The environment in the news tuesday, 3 January 2006

Other Environment News

Xinhua: Inondations en Indonésie : 29 morts et plus de 9 000 sans abri

 Deux jours de pluies torrentielles ont provoqué des inondations et un énorme glissement de terrain dans la ville de Jember, à  environ 800 km à l'est de Jakarta, a précisé le responsable. 

 "Nous avons retroué 29 corps jusqu'à présent. Environ 9 300  villageois sont obligés de loger dans des tentes de réfugiés car  leurs maisons ont ét détruites par les inondations et le  glissement de terrain", a déclaré Edi Susilo, chef du bureau de  presse de la province, dans une interview téléphonique accordée à   Xinhua. 

Il a ajouté que des mesures d'urgence avaient été prises pour  venir en aide aux sinistres. 

 Selon des témoins, au moins trois sous-districts ont été  affectés par cette catastrophe.

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AS rural firefighters braced last night for another day of soaring temperatures across NSW, shattered families returned to sift through the remains of homes destroyed in Sunday's blazes, which are now suspected of being deliberately lit.

On the NSW central coast, Uwe and Goong Oberlander stood amid the ruins of the Horsfield Bay house they decided to buy when they learned Goong was pregnant with their now three-year-old daughter, Tasha.

"These things happen. You just don't think it will happen to you," Mr Oberlander said.

He had tried to reach his newly renovated three-bedroom Kunala Lane house by boat during the fires on Sunday, but arrived too late. "You've got to look forward somehow and just do what you have to do," he said.

The tragedy was compounded by the fact that Mr Oberlander's parents were visiting from Germany and lost all their luggage, passports and tickets in the blaze. "They thought they'd have a better holiday than this," Mr Oberlander said.

Mrs Oberlander said she could not face telling her mother, who was in Thailand, about the tragedy because it came so close to the tsunami anniversary, and because her father had died during the past year.

The Rural Fire Service had teams of investigators working in the Gosford area and in Junee, in southern NSW, yesterday in an effort to discover whether Sunday's fires were deliberately lit.

"We know there were no lightning strikes in either area on Sunday, so the fires were a result of human activity, but we don't yet know if that activity was deliberate," RFS media officer Rebel Talbert said last night.

"At this stage, we can't say for sure because these things take time to process."

Ms Talbert said crews would remain on high alert in the Hunter region of NSW after a revised weather forecast that temperatures would be higher than 30C. "Conditions were much better today and the fires to Sydney's north and at Junee are almost under control," she said.

"But with high temperatures and strong westerly winds now predicted for tomorrow, we will be on full alert."

A total fire ban has been declared for the Greater Hunter area of NSW, north of Sydney.

Sunday's central coast fire hit hard in Wattle Crescent in Phegans Bay, obliterating Trent Caruana's half-renovated pole house among the treetops. Yesterday afternoon when he returned, he found nothing but a pile of rubble.

"It has turned into a major renovation," he said, obviously leaning on his sense of humour. "It's only material things. At least no one was killed."

Eight volunteer firefighters from The Bays Rural Fire Brigade, whose cars were burnt out on Sunday afternoon by the firestorm, were given rental cars by the RFS yesterday until they could get their cars replaced.

Sunday's weather conditions were so hot that they hindered aerial water-bombing operations. Helicrane pilot Hermann Messerli said the air temperature around his helicopter was 42C to 43C. "That made it a bit bumpy. It affects the aircraft's performance. You don't have quite the same power margins," he said.

NSW residents affected by the fierce New Year's Day bushfires have been allocated financial help from the state Government.

Councils will also be eligible for emergency grants to repair damaged infrastructure, such as roads and sporting fields.

"The emergency assistance enables farmers and small businesses in affected areas to get emergency assistance to put them back on their feet," NSW Emergency Services Minister Tony Kelly said yesterday.

"There are also emergency grants for affected community members and assistance for charities and church groups that have suffered losses."

In Western Australia, firefighters were mopping up after a fire north of Perth, which is being treated as suspicious. The fire started near Ledge Point, about 100km north of Perth, about noon (WST). No property was damaged or threatened.

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Los Angeles Times: Rain, Wind Pelt Southern California

A rainstorm packing 40- to 50-mph winds howled across Southern California on Monday, toppling trees and power lines and disrupting light-rail service in Pasadena during the Rose Parade.

The gusts ripped through mountain passes, foothills and valleys most of the day, reaching 96 mph in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Mount Wilson and 62 mph in the Santa Clarita community of Saugus. Even in areas closer to the coast, some gusts were recorded at more than 40 mph.

Emergency officials reported no major flooding, mudslides or wind damage.

Meanwhile, the stormy weather subsided in the Central Valley and Northern California, hammered by several days of rain that led to flooding and landslides. Rain continued throughout Monday, but it was mercifully light and did not swell rivers that had overflowed during the weekend. The Napa River fell to well below flood level, and homeowners and businesses continued to dig out from mud and debris.

Only low-lying Guerneville, on the Russian River in Sonoma County, remained underwater by Monday afternoon. The river had crested at 42 feet late Saturday night but slowly receded to 38 feet by Monday afternoon and was expected to drop below flood level -- 32 feet -- by early this morning, said Mike Edwards, a Sonoma Country spokesman.

Before touring inundated areas around downtown Napa, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday declared a state of emergency in Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Napa, Sacramento, Sonoma and Trinity counties -- paving the way for state and federal relief funds.

"We will do anything and everything to ensure you get as much money as possible," Schwarzenegger told Napa city and county officials at a late-afternoon briefing.

The governor pledged to ask President Bush for money to improve flood-control preparations, including reinforcement of bridges and levees around the state to prevent a New Orleans-type disaster in a major earthquake. He promised to commit state dollars to that effort as well.

Officials in the Napa Valley said the most recent storm could have been far worse but for flood-control improvements undertaken primarily by local governments the last few years. They complained that the federal government had not contributed its share of upfront costs.

The federal government continues "to pay hundreds of millions of dollars over time for relief instead of paying tens of millions to fix the problem," said Barry Martin, a spokesman for Napa County.

Martin estimated that the total remaining cost of protecting the county against a 100-year flood to be $100 million to $125 million.

The governor toured the flooded Napa home of Greg Allen, 37, and Zinaida Beynon, 33. He walked through their living room, where floodwaters rose to four feet, passing furniture propped up on pieces of wood and stepping over wet cardboard lining the floor before looking at the receding flood waters behind the house. He praised the couple and their neighbors for their good spirits and determination to quickly recover from the mess.

Most of the massive flood control system in Sacramento and San Joaquin counties operated without incident, but several levees were threatened and some leaks were reported by the state Department of Water Resources. The system, which includes major dams and 1,600 miles of levees, was battered by one of the wettest Decembers on record in the Northern Sierra Nevada watershed -- nearly 26 inches of rain, according to initial estimates.

A levee breach Monday forced the evacuation of about 100 residents near Collinsville, said Jeanie Esajian of the Department of Water Resources. Only two homes were reported flooded as of Monday afternoon, she said. A 1,000-foot breach also was reported Monday on remote Van Sickle Island in the Suisun Marsh area of Solano County, a roadless area accessible only by boat, where just a few residents live.

Southern California and the Central Coast took the brunt of the storm's beating on Monday. In Pasadena, the strong gusts loosened scaffolding from a construction site, and it hung perilously over the Metro Gold Line tracks near the Del Mar Station, prompting officials to halt service between Lake Avenue and Mission Street and shut down three stations.

Two of the stations, Del Mar and Memorial Park, were the ones closest to the Tournament of Roses Parade. They were shut down about two hours after the parade began, just when many people were leaving to ride the rails home.

Several thousand parade-goers and other riders were affected, some delayed by about an hour as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority dispatched 30 buses to transport them around the shut-down part of the line.

But MTA spokesman Bill Heard said it could have been worse, because a lot of rain-soaked people had already left the soggy parade route before the Gold Line stations were shut down.

"The bad weather actually helped us out," Heard said. "A lot of people started leaving the parade before the parade began because of the terrible weather. There was a steady stream of people leaving during the parade."

The National Weather Service reported that a line of thunderstorms and strong winds moved rapidly across the San Gabriel Valley at about noon. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reported scattered power outages there and at least one traffic light that temporarily went out. Downed power lines and trees were reported in Claremont.

By evening, the storm, which was generated in the tumultuous waters of the Gulf of Alaska, was heading out of Southern California. Clear, dry skies and warm temperatures were forecast for the rest of the week.

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Associated Press: Fans, float decorators ready for wet Rose Parade in Pasadena

By Peter Prengaman

2.1.2006

PASADENA – Hopes for a dry Rose Parade appeared all but washed away Monday morning as rain fell steadily along the parade route and forecasts called for downpours throughout the day.

Despite the conditions, event organizers said the event would begin as planned at 8 a.m. PST.

Rose Queen Camille Clark, who turned 18 on Monday, was draped in a clear poncho so spectators and viewers will be able to see her white gown.

"They are going to be a little wet on the bottom," Clark said. "It's still magical. It's my birthday. It's a wonderful day for me."

Rain also did not keep hundreds of die-hard fans from arriving Sunday night carrying umbrellas and tarps to camp out along the Rose Parade route in preparation for what could be the first rain-drenched parade in 51 years.

Parade-goers were deciding whether to spend the night guarding curbside seats along Colorado Boulevard or to stake claim a few feet back where they could be protected from the rain.

"If it rains, everybody is going to want this spot," said Jason Loucks, 26, sitting beneath the awning of a bar. "I bet I could even sell it."

Meanwhile, decorators finished up flowering the floats and made last-minute adjustments to protect electronic equipment inside the slow-moving vehicles in case it rains.

Judges scrutinized the parade's 48 floats early Monday before bestowing awards on half the entries.

The Sweepstakes award – the parade's top honor for the float with the "most beautiful entry with outstanding floral presentation and design" – went, fittingly, to the float sponsored by the FTD flower delivery company.

The last soggy Rose Parade was in 1955. The Tournament of Roses is traditionally held on New Year's morning, but a never-on-Sunday rule pushed the 117th parade to Monday.

Cities such as Pasadena located in valleys can expect up to 4 inches of rain, while up to 6 inches could fall in the mountains, said Jamie Smith, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Oxnard. The forecast also predicts wind gusts up to 45 mph.

Cindy Wolowic, a volunteer who came from Orlando, Florida, to help decorate a float promoting organ donations, said the forecast doesn't worry her.

"I live in Florida so I'm used to the weathermen trying to make a story out of nothing," said Wolowic, 43, who added that many dire hurricane predictions in the Caribbean never happen. "I don't think it's even going to rain."

This year's parade, titled "It's Magical," will have retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as grand marshall. (Another Supreme Court Justice – Earl Warren – served as grand marshall the last time rain fell on the parade.)

Some of the floats will include a 100-foot Statue of Liberty replica and a vacation paradise with cascading waterfalls. For the first time in its history, the festivities will include performances by artists like Grammy-winning singer LeAnn Rimes, singer Toni Braxton and magician Lance Burton.

Still, organizers are not taking any chances. Hundreds of plastic ponchos for band musicians and parade volunteers have been ordered, horses will be fitted with skid-resistant shoes, and float-builders are ready to roll out sheets of plastic to protect orchids and other delicate flowers.

The glue that holds decorations to the floats is waterproof and the floats are designed to withstand 50 mph winds.

But a major concern is the electronic equipment inside the floats, used for music and as a loud speaker, said Larry Palmer, spokesman for Phoenix Decoration Company, which has 22 floats in the parade. Equipment was being covered with plastic, he said.

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Houston Chronicle:Threat of fire likely to grow

Dry and windy forecast means more of Texas made vulnerable

A break in heavy winds allowed Texas firefighters to beat back massive blazes that ravaged two small communities, officials said Monday. But the fire threat was expected to reintensify this week, and more land is growing vulnerable the longer it stays dry.

Strong winds on New Year's Day helped fan a rash of grass fires, mostly over the northern half of Texas.

One blaze burned Ringgold, a hamlet east of Wichita Falls, and another razed Kokomo, which is between Abilene and Fort Worth, according to the Texas Forest Service. At least 67 homes were destroyed by those two fires.

Grass fires in Texas over the past week have killed three people and wiped out more than 300 homes, authorities said. Fires also have caused severe damage in neighboring New Mexico and Oklahoma, where one person was killed.

However, residents around Texas who were displaced by fire-related evacuations Sunday were allowed back home Monday — if their homes were still standing.

"Yesterday was a tough day in Texas," said Gov. Rick Perry, who visited the Wichita Falls area Monday. The Ringgold fire also scarred at least 40,000 acres, stretched 17 miles long and threatened nearby Nocona, where a team of 50 fire departments limited damage to its northern outskirts. The fire that hit Kokomo burned at least 35,000 acres and was 35 miles long, Forest Service spokesman Bill Sweet said.

A smaller fire leveled 15 homes near Mineral Wells, Sweet said.

Firefighters, by ground and by air, made headway Monday because of lighter winds, Sweet said.

"(Tuesday) we are planning on having another day of extremely low humidities and high winds," he said. Those conditions could spark even more fires.

Firefighters on Monday afternoon were focusing on two new fires, a 6,000-acre blaze in Erath County and a 37,200-acre fire in Irion County near San Angelo, forcing the closure of State Highway 163 in the sparsely populated area.

All of Texas was expected to remain dry through the week. In fact, the U.S. Hydrometerological Prediction Center said the nation's most fire-prone states — Texas and Oklahoma — were the only two of the contiguous 48 states not forecast to see rain through Saturday.

As conditions stay dry, more of Texas is threatened. Heavily forested East Texas has not seen major fires yet, but officials are on alert because trees downed by Hurricane Rita can act as kindling.

"Look for fire activity in Southeast Texas to pick up as fuels are approaching critical fuel dryness," Texas Forest Service fire behavior analyst Brad Smith wrote in a report last week. "A combination of cured grass fuels and dry Hurricane Rita debris is a situation we have not yet experienced. It is a situation that we have not been looking forward to."

That situation may have arrived. Jasper volunteer firefighter Ronnie Pearson said Monday his East Texas department was fighting two to three grass fires a day.

Jasper firefighters extinguished a grass fire Monday afternoon that almost torched a fully stocked fireworks stand.

"Right now, I think (rain) would just make it worse," Pearson said, explaining that a moderate shower probably wouldn't reduce fire risk but would create mud that would just make his job harder.

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By NATALIE ANGIER

3.1.2006
If the mere sight of Tai Shan, the roly-poly, goofily gamboling masked bandit of a panda cub now on view at the National Zoo isn't enough to make you melt, then maybe the crush of his human onlookers, the furious flashing of their cameras and the heated gasps of their mass rapture will do the trick.

"Omigosh, look at him! He is too cute!"

"How adorable! I wish I could just reach in there and give him a big squeeze!"

"He's so fuzzy! I've never seen anything so cute in my life!"

A guard's sonorous voice rises above the burble. "OK, folks, five oohs and aahs per person, then it's time to let someone else step up front."

The 6-month-old, 25-pound Tai Shan - whose name is pronounced tie-SHON and means, for no obvious reason, "peaceful mountain" - is the first surviving giant panda cub ever born at the Smithsonian's zoo. And though the zoo's adult pandas have long been among Washington's top tourist attractions, the public debut of the baby in December has unleashed an almost bestial frenzy here. Some 13,000 timed tickets to see the cub were snapped up within two hours of being released, and almost immediately began trading on eBay for up to $200 a pair.

Panda mania is not the only reason that 2005 proved an exceptionally cute year. Last summer, a movie about another black-and-white charmer, the emperor penguin, became one of the highest-grossing documentaries of all time. Sales of petite, willfully cute cars like the Toyota Prius and the Mini Cooper soared, while those of noncute sport utility vehicles tanked.

Women's fashions opted for the cute over the sensible or glamorous, with low-slung slacks and skirts and abbreviated blouses contriving to present a customer's midriff as an adorable preschool bulge. Even the too big could be too cute. King Kong's newly reissued face has a squashed baby-doll appeal, and his passion for Naomi Watts ultimately feels like a serious case of puppy love - hopeless, heartbreaking, cute.

Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.

The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.

The greater the number of cute cues that an animal or object happens to possess, or the more exaggerated the signals may be, the louder and more italicized are the squeals provoked.

Cuteness is distinct from beauty, researchers say, emphasizing rounded over sculptured, soft over refined, clumsy over quick. Beauty attracts admiration and demands a pedestal; cuteness attracts affection and demands a lap. Beauty is rare and brutal, despoiled by a single pimple. Cuteness is commonplace and generous, content on occasion to cosegregate with homeliness.

Observing that many Floridians have an enormous affection for the manatee, which looks like an overfertilized potato with a sock puppet's face, Roger L. Reep of the University of Florida said it shone by grace of contrast. "People live hectic lives, and they may be feeling overwhelmed, but then they watch this soft and slow-moving animal, this gentle giant, and they see it turn on its back to get its belly scratched," said Dr. Reep, author with Robert K. Bonde of "The Florida Manatee: Biology and Conservation."

"That's very endearing," said Dr. Reep. "So even though a manatee is 3 times your size and 20 times your weight, you want to get into the water beside it."

Even as they say a cute tooth has rational roots, scientists admit they are just beginning to map its subtleties and source. New studies suggest that cute images stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain aroused by sex, a good meal or psychoactive drugs like cocaine, which could explain why everybody in the panda house wore a big grin.

At the same time, said Denis Dutton, a philosopher of art at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, the rapidity and promiscuity of the cute response makes the impulse suspect, readily overridden by the angry sense that one is being exploited or deceived.

"Cute cuts through all layers of meaning and says, Let's not worry about complexities, just love me," said Dr. Dutton, who is writing a book about Darwinian aesthetics. "That's where the sense of cheapness can come from, and the feeling of being manipulated or taken for a sucker that leads many to reject cuteness as low or shallow."

Quick and cheap make cute appealing to those who want to catch the eye and please the crowd. Advertisers and product designers are forever toying with cute cues to lend their merchandise instant appeal, mixing and monkeying with the vocabulary of cute to keep the message fresh and fetching.

That market-driven exercise in cultural evolution can yield bizarre if endearing results, like the blatantly ugly Cabbage Patch dolls, Furbies, the figgy face of E.T., the froggy one of Yoda. As though the original Volkswagen Beetle wasn't considered cute enough, the updated edition was made rounder and shinier still.

"The new Beetle looks like a smiley face," said Miles Orvell, professor of American studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. "By this point its origins in Hitler's regime, and its intended resemblance to a German helmet, is totally forgotten."

Whatever needs pitching, cute can help. A recent study at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at the University of Michigan showed that high school students were far more likely to believe antismoking messages accompanied by cute cartoon characters like a penguin in a red jacket or a smirking polar bear than when the warnings were delivered unadorned.

"It made a huge difference," said Sonia A. Duffy, the lead author of the report, which was published in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. "The kids expressed more confidence in the cartoons than in the warnings themselves."

Primal and widespread though the taste for cute may be, researchers say it varies in strength and significance across cultures and eras. They compare the cute response to the love of sugar: everybody has sweetness receptors on the tongue, but some people, and some countries, eat a lot more candy than others.

Experts point out that the cuteness craze is particularly acute in Japan, where it goes by the name "kawaii" and has infiltrated the most masculine of redoubts. Truck drivers display Hello Kitty-style figurines on their dashboards. The police enliven safety billboards and wanted posters with two perky mouselike mascots, Pipo kun and Pipo chan.

Behind the kawaii phenomenon, according to Brian J. McVeigh, a scholar of East Asian studies at the University of Arizona, is the strongly hierarchical nature of Japanese culture. "Cuteness is used to soften up the vertical society," he said, "to soften power relations and present authority without being threatening."

In this country, the use of cute imagery is geared less toward blurring the line of command than toward celebrating America's favorite demographic: the young. Dr. Orvell traces contemporary cute chic to the 1960's, with its celebration of a perennial childhood, a refusal to dress in adult clothes, an inversion of adult values, a love of bright colors and bloopy, cartoony patterns, the Lava Lamp.

Today, it's not enough for a company to use cute graphics in its advertisements. It must have a really cute name as well. "Companies like Google and Yahoo leave no question in your mind about the youthfulness of their founders," said Dr. Orvell.

Madison Avenue may adapt its strategies for maximal tweaking of our inherent baby radar, but babies themselves, evolutionary scientists say, did not really evolve to be cute. Instead, most of their salient qualities stem from the demands of human anatomy and the human brain, and became appealing to a potential caretaker's eye only because infants wouldn't survive otherwise.

Human babies have unusually large heads because humans have unusually large brains. Their heads are round because their brains continue to grow throughout the first months of life, and the plates of the skull stay flexible and unfused to accommodate the development. Baby eyes and ears are situated comparatively far down the face and skull, and only later migrate upward in proportion to the development of bones in the cheek and jaw areas.

Baby eyes are also notably forward-facing, the binocular vision a likely legacy of our tree-dwelling ancestry, and all our favorite Disney characters also sport forward-facing eyes, including the ducks and mice, species that in reality have eyes on the sides of their heads.

The cartilage tissue in an infant's nose is comparatively soft and undeveloped, which is why most babies have button noses. Baby skin sits relatively loose on the body, rather than being taut, the better to stretch for growth spurts to come, said Paul H. Morris, an evolutionary scientist at the University of Portsmouth in England; that lax packaging accentuates the overall roundness of form.

Baby movements are notably clumsy, an amusing combination of jerky and delayed, because learning to coordinate the body's many bilateral sets of large and fine muscle groups requires years of practice. On starting to walk, toddlers struggle continuously to balance themselves between left foot and right, and so the toddler gait consists as much of lateral movement as of any forward momentum.

Researchers who study animals beloved by the public appreciate the human impulse to nurture anything even remotely babylike, though they are at times taken aback by people's efforts to identify with their preferred species.

Take penguins as an example. Some people are so wild for the creatures, said Michel Gauthier-Clerc, a penguin researcher in Arles, France, "they think penguins are mammals and not birds." They love the penguin's upright posture, its funny little tuxedo, the way it waddles as it walks. How like a child playing dress-up!

Endearing as it is, Dr. Gauthier-Clerc explained that the apparent awkwardness of the penguin's march had nothing to do with clumsiness or uncertain balance. Instead, he said, penguins waddle to save energy. A side-to-side walk burns fewer calories than a straightforward stride, and for birds that fast for months and live in a frigid climate, every calorie counts.

As for the penguin's maestro garb, the white front and black jacket suits its aquatic way of life. While submerged in water, the penguin's dark backside is difficult to see from above, camouflaging the penguin from potential predators of air or land. The white chest, by contrast, obscures it from below, protecting it against carnivores and allowing it to better sneak up on fish prey.

The giant panda offers another case study in accidental cuteness. Although it is a member of the bear family, a highly carnivorous clan, the giant panda specializes in eating bamboo.

As it happens, many of the adaptations that allow it to get by on such a tough diet contribute to the panda's cute form, even in adulthood. Inside the bear's large, rounded head, said Lisa Stevens, assistant panda curator at the National Zoo, are the highly developed jaw muscles and the set of broad, grinding molars it needs to crush its way through some 40 pounds of fibrous bamboo plant a day.

When it sits up against a tree and starts picking apart a bamboo stalk with its distinguishing pseudo-thumb, a panda looks like nothing so much like Huckleberry Finn shucking corn. Yet the humanesque posture and paws again are adaptations to its menu. The bear must have its "hands" free and able to shred the bamboo leaves from their stalks.

The panda's distinctive markings further add to its appeal: the black patches around the eyes make them seem winsomely low on its face, while the black ears pop out cutely against the white fur of its temples.

As with the penguin's tuxedo, the panda's two-toned coat very likely serves a twofold purpose. On the one hand, it helps a feeding bear blend peacefully into the dappled backdrop of bamboo. On the other, the sharp contrast between light and dark may serve as a social signal, helping the solitary bears locate each other when the time has come to find the perfect, too-cute mate.

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