Defenders Magazine

Wild Life: Requiem for a Hawaiian Songbird?

Requiem for a Hawaiian Songbird?

The bird, a male, died of natural causes at the Maui Bird Conservation Center where biologists had taken it for protection and for a last-ditch captive breeding program. The po’ouli is one of 12 species of Hawaiian honeycreepers listed as endangered. Its name means “black face” —a reference to its dark facial feathers.

One of the tragedies of the bird’s likely extinction is that the species was only discovered in 1973, by University of Hawaii students conducting field work in Maui’s rain forests.

“It’s very sad, especially because we’ve only known it for a very short time,” says Eric VanderWerf, Hawaiian bird recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “The loss epitomizes the situation in Hawaii right now.”

Birds and other native wildlife on the Hawaiian Islands face an onslaught of pressures, mostly as a result of human activities. Feral pigs and other foreign species dig up and destroy natural habitat. Introduced mosquitoes spread diseases such as avian malaria and pox virus. Rats, cats and other predators brought to the islands by people injure and kill wild birds. Of the 68 native land and freshwater birds found in Hawaii in 1893, 29 are now extinct or close to extinction and 17 more are endangered. Thirty-one of the 77 birds currently listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act are native to Hawaii.

Because the po’ouli was so unique in its form and behavior, VanderWerf likens the loss of the birds to the disappearance of the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel. But he holds out hope that there may be one or more po’ouli still living in Maui’s rain forests. When last counted, there were two others in the wild, but they have not been spotted in more than a year—the longest they’ve gone without being seen.

“It’s hard to prove that something is actually gone, so we’re not entirely giving up hope,” says VanderWerf. “Po’oulis are fairly cryptic birds, so they could still be out there.”

Strange Mole Is Speed-Feeding Champ

Call the record keepers at the International Federation of Competitive Eating; there’s a new champ of chomp. In the category of insect larvae, worms and small crustaceans, the star-nosed mole is the eater to beat. This six-inch-long, practically blind mammal finds, assesses and downs tasty tidbits in less than the blink of an eye—an average of 227 milliseconds, to be exact.

The speed-eating mole, found in wetlands from Canada to Georgia, has a secret weapon: a pink, sea-anenome-like snout designed for feeling, not smelling. Complete with 22 fleshy tentacles for probing its mucky habitat, this ‘star nose’ is “the most sensitive touch organ known to science,” says Kenneth Catania, the Vanderbilt University researcher who documented the mole in action using a high-speed video camera

. The star nose’s tentacles house an array of nerves that relay signals to the brain. Judging by how often the mole will skip over food objects before doing a double take and returning to them once its brain catches up, that brain is working at close to nervous-system speed limits.

Generally it’s more efficient for animals to eat larger and fewer prey. But by reducing its prey handling to milliseconds, the star-nosed mole can get the calories it needs with a minimum expenditure of energy and live on a diet of much smaller animals than its competitors.

While further study of the star-nosed mole is unlikely to yield any tips for competitive eaters in the pie, watermelon, hot dog and other categories, scientists say it could provide valuable information on the brain’s information-processing and decision-making capacities. That’s some fast-food for thought.

High Decibels in the Deep Blue

The ability of whales and dolphins to communicate across immense stretches of ocean boggles the mind—something like singing in the shower in Boise and hearing your grandmother harmonizing in Buffalo.

But this strength may also be one of the creatures’ greatest vulnerabilities, as shown by mass strandings in the Southeast recently. At least 37 whales beached themselves and died in mid-January on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and in March, 80 deep-water dolphins were trapped on shore near Marathon, Florida—nearly 30 of which later died. The deaths are the latest in a string of strandings in which the U.S. Navy’s use of high-decibel sonar blasts has been implicated.

Scientists have several theories about how sonar may affect whales and dolphins. One theory suggests the loud bursts of sound disrupt or destroy the mammals’ ability to hear, and thus navigate; another proposes that the abrupt high-decibel noise—sometimes as loud as a space-shuttle launch—scares and disorients them. Still another speculates that the unnatural sound causes them to dash to the surface too quickly, causing a deadly sickness similar to the bends.

After a mass stranding of whales in the Bahamas in 2000, the Navy acknowledged sonar blasts can harm marine mammals. But so far it has denied any connection to the most recent beaching deaths, some of which occurred in the vicinity of a proposed naval sonar-testing range.

Scientists and government officials are making the connection, however. Last year, scientists at the International Whaling Commission reported a link between sonar and whale deaths. In October, the European Parliament overwhelmingly agreed on the need to reduce sonar use and to establish a task force to address sonar and other oceanic noise pollution worldwide.

In response, the Bush administration stated its opposition to any international restrictions on military sonar use, citing national security interests. But U.S. officials say this doesn’t rule out voluntary cooperation between nations on the issue, in cases where cause and effect can be determined.

Daniel Hinerfeld, spokesperson for the Natural Resources Defense Council, counters that this international problem needs an international solution, and that cause and effect is not at issue. “There is no question that sonar is damaging marine life,” Hinerfeld says. “We don’t exactly understand how, but we know that it does.” 

Smarter Than the Average Bird

Did you know that pigeons can tell the difference between a Picasso and a Monet; that crows are crafty enough to make tools; and that parrots can not only learn human words but also use them to communicate with us?

Researchers pondering these and other surprising facts about our feathered friends are turning the term “birdbrain” on its head and raising questions about the notion of human superiority. It turns out that birds’ brains are more similar to mammals’ than previously believed.

A group of scientists recently proposed a wholesale renaming of the structures of the bird brain to more accurately portray recent findings about the feathery creatures’ smarts. The scientists say that traditional models are badly outdated, and result from outmoded views of evolution as a steady march from organisms with “lower” intelligence to those considered “higher.”

“We have to get rid of the idea that mammals—and humans in particular —are the pinnacle of evolution,” says Duke University Medical Center neurobiologist Erich Jarvis, lead author of the paper published in the February issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience. “We also have to understand that evolution is not linear, but an intricate branching process.”

Jarvis hopes that in another five or 10 years, the entry for “birdbrain” will be changed in Webster’s Dictionary. Instead of the current definition of “a silly person,” he says, “you should be reading ‘birdbrain, a highly intelligent individual.’ ”

Only time will tell if we humans are smart enough to make the change.