Itsy Bitsy Spider Comic

It's rough out there...

Lesser of Two Weasels Comic

Here's another geeky wildlife comic. I can't help myself...

New Geeky Wildlife Comic

I have a new geeky bio comic. This one doesn't need much explanation. Enjoy!

P.S - Feel free to share/tweet/whatever!

Poem: Hold the Lettuce

We went to Chicago a few weeks ago and I was a bit overwhelmed by everything about it. It's just so huge and there are so many people. It was, by far, the biggest city I'd ever been in and I was struck by the utter lack of plant or animal life. So I wrote a poem. Enjoy!

So many people.

Layers upon layers of humanity.

A giant smoldering mankind sandwich.

Hold the lettuce.

So little green.

So many lives. So little life.

Every religion, creed, race, color.

Except green.

Hold the lettuce.

Brick and concrete.

Shopping Meccas. Temples of consumption.

Sell everything imaginable.

Except green.

Hold the lettuce.

The 3 minute animated short that made me cry.

I'm not much of a crier.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of these overly macho guys that never expresses their feelings. I'm just not often moved to tears.

This 2 min 48 sec animated short "Spacebound" had me sobbing. I'm talking about sitting in my office with tears running down my face. To be able to elicit that kind of emotion from your audience with such a short story, and one without dialog no less, is truly amazing.

Please watch it.

Spacebound from Spacebound on Vimeo.

The message, as I see it, is that the end is coming for all of us. We can either sit there watching the clock or we can get out into the universe and enjoy ourselves. There is no better "personification" of this message than a dog. They don't care about the future, they just want to live in the moment.

Truly a beautiful story.

Hopstories #2

We've posted the second in our web series telling the story of small craft breweries here in Oregon.

Please check out Hopstory #2!



I also did a writeup for the story that you can check out on our website.

Like it? Then Like Us on Facebook! 

Climate of Fear Comic

Time for another geeky comic!

If you missed my first one, check out my Mesopredator Release Comic.

This one probably requires a little science lesson in order to put it into context.

One of the sexiest issues in wildlife biology today (by sexy I mean new, packed with buzz words, and full of controversy) is the concept of Trophic Cascades. "Trophic" refers to the food chain. Plants are on the 1st trophic level, herbivores are on the 2nd, predators on the 3rd, etc. When a predator (e.g. wolf) effects the abundance of the organisms in a lower trophic level (e.g. grass), by changing the abundance of an organism in an intermediate trophic level (e.g. deer), that's called a trophic cascade.

Basically, wolves don't directly control the amount of grass because they don't eat grass. But if wolves move into an area that has a ton of deer and very little grass (because the deer eat it all) and the wolves eat a bunch of deer, then the grass will come back (because there's not as many deer there to eat it). That's a trophic cascade. It's a form of "top down regulation". Predators (the top) regulate the bottom (the grass) by regulating the middle (the deer). The recovery of the grass is a type of "density mediated response". The deer population is less dense so the grass responds.

Still with me?

This is all well and good. I get all this. It works for me. The part I have an issue with is called the "Climate of Fear Response". This hypothesizes that the predators might actually effect the lower trophic level simply by scaring the middle trophic level away. Basically, the grass comes back because the deer are to scared of the wolves to stick around and eat, regardless of how many deer there are. It sounds fairly intuitive but the jury is still out about the science. I, for one, don't hold to it. 

That having been said, here is my Climate of Fear Comic!