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WHEN A FIASCO HITS ’HOME‘

Thursday, October 7, 2021

In this newsletter, keeping animals away from the California oil slick; deadly quake hits Pakistan; how dogs decode our emotions; a worm that can ’hear’; the fat bear champ ... and a target on giant clams.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ALLEN J. SCHAEBEN, LOS ANGELES TIMES/GETTY IMAGES

By Rachael Bale, ANIMALS Executive Editor

Shaw’s Cove is my beach. That, or Diver’s Cove, right next door. Depends where there’s parking. It’s where my dad tried to convince me not to be afraid of waves, after I got tumbled one too many times. It’s where I brought a beach chair and highlighter to study for exams my senior year of high school. It’s where I remember my childhood each time I fly back to see my parents in Laguna Beach.

Now it’s got golf-ball-size pieces of tar washing up on the Southern California sand. Two skimmers are just off shore, going up and down Laguna’s coast—all of which is a marine protected area—trying to collect the oil, spilled from a broken pipeline off the coast of Huntington Beach, two towns north. All of Laguna’s beaches are closed. In Huntington, oil has reached its ecologically sensitive, biodiverse, painstakingly restored marshes, as our Alejandra Borunda reports. (Pictured above, an oiled Sanderling shorebird in Huntington, where a containment boom blocks oil-contaminated water, pictured below, from the shore.)

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARIO TAMA, GETTY IMAGES

This next time back home, I won’t be stepping onto Shaw’s or Diver’s Cove. Instead I’ll be standing at a distance, wondering how many of the gulls and pelicans of Bird Rock have been oiled, thinking about whether the anemones and urchins in the tide pools at Main Beach will survive, and hoping the sea lions and dolphins have managed to swim far enough away to avoid the fiasco.

It’s not the biggest oil spill we’ve seen in recent years, but only a “little” spill can lay waste to an entire coastal ecosystem. And it reminds me that every ecological disaster occurs in the home of someone—a plant, an animal, or a human.

To get this newsletter regularly, sign up here. And if you think that offshore oil drilling and production should stop or keep on for a while, please let us know.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY @BRENTSTIRTON

Saving chimps, among the gunfire: There’s regular conflict in this eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There's also hope for baby chimps whose parents have been killed. “Raising a baby chimp requires a level of work similar to raising a human,” says photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Brent Stirton. He took images of some of the 100-plus young chimps at the Lwiro Primate Rehabilitation Center for this National Geographic feature. Stirton says he won’t forget the trusting chimps climbing into his arms. “When they put their little hands in mine, it felt exactly as it does when my baby son puts his hand in mine,” he tells us.

SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

TODAY IN A MINUTE

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADAM DEAN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Beware! The trafficking has been little known, but big in scale. We’re talking giant clams, massive mollusks (pictured above) that can grow four feet across and weigh 500 pounds. Criminals kill them and smuggle them to China for their shells, which can be carved like ivory (now banned by China). One seizure of clams weighed 132,000 tons. That’s five times heavier than the Statue of Liberty, Dina Fine Maron reports for our Wildlife Watch unit. (Wildlife Watch is our investigative reporting partnership with the National Geographic Society, focusing on wildlife crime and exploitation. Learn more about the Society's mission here.)

Quake hits Pakistan: Early Thursday, a strong quake struck southern Pakistan, and Reuters reported an initial toll of 20 deaths and 300 people wounded. Hundreds of homes collapsed. Nat Geo's Maya Wei-Haas says the region sits at the boundary of three tectonic plate—the Indian the Eurasian, and the Arabian—and earthquakes are common.

Goodbye Columbus: The zoo in Ohio’s capital is about to lose its accreditation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, NBC4 in Columbus reports. Its former CEO and chief financial officer quit after allegations they misused zoo property for personal profit, and a documentary in August alleged former longtime zoo director Jack Hanna had had improper ties to the big cat trade.

Speaking of zoos: A binturong (a carnivore similar to a civet) and a fishing cat at a zoo in Illinois have been confirmed positive for COVID-19, the USDA reports. This is a first for both species in the United States, Natasha Daly says. In Washington, D.C., all six lions and two tigers who tested positive for COVID-19 at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo are improving, the zoo says.

It’s Otis! That’s the name of this year’s Fat Bear Week winner. The social media contest featured images of heavyweight bears from southwest Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve packing on the pounds before winter. Otis, the three-time previous champ, believed to weigh over a thousand pounds, triumphed again in a reader vote, CNN reports.

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/ALAMYS

Darwin was wrong (about worms): Can earthworms hear? Charles Darwin concluded they couldn’t, after seeing that they didn't wiggle away when his son played bassoon. Ah, but a new study shows that the humble C. elegans, a tiny worm that’s ubiquitous in biology research, can “hear” airborne sound through its skin. The results come from more than a decade of research showing the worm (pictured above) also could smell, taste, touch, and detect light. It also has the so-called sixth sense of body awareness, Nat Geo reports.

THE SIXTH SENSE

OVERHEARD AT NAT GEO

PHOTOGRAPH BY KEVIN SCHAFER, MINDEN PICTURES

Their young are ‘kittens’: They roam from the southwestern United States to Argentina and Uruguay. They look a little like raccoons, with upturned snouts like pigs, but hunt during the day instead of the night. And coatis (pictured above), whose young are known as kittens, are able to “gulp down everything from leaves and fruit to insects, tarantulas, birds, lizards, snakes, rodents, and even crocodile eggs,” Nat Geo reports.

THE LAST GLIMPSE

PHOTOGRAPH BY STACY KRANITZ

Smart dogs: Yes, not only can dogs detect and figure out the difference between their owners’ fear, excitement, or anger, the pets also can “catch” these feelings from their human companions. It’s more than yawning when we do, says Clive Wynne, director of Arizona State’s Canine Science Collaboratory. “They are easily infected with our warmth and joy”—or our less ebullient emotions, he tells Nat Geo. (Pictured above, a girl and her dog in Boone County, West Virginia.)

DOES YOURS KNOW?

Today's newsletter was curated and edited by David Beard and Jen Tse. Do you have an idea or a link for the newsletter? Let us know at [email protected].

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