You might want to dial down the sound before tuning in to this UStream of the Decorah Eagles to avoid having to listen to a mic picking up gusting wind. It seems the Raptor Rescue Project is running a 24/7 video of eagles and their hatchlings atop a fish hatchery in Decorah, Iowa. I never thought animals would begin getting their own reality shows before I landed on one. Check out the live stream.

Thanks Kelly

This looks like that spider from The Lord of the Rings is laying down webs but it’s actually just millions of small spiders. I’m not sure which I’d rather face. It seems that the major floods in Pakistan last year caused millions of spiders to take refuge in the trees for extended lengths of time where they spun these massive webs. That’s actually something of a relief - I’d hate to pitch my tent near a tree and wake up trapped in a web with millions of spiders.

Scientists have uncovered evidence that sperm whales announce their presence to groups of other whales with a distinct and personal series of sounds. In other words, they shout out their name before rolling up on a group of strangers or friends. In the study, they focused on Caribbean sperm whales, because if you’re going to study sperm whales, the Caribbean is a much nicer location to do so than the Antarctic. My hope is that as we continue to study their habits, we’ll one day learn their language and be able to communicate with them. Of course I have no idea what we’d talk about. I hope they don’t all turn out to be jerks.

The Colorado Department of Wildlife is running a campaign among snowmobile rental agencies trying to prevent idiots from behaving in totally reckless manners. It seems that while GoPro cameras have created a flood of guys shooting themselves snowboarding deep powder, there’s also been a similar rise in videos from snowmobile riders:

Wildlife officials say they’re seeing too many videos posted on popular social video websites that show people chasing and harassing moose while riding snowmobiles.

This video’s actually been up for over a year, so it would seem that the Colorado Dept. of Wildlife is a bit of a newcomer to YouTube.

The path for the Eastern Cougar’s removal from the endangered species list has been cleared - it’s being declared extinct instead. No one’s spotted one of the cats in the east in over 7 decades. Some believers say they’re still out their running around earning them the ultra-cool nickname “ghost cats.” Then there’s the other camp of people who say they’re not extinct, because, well, they never really existed. It seems some geneticists believe that there were never distinct ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ cougars and that these two species of cats fall into the same group.