Pittwater Online News

They’re on our coat of arms but extinct in Tasmania. Rewilding with emus will be good for the island state’s ecosystems

The emu is iconically Australian, appearing on cans, coins, cricket bats and our national coat of arms, as well as that of the Tasmanian capital, Hobart. However, most people don’t realise emus once also roamed Tasmania but are now extinct there.

Where did these Tasmanian emus live? Why did they go extinct? And should we reintroduce them?

Our newly published research combined historical records with population models to find out. We found emus lived across most of eastern Tasmania, including near Hobart, Launceston, Devonport, the Midlands and the east coast. However, in the early days of British occupation, colonists hunting with purpose-bred dogs slaughtered so many emus that the population crashed.

It’s not all bad news, though. Those areas still provide enough good, safe emu habitat to make reintroducing emus from the Australian mainland to Tasmania a realistic option.

Large animals, such as bison, wolves and giant tortoises are already part of global efforts to repair and maintain ecosystems and prevent more extinctions, through the conservation movement known as “rewilding”.

In Tasmania, rewilding with emus might help native plants to cope with a changing climate. As our world warms, the places where conditions are just right for particular plant species are shifting. Those plants must disperse far and fast to keep up. Introducing emus, which disperse many plant seeds in their droppings, could help.

Emus Were Tasmania’s Biggest Herbivores

Emus are the biggest birds in Australia. The females weigh up to a whopping 37 kilograms. But when European sealers and explorers arrived on Australia’s southern islands, they found smaller, shorter emus. According to one estimate, Kangaroo Island emus averaged 24-27kg and King Island emus a mere 20-23kg.

Contrary to local folklore, Tasmanian emus were actually more similar to their mainland cousins. They weighed about 30-34kg (but sometimes up to 40kg).

Along with eastern grey kangaroos, known locally as “foresters”, emus were the biggest herbivores in Tasmania.

What Are The Likely Impacts On Ecosystems?

Large herbivores play important roles in ecosystems around the world. By chewing on plants, pushing through vegetation and churning up soil, large animals can create a mosaic of habitat types for other, smaller creatures. They move seeds and nutrients across the landscape and shape the frequency and intensity of fires.

Exactly how emus help ecosystems is a bit of a mystery because so few researchers have looked into it. But we do know emus are very good at seed dispersal. Emus live anywhere, eat anything and swallow their food whole. They walk miles and miles while seeds slowly pass through their gut, to be ejected in a ready-made batch of compost.

Without emus, some plant populations won’t be able to disperse quickly enough to escape the local effects of global warming.

How Did Tasmania Lose Its Emus?

We know colonists hunted emus and kangaroos in Tasmania. Emus were rarely seen on the island after 1845. But was hunting by a few hungry settlers enough to take out the whole population?

To find out, we recreated the emu population using computer simulations. Then we turned up the hunting pressure.

The signal was clear. Tasmania’s emu population could not sustain a harvest of more than about 1,500 adults per year. This limit was probably exceeded within a decade or two, which makes over-hunting the most likely cause of extinction.

Interestingly, the results of the simulation imply the island’s Indigenous people hunted adult emus at very low rates, less than one per person per year.

Where Can We Reintroduce Emus?

To find safe places for reintroductions, we overlapped emu habitat with current land use. We found large parts of the state that have both good emu habitat and a healthy distance from areas with higher risk of human-emu conflict.

Small-scale, trial introductions could be done in fenced enclosures to learn more about the emus’ needs and their ecological roles.

Indigenous voices are particularly important in conversations about reintroductions, because of the roles such animals play in living traditional cultures. For example, emus have featured in Tasmanian Aboriginal story, dance, song and art for generations. Pakana and Palawa still perform emu dances today.

Such conversations must be had with care, because many Indigenous people are wary of terms such as “rewilding” and “wilderness”. These terms can carry the implication of a land without people, when in fact Australian landscapes have a long and rich history of Indigenous people caring for Country. Even the concept of “wildness” can imply too strong a separation between humans and our non-human kin, and a lack of reciprocity and responsibility.

Australia Has Just Begun Rewilding

Landscapes all over the world have lost large animals that would otherwise be keeping ecosystems healthy and dynamic. European and American conservationists have responded by reintroducing large animals for their ecological and cultural functions.

Rewilding Europe, for example, has reintroduced bison to the Carpathian mountains and primitive horses to Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria and Ukraine. These efforts are placing prehistoric grazing regimes back into a rich cultural landscape.

On islands in the Indian Ocean, giant tortoises have been introduced to replace their extinct cousins. Those tortoises graze down weeds and give native plants a better chance of recovery.

In Siberia, the Pleistocene Park project aims to re-create a rich steppe ecosystem by reintroducing bactrian camels, musk oxen and American plains bison. One benefit is this will increase the amount of carbon stored in that landscape.

In Australia, most of our animal reintroduction programs are focused on conserving individual species. In a few cases, like the Marna Banggara project, ecological engineers like bettongs are being introduced to kick-start ecosystem restoration, but this is happening behind fences and on islands.

We need solutions like rewilding for our open landscapes. Reintroducing emus to Tasmania would be a good first step.

Tristan Derham, Research Associate, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) Policy Hub – Training and Education, University of Tasmania; Christopher Johnson, Professor of Wildlife Conservation, University of Tasmania, and Matthew Fielding, Research Associate / Teaching Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH), University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Exploding carp numbers are ‘like a house of horrors’ for our rivers. Is it time to unleash carp herpes?

With widespread La Niña flooding in the Murray-Darling Basin, common carp (Cyprinus carpio) populations are having a boom year. Videos of writhing masses of both adult and young fish illustrate that all is not well in our rivers. Carp now account for up to 90% of live fish mass in some rivers.

Concerned communities are wondering whether it is, at last, time for Australia to unleash the carp herpes virus to control populations – but the conversation among scientists, conservationists, communities and government bodies is only just beginning.

Globally, the carp virus has been detected in more than 30 countries but never in Australia. There are valid concerns to any future Australian release, including cleaning up dead carp, and potential significant reductions of water quality and native fish.

As river scientists and native fish lovers, let’s weigh the benefits of releasing the virus against the risks, set within a context of a greater vision of river recovery.

A House Of Horrors For Rivers

Carp are a pest in Australia. They cause dramatic ecological damage both here and in many countries. Carp were first introduced in the 1800s but it was only with “the Boolarra strain” that populations exploded in the basin in the early 1970s.

Assisted by flooding in the 1970s, carp have since invaded 92% of all rivers and wetlands in their present geographic range. There have been estimates of up to 357 million fish during flood conditions. This year, this estimate may even be exceeded.

Carp are super-abundant right now because floods give them access to floodplain habitats. There, each large female can spawn millions of eggs and young have high survival rates. While numbers will decline as the floods subside, the number of juveniles presently entering back into rivers will be stupendous and may last years.

The impacts of carp are like a house of horrors for our rivers. They cause massive degradation of aquatic plants, riverbanks and riverbeds when they feed. They alter the habitat critical for small native fish, such as southern pygmy perch. And they can make the bed of many rivers look like the surface of golf balls – denuded and dimpled, devoid of any habitat.

Most strikingly, this feeding behaviour contributes to turbid rivers, reducing sunlight penetration and productivity for native plants, fish and broader aquatic communities.

Carp truly are formidable “ecosystem engineers”, which means they directly modify their environment, much like rabbits. Their design leads to aquatic destruction of waterways.

We know when their “impact threshold” exceeds 88 kilograms per hectare of adult carp, we see declines in aquatic plant health, water quality, native fish numbers and other aquatic values. At present, we expect carp to far exceed this impact threshold. For river managers, the challenge is to keep numbers below that level.

The Carp Herpes Virus

The carp virus (Cyprinid herpesvirus 3) represents one of the only landscape-scale carp control options, although there are some exciting genetic modification technologies also emerging.

Mathematical modelling suggests the carp virus could cause a 40-60% knockdown for at least ten years, which may help tip the balance in favour of native fish. Certainly, there have been some well documented virus outbreaks in the United States resulting in large-scale carp deaths.

The risks and benefits of a potential Australian release of a carp virus are transparently addressed under the federal government’s National Carp Control Plan, released last year. This plan provides some sorely needed leadership in the carp management space.

Risks the plan identifies include:

• major logistic challenges in cleaning up dead carp
• potentially serious short-term deterioration in water quality
• potential native fish deaths due to poor water quality.

On the other hand, the benefits of releasing the virus include:

• recovery of aquatic biodiversity populations – fish, plants and invertebrates
• major long-term improvements to water quality
• improved social amenity of inland waterways.

As carp continue to destroy Australia’s riverine heritage, it’s time to lay our cards on the table and have a serious conversation about the carp virus. Managing expectations is a key and the confidence of stakeholders and the community is vital for its success.

Like rabbits and other vertebrate pests, carp are emblematic of our inability to deal with entrenched pest animals. There are no silver bullets.

How Else Can We Manage Carp?

Rolling out the carp virus is only one potential pathway away from carp. If we truly want to reduce carp numbers and impacts in the long-term then we need to examine all the roles humans play supporting them.

For example, the series of weir pools in the lower Murray create perfect conditions for carp because they give fish access to floodplains year round.

Strategically lowering and removing weir pools to re-create flowing water habitats would be one solution to help Murray cod and other flowing water specialists, such as silver perch, river snails and Murray crays. This is one of many integrated actions that could help tip the balance against carp.

Also, floodplain structures (which create artificial “floods”) generate static, warm-bathtub conditions that carp, being from Central Asia, prefer, contributing to huge numbers especially in dry years. Few medium or large native fish benefit from these conditions.

Another pathway is to seek guidance from increasingly sophisticated environmental modelling, which can identify optimal population trajectories for native fish over carp.

Now the floods have returned, we need to move away from local decisions at the site-scale and instead manage ecosystems across the entire Murray-Darling Basin.

The present flooding also reminds us of the huge potential increases in the numbers of golden perch, frogs, yabbies and water birds. Animals that eat carp (Murray cod, golden perch, pelicans, cormorants) should all be as fat as can be.

Looking Beyond Carp

Just like the huge numbers of dead native fish from the Darling River fish kills in 2018-2019, the huge numbers of carp is a big wake-up call on the poor state of rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin and how we’re managing them.

Perhaps what has been missing from the whole conversation is a vision for what our rivers should look like in ten or 20 years time. We don’t want to leave a legacy of degraded rivers for future Australians.

River health is an issue all Australian’s, country and city, need to engage with. If we don’t identify a common purpose, then we will likely continue to remain in lock-step with the great armies of carp and rivers of fish kills for generations to come. We need to do better than this. The future of our rivers depends on it.

Ivor Stuart, Fisheries ecologist, Charles Sturt University; John Koehn, Freshwater fish ecologist, Charles Sturt University; Katie Doyle, Freshwater Ecologist, Charles Sturt University, and Lee Baumgartner, Professor of Fisheries and River Management, Institute for Land, Water, and Society, Charles Sturt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Don’t kill the curl grubs in your garden – they could be native beetle babies

Have you ever been in the garden and found a large, white, C-shaped grub with a distinctive brown head and six legs clustered near the head?

If so, you’ve had an encounter with the larva of a scarab beetle (family: Scarabaeidae) also known as a “curl grub”.

Many gardeners worry these large larvae might damage plants.

So what are curl grubs? And should you be concerned if you discover them in your garden?

What Are Curl Grubs?

Curl grubs turn into scarab beetles.

There are more than 30,000 species of scarab beetles worldwide. Australia is home to at least 2,300 of these species, including iridescent Christmas beetles (Anoplognathus), spectacularly horned rhinoceros beetles (Dynastinae), and the beautifully patterned flower chafers (Cetoniinae).

While the adults might be the most conspicuous life stage, scarabs spend most of their lives as larvae, living underground or in rotting wood.

Scarab Larvae Can Help The Environment

Soil-dwelling scarab larvae can aerate soils and help disperse seeds.

Species that eat decaying matter help recycle nutrients and keep soils healthy.

Most scarab larvae are large and full of protein and fat. They make an excellent meal for hungry birds.

Besides being important for ecosystems, scarabs also play a role in cultural celebrations.

For example, the ancient Egyptians famously worshipped the sun through the symbol of the ball-rolling dung beetle.

In Australia, colourful Christmas beetles traditionally heralded the arrival of the holiday season.

Sadly, Christmas beetle numbers have declined over the last few decades, likely due to habitat loss.

Are The Curl Grubs In My Garden Harming My Plants?

Most scarab larvae feed on grass roots, and this can cause damage to plants when there’s a lot of them.

In Australia, the Argentine lawn scarab and the African black beetle are invasive pest species that cause significant damage to pastures and lawns.

Native scarab species can also be pests under the right circumstances.

For example, when Europeans began planting sugar cane (a type of grass) and converting native grasslands to pastures, many native Australian scarab species found an abundant new food source and were subsequently classified as pests.

Unfortunately, we know little about the feeding habits of many native scarab larvae, including those found in gardens.

Some common garden species, like the beautifully patterned fiddler beetle (Eupoecila australasiae), feed on decaying wood and are unlikely to harm garden plants.

Even species that consume roots are likely not a problem under normal conditions.

Plants are surprisingly resilient, and most can handle losing a small number of their roots to beetle larvae. Even while damaging plants, curl grubs may be helping keep soil healthy by providing aeration and nutrient mixing.

How Do I Know If I Have ‘Good’ Or ‘Bad’ Beetle Larvae In My Garden?

Unfortunately, identifying scarab larvae species is challenging. Many of the features we use to tell groups apart are difficult to see without magnification. While there are identification guides for scarabs larvae found in pastures, there are currently no such identification resources for the scarabs found in household gardens.

Since identification may not be possible, the best guide to whether or not scarab larvae are a problem in your garden is the health of your plants. Plants with damaged roots may wilt or turn yellow.

Since most root-feeding scarabs prefer grass roots, lawn turf is most at risk and damage is usually caused by exotic scarab species.

What Should I Do If I Find Curl Grubs In My Garden?

Seeing suspiciously plump curl grubs amongst the roots of prized garden plants can be alarming, but please don’t automatically reach for insecticides.

The chemicals used to control curl grubs will harm all scarab larvae, regardless of whether or not they are pests.

Many of the most common treatments for curl grubs contain chemicals called “anthranilic diamides”, which are also toxic to butterflies, moths and aquatic invertebrates.

And by disrupting soil ecosystems, using insecticides might do more harm than good and could kill harmless native beetle larvae.

So what to do instead?

Larvae found in decaying wood or mulch are wood feeders and are useful composters; they will not harm your plants and should be left where they are.

Larvae found in compost bins are helping to break down wastes and should also be left alone.

If you find larvae in your garden soil, use your plant’s health as a guide. If your plants appear otherwise healthy, consider simply leaving curl grubs where they are. Scarab larvae are part of the soil ecosystem and are unlikely to do damage if they are not present in high numbers.

If your plants appear yellow or wilted and you’ve ruled out other causes, such as under-watering or nutrient deficiencies, consider feeding grubs to the birds or squishing them. It’s not nice, but it’s better than insecticides.

Lawns are particularly susceptible to attack by the larvae of non-native scarabs. Consider replacing lawns with native ground covers. This increases biodiversity and lowers the chances of damage from non-native scarab larvae.

Scarab beetles are beautiful and fascinating insects that help keep our soils healthy and our wildlife well fed.

Tanya Latty, Associate professor, University of Sydney and Chris Reid, Adjunct Associate Professor in Zoology, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Photos from the field: our voyage investigating Australia’s submarine landslides and deep-marine canyons

Environmental scientists see flora, fauna and phenomena the rest of us rarely do. In this series, we’ve invited them to share their unique photos from the field.

We gathered at the edge of the ship deck, awaiting the return of our sediment corer that had been lowered 4.5 kilometres – half the height of Mount Everest – to the seafloor. Our team of 53 people nervously shuffled together like penguins as we speculated about what we’d find.

It was July 2022. We’d been at sea for 36 days on CSIRO’s Research Vessel Investigator to explore the edges of our continent and learn how it evolved through time. While we’re all familiar with the shape of modern Australia, our continental mass actually extends well beyond our shorelines.

Over the 36 days of our voyage, we mapped more than 40,000 square kilometres of the seafloor from as shallow as 22 metres to depths of over 4.8km. And we’ve created 3D visualisations of features never seen before.

The steel corer emerged from the deep glistening like pirate treasure. It marks just one of many samples we collected at sea. Analysing them all will probably take years, but we can still share exciting new maps of the seafloor and what they may reveal – from the threat of tsunami in Australia to evidence of ancient beaches and dunes.

The Threat Of Tsunami

Our research voyage aimed to investigate how mud and sand flows from our continent into the deep oceans. Along the way, these different sediments can travel down submarine canyons and form large landslides.

Sometimes, these submarine landslides are large enough to trigger a tsunami – so we’re also working to understand what the local tsunami risk is for Australia’s eastern seaboard communities.

A big part of understanding the potential threat of tsunami is learning how the material from the submarine landslides along the eastern seaboard has moved down into the deep ocean. For example, does it go as a single, large slab of sediment, failing all at once? Or does it slowly break apart, with smaller pieces heading down slope one at a time as a slurry of sediment and water?

While Australia has a relatively low tsunami risk compared to other places around the world, we are still exposed and so should heed warnings from emergency services.

A recent tsunami to hit Australia was caused by the underwater volcanic explosion in Tonga in January last year. This brought waves of more than 80 centimetres to the Gold Coast, which could knock you off your feet.

Mapping The Seafloor Surface

We mapped areas of the seafloor with a level of precision not available to previous generations of hydrographers and map-makers in Australia. Some areas were nearly 5km deep and over 100 nautical miles from the coast.

To do this, we use a multibeam system. This involves sending out sound waves from the bottom of the ship in a wide cone-shape. These sound waves bounce off the seafloor back to the ship, giving us information about the depth of the seafloor and allowing us to map any features on its surface.

One feature we remapped was an area of the continental slope offshore of Yamba, New South Wales. Here we see cliffs up to a few hundred metres high – evidence of slope failure and sliding.

We also remapped the scar from the Bulli submarine landslide, which is the biggest submarine landslide identified on the Australian continental margin to date. At over 25km long and over 10km wide, the Bulli landslide off Wollongong in NSW removed 40 cubic kilometres of sediment from the edge of our continent.

But to get a true feel for the multibeam system’s capabilities, we also mapped the wreck of the Limerick, a ship sunk by Japanese submarines off Australia’s east coast near Cape Byron in 1943. This also supported efforts to understand the current state of the famous shipwreck.

The wreck sits upside down in about 80m of water. To get a better view, we also lowered a camera to the torpedo hole in the side that sunk the ship.

Beneath The Seafloor

Understanding what’s on the surface of the seafloor tells us a lot about what has happened over the last few hundreds of thousands of years.

But looking below the surface at the sediment layers beneath can tell us how the seafloor has evolved over millions of years.

To do this, we use techniques that send out pulses of sound that can penetrate the seafloor. These pulses then listen for return signals that bounce off interfaces of different types of sediments and rocks.

Through these sub-surface imaging techniques, we have identified a range of interesting features. These include extinct river channels that were previously above the sea surface when sea levels were much lower in the past.

But to really tie things down we need physical samples of the seafloor and the sediment beneath it. Doing this is a challenge when you’re floating kilometres above the seafloor you want to sample.

So we use deep sea sediment corers and dredges, lowered down on winches with kilometres of cable. Corers punch into the seafloor and bring us back a column of sediment, while dredges drag along the bottom pulling up bits of mud and rocks, bringing them on board in big chain baskets.

Once on board, these samples are carefully analysed to look for key features that will help us piece together the puzzle of the continental margin’s evolution. Further work, such as radiocarbon dating and isotope analysis, is conducted in the months to years after the voyage to complete the analysis.

We’ve collected some fascinating new data that will keep us busy for years to come, but we also had time for table tennis competitions, a few movie nights, and a daily debate on which of the many delicious meals onboard was the favourite.

And we can’t forget the many spectacular sunrises and sunsets!

Hannah Power, Associate Professor in Coastal and Marine Science, University of Newcastle; Kendall Mollison, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Newcastle; Michael Kinsela, Lecturer in Coastal and Ocean Geoscience, University of Newcastle, and Tom Hubble, Associate Professor, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Molly Meldrum at 80: how the ‘artfully incoherent’ presenter changed Australian music – and Australian music journalism

Ian Alexander “Molly” Meldrum is 80 on January 29 2023.

The Australian music industry would not be where it is today without his work as a talent scout, DJ, record producer, journalist, broadcaster and professional fan.

His legacy has been acknowledged by the ARIAs, APRA, the Logies, an Order of Australia and even a mini-series.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Meldrum made headlines again for an appearance at Elton John’s farewell concert in Melbourne when he “mooned” the crowd in a playful display of rock and roll rebellion. He later apologised to the audience and old friend Elton, keen to make sure no one else was blamed.

It was an irreverence typical of Meldrum’s long career. But his legacy is not just in the musical acts he supported. It is also in the taste makers who followed in his footsteps.

‘Artfully Incoherent’

A journalist at pioneering music magazine Go-Set, a presenter and record producer, Meldrum became a household name with the ABC TV music show Countdown (1974-87). Countdown was a weekly touchstone for the industry and fans, promoting local acts alongside the best in the world.

Meldrum’s approach to interviewing and commentary is legendary. ABC historian Ken Inglis called his interviewing style “artfully incoherent”.

Importantly, his charm put artists and fans at ease.

Meldrum is not a slick player, but a fan. This fandom is felt so deeply that, at times, he became overwhelmed.

One of Meldrum’s most famous interviews was in 1977 when the then Prince Of Wales appeared on Countdown to launch a charity record and event. The presenter became increasingly flustered.

Even now, watching back, it’s hard not to side with Meldrum rather than his famous guest. Pomp, ceremony and hierarchy really didn’t make sense in this rock and pop oasis.

In another interview, Meldrum spoke to David Bowie on a tennis court. Both men casually talked and smoked (it was the ‘70s!), talking seriously about the work but not much else.

As Meldrum handed Bowie a tennis racket to demonstrate how the iconic track, Fame (with John Lennon) was born, the Starman was given space to be hilariously human.

When meeting a sedate Stevie Nicks, Meldrum met her on her level.

Nicks told Meldrum she was only happy “sometimes”, and rather than probing, he just listened. When Meldrum asked about the dog Nicks had in her lap, she opened up:

I got her way before I had any money, I didn’t have near enough money to buy her […] She’s one of the things I’ve had to give up for Fleetwood Mac, because you’re not home.

Meldrum approached this, and all his guests, with humanity. This is how his insights into the reality of rock royalty are effortlessly uncovered.

New Taste Makers

A country boy who came to the city, Meldrum studied music and the growing local industry much more attentively than his law degree. He passionately supported (and continues to support) Australian popular music – and Australian music fans.

He speaks a love language for music that musicians and fans share, and a language which has continued in other presenters.

Following in Meldrum’s footsteps we have seen distinct critical voices like Myf Warhurst, Julia Zemiro and Zan Rowe.

Each of these women have approached the music industry with charm like Meldrum, but also their own perspectives: Zemiro with a love of international influence; Warhurst with pop as a language to connect us to the everyday; Rowe with a way to connect audiences and musicians through conversations about their own processes and passions.

Our best music critics, and musicians, have embraced an unapologetic energy Meldrum made acceptable.

Meldrum is also a pioneer in the LGBTQ+ community, weathering the storms of prejudice during his early career. Today, members of the media and musical community have greater protection from the prejudice common when his career began.

The Music, Of Course, The Music

The Australian music industry would not be what it is had Molly Meldrum gone on to be a lawyer.

Through the pages of Go-Set and on Countdown he worked to promote new talent, believing in and developing acts like AC/DC, Split Enz, Paul Kelly, Do Re Mi, Australian Crawl and Kylie Minogue before the rest of the industry knew what to do with them.

He did the same for international artists. ABBA, Elton John, KISS, Madonna and many other now mega-names were first presented to Australian audiences via Meldrum’s wonderful ear.

Today, Australian music encompasses pop, dance, electro and hip hop, and artists from all walks of life. Meldrum’s willingness to listen has contributed to this, and he encouraged others to do the same.

Meldrum remains revered not just for nostalgia but as an example of what putting energy into the local scene can achieve.

Most importantly, Meldrum continues to be a music fan. He loves the mainstream, the place where the majority of the audience also resides. He has never bought into the idea of a “guilty” pleasure – if it works, it works, no music snobbery here.

His catch-cry – “do yourself a favour” – really does sum up the importance of music. It is not a luxury, but something to really keep us going. 

Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Let’s dance! How dance classes can lift your mood and help boost your social life

If your new year’s resolutions include getting healthier, exercising more and lifting your mood, dance might be for you.

By dance, we don’t mean watching other people dance on TikTok, as much fun as this can be. We mean taking a dance class, or even better, a few.

A growing body of research shows the benefits of dance, regardless of the type (for example, classes or social dancing) or the style (hip hop, ballroom, ballet). Dance boosts our wellbeing as it improves our emotional and physical health, makes us feel less stressed and more socially connected.

Here’s what to consider if you think dance might be for you.

The Benefits Of Dance

Dance is an engaging and fun way of exercising, learning and meeting people. A review of the evidence shows taking part in dance classes or dancing socially improves your health and wellbeing regardless of your age, gender or fitness.

Another review focuses more specifically on benefits of dance across the lifespan. It shows dance classes and dancing socially at any age improves participants’ sense of self, confidence and creativity.

Researchers have also looked at specific dance programs.

One UK-based dance program for young people aged 14 shows one class a week for three months increased students’ fitness level and self-esteem. This was due to a combination of factors including physical exercise, a stimulating learning environment, positive engagement with peers, and creativity.

Another community-based program for adults in hospital shows weekly dance sessions led to positive feelings, enriches social engagement and reduced stress related to being in hospital.

If you want to know how much dance is needed to develop some of these positive effects, we have good news for you.

A useful hint comes from a study that looked exactly at how much creative or arts engagement is needed for good mental health – 100 or more hours a year, or two or more hours a week, in most cases.

Dance Is Social

But dance is more than physical activity. It is also a community ritual. Humans have always danced. We still do so to mark and celebrate transitory periods in life. Think of how weddings prompt non-dancers to move rhythmically to music. Some cultures dance to celebrate childbirth. Many dance to celebrate religious and cultural holidays.

This is what inspired French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) to explore how dance affects societies and cultures.

Durkheim saw collective dance as a societal glue – a social practice that cultivates what he called “collective effervescence”, a feeling of dynamism, vitality and community.

He observed how dance held cultures together by creating communal feelings that were difficult to cultivate otherwise, for example a feeling of uplifting togetherness or powerful unity.

It’s that uplifting feeling you might experience when dancing at a concert and even for a brief moment forgetting yourself while moving in synchrony with the rest of the crowd.

Synchronous collective activities, such as dance, provide a pleasurable way to foster social bonding. This is due to feelings Durkheim noticed that we now know as transcendental emotions – such as joy, awe and temporary dissolution of a sense of self (“losing yourself”). These can lead to feeling a part of something bigger than ourselves and help us experience social connectedness.

For those of us still experiencing social anxiety or feelings of loneliness due to the COVID pandemic, dance can be a way of (re)building social connections and belonging.

Whether you join an online dance program and invite a few friends, go to an in-person dance class, or go to a concert or dance club, dance can give temporary respite from the everyday and help lift your mood.

Keen To Try Out Dance?

Here’s what to consider:

• if you have not exercised for a while, start with a program tailored to beginners or the specific fitness level that suits you

• if you have physical injuries, check in with your GP first

• if public dance classes are unappealing, consider joining an online dance program, or going to a dance-friendly venue or concert

• to make the most of social aspect of dance, invite your friends and family to join you

• social dance classes are a better choice for meeting new people

• beginner performance dance classes will improve your physical health, dance skills and self-esteem

• most importantly, remember, it is not so much about how good your dancing is, dance is more about joy, fun and social connectedness.

In the words of one participant in our (yet-to-be published) research on dance and wellbeing, dance for adults is a rare gateway into fun:

There’s so much joy, there’s so much play in dancing. And play isn’t always that easy to access as an adult; and yet, it’s just such a joyful experience. I feel so happy to be able to dance.

Tamara Borovica, Research assistant and early career researcher, Critical Mental Health research group, RMIT University and Renata Kokanovic, Professor and Lead of Critical Mental Health, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Asteroid 2023 BU just passed a few thousand kilometres from Earth. Here’s why that’s exciting

There are hundreds of millions of asteroids in our Solar System, which means new asteroids are discovered quite frequently. It also means close encounters between asteroids and Earth are fairly common.

Some of these close encounters end up with the asteroid impacting Earth, occasionally with severe consequences.

A recently discovered asteroid, named 2023 BU, has made the news because today it passed very close to Earth. Discovered on Saturday January 21 by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov in Crimea, 2023 BU passed only about 3,600km from the surface of Earth (near the southern tip of South America) six days later on January 27.

That distance is just slightly farther than the distance between Perth and Sydney, and is only about 1% the distance between Earth and our Moon.

The asteroid also passed through the region of space that contains a significant proportion of the human-made satellites orbiting Earth.

All this makes 2023 BU the fourth-closest known asteroid encounter with Earth, ignoring those that have actually impacted the planet or our atmosphere.

How Does 2023 BU Rate As An Asteroid And A Threat?

2023 BU is unremarkable, other than that it passed so close to Earth. The diameter of the asteroid is estimated to be just 4–8 metres, which is on the small end of the range of asteroid sizes.

There are likely hundreds of millions of such objects in our Solar System, and it is possible 2023 BU has come close to Earth many times before over the millennia. Until now, we have been oblivious to the fact.

In context, on average a 4-metre-diameter asteroid will impact Earth every year and an 8-metre-diameter asteroid every five years or so (see the infographic below).

Asteroids of this size pose little risk to life on Earth when they hit, because they largely break up in the atmosphere. They produce spectacular fireballs, and some of the asteroid may make it to the ground as meteorites.

Now that 2023 BU has been discovered, its orbit around the Sun can be estimated and future visits to Earth predicted. It is estimated there is a 1 in 10,000 chance 2023 BU will impact Earth sometime between 2077 and 2123.

So, we have little to fear from 2023 BU or any of the many millions of similar objects in the Solar System.

Asteroids need to be greater than 25 metres in diameter to pose any significant risk to life in a collision with Earth; to challenge the existence of civilisation, they’d need to be at least a kilometre in diameter.

It is estimated there are fewer than 1,000 such asteroids in the Solar System, and could impact Earth every 500,000 years. We know about more than 95% of these objects.

Will There Be More Close Asteroid Passes?

2023 BU was the fourth closest pass by an asteroid ever recorded. The three closer passes were by very small asteroids discovered in 2020 and 2021 (2021 UA, 2020 QG and 2020 VT).

Asteroid 2023 BU and countless other asteroids have passed very close to Earth during the nearly five billion years of the Solar System’s existence, and this situation will continue into the future.

What has changed in recent years is our ability to detect asteroids of this size, such that any threats can be characterised. That an object roughly five metres in size can be detected many thousands of kilometres away by a very dedicated amateur astronomer shows that the technology for making significant astronomical discoveries is within reach of the general public. This is very exciting.

Amateurs and professionals can together continue to discover and categorise objects, so threat analyses can be done. Another very exciting recent development came last year, by the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which successfully collided a spacecraft into an asteroid and changed its direction.

DART makes plausible the concept of redirecting an asteroid away from a collision course with Earth, if a threat analysis identifies a serious risk with enough warning.

Steven Tingay, John Curtin Distinguished Professor (Radio Astronomy), Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Is ‘Toadzilla’ a sign of enormous cane toads to come? It’s possible – toads grow as large as their environment allows

Last week, the world met “Toadzilla”, a cane toad the size of a football and six times larger than average. The rangers who found her – female toads are bigger than male – were stunned. Weighing in at 2.7 kilograms, Toadzilla may be the largest cane toad ever recorded.

Is this a sign Australia’s cane toads are getting bigger? Not necessarily. Like all other “cold-blooded” or ectothermic animals, cane toads don’t have a limit to their body size like mammals and birds do. They can keep growing their entire lives. Researchers have found toads at the front of the invasion wave get bigger quicker due to more prey.

But there’s another possibility too. Last year, we found toads in urban areas have smaller parotid (toxin) glands than those in rural areas. That might be because bush toads experience higher predation, selecting for more toxins. In nature, an easy way to select for larger toxin glands is to make the whole animal bigger.

Given many native animals, reptiles and birds have now figured out how to eat these toads, we may possibly see more Toadzilla contenders in future.

Wait, Cane Toads Have Predators In Australia?

When you think of cane toads in Australia, you might think of an unstoppable army hopping across the countryside, killing endangered animals, such as quolls, with their poison. There’s some truth to this – a large cane toad would appear to be a delectable package of protein for everything from freshwater crocodiles to goannas to birds of prey.

To survive, they have evolved large poison glands on their shoulders. When attacked, toads can pump out lethal bufotoxin. Worse, the eggs, tadpoles and toadlets are all poisonous as well.

In the South American savannas where they evolved, cane toads have many predators, which can consume them in spite of the poison.

While Australia has no native toads, we have frogs with poisonous skins and glands, for example red-crowned toadlets and corroboree frogs, so the concept of a toxic amphibian is not entirely new to our fauna.

Not only that, but many of our birds’ ancestors may have originated in Asia, where they were exposed to other poisonous amphibians. Our native rats, too, have some tolerance of these toxins from their more recent overseas ancestry. And colubrid snakes such as keelbacks can also eat cane toads.

Some species susceptible to the toxin have figured out ways to defeat it. Our famous “bin chickens” – the white ibis – have figured out how to eat cane toads, by flicking them about to make them produce their toxin and then washing them at a nearby creek. Rakali – the large water rat known as Australia’s otter – learned how to eat cane toads. They flip them over and eat their organs, avoiding the glands.
Overall, though, cane toads are bad news for many native species. Even with predator pressure, their populations keep growing and they keep moving into new areas.

How Do Water-Loving Toads Thrive In Dry Australia?

The difference between a toad and a frog isn’t whether they can live out of water. Australia has dozens of native treefrog species which have far better ways of holding onto their water than do cane toads. Desert tree frogs, for instance, can live in semi-arid regions, while burrowing frogs can live in true deserts. (The real difference is more obscure – toads have sternums in two cartilaginous parts instead of one, possibly an adaptation to walking or jumping).

So how did they become one of Australia’s most notorious introduced species? One answer: they were introduced purposely and vigorously, with thousands of toads bred up and introduced in many locations.

The plan was for the toads to eat native cane beetles plaguing Queensland’s sugarcane plantations. Before the 1935 introduction, the fantastically named entomologist Walter Froggatt pleaded with authorities not to release them. “This great toad, immune from enemies, omnivorous in its habits, and breeding all year round, may become as great a pest as the rabbit or cactus,” he wrote.

But farmers won, the toads arrived, the beetles proved too hard to catch and the toads began eating everything else. Soon, they began to spread. Each female can lay 20,000 eggs a year. (Cane beetles were brought under control only a few years later, when an effective pesticide was discovered).

Another reason these toads now number in the hundreds of millions is their sheer adaptability. They are incredibly good at finding hidden sources of water, even in semi-arid parts of the country. During the dry season, toads tend to stay very close to water. When the wet season comes and soaks the ground, they begin to move.

You might have come across research suggesting toads at the front of the invading wave are evolving longer legs. This isn’t natural selection – it’s spatial selection, where longer-legged toads naturally get to the front and breed with other longer-legged toads.

But we are seeing signs cane toads may be adapting to local conditions by getting better at retaining water. And, remarkably, they’ve become cannibals.

Are Cane Toads Unstoppable?

They’re formidable opponents, but cane toads have limits.

These toads eat everything they can catch – even if it has a sting or bite. They eat giant centipedes up to 16cm long. Beekeepers hate them because they’ll sit in front of hives and eat bee after bee.

Despite their poison glands, fecundity and adaptability, there’s one thing they can’t beat. Most amphibians can’t live in very arid conditions. That means toads will probably never infiltrate central Australia’s deserts.

Modelling has shown they’re unlikely to get past the arid middle coastline of Western Australia, and we think they’ll never make it to Melbourne because it’s too cold. Researchers have suggested protecting southern Western Australia from toads by converting cattle dams to tanks.

But Sydney will have to get used to cane toads before too long. They’ve already arrived several times, carried in on garden waste or in a pair of boots and establishing little populations before being eradicated. They have made it very clear they’re here to stay in Australia. Reducing numbers or protecting vulnerable areas is the best protection we’ve got.

Lin Schwarzkopf, Professor in Zoology, James Cook University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Beavers and oysters are helping restore lost ecosystems with their engineering skills – podcast

Whether you are looking at tropical forests in Brazil, grasslands in California or coral reefs in Australia, it is hard to find places where humanity hasn’t left a mark. The scale of the alteration, invasion or destruction of natural ecosystems can be mindbogglingly huge.

Thankfully, researchers, governments and everyday people around the world are putting more effort and money into conservation and restoration every year. But the task is large. How do you plant a billion trees? How do you restore thousands of square miles of wetlands? How do you turn a barren ocean floor back into a thriving reef? In some cases, the answer lies with certain plants or animals – called ecosystem engineers – that can kick-start the healing.

In this episode of “The Conversation Weekly,” we talk to three experts about how ecosystem engineers can play a key role in restoring natural places and why the human and social sides of restoration are just as important as the science.

Ecosystem engineers are plants or animals that create, modify or maintain habitats. As Joshua Larsen, an associate professor at the University of Birmingham, explains, beavers are a perfect example of an ecosystem engineer because of the dams and ponds they build.

“They create this pocket of still water, which allows aquatic vegetation to start to colonize that wouldn’t otherwise be there,” says Larsen. Once a beaver establishes a pond, the surrounding area begins to change from a creek or river into a wetland.

Larsen is part of an effort to reintroduce beavers into Britain, a place where they have been extinct for over 500 years and the landscape reflects that loss. There used to be hundreds of thousands of beavers – and hundreds of thousands of beaver ponds – all across Britain. Without beavers, it would be prohibitively difficult to restore wetlands at that scale. But, as Larsen explains, “Beavers are doing this engineering of the landscape for free. And more importantly, they’re doing the maintenance for free.”

This idea of using ecosystem engineers to do the labor-intensive work of restoration for free is not limited to beavers. Dominic McAfee is a researcher at the University of Adelaide in Australia. He studies oysters and is leading a project to restore oyster reefs on the eastern and southern coasts of Australia.

“These reefs were the primary sort of marine habitat in coasts, coastal bays and estuaries over about 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) of Australian coastline,” says McAfee. But today, “They’re all gone. All those reefs were scraped from the seafloor over the last 200 years.”

When you lose the oysters, you lose the entire reef ecosystem they support. So, a few years ago, McAfee and his colleagues decided to start bringing these reefs back. Oysters need a hard surface – like a rock, or historically, other oysters – to grow on. But all those old oyster reefs are gone and only sand remains. “So the first step to restore oysters is to provide those hard foundations. We’ve been doing that in South Australia by deploying limestone boulders,” explains McAfee. After just a year, McAfee and his colleagues are starting to see results, with millions of oyster larva sticking to these boulders.

At this point, McAfee says that challenges are less about the science and more about getting community and political support. And that is where Andrew Kliskey comes in. Kliskey is a professor of community and landscape resilience at the University of Idaho in the U.S. He approaches restoration and conservation projects by looking at what are called social-ecological systems. As Kliskey explains, “That means looking at environmental issues not just from a single disciplinary point of view, but thinking that many things are often occurring in a town and in a community. Really, social-ecological systems means thinking about people and the landscape as being intertwined and how one interacts with the other.”

For scientists, this type of approach involves sociology, economics, indigenous knowledge and listening to communities that they are working with. Kliskey explains that it’s not always easy: “Doing this sort transdisciplinary work means being prepared to be uncomfortable. Maybe you’re trained as a hydrologist and you have to work with an economist. Or you work in a university and you want to work with people in a community with very real issues, that speak a different language and who have very different cultural norms. That can be uncomfortable.”

Having done this work for years, Kliskey has found that building trust is critical to any project and that the communities have a lot to teach researchers. “If you’re a scientist, it doesn’t matter which community you work with, you have to be prepared to listen.”

This episode was produced by Katie Flood and Daniel Merino, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. It was written by Katie Flood and Daniel Merino. Mend Mariwany is the show’s executive producer. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.

You can find us on Twitter @TC_Audio, on Instagram at theconversationdotcom or via email. You can also sign up to The Conversation’s free daily email here. A transcript of this episode will be available soon.

Listen to “The Conversation Weekly” via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed, or find out how else to listen here.

Daniel Merino, Associate Science Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation and Nehal El-Hadi, Science + Technology Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Are your cats fighting or playing? Scientists analysed cat videos to figure out the difference

Have you ever worried if the play between your cats was getting too rough? A new study published in Scientific Reports has investigated play and fighting in cats.

Their aim was to use simple behaviours anyone could observe to work out what was play and what might lead to fights. This is important because the consequences of fights include injuries to animals and humans. At worst, you may even have to rehome one of your cats if they’re not getting along.

Categorising Cat ‘Fights’

The study, led by Noema Gajdoš-Kmecová from University of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy in Slovakia and from the University of Lincoln, UK, analysed 105 videos of interactions between 210 cats.

The research team then developed an ethogram – a list of specific behaviours used in the study of animal behaviour. These were put into six groups:

1. Inactive: head and body motionless and in specific position, for example crouching
2. Wrestling: cats in physical contact with wrestling movements
3. Chasing: one cat runs in pursuit or another cat runs away
4. Other interactive activities: for example grooming, approaching, raised fur on back
5. Non-interactive: activity directed towards themselves or an inanimate object, for example drinking, self-licking
6. Vocalisation: for example growl, hiss, meow

Each video was analysed to identify which of these behaviours were shown by each cat. Each interaction was then analysed statistically to work out which behaviours appeared together in clusters.

From this, the researchers separated the videos into three categories of interactions.

Playful: included 40% of cats from the videos and included wrestling and a lack of vocalising.

Agonistic: agonistic behaviours are any social behaviours that include threatening, aggression and submission. Cats in this group vocalised and had recurring bouts of inactivity; 32% of cats from the sample landed in this group.

Intermediate: this group included 28% of cats and was more closely associated with the playful group than the agonistic group. Cats in this group interacted for prolonged periods with pauses in between.

As a crosscheck, these behavioural categories observed from the videos agreed fairly well with how the four authors, experts in cat behaviour, described each interaction.

What Does This Tell You About Your Cats’ Play?

If your cats are wrestling, they are most likely playing. When there is friction between cats in a multi-cat household, they tend to avoid physical contact. Instead, they’ll use offensive or defensive manoeuvres that don’t involve extended direct contact, such as slapping.

If your cats are vocalising, and chasing between periods of inactivity (such as crouching) they are most likely fighting. Vocalisation is an especially important clue here to an aggressive, rather than playful interaction. Chasing is OK if it’s mutual, but if one cat is chasing or one cat is running away, that’s not so positive.

The intermediate group is the tricky one. It contains elements of both playful and agonistic behaviours, though was more closely related to the playful than the agonistic group. This suggests play could become agonistic, depending on what happens during the interaction.

In particular, the authors observed frequent breaks within the interaction, which may allow cats to reassess their partner’s interest in playing, and avoid escalation from play to aggression.

The Big Fights Are Easy To Spot

This study is the first to apply a scientific approach to cat behaviours anybody can identify, describing three types of interactions to help identify between play and fighting in cats.

We all know when cats are really fighting, but the main strength is in working out intermediate examples – where it could be OK, but could also escalate.

The study focused on obvious behaviours anybody can observe, but cats can be quite subtle, too. They also use facial expression, ear and tail placement, and pheromones to communicate. These subtle signals may be just as important in differentiating between what is playing and what is fighting.

If your cats really are besties (sleep in close contact and share food and toys) the occasional bit of agonistic play is okay.

But if your cats don’t get on as well, you might need to watch for signs of agonistic behaviours. Tension between cats is not always obvious, but can affect their physical and mental health.

If you are unsure if your cats are really getting along, seeking help early from an expert in cat behaviour can prevent a cat-astrophe.

Susan Hazel, Associate Professor, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide and Julia Henning, PhD Candidate, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

One of these underrated animals should be Australia’s 2032 Olympic mascot. Which would you choose?

Am I not pretty enough? This article is part of The Conversation’s series introducing you to unloved Australian animals that need our help.

Australia is set to host the 2032 Olympic games in Queensland’s capital Brisbane, captivating an audience of billions. With so many eyes on Australia, the burning question is, of course, what animal(s) should be the official mascot(s) of the games, and why?

Summer Olympics past have featured recognisable animal mascots such as Waldi the daschund (Munich, 1972), Amik the beaver (Montreal, 1976), Misha the bear (Moscow, 1980), Sam the eagle (Los Angeles, 1984) and Hodori the tiger (Seoul, 1988).

Iconic and familiar mammals and birds dominate the list. The trend continued at Sydney’s 2000 games which featured Syd (playtpus), Olly (kookaburra) and Millie (echidna).

But the Brisbane Olympics is a great opportunity to showcase lesser known species, including those with uncertain futures.

Sadly Australia is a world leader in extinctions. Highlighting species many are unfamiliar with, the threats to them and their respective habitats and ecosystems, could help to stimulate increased conservation efforts.

From a “worm” that shoots deadly slime from its head, to a blind marsupial mole that “swims” underground, let’s take a look at three leading candidates (plus 13 special mentions). What makes them so special, and what physical and athletic talents do they possess?

Onychophorans, Or Velvet Worms

Velvet worms are extraordinary forest and woodland denizens thought to have changed little in roughly 500 million years. Australian velvet worms are often smaller than 5 centimetres and look a bit like a worm-caterpillar mash up. They’re found across Australia and other locations globally.

Their waterproof, velvet-like skin is covered in tiny protusions called papillae, which have tactile and smell-sensitive bristles on the end. Velvet worms possess antennae and Australian species have 14-16 pairs of stumpy “legs”, each with a claw that helps them move across uneven surfaces such as logs and rocks.

Their colour varies between species, often blue, grey, purple or brown. Many display exquisite, detailed and showy patterns that can include diamonds and stripes – clear X-factor for a potential mascot.

Although velvet worms may be relatively small and, dare I say it, adorable, don’t be fooled. These animals are voracious predators.

They capture unsuspecting prey – other invertebrates – at night by firing sticky slime from glands on their heads. Once the victim is subdued, velvet worms bite their prey and inject saliva that breaks down tissues and liquefies them, ready to be easily sucked out.

If this isn’t intimidating enough, one species (Euperipatoides rowelli) lives and hunts in groups, with a social hierarchy under the control of a dominant female who feeds first following a kill.

Despite their formidable abilities, velvet worms are vulnerable to habitat destruction and fragmentation, and a changing climate.

Jalbil (Boyd’s Forest Dragon)

Jalbil is found in the rainforests of tropical North Queensland. They are a truly striking lizard – bearing a prominent pointy crest and a line of spikes down the back, distinct conical cheek scales and a resplendent yellow throat (dewlap) which can be erected to signal to each other.

Despite their colourful and ornate appearance, Jalbil can be very hard to spot as they’re perfectly camouflaged with their surroundings. They spend much of their time clinging vertically to tree trunks often at or below human head-height. Some have favourite trees they use more frequently.

If they detect movement, they simply move around the tree trunk to be out of direct view.

Reaching lengths of around 50cm, Jalbil mostly eat invertebrates, including ants, beetles, grasshoppers and worms. Males may have access to multiple female mates, and breeding is stimulated by storms at the beginning of the wet season.

While Jalbil are under no immediate threat, their future is uncertain. Jalbil are ectothermic, so unlike mammals and birds (endothermic), they can’t regulate their internal body heat through metabolism. Sunlight is often very patchy and limited below the rainforest canopy, restricting opportunities for basking to warm up.

Instead, Jalbil simply allow their body temperature to conform with the ambient conditions of their environment (thermo-conforming). This means if climate change leads to increased temperatures in the rainforests of Australia’s Wet Tropics, Jalbil may no longer be able to maintain a safe body temperature and large areas of habitat may also become unsuitable.

Itjaritjari And Kakarratul (Southern And Northern Marsupial Moles)

These remarkable subterranean-dwelling marsupials really are in a league of their own. Both moles can fit in the palm of your hand, measuring up to about 150 millimetres and weighing about as much as a lemon (40-70 grams).

What these diminutive mammals lack in size they make up for in digging power – if only digging were an official Olympic sport. In central dunefields, they can dig up to 60 kilometres of tunnel per hectare.

Marsupial moles are covered in fine, silky, creamy-gold fur. They have powerful short arms with long claws, shovels for furious digging. Their back legs also help them push. Instead of creating and living in permanent burrows, they “swim” underground across Australia’s deserts for most of their lives.

The impressive adaptations don’t end there either. They also have ridiculously short but strong, tough-skinned tails that serve as anchors while digging. Females also have a backwards-facing pouch and all have nose shields that protect their nostrils, ensuring sand doesn’t end up where it’s not supposed to.

Due to living underground for most of their lives, many mole mysteries remain regarding their day-to-day lives. Scientists do know they eat a wide range of invertebrates including termites, beetles and ants, and small reptiles such as geckoes.

But while neither species is thought to be in danger of extinction, there are no reliable population estimates across their vast distributions. What’s more, introduced predators (feral cats and foxes) are known to prey upon them. Itjaritjari is listed as vulnerable in the Northern Territory.

And 13 Special Mentions Go To…

With so many amazing wildlife species in Australia, it really is a near impossible task to choose our next mascot. So I also want to give special mentions to the following worthy contenders:

The Australian Giant Cuttlefish

These marine animals put on spectacular, colourful displays each year when they form large breeding aggregations.

Arnkerrth (Thorny Devil)

A desert-dwelling, ant-eating machine that can drink simply by standing in puddles.

The Torresian Striped Possum

This striking black and white possum is thought to have the largest brain relative to body size of any marsupial. Their extra long fourth finger makes extracting delicious grubs from rotting wood a cinch.

Kila (Palm Cockatoo)

Our largest and arguably most spectacular “rockatoo”, which plays the drums.

Ulysses Butterfly

Also known as mountain blue butterflies, the vivid, electric blue wings of Ulysses butterflies can span as much as 130 millimetres.

The Australian Lungfish

A living fossil, which is now found only in Queensland, can breath air as well as in the water.

Mupee, Boongary Or Marbi (Lumholtz’s Tree Kangaroo)

Despite being powerfully built for climbing, Lumholtz’s tree kangaroos are also adept at jumping, when alarmed they’ve been known to jump from heights of up to 15m to the ground.

The Green Tree Python

Green tree pythons are the most vivid green snake you can possibly imagine. While adult pythons are a vibrant green the juveniles may be bright yellow or red (but not in Australia), changing colour when they are about half a metre long.

The Chameleon Grasshopper

Based on temperature, male chameleon grasshoppers can change colour from black to turquoise, and back to black again, each day.

Greater Gliders

These fabulous fuzzballs can glide up to 100m in a single leap.

Peacock Spiders

Peacock spiders come in rainbow colours and the males sure know how to shake it. Their vivid colours, such as in the species Maratus volans, are due to tiny scales that form nanoscopic lenses created from carbon nanotubes.

Corroboree Frogs

They are a striking black and yellow, and desperately need help.

And finally, I’ll always have a soft spot for Australia’s much maligned canid, the dingo.

So now, over to you. What are your suggestions for unique animal mascots at the 2032 Brisbane Olympics?

Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

5 reasons to check on your elderly neighbour during a heatwave

We all know someone who insists on wearing a cardigan in summer or refuses to turn on the air conditioning because “it’s not that hot”. Chances are this is an older person, and there’s a good reason for that.

As we get older, we tend to not “feel” the heat as much even though our bodies are less able to handle the heat. This contradiction can have lethal consequences, especially during periods of extreme heat.

So, why is extreme heat so dangerous for older people? And what can we do to help?

Why Are Older People At Risk?

Extreme heat kills more Australians than all other natural hazards, and people aged 60 or older account for 69% of those deaths.

There are five key reasons we’re more susceptible to heat as we get older.

1. Bodily changes

One of the main ways we lose excess heat, blood flowing to our skin, isn’t as effective as we get older. This is in part because the blood vessels in our skin don’t expand fast enough, and we may have less blood pumping with each beat of our heart.

Many other changes in our bodies also lead us to gain and store more heat as we get older. These include how our bodies control sweat and how well our kidneys balance fluid, which are both important for staying cool.

2. Social isolation

Loneliness and social isolation are health risks on their own, but also multiply the risk of heat-related illness.

A South Australian survey of older people showed those who were socially isolated were less confident in asking for help during a heatwave.

This is concerning as many older Australians live alone, and we are more likely to live alone as we get older.

3. Beliefs and behaviour

Older Australians may not respond to heat in ways that protect their own health and wellbeing. Australian culture tends to view heat tolerance as a matter of resilience and identity, where there is a sense of generational pride in being able to cope with the heat.

Reports also suggest many older people have concerns about the cost of air conditioning, may be hesitant to use it, or accidentally use reverse cycle units as heaters.

4. Medical issues

Many chronic illnesses that are more common with age are also associated with an increased risk for heat-related illness. Because blood flow is so important for regulating our body temperature, it’s not surprising that conditions such as heart failure and diabetes are associated with increased heat risk.

Similarly, many medications commonly prescribed for chronic illnesses can interfere with how our body regulates temperature. For instance, some blood pressure medicines reduce our ability to sweat and lose heat.

5. Home environment

It is increasingly difficult for older Australians to find affordable and appropriate housing, especially pensioners and renters.

Poor home design, lack of insulation, inability to pay their energy bills, and limited income all contribute to being vulnerable to heatwaves in Australia. This is particularly troubling as energy prices soar.

What Can We Do?

Older Australians

Knowing the risks of extreme heat is the first step. Don’t underestimate your own risk during a heatwave.

There are many practical ways we can all keep ourselves and our homes cool, both safely and efficiently. These include:

• using a fan, which is effective, especially when it’s humid, but may not be enough when it’s very hot and dry. If you have an air conditioner, consider using it

• knowing the conditions inside your home by installing thermometers that ideally also measure humidity so you know which ways will work best to cool down

• opening windows facing away from the sun when it’s cooler outside; otherwise keep blinds closed in the heat of the day

• taking cool showers or applying a damp cloth to the back of your neck can help cool the skin

• taking regular, small drinks of water, even when you’re not thirsty (unless you have heart or kidney problems in which case you need to talk to your doctor first as too much water may be a problem for you)

• knowing the signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

Older relatives, friends and neighbours

We can all keep an eye on our older relatives, friends and neighbours as:

• keeping in touch is great protection from heat-related illness; check in regularly

• when an older person can’t keep the house cool, support a day trip to a cooler place such as a library, cinema, or shopping centre

• encourage them to talk to their doctor about how medical conditions or medications might increase their risk to heat.

We Need To Raise Awareness

Australians are growing complacent about the health risks of extreme heat, see heatwaves as normal and public health messages aren’t cutting through any more.

It’s also important to remember that older people aren’t all the same, so any public health approaches to extreme heat should be tailored to communities and individuals.

One way we’re trying to help is by working directly with older people. Together, we’re researching and developing a smart device that makes it easier to know when your house is getting warm, and customising strategies you can use to cool down safely.

Sarah Cunningham, Doctoral Candidate in Public Health, Griffith University and Shannon Rutherford, Associate Professor, Public Health, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Want your child to eat more veggies? Talk to them about ‘eating the rainbow’

Parents of young children today were raised during some of the most damaging periods of diet culture. From diet and “lite” foods and drinks, to expensive “superfoods”, one constant across these changing trends has been the moralisation of food as “good” or “bad”.

These diet movements have led to many of us having difficult relationships with food, eating and dieting. If this sounds familiar, you might be wondering how to use the fun features of healthy foods to encourage kids to eat more of them.

“Eating the rainbow” means regularly eating a variety of different coloured fruits and vegetables. Encouraging your child to eat a rainbow is backed by the evidence and can start more well-rounded and positive conversations with them about foods.

Encouraging Variety

All fruits and vegetables are good for us. Depending on the age and sex of your child, Australia’s dietary guidelines recommend they eat 2–5.5 serves of vegetables and a 0.5–2 serves of fruit each day.

Each fruit and vegetable has it’s own unique profile of nutrients, so the wider variety of fruit and vegetables you eat in those serves, the better.

Eating a variety of fruits and vegetables each day has more benefits than just eating the one type on repeat, so striving for the rainbow can help encourage variety.

Serving variety and colourful meals can also encourage us to eat more. So if you or your kids are struggling to eat enough fruit and vegetables, you can use the rainbow to help get all those serves in.

Sparking Adventurousness

Chasing the rainbow can also help kids break out of their comfort zones and can be an early way to encourage adventurousness for new foods.

While kids can benefit from routine, there are links between how adventurous we are with trying new foods and other healthy traits and habits. Those who love trying new things tend to have a higher quality diet than those who hate trying new things.

Starting Early Conversations About The Complexities Of Food

Most parents of today’s kids were raised during the “reductionist” era of nutrition. The focus wasn’t on whole, complex foods, but on the key macro and micronutrients they contain. So, bread becomes all about the carbs and citrus becomes all about the vitamin C.

When we think along these lines it’s easy to think bread is “bad” and citrus fruits are only a good source of vitamin C.

But foods are much more complex than this. Nutrients are rarely found in just one food, and each food is seldom made of just one nutrient. And even more importantly, food isn’t just nutrients – it also contains “bioactive compounds”.

These bioactives, which you might also see called phytonutrients or phytochemicals (phyto means from plants), occur naturally in plant foods. They’re not essential for our survival like nutrients are, but they can have healthy benefits.

Often these bioactives are linked to colours, so foods of different colours not only have different nutritional profiles, but they have different bioactive profiles too.

In fact, the pigments that give fruits and vegetables their colours are often bioactives. For example, reds can be lycopenes, linked to heart and blood vessel health and purples can be anothcyanins, linked to improved inflammation.

Kids don’t need to know which bioactive goes with which colour, or what they all do. But you can start conversations about the complexity of our biology and the food that nourishes it.

Where Does Fresh Food Come From?

Survey data regularly shows many kids don’t know where their food comes from, or don’t know which fruits and vegetables are which.

Fruits and vegetables often change colours when they ripen, and different parts of the plants they come from are different colours. So talking about the rainbow can open up conversations about:

• where food comes from
• how it grows
• which parts of each plant are safe to eat
• which parts of the plants are tasty.

Rainbows Go With Everything

As children get older, you can start talking about what happens to the colours of foods when when you cook or mix them. Some foods that aren’t very tasty alone might be more palatable when you mix them with some other colours. For example, bitter green leafy vegetables can be tastier if we combine them with sour from citrus or sweetness from berries.

Cooking might make foods brighter or duller, and can release or change nutrients and bioactives.

Colours can be used in kitchen science experiments – like cabbage or blueberries acting as natural indicators of acidity.

Kids don’t need to know all the details to benefit from eating the rainbow, but talking about colours can spark curiosity. The rainbow is diverse, so it reduces the focus on individual foods, making healthy eating easier and more fun.

Emma Beckett, Senior Lecturer (Food Science and Human Nutrition), School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

My teen’s vaping. What should I say? 3 expert tips on how to approach ‘the talk’

You’ve dropped your daughter off at her friend’s house and while cleaning the car, you find what looks like a USB drive on the passenger seat. It’s a disposable vape.

You’ve seen the news. Vapes or e-cigarettes are harmful yet increasingly popular with people her age.

You call to ask if the vape’s hers. It is and she’s been vaping occasionally for a few weeks. You say you’ll talk about it later.

But what will you actually say?

1. Know Your Facts

It’s important to be across accurate and up-to-date information about vaping. Evidence-based resources for parents and carers in Australia include:

• the Lung Foundation’s evidence-based resources

• factsheets, videos and webinars from NSW Health that help dispel any misconceptions parents might have about vaping. This includes whether vapes are likely to contain nicotine and the accuracy of labelling

• Quit Victoria’s resources for parents and teens, including brief guides that cover the essentials on vaping, including busting a few myths.

A common theme across such resources for parents is to bring home the reality of vaping in terms of how many teens are actually doing it, what current health evidence shows, and why it’s more than just media coverage of incidents at schools.

In a nutshell, vapes are easy to access, teen vaping is common and it’s becoming normalised in this age group.

Our own unpublished research with young people aged 16-26, provides some insights. We’ve heard vaping called a “clean alternative” to smoking (it’s not), and a “social activity” at school or parties. One young participant has seen others “nic sick”, or nauseous from vaped nicotine.

There’s mounting evidence pointing to physical health harms and unknown mental health risks from vaping. There’s no reason for a teen to be vaping, even if adults might take this approach in quitting smoking. Many vapes contain nicotine, whatever the label says, with the potential for dependence or addiction.

2. Listen More Than Speak

It might be tempting to deliver a lecture on the dangers of vaping. But conversations are more likely to be effective if they are clear, open, and constructive, with thought about how to focus on discussing health harms.

So use some of these tips, based on ones from the Alcohol and Drug Foundation:

• approach the conversation calmly, during a shared activity, such as walking the dog

• consider questions your teen may ask, and how you want to respond

• don’t assume, avoid accusations, show trust

• no judging; really listen to their perspective (listen more than speak) and respect they have a different and unique worldview and opinions. Understand their social life and create an environment where they can discuss this with you

• don’t exaggerate, just stick to the facts. Remember, your teen may have already received vaping and health resources from school and be aware of the health impacts and uncertainties about long-term health risks of vaping

• tailor your discussion based on whether your teen vapes occasionally, is addicted and/or wants support to quit

• respect their privacy

• show that their health is your focus.

3. Support Quitting

But what if it’s gone beyond trying vaping, and your teen feels they have a dependency or addiction?

Services such as Quitline, which traditionally provide counselling for people wanting to stop smoking, are increasingly receiving calls from teens struggling with vaping-related nicotine dependence.

Parents can also call Quitline (phone: 13 78 48) to plan the conversation with a teenager about vaping. They can also contact a GP to help their teen treat nicotine dependence and related effects.

Extra resources about vaping for parents and teens are available in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Australia Capital Territory and Northern Territory.

Joshua Trigg, Research Fellow in Public Health, Flinders University and Billie Bonevski, Professor of Public Health, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.