Carrizo Plain: would you like pronghorn with that?

Wanted to see the Carrizo Plain,

a super dry, somewhat elevated (2,000 feet-ish)

landscape that is home to the San Joaquin kit fox

(a species I've surveyed for many times w/o ever seeing)

and lots of other listed species.

It's a storied place, especially if you're a biologist in California.

Just mention that giant grassland, and a biologist's brain says

"oooooooh...."

Had no ambitions to see any specific wildlife or vegetation,

tho' we did plan a stop to check out the San Andreas fault.

So what are those creatures in the above photograph?

Pronghorn!

And we drove right by them.

Then Bear said "do you want to go back to see them?"

"Yes, and there was a sign for a bathroom back there."

"But it's 1.5 miles away."

"We're 30 miles from anything else!"

bb had to go (pardon).

And this landscape has SHORT short grass,

and is totally flat. NO cover.

Challenging even for an experienced (tho' bashful) field chick like me.

Here was the sign that made my heart go pitter pat:

See? The squirrel backed me up: "I'm 50 miles from nowhere."

Normally I'd be psyched about the kitfox reference,

but I was temporarily obsessed.

This cute little store was so isolated,

the dingdongs were still $1. Sold.

And the lady behind the counter was very happy

to chat about gardening, etc.

I think they don't get many customers.

Took a while to leave. =)

So, upon our return to the main road, we saw this:

pronghorn chewin' & chillin'

eep!

They'd moved MUCH closer to the road during our detour.

It's only the 3rd (or so) time I've seen them.

The first time in California.

Sooo coool!

Buns I'd happily gaze at.

Pardon the barbed wire; I didn't want to scare them off

by jumping out of my car to get above the fence line.

The lady at the store said that the farmers are fine with the pronghorn,

just plant extra wheat, and there's water at the wheat fields,

so the pronghorn hang out there.

All the time. =)

Good gig.

And if you are a spectacular running machine,

it's okay to live in a place with NO cover.

You can virtually outrun ANYTHING,

given a few steps to gather up speed.

For more on that, I highly recommend
Why We Run, by Bernd Heinrich.

It investigates why humans run,
whether they're built for it (v. just walking),
and devotes an entire chapter to
the spectacular endurance machine that is the pronghorn.

And whether or not Homo sapiens
could actually run that creature down.

Fascinating stuff.

And just one of the many exciting things the Carrizo Plain houses.
Glad we went. Gotta go back.

xobb 

"the cooking ape"

 
I actually laughed and clapped at the end, despite being alone in my house. So delightful.

Harvard Thinks Big 2010 - Richard Wrangham - 'Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human' from HTB2 on Vimeo.

This dude rocks.

If you don't know, my most serious academic and intellectual dalliance was in evolution and human behavior (before I went all conservation-biology-NPS-save-the-planet-y), so I am familiar with Richard Wrangham and love, love, LOVE thinking about this sort of stuff.

*happysigh*

In fact, my first night out of California was spent attending a meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) when I was 20 years old.


Thanks SO much to Carl Zimmer for cluing me in to his super-interesting article in Discover Magazine. It's a full-on 5-star article on the bb-scale, A Body Fit for a Freaky-Big Brain.

FYI, to get 5 stars from bb, you gotta

• write something I see as of now or later, vs. 15 minutes ago, since I just made up this 5 star thing up,
• write something I find fascinating
• write in such a way that it's EASY for me to rip through, given my ADD-nature, this is no small task
• not write in such a way that I think your statements are questionable, based on little or low-quality data, or dependent upon questionable (and, worse, also unstated) assumptions
• preferably supply references so I can dig further (also handy if I'm not yet convinced)
  

Seriously. This has made my day.


Brain happy.


And well and efficiently fed.

xoxoxo

bb

Don't think you are amazing? Think again.

 
Check this article out, by the amazing science writer, Natalie Angier.

IN-credible.

One thing it talks about is how our eyes are pretty much able to detect light in the tiniest units that physically exist (a single photon).

You cannot really spend ANY time learning about photography and taking photographs, etc., without appreciating your eyes. What I see with my eyes is always perfectly exposed, focused, and with just the right depth of field. Replicating that via camera takes a lot of know-how. And often, still doesn't work.

A friend sent this article to me saying this is why I love biology.

Yeah, it's pretty freakin' cool. =)

biobabbler

attention span of a gnat

 
(albeit I'm assuming that's very short, but what do I know)

Remember a number of days ago I posted a picture of my first harvest from the garden? A glorious sunburst squash?

Well, I've harvested maybe 4 since then. AND a tomato.

Any pics? Any celebration?

Nope.

I'm much better and planning and planting and nurturing the garden into maturity. CRAZY about cotyledons. LOVE leafy things. DIG the dirt.

Very bad at harvesting.

Ho hum.

Just not super interesting to me.

So, that got me to thinking; why?

Maybe we need the drive to plant and grow and nurture, but presumably our tummies would hurry along the harvesting. As opposed to today, where people pay other people to help them eat less and burn off what they do eat.

I'm thinking maintaining interest in harvesting, say, 3000 years ago (or even today, just not my house), when your life depended upon it, was not the dilemma.

Not starving was.

hm.

Guess I'll go install that drip irrigation system now.

bb

Fascinating article on possible new human group discovered...

Highly recommend. Wow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/science/25human.html?ref=science

And I love the phrasing of this quote:

"We are learning more and more what a luxuriant evolutionary tree humans have had,” said Ian Tattersall...

Nice!

biobabbler