links i liked: plant consciousness; beaks adapt to feeder use; insectary strips on farms, & more

FROM THE LENGTH of birds’ beaks to the favorite plants of the emerald ash borer (not just ash!), to matters of plant consciousness and more: Those are among the latest links that caught my attention and I wanted to share.are birds’ beaks adapting to birdfeeders?

WE ALL KNOW that living organisms adapt over generations to their environments, but this recent example made me smile: A bird species in the U.K. (the great tit, above) have developed longer beaks in recent decades, Oxford University reports, perhaps as a result of their attraction to bird feeders provided by humans. (Photo from Wikipedia by Shirley Clarke of Fordingbridge Camera Club.)

ebird and ‘all about birds’ sites have new look

SPEAKING OF BIRDS: My go-to resource for information on them, All About Birds from Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has had a redesign (look at the new species profile page for cedar waxwings, for instance). So has its eBird.org, the online checklist for reporting bird sightings. Hint: It’s a great time to join eBird if you aren’t already a member, and start sharing data on who you see when and where. The video above explains more.

plants and (un)consciousness

WHAT HAPPENS when you etherize a plant, it turns out, is not unlike what happens when you etherize a person: It’s like hitting a pause button. Research led by the University of Bonn in Germany on mimosas, Venus flytraps, sundews and peas analyzed the plants’ responses to anesthesia. What can anesthetizing plants teach us about how anesthesia works, something that is not yet fully understood? An article in “The New York Times” about the research takes it further, asking are we more like plants than we think—do they, too, have consciousness, if in fact you can knock them unconscious as the

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