Latest news with #NashvilleZoo
Yahoo
a day ago
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Escaped Rutherford zebra being tracked via drone; officials warn public to 'stay clear'
Note: This story has been updated with new information. A deputy used a drone to find an escaped zebra nicknamed "Ed" on social media on the morning of June 6 in a field near the Christiana community, a press release said. "Deputies are tracking the zebra with the drone," the press release from Rutherford County Sheriff's spokeswoman Lisa Marchesoni added. "Thanks to Rutherford County Deputy Ryan Bauer for the video." Rutherford Sheriff's Cpl. Sean White has asked people to avoid the area. 'We don't want to scare the zebra,' White said in the press release. 'We need time to get him to calm down.' The zebra's owner shares the department's concerns that people and cameras are scaring the animal, making efforts to secure it all the more difficult, Marchesoni said. The department has not named the owner publicly. But Marchesoni said the owner did obtain his own professional searchers to look for the zebra. Zebra on the run: Nashville Zoo spokesperson warns 'stay clear of that animal' A cornered zebra can be dangerous, according to Nashville Zoo spokesman Jim Bartoo. "Their kick can crush a lion's skull in defense," said Bartoo, a 25-year staff member. Bartoo recommends people stay clear of the zebra and let experts do their job to corral or tranquilize the animal. "These are not domestic animals," Bartoo said. "They are wild animals. They have a different temperament (than a horse or donkey). They can be aggressive in defending themselves." If authorities are unable to capture the zebra, Bartoo said people should keep an eye out for where the animal may roam and call authorities if they see it. Should the zebra escape again, those who see the wild animal should contact the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office by calling 615-898-7770, Marchesoni said. The runaway animal captured national attention May 31 after it was spotted running along both sides of Interstate 24 between Joe B. Jackson Parkway and Elam Road. The zebra tied up traffic for at least an hour, said Marchesoni, the sheriff's spokeswoman. In the days since, the zebra has sparked many conversations and posts on social media, including memes promoting Middle Tennessee State University sports, local businesses, bumper stickers and even an AI-generated song. The Sheriff's Office has requested help from a veterinarian to assist in the zebra's rescue. The department has noted it will send another update when more information becomes available. This is a developing story. Reach reporter Scott Broden with news tips or questions by emailing him at sbroden@ To support his work with The Daily News Journal, sign up for a digital subscription. This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Zebra rescue in works: Rutherford deputy tracking animal by drone
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nashville, Middle Tennessee to mark Memorial Day with ceremonies, 5Ks, fireworks
Memorial Day events in Middle Tennessee this weekend include patriotic ceremonies, cemetery cleanups, placing flags on the graves of veterans and family-focused gatherings like the Nashville Zoo's Spring Zzzoofari Slumber Campout. Here are some of the top community events to attend through the holiday weekend. Field of Honor (Mt. Juliet, May 22-26): A poignant "Field of Honor" display, with a patriotic formation of 350 flags, will celebrate fallen service members in Mt. Juliet for the 13th year at 22 East Division St. Sponsors can purchase flags in memory of a veteran. Proceeds are given to programs and charities supported by event hosts The Exchange Club of Wilson County and American Legion Post 281. Stones River National Cemetery (May 25, Murfreesboro): Youth groups will place flags on the more than 7,000 gravestones at the Stones River National Cemetery on Saturday. The cemetery will also host a ceremony honoring the fallen soldiers that is open to all visitors May 25 at 1:30 p.m. Nashville National Cemetery (May 26, Nashville): The Department of Veterans Affairs is hosting commemoration ceremonies at roughly 130 of its national cemeteries Memorial Day, including at 11 a.m. at the Nashville National Cemetery. Earlier this week, volunteers cleaned up the Nashville National Cemetery and placed flowers on the graves of the veterans buried there through Project Valor, which was developed by Heroes Vodka to ensure those buried at the Nashville cemetery are properly honored. Memorial Day services will also be held at the Williamson County Veterans Park in Franklin at 10 a.m. and the Cheatham County Veterans Memorial Park at 11 a.m. Memorial Day Dash 5K (Nashville, May 26): The 25th annual Memorial Day Dash 5K begins at 7:30 a.m. May 26 at Adventure Science Center in Nashville. The Nashville City Cemetery Association and the Metro Historical Commission host the run, which starts at the Adventure Science Center and loops through Fort Negley Historic Park and Nashville City Cemetery. Memorial Day Fun Run (Gallatin, May 26): The Memorial Day Fun Run begins at 7 a.m. May 26 in Gallatin on the Station Camp Greenway at the intersection of Bison Trail and Lower Station Camp Creek Road. The event is free, but donations will support the Cumberland Crisis Pregnancy Center. Spring Zzzoofari Slumber Campout (Nashville, May 24): You can camp in the Nashville Zoo on May 24, with activities that night and breakfast the next morning. The event costs $65 for non-members and $45 for members. Ryman Community Day (Nashville, May 25): Tennessee residents can tour the Ryman Auditorium for free on May 25 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. There will also be food trucks, live music, games and family-friendly activities including on-site printmaking from Hatch Show Print. Nashville Shores fireworks (Nashville, May 25): Fireworks are scheduled to begin at dusk, roughly 8:30 p.m., at Nashville Shores on May 25. Hendersonville Hometown Jam (Hendersonville, May 26): Hendersonville Parks and Recreation is hosting a a Memorial Day concert at Veterans Park this Memorial Day beginning at 4 p.m. The show, featuring bluegrass band The Isaacs, is free. Gates open at 3 p.m. Memorial Day Kayak Float (Montgomery Bell State Park, May 26): A relaxing kayak float in Montgomery Bell State Park, about 45 minutes west of Nashville, begins 4:30 p.m. The event costs $15 per person, and you can register online. East Nashville Beer Works Memorial Day Cookout (Nashville, May 26): East Nashville Beer Works is hosting a family-friendly cookout from noon to 10 p.m. with beer brats and hot dogs, as well as their normal full menu. Fat Bottom Brewing (Nashville, May 26): Another family-friendly event at a brewery, Fat Bottom Brewing will open at 11 a.m. on Memorial Day. The brewery will have live music, happy hour specials all day and is giving 50% off to all veterans and active military. There will be a face painter for kids, too. This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Memorial Day 2025: How Nashville, Middle TN will honor holiday
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Flamingos conjure ‘water tornadoes' to trap their prey
A pink flamingo is typically associated with a laid back lifestyle, but the way that these leggy birds with big personalities feed is anything but chill. When they dip their curved necks into the water, the birds use their feet, heads, and beaks to create swirling water tornadoes to efficiently group their prey together and slurp up them up. The findings are detailed in a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). 'Flamingos are actually predators, they are actively looking for animals that are moving in the water, and the problem they face is how to concentrate these animals, to pull them together and feed,' Victor Ortega Jiménez, a study co-author and biologist specializing in biomechanics at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement. 'Think of spiders, which produce webs to trap insects. Flamingos are using vortices to trap animals, like brine shrimp.' In the study, the team from UC Berkley, Georgia Tech, Kennesaw State University in Marietta, Georgia and the Nashville Zoo looked at a group of Chilean flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis) in the Nashville Zoo and 3D printed models of their feet and L-shaped bills. 'Flamingos are super-specialized animals for filter feeding,' Ortega Jiménez said. 'It's not just the head, but the neck, their legs, their feet and all the behaviors they use just to effectively capture these tiny and agile organisms.' Flamingo feet are webbed, but like many wading birds, they are also floppy. When feeding, the birds use their feet to churn up the sediment at the bottom of shallow water. The flamingos then propel the sediment forward with little whorls that they draw up to the surface by jerking their heads upwards like a plungers–creaing these mini water tornadoes. The whole time, the birds' heads stay upside down within the watery vortex, with their angled beaks moving to create smaller vortices that bring the sediment and food up into their mouths. Inside the mouth, the sediment is strained out. [ Related: Why flamingo milk is pink. ] Among birds, flamingo beaks are unique. They are flattened on the angled front end, so that when the head is upside down in the water, the flat portion is still parallel to the bottom. This helps flamingos deploy another technique called skimming. They use their long S-shaped neck to push its head forward while rapidly clapping its beak. The motion creates sheet-like vortices that trap prey. The tiny tornados were strong enough to trap typically agile brine shrimp and microscopic crustaceans called copepods. 'It seems like they are filtering just passive particles, but no, these animals are actually taking animals that are moving,' Ortega Jiménez said. When the team created a 3D model of the L-shaped beak, they found that pulling the head straight upward in the water creates a vortex. This vortex swirling around a vertical axis concentrates food particles at a speed of up to 1.3 feet per second. The fluid principles the team discovered in flamingos could have some engineering applications in the future. It could help engineers develop better systems for concentrating and sucking up tiny particles from water, potentially the ultra prolific microplastics. They could also be applied to better self-cleaning filters or robots that can walk and run in mud the way flamingos can.
New York Times
12-05-2025
- Science
- New York Times
Flamingos Summon Mini-Twisters to Suck Up Prey
If you've ever really looked at how flamingos eat, you know how captivatingly peculiar it is. They bob their inverted heads in the water and do a kind of waddle cha-cha as they inch their way across shallow water, filter-feeding small crustaceans, insects, microscopic algae and other tiny aquatic morsels. Victor Ortega-Jiménez, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, remembers being fascinated by this behavior the first time he saw it in 2019, during a trip with his wife and child to the Atlanta zoo. Ever since, he has been wondering what, exactly, was going on beneath the surface. 'The birds looked beautiful, but the big question for me was, 'What's happening with the hydrodynamic mechanisms involved in flamingos' filter feeding?'' he said. Back home, he was surprised to find no explanation in the scientific literature — so he decided to produce one himself. Several years of meticulous research later, he and his colleagues arrived at a surprising discovery, described Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Flamingos, they found, are active predators that harness the physics of how water flows to sweep up prey and funnel it directly into their mouths. 'We are challenging the idea that flamingos are just passive filter feeders,' Dr. Ortega-Jiménez said. 'Just as spiders produce webs, flamingos produce vortices.' Dr. Ortega-Jiménez's collaborators included three exceptionally cooperative flamingos from the Nashville Zoo: Mattie, Marty and Cayenne. Zookeepers trained the birds to feed in a clear container, which allowed the researchers to record what was happening using high-speed cameras and fluid dynamic methods. The scientists generated oxygen bubbles and added food particles to measure and visualize the flow of the water as the birds fed. After initial observations with the live birds, the team built a 3-D model of a flamingo head and used it to more precisely explore the birds' biomechanics. Flamingos, they found, frequently and quickly retract their heads as they feed. Each of those motions creates a tornado-like vortex and an upwelling of particles from the bottom toward the water's surface. Further observation and experiments with the mechanical beak revealed that chattering, in which flamingos rapidly clap their beaks while their heads are lifted but still underwater, is responsible for causing the mini-twisters to flow directly toward the birds' mouths, helping them capture prey. Their bent, L-shaped beaks were also critical for generating vortices and recirculating eddies as they fed at the water's surface, reaping the rewards of those engineered flows. Another 'amazing finding,' Dr. Ortega-Jiménez said, was what the birds do with their feet, which the researchers explored using a mechanical flamingo foot and computational modeling. The dancing-like motion of their webbed appendages underwater produced yet more vortices that pushed additional particles toward the birds' waiting mouths as they fed upside down in the water. Taken together, these findings suggest that flamingos are 'highly specialized, super feeding machines that use their entire body for feeding,' Dr. Ortega-Jiménez said. Sunghwan Jung, a biophysicist at Cornell University who was not involved in the study, praised the work for being 'an outstanding demonstration of how biological form and motion can control the surrounding fluid to serve a functional role.' Alejandro Rico-Guevara, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington, Seattle, also not involved in the work, agreed that the new paper puts to rest the notion that flamingos are passive in the way they filter feed. 'There have been many hypotheses surrounding how their odd bills could work,' he said, 'but until recently we didn't have the tools to study it.' In addition to solving that mystery and revealing 'a uniquely evolved way to capture tiny and evasive prey,' he continued, the research suggests another evolutionary reason for webbed feet in birds, beyond just being good paddles. Now that Dr. Ortega-Jiménez's curiosity about flamingo-instigated fluid dynamics has been satisfied, he plans to turn his attention to what is going on inside the birds' beaks during feeding. Taken together, such findings could eventually lead to bioinspired technologies that capture things like toxic algae or microplastics, he said. 'What's at the heart of filter feeding in flamingos?' he said. 'We as scientists want to understand both the form and function of these fascinating and mysterious birds as they interact with their fluid environment.'
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nashville Zoo's pudu welcomes baby just in time for Mother's Day. Meet the 1.5 pound baby
Mother's Day came a bit early at the Nashville Zoo by welcoming its newest fawn, a male southern pudu. The young fawn was introduced to the world over Mother's Day weekend, but the newest resident came into the world on April 28 at a whopping 1.7 pounds, and became the first southern pudu born at the Nashville Zoo. He's also the first for his mom, Bosa, and dad, Pacu. Zoo veterinarian Dr. Louden Wright said first-time mom Bosa was 'doing a great job.' 'We see a lot of animals struggle with their first offspring, but Bosa is taking to it naturally. Both her and the fawn are thriving,' Wright said. The zoo posted a Mother's Day tribute to the newly minted pudu mom on May 11. "Happy Mother's Day from first-time mom, Bosa, her adorable new fawn and all of us at the Zoo! 💝" Here are some facts about pudus and what makes them special. Pudus are the smallest species of deer in the world, with the southern pudu being native in southern Chili and southwestern Argentina and are often found in humid rainforest areas, according to the University of Michigan School of Zoology. The deer consists on a mainly vegetarian diet. The current population of the deer is unknown, but experts believe that it is around 10,000. The small number of the pudus has it on a Species Survival Plan. 'Southern pudus are on an Association of Zoos and Aquariums provisional Species Survival Plan, which means every animal is crucial to the North American population,' Nashville Zoo said in a statement. The Nashville Zoo has not released a name for the latest addition. This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville Zoo welcomes fawn of the world's smallest deer. Meet the pudu
