With enough training, pigeons can distinguish between the works of Picasso and Monet. Ravens can identify themselves in a mirror. And on a university campus in Japan, crows are known to intentionally leave walnuts in a crosswalk and let passing traffic do their nut cracking. Many bird species are incredibly smart. Yet among intelligent animals, the “bird brainΘ often doesn’t get much respect.
This year with COVID-19, I stayed closer to home but did spend a record 62 nights out in the wilderness this year -- all back country camping -- mostly away from other people. It was an interesting year with remote work, but it worked out to be a lot of fun, camping and then working at various libraries or using a hotspot and my cellphone.
“Fur lasts a lifetime — even longer, Lettas told The Post. “They’re worn by grandmothers, mothers and daughters."
Trump administration officials are expected to say this week whether the monarch butterfly, a colorful and familiar backyard visitor now caught in a global extinction crisis, should receive federal designation as a threatened species.
Stepped-up use of farm herbicides, climate change and destruction of milkweed plants on which they depend have caused a massive decline of the orange-and-black butterflies, which long have flitted over meadows, gardens and wetlands across the U.S.
Speaking of viruses, one of the oldest viruses known to man kind has seen a significant decline this year - rabies.
