While in Australia I was corresponding with several teachers and trying to send back information for their students. The following two essays were the beginnings of that effort. I wrote a Part 1, but it has disappeared into the ether, and I'm still looking for it. In the meantime, please see the following: Part 2 Big Wings of Australia Part 2 Monotremes, Marsupials and Marmite So we’ve talked about monotremes and crocodiles. Since they’re both egg layers, we may as well move on to the two species of Australian bird that are particularly interesting. The first is the emu. This is Australia’s largest bird and it reminds me of an ostrich. It does not fly and can run swiftly on its long legs. A long, long, long, long time ago Africa, Australia, India, and a few other countries/continents you’ll have to ask your teachers about, were united in one land mass called Gondwana. This is millions and millions of years ago. I’m guessing though, that a common ancestor of the ostrich and emu lived in Gondwana, and that after the land masses separated, the two birds evolved slightly differently on each continent. Emus feed on fruit, seeds and insects and lay up to 12 large green eggs. The male emu is the one who hatches and raises the chicks. How ‘bout that? The ‘Little Penguins’ are one of my favorites. Their latin name is Eudyptula minor which means “good little diver.”  They always return to the same nesting site, traveling up to 1000km. They are the smallest and most vocal of all penguin species and the only species that nests on mainland Australia. When they are not diving they have a very efficient way of breathing. They extract 50% of the oxygen from each breath compared to humans who extract 15% of oxygen with each breath. This means that the penguins can replenish the oxygen in their bloodstream much more quickly, making it possible for them to dive again after a short period of time. Since humans don’t typically spend large quantities of time underwater, we don’t need to replenish our oxygen supply as quickly. Moving on to the marsupials: the lovable kangaroos, wallabies and koalas. Roos and wallabies look very similar with wallabies being just a bit smaller. Both carry their young in a pouch which is what makes them a marsupial. I’ve attached a photo of a red-necked wallaby and her joey sticking out of the pouch. I think you can see the joey’s ears and one leg. The other very recognizable marsupial is the koala. They spend up to 20 hours a day resting in the forks of eucalyptus trees, which is what I found these koalas doing when I found them at the zoo (see photo). My favorite animal so far is one I don’t have a photo of yet. It is the wombat. They remind me of little grazing Ewoks of Star Wars fame. My quest for this trip is to acquire a stuffed animal wombat. I will keep you posted with how successful I am in my quest. And finally I was going to mention Marmite. Marmite is not an animal, it is a spread made out of yeast extract that some crazy people put on toast. And I have to admit that I cheated, because Marmite itself is actually popular in England, and what people here eat is called Vegemite, but I needed an “m” word to finish out my title. So there. back to top   Big Wings of Australia So there I was, lying in my swag (Australian canvas sleeping sack) in the moonlight on the front of a catamaran, listening to whale song echo up from the water below. The boat was aptly named Moondancer and I was on board for a week with the researchers from the Oceania Project. We were surveying the waters in Hervey Bay, taking note of which whales were in the area and what they were doing. Trish and Wally Franklin, the two people who have been running the Oceania Project for almost twenty years, know many of the whales who return frequently and are keeping track of which mothers have calves in what years and which whales hang out together, and who’s related to whom. (swags) Humpback whales have unique coloration patterns on the underside of their fluke, and when they dive they raise their tails (flukes) in the air and we can take photos of the fluke patterns. This acts like the whale’s fingerprint. By matching the photos to one another scientists (like Trish and Wally) can track the life histories of whales who they photograph across the years.     The latin name for humpback whales is Megaptera novaeangliae which translates as “Big-winged New Englander.”  Humpback whales are known for their very long pectoral fins, or “wings”.  They live in oceans all over the world, but the latin name refers specifically to a population off the east coast of the United States. I came to Australia to see the population of humpback whales that migrates from their feeding grounds in Antarctica to their calving and breeding grounds off the Great Barrier Reef, and back again. I’ve decided to refer to this population as “Big-winged Australians”. Almost all humpback whales migrate between a high latitude (colder water, closer to the north or south pole, area with more fish and krill) feeding ground, and low latitude calving and breeding ground (usually warmer, protected waters, low productivity-i.e. less food). I am used to studying the population of whales that migrate between Hawaii and Alaska. The waters between and around the Hawaiian islands are a perfect calving and breeding area; the whales usually hang around between the months of December and March (making it the ‘wintering grounds’ in the Northern Hemisphere). When this population migrates back up to Alaska they feed on a mixture of schooling fish and krill (tiny crustacean, shrimp-like creatures). But we’re talking about Aussie whales. This southern hemisphere population feed primarily on krill. Each little crustacean is only 1-2 cm in length, so it takes quite a few of them to feed a 40-ton humpback whale. Very little is known about the calving and breeding areas off the Great Barrier Reef, but scientists are beginning to study the migration route between the reef and the feeding grounds in the Antarctic. It is these scientists that I’ve been spending some time with lately. If you looked at a map of Australia you would see Melbourne on the bottom of the east coast, Sydney a bit further north, Brisbane a bit further north than that, and even further north than Brisbane is Australia’s Sunshine Coast. The Great Barrier Reef is again, even further north. Australia is a very big country. Anyway, at the northern end of the Sunshine coast is Hervey Bay. It seems to be a rest stop for humpbacks who are heading back to Antarctica. Just like you might stop at McDonald’s or some other fast food joint in the middle of a long road trip, the humpbacks seem to like to spend a bit of time in Hervey Bay before continuing south. We’re not sure they’re feeding there, but it’s possible that they snack on some fish on their way to their real feeding grounds.  Earlier I mentioned that the population of whales migrating off the coast of Australia feed primarily on krill, while the population in the northern hemisphere feeds on either schooling fish or krill. Another difference between the populations is that the southern whales have a lot more white pigmentation on their flukes and undersides of their bodies. Almost all of the whales down here have entirely white undersides on their flukes and many of them have white bellies. The whales we have up in Hawaii are a lot darker overall. I am comparing the behavior now between the migration routes and what I have seen on the breeding grounds. It is still early for me to draw any huge conclusions, but I see fewer competitive groups where the males are competing for access to a lone female. Also, in Hawaii we never see more than one adult female in a group at a time. Mother/calf groups seem almost to avoid one another while in Hervey Bay I saw several groups where there were two mothers and two calves. I am including a photo of whale who came over the boat to check us out. Whales are curious animals. As long as a boat is stationary and the whales don’t feel threatened, they may come over to take a closer look. Whales can see well forward and downwards, so in order to look at a boat on the surface of the water they often swim upside down, or at least turn on their side so they can look ‘down’ at the boat as they pass. Trish and Wally are looking at the genetic relatedness of the whales in Hervey Bay and Wally is trying to isolate the paternal alleles (or what a calf inherits from its father). Some researchers obtain skin samples by taking biopsy samples, usually with a dart fired from a crossbow. Wally prefers to pick up sloughed skin. All the genetic information he needs is present in a small sample of skin and whenever whales are surface active (breaching or tail slapping for example) they shed bits of dead skin which are then floating in the water and we can pick them up with nets. The skin samples are then stored in ethanol (or sometimes frozen) before transporting them to the lab where Wally will analyze them later. back to top