View allAll Photos Tagged brainwaves.
Brainwave, Activity Holiday, Family Circle Entertainment, Summertime Scene Contest, Artistic Market Square, Land Days
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by Doug Kline
If you're interested in higher resolution versions of my images for journalistic or commercial purposes, contact me via my profile page.
After running into mechanical difficulties (it wouldn't bloody work!) at Mossend a couple of days earlier, 92032 had made it as far as the south bay at Warrington Bank Quay on transfer to Crewe IEMD for attention from the special spanners.
Picture taken on Saturday 1 March 2014, it took until the following Thursday for someone to have the brainwave of using the ice breaker loco stationed in the north bay at Warrington, 87002, to take it the last 25 miles to the mother ship. Still, it was a nice sunny afternoon to bask in the bay...
Being serious for a brief moment, it's good to see the fortunes of the class improve, since their introduction 20 years ago, many of the class have spent long periods out of use as the traffic they were built for simply never materialised. There's few left at Crewe that are not serviceable, even the long dumped ones at Coquelles on t'other side of the tunnel are coming home. With DRS and GBRf clamouring for more electric horsepower, maybe a bit more of the next 20 years for the class will be in the sun.
Hunched up on the extreme left is our good pal Jim, no doubt concocting some dead arty shot of the broken Dyson. Don't some people just drive you mad?... Only joking Jim :D
I created the design for these cat frames (look closely to see the cats) and sent them to Shapeways for SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) 3D printing in sparkly alumide.
The pendant visualises EEG attention (red) and meditation (green) data and visualises it on this LED matrix in real time. Using a Mindwave Mobile, Bluetooth dongle and Shrimp microcontroller.
I've built this for use in excruciating social situations such at conferences, networking, bars, etc. I'm interested in extending our emotive state by displaying if we're paying attention to whom we're speaking to or if our thoughts / attention is drifting off to the canapes or our to-do list. It's a mischievous device, read more about it here rainycatz.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/eeg-data-visualising-p...
Gladys's Papa insists on doing the hard-work . . . sawing the middle out of a white plastic mono-bloc stool, 16-inches high.
the crazy little toilet-bowl in their C.R. is just 8-inches high, and if I crouch down to sit on it, I can't get up again !!
by Doug Kline
If you're interested in higher resolution versions of my images for journalistic or commercial purposes, contact me via my profile page.
Project 365 - Image 351/365
This morning Jeero was out in the garden playing when he found some tracks in the snow. After comparing the size of his own feet (several times) he finally decided that they had to be from some kind of animal and so he decided to follow them.
After a couple of miles he finally noticed that there was a reindeer up ahead eating some fruit that a farmer had left out, and that the tracks appeared to lead right to the reindeer.
"What woulds Babo tells me to do, hmmm", he pondered for a minute or two and then all of a sudden he had his first ever brainwave, "I must makes very very slows movement, so I doesn't scares the reindeer aways, if I don't threatens of scares it maybe it lets me says hello".
Slowly but surely Jeero shuffled his way through the snow trying in his own special way to be "statues-likes" until he stood only a short distance from the reindeer who by now was watching him very, very closely.
Jeero outstretched his hand and continued to stand perfectly still, and soon the reindeer came over to say hello, and let Jeero pet it's fur. As he did so the thought came into his head, "Man!!! When I gets back and tells the others they will not believes me and thinks that I is just makings it up!".
Poor Jeero...sometimes not being the smartest cookie in the cookie jar has it's down sides even when he does tell the truth!
From the Uglydoll blog at adventuresinuglyworld.blogspot.com/
Wiccan the made up child of Scarlet Witch is on the Young Avengers. Great character, who's underused.
I'm not the first to do him and using the (often useless) Batman head is someone else's brainwave. Body from Vikings figures. That's the new Thor cape from Age of Ultron
This is also (I think) the first openly gay minifigure character I've made.
I figured to kick off my big month with a solid foundation – to see how many species were possible on a walk through Bristol. The answer was 44, which surprised me.
It was helped by a semi-surprising common sandpiper in the New Cut, then a jaw-dropping great crested grebe just outside Cumberland Basin. I didn't know where to count that one but it made my life easier by eventually drifting into the New Cut. Other notable birds were a grey wagtail floating downstream on a log (how much junk flows along the Avon!) and a kestrel powering over the Create Centre.
Then it was up to Clifton and the first blackcap of the walk. The place has changed since my day in the mid-80s. Zombies proliferate as money has driven out the last remnants of intelligence. It was a relief to hit the Downs.
One redwing guarding its berries near the Bridge also put me on to a song thrush before I went on to peregrine alert. My route to the Watch Point did bring me one but it kept to the Leigh Woods side. As did a raven. However, a foray into the Gully brought three jays, a nuthatch (foraging upwards!), coal tits and a gorgeous goldcrest. Stock doves also commuted over the river and Seawalls provided two unexpected oystercatchers.
I found a path down through Sneyd Park to the Portway. This skirted a little reserve, mentioned way back in this blog, and landed me at Sea Mills. Redshank was the only addition to the list here so with a while to kill before the next train I sampled the Millhouse. A couple of pints of Doom Bar went down fast.
The railway line back to Temple Meads runs under Clifton Down to its eponymous station. I had a brainwave and got off there and walked down Whiteladies Road. Apart from anything this saved me paying – cunning, eh?
It also took me in the general direction of Turtle Bay, a Caribbean restaurant on the Centre that's had favourable reviews. It didn't disappoint: an excellent goat curry (what else?) accompanied a pint of Red Stripe (also what else?)
I don't think today will add much to the month list. Persistent rain is spreading, with possible gales, which should be interesting on top of high tides. There, I couldn't keep flooding out of the blog for long!
..the pendant is now able to record EEG visualisations and play them back, for extra mayhem! More info here: rainycatz.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/eeg-data-visualising-p...
In this offbeat 1982 thriller, a brain transplant recipient gets the gray matter of a murder victim. The brain switches its owner into "revenge" mode, and chills ensue. Director Lommel also did the better-known cult fave "The Boogey Man" (1979). The Korean VHS edition hit the shelves on the Ajoo Label, which tirelessly trawled the vaults and put out all kinds of obscure films.
Lama Ole (seated) being fitted by PhD scholars Anupama Tyagi (left) and Stephen Lane (center) with measuring equipment for a study on the relationship between mind and body, led by Professor Marc Cohen MD (far right) at RMIT University in Melbourne Australia.
Four computers tracked Lama Ole's physiology as he meditated, measuring numerous factors simultaneously: overall body temperature through real-time infrared video, ECG (cardiac function), blood pressure, EEG (brainwaves), galvanic skin response, and metabolism through oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production.
Screen shot of a Mind Mirror design I put together in BioExplorer. Contact me if you would like a copy (free) ( ianmc3 at shaw .. dot .. ca )
Here's a complete seminar by Anna Wise in 1991 demonstrating the real deal:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0PbIAqxJKo
As many have noticed, an FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) spectrograph shapes do not always match the classic MindMirror EEG display shapes published by folks such as Maxwell Cade and Anna Wise. Instead of using FFT this design uses 28 discrete bandpass filters in the hopes it will provide a display more closely matching the original MindMirror.
Look closely in the middle (and twist your head!) to see the band's center frequency. The yellow bars show a slower average for that particular filter. The range of each bargraph is 50 uV but that's easily adjustable in the design page.
Note: Monitor display needs rotation 90 deg CW to view. This can be done through free software (www.entechtaiwan.com/util/irotate.shtm) or you can physically rotate your screen...assuming it's not a CRT!
See the original Mind Mirror in action: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFFMtq5g8N4
Band Labels
In my version of Bioexplorer I don't see the frequency labels on each bargraph when I open the design. To have them display click on Instruments Menu and then 'Edit Layout'
Electrode Placement (from a MM website):
All the early Mind Mirror research was carried out using a two channel EEG, the Mind Mirror, with contacts placed over the occipital areas. Differential pick-ups between contacts placed at T5 - O1 and T6 - O2 are used, rather than the more usual common reference mode. Contacts T5, O1and T6, O2 are more or less equidistant from the powerful neck muscles and from heart voltages and thus cancel these voltages more effectively than the more normal common reference mode.
Sensitivity.
The default range of each bandpass bargraph is 50uV. On the design page you can see each channel go through an evaluator with a multiplier of 1 and it can be adjusted on each channel as needed. ie: change this to 2 to have a range of 25uV for each bargraph or 0.5 for 100uV.
I built this design using technical information provided from this MindMirror website which unfortunately has been shutdown (mindmirroreeg.biomonitors.com/). However as of Mar/07 some of it's pages were still available in google cache.
I did my best guess at the filter types and # of poles for each filter range in order to match what I could glean out of this site. I've tested by sweeping through with the BE signal generator and I think it's fairly close. Any feedback or suggestions appreciated
cheers, Ian
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Here's some interesting bits from the webpages (thanks Google cache!):
The Mind Mirror is an electroencephalograph (EEG) which was originally created in 1976. It performs frequency analysis of signals generated by the brain and displays the results on horizontal barographs. The display panel has two columns of bar graphs which represent the left and right hemispheres (LH, RH) of the brain. Zero signal is displayed by all the indications showing at the middle of the display. Each bargraph represents one filter; if a LH signal is being displayed, the indication moves away from the center of the panel to the left and similarly for the right.
The filters which analyze the brain signals are centered on frequencies chosen to give optimum analysis. These are 0.7Hz, 1.5Hz, 3Hz, 4.5Hz, 6Hz, 7.5Hz, 9Hz, 10.5Hz, 12.5Hz, 15Hz, 19Hz, 24Hz, 30Hz, and 38Hz. These frequencies were chosen by previous experience and needed to be modified only slightly after early work with the Mind Mirror. The bandwidth of each filter is adjusted so that the 3db loss points coincide with the equivalent points in the adjacent filters. This means that a brain rhythm whose frequency lies mid-way between two filters will appear at a reduced level in both. This disadvantage is balanced by the fact that a signal lying between two filters will not be lost.
The performance of analogue filters is excellent, the rejection of unwanted signals is 50db per octave. Translated, this means that the response of the 9Hz filter to a 4.5Hz signal is reduced by a factor of more than 100 times.
Maximum input sensitivity is 3 microvolts. The wideband noise is less than 1 microvolt. The sensitivity may be switched between 3, 5, 10, 30, 50 or 100 microvolts rms. The CMR response is better than 60db.
These machines and filter frequencies were the basis of the early work in "consciousness" research by C Maxwell (Max) Cade and its more recent development by Anna Wise. The analogue filters proved to be uniquely suited to this application because the optimum bandwidth of each one can be easily chosen.
Brain rhythms respond in both amplitude and frequency to changing thought patterns. Indeed if any frequency is very stable, it seems to indicate a rigid thought pattern which can manifest as a seizure. Our work suggests, for example, that the alpha frequency of a well-developed subject (someone who is very good at what they do) may average 9Hz but may be varying between 7 and 10Hz. This seemed to be true of all the subjects who excelled: what they excelled at did not seem to be important. They could be yoga teachers, television presenters or healers.
The original analogue filters in Mind Mirrors 1 and 2 were precise but difficult to construct with individual components and became too expensive to manufacture. An unusual design was adopted for the filters which allowed the center frequency and bandwidth to be set independently. I have never seen this in a filter textbook even though it is very easy to implement. Fortunately digital techniques can precisely imitate analogue filters and even to some extent improve on them so that the Mind Mirror technology has been translated into the digital domain. The cost is of the instrument is reduced and the precision of the resulting filters guaranteed.
FFT Analysis of Brainwaves
We are often asked why we do not use Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT), which are easy to implement in computer software. Due to the way it functions, this method gives a different pattern to that seen on the Mind Mirror and is not very responsive to the grouping of bands of frequencies known as the beta, alpha, theta and delta responses for a variety of reasons.
FFT works by taking a sample of the signal for a precise interval of time and then by calculation delivers an analysis of the signals present during that interval. It is excellent when the signal:
* is a constant frequency
* is repetitive
* is a much higher frequency than the sampling window interval
An example of its use is tone recognition used for telephone dialing.
The signal to be analyzed must be of a higher frequency than the sampling window time, i.e., a delta signal of 1Hz cannot be captured (a change of the signal in 1 second) by a sampling window which lasts one second without gross errors occurring. Any system with 1Hz window will be inaccurate below about 3 or 4 Hz.
Why is this? The sampling window chops into the signal, generating false answers, an effect called leakage. If the window was precisely synchronized with the signal being analyzed, there would be no problem. But we are analyzing the signal because we want to know the frequencies present. This means that at the beginning and end of the sampling interval there must be distortion. Consider a 1Hz wave and a 1 second sampling window. If the beginning of the window was aligned with a peak of the 1Hz wave, then the sample would contain a fast excursion from zero to maximum and this would imply a whole range of frequencies not present on the original. The problem can be minimized by shaping (tapering) the sampling window-switching voltage.
The leakage shows itself in every channel as a false reading. The effect is less when the frequencies are higher, e.g., 10 cycles of alpha during a 1-second window because only the first and last cycles are distorted by the sampling but the effect is still present. A reasonable guess might be that the error has been reduced to 5%. In most cases this does not matter (i.e., in telephone dialing). It can be eliminated by cutting out the low-level spurious signals, a process called application of a Hanning window. Suppose though that the wanted signal is at a low level; it too would be eliminated.
This use of the Hanning window partly explains why it is difficult to recreate an accurate beta response. A typical beta filter bandwidth is from 17 to 22Hz. The beta frequency is responding in both amplitude and frequency to the subject’s thoughts. Any beta signal lying within this range is automatically included in the response of the analogue filter and displayed even though it is varying in frequency. With FFT it would seem possible to obtain the same result by adding together the output of the windows 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22Hz. In practice, the continuously changing beta does not rest within one window for any length of time and is therefore often low
enough in amplitude to be chopped out by the Hanning window.
If the beta amplitude is large enough, FFT can generate beta readings which are approximately accurate, but the method becomes more and more inaccurate as the beta amplitude reduces. This makes it impossible to use to display Mind Mirror patterns.
The FFT can only generate outputs which are distributed linearly in frequency. If for EEG analysis the window is chosen as 1 second, the frequency "bins" are 1Hz wide from 1 to 40Hz. The relative width of each bin falls with frequency, i.e. from 1 to 2 Hz is a whole octave wide whereas from 39 to 40Hz is only a fraction of an octave. This does not matter if the signal consists of a single tone but when the source is an EEG which is varying continuously in frequency, then this unavoidable change in the relative bandwidth provides another explanation why the beta response is very different with FFT. FFT does not respond accurately to rapidly changing or transient signals. This is important when reading alpha frequencies which are rarely very steady in amplitude.
To understand this limitation we have to consider how the FFT analyzer works. Typically in EEG analysis, the sampling window is 1 second long but this does not mean that one has to wait for 1 second before a response is available. Overlapping windows are used; one choice might be 8 per second. After the first second, an eighth of a second of fresh data is added, the oldest eighth second is discarded and the latest 1 second of data is calculated. This speeds up the response after the first second so that low-frequency signals can be displayed within about 0.3 of a second of their occurrence.
Paradoxically this does not improve the transient response. If a 10Hz wave is being sampled by a 1-second window, it cannot display the full amplitude of alpha until the window is full and this takes a second to complete.
Consider what happens when the alpha is fluctuating. Assume the window is 1-second long and that bursts of five alpha waves are arriving every second. The rise time of the analogue filter would allow it to follow this easily, even though the fall time would be extended slightly by the detector time constant. But the FFT would see a half-full bin each time and so display the average - an unvarying output of half the relative amplitude. The relative time position of the sliding window wouldn’t make much difference because the window will still be only half full wherever the burst of 5 cycles is sitting within the window. The representation will look completely different on the two systems, one would be correctly following the peaks whereas the FFT would be showing an unvarying level. These bursts represent useful information in Mind
Mirror technology.
The transient response of the FFT cannot be improved by shortening the window time because it will then become comparable to the frequency and thus leakage will introduce large leakage
errors, especially into the adjacent channels. For example, an FFT with a quarter-second window could respond quickly but as the window will only contain 2.5 cycles of 10Hz alpha, one can see that considerable distortion (leakage) will be generated.
This means that FFT limitations cannot be overcome by using two or three FFT analyzers running
at the same time. To summarize:
* The Delta response is not good with tolerable response times.
* The process is not very responsive to fast-changing signals such as alpha.
* The FFT analysis itself produces spurious signals which are not present in the original. A
correction for this problem causes beta inaccuracy
* The pattern shown by an FFT analyzer is sufficiently different to make it unusable for Mind
Mirror work.
Uniqueness of the Mind Mirror Pattern.
Anna Wise has been contacted by many frustrated users of FFT systems wondering why they could not see the patterns which she described in her book The High Performance Mind. She says: "Twenty years’ work with the Mind Mirror has led me to understand the uniqueness of its pattern display and the complexity of the information I gain from it.
People need to know that they do not gain the same information from FFT systems and not realizing its limitations, could lead them to dismiss their own abilities and/or dismiss my years of research as not being replicable." "Accessing alpha allows the flow of information from the unconscious (delta), through the subconscious (theta), to the conscious (beta) mind. It is this openness or availability of awareness on all levels that constitutes the state Max Cade called an Awakened Mind. Applying and using and manifesting with this open flow of conscious awareness gives us a High Performance Mind. We have to focus on, find, and thoroughly develop the alpha bridge to allow this to happen." All the original studies of healers, swamis and anyone who excelled at their job by Max Cade and myself described in his book The Awakened Mind were performed with the Mind Mirror and will not be replicable with an FFT system.
My great-grandfather.
Yay! I've joined The Sketchbook Project 2013 :-)
After rebinding my sketchbook (with watercolour paper) and brainwaving about my theme, I recently started sketching...
I'm planning to make a family tree sketchbook... starting with my great-grandparents. I've always been interested in family-history. I have old photos, some facts and stories. And now I'm trying to combine these, travel through time and make small pieces of history come alive on my pages.
We're midway through the judging at the DFJ Venture Challenge today…
Here you see a UC Davis team demonstrating light-dimming demand response to help reduce utility blackouts.
From numerous entrants to the business plan competition, 18 teams presented this morning, and now six finalists are presenting extended versions of their pitch, and fielding questions from the VC judging panel.
It was a very tough call… and we were trying to reduce to five finalists:
• UW has two finalists: Athleon and Impel Neuropharma (drug delivery via the upper nasal cavity to better cross the blood-brain barrier)
• Stanford: Cascade Clean Energy (Microbial Fuel Cell for waste water treatment and energy generation)
• UCLA: CityMedia (novel social meeting places for the Indian market)
• UCSD: NeuroVigil (simpler brainwave monitoring for sleep disorder diagnosis)
• UC Davis: Advanced Enological Closures (better screwcaps for wine!)
Good luck to all!
In the inaugural episode of Private Lives, we talk about how women orgasm and the effect of orgasms on brainwaves, an adventure in Japans sex hotel, and Dr.Kat reviews the Venus Butterfly. sounderotica.com/stories/episode-1-exploring-the-elusive-...
In 1905 experts discovered that parts of Winchester Cathedral were under serious threat of collapse. The causes of the problems went back to when the Cathedral was expanded using beech logs as foundations in the 13th Century. These proved to be inadequate and over hundreds of years the walls began leaning outwards and rotating.
Civil engineers proposed solution was to remove these old beech logs and pump in concrete to firm up the foundations, by tunnelling down to a layer of gravel under the Cathedral walls. The only snag was that the cathedral was built on a high water table, which meant the trenches quickly filled with water, meaning it would have taken years to underpin the whole cathedral, whilst pumping solid material from under the walls could have undermined them further still.
They then had a brainwave to use a diver to descend into the murky water under the cathedral to temporarily shore up the walls by putting concrete underneath them. So, 235 pits were dug out along the southern and eastern sides of the building, each about six metres deep. Shoring up the foundations took a massive effort by the diver William Walker. He worked tirelessly and alone from 1906 until 1911 supporting the cathedral using more than 25,000 bags of concrete, 115,000 concrete blocks and 900,000 bricks, working in almost complete darkness in 13 feet of murky, sediment-filled water.
After Walker finished his work, the groundwater could be safely pumped out and the concrete he had put into place was able to bear the foundation walls. Bricklayers were then able to restore the damaged walls, thus saving the cathedral from collapse.
William Walker has become a hero in Winchester folklore. There are several statues of him in and around the City, including the bust photograhed above, which is situated towards the rear of the Catherdral. Each St Swithin's day prayers of thanksgiving are offered for the work of William Walker along with Francis Fox and Thomas Jackson the civil engineers.
William Walker was awarded the MVO (Member of the Royal Victorian Order) by King George V, who said that he had "saved Winchester Cathedral with his own two hands".
He died in 1918, aged 49, a victim of the great Spanish flu epidemic and is buried in Beckenham Cemetery, London.
Lama Ole (far left) discusses the results of a study conducted by Professor Marc Cohen MD (far right) at RMIT University in Melbourne Australia.
During the study, four computers tracked Lama Ole's physiology as he meditated, measuring numerous factors simultaneously: overall body temperature through real-time infrared video, ECG (cardiac function), blood pressure, EEG (brainwaves), galvanic skin response, and metabolism through oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production.
1) As elephants are gentle and protective with their young they also seem to sense when they are near a diabled individual. Modeled after Dolphin Assisted Therapy elephants are finding their own place in the therapeutic world. An elephant, in South Africa, brought self-confidence to a young girl with anophthalma (born without eyes) while in Thailand elephants are reaching out to autistic children.
2) This specially trained therapy dog lends support to a hospitalized child between visits from his family.
3) Palomino rabbits are a calm breed able to show empathy and caring. These rabbits can be certified to participate in Animal Assisted Therapy. As shown in this photo people find the soft touch of a rabbit very relaxing. Bunnie Therapy is also used, in the classroom, to calm and focus special needs children at story time. This works especially well if the story is about a rabbit.
4) It's been shown that just being in the vicinity of a horse changes our brainwave patterns. Horses have a calming effect which helps stop people becoming fixated on past or negative events - thus giving them a really positive experience. Horse Assisted Therapy has been particularly useful for children with autism, attention deficit disorder (ADD) and bipolar disorders - all of whom may find it difficult to communicate, interact with other people and carry out instructions.
5) Dolphin Assisted Therapy is suggested for use in healing and pain relief as well as increasing attention span, enhancing learning, and increasing motor skills and coordination in children. While dolphin therapy seems to work best with children, it's also a popular therapy for handicapped adults.
6) The dog is, by far, the most popular animal working in Animal Assisted Therapy. Therapy dogs visit with the sick and elderly, sometime simply sitting by the person's side and patiently being petted. Patients may walk therapy dogs, play with them, feed them or groom them. Some therapy dogs are trained to sit quietly. Many therapy dogs have their own disabilities or limitations that serve as inspiration to humans with disabilities.
7) Rehabilation centres sometimes use Parrot Assisted Therapy to assist stroke survivors with communication difficulties. This inovative program partially involves patients practicing their re-learned words speaking them to a feathered, non-judgemental listener.
8) Although dogs have more traditionally been recruited as therapy animals, cats are being used more and more. After all, the advantage of being able to purr, is of huge value. Therapy cats are especially valuable when interacting with Alzheimer patients by stimulating both memory and forgotten emotions.
9) Therapists have observed teens lay down beside therapy pigs in the stalls with their arms draped around them and talking about their days and their struggles. To struggling teens, these relationships seem so easy and uncomplicated. Here is a relationship in which they give and get back, in which they talk and feel heard.
10) Llama Therapy has been used in hospital settings as well as outdoors Llamas bring into play such activities as stroking, feeding, hand walking and hugging.
11) Professionals in th field of Animal Assisted Therapy find that in addition to cats and dogs a number of other animals are valuable healers. Even the little guinea pig can give patients a reason to interact, the offer intimacy, a chance to communicate and a sense of the contnuity of life.
12) Hospice programs represent a very fast growing area of demand for Animal Assisted Therapy.
Athough the photograph is not associated with Vancouver's children's hospice the announcement is genuine.
(April 25, 2010) Canuck Place Children’s Hospice is pleased to announce our newest member of the care team – Poppy! As part of the Canuck Place program, Poppy will fulfill and enhance many roles as a multi-tasking, hard working friend to the children, siblings and parents – accompanying them in the garden and on outings, as part of group counselling sessions or spending quality one-on-one time with them when they need it.
All photos from Google Images.
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www.orbitzoom.com/oz/viewer.php?url=http://www.flickr.com...
Please view in OrbitZoom - see full window too...
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I created the design for these cat frames (look closely to see cat shapes) and sent them to Shapeways for 3D printing in sparkly alumide.
The pendant visualises EEG attention (red) and meditation (green) data and visualises it on this LED matrix in real time. Using a Mindwave Mobile, Bluetooth dongle and Shrimp microcontroller.
I've built this for use in excruciating social situations such at conferences, networking, bars, etc. I'm interested in extending our emotive state by displaying if we're paying attention to whom we're speaking to or if our thoughts / attention is drifting off to the canapes or our to-do list. It's a mischievous device, read more about it here rainycatz.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/eeg-data-visualising-p...
Visual projection of EEG brainwaves. Part of the project Sounds of Complexity more infos and concept__ www.kinotek.org/soundsofcomplexity.html
Made in VVVV
Another low step count day, but this time because of two visits to the cinema!
I finally saw Frozen, over eight months after it's release date!
Whilst I was watching Guardians of the Galaxy Sue had the brainwave of procuring the necessary for a fabulous afternoon tea to celebrate the traditional August Bank Holiday weather. :)
This swiss roll, a gift from young Beki, topped out the cake tiers. :)
A few weeks ago we hosted an outreach event in collaboration with UCL Engineering department and the Royal Institution.
We set the children a brief entitled: Design for Disabilities.
Disability is being transformed by engineering: new wheelchairs, hearing aids, better prosthetics and smart bandages are all making the disabled more able to take part in society.
Spectacles are a product designed to aid vision these are now much more of a fashion accessory. Why shouldn’t hearing aids be as fashionable as eyewear?
In June last year the BBC trailed a low-cost brainwave-reading headset to control iplayer. It allowed users to select programes without lifting a finger. They headset uses two sensors; one that rests on the forehead, and another clips to the ears, these measure the brains electrical signals.
A chip in your brain can control a robotic arm.
Oscar Pistorius was one of the first double amputee to win an able-bodied race. During the 2012 Summer Olympics to win a medal in the mens 400m. Did Oscar’s carbon-fibre running blades give him an unfair advantage over other able-bodied competitors? Did this technology, the International Olympics Committee asked, take him beyond normal human limits?
The brief was to design and prototype a product in this market sector.
A performance about brainwave interference, using flickering light, inspired by Brion Gysin's dreamachine.
Art Science (KABK) - The Holographic Brain
Festival Key of Life 2010, Leiden
“We must storm the citadels of enlightenment. The means are at hand,” William S. Burroughs wrote to his best friend Brion Gysin. The means, he was referring to, was the invention of the dreamachine.
A rotating cyllinder lamp-like device, which produced a stroboscopic light. You would see beautiful patterns, shapes and colours, while looking at this device with your eyes closed. Even full hallucinations have been reported.
The trippy experience provided by the dreamachine fascinated the two beat-generation artists immensly, as well as a wide range of other artists and performers, mainly in psychedelic circles.
The effect produced by the dreamachine, however was not something new. In fact it has fascinated people since the begin of time. Flickering lights and repeated sounds have always been important for spiritual rituals, to induce a trance like state. Shamans, prophets and ordinary people used the effect as an aid for meditation and expanding their conciousness..
The first time this happened, according to one theory, was when a shaman stood under a tree, when a flickering shadow fell on him, created by the leaves slowly moving the wind. When he looked up and closed his eyes the flickering of the shadows gave him a visionary and spiritual experience. This could be the reason why trees take a really important place in all religions worldwide.
There are also stories about prophets, Nostradamus for example, waving their hands in front of their closed eyes, while looking at the sun. This would give them the ability to vision the future.
The first scientist to report it was the great Jan Purkinje, 200 years ago, when he was still a child. He found out that, by looking at the sun with his eyes closed, and waving his hands in front of his eyes, ‘beautiful figures’ would appear, which gradually became more intricate.
It doesn’t really matter what method you use, be it a device, your hands or a natural source, in the end the effect stays the same. The only difference is that modern day devices give us more control over the flicker and intensity. That’s why the dreamachine was such a revolutionary device, as it made it a lot easier to experience the effect.
Brion Gysin and scientist Ian Sommerville created the dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, "The Living Brain". Walter, a neurophysiologist, was a pioneer in research of brainwave activity. In this book he describes his experiments with stroboscopic light. He found that flicker-induced hallucinatory experiences of his test subjects seemed to be as broad and dynamic as anything experienced in the medical case histories. As suggested by himself, this effect is caused not by properties of the light itself, or by the eye, but are a product of the brain.
One theory is that the flickering is interfering with the brain’s visual cortex, attempting to deal with intermittent signal. It’s hard not to wonder if the patterns you see perhaps offer a glimpse of our own brain activity, something beyond our own senses.
In my performance I also make use of the flicker effect, but I have more control over it. In my performance, the audience wears white plastic masks, this way they look into a ganzfeld, a totally white field during the performance. In my set up, I use beamers, projecting light on the audience’s masks, completely immersing them in the light and colors of the projection.
I play an 8 minute live composition, based on the varying effects of different frequencies of flicker, colour, binaural beats and sound.
During the performance every spectator will see something different, varying patterns and colours, created within their own brains.
I hope my performance is another little step, in the long history of flicker, but above all, I hope to give the audience the opportunity to experience this amazing effect for themselves.
Matthijs Munnik
The reindeer or caribou (Rangifer tarandus) is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to Arctic, subarctic, tundra, boreal, and mountainous regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. It is the only representative of the genus Rangifer. More recent studies suggest the splitting of reindeer and caribou into six distinct species over their range.
Reindeer occur in both migratory and sedentary populations, and their herd sizes vary greatly in different regions. The tundra subspecies are adapted for extreme cold, and some are adapted for long-distance migration.
Reindeer vary greatly in size and color from the smallest, the Svalbard reindeer (R. (t.) platyrhynchus), to the largest, Osborn's caribou (R. t. osborni). Although reindeer are quite numerous, some species and subspecies are in decline and considered vulnerable. They are unique among deer (Cervidae) in that females may have antlers, although the prevalence of antlered females varies by species and subspecies.
Reindeer are the only successfully semi-domesticated deer on a large scale in the world. Both wild and domestic reindeer have been an important source of food, clothing, and shelter for Arctic people from prehistorical times. They are still herded and hunted today. In some traditional Christmas legends, Santa Claus's reindeer pull a sleigh through the night sky to help Santa Claus deliver gifts to good children on Christmas Eve.
Description
Names follow international convention before the recent revision[9] (see Taxonomy below). Reindeer/caribou (Rangifer) vary in size from the smallest, the Svalbard reindeer (R. (t.) platyrhynchus), to the largest, Osborn's caribou (R. t. osborni). They also vary in coat color and antler architecture.
The North American range of caribou extends from Alaska through the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut throughout the tundra, taiga and boreal forest and south through the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Of the eight subspecies classified by Harding (2022) into the Arctic caribou (R. arcticus), the migratory mainland barren-ground caribou of Arctic Alaska and Canada (R. t. arcticus), summer in tundra and winter in taiga, a transitional forest zone between boreal forest and tundra; the nomadic Peary caribou (R. t. pearyi) lives in the polar desert of the High Arctic Archipelago and Grant's caribou (R. t. granti) lives in the western end of the Alaska Peninsula and the adjacent islands; the other four subspecies, Osborn's caribou (R. t. osborni), Stone's caribou (R. t. stonei), the Rocky Mountain caribou (R. t. fortidens) and the Selkirk Mountains caribou (R. t. montanus) are all montane. The extinct insular Queen Charlotte Islands caribou (R. t. dawsoni), lived on Graham Island in Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands).
The boreal woodland caribou (R. t. caribou), lives in the boreal forest of northeastern Canada: the Labrador or Ungava caribou of northern Quebec and northern Labrador (R. t. caboti), and the Newfoundland caribou of Newfoundland (R. t. terranovae) have been found to be genetically in the woodland caribou lineage.
In Eurasia, both wild and domestic reindeer are distributed across the tundra and into the taiga. Eurasian mountain reindeer (R. t. tarandus) are close to North American caribou genetically and visually, but with sufficient differences to warrant division into two species. The unique, insular Svalbard reindeer inhabits the Svalbard Archipelago. The Finnish forest reindeer (R. t. fennicus) is spottily distributed in the coniferous forest zones from Finland to east of Lake Baikal: the Siberian forest reindeer (R. t. valentinae, formerly called the Busk Mountains reindeer (R. t. buskensis) by American taxonomists) occupies the Altai and Ural Mountains.
Male ("bull") and female ("cow") reindeer can grow antlers annually, although the proportion of females that grow antlers varies greatly between populations. Antlers are typically larger on males. Antler architecture varies by species and subspecies and, together with pelage differences, can often be used to distinguish between species and subspecies (see illustrations in Geist, 1991 and Geist, 1998).
Status
About 25,000 mountain reindeer (R. t. tarandus) still live in the mountains of Norway, notably in Hardangervidda. In Sweden there are approximately 250,000 reindeer in herds managed by Sami villages. Russia manages 19 herds of Siberian tundra reindeer (R. t. sibiricus) that total about 940,000. The Taimyr herd of Siberian tundra reindeer is the largest wild reindeer herd in the world, varying between 400,000 and 1,000,000; it is a metapopulation consisting of several subpopulations — some of which are phenotypically different — with different migration routes and calving areas. The Kamchatkan reindeer (R. t. phylarchus), a forest subspecies, formerly included reindeer west of the Sea of Okhotsk which, however, are indistinguishable genetically from the Jano-Indigirka, East Siberian taiga and Chukotka populations of R. t. sibiricus. Siberian tundra reindeer herds have been in decline but are stable or increasing since 2000.
Insular (island) reindeer, classified as the Novaya Zemlya reindeer (R. t. pearsoni) occupy several island groups: the Novaya Zemlya Archipelago (about 5,000 animals at last count, but most of these are either domestic reindeer or domestic-wild hybrids), the New Siberia Archipelago (about 10,000 to 15,000), and Wrangel Island (200 to 300 feral domestic reindeer).
What was once the second largest herd is the migratory Labrador caribou (R. t. caboti)[9] George River herd in Canada, with former variations between 28,000 and 385,000. As of January 2018, there are fewer than 9,000 animals estimated to be left in the George River herd, as reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The New York Times reported in April 2018 of the disappearance of the only herd of southern mountain woodland caribou in the contiguous United States, with an expert calling it "functionally extinct" after the herd's size dwindled to a mere three animals. After the last individual, a female, was translocated to a wildlife rehabilitation center in Canada, caribou were considered extirpated from the contiguous United States. The Committee on Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) classified both the Southern Mountain population DU9 (R. t. montanus) and the Central Mountain population DU8 (R. t. fortidens) as Endangered and the Northern Mountain population DU7 (R. t. osborni) as Threatened.
Some species and subspecies are rare and three subspecies have already become extinct: the Queen Charlotte Islands caribou (R. t. dawsoni) from western Canada, the Sakhalin reindeer (R. t. setoni) from Sakhalin and the East Greenland caribou from eastern Greenland, although some authorities believe that the latter, R. t. eogroenlandicus Degerbøl, 1957, is a junior synonym of the Peary caribou Historically, the range of the sedentary boreal woodland caribou covered more than half of Canada and into the northern states of the contiguous United States from Maine to Washington. Boreal woodland caribou have disappeared from most of their original southern range and were designated as Threatened in 2002 by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). Environment Canada reported in 2011 that there were approximately 34,000 boreal woodland caribou in 51 ranges remaining in Canada (Environment Canada, 2011b), although those numbers included montane populations classified by Harding (2022) into subspecies of the Arctic caribou. Siberian tundra reindeer herds are also in decline, and Rangifer as a whole is considered to be Vulnerable by the IUCN.
Naming
Charles Hamilton Smith is credited with the name Rangifer for the reindeer genus, which Albertus Magnus used in his De animalibus, fol. Liber 22, Cap. 268: "Dicitur Rangyfer quasi ramifer". This word may go back to the Sámi word raingo. Carl Linnaeus chose the word tarandus as the specific epithet, making reference to Ulisse Aldrovandi's Quadrupedum omnium bisulcorum historia fol. 859–863, Cap. 30: De Tarando (1621). However, Aldrovandi and Conrad Gessner thought that rangifer and tarandus were two separate animals, In any case, the tarandos name goes back to Aristotle and Theophrastus.
The use of the terms reindeer and caribou for essentially the same animal can cause confusion, but the International Union for Conservation of Nature clearly delineates the issue: "Reindeer is the European name for the species of Rangifer, while in North America, Rangifer species are known as Caribou." The word reindeer is an anglicized version of the Old Norse words hreinn (“reindeer”) and dýr (“animal”) and has nothing to do with reins. The word caribou comes through French, from the Mi'kmaq qalipu, meaning "snow shoveler", and refers to its habit of pawing through the snow for food.
Because of its importance to many cultures, Rangifer and some of its species and subspecies have names in many languages. Inuvaluit of the western Canadian Arctic and Inuit of the eastern Canadian Arctic, who speak different dialects of Inuktitut, both call the barren-ground caribou tuktu. The Wekʼèezhìi people, a Dene (Athapascan) group, call the Arctic caribou ekwǫ̀ and the boreal woodland caribou tǫdzı. The Gwichʼin (also a Dene group) have over 24 distinct caribou-related words.
Reindeer are also called tuttu by the Greenlandic Inuit and hreindýr, sometimes rein, by the Icelanders.
Evolution
The "glacial-interglacial cycles of the upper Pleistocene had a major influence on the evolution" of Rangifer species and other Arctic and sub-Arctic species. Isolation of tundra-adapted species Rangifer in Last Glacial Maximum refugia during the last glacial – the Wisconsin glaciation in North America and the Weichselian glaciation in Eurasia – shaped "intraspecific genetic variability" particularly between the North American and Eurasian parts of the Arctic.
Reindeer/caribou (Rangifer) are in the subfamily Odocoileinae, along with roe deer (Capreolus), Eurasian elk/moose (Alces), and water deer (Hydropotes). These antlered cervids split from the horned ruminants Bos (cattle and yaks), Ovis (sheep) and Capra (goats) about 36 million years ago. The Eurasian clade of Odocoileinae (Capreolini, Hydropotini and Alcini) split from the New World tribes of Capreolinae (Odocoileini and Rangiferini) in the Late Miocene, 8.7–9.6 million years ago. Rangifer “evolved as a mountain deer, ...exploiting the subalpine and alpine meadows...”. Rangifer originated in the Late Pliocene and diversified in the Early Pleistocene, a 2+ million-year period of multiple glacier advances and retreats. Several named Rangifer fossils in Eurasia and North America predate the evolution of modern tundra reindeer.
Archaeologists distinguish “modern” tundra reindeer and barren-ground caribou from primitive forms — living and extinct — that did not have adaptations to extreme cold and to long distance migration. They include a broad, high muzzle to increase the volume of the nasal cavity to warm and moisten the air before it enters the throat and lungs, bez tines set close to the brow tines, distinctive coat patterns, short legs and other adaptations for running long distances, and multiple behaviors suited to tundra, but not to forest (such as synchronized calving and aggregation during rutting and post-calving). As well, many genes, including those for vitamin D metabolism, fat metabolism, retinal development, circadian rhythm, and tolerance to cold temperatures, are found in tundra caribou that are lacking or rudimentary in forest types. For this reason, forest-adapted reindeer and caribou could not survive in tundra or polar deserts. The oldest undoubted Rangifer fossil is from Omsk, Russia, dated to 2.1-1.8 Ma. The oldest North American Rangifer fossil is from the Yukon, 1.6 million years before present (BP). A fossil skull fragment from Süßenborn, Germany, R. arcticus stadelmanni, (which is probably misnamed) with “rather thin and cylinder-shaped” antlers, dates to the Middle Pleistocene (Günz) Period, 680,000-620,000 BP. Rangifer fossils become increasingly frequent in circumpolar deposits beginning with the Riss glaciations, the second youngest of the Pleistocene Epoch, roughly 300,000–130,000 BP. By the 4-Würm period (110,000–70,000 to 12,000–10,000 BP), its European range was extensive, supplying a major food source for prehistoric Europeans. North American fossils outside of Beringia that predate the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) are of Rancholabrean age (240,000–11,000 years BP) and occur along the fringes of the Rocky Mountain and Laurentide ice sheets as far south as northern Alabama; and in Sangamonian deposits (~100,000 years BP) from western Canada.
A R. t. pearyi-sized caribou occupied Greenland before and after the LGM and persisted in a relict enclave in northeastern Greenland until it went extinct about 1900 (see discussion of R. t. eogroenlandicus below). Archaeological excavations showed that larger barren-ground-sized caribou appeared in western Greenland about 4,000 years ago.
The late Valerius Geist (1998) dates the Eurasian reindeer radiation dates to the large Riss glaciation (347,000 to 128,000 years ago), based on the Norwegian-Svalbard split 225,000 years ago. Finnish forest reindeer (R. t. fennicus) likely evolved from Cervus [Rangifer] geuttardi Desmarest, 1822, a reindeer that adapted to forest habitats in Eastern Europe as forests expanded during an interglacial period before the LGM (the Würmian or Weichsel glaciation);. The fossil species geuttardi was later replaced by R. constantini, which was adapted for grasslands, in a second immigration 19,000–20,000 years ago when the LGM turned its forest habitats into tundra, while fennicus survived in isolation in southwestern Europe. R. constantini was then replaced by modern tundra/barren-ground caribou adapted to extreme cold, probably in Beringia, before dispersing west (R. t. tarandus in the Scandinavian mountains and R. t. sibiricus across Siberia) and east (R. t. arcticus in the North American Barrenlands) when rising seas isolated them. Likewise in North America, DNA analysis shows that woodland caribou (R. caribou) diverged from primitive ancestors of tundra/barren-ground caribou not during the LGM, 26,000–19,000 years ago, as previously assumed, but in the Middle Pleistocene around 357,000 years ago. At that time, modern tundra caribou had not even evolved. Woodland caribou are likely more related to extinct North American forest caribou than to barren-ground caribou. For example, the extinct caribou Torontoceros [Rangifer] hypogaeus, had features (robust and short pedicles, smooth antler surface, and high position of second tine) that relate it to forest caribou.
Humans started hunting reindeer in both the Mesolithic and Neolithic Periods, and humans are today the main predator in many areas. Norway and Greenland have unbroken traditions of hunting wild reindeer from the Last Glacial Period until the present day. In the non-forested mountains of central Norway, such as Jotunheimen, it is still possible to find remains of stone-built trapping pits, guiding fences and bow rests, built especially for hunting reindeer. These can, with some certainty, be dated to the Migration Period, although it is not unlikely that they have been in use since the Stone Age.
Cave paintings by ancient Europeans include both tundra and forest types of reindeer.
A 2022 study of ancient environmental DNA from the Early Pleistocene (2 million years ago) Kap Kobenhavn Formation of northern Greenland identified preserved DNA fragments of Rangifer, identified as basal but potentially ancestral to modern reindeer. This suggests that reindeer have inhabited Greenland since at least the Early Pleistocene. Around this time, northern Greenland was 11–19 °C warmer than the Holocene, with a boreal forest hosting a species assemblage with no modern analogue. These are among the oldest DNA fragments ever sequenced.
Taxonomy
Carl Linnaeus in 1758 named the Eurasian tundra species Cervus tarandus, the genus Rangifer being credited to Smith, 1827.
Rangifer has had a convoluted history because of the similarity in antler architecture (brow tines asymmetrical and often palmate, bez tines, a back tine sometimes branched, and branched at the distal end, often palmate). Because of individual variability, early taxonomists were unable to discern consistent patterns among populations, nor could they, examining collections in Europe, appreciate the difference in habitats and the differing function they imposed on antler architecture. For example, woodland caribou males, rutting in boreal forest where only a few females can be found, collect harems and defend them against other males, for which they have short, straight, strong, much-branched antlers, beams flattened in cross-section, designed for combat — and not too large, so as not to impede them in forested winter ranges. By contrast, modern tundra caribou (see Evolution above) have synchronized calving as a predator-avoidance strategy, which requires large rutting aggregations. Males cannot defend a harem because, while he was busy fighting, they would disappear into the mass of the herd. Males therefore tend individual females; their fights are infrequent and brief. Their antlers are thin, beams round in cross-section, sweep back and then forward with a cluster of branches at the top; these are designed more for visual stimulation of the females. Their bez tines are set low, just above the brow tine, which is vertically flattened to protect the eyes while the buck "threshes" low brush, a courtship display. The low bez tines help the wide flat brow tines dig craters in the hard-packed tundra snow for forage, for which reason brow tines are often called "shovels" in North America and "ice tines" in Europe. The differences in antler architecture reflect fundamental differences in ecology and behavior, and in turn deep divisions in ancestry that were not apparent to the early taxonomists.
Similarly, working on museum collections where skins were often faded and in poor states of preservation, early taxonomists could not readily perceive differences in coat patterns that are consistent within a subspecies, but variable among them. Geist calls these "nuptial" characteristics: sexually selected characters that are highly conserved and diagnostic among subspecies.
Towards the end of the 19th century, national museums began sending out biological exploration expeditions and collections accumulated. Taxonomists, usually working for the museums began naming subspecies more rigorously, based on statistical differences in detailed cranial, dental and skeletal measurements than antlers and pelage, supplemented by better knowledge of differences in ecology and behavior. From 1898 to 1937, mammalogists named 12 new species (other than barren-ground and woodland, which had been named earlier) of caribou in Canada and Alaska, and three new species and nine new subspecies in Eurasia, each properly described according to the evolving rules of zoological nomenclature, with type localities designated and type specimens deposited in museums.
In the mid-20th century, as definitions of "species" evolved, mammalogists in Europe and North America made all Rangifer species conspecific with R. tarandus, and synonymized most of the subspecies. Banfield's often-cited A Revision of the Reindeer and Caribou, Genus Rangifer (1961), eliminated R. t. caboti (the Labrador caribou), R. t. osborni (Osborn's caribou — from British Columbia) and R. t. terranovae (the Newfoundland caribou) as invalid and included only barren-ground caribou, renamed as R. t. groenlandicus (formerly R. arcticus) and woodland caribou as R. t. caribou. However, Banfield made multiple errors, eliciting a scathing review by Ian McTaggart-Cowan in 1962 Most authorities continued to consider all or most subspecies valid; some were quite distinct. In his chapter in the authoritative 2005 reference work Mammal Species of the World, referenced by the American Society of Mammalogists, English zoologist Peter Grubb agreed with Valerius Geist, a specialist on large mammals, that these subspecies were valid (i.e., before the recent revision): In North America, R. t. caboti, R. t. caribou, R. t. dawsoni, R. t. groenlandicus, R. t. osborni, R. t. pearyi, and R. t. terranovae; and in Eurasia, R. t. tarandus, R. t. buskensis (called R. t. valentinae in Europe; see below), R. t. phylarchus, R. t. pearsoni, R. t. sibiricus and R. t. platyrhynchus. These subspecies were retained in the 2011 replacement work Handbook of Mammals of the World Vol. 2: Hoofed Mammals.[8] Most Russian authors also recognized R. t. angustirostris, a forest reindeer from east of Lake Baikal.
However, since 1991, many genetic studies have revealed deep divergence between modern tundra reindeer and woodland caribou. Geist (2007) and others continued arguing that the woodland caribou was incorrectly classified, noting that "true woodland caribou, the uniformly dark, small-maned type with the frontally emphasized, flat-beamed antlers", is "scattered thinly along the southern rim of North American caribou distribution". He affirms that the "true woodland caribou is very rare, in very great difficulties and requires the most urgent of attention."
In 2011, noting that the former classifications of Rangifer tarandus, either with prevailing taxonomy on subspecies, designations based on ecotypes, or natural population groupings, failed to capture "the variability of caribou across their range in Canada" needed for effective subspecies conservation and management, COSEWIC developed Designatable Unit (DU) attribution, an adaptation of "evolutionary significant units". The 12 designatable units for caribou in Canada (that is, excluding Alaska and Greenland) based on ecology, behavior and, importantly, genetics (but excluding morphology and archaeology) essentially followed the previously-named subspecies distributions, without naming them as such, plus some ecotypes. Ecotypes are not phylogenetically based and cannot substitute for taxonomy.
Meanwhile, genetic data continued to accumulate, revealing sufficiently deep divisions to easily separate Rangifer back into six previously named species and to resurrect several previously named subspecies. Molecular data showed that the Greenland caribou (R. t. groenlandicus) and the Svalbard reindeer (R. t. platyrhynchus), although not closely related to each other, were the most genetically divergent among Rangifer clades; that modern (see Evolution above) Eurasian tundra reindeer (R. t. tarandus and R. t. sibiricus) and North American barren-ground caribou (R. t. arcticus), although sharing ancestry, were separable at the subspecies level; that Finnish forest reindeer (R. t. fennicus) clustered well apart from both wild and domestic tundra reindeer and that boreal woodland caribou (R. t. caribou) were separable from all others. Meanwhile, archaeological evidence was accumulating that Eurasian forest reindeer descended from an extinct forest-adapted reindeer and not from tundra reindeer; since they do not share a direct common ancestor, they cannot be conspecific. Similarly, woodland caribou diverged from the ancestors of Arctic caribou before modern barren-ground caribou had evolved, and were more likely related to extinct North American forest reindeer. Lacking a direct shared ancestor, barren-ground and woodland caribou cannot be conspecific.
Molecular data also revealed that the four western Canadian montane ecotypes are not woodland caribou: they share a common ancestor with modern barren-ground caribou/tundra reindeer, but distantly, having diverged > 60,000 years ago — before the modern ecotypes had evolved their cold- and darkness-adapted physiologies and mass-migration and aggregation behaviors (see Evolution above). Before Banfield (1961), taxonomists using cranial, dental and skeletal measurements had unequivocally allied these western montane ecotypes with barren-ground caribou, naming them (as in Osgood 1909[85] Murie, 1935 and Anderson 1946, among others) R. t. stonei, R. t. montanus, R. t. fortidens and R. t. osborni, respectively, and this phylogeny was confirmed by genetic analysis.
DNA also revealed three unnamed clades that, based on genetic distance, genetic divergence and shared vs. private haplotypes and alleles, together with ecological and behavioral differences, may justify separation at the subspecies level: the Atlantic-Gaspésie caribou (COSEWIC DU11), an eastern montane ecotype of the boreal woodland caribou, and the Baffin Island caribou. Neither one of these clades has yet been formally described or named.
Jenkins et al. (2012) said that "[Baffin Island] caribou are unique compared to other Barrenground herds, as they do not overwinter in forested habitat, nor do all caribou undertake long seasonal migrations to calving areas." It also shares a mtDNA haplotype with Labrador caribou, in the North American lineage (i.e., woodland caribou). Røed et al. (1991) had noted:
Among Baffin Island caribou the TFL2 allele was the most common allele (p=0.521), while this allele was absent, or present in very low frequencies, in other caribou populations , including the Canadian barren-ground caribou from the Beverly herd. A large genetic difference between Baffin Island caribou and the Beverly herd was also indicated by eight alleles found in the Beverly herd which were absent from the Baffin Island samples.
Jenkins et al. (2018) also reported genetic distinctiveness of Baffin Island caribou from all other barren-ground caribou; its genetic signature was not found on the mainland or on other islands; nor were Beverly herd (the nearest mainly barren-ground caribou) alleles present in Baffin Island caribou, evidence of reproductive isolation.
These advances in Rangifer genetics were brought together with previous morphological-based descriptions, ecology, behavior and archaeology to propose a new revision of the genus.
The scientific name Tarandus rangifer buskensis Millais, 1915 (the Busk Mountains reindeer) was selected as the senior synonym to R. t. valentinae Flerov, 1933, in Mammal Species of the World but Russian authors do not recognize Millais and Millais' articles in a hunting travelogue, The Gun at Home and Abroad, seem short of a taxonomic authority.
The scientific name groenlandicus is fraught with problems. Edwards (1743) illustrated and claimed to have seen a male specimen (“head of perfect horns...”) from Greenland and said that a Captain Craycott had brought a live pair from Greenland to England in 1738. He named it Capra groenlandicus, Greenland reindeer. Linnaeus, in the 12th edition of Systema naturae, gave grœnlandicus as a synonym for Cervus tarandus. Borowski disagreed (and again changed the spelling), saying Cervus grönlandicus was morphologically distinct from Eurasian tundra reindeer. Baird placed it under the genus Rangifer as R. grœnlandicus. It went back and forth as a full species or subspecies of the barren-ground caribou (R. arcticus) or a subspecies of the tundra reindeer (R. tarandus), but always as the Greenland reindeer/caribou. Taxonomists consistently documented morphological differences between Greenland and other caribou/reindeer in cranial measurements, dentition, antler architecture, etc. Then Banfield (1961) in his famously flawed revision, gave the name groenlandicus to all the barren-ground caribou in North America, Greenland included, because groenlandicus pre-dates Richardson’s R. arctus,. However, because genetic data shows the Greenland caribou to be the most distantly related of any caribou to all the others (genetic distance, FST = 44%, whereas most cervid (deer family) species have a genetic distance of 2% to 5%)--as well as behavioral and morphological differences—a recent revision returned it to species status as R. groenlandicus. Although it has been assumed that the larger caribou that appeared in Greenland 4,000 years ago originated from Baffin Island (itself unique; see Taxonomy above), a reconstruction of LGM glacial retreat and caribou advance (Yannic et al. 2013) shows colonization by NAL lineage caribou more likely. Their PCA and tree diagrams show Greenland caribou clustering outside of the Beringian-Eurasian lineage.
The scientific name R. t. granti has a very interesting history. Allen (1902) named it as a distinct species, R. granti, from the "western end of Alaska Peninsula, opposite Popoff Island" and noting that:
Rangifer granti is a representative of the Barren Ground group of Caribou, which includes R. arcticus of the Arctic Coast and R. granlandicus of Greenland. It is not closely related to R. stonei of the Kenai Peninsula, from which it differs not only in its very much smaller size, but in important cranial characters and in coloration. ...The external and cranial differences between R. granti and the various forms of the Woodland Caribou are so great in almost every respect that no detailed comparison is necessary. ...According to Mr. Stone, Rangifer granti inhabits the " barren land of Alaska Peninsula, ranging well up into the mountains in summer, but descending to the lower levels in winter, generally feeding on the low flat lands near the coast and in the foothills...As regards cranial characters no comparison is necessary with R. montanus or with any of the woodland forms."
Osgood and Murie (1935), agreeing with granti's close relationship with the barren-ground caribou, brought it under R. arcticus as a subspecies, R. t. granti. Anderson (1946) and Banfield (1961), based on statistical analysis of cranial, dental and other characters, agreed. But Banfield (1961) also synonymized Alaska's large R. stonei with other mountain caribou of British Columbia and the Yukon as invalid subspecies of woodland caribou, then R. t. caribou. This left the small, migratory barren-ground caribou of Alaska and the Yukon, including the Porcupine caribou herd, without a name, which Banfield rectified in his 1974 Mammals of Canada by extending to them the name "granti". The late Valerius Geist (1998), in the only error in his whole illustrious career, re-analyzed Banfield's data with additional specimens found in an unpublished report he cites as "Skal, 1982", but was "not able to find diagnostic features that could segregate this form from the western barren ground type." But Skal 1982 had included specimens from the eastern end of the Alaska Peninsula and the Kenai Peninsula, the range of the larger Stone's caribou. Later, geneticists comparing barren-ground caribou of Alaska with those of mainland Canada found little difference and they all became the former R. t. groenlandicus (now R. t. arcticus). R. t. granti was lost in the oblivion of invalid taxonomy until Alaskan researchers sampled some small, pale caribou from the western end of the Alaska Peninsula, their range enclosing the type locality designated by Allen (1902) and found them to be genetically distinct from all other caribou in Alaska. Thus, granti was rediscovered, its range restricted to that originally described.
Stone's caribou (R. t. stonei), a large montane type, was described from the Kenai Peninsula (where, apparently, it was never common except in years of great abundance), the eastern end of the Alaska Peninsula, and mountains throughout southern and eastern Alaska. It was placed under R. arcticus as a subspecies, R. t. stonei, and later synonymised as noted above. The same genetic analyses mentioned above for R. t. granti resulted in resurrecting R. t. stonei as well.
The Sakhalin reindeer (R. t. setoni), endemic to Sakhalin, was described as Rangifer tarandus setoni Flerov, 1933, but Banfield (1961) brought it under R. t. fennicus as a junior synonym. The wild reindeer on the island are apparently extinct, having been replaced by domestic reindeer.
Some of the Rangifer species and subspecies may be further divided by ecotype depending on several behavioral factors – predominant habitat use (northern, tundra, mountain, forest, boreal forest, forest-dwelling, woodland, woodland (boreal), woodland (migratory) or woodland (mountain), spacing (dispersed or aggregated) and migration patterns (sedentary or migratory). North American examples of this are the Torngat Mountain population DU10, an ecotype of R. t. caboti; a recently discovered and unnamed clade between the Mackenzie River and Great Bear Lake of Beringian-Eurasian lineage, an ecotype of R. t. osborni; the Atlantic-Gaspésie population DU11, an eastern montane ecotype of the boreal woodland caribou (R. t. caribou); the Baffin Island caribou, an ecotype of the barren-ground caribou (R. t. arcticus); and the Dolphin-Union “herd”, another ecotype of R. t. arcticus. The last three of these likely qualify as subspecies, but they have not yet been formally described or named.
Physical characteristics
Naming in this and following sections follows the taxonomy in the authoritative 2011 reference work Handbook of Mammals of the World Vol. 2: Hoofed Mammals.
Antlers
In most cervid species, only males grow antlers; the reindeer is the only cervid species in which females also grow them normally. Androgens play an essential role in the antler formation of cervids. The antlerogenic genes in reindeer have more sensitivity to androgens in comparison with other cervids.
There is considerable variation among species and subspecies in the size of the antlers (e.g., they are rather small and spindly in the northernmost species and subspecies), but on average the bull's antlers are the second largest of any extant deer, after those of the male moose. In the largest subspecies, the antlers of large bulls can range up to 100 cm (39 in) in width and 135 cm (53 in) in beam length. They have the largest antlers relative to body size among living deer species.[116] Antler size measured in number of points reflects the nutritional status of the reindeer and climate variation of its environment. The number of points on male reindeer increases from birth to 5 years of age and remains relatively constant from then on. "In male caribou, antler mass (but not the number of tines) varies in concert with body mass." While antlers of male woodland caribou are typically smaller than those of male barren-ground caribou, they can be over 1 m (3 ft 3 in) across. They are flattened in cross-section, compact and relatively dense.[36] Geist describes them as frontally emphasized, flat-beamed antlers. Woodland caribou antlers are thicker and broader than those of the barren-ground caribou and their legs and heads are longer. Quebec-Labrador male caribou antlers can be significantly larger and wider than other woodland caribou. Central barren-ground male caribou antlers are perhaps the most diverse in configuration and can grow to be very high and wide. Osborn's caribou antlers are typically the most massive, with the largest circumference measurements.
The antlers' main beams begin at the brow "extending posterior over the shoulders and bowing so that the tips point forward. The prominent, palmate brow tines extend forward, over the face." The antlers typically have two separate groups of points, lower and upper.
Antlers begin to grow on male reindeer in March or April and on female reindeer in May or June. This process is called antlerogenesis. Antlers grow very quickly every year on the bulls. As the antlers grow, they are covered in thick velvet, filled with blood vessels and spongy in texture. The antler velvet of the barren-ground caribou and the boreal woodland caribou is dark chocolate brown. The velvet that covers growing antlers is a highly vascularised skin. This velvet is dark brown on woodland or barren-ground caribou and slate-grey on Peary caribou and the Dolphin-Union caribou herd. Velvet lumps in March can develop into a rack measuring more than a meter in length (3 ft) by August.
A R. tarandus skull
When the antler growth is fully grown and hardened, the velvet is shed or rubbed off. To the Inuit, for whom the caribou is a "culturally important keystone species", the months are named after landmarks in the caribou life cycle. For example, amiraijaut in the Igloolik region is "when velvet falls off caribou antlers."
Male reindeer use their antlers to compete with other males during the mating season. Butler (1986) showed that the social requirements of caribou females during the rut determines the mating strategies of males and, consequently, the form of male antlers. In describing woodland caribou, which have a harem-defense mating system, SARA wrote, "During the rut, males engage in frequent and furious sparring battles with their antlers. Large males with large antlers do most of the mating." Reindeer continue to migrate until the bulls have spent their back fat. By contrast, barren-ground caribou males tend individual females and their fights are brief and much less intense; consequently, their antlers are long, and thin, round in cross-section and less branched and are designed more for show (or sexual attraction) than fighting.
In late autumn or early winter after the rut, male reindeer lose their antlers, growing a new pair the next summer with a larger rack than the previous year. Female reindeer keep their antlers until they calve. In the Scandinavian and Arctic Circle populations, old bulls' antlers fall off in late December, young bulls' antlers fall off in the early spring, and cows' antlers fall off in the summer.
When male reindeer shed their antlers in early to mid-winter, the antlered cows acquire the highest ranks in the feeding hierarchy, gaining access to the best forage areas. These cows are healthier than those without antlers. Calves whose mothers do not have antlers are more prone to disease and have a significantly higher mortality. Cows in good nutritional condition, for example, during a mild winter with good winter range quality, may grow new antlers earlier as antler growth requires high intake.
A R. t. platyrhynchus skull
According to a respected Igloolik elder, Noah Piugaattuk, who was one of the last outpost camp leaders, caribou (tuktu) antlers
...get detached every year...Young males lose the velvet from the antlers much more quickly than female caribou even though they are not fully mature. They start to work with their antlers just as soon as the velvet starts to fall off. The young males engage in fights with their antlers towards autumn...soon after the velvet had fallen off they will be red, as they start to get bleached their colour changes...When the velvet starts to fall off the antler is red because the antler is made from blood. The antler is the blood that has hardened; in fact, the core of the antler is still bloody when the velvet starts to fall off, at least close to the base.
— Elder Noah Piugaattuk of Igloolik cited in "Tuktu — Caribou" (2002) "Canada's Polar Life"
According to the Igloolik Oral History Project (IOHP), "Caribou antlers provided the Inuit with a myriad of implements, from snow knives and shovels to drying racks and seal-hunting tools. A complex set of terms describes each part of the antler and relates it to its various uses". Currently, the larger racks of antlers are used by Inuit as materials for carving. Iqaluit-based Jackoposie Oopakak's 1989 carving, entitled Nunali, which means "place where people live", and which is part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada, includes a massive set of caribou antlers on which he has intricately carved the miniaturized world of the Inuit where "Arctic birds, caribou, polar bears, seals, and whales are interspersed with human activities of fishing, hunting, cleaning skins, stretching boots, and travelling by dog sled and kayak...from the base of the antlers to the tip of each branch".
Pelt
The color of the fur varies considerably, both between individuals and depending on season and species. Northern populations, which usually are relatively small, are whiter, while southern populations, which typically are relatively large, are darker. This can be seen well in North America, where the northernmost subspecies, the Peary caribou, is the whitest and smallest subspecies of the continent, while the Selkirk Mountains caribou (Southern Mountain population DU9) is the darkest and nearly the largest, only exceeded in size by Osborn's caribou (Northern Mountain population DU7).
The coat has two layers of fur: a dense woolly undercoat and a longer-haired overcoat consisting of hollow, air-filled hairs. Fur is the primary insulation factor that allows reindeer to regulate their core body temperature in relation to their environment, the thermogradient, even if the temperature rises to 38 °C (100 °F). In 1913, Dugmore noted how the woodland caribou swim so high out of the water, unlike any other mammal, because their hollow, "air-filled, quill-like hair" acts as a supporting "life jacket".
A darker belly color may be caused by two mutations of MC1R. They appear to be more common in domestic reindeer herds.
Heat exchange
Blood moving into the legs is cooled by blood returning to the body in a countercurrent heat exchange (CCHE), a highly efficient means of minimizing heat loss through the skin's surface. In the CCHE mechanism, in cold weather, blood vessels are closely knotted and intertwined with arteries to the skin and appendages that carry warm blood with veins returning to the body that carry cold blood causing the warm arterial blood to exchange heat with the cold venous blood. In this way, their legs for example are kept cool, maintaining the core body temperature nearly 30 °C (54 °F) higher with less heat lost to the environment. Heat is thus recycled instead of being dissipated. The "heart does not have to pump blood as rapidly in order to maintain a constant body core temperature and thus, metabolic rate." CCHE is present in animals like reindeer, fox and moose living in extreme conditions of cold or hot weather as a mechanism for retaining the heat in (or out of) the body. These are countercurrent exchange systems with the same fluid, usually blood, in a circuit, used for both directions of flow.
Reindeer have specialized counter-current vascular heat exchange in their nasal passages. Temperature gradient along the nasal mucosa is under physiological control. Incoming cold air is warmed by body heat before entering the lungs and water is condensed from the expired air and captured before the reindeer's breath is exhaled, then used to moisten dry incoming air and possibly be absorbed into the blood through the mucous membranes. Like moose, caribou have specialized noses featuring nasal turbinate bones that dramatically increase the surface area within the nostrils.
Hooves
The reindeer has large feet with crescent-shaped cloven hooves for walking in snow or swamps. According to the Species at Risk Public Registry (SARA), woodland
"Caribou have large feet with four toes. In addition to two small ones, called "dew claws," they have two large, crescent-shaped toes that support most of their weight and serve as shovels when digging for food under snow. These large concave hooves offer stable support on wet, soggy ground and on crusty snow. The pads of the hoof change from a thick, fleshy shape in the summer to become hard and thin in the winter months, reducing the animal's exposure to the cold ground. Additional winter protection comes from the long hair between the "toes"; it covers the pads so the caribou walks only on the horny rim of the hooves."
— SARA 2014
Reindeer hooves adapt to the season: in the summer, when the tundra is soft and wet, the footpads become sponge-like and provide extra traction. In the winter, the pads shrink and tighten, exposing the rim of the hoof, which cuts into the ice and crusted snow to keep it from slipping. This also enables them to dig down (an activity known as "cratering") through the snow to their favourite food, a lichen known as reindeer lichen (Cladonia rangiferina).
Size
The females (or "cows" as they are often called) usually measure 162–205 cm (64–81 in) in length and weigh 80–120 kg (180–260 lb). The males (or "bulls" as they are often called) are typically larger (to an extent which varies between the different species and subspecies), measuring 180–214 cm (71–84 in) in length and usually weighing 159–182 kg (351–401 lb). Exceptionally large bulls have weighed as much as 318 kg (701 lb). Weight varies drastically between the seasons, with bulls losing as much as 40% of their pre-rut weight.
The shoulder height is usually 85 to 150 cm (33 to 59 in), and the tail is 14 to 20 cm (5.5 to 7.9 in) long.
The reindeer from Svalbard are the smallest of all. They are also relatively short-legged and may have a shoulder height of as little as 80 cm (31 in), thereby following Allen's rule.
Clicking sound
The knees of many species and subspecies of reindeer are adapted to produce a clicking sound as they walk. The sounds originate in the tendons of the knees and may be audible from several hundred meters away. The frequency of the knee-clicks is one of a range of signals that establish relative positions on a dominance scale among reindeer. "Specifically, loud knee-clicking is discovered to be an honest signal of body size, providing an exceptional example of the potential for non-vocal acoustic communication in mammals." The clicking sound made by reindeer as they walk is caused by small tendons slipping over bone protuberances (sesamoid bones) in their feet. The sound is made when a reindeer is walking or running, occurring when the full weight of the foot is on the ground or just after it is relieved of the weight.
Eyes
A study by researchers from University College London in 2011 revealed that reindeer can see light with wavelengths as short as 320 nm (i.e. in the ultraviolet range), considerably below the human threshold of 400 nm. It is thought that this ability helps them to survive in the Arctic, because many objects that blend into the landscape in light visible to humans, such as urine and fur, produce sharp contrasts in ultraviolet. It has been proposed that UV flashes on power lines are responsible for reindeer avoiding power lines because "...in darkness these animals see power lines not as dim, passive structures but, rather, as lines of flickering light stretching across the terrain."
In 2023, researchers studying reindeer living in Cairngorms National Park, Scotland, suggested that UV visual sensitivity in reindeer helps them detect UV-absorbing lichens against a background of UV-reflecting snows.
The tapetum lucidum of Arctic reindeer eyes changes in color from gold in summer to blue in winter to improve their vision during times of continuous darkness, and perhaps enable them to better spot predators.
Biology and behaviors
Reindeer have developed adaptations for optimal metabolic efficiency during warm months as well as for during cold months. The body composition of reindeer varies highly with the seasons. Of particular interest is the body composition and diet of breeding and non-breeding females between the seasons. Breeding females have more body mass than non-breeding females between the months of March and September with a difference of around 10 kg (22 lb) more than non-breeding females. From November to December, non-breeding females have more body mass than breeding females, as non-breeding females are able to focus their energies towards storage during colder months rather than lactation and reproduction. Body masses of both breeding and non-breeding females peaks in September. During the months of March through April, breeding females have more fat mass than the non-breeding females with a difference of almost 3 kg (6.6 lb). After this, however, non-breeding females on average have a higher body fat mass than do breeding females.
The environmental variations play a large part in reindeer nutrition, as winter nutrition is crucial to adult and neonatal survival rates. Lichens are a staple during the winter months as they are a readily available food source, which reduces the reliance on stored body reserves. Lichens are a crucial part of the reindeer diet; however, they are less prevalent in the diet of pregnant reindeer compared to non-pregnant individuals. The amount of lichen in a diet is found more in non-pregnant adult diets than pregnant individuals due to the lack of nutritional value. Although lichens are high in carbohydrates, they are lacking in essential proteins that vascular plants provide. The amount of lichen in a diet decreases in latitude, which results in nutritional stress being higher in areas with low lichen abundance.
In a study of seasonal light-dark cycles on sleep patterns of female reindeer, researchers performed non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) on reindeer kept in a stable at the UiT The Arctic University of Norway. The EEG recordings showed that: the more time reindeer spend ruminating, the less time they spend in non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM sleep); and reindeer's brainwaves during rumination resemble the brainwaves present during NREM sleep. These results suggest that, by reducing the time requirement for NREM sleep, reindeer are able to spend more time feeding during the summer months, when food is abundant.
Reproduction and life cycle
Reindeer mate in late September to early November, and the gestation period is about 228–234 days. During the mating season, bulls battle for access to cows. Two bulls will lock each other's antlers together and try to push each other away. The most dominant bulls can collect as many as 15–20 cows to mate with. A bull will stop eating during this time and lose much of his body fat reserves.
To calve, "females travel to isolated, relatively predator-free areas such as islands in lakes, peatlands, lake-shores, or tundra." As females select the habitat for the birth of their calves, they are warier than males. Dugmore noted that, in their seasonal migrations, the herd follows a female for that reason. Newborns weigh on average 6 kg (13 lb).[148] In May or June, the calves are born. After 45 days, the calves are able to graze and forage, but continue suckling until the following autumn when they become independent from their mothers.
Bulls live four years less than the cows, whose maximum longevity is about 17 years. Cows with a normal body size and who have had sufficient summer nutrition can begin breeding anytime between the ages of 1 and 3 years. When a cow has undergone nutritional stress, it is possible for her to not reproduce for the year. Dominant bulls, those with larger body size and antler racks, inseminate more than one cow a season.
Social structure, migration and range
Some populations of North American caribou; for example, many herds in the barren-ground caribou subspecies and some woodland caribou in Ungava and northern Labrador, migrate the farthest of any terrestrial mammal, traveling up to 5,000 km (3,000 mi) a year, and covering 1,000,000 km2 (400,000 sq mi). Other North American populations, the boreal woodland caribou for example, are largely sedentary. The European populations are known to have shorter migrations. Island populations, such as the Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard reindeer and the Peary caribou, make local movements both within and among islands. Migrating reindeer can be negatively affected by parasite loads. Severely infected individuals are weak and probably have shortened lifespans, but parasite levels vary between populations. Infections create an effect known as culling: infected migrating animals are less likely to complete the migration.
Normally travelling about 19–55 km (12–34 mi) a day while migrating, the caribou can run at speeds of 60–80 km/h (37–50 mph).[2] Young calves can already outrun an Olympic sprinter when only 1 day old. During the spring migration, smaller herds will group together to form larger herds of 50,000 to 500,000 animals, but during autumn migrations, the groups become smaller and the reindeer begin to mate. During winter, reindeer travel to forested areas to forage under the snow. By spring, groups leave their winter grounds to go to the calving grounds. A reindeer can swim easily and quickly, normally at about 6.5 km/h (4.0 mph) but, if necessary, at 10 km/h (6.2 mph) and migrating herds will not hesitate to swim across a large lake or broad river.
The barren-ground caribou form large herds and undertake lengthy seasonal migrations from winter feeding grounds in taiga to spring calving grounds and summer range in the tundra. The migrations of the Porcupine herd of barren-ground caribou are among the longest of any mammal. Greenland caribou, found in southwestern Greenland, are "mixed migrators" and many individuals do not migrate; those that do migrate less than 60 km. Unlike the individual-tending mating system, aggregated rutting, synchronized calving and aggregated post-calving of barren-ground caribou, Greenland caribou have a harem-defense mating system and dispersed calving and they do not aggregate.
Although most wild tundra reindeer migrate between their winter range in taiga and summer range in tundra, some ecotypes or herds are more or less sedentary. Novaya Zemlya reindeer (R. t. pearsoni) formerly wintered on the mainland and migrated across the ice to the islands for summer, but only a few now migrate. Finnish forest reindeer (R. t. fennicus) were formerly distributed in most of the coniferous forest zones south of the tree line, including some mountains, but are now spottily distributed within this zone.
As an adaptation to their Arctic environment, they have lost their circadian rhythm.
Distribution and habitat
Originally, the reindeer was found in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Greenland, Russia, Mongolia and northern China north of the 50th latitude. In North America, it was found in Canada, Alaska, and the northern contiguous United States from Maine to Washington. In the 19th century, it was still present in southern Idaho. Even in historical times, it probably occurred naturally in Ireland, and it is believed to have lived in Scotland until the 12th century, when the last reindeer were hunted in Orkney. During the Late Pleistocene Epoch, reindeer occurred further south in North America, such as in Nevada, Tennessee, and Alabama, and as far south as Spain in Europe Today, wild reindeer have disappeared from these areas, especially from the southern parts, where it vanished almost everywhere. Large populations of wild reindeer are still found in Norway, Finland, Siberia, Greenland, Alaska and Canada.
According to Grubb (2005), Rangifer is "circumboreal in the tundra and taiga" from "Svalbard, Norway, Finland, Russia, Alaska (USA) and Canada including most Arctic islands, and Greenland, south to northern Mongolia, China (Inner Mongolia), Sakhalin Island, and USA (northern Idaho and Great Lakes region)." Reindeer were introduced to, and are feral in, "Iceland, Kerguelen Islands, South Georgia Island, Pribilof Islands, St. Matthew Island": a free-ranging semi-domesticated herd is also present in Scotland.
There is strong regional variation in Rangifer herd size. There are large population differences among individual herds and the size of individual herds has varied greatly since 1970. The largest of all herds (in Taimyr, Russia) has varied between 400,000 and 1,000,000; the second largest herd (at the George River in Canada) has varied between 28,000 and 385,000.
While Rangifer is a widespread and numerous genus in the northern Holarctic, being present in both tundra and taiga (boreal forest), by 2013, many herds had "unusually low numbers" and their winter ranges in particular were smaller than they used to be. Caribou and reindeer numbers have fluctuated historically, but many herds are in decline across their range. This global decline is linked to climate change for northern migratory herds and industrial disturbance of habitat for non-migratory herds. Barren-ground caribou are susceptible to the effects of climate change due to a mismatch in the phenological process between the availability of food during the calving period.
In November 2016, it was reported that more than 81,000 reindeer in Russia had died as a result of climate change. Longer autumns, leading to increased amounts of freezing rain, created a few inches of ice over lichen, causing many reindeer to starve to death.
Diet.
Reindeer are ruminants, having a four-chambered stomach. They mainly eat lichens in winter, especially reindeer lichen (Cladonia rangiferina); they are the only large mammal able to metabolize lichen owing to specialised bacteria and protozoa in their gut. They are also the only animals (except for some gastropods) in which the enzyme lichenase, which breaks down lichenin to glucose, has been found. However, they also eat the leaves of willows and birches, as well as sedges and grasses.
Reindeer are osteophagous; they are known to gnaw and partly consume shed antlers as a dietary supplement and in some extreme cases will cannibalise each other's antlers before shedding. There is also some evidence to suggest that on occasion, especially in the spring when they are nutritionally stressed, they will feed on small rodents (such as lemmings), fish (such as the Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus)), and bird eggs. Reindeer herded by the Chukchis have been known to devour mushrooms enthusiastically in late summer.
During the Arctic summer, when there is continuous daylight, reindeer change their sleeping pattern from one synchronised with the sun to an ultradian pattern, in which they sleep when they need to digest food.
Predators.
A variety of predators prey heavily on reindeer, including overhunting by people in some areas, which contributes to the decline of populations.
Golden eagles prey on calves and are the most prolific hunter on the calving grounds. Wolverines will take newborn calves or birthing cows, as well as (less commonly) infirm adults.
Brown bears and polar bears prey on reindeer of all ages but, like wolverines, are most likely to attack weaker animals, such as calves and sick reindeer, since healthy adult reindeer can usually outpace a bear. The gray wolf is the most effective natural predator of adult reindeer and sometimes takes large numbers, especially during the winter. Some gray wolf packs, as well as individual grizzly bears in Canada, may follow and live off of a particular reindeer herd year-round.
In 2020, scientists on Svalbard witnessed, and were able to film for the first time, a polar bear attack reindeer, driving one into the ocean, where the polar bear caught up with and killed it. The same bear successfully repeated this hunting technique the next day. On Svalbard, reindeer remains account for 27.3% in polar bear scats, suggesting that they "may be a significant part of the polar bear's diet in that area".
Additionally, as carrion, reindeer may be scavenged opportunistically by red and Arctic foxes, various species of eagles, hawks and falcons, and common ravens.
Bloodsucking insects, such as mosquitoes, black flies, and especially the reindeer warble fly or reindeer botfly (Hypoderma tarandi) and the reindeer nose botfly (Cephenemyia trompe), are a plague to reindeer during the summer and can cause enough stress to inhibit feeding and calving behaviors. An adult reindeer will lose perhaps about 1 L (0.22 imp gal; 0.26 US gal) of blood to biting insects for every week it spends in the tundra. The population numbers of some of these predators is influenced by the migration of reindeer. Tormenting insects keep caribou on the move, searching for windy areas like hilltops and mountain ridges, rock reefs, lakeshore and forest openings, or snow patches that offer respite from the buzzing horde. Gathering in large herds is another strategy that caribou use to block insects.
Reindeer are good swimmers and, in one case, the entire body of a reindeer was found in the stomach of a Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus), a species found in the far North Atlantic.
Other threats
White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) commonly carry meningeal worm or brainworm (Parelaphostrongylus tenuis), a nematode parasite that causes reindeer, moose (Alces alces), elk (Cervus canadensis), and mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) to develop fatal neurological symptoms which include a loss of fear of humans. White-tailed deer that carry this worm are partially immune to it.
Changes in climate and habitat beginning in the 20th century have expanded range overlap between white-tailed deer and caribou, increasing the frequency of infection within the reindeer population. This increase in infection is a concern for wildlife managers. Human activities, such as "clear-cutting forestry practices, forest fires, and the clearing for agriculture, roadways, railways, and power lines," favor the conversion of habitats into the preferred habitat of the white-tailed deer – "open forest interspersed with meadows, clearings, grasslands, and riparian flatlands." Towards the end of the Soviet Union, there was increasingly open admission from the Soviet government that reindeer numbers were being negatively affected by human activity, and that this must be remediated especially by supporting reindeer breeding by native herders.
Conservation
Current status
While overall widespread and numerous, some reindeer species and subspecies are rare and three subspecies have already become extinct. As of 2015, the IUCN has classified the reindeer as Vulnerable due to an observed population decline of 40% over the last +25 years. According to IUCN, Rangifer tarandus as a species is not endangered because of its overall large population and its widespread range.
In North America, the Queen Charlotte Islands caribou and the East Greenland caribou both became extinct in the early 20th century, the Peary caribou is designated as Endangered, the boreal woodland caribou is designated as Threatened and some individual populations are endangered as well. While the barren-ground caribou is not designated as Threatened, many individual herds — including some of the largest — are declining and there is much concern at the local level. Grant's caribou, a small, pale subspecies endemic to the western end of the Alaska Peninsula and the adjacent islands, has not been assessed as to its conservation status.
The status of the Dolphin-Union "herd" was upgraded to Endangered in 2017. In NWT, Dolphin-Union caribou were listed as Special Concern under the NWT Species at Risk (NWT) Act (2013).
Both the Selkirk Mountains caribou (Southern Mountain population DU9) and the Rocky Mountain caribou (Central Mountain population DU8) are classified as Endangered in Canada in regions such as southeastern British Columbia at the Canada–United States border, along the Columbia and Kootenay Rivers and around Kootenay Lake. Rocky Mountain caribou are extirpated from Banff National Park, but a small population remains in Jasper National Park and in mountain ranges to the northwest into British Columbia. Montane caribou are now considered extirpated in the contiguous United States, including Washington and Idaho. Osborn's caribou (Northern Mountain population DU7) is classified as Threatened in Canada.
In Eurasia, the Sakhalin reindeer is extinct (and has been replaced by domestic reindeer) and reindeer on most of the Novaya Zemlya islands have also been replaced by domestic reindeer, although some wild reindeer still persist on the northern islands. Many Siberian tundra reindeer herds have declined, some dangerously, but the Taymir herd remains strong and in total about 940,000 wild Siberian tundra reindeer were estimated in 2010.
There is strong regional variation in Rangifer herd size. By 2013, many caribou herds in North America had "unusually low numbers" and their winter ranges in particular were smaller than they used to be. Caribou numbers have fluctuated historically, but many herds are in decline across their range. There are many factors contributing to the decline in numbers.
Boreal woodland caribou
Ongoing human development of their habitat has caused populations of boreal woodland caribou to disappear from their original southern range. In particular, boreal woodland caribou were extirpated in many areas of eastern North America in the beginning of the 20th century.
This Brainwave Amplifier is installed at the Wallenberg Hall at Stanford University. If you stand under it and the machine is activated, your IQ will be enhanced a million fold, and you will achieve superconsciousness, and understand everything there is to understand, and know everything there is to know. You will comprehend the entire universe as a spectacular, single mathematical equation.
Unfortunately, the effect lasts only for a fraction of a second, after which it's gone, and you return back to your normal existence. You will be left with a feeling of having experienced something unbelievably wonderful, but not remembering what it was.
Unfortunately, there is also another side effect: every time you go through this, it drains about 20 IQ points off you, so repeated use can quickly make you very dumb.
I don't think photography or visitors were allowed in this place, but this made for a nice photo, so I took the picture and got out before anyone saw me and called campus security (hey, they might have seized my camera, you know!!!)
OK, OK, that was a yarn. It is actually an audio player/speaker with a sound reflector, so only the person who stands directly under it can hear the sound. Speakers like this are used at museums and exhibitions where a large number of items are on display, with self-playing commentaries.
Leica M9 + 50mm Noctilux, @ f/2
(L1000939)
This was 1984 and a caravan we had booked in Rhyl for a second year running to act as a base for our North Wales and Pennine peak moves. There were about 500 caravans on this site all looking the same and we were finding it a bit difficult to locate ours from staggering back after doing the 22.38 from Manchester Vic and consuming a shed load of beer. I had the brainwave of putting a traffic cone on our caravan to identify it as the numbers on the side were miniscule and the site was not well illunminated. Great idea. Or so I thought. Kev McCarthy had other ideas and a few nights later when Trowbridge and I had lingered on behind the others entertaining some local lasses, we made our way back to the caravan homing in on the cone. The door was locked. Strange. We kept on pulling the handle, then knocking on the door until this became frantic banging on the caravan side thinking the other four had dossed out in a stupor. Then some laughter punctuated the night air from an open caravan window in the next row where McCarthy was leaning out guffawing with the others. Yes he'd put the traffic cone on another caravan. What a wag. Thankfully the other caravan was empty although they didn't know that. Could have ended a lot worse.
Unfortunately Cancer touches most of us at some point so I wanted to make a cake for Marie Curie Cancer Care. I visited their website for inspiration and found out that they were holding a nationwide Swimathon this weekend.
I had a cake brainwave. I love the old Esther Williams films so with the help of Renshaw Napier a national Sugar Company and Jane Asher.com who donated all the icing, and tools I designed and made this cake.
Marie Curie were so thrilled with the cake that they asked me to take it to the launch of Swimathon 2011 which was held at London Fields Lido in Hackney last Wednesday. The Cake will now be auctioned at the Leeds Swimathon which is being held next weekend at Leeds Aquatic Centre.
I created the design for these cat frames (look closely) and sent them to Shapeways for 3D printing in sparkly alumide.
The pendant visualises EEG attention (red) and meditation (green) data and visualises it on this LED matrix in real time. Using a Mindwave Mobile, Bluetooth dongle and Shrimp microcontroller.
I've built this for use in excruciating social situations such at conferences, networking, bars, etc. I'm interested in extending our emotive state by displaying if we're paying attention to whom we're speaking to or if our thoughts / attention is drifting off to the canapes or our to-do list. It's a mischievous device, read more about it here rainycatz.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/eeg-data-visualising-p...
Play the second qualifier of the Brainwave Quiz for a chance to win an Apple iPod and 100 other exciting prizes!
Qualifier #2 quiz dates:
18th November, 2011 - 20th November 2011
Meritnation's Brainwave Quiz finals with a host of exciting prizes such as Apple iPods, Philips MP3 Players, Pen Drives & lots more
Applect Learning Systems Pvt. Ltd.
A-221, Okhla Phase - I, New Delhi - 110020
Ph: 011-40705070, 66446700
Fax: 011-47195310
Email: help@meritNation.com
20140426_0035_1D3-115 Kayaker (SH 01)
A kayaker heads into Taylors Mistake in a Brainwave kayak.
Scavenger Hunt 101 - SH01
#5528
A few weeks ago we hosted an outreach event in collaboration with UCL Engineering department and the Royal Institution.
We set the children a brief entitled: Design for Disabilities.
Disability is being transformed by engineering: new wheelchairs, hearing aids, better prosthetics and smart bandages are all making the disabled more able to take part in society.
Spectacles are a product designed to aid vision these are now much more of a fashion accessory. Why shouldn’t hearing aids be as fashionable as eyewear?
In June last year the BBC trailed a low-cost brainwave-reading headset to control iplayer. It allowed users to select programes without lifting a finger. They headset uses two sensors; one that rests on the forehead, and another clips to the ears, these measure the brains electrical signals.
A chip in your brain can control a robotic arm.
Oscar Pistorius was one of the first double amputee to win an able-bodied race. During the 2012 Summer Olympics to win a medal in the mens 400m. Did Oscar’s carbon-fibre running blades give him an unfair advantage over other able-bodied competitors? Did this technology, the International Olympics Committee asked, take him beyond normal human limits?
The brief was to design and prototype a product in this market sector.