Adelie penguin juvenile by J.D. Gantz
More random thoughts about bartending
11 years ago
Friday, February 5, 2016
Kuechly the penguin takes on mini Peyton Manning in cute video
02.04.2016
GREENSBORO, NC (WWAY) — Carolina Panthers fans come in all shapes and sizes. Even a penguin is pulling for the boys in blue on Sunday.
In a video posted by the Greensboro Science Center, Kuechly the penguin takes on a mini Peyton Manning. The penguin, named for star player Luke Kuechly, easily defeats the mini football team, an event many Panthers fans hope is a foreshadow for Super Bowl 50.
Congrats Kuechly the penguin! Keep Pounding!
source
Lucky stiffs! 18 Detroit Zoo staffers on 10-day trip to Antarctica
Royal Oak —
Eighteen employees of the Detroit Zoo are on a privately funded cruise
to Antarctica this week after not enough major donors were able to fill
the available slots.
The zoo is paying the approximately $36,000 combined airfare for the staffers, including zoo CEO Ron Kagan, to get from Detroit to Punta Arenas, Chile. They are joining 35 major donors on the voyage.
Six zoo employees originally were scheduled to go.
Staffers on the trip include the zoo’s chief operating officer, chief development officer, chief financial officer, two veterinarians, a curator, researcher, educational staff and others who are experts in researching and caring for penguins.
The trip, which began Monday, comes as the zoo is completing work on the $29.5 million Polk Penguin Conservation Center, which is scheduled to open in April.
The major donors are paying for most of the trip, sponsored by the Detroit Zoological Society, that begins at King George Island near the Antarctic Circle. The voyage includes roughly a dozen stops along the Antarctic Peninsula to see wildlife such as penguins, whales and seals among the continent’s fjords and icebergs. “We had a few donors and board members who dropped out which freed up some cabins that would otherwise go empty so we are taking a few extra of our people on the trip than we originally planned,” Kagan said before departing on the trip.
Donors are paying the cost to lease the Ocean Nova boat, which can carry 68 passengers and 35 crew. The zoo paid the airfare, spokeswoman Patricia Janeway said.
Rates on the Ocean Nova are $21,995 for a single occupancy cabin, $15,595 each for double occupancy and $13,595 for triple.
The staffers’ airfare will come from zoo coffers, which are partially funded by an annual millage levied on Metro Detroit taxpayers.
A 10-year, 0.1-mill tax for zoo operations was approved in 2008 by voters in Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties. It provides about 30 percent of the zoo’s $34 million operating budget with about 13 percent of the millage dollars coming from Oakland County, 11 percent from Wayne County and 6 percent from Macomb County.
Jeff Hauswirth, chairman of the Oakland County Zoo Authority, which oversees money collected from county residents through the millage, said there are no restrictions other than discretionary expenditures for operations and completing the zoo’s mission in how the millage money is used.
“The zoo has found these trips to be helpful in meeting operational expenses,” he said. “The penguin center being constructed — with the help of donors — will be the premier exhibit of its kind in the entire country.”
Kagan said the zoo sponsors “at least two or three trips a year,” including to the Amazon, working to improve villages and deliver supplies; to view polar bears in northern Canada; and to East and South Africa.
Janeway said more employees than expected were given the opportunity to go on the expedition after several donors and board members either chose not to go or were late cancellations. “We would have been sailing with some empty cabins,” she said.
The object of the trip is two-fold, Kagan said. Travelers get to experience the wonder and beauty of Antarctica first-hand, and zoo officials hope to raise money for exhibits. “Donor cultivation trips are pretty common at zoos,” he said. “This one might be a bit larger than some, but we felt there was sufficient interest to justify leasing a boat.”
Kagan said it’s still to be determined how much the zoo will raise as a result of the trip. “Last year we had $3 million in donations stemming from such a trip,” he said. “The year before, $10 million. We feel it is important to do this and have realized sizable donations from the trip.”
Rob Vernon, a spokesman for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, said “educational trips for donors and others are not out of line, but are a common and very accepted, justifiable practice that many facilities use to get support for their programs and efforts.” The association has 230 members across North America.
Kagan said those on the trip will meet with researchers such as a veterinarian who has been doing research around the country on captive penguin health; the director of animal welfare, who is an expert on penguin welfare; a bird department supervisor with 30 years of experience working with penguins; and world-renowned polar ecologist and penguin expert Dr. Bill Fraser, who also serves as a design consultant on the Polk Penguin Conservation Center.
The Ocean Nova will also stop at the U.S. Palmer Research Station to pick up a bird department staff member who is living at the research station for three months. “We have filled this (trip) a couple times before but some people had to drop out this year,” said Lloyd Semple, retired dean of University of Detroit Mercy School of Law who became the zoo’s board chairman last June. Semple said he was not able to sail this year due to health issues, but he called it “a trip of a lifetime.”
Semple said the zoo is only going to get better as a result of trips like the Antarctica expedition. “We are in the process of building a $30 million penguin center and its going to be the most spectacular exhibit of its type anywhere and a major, major attraction for the zoo and the city,” Semple said.
source
The zoo is paying the approximately $36,000 combined airfare for the staffers, including zoo CEO Ron Kagan, to get from Detroit to Punta Arenas, Chile. They are joining 35 major donors on the voyage.
Six zoo employees originally were scheduled to go.
Staffers on the trip include the zoo’s chief operating officer, chief development officer, chief financial officer, two veterinarians, a curator, researcher, educational staff and others who are experts in researching and caring for penguins.
The trip, which began Monday, comes as the zoo is completing work on the $29.5 million Polk Penguin Conservation Center, which is scheduled to open in April.
The major donors are paying for most of the trip, sponsored by the Detroit Zoological Society, that begins at King George Island near the Antarctic Circle. The voyage includes roughly a dozen stops along the Antarctic Peninsula to see wildlife such as penguins, whales and seals among the continent’s fjords and icebergs. “We had a few donors and board members who dropped out which freed up some cabins that would otherwise go empty so we are taking a few extra of our people on the trip than we originally planned,” Kagan said before departing on the trip.
Donors are paying the cost to lease the Ocean Nova boat, which can carry 68 passengers and 35 crew. The zoo paid the airfare, spokeswoman Patricia Janeway said.
Rates on the Ocean Nova are $21,995 for a single occupancy cabin, $15,595 each for double occupancy and $13,595 for triple.
The staffers’ airfare will come from zoo coffers, which are partially funded by an annual millage levied on Metro Detroit taxpayers.
A 10-year, 0.1-mill tax for zoo operations was approved in 2008 by voters in Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties. It provides about 30 percent of the zoo’s $34 million operating budget with about 13 percent of the millage dollars coming from Oakland County, 11 percent from Wayne County and 6 percent from Macomb County.
Jeff Hauswirth, chairman of the Oakland County Zoo Authority, which oversees money collected from county residents through the millage, said there are no restrictions other than discretionary expenditures for operations and completing the zoo’s mission in how the millage money is used.
“The zoo has found these trips to be helpful in meeting operational expenses,” he said. “The penguin center being constructed — with the help of donors — will be the premier exhibit of its kind in the entire country.”
Kagan said the zoo sponsors “at least two or three trips a year,” including to the Amazon, working to improve villages and deliver supplies; to view polar bears in northern Canada; and to East and South Africa.
Janeway said more employees than expected were given the opportunity to go on the expedition after several donors and board members either chose not to go or were late cancellations. “We would have been sailing with some empty cabins,” she said.
The object of the trip is two-fold, Kagan said. Travelers get to experience the wonder and beauty of Antarctica first-hand, and zoo officials hope to raise money for exhibits. “Donor cultivation trips are pretty common at zoos,” he said. “This one might be a bit larger than some, but we felt there was sufficient interest to justify leasing a boat.”
Kagan said it’s still to be determined how much the zoo will raise as a result of the trip. “Last year we had $3 million in donations stemming from such a trip,” he said. “The year before, $10 million. We feel it is important to do this and have realized sizable donations from the trip.”
Rob Vernon, a spokesman for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, said “educational trips for donors and others are not out of line, but are a common and very accepted, justifiable practice that many facilities use to get support for their programs and efforts.” The association has 230 members across North America.
Kagan said those on the trip will meet with researchers such as a veterinarian who has been doing research around the country on captive penguin health; the director of animal welfare, who is an expert on penguin welfare; a bird department supervisor with 30 years of experience working with penguins; and world-renowned polar ecologist and penguin expert Dr. Bill Fraser, who also serves as a design consultant on the Polk Penguin Conservation Center.
The Ocean Nova will also stop at the U.S. Palmer Research Station to pick up a bird department staff member who is living at the research station for three months. “We have filled this (trip) a couple times before but some people had to drop out this year,” said Lloyd Semple, retired dean of University of Detroit Mercy School of Law who became the zoo’s board chairman last June. Semple said he was not able to sail this year due to health issues, but he called it “a trip of a lifetime.”
Semple said the zoo is only going to get better as a result of trips like the Antarctica expedition. “We are in the process of building a $30 million penguin center and its going to be the most spectacular exhibit of its type anywhere and a major, major attraction for the zoo and the city,” Semple said.
source
British Antarctic Territory Features Emperor Penguin on Titanium and Silver Crown Coins
Indigenous and unique to the Antarctic continent and surrounding islands and coasts, the emperor penguin, or Aptenodytes Forsteri, are truly beautiful (though flightless) birds, and are the tallest and heaviest of all penguin species. On average, they measure 115 cm (about three feet) in height, which is the height of the average six-year-old human.
Emperor penguins are also the only bird to inhabit the open ice of Antarctica during the winter, trekking 30 to 75 miles or (50 to 120 kilometers) over the ice to breeding colonies. They spend their entire lives in Antarctica, where the temperatures can drop to as low as -60°C. These brilliant birds have special adaptations to survive in such low temperatures, with their large stores of insulating body fat and several layers of scale-like feathers that protect them from icy winds; they also huddle close together in large groups to keep themselves and each other warm.
The male and female are similar in plumage and size, with black dorsal sides and head, a white belly, pale yellow breast, and bright yellow ear patches. While the female lays a single egg each season, both mother and father take turns incubating the egg while the other returns to the sea to feed. The female carefully passes the egg to the male before journeying up to 50 miles (80 km) to the open ocean where she can feed. During this time, the males are in charge of keeping the egg safe and warm in the breeding ground. They do this by balancing the egg on their feet and covering it with feathered skin called a ‘brood pouch.’ It takes about two months for the eggs to hatch.
source
South Georgia Island: A Wilderness Replenished
A determined effort brings seals, fish and penguins back to South Georgia Island, near Antarctica
The monument to Shackleton on South Georgia. He died of a
heart attack and was buried on the island in 1922, having returned to
the spot six years after his famous Antarctic expedition.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
But don’t be fooled: The apparently pristine natural beauty of South Georgia is new. Like an old master painting that was badly damaged but has since been painstakingly restored, South Georgia was once utterly desecrated and is now gloriously refurbished.
The island was uninhabited when, on Jan. 17, 1775, HMS Resolution dropped anchor in what is now called Possession Bay, and Captain Cook claimed it on behalf of King George III. His men discharged their weapons “to the utter amazement of the seals and the penguins,” wrote the naturalist George Forster.
A century ago, however, when the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his five companions landed here, after bringing a small boat through 800 miles of stormy seas following the sinking of their ship Endurance, there were no fur seals and few penguins to greet him. The reason Shackleton came to South Georgia for help was precisely because it wasn’t wilderness but was inhabited, indeed industrialized. He was heading for one of island’s four small towns, in which lived nearly 2,000 people, mostly Norwegians and Scots.
A southern elephant seal pup surrounded by penguins at Gold Harbour, South Georgia, Antarctic Peninsula
Photo:
Justin Hofman/Barcroft Media/Getty Images
Yet today the island looks again much more like it was in Cook’s day than in Shackleton’s. The total human population is about 25 in summer (though some 8,000 tourists visit each summer on cruise ships and sleep on board). There are now some four million fur seals. They are everywhere, growling and moaning in crowds on the beaches, in the tussock grass and in the ruins of the towns. Elephant seals snooze and belch in heaps on every beach. King penguins abound: One colony has gone from 350 pairs in 1912 to 60,000 pairs today. Even the whales are back: Humpbacks and right whales were blowing regularly off the coast last month.
The plunder of South Georgia’s seas has also been halted. Fisheries regulation arrived with the declaration of a 200-mile limit around the island in 1993. In exchange for a hefty fee a handful of licensed vessels fish these waters for krill, ice fish and Patagonian toothfish (known on menus as Chilean sea bass). Each boat has a beacon transmitting an automatic identification system and carries an observer on board. No boat may fish in water shallower than 700 meters or in certain closed “boxes,” where the young toothfish live. Illegal fishing has almost entirely ceased.
In the 1990s, the long lines of baited hooks used to catch toothfish had begun catching albatrosses as well. Soon the populations of black-browed, gray-headed and wandering albatross were in free fall.
Today simple devices for preventing albatrosses getting hooked have completely solved that problem locally. The toothfish fishery has won coveted accreditation as sustainable from the Marine Stewardship Council. Far from boycotting “Chilean sea bass” in restaurants, as some marine preservationists advocate, you should go for it, so long as it comes with MSC certification.
Today, the fishermen have a new problem: Orcas and sperm whales have learned to steal their catch. Orcas bite the toothfish off the hooks as they are retrieved. Sperm whales find the lines on the sea floor and strip them of fish, apparently not bothered that this leaves hooks pierced into their own skin. Devices that transmit deafening sounds to deter the orcas proved counterproductive: The whales soon realized that the unpleasant sound was a dinner bell.
Most remarkable of all, the island is now free of rats. Between 2011 and 2015, the South Georgia Heritage Trust raised and spent more than $10 million to buy helicopters and spread poisoned bait over all the rat-infested parts of the island. This was a unique logistical achievement on a large mountainous island, accessible only by ship through the world’s stormiest seas. Even a few years ago, many people thought it was a mad plan. But it worked, and petrels and pipits can breed freely again here.
A spectacular ecological restoration has occurred, a wilderness replenished—on a scale probably unmatched anywhere else in the world. Last month, as I sat at the dining table of Pat Lurcock (one of three government officers for the whole island) at King Edward Point, eating potted krill and watching the light fade on the glaciers, I surveyed a wondrous scene: Stormy petrels flitted up the bay to feed their young, fur seals porpoised through the water, king penguins cooled their feet on the snow, and plump elephant seal pups snoozed on the steps of the laboratory.
Of course, challenges remain for South Georgia’s ecology. Rats or other pests may yet escape from ships that dock here (one rat jumped ship last year, but it was soon spotted and dispatched). So all cargo is minutely inspected and all visitors must wear clean, preferably new, clothing and thoroughly clean out their backpacks. Gentoo penguins have failed to breed at all this year, for lack of krill nearby. This may or may not be a symptom of climate change, which is responsible for the retreat of many of South Georgia’s glaciers since the time of Cook and Shackleton.
But after centuries of foolish plunder, pause to reflect what an astonishing transformation has been achieved by wise management. We can now see what Captain Cook saw: an ice-capped island looming over verdant bays teeming with wildlife. There is a lesson here for the whole planet: With prosperity and technology and determination, we can restore wilderness.
—The most recent of Mr. Ridley’s many books is “The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge.” He is a member of the British House of Lords.
source
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Newport’s prognosticating penguin disagrees with Ohio rodent
Paula did not see shadow at Newport Aquarium
Feb 02, 2016
Paula the prognosticating penguin waddled outside of the Newport Aquarium Tuesday morning and did not see her shadow. She predicted an early spring for the Cincinnati area, agreeing with the famed groundhog in Punxsutawney.
However, Paula seems to be at odds with Ohio’s groundhog Buckeye Chuck. Chuck, the groundhog from Marion, is reported to have seen his shadow Tuesday morning.
According to legend, if a critter sees its shadow on Feb. 2, winter will last another month-and-a-half. If he doesn't see it, spring will come early.
source
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Chester Zoo - Secret Life of the Zoo TV stars
Each
year, the zoo has around 1.6m visitors and now they will get to explore
and see these amazing animals close up in this new Channel 4 series.
The Secret Life of the Zoo
will take viewers on a journey, capturing in intimate detail both the
remarkable behaviour of the animals and their close relationships with
their keepers, using a range of filming techniques.
From
a giraffe baby dropping six feet through the air as it’s born, to
tigers moving house and a pregnant viper being x-rayed, the series will
present these spectacular rites of passage in the lives of rare animals
as never before.
So who are the stars of the zoo?
Rudd and Spike the Penguins
Rudd is an elderly South American humboldt penguin. Humboldt
Penguins are social animals, living in relatively large colonies of
closely spaced burrows.
Usually penguins enjoy an array of
partners but many years ago Rudd settled down with fellow penguin Spike
at Chester Zoo. The two have been a happy couple for several years. In
his old age, Rudd receives medication each day with tablets delivered at
feeding time.
Spike and Rudd are the oldest members of Chester
Zoo’s Humboldt Penguin colony, which consists of about fifty penguins,
part of a European Endangered Species Breeding Programme.
The colony has an excellent breeding record and many of the youngsters have gone on to join breeding groups in other zoos.
Chester
Zoo’s penguin enclosure has an underwater viewing area where you can
see our Humboldt Penguins ‘fly’ through the water at speeds of up to
25mph.
Animal Swap at the Long Island Aquarium; New Penguins
(Long Island, NY) Long Island Aquarium is pleased to announce two animal exchanges within the Penguin Pavilion and Otter Falls exhibits.The Long Island Aquarium recently relocated two of their female African Black-footed Penguins, Elaine and Jerry, to the Metro Richmond Zoo in Virginia. In exchange, the Aquarium acquired two males, Simon (born in August 2014) and Jim (born in October 2015). The move was beneficial to both facilities with regards to their breeding programs. The African penguin population has declined more than 60% in the wild due to human intervention including commercial overfishing of their main food source, oil spills and the collection of guano (which penguins use in their nests) as fertilizer. To help with their populations, many zoos and aquariums participate in a breeding program in an effort to gain public support for conservation of the species.
Simon and Jim, two African Black-footed Penguins. Photo Credit: Long Island Aquarium.
African penguins mate for life and the Aquarium had an uneven ratio of females to males, which meant a few of the females did not have a male to bond with. These girls will now have the opportunity to find a mate at their new facility. The new male penguins will also have the chance to find a partner when they get a little older and have the opportunity to connect with the rest of the Aquarium’s colony. Simon, the older penguin is currently out on display. Jim remains behind the scenes while waiting to lose the rest of his baby feathers. He cannot swim until those feathers are replaced with his new waterproof set. The Metro Richmond Zoo is thrilled to have the two females as they bring fresh bloodlines to their breeding program. This move provides great genetic diversity to both facilities.
source
Monday, February 1, 2016
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