The Red Fox

The first time ever I saw you, you were so little and your face was so special, that I couldn't even take a picture. You looked almost like some kind of new, unknown species. You looked funny and far beyond cute.

I soon discovered that not only did you look different, you actually were different. While your siblings wisely kept some distance from this unknown human being, you just bravely walked right past my feet. And I noticed you were even smaller than I had assumed.

I sat alone near your den for hours and hours. When you and your little brother and sister were small, it seemed to rain continuously and it was way too cold for that time of the year. Everything was dirty, cold and wet. Many of these hours, I truly wondered what on earth I was doing there. Until you suddenly showed up, out of the blue. In my memory, it stopped raining immediately and the sun came through.

You were still a baby fox that needed a lot of sleep. You rolled up in a clump of grass, closed your eyes and slept. And I could keep watch. When it rained, your hair used to curl and that was another part of you that was different. Foxes coats don’t curl at all, but yours did, which made you look like a little rat.

Although you remained smaller than the rest of the pack, you did grow up to be an energetic fox kit. You were doing just fine! Your mother had never been the greatest huntress. Fortunately, she kept on feeding you, although not always so warmly.

But you, the smallest of the pack, you made it!

For months and months I enjoyed watching you grow up to gradually take the shape of a real fox. A bit of a strange fox, with your too long nose and misshapen teeth, but for me you were the most beautiful fox ever. It’s wonderful to be allowed to follow all of this so closely. You were great. Thank you, super fox.

From Smells to Soundtracks

When a young sawfly, a bee-like insect, is threatened by its attackers like ants, it emits a mixture of unpleasant smells to defend itself. These emissions can seriously annoy a potential enemy.

Scientists wanting to study these smelly compounds—to understand which aspects of them discourage attackers and why—face great challenges. Meetups between sawflies and ants in a lab are difficult to carry out. There are also a very limited quantity of the insects’ emissions. On the side, Jean-Luc Boevé, a zoologist who studies insects, from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, is an amateur musician and composer. He decided to try a different way—the sound approach. “To be honest, I considered this project so unpractical myself that I set it aside,” he said. It was months before Boevé and his partner, Rudi Giot, finally made a resolution to get started on it.

They chose 16 sawfly species’ emissions to translate into sounds. First, they figured out which molecules (分子) were present in each smelly compound and in what amounts. Then they assigned various characteristics of those molecules matching properties of sound. For example, smaller molecules like a kind of acid found in vinegar, a sour-tasting liquid, evaporate (挥发) quickly, so Boevé and Giot assigned them sounds with higher pitch ( 音 高 ). Larger molecules were given lower-pitched sounds. In all, the scientists created individual audio descriptions for 20 molecules. Then they combined the sounds of each molecule present in a sawfly’s smell to construct the insect’s soundtrack. If a molecule was of higher proportion in an emission, they assigned it a higher volume. In such a case, the smaller a molecule is, the higher its pitch will be; and the higher the proportion of a molecule is, the higher its volume will be.

To test out the audio descriptions they created, Boevé and Giot examined people’s reactions to the soundtracks and compared them to ants’ reactions to the original smells. They played the 16 emission soundtracks and the 20 molecule sounds through speakers to about 50 study participants. Then the scientists measured how far people backed up to get to a “comfortable position” away from the noise. Most of the study volunteers told the researchers that the high pitch, as well as the high volume, was what made them withdraw. “Ants and volunteers moved away from a chemical and its matching soundtrack respectively,” the researchers wrote.

Boevé said he hoped the process would give other zoologists a new way to compare sawflies’ chemical defenses with those from other insects. It may also offer researchers clues about which molecules fight off enemies most.

Do you remember that story about the little girl who goes to visit her grandmother and meets a big, bad wolf along the way? Or perhaps you remember the story of the three little pigs who build three houses to protect themselves from a wolf?

The reality behind the fairy tales is that people feared wolves. Hunting and killing originating from hatred almost caused the animals to go extinct. Wolves needed a fairy mother —and that is what Brookfield Zoo in Chicago is for wolves and their puppies.

Being a fairy mother to wolves is not easy. Brookfield Zoo replaced iron-barred cubicles with safe habitats, which are not merely appealing to the zoo visitor, but more importantly, are contributing to the normal behavior and reproduction of the animals. The wolves have a large area to run and play in, places to hide and sleep in, and hills to climb with lots of grass and trees around them.

A fairy mother’s job is to make dreams magically come true and part of the magic is being invisible. The people who take care of the wolves hide themselves and the food and toys in places where the wolves can dig them up and find them on their own, so they feel more like they are living in nature.

Fairy tales are just stories. Wolves don’t dress up as grandmothers, nor have they blown a house down. Wolves aren’t scary at all, and in fact, they are more afraid of humans than we are of them.

The wolves have a great life at Brookfield Zoo. Maybe they will stay at Brookfield Zoo, but it would be nice to see them live back in nature again, too. If we all work together, maybe we can make this fairy tale come true for the wolves.