What species are more Canadian than moose or beavers? We now have an answer. A new report has catalogued 308 species, sub-species and varieties of plants and animals found in Canada — and nowhere else on the planet. They include mammals such as the eastern wolf, Vancouver Island marmot, wood bison and Peary caribou; birds such as the Pacific Steller’s jay; and fish such as the Banff longnose dace, Atlantic whitefish and Vancouver lamprey. But 80 per cent of them are plants and insects — ones you probably haven’t heard of, like the Maritime ringlet butterfly and the Yukon goldenweed. …B.C., Quebec, Alberta and Yukon had the highest numbers of endemic plants and animals.
The Enchanted Forest located west of Revelstoke is set to reopen for the season on June 26. The tourist attraction will be opening with COVID-19 protocols in place, as all reopening businesses are. …The attraction boasts a 50 foot treehouse, the largest one in the province. It also features 350 handcrafted fairy tale figurines and structures all hidden within gorgeous, old growth forest. The grounds include a two-kilometre boardwalk through the forest where visitors can learn more about the trees, plants, herbs and the giant 800-year-old cedar grove found there.
A small black bear spent the night in a treetop – and had a long sleep in Sunday morning. Terry Ruth Eissfeldt and her husband Terrence were in their Hyde Creek home, an east-Vancouver Island spot overlooking the Broughton Archipelago, Saturday evening when Terrence noticed a kerfuffle in a nearby tree. The young bruin was eating something at the top of what the Eissfeldts call the eagle tree – which is frequented by eagles, but there isn’t an active nest there this year, Terry said.
Living close to nature has long been considered a boon for mental health, but it takes a special kind of researcher to ask what dollar value can be put on the feeling of being surrounded by foliage. In 2015, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to quantify the benefits of green spaces, and after analyzing data sets from the City of Toronto, they found that having 10 or more trees on a city block does the same for a person’s sense of health and well-being as getting a $10,200 raise, or being seven years younger. A tree-filled street may not make you feel like a million bucks, but $10,000 is nothing to sneeze at!
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New research by Purdue University has found that treefrogs create an ‘auditory illusion’ to protect themselves while trying to find a mate. The frogs become easy targets for predators and parasites when they send mating calls. But they have found out this unique way to protect themselves. Male treefrogs essentially overlap their mating calls with those of their neighbours. When this happens, an auditory illusion takes place and predators are more attracted to the leading call, leaving other frogs to find mates without risking their lives, according to the research. This is called the ‘Precedence Effect’… When we hear two short sounds in quick succession, we assume the sound is coming from the source of the first one.
If you’re the kind of person who hates taking down their Christmas tree, you may want to take part in a new fad flooding the ‘gram. People all across Instagram are posting pictures of their Easter trees. The hashtag #eastertree has more than 500 posts. Sam Riccioli, an interior designer from Pennsylvania, thinks these trees will bring joy to people throughout spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The Christmas tree brings so much happiness to me, my husband and children that I decided to keep it up all year round and decorate it for every holiday,” she said.
…Oregon has the highest rate of reported Sasquatch sitings per capita, according to data collected by the Bigfoot Field Research Organization that for decades has hoped to prove it’s real. The BFRO’s official Oregon sitings reports is 254, the group states. With 4.2 million residents, that means six reports per 100,000 residents… “Oregon is definitely one of the best states to see a sasquatch in the world,” said Matt Moneymaker, executive director of the Bigfoot Field Research Organization and start of a handful of Bigfoot-chasing cable television shows. …Most cryptozoologists will tell you that if Bigfoot is real, it likely is a surviving version of gigantopithecus. That was the world’s largest primate when it inhabited the forests of China and India from as far back as 9 million years ago. …a licensed Bigfoot trap was set up on federal lands in 1974 in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. It caught a few beavers but no sasquatches on six years of operation, records show.
The Boston Celtics play their home games sandwiched by history with the 17 championship banners that hang above and the fabled parquet floor beneath. Ever wonder how the Celtics ended up with such a unique court design? The parquet look was the product of a lumber shortage as the Celtics prepared to debut in the Basketball Association of America in 1946. In the aftermath of World World II, many common items were in short supply, including professionally cut wood. Most manufactured wood had been earmarked for residential housing as servicemen returned home. To attract players and fans they needed a good quality floor. The only way they could do that was getting scraps of wood at lumber yards throughout Boston and put together a floor. The court was constructed for $11,000 using surplus scraps of northern Tennessee red oak. The pieces were laid out in alternating pattern, creating the parquet effect. The Celtics utilized that same floor for 53 years…
“Social distancing” has become the standard. Here in Rhode Island, gatherings of more than five are a violation as prescribed by medical and political leaders. And, like “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” a “Twilight Zone” episode from 60 years ago, your neighbors may even turn on you — in this case if you refuse to wear a mask. While there remains a great deal we don’t know about the immediate or long-term future, what we should probably prepare ourselves for is this — that we will think in terms of “Before Times and After Times.” It seems highly unlikely, however, that we’ll just emerge from our comfortable cocoons of toilet paper, disinfectants, sweats, Netflix and PJs to return to a busy life of meetings, travel, handshakes, kisses and hugs.
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Forestry workers were felling trees in southern Scotland when they noticed something peculiar among the roots and bracken: An iron door. It turns out the team had accidentally discovered a lost WWII-era bunker, built to house one of Great Britain’s most secretive — and suicidal — military forces. Known as the Auxiliary Units (or sometimes “Churchill’s secret army”), the force was a corps of volunteers similar to Britain’s Home Guard, charged with defending the country in the event of a Nazi German invasion. Unlike the Home Guard, however, the Auxiliary Units were a guerilla warfare brigade shrouded in secrecy. …The locations of these bunkers were such fiercely guarded secrets that many of them still remain undiscovered today.
Imagine that you roll out of bed onto a living fungus floor. The walls and ceiling — heck, the whole apartment building, down to the plumbing and electrical systems — are made of fungus too. Wood and concrete are remnants of the distant past; this entire city, from the schools to the stores to the hospitals, is made of living fungus — constantly growing, dying off and regenerating itself. That’s the vision laid out in a provocative new paper, which a team of European academics say is the first-ever exploration of living fungus’ potential as a raw material for futuristic, eco-friendly “monolithic structures” that would, in their telling, revolutionize the entire built environment and economy. “We propose to develop a structural substrate by using live fungal mycelium,” reads the paper. “Fungal buildings will self-grow, build, and repair themselves.” The idea is a response to the prospect of catastrophic climate change.