Sharon Ardalo reports Mutation Has Led to a New Type of Cat, Scientists Say: A research team has identified a new type of cat which has the typical adorable face and fur pattern of the black and white tuxedo cat, but with a difference: the fur on this feline’s back starts off with a solid color…
Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 74. Sunrise is 5:21 and sunset 8:36 for 15h 15m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 21.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets at 6 PM.
The reintroduction of wolves has only had temporary effects on other small carnivores at Isle Royale National Park on Lake Superior, according to new research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The park is the site of the longest predator-prey study on record between wolves and moose. Over the years, the wolf population has fluctuated there, but the species almost went extinct in the last decade after only two inbred wolves remained. Those wolves couldn’t reproduce to control the moose population.
In the fall of 2018, federal authorities began to introduce 19 wolves to Isle Royale. UW-Madison researchers led a study that took a before-and-after look at how wolves affected small carnivores there, such as red foxes and American martens.
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Jonathan Pauli, a forest and wildlife ecology professor at UW-Madison, said the research highlights the competitive interactions between the species.
“In the absence of wolves, foxes have free range of the island and that’s to the detriment of martens,” Pauli said. “But when wolves return, at least at first, they then enforce these really important costs on foxes, which benefits martens. But, eventually, it all kind of settles down.”
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:23 and sunset 8:19 for 14h 56m 20s of daytime. The moon is full with 100 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Board of Zoning Appeals meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1854, the Milwaukee and Mississippi railroad reached Madison, connecting the city with Milwaukee. When the cars pulled into the depot, thousands of people gathered to witness the ceremonial arrival of the first train, and an enormous picnic was held on the Capitol grounds for all the passengers who’d made the seven-hour trip from Milwaukee to inaugurate the line.
“With the temperatures this week and rain showers today and tomorrow, that’s really going to help things,” [Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Insect Diagnostics Lab PJ] Liesch said. “Once the emergence gets going in full swing, we’re probably going to be seeing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of these emerging in relatively small areas in Lake Geneva and other spots in the state.”
Here’s where else the cicadas are expected to emerge in the coming weeks.
Where will 17-year cicadas emerge in Wisconsin?
The Lake Geneva area will be the best place in Wisconsin to see the 17-year cicadas due to their well-established record there, especially along the northern side of the lake, Liesch wrote in his blog.
Other cicada hotspots include areas of Green County and Rock County, including Janesville and Beloit. Additionally, the insects are expected to be prevalent in southwestern Wisconsin’s Driftless Area counties: Iowa, Sauk, Richland, Crawford and Grant.
Natali Anderson reports New Prehistoric Cat Species Discovered in Spain (‘The new cat species, named Magerifelis peignei, lived in what is now Spain some 15.5 million years ago’): It belonged to Felinae, a subfamily of small cats having a bony hyoid because of which they are able to purr but not roar. The new cat…
Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:05 and sunset 7:41 for 13h 35m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
Embed from Getty Images Nicola Davis reports Big cats can tell apart known and unknown human voices, study finds (‘Tigers, cheetahs and snow leopards, like domesticated cats, respond differently to familiar and unfamiliar voices’): From tigers to cheetahs, big cats may seem majestically aloof but researchers have found they can tell apart familiar and unfamiliar…
??Justine McDaniel reports Taters the cat stars in NASA’s first video streamed from deep space: On the path to Mars, nearly 19 million miles from Earth, Taters the cat got his big break. The orange tabby starred in the first video streamed from deep space, a successful NASA experiment that marked a milestone for advancing…
Saturday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 44. Sunrise is 7:19 and sunset 4:22 for 9h 02m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1773, members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians hold a Boston Tea Party when they dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.
according to a new study, many cats share a trait more frequently associated with pet dogs: They play fetch.
The peer-reviewed study, published Thursday, dispels any lingering myth that cats do not know how to retrieve objects for their owners, said its authors, who based their findings on a survey of the owners of 1,154 cats that played fetch on every continent except Antarctica. Some cats can and do play fetch, they found, although it depended on the feline’s individual traits and the bond shared with its owner.
“It was more common than people were probably expecting, and even I was expecting,” Jemma Forman, an animal psychologist at the University of Sussex and an author of the study, said in an interview. The authors of the study, published in the Scientific Reports journal, said they believe it is the most extensive conducted to date on this specific behavior among cats.
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The study, limited to cats whose owners already reported fetching, did not assess how prevalent the behavior was among the general cat population. While many cats do fetch, Forman suggested that more research was needed to determine how common it was more generally. A cat’s breed was not a barrier to its ability to fetch, the study found, although Siamese cats were particularly well represented in the sample.
Embed from Getty Images In Scientific American, Jack Tamisiea writes that Cats Kill a Staggering Number of Species across the World (‘Domestic cats are cherished human companions, but a new study shows the enormous breadth of species the felines prey on when they are left to roam freely’): Despite their small stature and memeable mugs,…
See Think cats are aloof? They make nearly 300 facial expressions, study says: Brittany Florkiewicz has always been a dog person, but she was surprised by what she discovered when reviewing more than 100 hours of cat videos. Florkiewicz, a psychology professor at an Arkansas college, spent her childhood running around her yard with her…
Good morning. Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 82. Sunrise is 6:20 AM and sunset 7:28 PM for 13h 08m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.3% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1939, J. Robert Oppenheimer and his student Hartland Snyder publish the…
At Virginia Tech, there’s a study on the benefits of taking shelter cats for a stroll now and again. Marjorielee Christianson writes that Over 3 million cats enter shelters in the United States each year, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Julianna Scardina, a member of the Virginia-Maryland College of…
Good morning. Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 81. Sunrise is 5:45 AM and sunset 8:16 PM for 14h 30m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.4% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1777, the Second Continental Congress passes a resolution that the…
Embed from Getty Images Hannah Keyser writes How Do Cats Cool Themselves Off? (‘Here’s a hint: It’s not by sweating through their paws’): Conduction allows cats to cool themselves off or warm themselves up via contact with objects of a different temperature. This is why you can often find your cat seeking out cool kitchen…
