Babies
milhayser | March 2, 2014Solar cells made with bismuth vanadate achieve a surface area of 32 square meters per gram. This compound can be paired with cheap oxides to split water molecules (and make hydrogen) with record efficiency.
Short-term geoengineering could postpone global warming, only to have it happen more quickly in the future.
Carotenoids tinge blackbird bills a deep orange, signalling fitness; birds with oranger bills are "are heavier and larger, have less blood parasites and pair with females in better condition than males with yellow bills."
Fibroblasts can extrude a tidy biological scaffold for stem-…
sastyk | October 26, 2010Along the theme of time - finding it, using it, fast, slow, in-between - I thought I'd re-run this post. I have a *lot* of experience with four little boys, one autistic, in getting things done around the kids ;-) - they help now a lot more, but sometimes this is still necessary, so I thought it might be worth rerunning my meditations on how that works. Asher will turn five this week, and Eli is ten now - and while Asher is now one of my primary aids, Eli is still sometimes a lovable hindrance, despite some improvement - but in a nice way, and we're used to it. Still, getting everything…
sastyk | September 2, 2010It isn't that I'm not athletic, I am - but my strengths in the athletic zone were never speed and agility - more forceful forward motion and tough elbows in basketball games. I've never been the kind of person who makes that rolling catch to save the game.
Until now. You see, I've got a new sport - the baby goat roundup. This is definitely a speed and agility event, and I am now the queen.
You see, we let our goats roam loose. Believe it or not, they don't go wandering into the road, but stay in the pastures. We only do it when someone is around to keep an eye on them (the rest of the…
sastyk | August 29, 2010Jessie finally kidded early Monday morning, giving us a solid ten baby goats, five does and five bucks. And on Thursday while celebrating one of my best friends' birthdays, we set them almost all out on parade (we ran out of kids to hold them before we ran out of kids to be held):
(From left to right, Isaiah and Poppy, Simon and Hemp, Josiah and Marshmallow, Asher and Heliotrope, Gideon and Stachys, and Rachel and Licorice.)
Missing from the lineup are Calendula (seen here in a not-terribly flattering picture of me - Calendula is the top doe, Licorice is hanging out on the bottom)
And here…
edyong | November 5, 2009Telling the difference between a German and French speaker isn't difficult. But you may be more surprised to know that you could have a good stab at distinguishing between German and French babies based on their cries. The bawls of French newborns tend to have a rising melody, with higher frequencies becoming more prominent as the cry progresses. German newborns tend to cry with a falling melody.
These differences are apparent just three days out of the womb. This suggests that they pick up elements of their parents' language before they're even born, and certainly before they start to…
edyong | September 4, 2009Domestic dogs are very different from their wolf ancestors in their bodies and their behaviour. They're more docile for a start. But man's best friend has also evolved a curious sensitivity to our communication signals - a mental ability that sets them apart from wolves and that parallels the behaviour of human infants. Dogs and infants are even prone to making the same mistakes of perception.
Like infants less than a year old, dogs fail at a seemingly easy exercise called the "object permanence task". It goes like this: if you hide an object somewhere(say a ball under a cup) and let the…
cwilcox | August 20, 2009Animals don't have to be adorable adults to be cute when they're kids. A classic example, as pointed out by my favorite French blogger (who also happens to have a fascination with parasites), is the sloth. As adults they're underwhelming in the cuddle department (unless you're a weirdo like me who thinks just about everything is cute). But as babies they're just darned adorable!Like their name suggests, the six living species of sloths which live exclusively in Central and South America tend to be slow-moving, even to the point of seeming lazy. But that lack of energy isn't without purpose.…
cwilcox | August 1, 2009Ok, so I've kinda missed a week or two.
What? None of you noticed? Oh. Nevermind then.
Wait a second, I see someone noticed. Just look at that face - so sad that I didn't post a Weekly Dose of Cute last week!
c/o the ever-adorable Zooborns
This unhappy cub is one of four lovely little 2 month olds being raised by the San Diego Zoo's all too happy staff. Cheetahs are amazing animals. They're able to reach speeds of up to 75 mph in short bursts, and are able to accelerate from 0 to 70 in about 3 seconds. Unfortunately, like so many large cats, their future is uncertain. Their numbers have…
sciencewoman | July 1, 2009In January 2008, a reader (Serious Scientist) sent me a query about dealing with inlaws who thought she should give up on her scientific career when her baby arrived. They wanted her to go to a baby shower across the country, without her husband, and she was dreading the trip and the questions and judgements that would certainly arrive during the party. I encourage you all to look back into the archives and read her original letter, and the wonderful advice everyone offered to Serious Scientist.
Serious's letter, even buried back in the archives, has generated a couple of recent comments.…
cwilcox | April 14, 2009I think these win not only on cute but on awesome naming: meet the Dik Dik.
They're named after the sound they make when startled, which I would guess is really just their way of saying "you're a total jerk" to whatever disturbs them. They live in open plains frolicking amongst other adorable grass-eaters such as giraffes, zebras, and other antelopes.
Weighing in at only 6 kg max (roughly 13 lbs) and standing a mere foot or so tall, they're just a tiny little package of almost unreal anime-style cute. Like us (or at least the best of us), they form life-long monogomous relationships. Can you…
edyong | April 14, 2009Learning a new language as an adult is no easy task but infants can readily learn two languages without obvious difficulties. Despite being faced with two different vocabularies and sets of grammar, babies pick up both languages at the same speeds as those who learn just one. Far from becoming confused, it seems that babies actually develop superior mental skills from being raised in a bilingual environment.
By testing 38 infants, each just seven months old, Agnes Melinda Kovacs and Jacques Mehler have found that those who are raised in bilingual households have better "executive functions…
cwilcox | March 30, 2009I admit I'm a sucker for cute, furry things. But even those of you who prefer the scaly creatures have to be won over by these little fur balls:
Photo credits: Jason Collier/SeaWorld Orlando, c/o Zooborns
These are some of SeaWorld Orlando's newest arrivals: a pack of four Asian Small-Clawed Otter pups. The Asian otters (Aonyx cinerea) are the smallest otter species in the world, reaching only 0.9 m (roughly 3 feet) from nose to tip of the tail when fully grown. Like other otters, they live in rivers, creeks and estuaries. These otters are unique in that they capture food with their paws…
edyong | March 7, 2009
Most of us could easily distinguish between spoken English and French. But could you tell the difference between an English and a French speaker just by looking at the movements of their lips? It seems like a difficult task. But surprising new evidence suggest that babies can meet this challenge at just a few months of age.
Young infants can certainly tell the difference between the sounds of different languages. Whitney Weikum and colleagues from the University of British Columbia decided to test their powers of visual discrimination.
They showed 36 English babies silent video clips of…
cwilcox | March 1, 2009Everyone has that "awkward" phase in their youth. It's too bad ours isn't this cute!
From Flickr
cwilcox | February 22, 2009Gotta love Zooborns for always finding great cute baby photos. I think these guys are simply the cutest in that weird, funny-looking sort of way!
They're Tawny Frogmouth chicks. Below is an image Allie took when we went behind the scenes at SeaWorld of an adult. They're similar to owls, but are not true "owls". They are raptors, like owls, but they catch their prey with their beaks instead of their talons and have a few physiological differences. Like many species of birds, they're monogamous, and will stick to their mate until death do them part. And, as far as conservation is concerned,…
cwilcox | February 9, 2009I don't really have an intro to these guys, as they're just too cute for words!
They're baby fennec foxes, for those of you who aren't familiar with those large ears. The fennec fox lives in the Sahara desert, where they use those massive acoustic organs to both hear its prey from far away and cool off. It's nocturnal, and hunts rodents, insects and just about anything it can get its adorable little paws on. Interestingly, it's one of the only species of Fox that is able to be properly kept as a pet - just ask Jeff Corwin - but most areas require special exotic animal permits to do so. Of…
cwilcox | January 26, 2009This week's cute is a newborn Sifaka (Propithecus coronatus) named Tahina from a French Zoo. She's a beautiful baby girl, whose name means "needs to be protected."
In the wild, this little girl would be carried in her mother's mouth until she was strong enough to hold onto her fur by herself. Devoid of a mother, the little lemur was given a teddy to cling to. Like all lemur species, Sifakas are found only on Madagascar, and are on the verge of extinction. This little girl is one of only 17 in captivity, and her species natural habitat is shrinking every day. The IUCN Red List states the wild…
cwilcox | January 3, 2009A spaniel adopted a litter of orphaned baby bunnies.
Click the picture above to see a video of the ridiculous cuteness.
zooillogix | October 17, 2008If Zooillogix had a child, one might have assumed that it would be a hyperactive know-it-all with a weird sense of humor that just made other people uncomfortable. Who would have guessed that it would be a bouncing bundle of innocently adorable joy!!!
Please check out the newest Bleiman creation - ZooBorns - that just went live today!
Come see baby red pandas in abundance at ZooBorns!
cwilcox | October 17, 2008Now that I'm done fuming, I can appreciate a new site I just found by the creators over at Zooillogix: ZooBorns.
Oh yes, it's every bit as cute and cuddly as it sounds. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I WANT ONE! Look at some of the adorables posted:
Red Panda Babies
Baby Armadillo
and, my personal favorite: Baby Beluga in the deep blue sea...(please tell me someone got the musical reference)