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The Happiest Little House of Horrors

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Monday, September 30, 2024

You have been granted access, use your keyboard to continue reading.The Happiest Little House of HorrorsWelcome to the Spruce House in Finland, where macabre jokes about the end of the world are built into a comfortable island cabin.NewJan-Erik Andersson and Marjo Malin at the Spruce House in Turku, Finland. “This house is really about symbols, what art can do, and what houses should be,” Mr. Andersson said.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesSept. 30, 2024, 5:01 a.m. ETA metal pool ladder is fixed to a wooden veranda outside Jan-Erik Andersson’s house in western Finland. But there is no pool here, and we are 1,000 feet from the sea. The steps to nowhere, says Mr. Andersson, are a provocation, “an artwork to protest about rising waters.”“We are waiting for our pool,” he adds. “It will not be long. The world is burning.”More unsettling visual jokes about imminent environmental catastrophe turn up all over his hexagonal home, known as the Spruce House. But Mr. Andersson, an artist, designer and performer, can’t help but envelop them in the beauty that he sees all around the natural world. He’s an optimist, after all.Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesVesa Laitinen for The New York TimesVesa Laitinen for The New York TimesVesa Laitinen for The New York TimesThe Spruce House, newly built on a semirural plot on the island of Hirvensalo, in Finland’s Turku archipelago, resembles a wicked-green wooden head, perhaps some kind of Nordic folk-horror goblin. Its mossy green roof is a misshapen hat, its scarlet door an abstracted bloody mouth, its narrow windows a pair of malevolent eyes.It is built to high environmental standards, and heated and cooled by geothermal energy, but these technicalities aren’t really what interest its creator. “There are many houses, many architects dealing with purely ecological problems,” he says. “This house is really about symbols, what art can do, and what houses should be. In my opinion, there should be more art interventions.”Mr. Andersson and Ms. Malin in the kitchen. The ‘philosopher’s table,’ an acrylic work by Mr. Andersson, imagines mountains, temples and knowledge systems consumed by flames.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesMr. Andersson, modest and energetic at 70, is a well-known art figure in the Nordics. He moved into the 795-square-foot house this year with his wife, the graphic designer Marjo Malin, having built it to his own design as a postdoctoral project working with the Finnish architect Erkki Pitkäranta. Together, they conceived a visual tension between Mr. Andersson’s eco-optimism and the apocalyptic motifs in the interiors — much of which are Ms. Malin’s work.“She has less faith in humanity’s ability to work together to solve problems and I am more positive, so you get both sides,” Mr. Andersson says.The architect Erkki Pitkäranta, who designed the house with Mr. Andersson, describes his aesthetic as “strict and functional,” whereas his client’s is driven by colors and forms. “Those are very good things to put together.”Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesAfter a few months living the house, Ms. Malin says, “it feels normal, you get used to it.”“It’s also functioning very well, and it feels like home,” she adds. “I think it feels like when you are inside your mother’s womb. It feels like a safe place because it’s little and round.”Perhaps the best way to think of the Spruce House is as a manifesto you can live in. Mr. Pitkäranta describes his architectural point of view as “strict and functional,” whereas his clients come from a world of intentional colors and forms — “and those are very good things to put together.”The name refers to three spruce trees originally on site, which fell prey to parasites and had to be cut down. Those bathetic pool steps are an installation by Trudi Entwistle, the English environmental artist, who also laid out Mr. Andersson’s garden — a series of earth ramps tangled with wild grasses and meadow flowers, suggesting the house’s inhabitants are stranded in a wasted landscape that’s been returned to nature.The staircase is both “the stairway to heaven and the road to hell,” Mr. Andersson says.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesMs. Malin designed many of the interior moitifs.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesDownstairs, there’s a bathroom and an open kitchen/living room anchored by the “philosopher’s table,” a circular acrylic work by Mr. Andersson. Its surface design imagines mountains, ancient temples and knowledge systems consumed by flames. A second, rotating table features violent, swirling digital galaxies flocked with spruce branches. To complete the metaphor, 10 black “burnt” Philippe Starck chairs are positioned neatly around the table.“The doom scenarios have been part of art for centuries, but we are still here,” Mr. Andersson says. “Talk and communication is the only way, and we have 10 chairs around the table for that. And a big monitor beside the table for bringing those discussions online.”Ms. Malin’s designs for the interior include a kitchen backsplash of red Perspex in the shape of cartoonish scarlet flames, reminiscent of the “This is fine” internet meme. “The fire, lots of black and orange, was my idea,” she says. “Then Jan-Erik and I decided together how to use them.”Clusters of lampshades are junk-shop bargains of the mid-20th century, mass-produced variety, a way to find use for old plastics. For fixtures, Ms. Malin improvised with secondhand finds: “I used old egg cups for door handles,” she said.Ms. Malin’s designs in the kitchen include a backsplash of red Perspex in the shape of scarlet flames. “I used old egg cups for door handles,” she says. Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesThe staircase, with steps that change from red to orange to yellow to white as one ascends, is “the stairway to heaven and the road to hell,” says Mr. Andersson. “You get hotter as you go down, you come up onto a cloud — symbolically, of course.”Upstairs, there’s a compact bedroom, a shower room and two micro-offices, one each for the couple. Ms. Malin’s desk and shelves are immaculate. “She’s a very minimalist person,” her husband says. His space is only slightly messier and has a balcony overlooking the garden: “It’s a beer-drinking place, only for me and my beer bottle. There’s no room for anyone else.”The house is hexagonal, he says, because “there are no squares in nature.” He borrowed the motif from the rock formations at the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. “Natural forms are good for our psyche. With squares it wouldn’t have the same feeling at all.” Most of the windows are arrow-shaped, with five corners.Not all motifs and artworks are didactic — some are purely decorative, like the five facade sculptures by the Finnish artists Heini Aho and Kimmo Schroderus, among others. They were, Mr. Andersson says, blind commissions; he simply invited artists he admires to make him something, then fastened the results to the exterior in an arrangement that pleased him. “There should be more ornaments,” he says.“We are waiting for our pool,” Mr. Andersson says. “It will not be long. The world is burning.”Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesEvery window in the house has five corners. “There are no squares in nature.”Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesThe Spruce House may be a Finnish curiosity, but it comes from a global tradition of homes known as “Gesamtkunstwerk” — a German term meaning “total artwork,” indicating highly individualistic collisions of architecture and art. Their creators use and live with their work.The Spruce House is Mr. Andersson’s second attempt at such a project. His first was Life on a Leaf, a custard-yellow villa with a wooden facade and crowned with an indigo-glass skylight in the shape of an enormous, upside-down bluebell — “only for philosophizing and drinking in,” he says. The house was a celebration of nature, also designed by Mr. Andersson and Mr. Pitkäranta and completed in 2009 for his doctoral project at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. In his 2020 book “Total Design,” professor George H. Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania included Life on a Leaf alongside masterpieces by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Finland’s Alvar Aalto.Life on a Leaf, which sits on the plot next to the Spruce House, was initially funded through philanthropic donations, and as part of a special arrangement it was Mr. Andersson’s home for a while. Now it belongs to a nonprofit organization set up to secure its future, and hosts artists in residence. By contrast, Mr. Andersson paid for the Spruce House himself, with support from the city of Turku, which owns the land, and some funding from the Kone Foundation, an arts sponsor in Finland. The total cost was €250,000 (about $275,000), excluding the external sculptures.Mr. Andersson commissioned other Finnish artists to create the facade sculptures.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesMr. Andersson fastened them to the exterior in an arrangement that pleased him.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesTurku’s planning officials insisted the new house complement Life on a Leaf, effectively prohibiting Mr. Andersson from building anything bland or conventional. “Both buildings are works of art in themselves and contain separate visible artworks to delight people,” says Timo Hintsanen, director of development for the City of Turku. “From a cultural significance perspective, it is important that the complex is as open as possible.”One final structure sits on the site: The sunshine-yellow sauna, shaped like an enormous garlic clove, or perhaps a Russian Orthodox Church dome, with bugle-shaped metal pipes where a stalk should be. This is the Sounding Dome, a fiberglass steamhouse created with the American sound artist Shawn Decker as a public commission in 2011. Today, the sauna is out of order and awaiting repair, but the sound installation still works. Inside are rows of chairs mounted on platforms — secondhand finds with the legs removed.Mr. Andersson closes the door. Through the silence comes a discordant drone, like the low whine of an animal, then a shrill whistle and a gurgle. When the heat rises, the sound becomes louder and more intense — a way to heighten the senses beyond the powers of a standard sauna. “The sound travels around your head,” he says.The sunshine-yellow sauna, shaped like an enormous garlic clove, is the “sounding dome,” a fiberglass steamhouse created with the American sound artist Shawn Decker.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesHow often does he use it? “I am not a big sauna person,” he says. “It takes away your efficiency. I’m a workaholic.”He hopes the Spruce House design may one day be replicated at scale, perhaps as some kind of experimental housing estate. On the way out, we pass two low stools with knobbly, concrete seats on the veranda. Mr. Andersson says he made the stools for philosophizing on.“They are uncomfortable on purpose,” he says, “because we cannot be sure of anything.”

Welcome to the Spruce House in Finland, where macabre jokes about the end of the world are built into a comfortable island cabin.

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The Happiest Little House of Horrors

Welcome to the Spruce House in Finland, where macabre jokes about the end of the world are built into a comfortable island cabin.

New

Jan-Erik Andersson and Marjo Malin at the Spruce House in Turku, Finland. “This house is really about symbols, what art can do, and what houses should be,” Mr. Andersson said.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times

A metal pool ladder is fixed to a wooden veranda outside Jan-Erik Andersson’s house in western Finland. But there is no pool here, and we are 1,000 feet from the sea. The steps to nowhere, says Mr. Andersson, are a provocation, “an artwork to protest about rising waters.”

“We are waiting for our pool,” he adds. “It will not be long. The world is burning.”

More unsettling visual jokes about imminent environmental catastrophe turn up all over his hexagonal home, known as the Spruce House. But Mr. Andersson, an artist, designer and performer, can’t help but envelop them in the beauty that he sees all around the natural world. He’s an optimist, after all.

  1. Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times
  2. Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times
  3. Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times
  4. Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times

The Spruce House, newly built on a semirural plot on the island of Hirvensalo, in Finland’s Turku archipelago, resembles a wicked-green wooden head, perhaps some kind of Nordic folk-horror goblin. Its mossy green roof is a misshapen hat, its scarlet door an abstracted bloody mouth, its narrow windows a pair of malevolent eyes.

It is built to high environmental standards, and heated and cooled by geothermal energy, but these technicalities aren’t really what interest its creator. “There are many houses, many architects dealing with purely ecological problems,” he says. “This house is really about symbols, what art can do, and what houses should be. In my opinion, there should be more art interventions.”

Mr. Andersson and Ms. Malin in the kitchen. The ‘philosopher’s table,’ an acrylic work by Mr. Andersson, imagines mountains, temples and knowledge systems consumed by flames.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times

Mr. Andersson, modest and energetic at 70, is a well-known art figure in the Nordics. He moved into the 795-square-foot house this year with his wife, the graphic designer Marjo Malin, having built it to his own design as a postdoctoral project working with the Finnish architect Erkki Pitkäranta. Together, they conceived a visual tension between Mr. Andersson’s eco-optimism and the apocalyptic motifs in the interiors — much of which are Ms. Malin’s work.

“She has less faith in humanity’s ability to work together to solve problems and I am more positive, so you get both sides,” Mr. Andersson says.

The architect Erkki Pitkäranta, who designed the house with Mr. Andersson, describes his aesthetic as “strict and functional,” whereas his client’s is driven by colors and forms. “Those are very good things to put together.”Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times

After a few months living the house, Ms. Malin says, “it feels normal, you get used to it.”

“It’s also functioning very well, and it feels like home,” she adds. “I think it feels like when you are inside your mother’s womb. It feels like a safe place because it’s little and round.”

Perhaps the best way to think of the Spruce House is as a manifesto you can live in. Mr. Pitkäranta describes his architectural point of view as “strict and functional,” whereas his clients come from a world of intentional colors and forms — “and those are very good things to put together.”

The name refers to three spruce trees originally on site, which fell prey to parasites and had to be cut down. Those bathetic pool steps are an installation by Trudi Entwistle, the English environmental artist, who also laid out Mr. Andersson’s garden — a series of earth ramps tangled with wild grasses and meadow flowers, suggesting the house’s inhabitants are stranded in a wasted landscape that’s been returned to nature.

The staircase is both “the stairway to heaven and the road to hell,” Mr. Andersson says.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times
Ms. Malin designed many of the interior moitifs.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times

Downstairs, there’s a bathroom and an open kitchen/living room anchored by the “philosopher’s table,” a circular acrylic work by Mr. Andersson. Its surface design imagines mountains, ancient temples and knowledge systems consumed by flames. A second, rotating table features violent, swirling digital galaxies flocked with spruce branches. To complete the metaphor, 10 black “burnt” Philippe Starck chairs are positioned neatly around the table.

“The doom scenarios have been part of art for centuries, but we are still here,” Mr. Andersson says. “Talk and communication is the only way, and we have 10 chairs around the table for that. And a big monitor beside the table for bringing those discussions online.”

Ms. Malin’s designs for the interior include a kitchen backsplash of red Perspex in the shape of cartoonish scarlet flames, reminiscent of the “This is fine” internet meme. “The fire, lots of black and orange, was my idea,” she says. “Then Jan-Erik and I decided together how to use them.”

Clusters of lampshades are junk-shop bargains of the mid-20th century, mass-produced variety, a way to find use for old plastics. For fixtures, Ms. Malin improvised with secondhand finds: “I used old egg cups for door handles,” she said.

Ms. Malin’s designs in the kitchen include a backsplash of red Perspex in the shape of scarlet flames. “I used old egg cups for door handles,” she says. Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times

The staircase, with steps that change from red to orange to yellow to white as one ascends, is “the stairway to heaven and the road to hell,” says Mr. Andersson. “You get hotter as you go down, you come up onto a cloud — symbolically, of course.”

Upstairs, there’s a compact bedroom, a shower room and two micro-offices, one each for the couple. Ms. Malin’s desk and shelves are immaculate. “She’s a very minimalist person,” her husband says. His space is only slightly messier and has a balcony overlooking the garden: “It’s a beer-drinking place, only for me and my beer bottle. There’s no room for anyone else.”

The house is hexagonal, he says, because “there are no squares in nature.” He borrowed the motif from the rock formations at the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. “Natural forms are good for our psyche. With squares it wouldn’t have the same feeling at all.” Most of the windows are arrow-shaped, with five corners.

Not all motifs and artworks are didactic — some are purely decorative, like the five facade sculptures by the Finnish artists Heini Aho and Kimmo Schroderus, among others. They were, Mr. Andersson says, blind commissions; he simply invited artists he admires to make him something, then fastened the results to the exterior in an arrangement that pleased him. “There should be more ornaments,” he says.

“We are waiting for our pool,” Mr. Andersson says. “It will not be long. The world is burning.”Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times
Every window in the house has five corners. “There are no squares in nature.”Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times

The Spruce House may be a Finnish curiosity, but it comes from a global tradition of homes known as “Gesamtkunstwerk” — a German term meaning “total artwork,” indicating highly individualistic collisions of architecture and art. Their creators use and live with their work.

The Spruce House is Mr. Andersson’s second attempt at such a project. His first was Life on a Leaf, a custard-yellow villa with a wooden facade and crowned with an indigo-glass skylight in the shape of an enormous, upside-down bluebell — “only for philosophizing and drinking in,” he says. The house was a celebration of nature, also designed by Mr. Andersson and Mr. Pitkäranta and completed in 2009 for his doctoral project at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. In his 2020 book “Total Design,” professor George H. Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania included Life on a Leaf alongside masterpieces by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Finland’s Alvar Aalto.

Life on a Leaf, which sits on the plot next to the Spruce House, was initially funded through philanthropic donations, and as part of a special arrangement it was Mr. Andersson’s home for a while. Now it belongs to a nonprofit organization set up to secure its future, and hosts artists in residence. By contrast, Mr. Andersson paid for the Spruce House himself, with support from the city of Turku, which owns the land, and some funding from the Kone Foundation, an arts sponsor in Finland. The total cost was €250,000 (about $275,000), excluding the external sculptures.

Mr. Andersson commissioned other Finnish artists to create the facade sculptures.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times
Mr. Andersson fastened them to the exterior in an arrangement that pleased him.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times

Turku’s planning officials insisted the new house complement Life on a Leaf, effectively prohibiting Mr. Andersson from building anything bland or conventional. “Both buildings are works of art in themselves and contain separate visible artworks to delight people,” says Timo Hintsanen, director of development for the City of Turku. “From a cultural significance perspective, it is important that the complex is as open as possible.”

One final structure sits on the site: The sunshine-yellow sauna, shaped like an enormous garlic clove, or perhaps a Russian Orthodox Church dome, with bugle-shaped metal pipes where a stalk should be. This is the Sounding Dome, a fiberglass steamhouse created with the American sound artist Shawn Decker as a public commission in 2011. Today, the sauna is out of order and awaiting repair, but the sound installation still works. Inside are rows of chairs mounted on platforms — secondhand finds with the legs removed.

Mr. Andersson closes the door. Through the silence comes a discordant drone, like the low whine of an animal, then a shrill whistle and a gurgle. When the heat rises, the sound becomes louder and more intense — a way to heighten the senses beyond the powers of a standard sauna. “The sound travels around your head,” he says.

The sunshine-yellow sauna, shaped like an enormous garlic clove, is the “sounding dome,” a fiberglass steamhouse created with the American sound artist Shawn Decker.Credit...Vesa Laitinen for The New York Times

How often does he use it? “I am not a big sauna person,” he says. “It takes away your efficiency. I’m a workaholic.”

He hopes the Spruce House design may one day be replicated at scale, perhaps as some kind of experimental housing estate. On the way out, we pass two low stools with knobbly, concrete seats on the veranda. Mr. Andersson says he made the stools for philosophizing on.

“They are uncomfortable on purpose,” he says, “because we cannot be sure of anything.”

Read the full story here.
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Your gadgets are actually carbon sinks — for now

New research finds billions of tons of carbon get trapped in the "technosphere".

At any given moment, crude oil is being pumped up from the depths of the planet. Some of that sludge gets sent to a refinery and processed into plastic, then it becomes the phone in your hand, the shades on your window, the ornaments hanging from your Christmas tree. Although scientists know how much carbon dioxide is emitted to make these products (a new iPhone is akin to driving more than 200 miles), there’s little research into how much gets stashed away in them. A study published on Friday in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability estimates that billions of tons of carbon from fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — was stored in gadgets, building materials, and other long-lasting human-made items over a recent 25 year period, tucked away in what the researchers call the “technosphere.”  According to the study by researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, 400 million tons of carbon gets added to the technosphere’s stockpile every year, growing at a slightly faster rate than fossil fuel emissions. But in many cases, the technosphere doesn’t keep that carbon permanently; if objects get thrown away and incinerated, they wind up warming the atmosphere, too. In 2011, 9 percent of all extracted fossil carbon was sunk into items and infrastructure in the technosphere, an amount that would almost equal that year’s emissions from the European Union if it were burned.  “It’s like a ticking time bomb,” said Klaus Hubacek, an ecological economist at the University of Groningen and senior author of the paper. “We draw lots of fossil resources out of the ground and put them in the technosphere and then leave them sitting around. But what happens after an object’s lifetime?”The word “technosphere” got its start in 1960, when a science writer named Wil Lepkowski wrote that “modern man has become a goalless, lonely prisoner of his technosphere,” in an article for the journal Science. Since then, the term, a play on “biosphere,” has been used by ecologists and geologists to grapple with the amount of stuff humankind has smothered the planet in. “The problem is that we have been incredibly wasteful as we’ve been making and building things.” said Jan Zalasiewicz, a professor of paleobiology at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the University of Groningen study. In 2016, Zalasiewicz and his colleagues published a paper that estimated the technosphere had grown to approximately 30 trillion tonnes, an amount 100,000 times greater than the mass of all humans piled on top of each other. The paper also found that the number of “technofossils” — unique kinds of manmade objects — outnumbered the number of unique species of life on the planet. In 2020, a separate group of researchers found that the technosphere doubles in volume roughly every 20 years and now likely outweighs all living things.  “The question is, how does the technosphere impinge upon the biosphere?” Zalasiewicz said. Plastic bags and fishing nets, for example, can choke the animals that encounter them. And unlike natural ecosystems, like forests and oceans that can absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, humans are “not very good at recycling,” Zalasiewicz said. Managing the disposal of all this stuff in a more climate-friendly way is precisely the problem that the researchers from University of Groningen want to draw attention to. Their research looked at the 8.4 billion tons of fossil carbon in human-made objects that were in use for at least a year between 1995 and 2019. Nearly 30 percent of this carbon was trapped in rubber and plastic, much of it in household appliances, and another quarter was stashed in bitumen, a byproduct of crude oil used in construction.“Once you discard these things, the question is, how do you treat that carbon?” said Kaan Hidiroglu, one of the study’s authors and an energy and environmental studies PhD student at the University of Groningen. “If you put it into incinerators and burn it, you immediately release more carbon emissions into the atmosphere, which is something we really do not want to do.” Each year, the paper estimates, roughly a third of these fossil-products in the technosphere get incinerated. Another third end up in landfills, which can act as a kind of long-term carbon sink. But unfortunately, the authors acknowledge, these sites often leach chemicals, burp out methane, or shed microplastics into the environment. A little less than a third is recycled — a solution that comes with its own problems — and a small amount is littered.“There’s so many different aspects to the problem and treating it properly,” Hubacek said. Nevertheless, he said, landfills are a good starting point if managed well. According to the study, the bulk of fossil carbon that’s put into landfills decays slowly and stays put over 50 years. Designing products in a way that allows them to be recycled and last a long time can help keep the carbon trapped for longer. Ultimately, Hubacek said, the real solution starts with people questioning if they really need so much stuff. “Reduce consumption and avoid making it in the first place. But once you have it, that’s when we need to think about what to do next.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Your gadgets are actually carbon sinks — for now on Dec 20, 2024.

Squirrels Are Displaying 'Widespread Carnivorous Behavior' for the First Time in a California Park, New Study Finds

The familiar rodents, known for eating nuts and seeds, have been spotted hunting and decapitating voles in a gruesome dietary adaptation. Scientists say it might signal resiliency in face of future environmental pressures

A California ground squirrel carries a vole in its mouth after hunting the rodent. Sonja Wild, UC Davis In the rolling green hills of California’s Briones Regional Park, not far from the urban bustle of Oakland and Berkeley, the squirrels are not what they seem. Instead of simply stuffing their cheeks with fruits, nuts or seeds, the California ground squirrels there are now known to hunt, kill, decapitate and consume voles, a fellow rodent species, according to research published Wednesday in the Journal of Ethology. “This was shocking,” study lead author Jennifer E. Smith, a professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, says in a statement. “We had never seen this behavior before.” Most people are very familiar with squirrels, accustomed to seeing the animals on their streets or in their yards. And Smith is even more so—since 2013, she has led the Long-term Behavioral Ecology of California Ground Squirrels Project, which monitors squirrel genetics, social behavior and physiological stress responses in the San Francisco Bay area. But even with her intimate knowledge of the rodents, it was only this year that her research team observed ground squirrels actively pursuing and eating meat. The initial discovery was made by undergraduate researchers, who returned from the field site in Briones Regional Park earlier this year with videos of the squirrels’ behavior to show their incredulous supervisors. “At first, we questioned what was going on,” Smith tells Suzie Dundas of SFGATE. “But seeing the videos was astounding and shifted my perspective on a species that I have spent the last 12 years of my life studying.” Vole hunting: Novel predatory and carnivorous behavior by California ground squirrels Smith and her team documented 74 interactions between ground squirrels and voles between June and July. In 42 percent of the interactions, the squirrels were hunting the smaller rodents. “From then, we saw that behavior almost every day,” Sonja Wild, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, who co-leads the project with Smith, says in the statement. “Once we started looking, we saw it everywhere.” Though they’re largely vegetarians, squirrels have long been known to occasionally consume insects, small bird eggs or meat left out by humans, but “direct study of hunting behavior by squirrels remains rare,” according to the study. This “widespread carnivorous behavior,” Smith tells SFGATE, was therefore groundbreaking. In most recorded cases included in the paper, a single squirrel would pursue a single vole across the open landscape, rather than lying in wait or hunting in a group. Sometimes with a stalking motion and a pounce, it would tackle the vole, restrain it with its forepaws, bite the vole’s neck and remove its head. Then, the squirrel would either strip the fur from the vole to expose cartilage, meat and organs, or tear the meat directly out from the torso. The authors of the study suggest this change in diet is a response to a booming vole population. Using reports from citizen scientists on iNaturalist, an app that allows users to submit photos of plants and animal sightings, the researchers found vole abundance in the state was seven times greater this year than over a ten-year average, and sightings were particularly high in Briones Regional Park. “What is most striking and incredible is the speed at which they shifted their behavior to this local surge in vole abundance,” Smith tells CNN’s Julianna Bragg. “It’s a wonderful way for them to capitalize on a very abundant resource … to provide enough sustenance for many [squirrels] to use,” John Koprowski, a wildlife biologist at the University of Wyoming who was not involved in the study, tells CNN. Tia Ravara from UW-Eau Claire, left, and Ryann Su of UC Davis, both members of the research group called "Team Squirrel," watch a California ground squirrel during the 2023 field season. Sonja Wild, UC Davis Squirrels of all ages and sexes took part in the vole hunt, an indication that this dietary flexibility is widespread across the species and may serve as a crucial survival mechanism in response to fluctuating environmental conditions, especially in areas with high human populations. “In the face of human insults such as climate change and drought, these animals are resilient and have the potential to adapt to live in a changing world,” Smith adds. If acorn or seeds fall into low supply, for instance, squirrels appear primed to find other sources of protein and nutrients. The less stubborn an animal is about its diet, the better suited it is for survival. Although in this case, the squirrels don’t seem to be motivated by a scarcity of any other food source, per SFGATE, rather, the high population of voles appears to be the reason for their hunting. But because the study was focused on one regional park, it is unclear if the squirrels’ behavior will—or already has—spread across the state. It is also unknown if the taste for fellow rodents (and the hunting techniques used to capture them) will be passed onto future generations of squirrels once this vole surge abates. What the opportunistic squirrels do—or eat—next remains to be seen. “Digital technology can inform the science,” Smith says in the statement, “but there’s no replacement for going out there and witnessing the behavior, because what animals are doing always surprises us.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Environmental Groups Sue Over California Support for Polluting Biofuels

Several environmental groups are suing California air regulators over their continuing support for biofuels

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Several environmental groups are suing California air regulators over their recent update of a contentious climate program, saying they failed to address the pollution impacts of biofuels.The lawsuits target the low-carbon fuel standard, which requires California to reduce the environmental impact of transportation fuels by incentivizing producers to cut emissions. The California Air Resources Board voted last month to increase the state’s emission reduction targets, fund charging infrastructure for zero-emission vehicles, and phase out incentives for capturing methane emissions from dairy farms to turn into fuel.California, which often leads the nation on climate policy, plans to achieve so-called carbon neutrality by 2045, meaning the state will remove as many carbon emissions from the atmosphere as it emits. The state has passed policies in recent years to phase out the sale of new fossil-fuel powered cars, trucks, trains and lawn mowers.One of the lawsuits filed this week, by the nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment, accuses the board of failing to thoroughly analyze the climate impacts of burning biofuels derived from plants and animal waste. Another, filed by Food and Water Watch, Central Valley Defenders of Clean Air and Water, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, focuses on the impact of pollution often impacting low-income and Latino communities from the capture of methane from cow manure to turn into fuel. “People who live near refineries in California are harmed by the spiraling expansion of polluting biofuels,” but CARB failed to analyze the resulting harm to these communities, said a statement by Katherine Ramos, a program director at Communities for a Better Environment.Environmentalists say the LCFS program has stimulated the production of polluting biofuels, competing with food production and contributing to deforestation. They want California to focus more on expanding the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.The agency declined to comment on the lawsuits but said the program plays an important role in combating climate change and improving air quality.“The amendments channel global, national and local private sector investment towards increasing cleaner fuel and transportation options for consumers, accelerating the deployment of zero-emission infrastructure, and keeping the state on track to meet legislatively mandated air quality and climate targets,” Dave Clegern, a spokesperson for the board, said in an email.Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @ sophieadannaCopyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

Meet the Brazilian Velvet Ant, a Rare 'Ultra-Black' Wasp That's So Dark It Absorbs Almost All Visible Light

While the distinctive coloration is thought to be a warning to predators, it also has intriguing implications for designing man-made materials

The wasp species known as the "velvet ant" has a pattern of white and ultra-black coloration. © shrike2 via iNaturalist under CC BY-NC 4.0 The Caatinga is a stark, dry shrubland in northeastern Brazil. In Tupi, an Indigenous language, its name means “white forest,” describing the arid grasses, thorny trees and pale, stony soil that dominate the landscape. But scurrying across this land of extreme whiteness is, paradoxically, one of the darkest animals on Earth: a species of velvet ant known as Traumatomutilla bifurca. With its furry exterior and distinct black and white markings, the insect “looks like magic,” Vinicius Lopez, an entomologist at the Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro in Brazil, tells Katrina Miller of the New York Times. As it happens, velvet ants, known colloquially to Brazilians as “sorcerer ants,” are actually a type of wasp, but the females, which are wingless, give the creatures their name. And, according to a study led by Lopez and published earlier this month in the Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology, velvet ants have another claim to fame: The black parts of females possess a rare coloration known as “ultra-black,” so dark that it absorbs nearly all visible light. “We have never seen this kind of color in the dragonflies or bees or beetles we have analyzed,” Rhainer Guillermo-Ferreira, another entomologist at the Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro who collaborated with Lopez on the paper, explains to the New York Times. Unlike melanin, which makes animals like crows and black panthers appear dark, the researchers note that ultra-black is not just a matter of pigmentation. Instead, they write in the paper, these colors “are formed in nature by a sophisticated arrangement of microstructures” alongside dark pigments. In the female velvet ant, these microstructures include overlapping stacks of lamellae, or layers of tissue, beneath dense, hair-like setae. Combined with a black pigment, these features in the insect’s exoskeleton “minimize reflectance and enhance light absorption,” the researchers write. Visible and ultraviolet light gets trapped in the layers, and less than 1 percent is able to escape. Dakota McCoy, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the study, lauds the researchers’ use of multiple electron microscopy techniques “to try to see what the whole story was,” according to the New York Times. The mating display of a male superb bird of paradise shows off its ultra-black feathers. (A) Edwin Scholes / (B) Tim Laman via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 4.0 This type of research is cutting-edge, because ultra-black coloration is extremely rare in the animal kingdom. Traumatomutilla bifurca is the first known ultra-black member of the Hymenoptera order, which includes more than 150,000 species of ants, wasps, sawflies and bees. Along with some butterflies, it is one of the only ultra-black insects. Though this trait is rare, the advantages for animals that do possess it are wide-ranging. For peacock spiders and birds of paradise, the profound darkness may accentuate their vivid other colors and help them stand out to potential mates, according to a 2019 study. For deep-sea fish like the fangtooth, ultra-black serves as an “evolutionary tactic that gives some fishes an invisibility cloak,” Courtney Sexton wrote for Smithsonian magazine in 2020. And for vipers, a 2013 study suggests the intense coloration can help the snakes regulate their temperature. In the case of female velvet ants, the little available evidence on their species’ mating preferences suggests the ultra-black hue doesn’t have to do with attracting males. And while it might play a role in protecting the wasps from ultraviolet light, the team couldn’t prove that. Instead, the researchers propose that the wasps’ ultra-black is related to protection from predators. Velvet ants are already known as “indestructible insects” because of their painful stings, venom and hard exoskeletons, according to the paper. Their dark color could serve as a warning to would-be predators. Some researchers see these natural advantages of ultra-black in animals as a blueprint for man-made materials. Ultra-black butterfly wings, for instance, hint at the possibility of extremely lightweight and absorptive material that could be used to harness solar energy, hone precision telescopes to detect the faintest light traveling across space or produce a camouflage coating for military vessels. “The blackest black should be a constantly improving number,” Brian Wardle, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, told Natalie Angier of the New York Times in 2019. What makes ultra-black butterflies so black? Scientists are also on the hunt for the counterpart of ultra-black: ultra-white, a color that reflects up to 97.9 percent of sunlight. As climate change elevates temperatures across the globe, engineered ultra-white paint could help cool airplanes, cars and spacecraft without relying on air conditioning. Still, many questions remain for researchers about how and why these extreme patterns of coloration occur in the wild. For instance, why do male velvet ants not have ultra-black pigmentation and instead reflect light at a much higher rate than females? What environmental pressures are responsible for dividing velvet ant evolution along these lines? But, as Guillermo-Ferreira points out to the New York Times, these waspy denizens of the Caatinga are rich with research potential. “Every time we study velvet ants, they give us some new, interesting result.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Feds Propose Protection for Giant Salamanders Devastated by Hurricane Helene

A giant salamander that evolved on the supercontinent Pangaea and outlived the dinosaurs has been proposed for federal protection by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

You never forget your first time seeing a giant salamander, according to Andy Hill. He was a teenager, standing thigh-high in the Watauga River outside Boone, North Carolina, casting a line on an early fall day when he saw his first eastern hellbender. The salamander stretched 2 feet long and was camouflaged among rocks beneath the clear water.“You never lose your sense of wonder and otherworldliness when you see one,” said Hill, who now works as the Watauga Riverkeeper for MountainTrue, a nonprofit protecting natural ecosystems in western North Carolina, home to part of the Blue Ridge Mountains.The ancient species, which evolved on the supercontinent Pangaea and outlived the dinosaurs, was submitted for federal protection Friday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If the proposal is adopted after a period of public comment, the creatures will be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Their population in the U.S. has rapidly declined in recent decades; dams, industry and even flooding worsened by climate change have threatened their habitat and ability to reproduce and find food. Today, just 12% of eastern hellbenders are successfully reproducing.Hellbenders in the Blue Ridge Mountains had been considered the healthiest population of the eastern subspecies but were devastated this fall by Hurricane Helene. Thousands were displaced or found dead amid rubble. Others were found in flooded church basements and returned to the river. But some rivers are so polluted, there’s still a “do not touch” advisory for people.Tierra Curry burst into tears when she learned of the proposed protection. “I just think it's a moral failure that we're pushing them to the brink of extinction,” said Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.The slimy, brown creature with a broad, flat head may never win a beauty contest, but it is famous as the largest amphibian in North America. The hellbender breathes dissolved oxygen in the water through its skin. Water that becomes slow-moving, warm or polluted holds less oxygen.Over the past five years, two dams were removed on the Watauga River to help improve water quality and reconnect hellbender communities. The most recent one came down this summer — and two months later, Helene upended life not just for people, but also for animals like the salamander.For those working to ensure the species' survival, the newly proposed federal protection couldn't come soon enough, said Erin McCombs, Southeast conservation director for American Rivers. “We have to be paying more attention to the health of our nation's rivers and streams, and that means paying more attention to the critters that live in them,” she said. “When species like the hellbender, which are reliant on free-flowing and clean water, are declining, alarms need to be going off, because we'll feel the impacts next.”The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned and won protection for the Ozark subspecies of hellbenders in 2011 and for Missouri hellbenders, another population of eastern hellbender, in 2021. The group sued, seeking protection for all eastern hellbenders. As of this week, all hellbenders in the U.S. are protected or slated for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Hill says he hopes the new federal protection will usher in “bold strategies” to help the species recover.“It’s going to take a massive effort," he said.The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environmentCopyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

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