This bird species was contributing to the demise of another. So scientists stepped in to help.
Image by Gus Van Vliet/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Pictured above is the marbled murrelet, a seabird native to the coasts of the Pacific Ocean.
Marbled murrelets stay mostly around Oregon, Washington, Northern California, British Columbia, and Alaska (although also somewhat in Russia and northern Japan).
They thrive in old-growth forests, and if you're a human it's rare to find one of their nests because they tend to build them hundreds of feet off the ground.
As a species, they're endangered, in part because of logging that has reduced the size of their habitat. But there's another concern as well that is also, but indirectly, human-caused.
This guy:
Image by Noel Reynolds/Flickr.
That's the Steller's jay, another species of bird.
The jay isn't a very picky eater and therefore tends to go to where the food is.
We humans go and visit old-growth forests — that part is OK — and then we toss bread or seeds or other such stuff on the ground, hoping to feed the birds.
Marbled murrelets only lay one egg per year. When jays are around, eating those eggs, it makes it hard for the marbled murrelet population to grow.
That sounds like a very nice idea — birds have to eat, after all! — but there's a downside. The jay population thrives and are attracted to this new abundance of edibles, and while they're in the neighborhood, they find something else to snack on: eggs.
That includes chicken eggs, if there happen to be some laying around, but it also includes marbled murrelet eggs.
To make matters worse, marbled murrelets only lay one egg per year. When jays are around, eating those eggs, it makes it hard for the marbled murrelet population to grow.
The good news is that jays are “really, really smart," as Elena West, a researcher with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told NPR.
And also per NPR, Portia Halbert, a park scientist at Butano State Park just outside of San Francisco, has used the jays' intelligence against them. How? With a little bit of poison.
Halbert and team take chicken eggs and paint them to look like marbled murrelet eggs. Then they inject these decoy eggs with a little bit of something called Carbocal into the eggs, which, if you're a bird, is a bad thing to eat — it'll likely make you throw up.
The jays learn that the eggs aren't good for them and, over time, learn not to eat them.
The jays learn that the eggs aren't good for them and, over time, learn not to eat them. And as smart as the jays are, they aren't quite smart enough to differentiate between chicken eggs and marbled murrelet eggs.
So eventually, the jays learn to let the marbled murrelet eggs go uneaten.
Hopefully, this will help keep the marbled murrelet population growing.
Although there's one other reason to be concerned. Halbert and her team (and similar teams in other forests) can only place tainted decoys on the ground — the nests of marbled murrelets are simply too high up for humans to reach.
Some researchers are concerned that the jays will realize that the eggs on the ground aren't safe to eat but that the ones up in the nests — and therefore, the ones most likely to hatch — make for perfectly fine snacks.
Dan Lewis runs the popular daily newsletter Now I Know ("Learn Something New Every Day, By Email"). To subscribe to his daily email, click here.
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.