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QuestX is moving…

QuestX blog is in the process of moving over here from QuestX on blogspot …

QuestX ... exploring the world through the lens of science...
QuestX … exploring our world through the lens of science…

We’re in the process of updating the website and consolidating the blog on to our web page.

It will take us some time to get this all up to date, I’m hoping by March, 2018!

Please excuse our mess while we get this all sorted through and cleaned up.

A lot has been going on and we’ll have loads to share with you later this year…

…stay in touch with us for upcoming events, activities, news, research, podcasts, curiosities, quests, and other science “stuff”!

Currently, QuestX‘s “drop in” experiment page is at questx.net , “home” page , and “about/staff” page.

oh! …and for some reason Firefox does not like the current web page set up and does not consistently work for our site, we’ll be sorting that out too!  (the other browsers seem to work fine…)

…for more QuestX :

QuestX is also on Google+ / YouTube (QuestX), Facebook(@QuestX.net), & Twitter (@QuestX1)

 

 

 

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Badger caches cow…

Wait! … What?!?

Yep… scientists researching the ecology of scavengers (in other words> studying how animals that feed on dead animal or plant matter interact with each other and their environments) during winter in the Great Basin Desert, Utah, staked out 7 calf carcasses (each with an associated trap camera) and got an unexpected result…
Badgers!
Scientific researchers in Great Basin Desert, Utah, caught American badgers (on trap cameras) caching cows.
While badgers are known scavengers, the researchers hadn’t planned on studying any mustelids, including badgers.

Badgers are hard to study since they are generally active underground or are nocturnal (out and about at night), so their behaviors aren’t well-known. Last winter (January, 2016) the researchers caught two badgers (images, not the badgers themselves! ; ) caching two of the staked out carcasses. This is the first evidence of a badger caching / burying an animal larger than itself.

Here is a video (from a trap camera) of one of those badgers caching /burying it’s find for later:

updating soon…

The original video is on YouTube!

For the research article:
.
 Subterranean caching of domestic cow (Bos taurus) carcasses by American badgers (Taxidea taxus) in the Great Basin Desert, Utah