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Part I: Speaker

Squirrels Use Hot Tails To Intimidate Rattlers
Squirrels heat up their tails and wave them at heat-sensing rattlesnakes to keep the snakes away. Steve Mirsky reports.

Mongoose python fights get all the ink, but here in the US it’s squirrels and rattlesnakes that have a noteworthy and tempestuous relationship.  One might even call the interaction heated.  Literally.  Because researchers have discovered that California ground squirrels heat their tails up as a signal to rattlesnakes to keep away from baby squirrels.  The report is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Squirrels wave their tails at snakes to appear bigger and ticked off.  And it was known that squirrels waved their tales more vigorously in the dark than in daylight.  Well, rattlesnakes can sense infrared radiation, aka heat.  So researchers used an infrared camera to record squirrel rattlesnake encounters.  They also recorded faceoffs between squirrels and gopher snakes, which cannot sense heat.

And they found that the squirrels heated up their tales somehow when dealing with rattlers.  But squirrels didn’t bother to turn on the heat when they waved their tales at gopher snakes.  So a heatable tail seems to allow squirrels to say to rattlesnakes, “Move along, things for you here are just too hot.”

Source: Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/612c60c0-e7f2-99df-3243c8bc56811d6c/

[Rephrase 1, 1:21]

Going

Part II: Speed

5 Surprising Facts About Squirrels (Hint: They Make Jerky)
by Jason Bittel  |  26 Sep 2014

[Time 2]
Right now, across much of the Northern Hemisphere, squirrels are doing what they do best: squirreling away seeds and nuts for the approaching winter.

But there’s a lot more about these rodents that you might not realize. So we talked to Richard Thorington, curator of mammals at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, who presides over one of the world’s largest collections of the squirrel family, or Sciuridae. In all, the Smithsonian is home to more than 30,000 squirrel specimens.

Thorington started studying squirrels almost 50 years ago as a boy who just wanted to keep the varmints off his bird feeder. Since then, he’s co-authored two books on the subject, Squirrels: The Animal Answer Guide and Squirrels of the World, each of which probes the hidden lives of these seemingly everyday creatures and investigates their myriad roles across ecosystems.

Here are some of Thorington’s surprising squirrel facts:

Squirrels exist in nearly every habitat on Earth.

There are 285 species scattered across the globe, ranging from the half-ounce pygmy tree squirrels of western Africa to the nearly 20-pound (9-kilogram) gray marmots of Kazakhstan.

You’d basically have to venture to the planet’s Poles to escape them.

Squirrels can help trees.

Take the gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) and its penchant for burying acorns for later use. A single gray squirrel can create several thousand buried caches of food each season, not all of which it can hope to rediscover. This is called scatter hoarding.

“In some cases the burying of nuts is good for the trees,” said Thorington.

“You have squirrels taking the acorns from directly underneath an oak tree and burying them somewhere else. That gives the trees more of a dispersal.”

Squirrels can hurt trees.

In other cases, the relationship between squirrels and trees is less harmonious.

North American red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) and Douglas squirrels (T. douglasii) are seed predators that live almost entirely on the cones of conifer trees. They either eat the seeds immediately or store pine cones by the score in secret larders where the seeds remain moist and  have little chance of germinating.

Obviously, this is great for the squirrels, because the preserved food supply allows them to survive the winter. The trees, on the other hand, lose their chance at reproducing.
[377words]

[Time 3]
Interestingly, a study published in 1995 in the International Journal of Organic Evolution showed that the trees may have ways of fighting back. The research revealed that in the Rocky Mountains, where red squirrels were prominent, the cones of limber pine trees had thicker seed coats and more resin.

“This makes it difficult for the squirrels to get between the pine cone’s scales,” said Thorington.

But that’s not all. The researchers also found the cones had fewer seeds than normal and less energy per seed. So not only do the squirrels have to put in more work to access the pine cone’s innards, but they also got less of a reward for doing so.

Squirrels make mushroom jerky.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing things you’ll find in Thorington’s books are the lengths to which some squirrels will go to take advantage of a food source.

For instance, did you know that some squirrels eat mushrooms? Not only that, but red squirrels will hang fungi out to dry between tree branches so that it keeps better over the winter.

Mushroom jerky is also less likely to infect their larder with insect larvae and nematodes.

Squirrels can “garden”—and know their food sources well.

Gray squirrels have also evolved a few rather impressive storage strategies. Thorington explained that the squirrels can tell the difference between red oak acorns and white oak acorns and store them accordingly.

Whites germinate quickly, almost as soon as they hit the ground, said Thorington, and the squirrels tend to eat them immediately since a germinated acorn loses nutritional value. Conversely, reds don’t germinate until spring, so the squirrels prefer to bury those for winter snacking.

And now for the twist. A 1996 study in the journal Animal Behavior observed some squirrels biting through the embryo of white oak acorns, essentially paralyzing the seed’s ability to sprout. The squirrels then buried the modified white oak acorns as they would have with the reds.

What’s more, the scientists witnessed the squirrels digging up red oak acorns that they didn’t need to eat over the winter, nipping off their embryos, and re-burying the food for later use.

“It’s really interesting,” said Thorington. “If you watch squirrels, they are actually doing so much more than you might anticipate

If only humans were half as efficient with our leftovers.
[388words]

Source: National Geographic
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/09/26/squirrels-animals-fall-winter-science-united-states-surprising-facts/

Mysterious Flying Squirrel Could Get Endangered Species Protection
by John R.Platt  |  24 Sep 2014

[Time 4]
The squirrels gliding amid the mountains east of Los Angeles have been, for the most part, flying under the scientific radar. There has never been a single scientific paper published specifically about the San Bernardino flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus californicus), even though hundreds of papers about squirrels in general are published every year.

Despite this scientific oversight, the San Bernardino flying squirrel—a subspecies of the northern flying squirrel—has become very popular among some conservationists, who have been fighting to get it protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) since at least 1985. This week they finally made progress: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), in response to a 2010 petition from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), agreed that the squirrels may deserve ESA protection. The agency said it will make a recommendation, either for or against protection for the subspecies, by April 2016.

Of course protecting a rare species depends on possessing detailed scientific information about its ecology, habitat use, threats and behaviors. We don’t have much of that for the San Bernardino squirrel. Here’s what we do know: They are medium-sized gray-brown squirrels which, like others in their family, possess wing-like skin flaps between their legs, which allows them to jump and glide up to 90 meters from tree to tree. They live in high-elevation forests exclusively on the San Bernardino Mountains. They used to be found on the San Jacinto Mountains as well, but the squirrels haven’t been seen there since at least 1980. Their remaining habitat is completely isolated by the Mojave Desert and several deep passes, so they can’t expand their range. The most recent estimate of their population put it at less than one squirrel per hectare, but that was from a trapping survey of the entire region conducted way back in 1998.
[302 words]

[Time 5]
FWS started looking into the status of the squirrel in 2012 when, prompted by the CBD petition, they opened a public-comment period on the animals. That should have been followed within months by a decision to propose an endangered listing or not—but that next step never happened. CBD threatened to sue. The agreement this week was part of a settlement with CBD under which FWS promised to move forward on the squirrel and nine other species that have been stuck in a backlog of ESA decisions.

According to CBD’s petition, the squirrels face multiple threats. The San Bernardino Mountains are warming and drying due to climate change and drought, making the lower elevations too dry for truffles (the squirrels’ favorite food). Meanwhile, forest management practices the CBD calls “misguided” have removed too many of the high forest canopy limbs the squirrels use to traverse the mountains. More people are moving into the area, which could result in more habitat loss. To top it all off, those people are bringing more domestic animals such as cats, which are apparently preying upon the squirrels.

The next 18 months could make or break the fate of the rare squirrels. We can hope that FWS biologists and others will be able to dig up enough information to protect the subspecies. Maybe someone will even get a scientific paper out of the process.
[229 words]

Source: Scientific American
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2014/09/24/mysterious-flying-squirrel/

This Massive Squirrel Has Been Saved from Extinction
by John R. Platt  |  23 Sep 2014

[Time 6]
It only took about half a century, but the once-rare Delmarva fox squirrel (Sciurus niger cinereus) now has a healthy population once again, placing it in a position to finally leave the protection of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). If that happens, this giant squirrel—which can reach an astonishing 75 centimeters in length—would join just 29 other species that have been declared recovered under the ESA.

The Delmarva fox squirrel has enjoyed legal protection since 1967, predating the Endangered Species Act of 1973. At the time it was declared endangered, the subspecies had lost 90 percent of its historic range, which once included almost the entire 274-kilometer Delaware peninsula for which it is named as well as areas of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Deforestation and other habitat loss during the first half of the twentieth century pushed the squirrel out, while hunting also took a heavy toll. By the 1960s the subspecies could only be found in a few Maryland counties.

Endangered-species protection brought an end to the squirrel hunting season, but the real key toward recovering the Delmarva squirrel turned out to be private landowners. Biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) relocated squirrels onto several large Maryland farms where they thrived. Other reintroductions took place on national wildlife refuges, but today 80 percent of the squirrel’s expanded habitat consists of private lands. The squirrel has now regained approximately 28 percent of its historic range and its population (estimated at between 17 and 20,000) is stable, widely distributed and, according to the FWS, healthy enough to withstand any future threats that might arise from disease or habitat loss, or even sea-level rise (which, FWS predicts, will result in some deforestation along the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Coast).

The process to delist the squirrel from the ESA isn’t quite over. The public is invited to submit comments or other supporting information on the proposal to delist the species. Comments are due by November 24. Assuming no new information about previously unassessed threats comes in during that process, it would then take another few months before the squirrels were delisted. Even then, FWS would continue to monitor the squirrels for several years to make sure their populations remain healthy outside the protection of the ESA.

It has been a long road to recovery for the Delmarva fox squirrel, but hopefully the journey is just about completed.
[399 words]

Source: Scientific America
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2014/09/23/massive-squirrel-saved/

Going

Part III: Obstacle

Cuddly Squirrel or Gray Menace?: When Invasive Species Pose an Environmental Threat
by Hilary Parker  |  28 April  2008

[Paraphrase 7]
Gray squirrel may look cute and harmless with their twitchy noses, piercing peepers and oh-so-bushy tails. But an international team of scientists recently named the furry beasties one of Europe's 100 worst environmental offenders. Their crime? Driving the equally adorable European red squirrel toward extinction.

The problem of invasive alien species is not unique to Europe. From reindeer on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia to mouflon sheep in Hawaii and cane toads in Australia, biological invaders are flourishing around the globe, devastating native plants and animals in their wakes. Often, they deliver multiple punches, as in the case of the U.K.'s gray squirrels. They not only sap resources from the native reds, but carry and spread squirrel pox—a disease that is decimating their red cousins.

Initiatives, such as the European Commission's Delivering Alien Invasive Species In Europe (DAISIE) project, which seeks to identify species wreaking havoc on ecosystems across Europe, and Aliens in Antarctica, an International Polar Year (2007–2008) project, are attempting to further the understanding of biological invasions to eliminate current problems as well as prevent future ones.

Needless to say, species movements from one location to another are nothing new—the terrestrial flora and fauna on volcanic islands that rose out of the sea, like Hawaii and the Galapagos, had to come from somewhere. The difference between the natural spread of species and today's invasions is how far—and fast—species are traveling.

"The natural process happens over slow time periods," says Barry Rice, an invasive species specialist with The Nature Conservancy. "When you have human-augmented invasions, these things happen at rates that are thousands of times faster than natural processes."

Many invasive species were released intentionally, like the South Georgia reindeer that were intended to provide meat to whalers in the early 1900s. Now they have overgrazed the native plants, which serve as nesting areas for seabirds and did not evolve to protect themselves against large herbivores. Others, like the Eurasian zebra mussels that invaded the Great Lakes in the 1980s, were stowaways, using oceangoing ships to taxi to a new environment. Years later, the voracious interlopers are continuing their steady march across the nation's waterways and are overwhelming native freshwater mollusks.

Global climate change is adding other dimensions to the problem.

"South Georgia is undergoing reasonably rapid climate change and retreat of glaciers, and it's hard to say what will happen in the future," says Kevin Hughes, the British Antarctic Survey's environmental research and monitoring manager. "One of the problems with the melting of some of the glaciers is that the reindeer might be able to extend their range and get to parts of the island they're not currently able to access."

The interplay of climate change and biological invasions is not only a concern in the polar regions. Wherever more severe and frequent weather events occur, there will be an increasing number of disturbed habitats, which may be ideal for nonnative species.

"This is all unknown, but invasive species may be able to take advantage of disturbances and move into these habitats much more quickly than native species," says Steven Hess, a wildlife research biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center's Kilauea Field Station in Hawaii National Park.

Native species accustomed to a particular environment have a tough time coping when conditions change, the Conservancy's Rice says. In contrast, many of the most successful invasive species are organisms like rats that easily adapt to various environments.

The best way to limit damage from invasive species? Prevent them from getting a foot in the door. "A really good analogy is to think about invasive species [as you would] wildfires," Rice says. "You can control a small fire when all you have to do is step on it, but once it's a large blaze, the logistics are much more complicated."

The first line of defense, he says, is to take appropriate biosecurity measures whenever possible. For example, many of the sub-Antarctic islands have implemented simple procedures, such as requiring visitors to dip their shoes in biocide (a chemical that kills microbes and plants) before disembarking onto the islands to prevent seeds or new pathogens from being introduced.

But it is impossible to prevent all invasions, which is why Rice stresses the importance of a network of experts who can immediately identify new threats and nip them in the bud. The Invasive Plant Atlas of New England project is doing just that, using trained volunteers to inventory habitats and document the arrival and spread of invasive species.

Once intrusive populations become established, it can be almost impossible to get rid of them. Often, as is the case with rats, feral pigs and many plant species, they have extraordinarily high reproductive rates.

Rice says that efforts to control invasive species should be tailored to each situation. Called adaptive management, this practice takes into consideration the characteristics of each site, goals, the manpower required and financial resources.

Economics almost always figures into decisions about managing invasive species, given limited conservation budgets and the tremendous damages inflicted by invaders on ecosystems. According to The Nature Conservancy, invasive species are estimated to cause $120 billion in damages each year in the U.S. alone. The worldwide toll is hundreds of billions of dollars greater, not to mention the human health and environmental costs.

"If I'm a preserve manager and I decide to wipe out every nonnative species, I will drive myself crazy and break my budget," Rice says. "I have to look at the site and ask myself, 'What is important? What am I trying to protect?' Then I ask myself which invasive species are causing damage to that purpose and how to deal with those on a local level."

For instance, officials would not waste time or resources trying to remove wild grass from a stopover for migrating birds unless it was interfering with their efforts to, say, drink from ponds there.

Management decisions to eradicate populations of introduced species, especially mammals, can be fraught with emotion and regret. In 2005, for instance, The Nature Conservancy killed 5,000 wild pigs on Santa Cruz Island to save the isle's endangered foxes and plants.

According to The Conservancy, the action was taken only after extensive consideration of other options. In the end, officials concluded that transporting pigs to the mainland carried too great a risk of disease.

"When we find ourselves in a situation [in which] we have to kill some organisms because we introduced them and they're damaging native organisms, ultimately this is a tragedy," Rice says. "We should take responsibility for that tragedy and we should channel that energy into avoiding introducing such organisms in the future."

Still, he says, although problems associated with invasive species may be pervasive and complicated, they are not insurmountable.

"You can define successes on a regional level—they're not measured only by whether the organism has been eradicated," he says. "Keep your eye on what you're there to protect and not what you're there to control. The goal is protecting native biodiversity. The goal is not to kill nonnative species."
[1181 words]

Source: Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/introduced-species-pose-environmental-threat/

画画2013

拉姆生日做松鼠的题目XDDDD。
Speaker
tempestuous 剧烈的
aka 又称为
California ground squirrels heat their tails up as a signal to rattlesnakes to keep away from their babies.
Such squirrels heats their tails more vigorously in the dark than in daylight. Rattlesnakes can feel infrared radiation, so that squirrels heat up to let rattles believe here is too hot for them to stay. However, squirrels never heat up to dopher snakers, which cannot feel heat.
Time2 2'44
curator 馆长，监护人，管理者
penchant 嗜好，倾向
conifer 针叶树
Some truths about squirrels.
1. Squirrels almost live in every habitats on earth, only on the Pole of earth you cannot find them.
2. Squirrels can help trees. In some cases, burying nuts is good for trees to grow.
3. Squirrels can also hurt trees. In some cases, squirrels eat the seeds of trees to pass the winter, leaving little chance for trees to germinate.
Time3 2'43
resin 松香，树脂
acorn 橡子
larder 食品室，食物橱
interestingly, trees can also fight back. The research realved that seeds of such trees have thicker seed coats and more resin, and some of them even have less nutrition that made squirrels have few rewards.
4. Squirrels make mushroom jerky. Some kinds of squirrels eat mushrooms, they can make the mushroom easy to hide by making fungi dry.
5. squirrels can garden and know their food sources well.
Time4 1'52
hectare 公顷
San Bernardino flying squirrels have been discussed to be listed under ESA protection animals for many years, and now this process does make some progress.
Basic information about this kind of squirrels.
Time5 1'27
CBD threatened to sue FWS for not taking the next step, and the scientists of CBD mentioned some factors that will threat the life of San Bernardino flying squirrels.
1. The climate of the moutain has rised up and the circumstance has also become dry.
2. The more people comes to this place, the less habitats that squirrels will have.
3. Pets of human can prey such kind of squirrels.
Time6 2'29
Deforestation 采伐森林，森林开伐
The Delmarva fox squirrels may be delisted from ESA's protection, because their quantities have become stable and enough to deal with the dangers they may face in the future.
Delmarva squirrels once faced endangered is due to deforestation, habitats loss and hunting. The number of this kind squirrels has raised up since FWS put it under ESA's protection.
However, whether it will delist from the protection list of ESA is still needed some years to obeserve and collect more information to prove.
Obstacle 7'43
beastly 野蛮的，残忍的，可恶的
herbivores 食草动物
mollusks 软体动物
pathogens 病原体，病菌
Main idea: how to stop the invasive species and how will these species bring the native species into danger.
Grey squirrels are cute, but they are invasive squirrels in europe, so that they do make the red squirrels become endangered.
Invasive species have become a global proble, wasting much money and bring many environment problems. Dealing with such a problem will result in a huge budget, so that the most important is to figure out what does hurt the native species. We should make sure that our goal is protecting native biodiversity, not killing nonnative species.
  

tantan08

2:35
2:40
2:16
1:44
2:47
  看的好晕

Euginia

time2 2‘46
time3 2’25
time4 1‘43
time5 1’01
time6 2‘19

obstacle 5’59
The threat of new species to native species
Example
Question
Causes
Actions
Current Situations of controling(avoid tragedy of killing native species)
14/11/11

11/10的没有找到是因为双十一抢货的放假吗~

越狱LV

Speaker
Squirrels heat up their tails to keep snakes away from their baby squirrels.

2. 02.26.30
In T’s book he found 5 facts about squirrels. They exist almost everywhere. They can both help trees and hurt trees.

3. 02.38.08
The trees would also fight back. The squirrels are able to make full advantages of the food, such as to make mushroom jerky. They can also tell the location of their winter storage. They store a lot of food even though they don’t eat up all of them in the winter.

4. 02:21.30
The squirrels are found amid the mountains of LA flying. Some scientists suggested to protect these flying squirrels, but some are against because we don’t know much about these squirrels so far.

5. 01:57.23
The suggestion for protecting these squirrels was not approved. But the squirrels are faced with multiple threats. The next 18 months will tell the fate of these squirrels.

6. 02:09.56
The giant squirrels will be recovered from extinction after the legal protection since 1976. But it still takes some time to delist them from the endanger animal lists because the public could comment on their survival status and the institute would observe them for a few years.

cyndichiang

Speaker
Califoria ground squirrels can heat their tail up as a signal to keep away snake forn their babies.
They wave their tails in dark more vogrously than in daylight
R snakc can sense infrard radiation,so researchers use infrard camera to test this phenomenon.

obstacle 4'06''
Gray squirrels , a non-native invasive species which bring a pox and pose threat to the environment.
Other factors such as melting ice sheet or other climate disturbance will intensify this invasion,costly expenditure, as well as the healthy risk.
The best way to control the invastors is to identify them quickly and limit them in the bud.
The way to judge whether the method to control invastors is successful is to see what are protected rather than what are eliminated.

HaiqingYU

Thank you for sharing such a cute message!
03:07->J is an expert of squirrel, and his two book reveal certain character of squirrel: exist everywhere; help and hurt trees;
03:19->defense of trees for squirrel
           eat mushroom
           how they handle their leftover
02:31-> GS is needed to be protected;
            necessary documents: habit and introduction of GS
01:52->the S is indeed in threat by many factors;
           Hope for measures
04:54->the S may be delisted from the endangered list.
           Their previous situation
           2 measures help them: end to hunting; private land
           public opinion is still needed.
07:59->GS threats the RS
            human activities and climate change are the two reasons for biological invasion
            ways to limit the damage: strengthen the defense; nip the threatened one early;
            the way to judge whether the measures are sucessful

MAGGIEHE1993

可以看懂文章的感觉真好。
time2: Some interesting facts about squirrels. They can be found on nearly every connor of the world. Some of the species can help the

trees while others can hurt the trees.
time3: Sometimes squirrels eat mushroonms and make mushroom jerkys to keep over winter. Squirrels can garden and know their food sources

well. They will eat acorns which germinate quickly and store acorns which do not germinate until spring.
time4: Although the squirrels gliding amid the mountains east of LA have been for the most part flying under the scientific radar, there

have never been a paper specifically written for them. However, the flying squirrel has become very popular among some conservationists.

The already known facts anout the flying squirrel: its appearance, size, habitat and so on.
time5: CBD pushed FWS to move forward on the squirrel for further protection. According to CBD's petition, the squirrels face multiple

threats. Their food and habitat are both under threaten. The next 18 months could make or break the fate of the rare squirrels.
time6: Delmarva fox squirrel can be finally removed from the Endangered Species Act. Deforestation and other habitat loss in the early

20th century pushed the squirrel out. The real key toward recovering the Delmarva squirrel turned out to be private landowners. Now the

number of fox squirrels are healthy enough to withstand any future threats. But the fox squirrels still need further inspection in order

to be delisted from ESA. It has been a long road to recovery for the fox squirrel, but hopefully the journey is just about completed.
Obstacle: Gray squirrels are defined as environment offenders for driving out their red cousins out of Europe. They not only sap resources

from the native reds but also carry and spread squirrel pox. DAISIE and AA are attempting to further understand biological invasions and

eliminate current problems as well as prevent future ones. Species movement can happen both in natural process and human activities. But

the speed it happens in human activities are much faster than in natural process. Global climate change is adding other dimensions to the

problem. When a disaster happened, nonnative species can better adapted to the environment than the native species. The best way to limit

damage from invasive species is to prevent them from getting a foot in the door. However, this method alone is not effective enough. An

expert said the efforts to control invasive species should be tailored to each situation. The goal is not to kill all nonnative species

but to protect native biodiversity.