hstòria natural
Insects that give us wings
Although insects generally produce rejection and we associate them with annoying or harmful bugs, they are really fundamental animals for the planet since they pollinate most flowers (including our crops), eliminate manure and corpses, they are key in many trophic chains and could even serve as food. The following spoke: Jorge Mederos and Gloria Masó, […]
Prevent avalanches
The reporter of the program Pere Renom ascends with skis of mountain to the Cap des Clòsos, a summit of the Valley of Aran of 2.417 meters of altitude, opening trace through the snow. He is accompanied by two experienced mountaineers, one of whom, Ivan Afonso, survived an avalanche 20 years ago. From this experience […]
De-extinction: to revive a species
In Masjoan at Espinelves (Girona) there is a collection with more than 250 species of stuffed birds, gathered by the naturalist Marià Masferrer Rierola in the late nineteenth century. Among the various species there is the Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), a bird native to the United States, which was extinct in 1918 by hunting and […]
Fleas, ticks and bed bugs
Fleas, ticks and bedbugs are hematophagous invertebrates, that’s blood-eaters. Each has its own particular life cycle and preferences when itching. Apart from causing annoyance, they can transmit diseases of a certain severity like Lyme, and in exceptional cases, even to be mortal. The following spoke: Joaquim Castellà, parasitologist of the Department of Animal Health and […]
Laia, a branch in human evolution
The evolution up to Homo sapiens is a puzzle of many pieces that is intertwined in the past and we still have much to discover. In 2011, at the Can Mata dump, at Hostalets de Pierola, a piece of this puzzle was found: the fossil remains of a primate distant relative of humans. The specimen was […]
Pantry of Fall
Typical autumn products are mushrooms and chestnuts, but actually the list includes many others, such as the strawberry tree, the hackberry, the rose hip, the jujube, the loquat or the rowanberry. We will learn to recognize them. We will also discover that humans are not the only ones to make pantry, gray dormouse also makes. […]
Montsant, peace and silence
The range of Montsant is located away from main roads and has no road and no track that passes. This makes it particularly quiet. For this reason it is a refuge for very sensitive species such as Bonelli’s eagle, the native crayfish, several bats or yew forests. It also locates Somereta an endemic insect species […]
Fascinated by cats
We will learn to better understand the behavior of cats in order to improve coexistence, we will see how manage the colonies of feral and abandoned cats, we will understand the possible origin of the expression “to look for three feet of cat”, and we will know purebred cats with more than a century pedigree. […]
Hunt with hunters
We will hunt with bow and arrows to experience the difficulty of the original hunting techniques, and we will discover the latest technological innovation with the compound bow. Also we will take advantage of the innate predatory ability of dogs, ferrets and falcons to hunt woodcocks, rabbits and partridges. And we will understand why the […]
Evolution, after Darwin’s footsteps
Charles Darwin proposed natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, inspired by the finches of the Galapagos islands, fossils of Patagonia, or domestic pigeons. In Catalonia can be found completely equivalent examples: Pyrenean cave beetles, rodent fossils, or a new breed of mini-pigs intended for biomedical research.
