Winter everywhere

 

“A Year on Planet Earth” is a four-part nature documentary about…essentially everything. 

I just watched the “winter” episode, which takes us to such diverse places as the African savannah, the jungles of New Guinea, and Svalbard. Well, at least there´s winter at the latter place! Arctic night, too. The polar bears, seals and reindeer could pass for wintery animals. Maybe the penguins in the Antarctic, too. “Dancing” riflebirds in the rainforest? Elephants?! Not so much. 

The nominal point is that all these animals are active during the season *we* call winter, but in reality, I think they just wanted to show some (admittedly good) footage of various Animalia as filler on some nature channel…

Massacre on Marion Island

 

Credit: JJ Harrison

Some really bizarre information in this one. 

The remote Marion Island in the Indian Ocean is scene to a "zombie apocalypse" during which aggressive and hungry mice prey on the seabirds, including large albatrosses, and eventually kill them. Or, not to put too fine spin on it, eat them alive under torture-like forms. 

Homo sapiens has decided to come to the rescue, and in 2026, the plan is to kill off the mice instead. That is, to exterminate millions of them! So our response to the zombie apocalypse is mouse genocide. Not until 2028 will we know whether the pesky rodent is finally gone and our tubenose brethren saved. Oh, and in a previous hominid killing spree on the island, all cats were extirpated?! 

>>>A “zombie apocalypse” has been playing itself out on Marion Island in the Southern Indian Ocean for more than a decade, as flesh-eating mice massacre vulnerable seabirds, having already laid waste to invertebrates and otherwise tenacious vegetation.

>>>In the 20 years up to 2018, the number of mice on Marion increased by about 430%. As a result, says Anderson, “the frequency of mouse attacks is increasing very significantly. It’s exponential, and it’s related to the fact that the invertebrates on which the mice used to prey have been decimated, so the mice are feeding off the seabirds and their eggs as an alternative food source” to replace their diet of weevils, moths and seeds. 

>>>In a 2015 study, mice were found to be killing one in 10 albatross chicks. Not only has this escalated, says Anderson, but “one of our concerns is that the mice are now starting to feed on adult wandering albatrosses as well. “The loss of chicks obviously has a big impact, but once you start killing adult birds of breeding maturity, then the impact on populations increases. And this is a more recent phenomenon.”

Massacre at Marion: Mouse eradication project gathers pace