A Brief History On November 4, 1960, Dr. Jane Goodall observed Chimpanzees creating and using tools, behavior previously believed to be limited to human beings. Digging Deeper Goodall’s stunning discovery took place at the Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanganyika, what is now Tanzania. While many animals use various objects as tools, actually modifying an object into a useful tool is a bit rarer. Chimps even make spears for hunting Bushbabies and monkeys, and their use of tools has been documented to go back thousands of years. Other animals using tools include Sea Otters using rocks to break open shellfish, elephants…
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A Brief History On October 8, 1982, actor Fernando Lamas died, probably best remembered for the Billy Crystal impression saying the phrase, “You look marvelous!” Many other actors and celebrities have been attributed quotations they did not really say, and today we look at a few of those. Digging Deeper PT Barnum, showman and huckster, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Julius Caesar, Roman dictator, “Et tu, Brute?” Albert Einstein, physicist and genius, “If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” Greta Garbo, actress, “I vant to be alone…”…
A Brief History On September 27, 1962, the book, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson was published. The book dealt with environmental science and focused on the widespread use of pesticides and the disinformation provided by the manufacturers of those chemicals. Digging Deeper Carson made a case that the indiscriminate use of these chemicals was poisoning the environment and killing off many beneficial insects along with the pests. Additionally, many birds suffered ill effects from the pesticides, and Carson projected that one day the birds would be gone, hence the title of the book. You might have thought a cataclysmic environmental…
A Brief History On September 7, 1936, Benjamin died. Ben was the last Thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian Tiger or Tasmanian Wolf, a carnivorous marsupial of Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea. The introduction of Dingoes and climate change cut into their population, and hunting pressure did the rest. Digging Deeper Now that we have no living Thylacines, should scientists use cloning to resurrect the species? Are there any moral or practical reasons not to? What about other extinct species? Some of the critters we would like to see brought back through cloning include the Wooly Mammoth and the Wooly…
A Brief History On September 6, 2013, ivory poachers in Africa poisoned and killed 41 elephants at the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. The WWF reports about 20,000 elephants are killed illegally each year in Africa by poachers, out of a world wide total of only 415,000 African elephants. Incredibly, in 1930 there were about 10 million wild elephants in Africa! Digging Deeper Despite strict anti-poaching laws, poaching takes a terrible toll on many types of animals. There may be about 30,000 Rhinos left in Africa, of which only 6000 are Black Rhinos, which numbered over 100,000 as recently as…
