peregrine falcon

See the world through the eyes of nature’s fastest animal: the peregrine falcon. Though once perilously endangered in the U.S., this spectacular predator is now thriving again in American cities and on every continent but Antarctica. What is the secret to its predatory prowess? To find out, follow a young family of peregrines in urban Chicago as the chicks hatch and learn from their parents to fly and hunt. And join expert falconer Lloyd Buck as he trains a captive peregrine and puts its hunting skills to the test. What’s the secret behind the peregrine falcon’s blistering speed, able to reach nearly 200 mph? (Premiered November 21, 2018)

See the world through the eyes of nature’s fastest animal—the peregrine falcon.

World's Fastest Animal

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Forty years of community engagement has brought the freshwater turtles of Brazil back from the brink—but lack of funding may imperil conservation.

Amazon Turtles Recovering, Thanks to Local Volunteers

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Drowned out by the din of passing ships, humpback whales attempting to breed off the coast of Japan are cutting their conversations short.

Ship Noises Mute the Songs of Humpback Whales

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Nature

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Draper

Learn about this baby giant armadillo.  
Researchers use camera traps in a Brazilian rainforest to capture a day in the life of Alex the armadillo.
This Little Armadillo Was a Big Ambassador for His SpeciesPublished: December 13, 2019Onscreen: Scientists have placed thousands of camera traps all over the Pantanal region of Brazil. They&#x27;re hoping to spot a giant armadillo.Arnaud Desbiez: A camera trap is essentially a device that you can place anywhere, and when something passes in front of it, it will take a series of pictures and videos.This the part I really want to get, so I’m going to get the motion sensor to work.Narrator: Then, he waits.Desbiez: So, the camera traps are, for a field biologist, what a microscope is to a microbiologist. It helps us see things that we can’t see with our own eyes.Narrator: The camera traps caught something never before recorded on camera, a baby giant armadillo.Desbiez: It was an incredible experience to be able to see this tiny little white shape. They have no coloring. You can tell that the shell is soft, and they’re a little bit clumsy the way they move.Narrator: The scientists nicknamed the baby Alex.Desbiez: All of us got extremely attached to this little giant armadillo, with whom we actually had no physical contact. Our whole relationship was through these images. Every time we came to the field, it was an exciting moment, “What is Alex going to be doing now? How has he progressed?”Narrator: Thanks to Alex, scientists estimate that giant armadillos have just one offspring every three years. The babies nurse for a year and live with their mothers for 18 months.Desbiez: Parental care is much, much longer than we could ever have imagined. We were able to follow time spent inside the burrow, time spent outside the burrow. And so those measures of time, now, today, help us to estimate the age of a baby giant armadillo, because we related those to the age of Alex.Narrator: Arnaud shared Alex’s story with the public. Soon, everyone was hooked on the day to day life of this vulnerable baby armadillo.Desbiez: I remember telling them when he predated his first termite mound. I remember when he dug his first burrows. We were almost like you would celebrate a child’s first achievements; we were doing that with Alex.Narrator: After a few months living on his own, Alex’s story took a sad turn.Desbiez: One day, we saw that he had entered one of his mother’s old burrows. So, we set a camera trap in front of the burrow, but he didn’t come out that night. And he didn’t come out the night after.We saw a vulture land in front of the camera trap. I went and put my face against the burrow, and I smelled a rotting nasty smell from the burrow.Narrator: A necropsy revealed a mortal wound in his shoulder. Only one animal in this area could inflict such damage: the puma.News of Alex’s death hit hard. There was an outpouring of public sympathy.Desbiez: This little armadillo had actually become quite the ambassador for, for his species. People were able to understand how vulnerable this species is, and how easy it is to locally extinct a population of giant armadillos, because any threat, whether it’s habitat loss or hunting or road kill, will have a huge impact on the species.

Learn about this baby giant armadillo.

This Little Armadillo Was a Big Ambassador for His Species

Scientists use drones to spy on bowhead whales.  
Why do bowhead whales rest their heads against large rocks in the Arctic? Getting an aerial view helps one research team find some answers.
Using Drones to Solve 170-Year Bowhead Whale MysteryPublished: December 13, 2019Onscreen: Year after year, bowhead whales gravitate toward the shore of Cumberland Sound, Canada and hang around the big rocks there. No one knows why.Sarah Fortune is hoping this drone will solve this mystery.Narrator: Ricky Killabuck, an Inuit fisherman, brings them to the site.Sarah Fortune: So, have you seen any whales in this bay this year?Ricky Killabuck: Oh, yeah.Fortune: Yeah? Okay.If you go back to the whaling records, dating back to 1845, whalers had made note that these whales would go near shore and they’d rest their heads or their chins upon these large rocks.Killabuck: Going along this coast, we’ve been seeing whales along the rocks in this area.Fortune: Okay.Some people thought that they might be feeding; others thought that they’re resting.Narrator: Without a clear view, it was to impossible know.Fortune: Around our 11:00.Bill Koski: So, we have a whale up ahead. We’re heading towards it now.Resarcher: Got that camera out to the aft, all powered up.Fortune: So, then I think you’re going to want to bring it to our 11:00 here, maybe to the bow.Resarcher: It’s starting to come shallow.Fortune: Mmhmm, it’s coming in.Narrator: This whale seems to be scratching his back against the rocks.Fortune: Now we know that the whales aren’t just coming here for feeding purposes, they’re also coming here for molting purposes, rubbing on these large boulders as exfoliation, so, to help expedite the molting process.Narrator: The best guess is they’re trying to keep their skin healthy and free of parasites.The drone reveals Cumberland Sound, with its shallow rocks and plentiful zooplankton, to be a critical bowhead habitat.Yet it’s also a place destined to change.Fortune: These are whales that will be impacted in one way or another by environmental change. We don’t know if it’s going to be detrimental, we don’t know if these whales will be very adaptable, but we know that things are going to change, just like they’re going to change for the people in the north that are living in these communities.Narrator: For now, keeping a close eye on these giants of the Arctic is critical.Fortune: The really big win about drones is that we’re able to collect a lot of data about the whales with zero impact to them. And so, I think this is a very positive step forward.Great, awesome. Thanks so much, guys.

Scientists use drones to spy on bowhead whales.

Using Drones to a Solve 170-Year Bowhead Whale Mystery

<div class="rich-text">It’s hard to imagine an animal with “giant” in its name going unnoticed for decades. But two such species make our list of near misses—creatures once believed to be gone forever. (Most species considered extinct aren’t so lucky.)Here are the tales of eight underdogs that clawed, buzzed, and scampered their way back onto the radar:</div>
 

 
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 <div class="rich-text"><h3>Black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes)</h3>With rounded ears, a short muzzle, and big, dark eyes, the black-footed ferret is the only ferret species native to North America—and it’s downright adorable. Perhaps surprisingly, this once-presumed-extinct animal owes its recovery to a dog named Shep, an unlikely ally that helped saved the species by killing one of its members.In the early 1900s, black-footed ferret numbers plummeted when grassland habitats in the western U.S. were converted to farmland. In addition to habitat loss, this change led to severe declines in the ferrets’ favorite food: prairie dogs. Several infectious diseases, including sylvatic (bubonic) plague, which ferrets contract from infected prairie dog prey, also hit the species hard. Because black-footed ferrets are found only in North America, declines in the U.S. meant the dwindling of the entire global population.By 1979, these fuzzy carnivores were considered extinct.But just two years later, in 1981, Shep brought a dead black-footed ferret home to her owners, Lucille and John Hogg, a pair of Wyoming cattle ranchers. The Hoggs then took the ferret to their local taxidermist, who confirmed its identity.Conservationists soon found the remnant population on a nearby ranch and brought the 18 survivors into captivity to help increase their numbers. Today, thanks to <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/11/21/18103851/future-perfect-podcast-endangered-species-ferret-crispr">careful captive breeding</a> and strategic releases, about 300 to 400 black-footed ferrets scamper about North America.<h3>New Zealand storm-petrel (Fregetta maoriana)</h3>
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Oceanites_maorianus.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="400" width="600"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Oceanites_maorianus.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>A New Zealand storm-petrel sails over the sea. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Aviceda<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 With nearly 100 different species of seabirds breeding on its shores and islands, New Zealand is sometimes called the Seabird Capital of the World. But habitat loss and predation by invasive mammals have caused the nation’s seabird numbers to plummet.For the entire twentieth century, there was not a single recorded observation of a New Zealand storm-petrel—a species only known to science because of three specimens collected in the nineteenth century—and so it was presumed extinct. (The New Zealand storm-petrel is one of about two-dozen storm-petrel species.) The situation shifted in 2003, when birders photographed a member of the long-lost storm-petrel species. Two years later, one of these sparrow-sized birds flew onto the boat of a conservation ranger-turned-fisher who was able to identify the species.With these two encounters assuring scientists that the storm-petrels were out there, Chris Gaskin, a founding member of the Northern New Zealand Seabird Trust, and his collaborators spent years trying to find more of them and figure out where they nest.The birds are small, nocturnal, and spend most of their lives at sea—all of which made them difficult to track down. They largely eluded the scientists until 2013, when Gaskin and his team finally found a nesting site. They’ve since captured 400 birds, but Gaskin believes there could be a few thousand alive. Still, the storm-petrel’s situation remains precarious, Gaskin says, since the team only knows of a single site where they breed and nest. “Chances are they’re on other islands,” Gaskin says. “We just haven’t discovered them.”<h3>Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile pluto)</h3>The world’s biggest bee seems like it would be hard to overlook. But following heavy deforestation in its native habitat—the North Molucca Islands in Indonesia—Wallace’s giant bee went missing for nearly 40 years.Dwarfing your average honeybee, Wallace’s giant bee has enormous mandibles (jaws) and a 2.5-inch wingspan—about the width of a tennis ball. The species was named for its discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, a British naturalist and entomologist, who published a joint paper with Charles Darwin in 1858 arguing the theory of evolution through natural selection. Aside from Wallace’s first identification, the only other recorded sighting of this outsize insect occurred in 1981 when entomologist Adam Messer collected a few specimens. Wallace’s giant bee then went MIA until earlier this year.In January 2019, a search team found a single female. The team’s photographs and videos are the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/02/worlds-largest-bee-rediscovered-not-extinct/">first-ever documentation</a> of a live specimen of Wallace&#x27;s giant bee.Because species this rare can become targets for collectors, Simon Robinson, an Australian biologist on the trip, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/science/giant-bee-wallace.html">told Douglas Quenqua at The New York Times</a> that he and his team are keeping the exact location of their discovery quiet. They hope they can learn more about this ultra-rare species and how to help its numbers buzz back.<h3></h3><h3>Fernandina giant tortoise (Chelonoidis phantasticus)</h3>The Fernandina giant tortoise was “extinct” for more than 100 years. But on February 17, 2019, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwb4xa/giant-tortoise-feared-extinct-reappears-after-113-years">researchers found one</a>. Washington Tapia, director of the Galápagos Conservancy’s Giant Tortoise Restoration Initiative, and his team discovered the female tortoise on the island of Fernandina in the Galapagos, the first of her kind spotted since 1906.The team had found a clue suggesting the species still roamed Fernandina Island several years prior. In 2015, Galápagos National Park ranger Jeffreys Malaga and Charles Darwin Foundation researcher Patricia Jaramillo spotted feces they believed belonged to the species. Because Fernandina Island is an active volcano, its terrain is challenging to navigate, so it took Tapia years to finally track down the poo-producing (or so he presumes) tortoise. She is now the only known survivor of her kind.But, based on tracks found it the area, it looks like there may be more Fernandina giant tortoises out there. “It created hope for people to know conservation is possible and that changing human activities is necessary for it to continue,” <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/02/extinct-fernandina-giant-tortoise-found/">Tapia told National Geographic</a>. This female is estimated to be 100 years old, but she could live to be 200. If more tortoises are found, she could have another century to breed and help her species rebound.<h3></h3><h3>Crested gecko (Correlophus ciliatus)</h3>
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Izzy.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Izzy.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>The crested gecko is now one of the most popular species of lizard in the reptile pet trade. Image Credit: Sukee Bennett, WGBH<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 The crested gecko is unique in many ways. It can lick its own eyeballs and <a href="https://www.livescience.com/47307-how-geckos-stick-and-unstick-feet.html">use electromagnetism to stick to walls</a>. Its coloration and scale patterns vary wildly between individuals, and it has a spiky fringe that fans out above its eyes, earning it the nickname “eyelash gecko.” It also has the distinction of going unseen by humans longer than any other species on this list.After its identification in 1866 by a French zoologist named Alphone Guichenot, the crested gecko was not seen again for nearly 130 years. In 1994, this little reptile, which at around 35 grams weighs about the same as 7 nickels, was rediscovered. During an expedition led by German herpetologist Robert Seipp, scientists found the crested gecko on its native islands of New Caledonia, a French territory in the South Pacific.Soon after the crested gecko’s reemergence, several live specimens were collected on the islands and brought to Europe and the United States for research. Some specimens were also bred in captivity. While the export of crested geckos from the wild is now prohibited, captive breeding has been very successful: This species is now one of the most commonly owned pet lizards in the world.</div>
 

 
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 <div class="rich-text"><h3></h3><h3>Wood&#x27;s hau kuahiwi (Hibiscadelphus woodii)</h3>It’s not just fauna that sometimes reappear on our radar. Some plants only grow in incredibly remote locations, meaning it’s difficult for humans to know if they’re still around.One such plant, a hibiscus relative known as Hibiscadelphus woodii, was<a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/drone-rediscovers-hawaiian-flower-thought-to-be-extinct/">rediscovered in January 2019</a> on a remote cliff in the Kalalau Valley in Kaua‘i, Hawai‘i: It wasn’t spotted by an extreme expeditioner, but rather a drone surveying the cliff face. The found specimen was not flowering, but its species produces bright yellow blooms that transform to purple over time.First discovered by botanist Kenneth R. Wood and his colleagues in 1991, this hibiscus relative was listed as “presumed extinct” in 2016 after seven years without a single sighting. Until, that is, a team of researchers flew a drone to scour the hidden ridges deep within the Kalalau Valley. They captured images of a shrub that resembled H. woodii peeking out of the steep rocks that line the Kalalau Valley. This location is home to many threatened plant species, but because they grow so far down on the steep cliff, they are largely inaccessible.Though researchers were unable to reach the plant by hiking or rappelling, in February, drones once again helped them confirm the sighting. Now, drones may even be sent back into the valley to collect clippings that scientists could use to learn more about the plant, and potentially help it recover by growing cuttings in a greenhouse.Ben Nyberg, who worked with National Tropical Botanical Garden on this rediscovery project, <a href="https://qz.com/1600255/botanists-are-using-drones-to-rediscover-extinct-flowers/">told Zoë Schlanger at Quartz</a> this is the first instance he knows of in which a drone was used to rediscover a presumably extinct plant species.<h3></h3><h3>Takahē (Porphyrio hochstetteri)</h3>
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="takahe.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/takahe.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>A Takahē sports an antenna so that scientists can monitor its movements. Data like this can better help researchers protect endangered species. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons, russellstreet<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 Along with its namesake storm-petrel, New Zealand is home to another bird that famously surprised scientists with its reemergence: the takahē. Like most birds in New Zealand, takahē numbers were hit hard when Polynesian voyagers, and then European settlers, introduced rats, stoats, possums, and other predators to a country with no native land mammals.Faced with a host of new threats, nearly 60 of New Zealand’s bird species went extinct—and for about 50 years the large, flightless takahē was believed to be among them.At the turn of the nineteenth century, its iridescent blue and green feathers were scarcely seen. But in 1948, driven by promising tracks and photographs, an expedition set out to see if any takahē had somehow survived. Physician Geoffrey Orbell and his team <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/22-11-2018/once-thought-extinct-takahe-have-a-brand-new-home/">uncovered a small population</a> of the birds in the remote Murchison Mountains, to the delight of the nation.Scientists still don’t understand how this population escaped predation. But they have since helped takahē numbers increase through captive breeding and release onto pest-free islands and fenced-in sanctuaries cleared of mammalian predators. Today, there are approximately 350 takahē in New Zealand.<h3></h3><h3>Lord Howe stick insect (Dryococelus australis)</h3>
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Dryococelus_australis_02b_Pengo.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="393" width="800"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Dryococelus_australis_02b_Pengo.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>A Lord Howe stick insect at the Melbourne Museum in Melbourne, Australia. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Peter Halasz<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 Nicknamed the “tree lobster,” the Lord Howe stick insect is about the size of a human hand. It inhabits Lord Howe Island, about 350 miles off Australia’s east coast. And like many island-dwelling species, the Lord Howe stick insect was no match for rats, which invaded the island when a ship crashed nearby in 1918. Just a few years later, the insects were difficult to find. In 1960, experts declared them extinct.Unlike the other species on this list, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/welcome-back-lord-howe-island-stick-insect/">the reemergence</a> of the Lord Howe stick insect came down to genetics. In 2001, scientists found similar-looking stick insects on nearby islands. They looked different enough, though, that many experts doubted they could be tree lobsters.To find out, scientists sequenced the genome of the newly discovered insects (a massive genome about 25 percent larger than <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/cracking-your-genetic-code/">the human genome</a>) and found that the variation was small enough for them to be considered the same species. Scientists have since bred more from this population. They hope to one day reintroduce the tree lobster to Lord Howe Island—if they’re able to reduce or eliminate invasive rat populations.</div>
 

 
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A giant tortoise, a seabird, and a gecko all went undetected by scientists for more than a century.

Dogs, drones, and DNA: How eight “extinct” species were rediscovered

Camera technology is revolutionizing the study of animals—without them even noticing.

Animal Espionage

<div class="rich-text">Of the many animals <a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/team/andrew-tilker/">Andrew Tilker</a> studies, there are plenty he’s never actually seen in person.It can feel a bit like chasing after mythical beasts, admits the Global Wildlife Conservation biologist. But that’s par for the course, he says, when you’re searching for species considered <a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/search-for-lost-species/">“lost” to science</a>.That’s certainly been the case for the <a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/silver-backed-chevrotain/">silver-backed chevrotain</a> (Tragulus versicolor)—a fanged, cat-sized deer relative that looks like it lowered itself halfway into a bath of metallic paint before changing its mind. Though Western researchers have known about this skittish creature for more than a century, they’ve collected only five specimens, all corpses obtained from hunters in Vietnam.</div>
 

 
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 <div class="rich-text">The last of these appeared nearly three decades ago, in 1990. No Western biologist—Tilker included—has ever glimpsed a silver-backed chevrotain alive.But now, with the help of local knowledge and a cluster of well-placed camera traps, Tilker and his team have snapped the first-ever photos and videos of the silver-backed chevrotain in the wild. Their <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-1027-7">findings</a>, published today in the journal Nature Ecology &amp; Evolution, go beyond the glamour shot: They confirm that, despite decades of illegal poaching and habitat destruction, this mysterious mini-mammal remains alive and well in its native Vietnam—for now.“We should think that we’re still pretty damn lucky that this species is still around,” says <a href="https://www.uwo.ca/biology/directory/faculty/zanette.html">Liana Zanette</a>, a conservation biologist at Western University in Canada who wasn’t involved in the study. “We’ve been given another opportunity to try and preserve it, and that’s where the focus needs to be now.”This scientific rediscovery is another notch in the belt of Global Wildlife Conservation, which, in 2017, launched a <a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/lost-species-list/">campaign</a> to scour the world for 1,200 species lost to science. The silver-backed chevrotain is the first mammal checked off the organization’s 25 “most wanted” list, joining several other “found” plants and animals, including a <a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/jacksons-climbing-salamander/">golden salamander</a> salamander in Guatemala, a <a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/fernandina-galapagos-tortoise/">gargantuan tortoise</a> in Ecuador, a <a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/wallaces-giant-bee/">giant bee</a> in Indonesia, and a <a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/velvet-pitcher-plant/">flesh-hungry pitcher plant</a> in Canada.
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="ncs016__ct016__2018-04-22__16-23-56(3)__Silver backed chevrotain.JPG" class="richtext-image full-width" height="600" width="800"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/ncs016__ct016__2018-04-22__16-23-563__Silver_b.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>A silver-backed chevrotain shows off its metallic backside. Image Credit: SIE/GWC/Leibniz-IZW/NCNP Copyright holder: Andrew Tilker<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 Like many of its predecessors, the silver-backed chevrotain (sometimes called the Vietnam mouse-deer) is as enigmatic as it is elusive. It first came onto the scientific scene in 1907, after a biologist collected four dead specimens near Nha Trang, Vietnam. Like other chevrotains, they sported short, spindly legs that could help them scuttle through the forest, and odd, elongated fangs that males might use for fighting. But in contrast to the more common lesser chevrotain (Tragulus kanchil), a close relative also native to the region, the silver-backed species lacked a distinctive stripe on its throat and “looked as though someone had dunked two thirds of it in silver,” Tilker says.There was only so much scientists could figure out from the bodies, which were filed away into collections in the hopes that more individuals would appear. But then the trail went cold.
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="setting camera trap (2).jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/setting_camera_trap_2_e9GXfzy.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>Researchers set up a camera trap to capture images of the elusive silver-backed chevrotain near Nha Trang, Vietnam. Image Credit: SIE/GWC/Leibniz-IZW/NCNP<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 The next chevrotain didn’t appear until 83 years later, when a team of Vietnamese and Russian scientists nabbed another hunter-killed specimen in Gia Lai, a province more than a hundred miles away from the original site.By the time the species blipped onto the radar of Tilker and his colleagues some two decades later, it was clear in that the silver-backed chevrotain might be in some trouble. Poaching and habitat destruction had already triggered the decline of several other animals in the region—and scientists began to worry that they’d lose the strange little creature before it had truly been found.</div>
 

 
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 <div class="rich-text">But “species shouldn’t be written off just because they haven’t been seen,” Tilker says. So he and his colleague <a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/team/an-nguyen/">An Nguyen</a> decided to do some scientific sleuthing of their own. The best bet for pinpointing a chevrotin population, Nguyen says, would be to go back to the source: Nha Trang, where four of the five precious specimens had first been recovered—and, they later learned, where a photo of an oddly colored young chevrotain had supposedly been taken in 2004.In 2017, a team led by Nguyen began interviewing residents around Nha Trang. While Western scientists have yet to glimpse a living silver-backed chevrotin, he says, the animals—known to the Vietnamese as cheo cheo—were nothing new to locals: About a quarter of the 35 people the researchers interviewed said they had recently spotted gray-looking chevrotains nearby.<div style="padding-bottom: 74.94553376906318%;" class="responsive-object">
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That fall, the researchers planted three camera traps—which, when triggered by motion, snap images and record videos of their surroundings—near where the sightings had occurred. These devices, Zanette explains, give scientists a way to keep tabs on rare animals in remote regions without making the trek themselves.When the team collected the traps the next spring, Nguyen wasn’t expecting to see much. But within the first 30 photos, a small, silver-speckled creature flashed onto his screen. Then there was another—and another. All three cameras had captured silver-backed chevrotains.“I got very excited,” Nguyen says. “It was a joy to see.”
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="ncs015__ct015__2018-06-06__15-41-54(1)__Silver backed chevrotain.JPG" class="richtext-image full-width" height="600" width="800"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/ncs015__ct015__2018-06-06__15-41-541__Silver_b.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>The silver-backed chevrotain is a baffling mishmash of traits: a round body, sharp fangs, spindly legs, even-toed hooves, and a splash of metallic fur. Image Credit: SIE/GWC/Leibniz-IZW/NCNP Copyright holder: Andrew Tilker<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 Eager for more, the team returned to the region, this time setting ten times as many traps as before. Within three months, they’d amassed evidence of another 208 sightings.“This was a classic case of an animal that wasn’t that hard to find as long as somebody looked for it in the right place,” Tilker says.One of the most exciting parts about this story is how critical local voices were to the scientists’ success, says <a href="https://www.mairinbalisi.com/">Mairin Balisi</a>, a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at La Brea Tar Pits who wasn’t involved in the study. “[Conservation] can’t just be scientists working together. It has to be scientists and local community members working together.”That human element, in combination with the cutting-edge technology of camera traps, makes this “a fantastic detective story,” Zanette says. “You need the pictures to prove a species exists. Now we can do all that.”
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="IMG_20191101_121507_2.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="600" width="800"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/IMG_20191101_121507_2.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>Study author An Nguyen gets a new tally mark on his wrist tattoo each time he discovers a mammal in the wild that he’s never detected before. The silver-backed chevrotain marks his fiftieth find. Image Credit: Courtesy of An Nguyen<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 The most important next step is to get a better sense of how many chevrotains are left, Tilker says, which is hard to do with just photos and videos. But, he notes, most of the team’s interviewees noted a recent and sharp decline in chevrotain numbers. Hunting and habitat destruction have stripped Vietnam and surrounding countries of many of their animals, where “<a href="http://enbt.jbrj.gov.br/mestrado_profissional/seminario/7_Redford%201992.pdf">empty forest syndrome</a>” has spread like contagion, Tilker says.As such, Tilker and his colleagues have also been careful not to disclose too much about the chevrotain’s whereabouts. Awareness, he explains, is a double-edged sword: Hunters have previously used published scientific data to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/endangered-species-scientists-urged-not-publish-location-poachers-find-hunt-kill-animals-chinese-a7763156.html">home in on their marks</a>.Even though it’s been found in the forest, the silver-backed chevrotain isn’t yet out of the woods.“We...have this remarkable opportunity in our hands to protect a species that has come back onto the radar,” Tilker says. “Second chances like this don’t come around that often.”To learn more about how scientists are spying on the world’s creatures, stream “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/animal-espionage/">Animal Espionage</a>” or tune in on November 27 at 9/8c on PBS. </div>
 

 
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The images confirm the species, which has been “lost” to science for 29 years, is alive and well in its native Vietnam.

Feast your eyes on the first-ever photos of a silver-backed chevrotain in the wild

<div class="rich-text">If a new acquaintance leaned over and puked blood into your mouth, you might be less inclined to hang out with them again.Unless, that is, you’re a common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus).These teacup-sized mammals, which are native to the Americas, maintain super-specific diets: They feed exclusively on the blood of other wild animals, slurping up an ounce or so of liquid at a time, and can die if they go just two or three days without food. So when a nighttime hunt goes poorly, vampire bats will rely on friends and family to <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/why-bats-share-blood">share their sanguine snacks</a>—even if they’ve already swallowed them.</div>
 

 
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 <div class="rich-text">During these feeding events, the bats get surprisingly cuddly, says <a href="https://eeob.osu.edu/people/carter.1640">Gerald Carter</a>, a behavioral ecologist at Ohio State University. “They get really close, belly to belly,” he says. “Then they just look like they’re kissing.”These ritual regurgitations are actually an important way for vampire bats to form and strengthen social bonds—ones built on a wholesome cycle of generosity and reciprocity. It’s a system, Carter says, not unlike human friendship.Carter has built a career playing platonic matchmaker to these oft-maligned bats. In his latest study, he and his colleagues report that vampire bat relationships are remarkably enduring—strong enough to survive even the stressful transition from captivity to the wild. The team’s <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31364-8">findings</a>, published today in the journal Current Biology, suggest that it’s more than circumstance that brings (and keeps) these bitty blood-sippers together.“For a long time, people assumed that there are certain characteristics limited to humans or primates,” says <a href="https://eeb.princeton.edu/people/christina-riehl">Christina Riehl</a>, an evolutionary biologist studying social behavior at Princeton University who wasn’t involved in the study. “It’s now emerging that social bonds occur in everything from fish to birds to bats...it’s more general than people originally thought.”<div style="padding-bottom: 56.25%;" class="responsive-object">
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If their name is any indication, vampire bats get a pretty bad rap. Perhaps it’s no surprise, given their unconventional diet and toothsome smile—but they’re actually one of the more social species out there, Carter says. Though males leave their mothers early on to live somewhat solitary lives, females roost together, and can often be found grooming and swapping spit (and blood) with family and nonrelatives alike.Building and maintaining this network gives bats something of a social safety net when times get tough, Carter says. The biggest predictor of whether Bat A will share food with Bat B is if Bat B shared food with Bat A. But there’s more to it than simple quid pro quo, he says. Gifts and favors can be doled out without the expectation for immediate payback; relationships appear to strengthen and evolve over time. What happens between vampire bats, Carter says, isn’t a cold, calculated business transaction. It’s genuine companionship, warm fuzzies and all.This new study, led by <a href="https://www.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/en/taxonomy/term/234/simon.ripperger">Simon Ripperger</a> of the Museum for Natural History in Berlin, is the latest to expand researchers’ understanding of vampire bat friendship. Years of observations had shown Carter and his team that captive bats seem to cozy up to the same individuals time and time again. But it wasn’t clear if these relationships, forged in an environment where bats don’t have the luxury to pick and choose their bunkmates, were born out of affection or mere convenience.Riehl compares it to the social dynamics of a college dorm. Some will go out of their way to hang out with people they like; others find it easiest to just pal around with the folks next door.
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Desmo-boden.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="552" width="800"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Desmo-boden.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>“You can just tell [these bats] are super intelligent,” says study author Simon Ripperger. “Usually when you catch a bat, it’ll try to bite your glove. Vampire bats just turn around and look you in the face. It’s a weird experience.” Image Credit: Uwe Schmidt<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 To test the limits of these batty bonds, Ripperger and Carter’s team put the residents of a vampire dormitory to the ultimate test: move-out day. After housing 23 wild-caught female vampire bats in an outdoor cage for 22 months, the researchers released them back into the Panamanian tree roost they’d originally been captured from.During their stint in captivity, the bats were provided with regular meals of blood. But every month or so, the scientists would withhold food from one bat, giving them a chance to see who swooped in to help when the hungry animal rejoined the group.After nearly two years of observations, it was clear where allegiances lay. To see if the sentiments would stick, the researchers returned the bats to their roost and set them free.For the next eight days, the team monitored the bats’ behavior through small, ultra-sensitive sensors tethered to their backs—inventions of Ripperger’s. Every two seconds, the backpacks would log how close two tagged bats were to each other. An encounter within 20 inches was a “meeting”; less than one inch denoted “close contact.”</div>
 

 
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 <div class="rich-text">Not all friendships are built to last. The once-captive colony experienced its fair share of fractures in the week post-rewilding, Ripperger says. But on average, the more bats had partnered up in the lab, the more likely they were to rendezvous at the roost. That suggests that the bonds they’d built in captivity were genuine relationships—ones resilient enough to weather an abrupt change in scenery, Carter says, and not just byproducts of being in “prison” for almost two years.For bat buffs, the finding might not be a huge surprise, Riehl says. Among researchers, vampire bats are already renowned for their reciprocity. That said, tiny, blood-guzzling vampire bats still stand out among other animals known to engage in bona fide friendships—a list that includes big-brained, charismatic megafauna like elephants, chimpanzees, and dolphins. To manage such a filial feat, she says, “you need to remember what your cooperative partners have done before, and tell individuals apart. That requires a lot of mental hardware.”
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="215032.png" class="richtext-image full-width" height="355" width="800"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/215032.width-800.png"/><figcaption>A common vampire bat wearing one of the researchers&#x27; proximity sensors. When worn by a group of bats, these sensors can relay information about how close individuals are to one another every two seconds, allowing scientists to map their encounters precisely in both time and space. Image Credit: Sherri ad Brock Fenton<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 Studies like this might help fight the stigma that’s often attached to vampire bats, which can carry diseases that <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/infectious-disease-zoonotic-model/">have the potential to hop into humans</a>, says <a href="http://evolve.zoo.ox.ac.uk/Evolve/Marina_Escalera.html">Marina Escalera Zamudio</a>, an ecologist at the University of Oxford who has studied vampire bats in the context of infection, but was not involved in the study. Bats come with a bevy of benefits, too, she points out. They’re important pollinators, and nosh on insect pests like mosquitoes.And for researchers like Carter, bats represent an untapped resource for the study of complex social structure. They’re reminiscent of primates, he says, only much easier to study in their natural environment.Diet aside, we humans aren’t all that different from these blood-loving buddies, Riehl says. “Vampire bats have complex social behaviors, just like humans do,” she says. “Maybe thinking about these bats as having friends can make people realize that they’re not as awful as just the ‘vampire’ part would imply.”</div>
 

 
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The relationships these winged mammals forge in captivity are strong enough to survive the jarring transition back into the wild.

Vampire bats form lasting bonds of ‘friendship,’ just like us

<div class="rich-text">The language of love is nothing if not subtle and complex. To woo potential mates, some species will whisper sweet nothings, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/ships-noises-humpback-whale-song/">sing a soft serenade</a>, or even <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews-science/Giant-Panda-Mating-Calls-Say-a-Lot-About-Them-180970390/">grunt a gentle come-hither call</a>.But male <a href="https://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu/Species-Account/nb/species/whibel2/overview">white bellbirds</a> (Procnias albus) aren’t here for your politeness and pleasantries. When they’re looking to couple up, these brightly plumed boys will sidle up real close to their ladies, inhale deeply, and scream their heads off—to the deafening tune of 115 decibels.“That’s like having your head in a speaker at a rock concert,” says <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mario_Cohn-Haft">Mario Cohn-Haft</a>, an ornithologist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Brazil.</div>
 

 
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 <div class="rich-text">As a mating strategy, it’s forward, to say the least. But it seems to work fine for the bellbirds, according to Cohn-Haft and his colleague <a href="http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/podos/">Jeff Podos</a>, a bioacoustician at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The astounding acoustic feat, <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31190-X">reported today</a> in the journal Current Biology, earns these boisterous birds the title of loudest recorded song in the avian world—and may even make them a top contender among all land animals.“Right now, I can’t think of anything louder,” says <a href="https://derryberrylab.wordpress.com/">Elizabeth Derryberry</a>, an animal communication expert at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who wasn’t involved in the study. “There can be hearing damage at this point.”Cohn-Haft, who’s spent decades cataloguing avian diversity in the Amazon, has long been privy to the piercing, alarm-like anthems of the white bellbird. But it wasn’t until 2017, during an expedition into a particularly mountainous region, that he was able to get up close and personal with the birds’ impressive pipes. While prepping a bellbird specimen in the field, he was struck by its unusually robust abdominal muscles and sturdy ribcage.Most birds maintain only scant musculature to keep light for flight, he explains. But the bellbird in his hands, he recalls, was absolutely ripped. “It had a washboard stomach,” he says. “It was really impressive, like a bodybuilder. And I thought, ‘That’s obviously some kind of adaptation for producing loud sound.’”
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="proalb Pronias albus.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="543" width="800"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/proalb_Pronias_albus.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>Male white bellbirds can open their bills wide enough to &quot;swallow a golf ball,&quot; says Jeff Podos of UMass Amherst. The flared opening of their mouths might act a bit like the end of a trombone, amplifying the sound that emerges. Image Credit: Anselmo d’Affonseca<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 Cohn-Haft sent photos of the bird’s super-shredded physique to Podos, whose interest was instantly piqued. The next year, the pair ventured back into the Amazon, this time toting bags of sensitive recording equipment to measure the birds’ auditory output.Historically, getting good measurements of volume hasn’t been an easy thing to do, Derryberry says. Until fairly recently, the technology wasn’t up to snuff. And out in the field, sounds can get muffled or warped by obstacles between animal and receiver if the data aren’t collected carefully.But Podos and Cohn-Haft did things right, Derryberry says. With a state-of-the-art recording device in hand, the researchers embarked on a rigorous two day hike up the side of a remote mountain in northern Brazil. When they got within earshot of the treetop-perching bellbirds, they switched the machine on.<div style="padding-bottom: 56.25%;" class="responsive-object">
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White bellbirds are about the size of a morning dove and weigh just half a pound apiece. But they stuff a lot in a small package: These birds, Podos says, can belt out notes roughly comparable in volume to the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347208003461">bellows of bison</a> and the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347203003701">hoots of howler monkeys</a>—brawny, big-mouthed mammals many times their size.All in all, the researchers recorded more than 154 white bellbird songs, which fell into one of two categories: one very loud, and one very, very loud. The “quieter” ones were more common, and comparable in volume to those produced by the <a href="https://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu/Species-Account/nb/species/scrpih1/overview">screaming piha</a> (Lipaugus vociferans)—another Amazonian species known for a distinctive, three-part wolf whistle that, until now, was considered the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09524622.2004.9753527">loudest bird song ever documented</a>. But every once in a while, the bellbirds upped their game, blaring out another tune with triple the sound pressure (an objective measure of a noise’s intensity) of the piha’s signature scream.“You can hear these birds a mile away,” Cohn-Haft says.</div>
 

 
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 <div class="rich-text">These sonorous shenanigans all seem to be in service of sex. On several occasions, Podos and Cohn-Haft spotted females, drawn in by the acoustic stylings, joining males on their perches—presumably to get a better sense of the man behind the melody.At this point, Podos say, you might expect the vocal braggadocio to grind to a halt. Instead, the females’ arrival prompted males to bust out the loudest parts of their repertoire, even dramatically swiveling mid-song to blast a final, emphatic note “right in her face,” Podos says.Cohn-Haft can’t imagine this is a terribly pleasant experience. The females do back up a bit, he says. But they don’t peace out completely, often staying within a few feet of the male—well within the hot zone.
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="proalb Procnias alba.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="581" width="800"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/proalb_Procnias_alba.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>A female white bellbird. Unlike males, females have camouflaging plumage. They also lack wattles and don&#x27;t sing. Image Credit: Anselmo d’Affonseca<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 “That’s where all the questions start,” Cohn-Haft says. It’s still unclear why the females are willing to endure the din, or how (even if) either party manages to escape the interaction with their hearing intact. Such over-the-top grandiosity can also make you conspicuous to predators, and even take a physiological toll: The louder the birds’ songs were, the shorter they got.But something about the clang and clamor made this trait worth keeping around—so much so that it evolved in an extreme form, almost like the auditory version of a peacock tail, Derryberry says.One possibility is that the songs help advertise males’ physical prowess, says <a href="https://nataliacgarcia.wixsite.com/mywebsite">Natalia García</a>, an acoustic communication expert at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who wasn’t involved in the study. Another theory, suggested to Podos by a colleague, is that the birds are intentionally trying to temporarily deafen females to the alluring songs of other males.Whatever the reason, Derryberry says, “I guess these females like being shouted at.”
 <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="This image shows a male white bellbird screaming its mating call 2 CREDIT Anselmo d’Affonseca.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="628" width="800"
 src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/This_image_shows_a_male_white_bellbird_screami.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>When male white bellbirds open their mouths, &quot;it’s like an enormous black hole has opened up in this white blob,&quot; says Mario Cohn-Haft of the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Brazil. Image Credit: Anselmo d’Affonseca<div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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 Podos and Cohn-Haft both express concern about being able to address these questions and more before time runs out. As humans continue to <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/wildlife-trade-extinction-prediction/">impinge</a> on the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/animal-adaptation-climate-change/">natural world</a>, fragile habitats—and the vulnerable species that reside in them—are declining worldwide.That includes parts of the Amazon, where the ballads of white bellbirds reverberate through the trees. Despite a long history of birdwatching, García points out, it took humans until now to document just how weird and wonderful these creatures truly are. There’s surely more, she says, that’s been overlooked.“It’s overwhelming, thinking of all the biodiversity we’re losing,” she says. “There are species we won’t even know we’re losing before they’re gone.”</div>
 

 
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Researchers aren’t sure how these birds maintain this deafening mating ritual without damaging their hearing.

Topic: Nature

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