The funny animal genre evolved

The funny animal genre evolved in the 1920s and 1930s, as blackface became less socially acceptable. Early black-and-white funny animals, including Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Mickey Mouse (perhaps the most enduring of the kind), Foxy the Fox, Felix the Cat and Flip the Frog, maintained certain aspects of the blackface design, including (especially with the advent of sound film) heavy emphasis on song and dance routines. The increased use of Technicolor and other color film processes in the 1930s allowed for greater diversity in the ability to design new "funny animals," leading to a much wider array of funny animal shorts and the near-total demise (except for Mickey Mouse and a few other Disney characters of the era) of the blackface characters. Song and dance fell out of favor and were largely replaced by comedy and satire. The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts by Warner Bros. Animation, for instance, introduced dozens of funny animals, many of whom have reached iconic status in American culture. Other notable funny animals from the color film era included Walter Lantz's Woody Woodpecker, MGM's Tom and Jerry (among many others), and Paul Terry's Heckle and Jeckle.
Television changed the dynamic of animation, in that although budgets were much smaller and schedules much tighter, this prompted a shift from the physical comedy that predominated film shorts to more dialogue-oriented jokes (including celebrity impressions and one-liner jokes). Hanna-Barbera Productions focused almost exclusively on these kinds funny animal TV series in the late 1950s and early 1960s, creating an extensive line of funny animal series (Yogi Bear being one of the most enduring franchises). Jay Ward Productions also produced The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, a series representative of the genre (albeit with much stronger Cold War overtones than Hanna-Barbera).

Sharks Slap Fish to Death

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Thresher sharks slap fish to death, according to a new study that adds sharks to the list of ocean predators that can kill with just a slap.

For this latest study, published in PLoS ONE, Simon Oliver of the Thresher Shark Research and Conservation Project and his colleagues observed thresher sharks hunting schooling sardines. The action took place in the waters off of a small coral island in the Philippines.

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Using handheld video cameras, suggesting that they were very close to the sharks, Oliver and his team recorded 25 instances where the sharks slapped their tails on or very near fish. The slaps either killed the sardines outright or stunned the fish so that the shark could easily gulp them down.

Thresher sharks initiated the behavior by drawing their pectoral fins inward to lift their posteriors rapidly. The forceful tail slapping followed. Slaps were so hard that they dissolved gases that bubbled out of the water.

The sharks ate an average of 3.5 sardines after each successful hunting event.

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Clearly this method works, and it’s more efficient than hunting fish one by one. Sardines are on the small side, so a predator could quickly run out of steam trying to chase a single fish, and then another and another.

Most fish species are on the decline, due to overfishing, pollution and other human-caused problems, so the hunting method is increasingly important for sharks.

“This extraordinary story highlights the diversity of shark hunting strategies in an ocean where top predators are forced to adapt to the complex evasion behaviors of their ever declining prey,” said Oliver in a press release.

The tail slaps might also help sharks to communicate with each other, although that hasn’t been proven yet. Humpback and sperm whales slap their tails a lot, turning them into a sort of oceanic Morse code to communicate over long distances.

Crickets Act Differently When Others Are Watching

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Everybody loves an audience—even crickets.

A new study shows that the insects change their aggressive behavior when they know other crickets are watching, the first time this phenomenon has been observed in any invertebrate. Mammals, birds, and fish are all known to be influenced by others.

In recent experiments, male crickets fighting in an arena acted more violently—and upon winning, were more jubilant—when other male or female crickets were in the audience. (See National Geographic's bug videos.)

Found worldwide, crickets live in communities defined by conflicts between individuals, usually to gain access to territories, resources, and mates.

But most previous research has focused on the fighters themselves, without placing them in the social networks in which they live.
Now, the new study reveals that cricket behavior "is much more complex than we give them credit for," said study leader Lauren Fitzsimmons, a biologist at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.

Robert Matthews, a professor emeritus of entomology at the University of Georgia who was not involved in the study, said, "It's an area that should have been looked at long ago.

"Contests don't occur in isolation," he said. "They always are in a social context."
Taking the Stage

For their experiments, Fitzsimmons and colleagues caught male and female crickets from local fields and reared their offspring in isolation in the laboratory. The team then put pairs of either wild-caught males or laboratory-raised males in a small arena at separate times, which always led to fights.

In a glass-separated viewing area adjacent to the arena, the scientists set up experiments with three audience situations: a male watching a fight, a female watching a fight, or no audience. The lab-raised male fighters had a lab-raised audience, and the wild crickets had a wild-caught audience. (See pictures of the world's deadliest animal battles.)

The researchers then videotaped each fight and played them back in slow motion, noting the aggression and overall behavior of the males in the three separate audience situations.

The intoxicated world of the spotted flycatcher

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Spotted flycatchers have commandeered the fence this year. Darting from shadows behind the hedge; landing on a post or wire; pausing to watch for a target; looping out into the field to land back on a further post; launching to snatch an insect on the wing with a blur and then back into the shadows. The spotted flycatchers have learned they have a speed and agility beyond the comprehension of walkers along the fence. They have the confidence now to hunt even while people and dogs are about. Sheep in the field bring more flies and the jackdaws are too slow and otherwise engaged to bother.

The flycatcher sprites appear flitting from post to post along the field's length as you walk beside the fence. They stay a couple of posts ahead, luring you closer and closer, until they flick to the next post or wire. When you get to the kissing gate at the end of the field they vanish. But if you look the way you've come, you'll see them on fence posts behind you going back to the far end. It's a game. However, with a 70% drop in population since the 1960s, climate change, farming changes, a lack of insects and problems crossing the drought-ridden Sahel on migration, the flycatchers' game is deadly serious.

With their grey-browns and faint dotted lines, they are often described as dull-looking birds, as if that makes them less interesting. But like many of the insects they catch and the landscape they inhabit, subtlety has a greater beauty and their aerial hunting dance is astonishing to watch. We, the lumbering pedestrians along the fence path, are enchanted and find ourselves drawn into it. Spotted flycatcher world is intoxicated by the scent of honeysuckle and the flush of dog roses. We hope the insects they snip from the air with those pencil-sharp beaks are feeding a brood that will also return to the fence.