Showing posts with label zoos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zoos. Show all posts

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Koalas for School....

Try visiting Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane, Australia, or, checking out their educational programs.
http://www.koala.net/lonepine/index.htm

If you can't get there, look up Australia on a map and create a virtual visit or design a travelogue for a pretend visit.

What is special about the animals found at this sanctuary?

Have you been there? Tell us about it.

One of my Boston students did get a chance to go there. She is now a scientist that works on marsupials. We raised grant money for her to go. You might be able to raise funds for your own studies there.

Try using Google map (and comparing it to plotting the same trip using a paper map, in case the computer is down...) to go from:

90 South St
Murdoch, WA 6150, Australia

to:

Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary
Jesmond Road, Fig Tree Pocket Qld 4069, AUSTRALIA

and, then, to:

Sydney Airport
www.sydneyairport.com.au
The Ulm Building
1 Link Rd, Sydney International Terminal, NSW 2020, Australia

for the trip home to your own country.
Dr. J

Monday, January 28, 2008

How long do birds live? How many offspring do they have?

Hi! Recently I was asked questions on birds. The answer got truncated by the program handling the answer. I decided to re-create the answer here, thus, this post.

I am very excited to get your question. One reason is that my nephew is very interested in birds and we often watch them and talk about them. My mother, too, likes birds. My parents have a bird feeder and also go bird-watching. They are in their eighties. I think the birds help keep them young!

I imagine that the number of times a bird reproduces depends on the type of bird (chicken or robin, for example)and on the particular bird (Just like you like one kind of ice cream and your friend likes another, different birds might reproduce different numbers of times based on preference. Similarly, numbers of offspring and longevity vary among bird families and bird individuals just like they do among human families and individuals. The oldest woman I know is 115 years old, for example. The life span is now 160 for people. Some people die before reaching that age, because of accident or disease. The same kind of thing happens to birds: some live longer than others, some have more offspring than others. But, there are other answers...
I think I can help you find some answers.

Here is a diagram of a "typical" bird life cycle. Click here.
http://www.bird-friends.com/Life.html

There is a bird expert (scruthird@zoonewengland.com, ask for the, "bird expert.") at the Franklin Park Zoo (www.zoonewengland.org) and you can see some of "Bird World" too.

The National Zoo offers bird facts
where you can find lots of information. The bald eagle, for example can live 48 years in captivity at zoos (less in the wild). It has two or three eggs a year and typically mates in the spring, but may mate more often.

Teaching printables can be found at: http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/Themes/Life_Cycles/

Another part of the answer addressed the fact that women and men can both be scientists and the student (a girl) asking the question was encouraged to go on in science.

There is a bird game already posted. I'll put a link here: Click!

Well, I haven't recreated the entire answer, but I repeated the work that was lost as well as I could recall it at present.

Edited on 10-20-09:
See comments below for more information. Here is a quote from one of them showing a sample of the kind of information you can find there on many birds:

SPECIES

YR.-MO

SPECIES

YR.-MO.

Laysan Albatross

37-05

White-crowned Sparrow

13-04

Arctic Tern

34-00

House Sparrow

13-04

Great Frigatebird

30-00

Warbling Vireo

13-01

Source for the information on the albatross, tern, and frigatebird shown above: http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/How_Long.html Accessed 10-20-09. Notes: Copyright ® 1988 by Paul R. Ehrlich, David S. Dobkin, and Darryl Wheye,
from The Birder's Handbook (which covers birds of North America), note the date of the statistics (which are now 21 years old), the website data is limited to campus(Stanford) birds (in California) [Thanks to D. Wheye for these added clarifications in the above, "Notes."]