Beasts of the Wild

The year is 2000, I'm 5 years old and I just watched the iconic film "JAWS" starring a ravenous Great White shark, out for cold blood. Killing everyone and everything in it's path, leaving destruction in it's wake. Being a young and impressionable native Floridian, this movie really shook me to the core, and it took years for me to recover from the stigma that this movie (and so many others) had created. The media's portrayal of sharks and their insatiable appetite had done it's part in keeping me out of the oceans for quite some time.

The world's oceans are running out of fish.

While living in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia, one of our favorite activities is visiting Cleland Wildlife Park. This conservation park offers an immersive nature experience where we get up close and personal with Australian wildlife. Very few of the animals are in cages, so I liken it to a several-acre petting zoo. As you walk in the doors, you can purchase a small bag of food and get started on your adventure.

It’s hard to describe the sound that koalas make in the middle of the night during mating season. If I had to guess, I’d say that it is a cross between a pig snorting and a bear rutting. It’s rhythmic and loud, and more nights than not, it is just outside our bedroom window in Stirling, South Australia, located just 15 minutes away from the capital city of South Australia.

Sea turtles have been in our oceans for over 100 million years. They are fantastic navigators; they swim great distances between feeding and nesting grounds. They are elegant, beautiful, and adapted perfectly to live in the oceans. Aside from the cuteness and charm that comes with sea turtles, their biology has some very interesting quirks to it, some good, some bad. Yet it’s their biology that helps conservationists and scientists better conserve these species, as they need the help.

A world without the buzz of bees would really sting. The humble bumblebee- the same ones we swat and scream at when they fly our way, play a crucial role in each of our daily lives! We actually have a bee to thank for every 1 in 3 bites of food that we eat every single day. Bees work tirelessly, sometimes up to 12 hours a day foraging nectar and transporting pollen between plants to produce essential foods in our diet like fruits, vegetables, nuts, chocolate and even coffee! Bee populations have been drastically declining more and more each year since the 1980s. If we lose our precious pollinators to extinction, we lose up to 90% of the world’s nutrition. It’s time for us humans to beehive!

This 8 armed, beak wielding, marine invertebrate belongs to a family (Cephalopods) of approximately 300 species worldwide. They're known for their camouflage abilities, intelligence, and generally for being weird yet wonderful creatures of the blue. So why are they cool? Aside from how they look like aliens, or how they can squeeze into tiny places, they've got a few things about their biology that makes them cool.

A Quick Aside

If you want to get involved in birdwatching, you can make it more interesting by knowing some facts about birds. Test your bird knowledge by answering the following questions.