Missouri State Fair - growing my own great memories

I've spent the last week at the 108th Annual Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, Missouri. It was a lovely week. I was there doing science outreach, participating in the 4 Days of Hands-on Science Fun which included a Street Science Fair, Show Me Robotics Showcase & Competition, and Aerospace Fun Day. Plus, there were the agricultural exhibits and showcases. I loved it all. it really reminded me of my agricultural roots.

When I was younger, I would go to the Mid-South Fair and Libertyland housed on the Fairgrounds in Memphis, Tennessee. I loved it: the rides, the games, the food. Being a city kid, I thought that's what the fair was all about. It wasn't until college - majoring in Animal Science that I came to know that wasn't what the Fair was about at all.  Fairs are about the agriculture and home economics achievements of everyday folk - the people who grind and work to make their daily lives out of hard work and simple materials. It was eye-opening to learn not only about the science of raising livestock, growing crops, and the economics of practical living, using all resources adequately and respectfully, as well as the creativity and artsmanship of both agriculture and home economic endeavors. I had a new appreciation of fairs that continues today.

So, as I spent time at the Missouri State Fair, I was more excited about the animal exhibits than the rides at the mid-way. But don't get me wrong. I still had all of my fair favorites: corn dogs, funnel cake, lemonade,turkey leg, roasted corn, plus fried green tomatoes. Nom, nom, nom.

I also checked out the Home Ec. exhibits as well. You can tell the first placed pies....bigger slices cut out. lol.

It's a shame all of those lovely treats were only enjoyed by the judges. They stay on display throughout the fair and then discarded. I love sweets too much to commit that kind of abuse.

 

Check out more photos from the Missouri State fair at my Facebook Fan Page: Missouri State Fair 2010 Photo album.

And as I looked around, I realized that State Fairs are perfect opportunities for people to reconnect with their communities on a regional scale and appreciate what it has to offer.  State fairs are ideal day trip destinations for the entire family - from the young kiddies, the teens, young adults, and grand parents. Load the car up and take everyone out for a great time. I met one family that comes to the fair every year. They camp out on the nearby campground and they pall around all weekend. Isn't that lovely (and affordable)? Now, that's how fond childhood memories are made.

The only thing I thought the fair was missing was diversity. People came from all over the state, but there was very, very little participation from St. Louis and Kansas City - the state's major metropolitan areas. It's a two-way street no doubt, but I can't recall a single piece of advertisement within the St. Louis Metro core. For the most part, fairs are rural events, but considering that every heritage has a rural and agricultural history (not to mention the fact that everybody eats), I think it's a shame that State Fair planners haven't found ways to engage multiple demographics, especially since many regional fairs are struggling. I can imagine a whole list of ways to attract urbanites to the State Fairs that wouldn't involve an overhaul of marketing efforts. And with the rise of people's interests in farmers markets, urban gardening, and local food, I think the urban markets are ripe for plucking and attending State Fairs. So, if any fair planners are serious about increasing reach in urban areas, then feel free to contact me. I am more than happy to offer my consultation services to your operation.

In the comments section, please feel free to share your State Fair Memories, too. Check out OutdoorAfro's blog post about State Fair memories. It's like she's in my head or something.

Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday: Still Stalking in the Snow

The SnowPocalypse isn't all bad. At least I was able to snap some really great animal tracks on my deck and in my back yard.

Cat paw prints

Notice the paw pads. Cats walk intheir own tracks, the back paws step into the same spot as the front paws, creating a single middle pad and 5 smaller pad impressions.

This cat walked the length of my backyard from the back gate (where there is a small hole), past the red bucket to the deck.

The snow is 6 inches deep at this point.

Cats are still active, even in the cold weather.

Paw print with the distinctive 4 toe pads.

Has the SnowPacolypse revealed any animal tracks in your yard?

Wordless Wednesday: Autumn & Agriculture

Autumn is harvest time and perfect time for us all to reflect on the importance of agriculture, especially us city-dwellers. Though the city has a lot of exciting amenities, we still depend on agriculture for our food needs; and agriculture is still a mostly rural activity. However, there are some great efforts to shift some food production to urban areas; and I am in support of that.

In the meantime, enjoy my autumn & agriculture adventures.

From the Best of Missouri Markets at the Missouri Botanical Garden

Pumpkins for decorating.
cute baby calves.

B&B - the Animal Science Club for college students. Yes, I was member of my college chapter many moons, ago. Go Aggies!

Standing next to a Guernsey Dairy cow.

Read more about my Farm-tastic adventures at the Best of Missouri Market here.

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Mrs. Boyd's Garden

her cabbage

her cucumbers - which we ate.
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My mom's bounty. Moving to Racine from Memphis was great for my mom's gardening efforts. For years, the squirrels ate everything. Now she has a pretty good harvest.

Red and purple Chili peppers. These can be eaten fresh or dried.

Yellow, red, and green tomatoes.

Snap beans and green tomatoes. Yes, we had fried green tomatoes - my mom makes the best.

This post is also apart of Thematic Photograph 69: Transtion. Autumn and Harvest are our season transition time.

Ethology Conference - The Causes and Mechanisms of Behavior

Day Two of the conference all about the Mechanisms of Behavior.


The plenary speaker of the day was Dr. Carmen Sandi whose talk was titled Stress and the fate of memories. First, I was excited to see a female plenary or keynote speaker. In science it is still relatively uncommon to have female keynote speakers. It’s not because there aren’t very many female scientists, and that certainly isn’t the case in the field of behavior. However, there are still relatively fewer women, compared to men who reach the high levels of recognition in order to receive an invitation to be a keynote speaker at a major international conference. There are researchers and science bloggers who study and address these topics directly, e.g. Fairer Science, and can list a variety of reasons why this may or may not be the case. However, it is always a joy to see a plenary talk from a seasoned researcher who represents a different demographic typical of what we think most scientists look like.

Her talk detailed the important role stress has in making memories and learning and how behavior is influenced. How does stress do that?

Well, stress can be internal (like emotional) or external (like meeting a deadline). The stress surrounding the situation can strengthen the memory and shape how we respond to futire encounters of the stress. Your memory can be key to your survival, for awild animal it would be important to remember:
- what food to eat or prey to hunt or avoid
-what is a dangerous habitat or where the predators live, look like, smell like, etc
You need to be able to recall these things in an emergency and react appropriately

Dr. Sandi's presentation included examples of rodent ‘learning mazes’ that were very similar to the testing equipment I used in my studies. The rest of the conference day, including my symposium on Animal Personality and Day Three of the Conference all about Applied Animal Behavior (with domestic and captive wild animals) was Deja vu.

Dramatic, I know. But these tests are being used for a wide variety of animal species: rodents - wild and domesiticated; farm animals - sheep, goats,and pigs; fish;birds..and many, many more species.

Animal personality is one a-MAZE-ing (open)FIELD of study.

The positive: there is a huge body of literature and knowldge about how these behavior tests work to help us leanr about animal behavior and personality.

The negative: we can't seem to agree as what these test actually tells us about animal behavior -of animal kind of animal - large or small, fish or fowl, wild or domesticated.

Science is by no means an exact science. Knoweldge is being constantly updated and modified. Which, by the way is the purpose of me sharing with you what happens at professional science meetings. This doesn't mean that we don't know what we are doing or what we are talking about. Oh contrare - but it does mean that we are cautious about telling you, the public, that we have found the answer, the one absolute answer. You see, most any scientist is always thinking considering things. We try hard not to be judgmental, there is always room to learn. We don't know everything so we always leave the door open to learn more. That's one of the lessons of being scientific literacy you might hear people talking about sometimes.

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Pictures of people at the conference, many of them are professors whose papers I have read and cited in my Bibliography of my dissertation.

Ethology Conference - The Development of Behavior

First, I need to make a correction. The is the 31st Biennial IEC Confrence, not the annual. Biennial means every two years. Each day of the IEC conference is organized around one of the Tinbergen's 4 Questions.

Day one of the conference is all about Behavior and Development.

Development & Behavior - describes how organisms come to behave in a way that is thought to be 'typical' of its species and this is called species-typical behavior. Species-typical behavior is important for the organism because behaving 'correctly' keeps the animal safe from danger and helps it utilize resources - such as what is the right kind of food to eat or prey to hunt, where and how to find appropriate shelter, and also how to interact with conspecifics, or others of its species, in a social manner which would include mating and parenting.

Dr. Robert Lickliter, of Florida International University, gave a talk titled ‘Ecology, experience, and epigenesis: The developmental dynamics of species-typical behavior” and presented some interesting details about how the field of Behavioral Development has provided some great insights into species-typical behaviorFor a long time, we thought of species-typical behavior as built-in to the organism. Animals are simply born, hatched or emerging knowing what to do and doing it. For example, ducks that follow their mother after hatching, or baby antelope that can gallop, run and nurse its mother soon after birth. Or the breed differences between sheep. Black face sheep are known to be very being very good mothers, whereas Suffolk are known for being less so. I learned in the talk by Dr. Cathy Dwyer of Scottish Agricultural College titled “Variation in maternal behavior affects offspring behavior and development in sheep”, that these breed-typical behaviors are based on subtle behavior cues coming from both the mother sheep, called a ewe, and the baby sheep, called a lamb. The reason why these two breeds or sheep are different in their parenting styles is because they different in how much they nurse their young and interact with their lambs when they are nursing. These parenting differences also influence the social behavior or flocking tendency of lambs with other sheep.
Suffolk sheep Image credit: http://www.faculty.ksu.edu.sa/

Black face sheep Image credit: http://www.attonburn.com/

These seemingly immediate and natural behaviors were once explained as being innate or instinctual to the organism. But it is important for me to explain to you that instinct doesn't mean genetically hard-wired. In fact, the idea of innate or instinctual behavior isn't set in stone.

Even what we thought of as instinctual behavior is subject to development, in other words, it happens because of some sort of preparation to do the behavior.

Preparation can include simple exposure - such as baby ducks must hear the calls of its mother and itself in order to know its species call and respond to them once they are hatched. That is why baby ducks follow their mother so immediately after hatching.

Preparation can include practice and coaching - such as male zebra finches that need to hear older males sing their species mating songs and practice the songs before they can successfully sing the song and win a female mate.

Preparation can also include practice and feedback - such as male cow birds that sing mating songs and the females give them visual signals to let them know which parts of the songs they like. The males eventually only sing songs that females like and this helps them secure a mate.

These research studies are great examples of the scientific process and how science helps us discern more information about the everyday - seeing wonder and nuance in common phenomena.

Once upon a time, the term instinct was perfect way to explain things that we didn't completely understand at the time. It just seemed to happen. I made it look easy, because it is to me ("The Choice is Yours" by Black Sheep 1991 - did you get the pun? hahaha).

In other words, until researchers decided to look at the phenomena more closely and carefully, the behavior of the animals just seemed to happen - automatically, immediately, and naturally. The scientific process - of observation, proposing hypotheses and testing hypotheses, allows for us to update our knowledge. Yes, once upon a time we thought of each of the behaviors mentioned earlier as instinctual. Now, with hypothesis testing we are learning that these behaviors are developed and animals are prepared (unconsciously and sometimes before birth/hatching) to do these behaviors. Not only can we update our knowledge about animal behavior, but animals can also 'update' their capacity to behave in a way natural for their species.

135th Kentucky Derby

Today marks the 135th Anniversary of the Run for the Roses in Louisville, Kentucky. I love the Derby. It is the first race of the Triple Crown races. Three year colts (and the occasional Philly) compete to win the one and a quarter mile race at Churchill Downs – a truly beautiful track. It is described as the most exciting two minutes in sports.

Though I usually review books on Mondays, I have two books all about horseraces I wanted to introduce you to. It’s timely.

Title: Behind the Scenes The Racehorse
Author: Nikki Tate
Publisher: Fitzhenry & Whiteside

This book explains the domestic history of horses and how humans have harnessed their strength and speed over the ages. Thoroughbreds and Quarter horses are the preferred breeds for racing. The book is a great intro book – explaining the various employment roles of people at racetracks, companion and training animals, training facilities, husbandry and horse racing culture. It also explains how to read a program book. Full of great factoids.

Title: The Last Black King of the Kentucky Derby
Author: Crystal Hubbard, Illustrator: Robert McGuire
Publisher: Lee & Low Books Inc.

This book is actually written by a local author (St. Louis, Missouri). I am hoping to meet her and have her sign this book before I donate it to the children of Clay Elementary School. Jimmy “Wink” Winkfield was born and raised in rural Kentucky and love to ride horses. He was a natural. By the age of 19 he was racing horses professionally, and won his first official race in 1899 at the Harlem Racetrack near Chicago, Illinois. The following year he raced in the famed Kentucky Derby and placed 3rd. In 190l, Wink rode His Eminence and won the first race of the Triple Crown; and won again in 1902. His final Derby race was in 1903. He placed second and that was also the last year an African-American competed in the Kentucky Derby.

Well, now I’m off to find my hat and find a great seat to watch the race!

Pets and Wildlife also hit hard by Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike has been devastating. Even as far away as the Midwest, we had some 'residual' damage, flooding, power outages, and deaths.

But natural disasters like this storm also separate families from the their pets, not to mention the lives of many companion and homeless animals. The Houston SPCA and other area animal agencies are hard-at-work with animal rescues.

The Houston SPCA has activated its Animal Response Hotline. Operators will be accepting lost and found animal reports, rescue reports and offering other animal related information. The hotline will be staffed from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Call notes are available so those who call in after hours may leave a message which will be returned first thing in the morning.
The number is 713-435-2990.

We don't think about how wildlife fares during storms. But think about it. Many trees are taken down or damaged during storms and this forever changes the urban forestry landscape in an area. It is often the old trees that fall and do the most damage - the same trees that serve as historical and important shelter sites, food resources, territory boundaries, and ecological landmarks for urban wildlife. With flooding, animals retreat to trees or little pockets of dry land or rooftops. These dry places are little islands, often providing no shelter or food, forces animals to huddle in close proximity that they are not accustomed to. Fighting and predation often result. And the food is gone, drowned in water, and starvation becomes a reality.

For the most part wildlife tends to be okay after such disasters. But I'm speaking in overall terms. In other words, the population should bounce back and everything will be fine after a while. But on an individual scale, there is always lost: shelters, refuges or hiding places, and scarcity of food. And it's usually the most vulnerable that don't fair so well - the sick and ailing, old, and the young.

Ike's Smallest Victims - This is a video of the urban wildlife that were also victims of Hurricane Ike. Wildlife Rehab and Rescue are sheltering over 200 baby squirrels and a flying squirrel who were injured in Hurricane Ike at the Houston SPCA. Video by Meg Loucks. September 14, 2008.

(A baby squirrel being hand-fed milk formula by a volunteer.)

Houston SPCA publishes Updates from the frontline that can be accessed here.

Or you may want to donate to their efforts.

The Wild Life of Hamsters - Interview from ISBE Conference 2008

Though this site is dedicated to introducing you to Wildlife Outside of your Window, I realize that for the average urban/suburban child, there are plenty of “wild animals” you may already know. We call them pets. Our pets are merely the domesticated descendents of wild fore-parents from many, many generations ago.

Domestication of animals – whether for pets or for agriculture – has a very long history. In fact, one the oldest domesticated animals is the honey bee!! No kidding. Domesticated animals carry many of the same biological tendencies, genes, and behaviors of their wild cousins. After all, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. But many “unique’ traits of domesticated animals is due to deliberate preferences of people – artificial selection.

While at the 2008 ISBE Conference I interviewed a friend and colleague who studies Golden Hamsters. They are also referred to as Syrian hamsters and yes, the same species of hamster that I and so many other youngsters had/have as children.
There are still wild hamsters left, but they are endangered.
This is an actual picture of a wild Golden Hamster in its native habitat in Turkey.

Check out this interview with Misty McPhee, Biologist and Post-doc, at Cornell University and learn more about the Golden Hamsters and the research she does with the wild version of the hamster in its native country of Turkey. By the way, the countries of Turley and Syria are neighbors. Below is a picture of her next to a poster about her research.
You’ll get to hear my voice!


Finally don't forget to cast your vote for my blog as the Best Science/Tech Blog in the 2008 Black Weblog Awards. Voting ending this Sunday, Aug 31st.