Climate change is increasingly causing extreme weather events and natural disasters that have left scientists alarmed. One such event occurred on September 16, 2023, when earthquake sensors around the world detected mysterious seismic tremors that lasted for nine days—an unusually long duration for any earthquake.
Representative Image Source: Greenland, Sildefjord, Aerial view of expedition yacht S/V Ocean View anchored in cove along Tugtotoq Island along Skovfjord on summer evening (Getty Images)
Researchers, who had no idea what was causing these seismic vibrations, classified the signal source as a “USO” – an unidentified seismic object, as per Scientific American. A year later, they finally had the answer to this mystery, and a study published in the journal Science revealed that the cause of the seismic signal was a massive rockslide that occurred in Greenland’s isolated Dickson Fjord. “When we set out on this scientific adventure, everybody was puzzled and no one had the faintest idea what caused this signal,” said Kristian Svennevig, a geologist and the study’s lead author, in a press release. “All we knew was that it was somehow associated with the landslide. We only managed to solve this enigma through a huge interdisciplinary and international effort.”
A team of 68 scientists from 40 institutions in 15 countries worked together to reveal that the mysterious reverberations were triggered after a 3,937-foot-high mountain collapsed in Greenland’s Dickson Fjord, per The Guardian. After the melting glacier was unable to hold the elephantine mass, more than 25 million cubic meters of rock and ice plunged into the fjord’s waters, further triggering a 656-foot-high mega-tsunami, and a phenomenon known as a “seiche.” A tsunami wave typically gets dissipated in the ocean or sea, but this wave got trapped inside the fjord, and the water kept sloshing back and forth rhythmically for almost nine days, sending seismic tremors throughout the planet.
The landslide and mega-tsunami were first observed in Eastern Greenland. Although no damage was caused to the locals, the disaster ended up smashing $200,000 worth of gear at an unoccupied research station on Ella Island.
Scientists attribute this entire phenomenon to the rapidly changing climate conditions. “Climate change is shifting what is typical on Earth, and it can set unusual events into motion,” said Alice Gabriel in the press release. This particular tsunami shed a voluminous mass of rock and ice that was “enough to fill 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.”
A mysterious, unidentifiable seismic signal, a first-of-a-kind giant Greenland landslide, a 200m high tsunami, and a 9-day-long seiche explained by #HPC models. It has been a tremendous honor (and – lots of fun) to be a tiny part of this collaboration published in Science today. https://t.co/IJOyZYCc3x— Dr. Alice-Agnes Gabriel (@InSeismoland) September 12, 2024
To solve the mystery of this seismic reverberation, scientists combined information from a wealth of seismic data, satellite imagery, in-fjord water level monitors, and detailed simulations of how the tsunami wave evolved. When they analyzed the signal and reconstructed the chain of events that could have possibly triggered it, they noticed that it depicted two peculiar things. Firstly, it looked nothing like a typical earthquake on the seismograph, but oscillated with a 92-second interval between its peaks, too slow for humans to notice. Secondly, the signal didn’t seem to lose its strength for more than a week.
Representative Image Source: A seismographer uses a pen to point out the initial shock waves of an earthquake charted on a seismograph. (Getty Images)
The study’s findings have now put another concern in the minds of scientists and geologists. As climate change appears more prevalent around the globe, especially in the arctic regions, events like these might be more frequent than ever. “This certainly won’t be the last such landslide-megatsunami. As permafrost on steep slopes continues to warm and glaciers continue to thin, we can expect these events to happen more often and on an even bigger scale across the world’s polar and mountainous regions. Recently identified unstable slopes in west Greenland and in Alaska are clear examples of looming disasters,” the researchers, including Stephen P. Hicks, told Scientific American and added that, while the ground beneath the feet of humans is shaking, they must adopt new ways of thinking to deal with these situations.
The urban monkeys in New Delhi are so bold they’ll steal the lunch right off your plate. If you’ve spent time in New York, you’ve probably seen squirrels try to do the same. Sydney’s white ibises got the nickname “bin chickens” for stealing trash and sandwiches.
This brazen behavior isn’t normal for most species in the countryside, yet it shows up in urban wildlife, and not just in these cities.
Studies show that animals living in urban environments around the world exhibit common sets of behaviors. At the same time, these urban animals are losing traits they would need in the wild. This process of urban animals’ behavior becoming more similar is known as “behavioral homogenization,” and it accompanies the loss of species diversity with urbanization.
Squirrels in New York’s Central Park have no qualms about rifling through your belongings and stealing your food. Keystone/Getty Images
Cities, despite their local differences, share many of the same features worldwide: They are warmer than the surrounding countryside, noisy, polluted by light and, most importantly, dominated by people.
Cities drive evolution as well. Humans and the changes we’ve brought to cities have led to the survival of bolder animals, and those bolder animals pass on their traits to future generations. In genetics, scientists refer to this as the environment “selecting” for those traits.
It’s not just sandwich-stealing that is more common among city wildlife; urban birds also sound more alike.
Why? Cities are loud and filled with traffic noise, so those who can effectively communicate in that environment are more likely to survive and pass on those traits.
Animals may behave similarly in cities because they learn from each other how to exploit novel human food sources. For instance, the cockatoos in Sydney have learned to open trash bins. In Toronto, the raccoons are in a race to outwit humans as urban wildlife managers try to design animal-proof trash bins.
The buildings and bridges in cities become home to bats, birds, and other urban dwellers, at the cost of learning to use more natural nesting sites. Roads and culverts modify how and where animals move.
While rural animals may forage at a variety of places and eat a variety of foods, urban animals may concentrate on garbage bins or rubbish dumps where they know they can find food, but they end up eating a potentially unhealthy diet.
Consequences of similar behaviors
The loss of behavioral diversity is happening everywhere that humans increase their footprint on nature. This is worrisome on several levels.
At the population level, behavioral variation may reflect genetic variation. Genetic variation gives species the ability to respond to future environmental change. For example, for animals that have evolved to breed at a specific time of the year, urban heat islands can select for earlier breeding.
Reducing genetic variation leaves populations less able to respond to future changes. In that sense, having genetic variation resembles a diversified investment portfolio: Spreading risk across a variety of stocks and bonds lowers the risk that a single shock will wipe out everything.
Moreover, as animals become tamer, new conflicts between animals and humans may emerge. For instance, there may be more car crashes, animal bites, property damage and zoonotic disease transmission. Such conflicts cost money and may harm both the animals and humans.
Losing behavioral diversity is also troubling for conservation.
When a species loses behavioral diversity, it loses resilience against future environmental change in the wild, making reintroducing urban animals to the wild harder.
Losing behavioral diversity also risks erasing socially learned, population-specific behaviors, such as local migration routes, foraging techniques, tool-use traditions or vocal dialects.
For example, Australia’s regent honeyeater populations have been shrinking and are critically endangered. The isolation of having fewer of their own species around has disrupted normal song-learning behavior, making it harder for male birds to sing attractive songs that help them find mates and breed successfully.
Ultimately, behavioral homogenization is making wildlife in cities such as Los Angeles, Lima, Lagos and Lahore behave in similar ways despite living in different environments and having different evolutionary histories.
Many of these behaviors influence survival and reproduction, so understanding this form of diversity loss is important for successful wildlife conservation, as well as future urban planning.
Since 2015, the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, created by photographers and conservationists Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam, have been delivering laugh-out-loud moments through the lens of nature. With a mission to entertain while raising awareness about wildlife conservation, the competition celebrates the charming and comical side of the animal kingdom.
Let’s take a joyful stroll down memory lane with some of the most funniest entries from the 2019 contest (and if you’re feeling inspired, you’ll also learn how to submit your own wild and witty shots for future competitions).
OVERALL WINNER, CREATURES OF THE LAND WINNER: “Grab Life By the…”
You don’t think about how hard it would be to be the parent of a small, curious creature with massive, sharp claws. Let’s all take a moment to be grateful that even though it’s very hard to have a human baby, they don’t have super sharp claws. That would make things ten times worse.
CREATURES IN THE AIR WINNER: “Family Disagreement”
I think if I were an otter, I too would constantly clutch my face in disbelief. “I can’t possibly be this cute, can I? Cute nose, fuzzy head, tiny little eyes? That can’t be! Oh, but it is! I really am this adorable! I am! I am!”
Have you seen those videos of foxes diving headfirst into the snow to catch prey? It’s hilarious and fascinating, and I think this fox forgot that there was no snow. His friend is really trying to help him not hurt himself, but his buddy insists on being dumb. Oh, foxes!
“And then Carol was like, ‘You otter come over for dinner sometime!’ Get it? Get it? Man, Carol’s hilarious. So I went over for dinner and she had like, this whole seafood spread. Crabs, clams, mussels…the whole shebang. Anyway, I think I’m going to marry her.”
Just think about how much poise it took for this photographer to take this photo. Not only is the shark sneaking up on this poor fish, but there’s a person behind that camera! Presumably, the photographer escaped unscathed, since he was able to enter this photo in the contest.
It’s clearly not just human women who have to put up with the incessant nagging conversation from dudes we have no interest in talking to. See the look on that bird’s face? Staring straight out just willing him to go away? Tell me you haven’t made that face. Yeah, that’s what I thought.
“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?” No one really knows this, but squirrels are generally huge Shakespeare fans. They saw him put up a play in Europe centuries ago and have just carried that love for his words through generations and generations of squirrels.
I relate to this bear hard. Anyone who has had to get up and go to work after a long weekend knows this feeling. Sometimes, you just don’t want to deal with anything. Sometimes, you just want to lie on the ground, cover your face with your hands, and nap for a little while longer.
I love this photo so much. Because not only is it a picture of a penguin farting, but it’s a picture of a penguin who is clearly trying to hide the fact that he’s farting and play it off like he’s doing absolutely nothing. He’s just standing there twiddling his wings. He has no idea what that big bubble under his butt is.
There seems to be a whole genre of “Small rodents holding flowers” photos, and I am a sucker for every single one of them. I’m pretty sure this comes up when you look up “cute” in the dictionary. It’s just so pure.
“Hi there! Welcome to my flower. So glad you could make it! It’s a little cold and wet right now, but once the sun comes up we’ll be in business. Help yourself to a dewdrop. They’re especially fresh this morning.”
“And then my friend Steve, the otter, told me that Carol said to him, ‘You otter come over for dinner!’ Get it? Get it? Because they’re otters! So it’s funny. Hey, where’d you go?”
These poor monkeys were just trying to get it on. Their kids were finally out of the tree, they had some peace and quiet, and then they were so rudely interrupted by a photographer. Although mom looks like she was kinda zoning out anyway.
This little chimp is living the life! He’s got it all figured out, and from the looks of him, he’s still a tiny baby. He’s just looking out at the jungle, thinking about all that milk he’s going to drink later.
I bet that when you’re a Snowy Owl and it finally snows, you are just so ecstatically happy. I mean, it’s right there in your name. Look at her face! It’s full of such pure joy.
Like this little monkey, I, too, usually save my existential crises for bath time. There’s something about the weightlessness of floating in the water that makes you question everything you know to be true about yourself and the world.
Who’s calling this snapping turtle slow? He’s just “taking his time.” On another note, I think turtles are probably the most prehistoric-looking creatures that still exist. If you really take the time to look at them, they’re so crazy.
Imagine playing hide and seek on a block of ice as a polar bear. On one hand, there aren’t too many places to hide. On the other hand, you’re looking for white on white, and that’s not easy.
I don’t know if you knew this, but rodents love ABBA. Here is one getting down to “Dancing Queen.” Because they’re so small, they really feel the music down to their bones. Raise your hand if you would watch an all-rodent adaptation of Mamma Mia! Yeah, me too.
If you want to enter next year’s competition, follow the link here to sign up for mailing list updates!
This article originally appeared six years ago. It has been updated.
Photo credit: Brookfield Zoo Chicago’s Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, taken under NMFS MMPA Scientific Research Permit – Bottlenose dolphins are social creatures that use whistles and clicks to communicate with each other.
But it wasn’t until the 1960s that methodical research into dolphin communication began. Scientists like John Lilly and the husband-and-wife team of Melba and David Caldwell tried various experiments to decipher the sounds dolphins can make.
The Caldwells figured out a way to record isolated animals in human care. They discovered that each individual dolphin communicated mostly with one unique whistle, which they called the “signature whistle.” Researchers now know that these whistles convey identities much like human names do. Dolphins use them to stay in touch with each other in their murky habitat, where vision is limited. It’s like announcing “I’m over here!” when someone can’t see you.
This collaborative study, led by Randall Wells of Brookfield Zoo Chicago’s Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, involves numerous researchers from a variety of institutions, who study different aspects of dolphin biology, health, ecology and behavior. Begun in 1970, this is the longest-running research project on a population of wild cetaceans – whales, dolphins and porpoises – in the world.
Photo credit: Photo by Brookfield Zoo Chicago’s Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, taken under NMFS MMPA Scientific Research Permit – Each dolphin has distinctive markings on its dorsal fin. Experienced researchers can sometimes identify them by sight in the field, and they photograph them to confirm their identity in the lab.
Recording and observing
Researchers know the age, sex and maternal relatedness of almost all of the approximately 170 dolphins in the Sarasota community. This depth of knowledge provides an unprecedented opportunity to study communication in a wild cetacean species.
The dolphins in the Sarasota project are periodically subject to brief catch-and-release health assessments, during which researchers, including me, briefly handle individual dolphins.
Our team attaches suction-cup hydrophones directly onto each dolphin’s melon – that is, its forehead. We then record the dolphins continuously throughout the health assessments, taking notes on who is being recorded when, and what is happening at the time.
This is how my colleagues and I were able to confirm that wild dolphins, like captive animals, produced large numbers of individually distinctive signature whistles when briefly isolated from other dolphins. Through observations and recordings of known free-swimming dolphins, we were further able to confirm that they produced these same signature whistles in undisturbed contexts.
We have organized these recordings into the Sarasota Dolphin Whistle Database, which now contains nearly 1,000 recording sessions of 324 individual dolphins. More than half of the dolphins in the database have been recorded more than once.
We identify each dolphin’s signature whistle based on its prevalence: In the catch-and-release context, about 85% of the whistles that dolphins produced are signature whistles. We can identify these visually, by viewing plots of frequency vs. time called spectrograms.
Spectrograms of signature whistles of 269 individual bottlenose dolphins recorded in Sarasota. Figure created by Frants Jensen, with sound files from Laela Sayigh
Signature whistles and ‘motherese’
The Sarasota Dolphin Whistle Database has proved to be a rich resource for understanding dolphin communication. For instance, we have discovered that some calves develop signature whistles similar to those of their mothers, but many do not, raising questions about what factors influence signature whistle development.
Dolphin mothers modify their signature whistles when communicating with their calves by increasing the maximum frequency, or pitch. This is similar to human caregivers using a higher-pitched voice when communicating with young children – a phenomenon known as “motherese.”
Also similar to humans is how dolphins will initiate contact with another dolphin by imitating their signature whistle – what we call a signature whistle copy. This is similar to how you would use someone’s name to call out to them.
Our team is interested in finding out if dolphins also copy whistles of others who aren’t present, potentially talking about them. We have seen evidence of this in our recordings of dolphins during health assessments, which provide a rare context to document this phenomenon convincingly. But we still have more work to do to confirm that these are more than chance similarities in whistles.
Shared whistle types
Another exciting development has been our recent discovery of shared whistle types — ones that are used by multiple animals and that are not signature whistles. We call these non-signature whistles.
I could hardly believe my ears when I first discovered a repeated, shared non-signature whistle type being produced by multiple dolphins in response to sounds we play back to them through an underwater speaker. We had previously believed that these non-signature whistles were somewhat random, but now I was hearing many different dolphins making a similar whistle type.
Our team originally had been using the playbacks to try to determine whether dolphins use “voice cues” to recognize each other – similar to how you can recognize the voice of someone you know. Although we found that dolphins did not use voice cues, our discovery of shared non-signature whistle types has led to an entirely new research direction.
The author listens to dolphin whistles on a boat in Sarasota. Jonathan Bird from the film ‘Call of the Dolphins’/Oceanic Research Group, Inc.
So far, I’ve identified at least 20 different shared non-signature whistle types, and I am continuing to build our catalog. We are hoping that artificial intelligence methods may help us categorize these whistle types in the future.
To understand how these shared non-signature whistle types function, we are carrying out more playback experiments, filming the dolphins’ responses with drones. We’ve found that one such whistle often leads the dolphins to swim away, suggesting a possible alarm-type function. We have also found that another type might be an expression of surprise, as we have seen animals produce it when they hear unexpected stimuli.
More difficult, more interesting
So far, the main takeaway from our experiments has been that dolphin communication is complex and that there are not going to be one-size-fits-all responses to any non-signature whistle type. This isn’t surprising, given that, like us, these animals have complicated social relationships that could affect how they respond to different sound types.
For instance, when you hear someone call your name, you may respond differently if you are with a group of people or alone, or if you recently had an argument with someone, or if you’re hungry and on your way to eat.
Our team has a lot more work ahead to sample as many dolphins in as many contexts as possible, such as different ages, sexes, group compositions and activities.
This makes my job more difficult – and far more interesting. I feel lucky every day I am able to spend working on the seemingly infinite number of fascinating research questions about dolphin communication that await answers.
