Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2025 i BBC Wildlife Magazine

Secrets of the Spy Whale A documentary uncovering the true story of a beluga whale suspected of spying for Russia. Enter the strange world of marine mammal training and international espionage. Catch up on iPlayer Fungi: The Web of Life Biologist and writer Merlin Sheldrake unravels the many secrets of these essential organisms that shape the weather, support life on land, are at the cutting edge of medical research, and even have the power to break down plastic waste. Catch up on BBC iPlayer Rare Earth The toughest drought on record has helped spread fires in the Amazon that have been the worst in two decades. In the episode titled Amazon Future, the rainforest’s role in the global climate is considered, as well as its future. Catch up on BBC…

ON THE INSIDE A mesmerising ghost glass frog hides within a curled Heliconia leaf in Costa Rica. Glass frogs are found in Central and South American rainforests and are so-called because they have translucent bellies and chests, allowing lucky observers to see their blood pumping and food being digested. STILL LIFE Trapped by the surface tension of the water, this collection of dead butterflies and moths was seen in a stream in Majella National Park, Italy. The image is one of 25 competing for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award 2024. Voting is open until 29th January at bit.ly/VotePeoplesChoice2024.…

GREAT TINAMOU AT FIRST GLANCE, the great tinamou (Tinamus major) seems a candidate for nature’s worst mother. After a fleeting liaison, this tropical bird abandons her eggs on the forest floor, leaving the father to do all the caretaking while she waltzes off to mate with another male. Tinamous are ground-dwelling junglefowl found in the forests of Central and South America. Resembling big brown quails with tiny shrunken heads, they blend into the leaf litter – a logical adaptation, since the forest floor is teeming with predators. What’s puzzling is why such an artfully camouflaged bird lays lurid turquoise eggs – which positively pop in their dark surroundings – and leaves the male alone to protect them. Birds normally go to great lengths to safeguard their chicks. Some, such as…

I’M CROUCHING UNCOMFORTABLY AMONG SHARP volcanic rocks, yet I’m buzzing with the thrill of discovery. Behind me, a vast sea stretches to the horizon, the waves crashing against the shore with a rhythmic roar; in front of me, a large, vivid crustacean is scuttling across a dark, lumpy outcrop with a gentle tip-tap of its claws, offering a welcome burst of colour in this rugged, almost alien landscape. It’s a yellow land crab, otherwise known as John. This is my first encounter with this species, yet it feels like I’m greeting an old friend. Ever since I first clapped eyes on an image of a yellow land crab, I’ve been eager to find it and tell its story. Seeing it in the flesh is a dream come true. It’s March…

WOLVES ARE THE LARGEST members of the dog family (Canidae) and can be found in Europe, Asia, North America and Africa. They are highly sociable mammals that typically travel and hunt in packs. These apex predators are a keystone species because they encourage biodiversity and support ecosystems by keeping prey numbers under control. Wolves live in a variety of habitats, including forests, shrublands, wetlands, grasslands, rocky areas and deserts. What do wolves eat? These carnivores occur primarily but not exclusively in wilderness and remote areas where there is suitable food. Unsurprisingly, there are usually more wolves where there is more to eat. The wolves’ diet mainly consists of large ungulates such as moose, caribou, deer and wild boar, but they are also known to catch smaller mammals. Wolves will also…

The crossword ACROSS 1 National park in Canada, home to wolverine, elk and grizzly bear (5) 4 Thick-furred marine mammal (3,6) 9 Predatory sea snails (7) 10 ___ mouse, small farmland rodent (7) 11 Bloodsucking invertebrate (5) 13 Rounded segment of an oak leaf, for example (5) 15 Female swan (3) 16 Tree in the laurel family (3) 17 Songbird of Asia and the Americas, often greenish in colour (5) 19 African bird on the wattle-eye family (5) 21 Large sea duck, sometimes called a cuddy (5) 23 Another name for a snow leopard (5) 24 Large flightless bird (3) 25 Venomous snake (3) 26 Leafy plant also called a plantain lily (5) 28/30 Social insect that builds its nest from mud (5,3) 29 Flatfish that may be Pacific, longfin…

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TO THE YUROK TRIBE WHO INHABIT northern California, the Klamath River is “the bloodline, the lifeblood of the people” because of the vast numbers of Chinook and coho salmon and steelhead trout that used to migrate upstream and into its tributaries to spawn each year. Dam-building for hydro-electricity, which began in 1908, had a catastrophic impact on this once abundant resource, cutting off the fishes’ routes to their spawning sites. But now, after decades of negotiation involving federal and state authorities and indigenous (not just the Yurok) and environmental groups, four major dams have been removed, and the salmon and trout can travel upriver once again. The first dam came down in the summer of 2023, with the removal of the others – the largest more than 50m in height…

THE FUTURE OF INDIA’S CRITICALLY Endangered great Indian bustard (GIB) is looking up. The first chick conceived by artificial insemination recently hatched in a victory for the country’s Bustard Recovery Program. GIBs, some of the world’s heaviest flying birds, are seriously threatened by hunting and habitat loss, with fewer than 200 in the wild. Once found across 11 states in western India, today these big birds are generally restricted to Rajasthan and Gujarat. Habitat has been lost to industrialised farms and renewable energy infrastructure, such as wind turbines, and the birds’ poor eyesight can lead to collisions with powerlines, fences and cars. “The only solution to conserve the GIB is to preserve its natural habitat,” says conservation ecologist Sumit Dookia. In the meantime, researchers are trying to keep numbers up…

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Watch Florian’s polar bear footage in Mammals, episode four Frozen playground Around 3,000 polar bears live in the Barents Sea area, including Svalbard, midway between northern Norway and the North Pole. Bear encounters are often friendly. When these two young adults met, they played happily for five hours, including – according to Florian – ‘skating’ together on stretches of freshly frozen, smooth grey ice. Family foraging A female searches for prey to sustain her family. Cubs eat solid food from the age of three months, but mothers continue breastfeeding for another 16 months or more. Despite their efforts, Svalbard cubs have only a 35 per cent chance of surviving for two years. Bigfoot trail Adult males are roughly twice the weight of a grizzly bear and leave huge prints. Up…

Email your questions to wildlifemagazine@ourmedia.co.uk Why do penguins give stones to each other? THERE’S NOT A GREAT CHOICE OF NESTbuilding materials in the Antarctic. Pretty much the only things available to gentoo, Adélie and chinstrap penguins are pebbles, which at least serve to raise eggs off the frozen ground. Pebbles don’t collect themselves and can be hard to find. The males tend to do the bulk of the work and will readily steal from their neighbours to fulfil their parental duties. There are plenty of videos out there of penguins passing the stones from beak to beak to a mate on the nest. This behaviour has inspired the word ‘pebbling’, which has come to describe the swapping of little gifts between human friends or lovers. If the internet is to…

How is silk made? Silk is a catch-all term for a range of high-strength threads produced by invertebrates to build webs, nests, cocoons and egg-cases. It starts out as a gel-like fluid composed of short protein chains and only solidifies when it is extruded from glands via tiny nozzles. The forces involved in squeezing it out cause the protein chains to interlink, producing gossamer-thin threads. Silkworm caterpillars pupate within a cocoon spun from a single thread hundreds of metres long. Textiles made from it are highly durable and, thanks to the microscopic structure of the fibres, scatter light to produce an attractive shimmering effect. Has Antarctica ever been ice-free? Not only has it not always been covered in ice, but Antarctica hasn’t always been at the South Pole. Today, the…

Little and large Walking in my garden one afternoon, I spotted this large Tetraponera ant drinking alongside some smaller ants. Within seconds, the smaller ants became scared of their larger cousin and ran away. Dipanjan Pal, Kolkata, India Hideaway Pheasant-tailed jacana chicks take shelter under the wings of their parent. The legs of the chicks and the two cute heads appearing above make this scene special to me. Niranjan Karmakar, Asansol, India Night glow Fireflies are most active during the monsoon season, when you can see a synchronised, rhythmic blinking in the forests. Pratap Patra, Khargapur, India Friends in high places Two red-breasted parakeets observe their surroundings, their keen eyes scanning for signs of food or potential threats. Dakshesh Ashra, Mumbai, India On the fly After repeatedly trying to use…

IT WAS WONDERFUL TO SEE YOUR December issue cover photo of a red panda, yet so sad to read the recent news of the death of a baby red panda at Edinburgh Zoo. With fireworks becoming more prevalent, surely there could be controlled zones or regulations. I wonder if there are studies available, or articles by journalists, looking at the effect that fireworks have on wildlife. They could be used to strengthen the case. I have witnessed some sad reactions to fireworks on trailcams. All animals and animal lovers deserve a voice, but we seem to be unheard. Kathryn Spedding, Buckinghamshire Missing cat Why is Acinonyx pardinensis, the compelling giant European cheetah, missing from the Top 10 article on prehistoric cats in the December issue? A. pardinensis is currently thought…

In 2012, following the death of her husband, photographer Ursula Clare Franklin set herself a challenge: to see and capture all 18 species of penguin in the wild. This quest, which would span several years and take her to some of the most remote corners of Earth, helped Ursula not only to understand these diverse and fascinating birds, but to come to terms with her loss. ON SALE 6th FEBRUARY…

NICK BAKER “It did look for all the world like a monkey nut with wings, and one sprinkled with icing sugar” P.36 GILLIAN BURKE “Plants are more than carbon stores – they are living, breathing, climate co-creators” P.27 MARK CARWARDINE “Fox hunters argue that their barbaric bloodsport should continue because it is a British tradition” P.30 LUCY COOKE “Cameras recorded a whopping 80 per cent of tinamou eggs being eaten by predators” P.29 MIKE DILGER  “In hunting mode, an orca often swims on its side to hide its distinctive dorsal fin from its quarry” P.32…

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) IS BEING utilised to help save the UK’s endangered red squirrels. The groundbreaking technology, known as Squirrel Agent, has been trained to spot the difference between red and grey squirrels in a bid to manage feeders meant for red squirrels and, ultimately, control populations. The UK’s only native squirrel, reds have been under threat since the introduction of greys from North America in the late 19th century. Today, greys are thought to number some 2.7 million versus only a few hundred thousand reds. This is largely because greys are bigger, outcompeting reds for food and territory, and carry squirrelpox, a disease deadly to reds. Collectively, these pressures have pushed red squirrels to the brink of extinction. Squirrel Agent, which claims a 97 per cent accuracy rate, recognises…

EIGHT OR SO YEARS AGO, DICK WOODS was attracting an estimated 50 greenfinches to the birdfeeders outside his converted barn near Canterbury, Kent. They vastly outnumbered the other species, and then – over a just a couple of weeks – they completely disappeared. Woods’s visitors had succumbed to a deadly disease that has killed around 70 per cent of British greenfinches: trichomonosis, a parasite that first jumped to songbirds from pigeons around 2005. It’s thought to be spread mainly on and around birdfeeders, and this got Woods, who is a design engineer by trade, thinking. The result was Finches’ Friend, a redesigned birdfeeder that Woods manufactures at home and says reduces disease transmission. Trichomonosis is spread in saliva, and infected birds regurgitate their food. “You don’t want birds walking, vomiting…

WILDLIFE SPECTACLES The broadcaster, naturalist and tour guide shares the most breathtaking seasonal events in the world BEING BOTH AN APEX PREDATOR AND A charismatic beast, the orca, or ‘wolf of the sea’, must surely figure highly on most wildlife-watchers’ bucket lists. The orca is a cosmopolitan species and swims in all oceans, but is most abundant in colder, temperate waters. Spotting these giants is rarely straightforward, however, and just the sight of that huge dorsal fin slicing through the water might arguably be considered a spectacle in its own right. Anyone keen to go a step further and witness orcas at their destructive best will need to head to just a couple of locations on the coast of Argentina, between February and late April (the austral autumn). With the…

THE JAVAN SLOW LORIS IS NOT, AS ITS name suggests, the speediest creature in the animal kingdom. These melon-sized mammals move at an average speed of around one mile an hour, while they can perch motionless on a branch for an entire morning or afternoon. Researchers believe they may even slip into torpor – a kind of hibernation – when it gets chilly. Sadly, the recent decline in the Javan slow loris population has been anything but sluggish. With numbers plummeting by at least 80 per cent over the past three decades, the Javan slow loris is now one of the world’s 25 most endangered primates. In Indonesia – which is home to the Javan slow loris and five other slow loris species – these omnivores are now in serious…

SAILING THROUGH THE AIR WITH ITS COLOSSAL, 2m wings outstretched, white head and yellow beak contrasting with its dark body, there’s no mistaking one of North America’s most iconic birds: the bald eagle. The USA’s national bird has had a rollercoaster ride. Many people are familiar with the species’ astounding recovery following a brush with extinction, but one chapter in this incredible success story usually flies under the radar: a young woman alone in the woods, hand-feeding a vulnerable pair of eagle chicks. Before she had landed this unusual role as eagle foster-mother, Tina Morris, a graduate from Cornell University, knew little about these birds. “I have to admit,” she recalls, “there were many times when I thought ‘what on Earth am I doing here? How exactly am I going…

Many aquatic animals, from bryozoans and corals to sponges and barnacles, spend their whole lives rooted to one spot. They don’t need to travel because the currents bring them what they need. On land, animals must actively go and find it – though some are less active than others. Even the fastest snails reach only 0.012kph (or 3.3mm per sec). Among the vertebrates, sloths, which clamber through the trees at an eye-watering 0.24kph, are always going to be hard to lose to. Their gait is designed for efficiency rather than speed, because their leafy diet gives them little energy to play with. FACT. Crows might just have an evolutionary edge. Studies have found that corvids can recognise human faces, apparently learning from parents and the flock to identify threatening humans.…

DETECTING CHEMICALS IN THE environment enables an individual to identify molecules secreted by predators or prey, potential poisons and sexual partners. This benefit to survival and reproduction helps explain why smell – olfaction – is probably the oldest sense and evolved 500 million years ago, around the origin of animals. What’s the difference between taste and smell? The distinction is down to whether a chemical is already dissolved in water or if it is airborne. Your tongue’s tastebuds identify five flavours (bitter, salty, sweet, sour and savoury/umami) in liquids, while your nose’s sensors can detect numerous odour molecules – odourants – that are airborne before they dissolve in the moist lining of your nasal cavity. But that’s for terrestrial species. For aquatic creatures such as fish, all molecules are in…

How did your career in wildlife photography start? After spending 15 years working behind desks for large corporations, I made the decision to quit and start a career in nature photography. I can proudly say that I have been enjoying life as a wildlife photographer since 2014. Photography has given me the opportunity to have a much more dynamic existence, to travel the world and see things differently. I don’t see it as a job, rather a thrilling journey. What is the current focus of your photography work? I support Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary near Freetown, Sierra Leone, where staff care for orphans whose parents have been killed for bushmeat, and also rehabilitate injured individuals. I have been visiting the sanctuary since 2020, taking photographs and making films that tell the…

1. Stonefish Cleverly camouflaged on rock, coral reef or the seabed and capable of staying completely still, stonefish are dangerous because they are practically invisible to the prey they ambush and swallow whole. They’re equally deadly to any creature that falls foul of their defensive dorsal spines, which, if the fish is disturbed, stand on end to deliver a powerful venom. 2. Moray eel These fearsome 3m-long, sea serpent-like predators usually target fish, but have been known to bite divers if they get too close. They have poor eyesight and could mistake a human arm for a tasty meal. Amazingly, they have a second set of jaws that launch into the mouth after the first set has snagged its prey, dragging it into the back of its throat. 3. Pufferfish…