may indicate that a skate nursery is located nearby. This kind of information is valuable to conservationist who are trying to protect these species.

Why does the Shark Trust want you to record eggcases? In recent decades several species of skate and ray around the…coast have dramatically declined in numbers…The identification of these critical areas will enable the Shark Trust to propose conservation measures, in order to reverse the decline of these charismatic animals.

So now’s your chance to contribute to skate and ray conservation and have a lot of fun at the same time.

They have a lot of resources for citizen scientists and for educators who want to organize a local eggcase hunt. And if you don’t live near the coast, you can still take some time this spring to create your own giant eggcases (PDF link) out of balloons and papier-mâché. Or better yet, make some chocolate ones that you can send to me!

• Great Eggcase Hunt
• A Fieldguide to Eggcases (PDF)
• **What’s the difference between a skate and a ray?

Rabbitfish Helping to Save the Reef

Continuing with my aquatic version of things vernal, there is news that rabbitfish might be helping to save the Great Barrier Reef. Many herbivorous reef fish species like parrotfish and tangs regularly graze on the fast-growing algae of the reefs. But apparently they only like to eat it when it’s young and not too weedy. This is where the rabbitfish comes in.

“Then, to our even greater surprise a fish we had never seen in this area before was observed grazing on the weed. The rabbitfish (Siganus canaliculatus), came out of nowhere and began to clear-fell the weed placed on the reef crest.”

The rabbitfish were caught on underwater videocams, in schools of up to 15 fish, grazing the crest, slopes and outer flats of the reef, and chomping away at more than ten times the rate of other weed-eaters.

• Red Orbit: Rabbitfish Helping to Save the Great Barrier Reef
• Science Daily: Rabbit Fish To The Rescue Of The Reef

sƎʇɐʞs ɹƎɥ :ɐ*