Warren's Pet E-Book

E-book cover.

No, I'm not ready to start blogging again, though I have been writing. In fact, I just self-published an e-book, No More Cats, Please! I’m announcing the book’s release here to promote it, but also because the book evolved from a handful of the posts that appeared on this blog.

The book reviews my life with pets. The memories I recount are of my and my family’s dogs, fish, turtles, gerbils, a parakeet, a horned lizard, salamanders and, of course, cats, which dominated my last quarter century.

If you've followed this blog over the years, you may remember the cats--cerebral Lassie, disappearing Rex, Boss, the cat of lesser intelligence, and especially Henry, who, among other achievements, sent Boss into protective custody and so intimidated a pet sitter with 20 years’ experience, she was unable to enter the house.

Writing the book, I pulled together selected posts, filled in lots of detail and added cement. Then I prepared an appendix whose content goes beyond my life with pets. Since many of the blog posts reviewed research, including studies of animals and pets, I summarized several pet research posts.

The book is currently available for 99 cents (cheap) from either Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/More-Cats-Please-Warren-Philipson-ebook/dp/B01IPY78B6/) or Smashwords (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/652117).

If you do read it--and I hope you will--please let me know what you think. (I can take it.) Or review the book where you buy it. Thank you.

Lure-Using Animals Addendum

One item in last Friday’s blog post, Crocodile News, was a report on crocodiles and alligators using sticks and twigs to lure nest-building birds. That, of course, made you wonder: Do other animals use hunting lures? Today’s addendum features only one that uses objects as lures, but I think you’ll be interested in what the others do.

Green herons drop bait to attract fish. (Photo from bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/2010/ausloos_jane/facts.htm)

Alligator snapping turtles wiggle their tongue to lure prey.
(Photo from video www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU6LyFfbcZE)

Young cantil snakes dangle their tail to attract prey. The tail color darkens as they age, but adults do fine without the lure. (Photo from adlayasanimals.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/cantil-agkistrodon-bilineatus/)

For their hunting lure, deep-sea anglerfish grow a long moveable filament topped by a growth of flesh (“esca”), some with bioluminescent bacteria. (Photo on multiple websites; taken from www.realmonstrosities.com/2010/06/anglerfish.html)

Some Photuris genus female fireflies mimic flashing signals of female Photinus genus fireflies to attract male Photinus fireflies for dinner instead of romance. (Photo by Thomas Eisner from www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/09/cornell-biologists-report-mimicry-and-murder-night)

Margays have been observed mimicking distress calls of baby tamarin monkeys to prey on the adult monkeys. (Photo from multiple websites.) See research paper www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1896/044.016.0107

The similarity of Calabar pythons’ head and tail offers a handy way to deceive prey, especially since the snake can move its tail as other snakes move their head. (Photo from video www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc5mwPQudsY)

Some cichlid fish, such as this Nimbochromis livingstonii nakatenga, feign death to prey on scavengers. (Photo from video www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJMu1dA2PTk)

Some species of the adult Epomis beetle go after frogs and other amphibians, but the larva of these beetles let the hunter come to it before making the hunter the prey. (Photo by Gil Wizen) See videos by Wizen youtu.be/Nm428RTPLhk and www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y1FPm5WNVc and research paper by Wizen and Avital Gasith journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0025161

The orchid mantis (or walking flower mantis) looks enough like an orchid that it is the lure to capture its prey. (Photo from multiple websites) See video www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdfGCscTMak

Tortoise Smarts

Welcome back. Did you see last Tuesday’s Waiting Animals Photo Addendum, the last photo, the one of a turtle? I saw its feet and guessed it was a turtle not a tortoise. Turtles are mostly aquatic with a swimmer’s webbed feet and streamlined body; tortoises are mostly terrestrial with stubby legs and no webbed feet or streamlining.

Young red-footed tortoise. (Photo
from howtocareforatortoise.com)

It’s confusing because “turtle” and “tortoise” as well as “terrapin” are often used interchangeably. Taxonomically speaking, turtles and tortoises are reptiles in the order Testudines. Although there are turtle species with terrapin in their name, there is no “terrapin” taxonomic unit (just University of Maryland teams).

Why the fuss? There was a very cool study of red-footed tortoises and touchscreens I wanted to tell you about.

Investigators from Austria’s University of Vienna, the UK’s Lincoln and York universities and Australia’s University of New South Wales tested red-footed tortoises’ ability to learn to operate a touchscreen and apply that training in an actual setting. The research was done to better understand how tortoises navigate, and ultimately, to advance understanding of the evolution of the brain and cognition

Why the emphasis on navigation? Reptiles lack a hippocampus that, in the human brain, is associated spatial navigation and spatial memory in addition to memory in general--particularly long-term memory--and behavioral inhibition. 

Touchscreen Experiment 

Red-footed tortoise being trained with
touchscreen. (Photos from video:
 www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMJLuh6p0A8)

Using treats such as strawberries, the investigators taught four tortoises to nose-poke a red triangle in the touchscreen center, which caused two blue circles to appear, one on each side. To be rewarded, the tortoises then had to poke consistently the circle on the left or right.

To test whether the training could be transferred from touchscreen to reality, two of the tortoises were placed in an area with two empty blue food bowls that looked like the touchscreen’s blue circles. The tortoises went to the bowl that was on the same side as the circle they poked on the screen, indicating that when navigating in real space, they do not rely on simple motor feedback but learn about the position of stimuli within an environment.

To rule out the possibility of the choice of bowls being the result of a preferred side, the investigators trained the tortoises to go to the opposite bowl. When given the same touchscreen test three months later, the tortoises still poked the circle on the same side as in their initial training.

Wrap Up

Not having a high regard for reptile intelligence, a notion I’m now forced to revisit, I was impressed by the study results and would like to see further testing with at least more tortoises. I was even more impressed by one investigator’s comment that red-footed tortoises are inquisitive and learned to use the touchscreen as fast as pigeons and rats, and--get this--faster than dogs. No comment regarding cats, of course. Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.

Tortoise study in Behavioural Processes journal:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376635714001326
Articles on study on LiveScience and ScienceDaily websites:
www.livescience.com/47155-tortoise-touchscreen-learning.html
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140806124936.htm
Background on red-footed tortoises:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-footed_tortoise
www.zoo.org/page.aspx?pid=1948#.VTumcJN8yUk
Earlier study with red-footed tortoise in Journal of Comparative Psychology:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22390619
Discussion of hippocampus functions:
www.news-medical.net/health/Hippocampus-Functions.aspx

Waiting Animals Photo Addendum

When I was deciding whether or not to do last Friday’s blog post, Waiting, I jumped ahead and collected photos that I thought would make an addendum you’d enjoy. I went with the post and here are the photos. I hope I was right.

 I think dogs wait and watch for anything, but, like toddlers, dogs place people atop their list. (Photo from dailypicksandflicks.com/2012/04/08/daily-picdump-447/)

I think that’s true whether the waiting dogs are big, like Great Danes. (Photo from roseynews.com/dogs-waiting-by-the-window/)

Or small, like Dachshunds. (Photo from roseynews.com/dogs-waiting-by-the-window/)

Or Retrievers resting on a bed. (Photo from multiple websites)

Or Shepherds sitting in a sink. (Photo from roseynews.com/dogs-waiting-by-the-window/)

Or even a deaf, rescue Pit Bull awaiting a National Guard soldier who’s been away for a weekend drill. (Photo from video www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I7GlmTKsrA)

Cats have better things to wait and watch for, unless they’re like Rex, who hid if she saw someone coming. (Vicki’s photo from Time for Pets--Cats Revisited)

Mostly, though, cats wait because they have things to think about. (Photo from multiple websites)

I wonder what turtles wait for. (Photo from multiple websites)

Time for Non-Furry Pets (Tropical Fish, etc.)

Lest my last three blog posts give you the impression that I’m a cat person, which isn’t necessarily bad just incorrect, I thought I’d give a rundown of animal companions I’ve known. 

Logically, I should start from my youth and come forward, but if you’ve read my recent blog posts, you’re already familiar with excerpts from my notes to the pet sitters. In those notes about cats, it was sometimes necessary for me to leave instructions about other animals. At times we had tropical fish. (Believe me, “we” is a stretch.)

Tropical Fish--Pleco

For the most part, the fish were small. Nevertheless, because of their number, they eventually graduated from a small bowl to a sizable aquarium. Lassie and Rex were most appreciative for the diversion. Fortunately, we didn’t have Boss at the time; she would have drowned or dumped the tank. 

Lassie, quenching her thirst 

from our first fish bowl.

Here’s an extended excerpt, warning the pet sitter that she will encounter fish where there were none before. This excerpt focuses on an algae eater, Hypostomus plecostomus or pleco, that we called Godzilla. 

Godzilla look-alike pleco. Photo courtesy of Badman’s 

Tropical Fish (http://badmanstropicalfish.com/). 

Excerpt from Note to Pet Sitter

Vicki's fish tank is sort'a cool, at least there's Godzilla, who's easily distinguished from the other fauna and flora by his or her oval grin and -- if you have patience -- by his or her ability to extend a string of droppings the entire length of the aquarium! (Probably a him.) 

Each of Godzilla's… predecessors died about every full moon, just like Vicki’s regular, less talented tropical fish….Then Vicki discovered she was supposed to feed them. 

Wow! What a concept! Feed the fish. Well, by gosh, it worked. Vicki's 2-inch runt made it through the full moon and grew and grew and will soon climb from the tank to crush Tokyo. 

There's also a frog and snails in the tank. Well, sometimes. If they get out, don't worry-- unless of course they come in contact with your exposed skin. But I bet you won't let that happen.

Goodbye Godzilla the Pleco

Lacking a license to drive a crane, I needed two hands to lift our 10 inch Godzilla when we finally relented and returned him or her to the pet store for a better life. For a subsequent going out-of-town note to the same pet sitter, I wrote:

You may remember Godzilla. He/She finally escaped (no report yet from Tokyo). Vicki's experimenting with another big one that she calls "Big One." (Vicki's from Wisconsin.)

She gives Big an algae tablet every night. I have no idea if or when or what she feeds the other things that float about, trying to escape Big, who's a tad clumsy.

Turtle and Parakeet

In grade school, I had a turtle and a parakeet. The turtle wasn’t the most exciting of pets for an active young boy, but I quickly coached the plain yellow parakeet, frozen and traumatized the winter evening my parents brought it home, to do everything but speak. With such proven success I considered a career as a bird trainer until…crunch… the bird died. 

Box turtle.

  

The green or painted turtles that were sold when I was young were no more than 3 inches tip to tail. We found this box turtle on our lawn and brought it inside for an hour or so.

A bird, yes, but that’s a cockatiel

not a parakeet.

In college, the student with whom I shared an apartment for two years wanted a pet. He bought a small terrarium, added sand and a horned toad, which I guess are really horned lizards.

The animal lasted a couple weeks. It was so inanimate and required so little care, my roommate didn’t know it was dead for days.

Wrap Up

Thanks for stopping by. If you’ll permit me to continue my pet saga, I’ll come back in about a week and write about--ready?--dogs. Earlier next week, I’ll post a couple of non-furry pet photo addenda.

P.S.

I encourage any interested viewer to sign up (at bottom) for the emailed version of blog posts. I recommend, however, that the emailed version be used as an alert to check the website. The format of the emailed version can be quite different from what I lay out and any links, such as the YouTube video of Henry, may be absent.