Wild Meerkats Teaching

Meerkat pup's first scorpion 

Photo credit: National Geography

Developing survival skills such as the ability to hunt prey successfully and to locate food and water source are incredibly crucial for wild animals. Teaching can allow faster skills acquisition and more efficient information transfer compared to passive learning. Wild animals such as meerkat was shown to provide teaching to younger family members to assist learning on how to handle prey items. 

There are three criteria for teaching (developed by Caro and Hauser):

i)   As a result of teaching, students obtain knowledge or develop certain skills faster. 

ii)  The teacher modifies its behaviour when students are around.

iii) There may be some cost involved, but no immediate benefit will be acquired by the teacher.

Meerkat's diet comprised of a range vertebrate and invertebrate prey, which requires skills to handle. Teaching was shown to play an important role in enhancing the ability of younger meerkats to handle dangerous prey items such as scorpions (one of the usual prey items for the meerkats).

Alex Thornton and Katherine McAuliffe from University of Cambridge discovered that older meerkats teach pups (less than 3 month old meerkats) directly on how to handle scorpions. 

Initially, older meerkats will disable the prey by removing the sting or bring dead scorpions to the pups. Gradually, as the pups age, the adult meerkats will increasingly introduce live preys to pups. By doing so, the older meerkats are training the pups by providing them with the opportunities to handle live preys. The finding shows that the likelihood of pups to lose live prey items and the duration they handle scorpions decreases as they age. Hence, the result shows that the teaching is effective in developing prey-handling skills in meerkats.

Watch Wild Meerkats video here!
https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/videos/david-attenboroughs-life-story/meerkat-pup-takes-on-first-scorpion-4063.aspx

References:

Thornton, A. and McAuliffe, K. (2006). Teaching in Wild Meerkats. Science. 313, 227-229.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/wild-meerkats-school-their-young

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/05/160507-animals-teaching-parents-science-meerkats/

The Problems with Plastic

What are Plastics?

Plastics are man-made material, derived from inorganic and organic materials such as carbon, silicon, oil and natural gas. 'Plastic; comes from the Greek word 'plastikos' which means having the ability to be shaped into various shapes. This man-made material is also designed to be resistant to microbial attack and environmental factors such as light and moisture.

Due to its flexibility and durability, plastic is used for almost any application, including packaging, building, textiles and transportations. The figure below shows a trend of continuous increase in the annual global plastic production, with production of only 2 million tonnes in 1950 to 381 million tonnes in 2015.

Global plastics production from 1950 to 2015 (billion tonnes). 

Photo credit: Plastic Pollution (Ritchie, H. and Roser, M.)

However, the additives that make plastics more flexible and durable, eventually create a significant disposal problem as the additives increase the lifespan of plastics, allowing it to persist for hundreds of years in the environment after disposal.

Plastic Pollution

A crab found in a plastic cup in the Philippines. 

Photo credit: Noel Guevara/Greenpeace

80% of plastics in the ocean came from land. There are three main pathways of how plastics end up in the ocean (source from: WWF):
i) Plastics transported to landfill can be blown away due to to its light weight, eventually finds its way into waterways and finally into the oceans.

ii) Plastic waste from littering will be carried away by rain and wind into drains and rivers, ultimately into the oceans.

iii) Plastic products or waste that was flushed down the toilet will escape into the oceans as wastewater plants are unable to filter those particles due to its small sizes.

Around 700 animal species are known to be affected by plastics. Plastic was shown to be fatal to wildlife, mainly due to entanglement, ingestion and starvation. Entanglement usually involves plastic rope, netting and fishing gear.

Meanwhile, ingestion of plastics can occur either unintentionally, intentionally or indirectly through consuming prey that had ingested plastics. When consuming a large amount of plastics, the plastics will take up space in the animal's stomach, reducing its appetite and finally starve it to death. Plastics can also cause other health issues such as reduced enzyme activity and metabolic disruption.

A bird's stomach filled with plastic waste. 

About 90% of seabirds were recorded to have eaten plastics.

A turtle was being entangled in fishing net.

Plastic resembles food for some animals, including this whale shark.

Discover more tips to reduce plastics in our every day life:
-10 Ways to Reduce Plastic Pollution
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/10-ways-reduce-plastic-pollution
-9 Ways to Reduce Plastic in Your Workplace
https://www.lessplastic.org.uk/9-ways-to-reduce-plastic-in-your-workplace/

References:
The World's Plastic Pollution Crisis Explained
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/plastic-pollution/
Plastic Pollution
https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#note-2
How Does Plastic End up in the Ocean
https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/how-does-plastic-end-ocean