I have a new book!

By Claire Eamer

I HAVE A NEW BOOK COMING OUT JUNE 1!!!

(Oops. Did I shout? Sorry. It’s just that the birth of a new book is really quite exciting.)

Actually, let me tell you a bit about the book – and then I’ll move on to the “exciting.”

It’s called Extremely Gross Animals: Stinky, Slimy and Strange Animal Adaptations, published by my good friends at Kids Can Press. And it’s disgusting, in the best of all possible ways!

Note the tasteful use of both snot-green and puke-green on the book cover.

For example, did you know that baby elephants eat their mothers’ poop? And it’s good for them. Or that horned lizards shoot blood out of their eyes? (Okay, it’s from glands right near their eyes, but the effect is pretty much the same.) Or that giraffes can stick their tongues up their noses? And do!

The book has that and more – and I find it all fascinating. In fact, behaviour that looks icky at first glance usually turns out to be an unexpected but extremely useful way for an animal to survive and prosper. You can read all about it in my new book (did I mention that it’s called Extremely Gross Animals?) on June 1.

But back to the “exciting” bit….

A book isn't born either painlessly or quickly. It has a long, long gestation period. An elephant goes from fertilized egg to newborn baby in about 645 days, or about 21.5 months. Compared to a book, that’s downright speedy.

I checked back through my emails and found that I first mentioned the idea of Extremely Gross Animals to my editor at the end of August 2017. That means it will have had a gestion period of 44 months by the time it’s released to the world – more than twice the time it takes to produce an elephant. And all that for a book that’s just 40 pages long.

So what takes so long? Here’s a summary, based on my overflowing email archive (which I really should prune):

August 31, 2017: I mention in an email “…an old book idea I tinkered with a bit – gross and disgusting animals. I’m sure the world’s 8 to 12 year olds need this book!” My editor agreed, so we both started looking through lists of existing books to see if anyone had already written this book.

September 17, 2017: I submit a preliminary proposal for the book, designed not to duplicate any of the books we found in our search. The proposal bounces back and forth between me and the editor for a few months as we refine it.

January 9, 2018: I submit a full proposal to Kids Can Press (KCP): a detailed outline of the book, an explanation of the rationale behind it, a review of similar or competing titles, and suggestions about how it fits into the curriculum of several different school systems.

March 8, 2018: The KCP editorial board approves going ahead with the proposal, as long as there are enough good, kid-friendly photos of the animals. (There are.)

Long pause filled with personnel changes at KCP, publication schedule planning, and other mysterious goings-on. In other words, my proposal seems to have disappeared into a black hole.

November 8, 2018: After another editorial board meeting, input from the sales department, and more mysterious publisher activity, I’m told the book is a go. Yay!?! But that doesn’t mean the book is underway yet. I still don’t have a contract.

January 17, 2019: I receive a contract proposal from KCP. Then we (KCP, my literary consultant, and I) negotiate.

February 15, 2019: I have a contract with deadlines, royalty rates, lots and lots of fine print – and the book is officially underway! (At this point, of course, I have been researching my chosen animals for some time. But nothing’s official until it’s signed-official.)

…writing…researching…reorganizing…writing…more researching...more writing....

May 6, 2019: I submit the first draft of Extremely Gross Animals (although it doesn’t have that title yet).

May 28, 2019: Draft manuscript returned with editor’s comments.

June 6, 2019: I submit the second draft, along with a draft glossary and list of scientific names for some animals. A few days later, it starts circulating around the editorial department at KCP.

July 14, 2019: I receive editor’s comments on the second draft of the manuscript. I return the manuscript with a few changes a couple of days later, and then go on to work on the back matter, including the index word list, glossary, etc.

August 25, 2019: I receive a revised publication schedule from the publisher. The book has been moved forward to Spring 2021 publication instead of Fall 2021 (which still seems like a long way off). At this point, the designer, photo researcher, and printers get involved, with each stage checked by multiple people.

September 19, 2019: I receive the final edited version of the manuscript, along with the edited version of the end matter we’ve all been working on. Now we make decisions, such as figuring out which animals need to be identified by scientific name and how we do that without confusing the reader.

November 29, 2019: I receive the manuscript with the copy editor’s comments. These are usually the nitpicky bits related to the publisher’s house style, but it's also a chance for a fresh set of eyes to spot where something isn’t as clear as it should be. By this time, both the editor and I have read the manuscript so many times that we can’t reliably pick those moments out. So – yet a few more changes. At this point, I’m well over two years into this book.

April 29, 2020: The photo research is almost complete. The editor checks with me about a few of the photos – mainly whether they match the scientific information in the book.

May 7, 2020: I receive the first set pages (illustrated and laid out as they’ll appear in the book). My job is to check the text one more time, check all the photos to make sure they are scientifically accurate, and add any little touches that might seem necessary (for example, size references where it’s not clear how big or small the animal is). Comment from the editor: “And my advice is to do your review well before or well after eating -- after seeing the photos of the horsehair worms, I won't be eating spaghettini for quite a while.”

August 27, 2020: I receive a PDF file of the first complete colour version of the interior pages of the book. So pretty! And one more chance to catch problems. There aren’t many, but I send back my list of tweaks the next day.

September 9, 2020: I receive a draft of the cover copy (the text on the book’s back cover) for review.

September 22, 2020: I get my first look at the cover. Wow!

November 2, 2020: The final title is confirmed –

Author's delight -- a boxful of beautiful books!

Extremely Gross Animals: Stinky, Slimy and Strange Animal Adaptations – and I have official permission to start talking about the book.

And the rest is a matter of waiting to meet my book in person, face to …er…cover. That happened April 13 (less than four years after I started thinking about it), when my box of author's copies arrived. The rest of you will have to wait a few more weeks.

But you can pre-order the book at your local bookstore or online. It's called Extremely Gross Animals: Stinky, Slimy and Strange Animal Adaptations. Or did I already mention that?

Eat like a bird? Better get started!

If you ate like a bird, you'd take in more than 16 kg (35 lbs) of food every day!
Saying someone "eats like a bird" is supposed to mean they eat very little, but that's based on a mistake: birds actually eat a huge amount. Up to half their body weight every single day! While you may see birds take one seed at a time from the bird feeder, they come back often, and keep eating all day. That adds up.
What would it look like if you ate half your body weight? Let's look at the choices for a typical 32 kg (70 lb) 10-year-old:
1.5 large bags of potatoes
13 boxes of Foot Loops
20 heads of lettuce
67 Big Macs
235 scoops of ice cream
So, if you're going to "eat like a bird", you'd better start eating!

Just be glad you're not a pygmy shrew. They have to eat 1.25 times their weight every single day!

Photo by Andrew via CC BY-2.0

Image of cardinal by GeorgeB2 from Pixabay

Bird Banding! guest post by Meghan Jacklin

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a biologist? It is a truly rewarding career, but it might not be what you expect! Read on to learn about what a career in biology can be like, in a post from our guest writer Meghan Jacklin.

My name is Meghan, and I am a biologist in Edmonton Alberta. I was first inspired to care about wildlife and natural areas from a young age through my love of wolves, and my family canoeing and camping activities. I struggled to find the right education, until I heard about the Environmental sciences program at the U of A. I got my bachelors degree in Conservation Biology, and then it was time to head out into the real world!

Meghan (right) and a coworker, birding despite rain AND mosquitos!

During my degree I started volunteering for a local organization called the Beaverhill Bird Observatory. That is where things got really interesting. The Beaverhill bird observatory studies bird migration through bird banding. But what is bird banding?

Bird banding means putting a lightweight metal band with a unique number on a bird's leg. If this bird is ever caught or found dead somewhere else in the world, we have learned valuable information about that bird and where it traveled!

 Neat! But why do this?

About 40% of the worlds 10,000 bird species are migratory, meaning they spend part of the year in one place and then undertake a large movement to another location for a different part of the year. This can make them uniquely vulnerable – if their habitat, the place that they live, is destroyed or damaged in one area, but not in the other, we may not recognize what the problem is without understanding where birds are migrating to and from.

A banded Dark-eyed Junco

What else do we learn from bird banding?
We also can determine whether a bird hatched this year or is an adult. This helps us understand whether problems are occurring at the breeding grounds (if not many babies are hatching) or if problems are at the wintering grounds (there are enough babies but not many returning adults). We can check roughly how fat a bird is! This is important because some birds migrate hundreds to thousands of kilometres, sometimes without stopping. They must put on lots of weight before starting so they have enough fuel to make it to their journey's end.

How does it actually work?
We first have to get up reeeaaally early, because that is when the birds are around! We get up half an hour before the sun even rises – urg. It is worth it though! We then set up a series of very fine mesh nets, so fine that you can hardly see them. As the birds are flying through the bushes in the early morning, they don’t see the nets, and fly right in.

Can you see this songbird mist net?

Then the staff and volunteers get busy. We check the nets every 30 minutes and remove every caught bird, and place them in individual cloth baggies to bring back to our banding lab. It takes lots of training, and dexterity to carefully take the birds out of the nets! We also get our exercise in, seeing as the distance to check all the nets is around 1 km in length, and we need to walk that every 30 minutes.

Lots of birds in bags,waiting to be banded at the lab!

Once we get back to the lab, we start the banding process. We add the band using special pliers, and this part is actually pretty easy to learn. What’s harder is accurately determining the age and sex of the bird. That requires study and practise, and careful reading of the “bird banding bible” Pyle, the widely accepted expert in North America.

During the banding process, we also get pooped on… a lot! We learn a lot about birds and can help their species to thrive, but no wild bird enjoys being caught, and they let us know! We are covered in poop, and little scratches from beaks and claws by the end of a day. Most songbirds don’t hurt too much when they bite, but if we catch a bird used to cracking seeds – ouch!

An adult Great Horned Owl about to be banded.

 With all that said, bird banding is a very rewarding path for a biologist. Until you start to look and listen, you don’t realize the beautiful colours, shapes, and sizes of the birds right here in our backyards. With all the troubles that birds face, from window strikes, cat predation, habitat loss, and changing climate, it is wonderful to know I am making a difference.
If this sounds right for you, it’s never too early to get started. Many banding stations are open for the public to visit, volunteer, and learn about this important work. Look for one near you!

Secrets of the Credit River - guest post!

Secrets of the Credit River

guest post by Nina Munteanu

 

I began my limnology career teasing out the secrets of stream life as a grad student at Concordia University, Quebec. My master’s research focused on several rural and urban streams in the Eastern Townships, not far from where I grew up.

Later, as a limnologist for various environmental consulting companies in British Columbia, I used stream macro-benthos communities—the critters that live on the stream bottom—as indicators of environmental impact from industrial discharges, agriculture and municipal development.

Macro-benthos are bottom-dwelling life you can see with the naked eye. They’re mostly made up of aquatic worms and juvenile stages of insect species (benthic invertebrates). Many of these insects start with an aquatic phase (often called nymphs or larvae) in which they voraciously feed and which lasts from several months to several years; they then emerge as adults to live briefly (from days to weeks) to mate and create new life.

Mayfly, stonefly and caddisfly larvae are commonly found in clean flowing streams; slower moving and polluted or turbid streams contain more worms, midges and amphipods.

Adult mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies don’t feed. In fact, they don’t have usable mouthparts or digestive systems because they don’t need them—they don’t live long enough. The adult female mayfly (Dolania Americana) lives a brief five minutes. Once she emerges as an adult, she flies in a swarm of other mayflies, mates in flight and lays her eggs then dies and falls back into the water as food for fish, frogs, and other aquatic life. The stonefly (Gripopterygidae) larva, which clings to the underside of rocks and debris in fast flowing water, takes from one to three years to mature but once emerged will live from 1-4 weeks before dying. 

Stream ecologists identify benthic invertebrates by their form, but they also recognize them by how they feed; how they feed is largely determined by where they are in the stream and what is around them:

-Shredders use scissor-like mouths to cut and shred apart coarse particulate matter. These include amphipods, mayflies, stoneflies, midges, and some caddisflies.

-Collector–gatherers (e.g., worms, nematodes, crustaceans, and gastropods) use their broom-like mouths to sweep in fine and ultra-fine organic matter.

-Grazers or scrapers, such as beetles, mayflies, and stoneflies, feed on attached algae and biofilms. Their mouths chisel against periphyton (attached algae) on rocks, wood debris and aquatic plants.

-Filtering collectors, such as blackfly larvae, use their finely spun nets to collect suspended fine organic matter, which can include phytoplankton (floating algae). The caddisfly larva Arctopsychegrandis builds a rough house made from twigs, leaf fragments, and small pebbles and spins silk nets across its “door” to capture organic matter that flows in.

-Predatory benthic invertebrates, such as damselflies and dragonflies, have piercing mouthparts that act like a straw, allowing them to suck the liquid nutrients from their prey without having to chew or shred it. The dragonfly uses a hyper-thrust mechanism to give it a speed-boost as it chases prey. The dragonfly ejects water from its anal opening for a quick burst of speed; it’s just like a jet propulsion system.

Since 1909, when scientists Kolkwitz and Marsson showed that benthic invertebrates had specific tolerances to organic enrichment and other sources of pollution, ecologists have used these communities to study impacts to stream health from chemical pollution, flow disruption and habitat destruction. The EPT Richness Index was developed, based on the knowledge of certain pollution-intolerant groups. EPT stands for Ephemoroptera (mayflies), Plecoptera (stoneflies) and Tricoptera (caddisflies) and the index corresponds to their percentage in the stream. EPT benthos will disappear in areas of poor water quality, organic enrichment, low oxygen, and high metal levels.

I recently tested this in several ad hoc field trips I made with my naturalist friend Merridy Cox along the Credit River in Ontario. We started our explorations with the lower Credit River watershed, located in the urban setting of Mississauga, Ontario. We sampled the river and a few small tributaries in Riverwood Park, a few kilometres from where the river empties into Lake Ontario.

Originally named “trusting creek” (Missinnihe) by the Mississauga First Nation people, the salmon-bearing Credit River drains some 860 km 2 of Ontario and flows 90 km from its source at Orangeville, over the Niagara Escarpment, through several suburbs, and into Lake Ontario at Port Credit.

Great efforts have been made to restore and maintain the health of the Credit River and its watershed, mostly through the work of the Credit Valley Conservation Authority, together with the provincial and various municipal governments. While the water quality of the lower river is considered generally fair to poor, the river is partially saved by its gradient and turbulent flow. The length of the Credit River, up to very close to its mouth, rushes with the sound of a great storm. It tumbles and gurgles over rocks, capturing oxygen from the air; it scours gravel beds and cuts swirling eddies and creates undercut banks for foraging fish. The habitat is complex and life thrives here. Green algae cling to smooth boulders as water shears over them into pools of bubbling water. Water striders skate on the water surface in calmer backwaters. A cursory sampling of rocks in the river revealed a diversity of macro-benthic organisms. I spotted several species of mayfly, including rock-clinging Heptagenids (flat-headed mayflies) and the stone-building caddisfly Glossoma, all indicators of well-oxygenated turbulent flowing waters. 

About 500 m from where we had sampled in the Credit River, we investigated a small tributary in the forest that led into the river. The creek obviously drained storm water runoff from the streets above; and, while the water was clear and contained riffles with a good flow, I found no macro-benthos on the rocks. Only blue-green algae populated the shoals. This was not surprising, given that storm water and street runoff generally contain contaminants (e.g., chlorides, heavy metals, organics, and oxygen-depriving materials) that the susceptible EPT organisms can’t tolerate.

What struck me was the deceptive nature of this contamination. Most of us, when we think of polluted water, envision a turbid stagnating watercourse with visible garbage, bubbling with toxic algae. The pollution in this tributary was invisible; so was the life. It reminded me that the face of pollution varies and ranges from the obvious (as with most organic enrichment) to the insidiously subtle (as with heavy metal contamination or acid rain).

Water holds many secrets; some good, some not so good.


Water is an introvert.

All illustrations by Kerste Voute and Nina Munteanu

Photos of Nina by Merridy Cox except one of Nina and swan by John Stewart of Mississauga News.

Photo of Merridy Cox by Nina Munteanu

All shots taken at the Upper Credit River, Ontario.

A version of this post complete with references is available at Nina Munteanu's website at this link.

Our guest blog writer Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She currently lives in Toronto where she teaches at the University of Toronto and George Brown College. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” will be released by Inanna Publications in 2020.

Lane Anderson Award Winner Is Life-long Giraffe Fan

The winner of the 2016 Lane Anderson award for excellence in Canadian science writing for youth is Anne Innis Dagg, for her book 5 Giraffes, published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside. This is her account of how she came to study giraffe. -CE

By Anne Innis Dagg

When I was three years old, my mother took me on a trip from our home in Toronto to Chicago where we visited the Brookfield Zoo. I was mesmerized by the giraffe! So much so that I decided I would study them in Africa when I grew up.

At the University of Toronto, I enrolled in biology and for four years learned a great deal, but nothing about my favourite animal. When I graduated I wrote to as many sources as I could think of in Africa to see if anyone would like a young woman to come and watch giraffe near them, but with no success. I then decided to do a year of graduate work and try again the following year, in 1956.

This time I was successful! I was able to live on the grounds of a huge cattle farm that had 95 giraffe on its property, coming and going as they wished. By watching them from the tiny second-hand car I had bought, I was able to document what they did each day. The extensive scientific paper I wrote was apparently the first to be published about the behaviour of any wild animal living in Africa.

Since then I have been able to study giraffe in many other ways, such as their gaits, their spotting, and their behaviour in zoos. I have also written books about giraffe and about my adventures with them. In 2018, there should be a movie about my life with this wonderful animal!

For my book 5 Giraffes, of course, I had to choose individuals from a variety of different backgrounds and places. I belong to a group of scientists who are devoted to this animal, which is in danger of extinction, so this was easily done. They gave me lots of possibilities, from which I chose the five – three of the giraffes lived in zoos, one is a dominant male in Kenya, and the last is a female of another race, also in Kenya, who grieved for days when her youngster died.

Then I added other chapters that deal with a variety of ways in which giraffe differ from other animals. For example, their legs are so long that they have unusual gaits. The females are sociable, moving usually in small groups, while the large males are more likely to be solitary. Giraffe have evolved ways to “beat the heat” on hot days and to obtain moisture from leaves where there is no water.

Writing 5 Giraffes was a wonderful chance for me to recall the amazing way in which giraffe have evolved to live in Africa.

Photos courtesy of Anne Innis Dagg.

Jellyfish Aren’t Just for Saltwater

By Adrienne Montgomerie

“Mom, we saw jellyfish!”

“No way. We’re in a lake. Jellyfish are saltwater creatures.”

“No, really, honey," his dad said. "There were jellyfish.”

“Well that’s cool,” I said with total skepticism.

The next day, I said I wanted to see the jellyfish. Totally bracing for the “we’re just kidding” punchline, off we went.

Canoeing into a little bay of a medium sized lake in eastern Ontario, my son dipped a pail in the water, and pulled up several jellyfish about the size of a quarter. White, but mostly transparent. They looked almost like large contact lenses. Delicate, undulating in the green bucket.

The bay was full of them. A bloom of jellyfish. In fresh water.

They didn’t sting. Or if they did, they were so small that it was hard to tell. I didn't want to touch them because they are so delicate. I had to learn more about this.

It turns out that these jellyfish (C. sowerbii) are an invasive species, and they are quite widespread across North America. You can report sightings of them on the Freshwater Jellyfish website.

How Long Have Jellyfish Been in North America? 

This year there are thousands of news reports about the freshwater jellyfish, but there have been confirmed sightings in Canada and the USA as far back as 1934. There are even reports from the 1800s in London, England. Sightings are reported throughout Canada and the USA, but that 1934 sighting was in Horseshoe Lake near Ste. Agathe-des-Monts, Quebec.

How Can I Get a Closer Look?

If you want a closer look at these jellyfish, you can scoop some up in a clean bucket for a few minutes. Be sure to gently put them back where you found them. Check the sightings at FreshwaterJellyfish.org to find a likely lake.

They are big enough to see with just your eyes, but a magnifying glass will help you get a closer look.

The adult stage only lasts several days, so you may not find them when you go to look. It takes about a month for a jellyfish to grow. I saw them bloom on a very warm weekend one Thanksgiving but there are many reported sightings in mid-summer.

Where Did Freshwater Jellyfish Come From?

They probably came in the water inside a ship from South America, or on imported water plants from China.

They are found in crystal clear water, in slimy ponds, and in every kind of water in between.

How Can We Help Prevent Them from Spreading?

Clean boats and water toys in hot soapy water, just as you would to stop the spread of zebra mussels and gobies.

Don’t take plants from an infested place and put them in a new place.

Can you Keep at Jellyfish at Home?

Delicate and eerie, jellyfish have a mesmerizing appeal. Like any wild animal, they are healthiest when left in the wild. Like any invasive species, it’s best not to transport them to new areas, where they can infest more lakes.

Aquariums that keep jellyfish find it very difficult. None have been able to keep freshwater jellyfish on display. They usually only live a few days in captivity.

It takes special equipment to keep the pH correct and the water circulating continuously, and they need a constant supply of fresh plankton. Raising jellyfish takes a lot of attention. An aquarium is hazardous itself, as the delicate jellyfish can get sucked into filtration systems and pumps, and air bubbles can get trapped inside the jellyfish, holding them at the surface.

Are Jellyfish Harmful?

Freshwater jellyfish do sting, but their stinger is so small that it can’t seem to penetrate human skin. Some people do feel an irritation but it seems to be easily washed off.

It’s not yet known how these creatures will affect the ecosystem. They do eat plankton, which other species rely on, creating competition for the food. They are also eaten by gulls, crayfish, and turtles, providing new food that may help those species thrive (which in turn can affect other species that compete and rely on those animals). Few organisms have a zero sum impact on the environment they live in. We just haven’t seen the full effect yet.

Living or Non-Living, There Is No Once-Living

As educators, we pay close attention to common misconceptions of our students and readers, and are prepared to correct them. Being human, we ourselves are equally susceptible to misconceptions and errors of logic. This particular one has popped up from more than one source, so I’m going to explain it here.

Readability is very important to educators, and particularly to children’s writers. We try to use vocabulary that students won't get stuck on, preventing them from concentrating on the concepts that are being explained. For this reason, we often use categories of living and non-living when describing the biotic/abiotic dichotomy in science. Biotic means living, and abiotic means non-living.

However, this language sometimes leads into a misconception of associating living with the state of being alive. Dead stuff is still biotic, or living if we’re using simplified language. Lacking signs of life does not make something abiotic. (Texting teenagers, for example, may not appear alive but still remain classified as biotic.)

This becomes less problematic if we apply the categories to groups, rather than to individuals. Lumber doesn’t resemble a tree, but it is still biotic. Trees are biotic components of the world. Similarly, an infertile individual does not get classified as non-living (abiotic). They are classified along with their whole species, as biotic.

Neither is there is a third, “once-living” category—no “once-biotic.” Sedimentary rocks were formed from the remains of living things millions of years ago. In that sense, the components of rocks were once living, but rocks are classified as non-living.

Biotic: things that reproduce, grow, and die, and the waste from these things

• plants
• animals
• microorganisms

Abiotic: not derived from biotic things

• air
• water
• sunlight
• rocks
• etc.

--------

Photo via US Dept Agriculture, used under CC BY-2.0 license.

Are Monsters REAL?

Post by Helaine Becker

Are monsters - vampires, zombies and their kin - real? Could they be?

I'm so excited to share this new trailer for my upcoming book, Monster Science, from Kids Can Press.

Enjoy!