Habitats

It's mating season for coyotes, which means they're more likely to be out and about during the day.With that in mind, the City of Burlington, Ont., is reminding residents what to do if they encounter one, and how to coyote-proof their properties. Last week, the city also updated its bylaws to let wildlife management professionals use firearms but the city's head of bylaw says that's not to make it easier to kill coyotes but makes the response require less staffing."Coyotes have always been here. People just didn't notice…

Canada's forestry sector is responsible for far more greenhouse gas emissions than show up in official tallies, potentially leading to policies that aren't in line with the country's climate goals, a new study suggests.The peer-reviewed study, published in the academic journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, found that annual greenhouse gas emissions attributable to forestry between 2005 and 2021 were, on average, nearly 91 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent — which would put the sector on par with…

A few years ago, a couple of Google employees reached out to a Minnesota scientist with an unusual proposal: What if they could teach computers to spot beaver habitats from space? "They wanted to know if I thought it was possible to find beaver wetlands from aerial imagery myself, and then if that could be scaled up with machine learning," Emily Fairfax, a University of Minnesota beaver researcher and assistant professor of geography, told As It Happens guest host Megan Williams.Fairfax knew that beavers' sprawling dams…

An underwater marine survey completed at West Mabou Beach in Port Hood has yielded some interesting results that shed new light on what species dwell in Nova Scotian harbours.The survey was completed by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and their findings were released at a public meeting in the Cape Breton community of Mabou on Monday evening.Information Morning Cape Breton host Steve Sutherland spoke with Hunter Stevens, a biologist with the group, who co-ordinated the survey and was one of the divers…

China will explore using 3D printing technology to construct buildings on the moon, the official China Daily reported, as Beijing solidifies plans for long-term lunar habitation. In the 2020 Chinese lunar mission, the Chang'e 5, named after the mythical Chinese goddess of the moon, an uncrewed probe took back to Earth China's first lunar soil samples. China, which made its first lunar landing in 2013, plans to land an astronaut on the moon by 2030. Between now and then, China will launch the Chang'e 6, 7 and 8 missions,…

China will explore using 3D printing technology to construct buildings on the moon, the official China Daily reported on Monday, as Beijing solidifies plans for long-term lunar habitation.In the 2020 Chinese lunar mission, the Chang'e 5, named after the mythical Chinese goddess of the moon, an uncrewed probe took back to Earth China's first lunar soil samples. China, which made its first lunar landing in 2013, plans to land an astronaut on the moon by 2030.Between now and then, China will launch the Chang'e 6, 7 and 8…

Using rigorous and detailed collection methods, researchers were able to place the remains of fossil apes, such as Morotopithecus, within detailed habitat reconstructions. The research has led to a new framework for future studies regarding ape evolutionary origins. The findings suggest that modern ape anatomy may have evolved in open woodlands among leaf-eating apes rather than in forest-dwelling fruit-eating apes. Credit: Corbin RainboltResearchers shift the narrative of human evolution through paleontological and…

Humpback whales hunt using one of the most hilarious strategies in nature. Groups of whales swim in a circle around their prey … and blow bubbles. As the bubbles rise, they form a column that acts as a virtual net and concentrates prey. The whales swim upward in a spiral, spewing bubbles all the way, then lunge into the center of the column to grab an enormous mouthful of krill. But how do these gigantic creatures find patches of tiny krill in the first place? Scientific American's evolution and ecology senior editor Kate…

Some folk baked a lot of bread during lockdowns. Others assembled a team of scientists and figured out a practical way to turn asteroids into space habitats, by spinning them inside out and creating giant rotating, Manhattan-sized city-rings.In the latter group are a team of University of Rochester scientists, who turned their attentions to a "wildly theoretical" paper now published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space. The challenge they set themselves: how to create a city-sized space habitat people could…

This study is the culmination of 20 years of research by Brad Seibel on vertical migrators that has included scores of dives like this one. Credit: Stephani Gordon, Open Boat Films.The research is the first to look into the link between oxygen, temperature, and the metabolic needs of vertical migrators.Brad Seibel still recalls headlines from 20 years ago that sounded like they were taken from a B-rated science fiction film, such as “Invasion of the jumbo squid in Monterey Bay.” At the time, he was a postdoctoral…