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News

  • Forestry Friday: The Rare Milkweed Garden at the Gardner Forest

    Sophie Oehler
    September 15, 2023

    In this Forestry Friday, the forestry team takes a trip to the Gardener Forest in Hollis to check in on a population of a rare species of milkweed. (Photo: Sophie Oehler)

  • Something Wild: Why the treeline of Mt. Washington is not a line

    Dave Anderson, Chris Martin, Jessica Hunt
    August 24, 2023

    In this second episode of our series, Dave Anderson of the Forest Society and Chris Martin of NH Audubon are exploring the different forest zones on the flanks of the mountain, below the treeline.

  • Something Wild: Atop Mt. Washington

    Dave Anderson, Chris Martin, Jessica Hunt
    August 3, 2023

    The Something Wild team is above treeline on Mount Washington, exploring the ecological zones of New England’s highest peak. 

    While many visitors focus on summiting, Chris Martin of NH Audubon and Dave Anderson of the Forest Society are examining how both flora and fauna vary as the ...

Creatures in the Night

Something Wild
Chris Martin
February 20, 2015
Wildlife
Why are so many animals active, given their limited ability to see in the dark?

Wildlife tracks in the snow indicate a lot of coming and going in the nighttime world. Why are so many animals active, given their limited ability to see in the dark?

There's the obvious reason: division of resources helps avoid competition. A red-tailed hawk hunts the same fields by day that a great horned owl hunts by night. Night also offers some animals protection from their main predators. Mice lie low by day, but in the wild—and in my house—they come out at night.

The one big answer about nocturnal habits goes back in time--way back--when dinosaurs in a great diversity of species, exploited every available ecological niche—by day. That left the nighttime world open for a whole host of creatures. The first mammals appeared well after the dinosaurs were established, and the first known mammal by fossil record was a very small, shrew-like animal. While dinosaurs ruled the daytime world, this early mammal—perhaps the very first mammal—became active at night.

It's also a habit that helped mammals survive the mass extinction that befell dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That's when debris from a giant meteor's impact blocked the sun, creating a significant period of cold and dark. Warm-blooded, fur-coated and nocturnal, the early mammals survived. Plant-eating dinosaurs were the first to go as vegetation died, followed by carnivorous dinosaurs that preyed on them. 

Absent the threat and competition of dinosaurs, mammal species evolved rapidly to fill most land and marine niches. Today, as daylight fades and on through the night, new tracks are laid in the snow by wild ones sharing ancestry—and nocturnal habits—going back almost 200 million years.  

Listen to the feature here at NHPR

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Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests54 Portsmouth St.Concord, NH 03301
Phone: 603.224.9945Fax: 603.228.0423info@forestsociety.org
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