Category Archives: Outreach Project

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Crows vs Ravens: An underdog story

Imagine you had to fight someone two to three times as big as you. Preposterous and highly unlikely, I know… but who do you think would win? This is what crows commonly encounter.

Let’s take a look at the sizes of both the Common Raven and the American Crow:

Compare the sizes of the Common Raven versus the American Crows

Image created by: Hinterland Who’s Who

After seeing this picture comparing the sizes of both crows and ravens, who do you think would win: crows or ravens? By sheer size, you may have said ravens… but in fact, in a recent study about crows and ravens, it was actually found that crows, the underdog, attacked ravens. Let’s find out why!

Dr. Benjamin Freeman, a biologist from the University of British Columbia, and his colleague, Eliot Miller, from Cornell University, recently studied and wrote a paper on the aggression between crows and ravens. To carry out their study, they used more than 2,000 observations from a citizen science website called eBird to collect data of crows and ravens across North America.

What is Citizen Science?

Infographic created by talk:Wildlife

Citizen science is described as the public participation in scientific research. This is a place where members of the public can share and contribute data to scientific research. For example, the citizen science site, eBird used by Dr. Freeman, is a place for anyone from anywhere to share their observations of birds. eBird currently has over 500 million bird observations worldwide, and an app that is available in 27 languages

With that being said, you can also be a citizen scientist! Want to learn more? Listen to our interview with Dr. Benjamin Freeman about his view on citizen science:

Enough about citizen science, let’s talk more about Dr. Freeman and Miller’s studies on why crows attack ravens.

What did Dr. Freeman and Miller find in their studies?

Dr. Freeman and Miller found three main results:

1. Crows often attack ravens

Image created by: Dr. Benjamin Freeman

It was found that crows attack ravens almost 97% of the time. The picture above shows that crows (purple dots) initiated 1,964 of the 2,014 attacks in North America.

2. Attacks were more common during the crows’ nesting season

Image created by Vanessa Lee

Looking at the red bars above, crow attacks peaked from March to May, the same time as the crows’ nesting season. Dr. Freeman and Miller believe that this may be due to the crows’ instinct to protect their nestlings from ravens.

3. Group vs one-on-one attacks

It was found that attacks were primarily done in groups for crows. Crows are very social creatures, and they were able to dominate through mobbing, a technique that capitalizes on the strength in numbers.

What is mobbing?

Mobbing is when smaller birds join forces to fight larger birds. Group attacks were seen in 81% of the attacks in Dr. Freeman’s studies, rather than one-on-one attacks.

Here’s a video we made to summarize why crows attack ravens (and you get to hear from Dr. Freeman himself!):

Let me ask you again, imagine you had to fight someone two to three times as big as you. Preposterous and highly unlikely, I know… but who do you think would win?

Now, you could say yourself… if you were to compare yourself to a crow! 

 

– Written by: Kuljit Grewal, Han Jiang, Kaitlyn Le, and Vanessa Lee

 

Bird’s Eye View: A Look Into the World of Bird Neuroscience and Human Machinery

 

Hummingbird, zebra finch, and pigeon. All images sourced from Flickr

The brain is an intricate and complex structure that takes a lifetime to understand completely. You may be slightly familiar with the human brain, but have you ever wondered how the brain of an animal functions? We had the opportunity to interview lead researcher Dr. Andrea Gaede to discuss her groundbreaking bird brain research. The study, based in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia in 2018, was conducted to investigate how bird species process visual motion in their brain and to find out if these processes are dependent on the way the bird species flies. First, they captured the birds, then injected their brains with a fluorescent dye, and finally analyzed the individual brains with imaging software.

Dr. Gaede’s findings show that bird species with distinct modes of flight will have significantly different ways of processing visual motion within their brain. By using advanced imaging, you can actually see the different visual flow patterns in their brain! 

Figure 7 from Dr. Gaede’s paper

The results of Dr. Gaede’s study suggest a relationship between bird size, unique flight behaviours, and the location in the brain that responds to visual stimuli. 

In the interview with Dr. Gaede, we were able to learn more about her research study and why she is so interested in the bird brain. From acquiring the birds used in the experiment, to discussing what her findings mean for the future of technology and neuroscience, Dr. Gaede gives us insight into the whole process. For all the details, listen to the podcast below!

Why Hummingbirds: How is the hummingbird brain different from all other brains?

A hummingbird mid-flight. Image sourced from Flickr

Dr. Gaede used hummingbirds, pigeons, and zebra finches in her study, but the main focus of her research was to understand hummingbirds. Special characteristics in the hummingbird brain can be attributed to their unique flight patterns. Hummingbirds have the ability to maneuver rapidly in all directions, in a way no other birds can. They have a physical sensitivity to movements in their surrounding environment. Instinctively, they hover backward when something is approaching, and forwards when they see open space in front of them. Additionally, a portion of their brain, called the LM (lentiformis mesencephali), is enlarged in comparison to the size of their bodies. This enlargement is expected to be a neural specialization for hovering, therefore studying this region is a main focus of Dr. Gaede’s study.

Bird Neuroscience and Human Technology — Why Does It Matter to Us?

Dr. Gaede mentioned in her interview that her research can be used to make advancements in technology for drones and autonomous aerial devices. Machines based on nature and animals rarely disappoint, and this can potentially be the case with a drone based on a hummingbirds’ structure and flight pattern. Hummingbirds have unique modes of flight, and are extremely light, which makes them an ideal model for a drone. Previously, attempts have been made at creating drones similar to hummingbirds; however, they failed. After some time, a breakthrough was made and a drone that is based off of a hummingbird finally took flight, and it did not disappoint!

Watch the video below to see how this innovation was made possible:

Future Research

Dr. Gaede is continuing to research the bird brain, and is currently working on a study about cell stimulation during different activities. The study is conducted by putting an animal through a certain behaviour, for example perching or hovering, and then euthanizing them immediately after. Afterwards, she uses advanced techniques to determine which cells in the brain were used to perform that behaviour. This would help us to further understand how visual information is processed into motor-function output during flight, therefore promoting improvements in the technology of hummingbird drones! 

Written by Francine Flores, Eric Hsieh, Alexandra McDonald, and Pawan Uppal

 

Mother Nature: The Ultimate Bioterrorist

Global Pandemic.
Source (Flickr)

There are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes and pandemics. While it may seem that humanity is making great strides in the medical sector in terms of advanced vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and devices for primary health care, you would be surprised to find that the risks of millions dying due to pandemics are higher than ever. Bill Gates, an American businessman and philanthropist is one of the believers that a global pandemic is coming and the world is severely underprepared.

“People rightly worry about dangers like terrorism and climate change (and, more remotely, an asteroid hitting the Earth). But if anything is going to kill tens of millions of people in a short time, it will probably be a global pandemic,” Bill Gates wrote in his annual “What I learned at work this year” letter.

To understand why Bill Gates and an international panel of experts assembled by  the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that viral diseases like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and flu would potentially kill millions and destabilize economies as well as national security according to the  Global Preparedness Monitoring Board(GPMB), it is essential to have an  idea of how pandemics start and spread.

How pandemics start and spread globally

Types of Microbes. Source vecton

Pandemics start at the microscopic level where among the major types of microbes, bacteria and viruses cause the deadliest infections. The ability for a bacteria and virus to move from one living organism to another makes them candidates for the cause of  an inevitable pandemic.

In particular, viruses that infect animals may spillover to humans becoming new types of viruses known as zoonotic viruses. For instance, the H1N1 virus that caused the Spanish flu pandemic which killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims in 1918, is a zoonotic virus that resulted from the combination of influenza A virus from birds and from humans in a pig. What makes zoonotic viruses more lethal than other infectious viruses is that they contain parts (specific to animal immune response system) that the human immune system would not be able to detect hence enabling them to evade immune responses by the human body. In addition, their ability to mutate fast only worsens the human immune system’s situation as a losing side in this life or death microscopic warfare.

YouTube Preview Image

In our modern world, technology has been the primary facilitator for the spread of these viruses globally. For instance, SARS spread to over 17 countries on three continent within a few week due to fast globally widespread air travel. Although SARS outbreak did not end up becoming the worst pandemic that humanity has seen, it was surely a clear sign that the next pandemic will be able to spread in a few days.

Is there anything that can be done to prevent the impending doom?

While it may be impossible to stop global human movement and improvement of transport technology, the best chance to preventing a pandemic would be controlling the spread at its source. For instance, the CDC deployed detectives  to caves in Uganda to understand how bats could spread Ebola related viruses to humans directly or through other animals. In addition, governments around the world should invest in the innovation for prevention early even when everything seems fine now!

By Flipos Tadese.