Latest news with #foraging
CBC
6 days ago
- Science
- CBC
For these dolphins, using sponges to dig up fish is a family tradition
In a marine-protected area off the coast of Australia, there are bottleneck dolphins swimming around with sponges on their noses. But unlike orcas wearing salmon on their heads or chimps putting grass in their ears and anuses, "sponging" isn't a fashion statement or a cultural trend. Rather, it's a sophisticated foraging technique passed down through generations to drudge up tasty snacks from the seafloor. "It's likely that sponging arose from a single dolphin having this creative event where they had a sponge on their face and they realized it was really effective for scaring up fish," Ellen Jacobs, a marine biologist at Denmark's University of Aarhus, told As it Happens host Nil Kӧksal. "Then maybe this dolphin had an offspring who saw this was how mom was foraging, so that's how she's going to forage, too. And then it kind of snowballs." Jacobs is the lead author of a new study, published in Royal Society Open Science this week, that examines the pros and cons of sponging to figure out why the technique is limited to a small population of genetically related dolphins in the marine-protected environment of Shark Bay. Oddly exclusive Here's how sponging works: A dolphin puts a sea sponge on its nose like a glove, then cruises along the sea floor using it rustle up fish hiding among the rocks and shells in the sediment. "Then the dolphin drops the sponge, grabs the fish, and then picks up the sponge and keeps going," Jacobs said. First reported in the 1984, the behaviour has continued through the decades. But only five per cent of the dolphin population studied by the researchers in Shark Bay do it, or roughly 30 dolphins in total. And it's strictly a family affair, with calves learning it from their mothers. "All of the dolphins that we see ... sponging are all related matrilineally," Jacobs said. The researchers were curious why sponging had not taken off more widely among dolphins. It appears to only spread vertically, from adults to juveniles, and never laterally, from peer to peer or group to group. Sponging, it turns out, comes with some trade-offs. First of all, it's time-consuming. Dolphins who sponge spend more time looking for food than dolphins who use other hunting and foraging techniques, Jacobs said. What's more, it's a complicated skill that takes years to master. "Sometimes you'll see juvenile spongers who get frustrated, throw their sponge away and pick up a new one," Jacobs said. "But as they age, they get more efficient with their sponge use." Why is it so hard to learn? The researchers discovered the sponges distort the echolocation that dolphins use to navigate their environments. Jacobs used an underwater microphone to confirm the dolphins still use echolocation clicks to guide them while sponging. She then modelled the extent of the sound wave distortion from the sponges. "It's similar to if you were wearing a pair of glasses with the wrong prescription," she said. "You're going to be kind of uncomfortable and everything is going to look a little bit weird, but you can kind of make it through your day, just maybe with a headache." Mauricio Cantor, a marine biologist at Oregon State University, who was not involved in the study, likened it to "hunting when you're blindfolded." "You've got to be very good, very well-trained to pull it off," Cantor said. And not everyone has what it takes to wield the sponge, or the patience to perfect it. "It takes them many years to learn this special hunting skill [and] not everybody sticks with it," said Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, who was not involved in the study. Why bother? But those who do master the art of sponging reap the benefits of their hard work. "They can get a lot of fish all year round because the fish that they're primarily hunting for are not migratory," Jacobs said. " And there's not a lot of dolphins that do it so they don't have a lot of competition for those fish." Earlier research also suggested the fish in the sediment may even be more nutritious than other kinds of fish. Sponging isn't the only example of tool use documented among bottleneck dolphins. In 2020, researchers published a study documenting dolphins teaching each other how to use sea shells to scoop fish into their mouths, a technique they dubbed "shelling" or "conching." And just like the spongers, the shellers reside in Shark Bay, a marine protected area off Western Australia. "Sponging is such a complex interaction between a lot of different parts of the ecosystem, and that's only possible because it is a very pristine ecosystem," Jacobs said. What's more, she says dolphins in Shark Bay don't suffer stresses related to pollution and overfishing like many other dolphins around the world. "That really gives them the opportunity to be dolphins the way that dolphins should be without anthropogenic impacts," she said. "It's a really great opportunity for us to understand: What is a dolphin supposed to be?"
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Country diary: An invasion of tiny fungi parachutists has landed overnight
There were none here yesterday, and by the end of tomorrow they'll have deliquesced and disappeared, but for now the neatly mown grass under our feet was studded with 2in-tall parasol inkcaps (Parasola plicatilis). They looked like an invasion of tiny parachutists; in reality they'd risen from the underworld. They were here all along, as a mycelium of microscopically slender hyphae, down among the grassroots. Autumn is the fungal forager's season but fungi, as hyphae or spores, are everywhere, unseen, all the time. Occasionally, driven by the imperative to reproduce, their ramifying network of independent threads collaborates, producing spores in toadstools. Some, like these inkcaps, are ephemeral; others, like the dryad's saddle (Cerioporus squamosus) we'd been watching since spring, grow from teacup to tea-tray proportions, slowly digesting dead wood, taking months to reach maturity. What changed overnight on this lawn, unseen, in the soil? Had several square yards of inkcap mycelium finally accumulated enough strategic reserves and sent signals fizzing along its underground network, with the order to send toadstools breaking through into the daylight? Was rain the trigger, a sudden downpour, softening sun-baked, droughted ground just enough for the fragile inkcaps to emerge? Fungi, evolutionarily closer to animals than to plants, behave in mysterious ways. Some, like the bright orange nettle clustercup rust (Puccinia urticata) that we found distorting stems and leaves of stinging nettles along the lane here, live complicated lives, switching between different hosts. It spends half its life cycle on sedges, unnoticed, before producing its minute clustercups, brimming with spores, on nettles in the summer months. The accolade for the most architecturally impressive fungus went to an immaculate group of oyster mushrooms, growing on fallen logs. In the silence of the beech wood there was a sense of awe when we peered under the tiered smooth grey brackets, with their radiating rows of gills, like the fan vaulting of a cathedral roof. But there was also a hint of menace: Pleurotus ostreatus is carnivorous. Tiny nematode worms, attracted to the perpetual moisture of wood softened by fungal rot, are paralysed by the toadstool's toxin, unable to escape its hyphae that invade and digest them. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
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Travel + Leisure
13-07-2025
- General
- Travel + Leisure
I Stayed in Julia Child's Cottage in the South of France—What It's Like to Stay and Cook There
Wild dill, it turned out, looked like a tiny bristle, like a hairbrush for a mouse. Squatting in the grass, I plucked a green sprig with my thumb and forefinger. I chewed one end—that was bright, citrusy dill, alright. On my tray it went among its fellow herbs. I didn't usually sample random plants found underfoot, and up until this breezy May afternoon, I didn't know how dill looked in its natural habitat. But edible herbs grew all over this particular garden. On my way back to the cottage, foraging tray full, I also waded past rosemary, basil, oregano, mint, marjoram, thyme, and chives swaying their purple-flowered heads. The cottage was Julia Child's former home in Plascassier, a village in Provence, France, where she lived on and off from 1965 to 1992. It's named La Pitchoune ("the little one"), though she and her husband, Paul, affectionately called it La Peetch. I was staying there as a student at the Courageous Cooking School, a weeklong culinary course that's taken up residence. The kitchen and cooking school. It felt like stepping into a scrapbook of Julia's life: We cooked in her kitchen, where she developed recipes for "Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Volume 2." We unhooked pots and pans from her original pegboard wall. Her pine-green Dutch oven, its enamel worn from perhaps decades of coq au vin, sat heavy in the cabinet. So did her old set of soufflé pans with little heart-shaped handles. The walls were papered with evidence of a well-lived life: a packing list ("writing eqpt. & reading, bottle opener"); black-and-white photos of long, liquid lunches with friends; and typeset directions to the house addressed to the chef James Beard, who stayed there. This was where Julia and Paul Child cooked, drank, and hosted hungry friends. Now, it's where six of us stood, fresh from ransacking the garden and clutching our knives like nervous acolytes, about to be initiated into the Courageous Cooking School's particular brand of culinary heresy: that recipes were suggestions rather than scripture, and that cooking should be an adventure. Details from inside the kitchen and cooking school. Karen Yuan/Travel + Leisure The course operated on simplicity: no printed recipes, just a handful of students and a couple of instructors guiding us through the ingredients that made a dish work—salt, fat, acid, and aromatics. Our teachers were Kendall Lane, a sunny, Florida-born chef who previously worked in Michelin-starred kitchens, and Santana Caress Benitez, a Chopped champion with mise en place tattooed on her shoulder. The course's steward was Makenna Held, an American chef who'd bought the cottage in 2016 site unseen, inspired by French cooking much like her predecessor. They celebrated permission rather than precision: to taste as we went, to trust our senses. After all, Julia herself once famously dropped a potato pancake on the kitchen counter before scooping it back into a pan. ("You're alone in the kitchen—who's going to see?" She said in The French Chef episode.) Perfection was beside the point. The real lesson was learning to cook like someone who knew that dinner, like life, would go on even if the soufflé fell. I sorely needed that lesson. Though I was a big fan of eating , the irony was that I had a lot of anxiety around cooking, thanks to perfectionism and a respectful fear of sharp, pointy things. I ham-fisted recipes as if they were legal documents. The Courageous Cooking School felt like an intervention. Could a week at La Peetch help me loosen up and enjoy putting together a dish? My fellow students were regular folks from Vancouver, Chicago, and New Jersey; they worked in accounting, marketing, and health care. We were all drawn here by La Peetch's mystique and our love for a good home-cooked meal. Julia might have been gone, but she always did love a brave cook. As I tied on my orange apron, I half-expected to hear that distinctive warble from the next room. But the only sound was the snick of my knife against wood, beginning the day's first chop. We'd driven to nearby Cannes earlier in the day, where we'd been dropped at the entrance of the Marché Forville, given an allowance, and set loose to buy any produce—any!—that we felt like. The market assaulted the senses: Stalls bore ripe strawberries that threatened to dissolve into syrup at a touch; their perfume cut through the briny tang of just-landed sea bass; a fromager presented a wheel of Banon cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves. Emboldened, I splurged on donut peaches, melons, and stalks of white and purple asparagus that could double as medieval weapons. I'd never cooked with any of them before, but that felt like the reason to try them. My classmates came back with just-as-tentative expressions and baskets full of red currants, squash blossoms, and heads of frisée. Now, back in Julia's kitchen, I was clumsily cutting that giant frisée into chunks. The mission: Mix fruits and veggies from the morning's haul and make a no-rules raw salad—and have fun. Play with sources of fat and acid. Pile on any herbs and spices that pique your interest. 'So much good stuff can be put in there,' Lane said. So my classmates and I massaged black lime and wild mesquite into the bitter frisée. We paired textures like mad scientists, tossing in crunchy fennel, leek, and red onion, which were sharpened by apple cider vinegar and sweet paprika, which melted into silky strawberries, red currants, and donut peaches, which, in turn, lit up through silk chili, pink peppercorn, hazelnut bits, and a reckless shower of lemon zest. It was the wildest bowl of salad I'd ever made. Miraculously, it tasted sweet, tart, salty, and spiced all at once. We sampled as we went, adjusting acid, fat, and salt until the balance felt right. Each ingredient had a role. No dressing necessary—the layers were noisy with flavor. On our first day, Benitez had instructed us to bury our noses in the pantry's jars of single-origin spices and get curious about them. This included Urfa pepper with its raisin-like depth, verjus cinnamon, and licorice-like grains of paradise. I wasn't familiar with any of them and wouldn't easily find them back at home, and so recognized this for what it was: a rare chance to travel around the world through the flavors and try something new. So my classmates and I poured hearty amounts into our frisée. It was an exercise in cooking with abandon. 'There's always something fun or new to take away from an attempt, even if you don't meet your initial goal,' Lane told us. Through the rest of the week, I often found myself reaching for the zappy, smoky black lime we'd macerated the frisée in. I didn't know if I'd get access to the ingredient back home, but I resolved to bring more of those moments back into my cooking routine: adding something I usually never touched (maybe from the back of the fridge), biting down for a taste in progress, and raising my brows in shocked delight. We cooked in that sunny kitchen through the week, scoring duck breast, caramelizing onions, filleting fish, prepping artichokes, and whipping up mousse. Along the way, we tried to decode what made food sing, flipping ingredients and expectations. The course ranged across starters, entrées, and desserts, demystifying a slew of classic French dishes. When Lane showed us how to make soufflés, her first lesson was that their puffy domes always fall. It was just gravity. 'Release perfection from the start,' she encouraged. Later, she produced two towering soufflés out of the oven, perfectly quivering in Julia's heart-handled pans. Then they slumped, just as promised. We devoured them anyway. Lulu the house cat. Karen Yuan/Travel + Leisure In the evenings, we ate the fruits of our labor and lazed around the cottage. La Pitchoune is tucked off a sloping road, and each dusk did its best impression of a Provençal postcard. We'd list about the garden, where an enormous, centuries-old olive tree anchored beds of herbs, the rosemary planted by Julia's own hands. We'd visit the chicken coop, where Blanche, the white hen, deposited our daily eggs. Or check out the old water cistern, half-hidden in the golden light, where Julia and her cookbook co-author, Simone Beck, had dunked themselves, laughing, to escape the summer heat. We'd lie by the actual pool (a modern fixture). If we were lucky, Lulu, the house cat, sleek as a '60s starlet, would slip out to sit with us. We'd sip wine on the front patio under wisteria that cast lacy shadows over us. At dinner at the end of the week, Megan, a fellow student from Chicago, confessed she'd arrived burnt out on cooking. 'This week reminded me that I love it,' she said, scooping up the remains of a chocolate mousse we'd topped with berries and chilis. We had left the kitchen for the last time, but the lights were still on. Somewhere, Julia was probably tutting at the mousse we'd just murdered. But she'd also taught people to cook without apology. I thought of that wild frisée salad with its layers of sultry mesquite, puckery vinegar, and peppercorns, garnished with dill I'd picked myself. It had been weird, generous, and alive. There were no tidy endings here, no certificates of mastery—just the understanding that cooking was exploring, even and especially if it took you where you didn't mean to go. Some lessons, I guess, were meant to be tasted.
ABC News
11-07-2025
- ABC News
Mushroom foraging tours 'becoming unviable' due to rising insurance costs
Foraging tour operators say rising insurance costs are making their operations more difficult, but those involved in the insurance industry say it is unlikely to be connected with Erin Patterson's triple-murder trial. This week, Patterson was found guilty of killing three relatives and attempting to kill another by feeding them beef Wellington made with death cap mushrooms. Feresh Pizarro moved to a farm near Robe in South Australia's south-east three years ago to start her business, South Spore. She said had she cancelled her usual autumn and winter tours because of rising insurance costs, and she knew two other businesses similarly affected. Ms Pizarro said she believed the increase in premiums was connected with Patterson's trial. "The insurance went up by ridiculous amounts, so I actually can't make it viable," Ms Pizarro said. "It's a pity, this is what I love. I want people to know and understand the fungi queendom — it's huge. "It's not just about edibles, it's about the role they play. "There are mushrooms that have been proven to eat plastic or completely clean oil spills and transform them into a beautiful little environment." Similarly, Natasha Vorogushin, who runs mushroom foraging tours in Morwell, Victoria, where Patterson was put on trial, said she had only been able to get general public liability insurance, not coverage specifically tailored for her work. "I've contacted quite a few insurance companies and had trouble finding anyone who would insure me for that specific type of workshop," Ms Vorogushin said. Richard Ford, who runs tours in Mount Macedon, said his employer already had high insurance costs. "She said if they put the insurance up she certainly wouldn't be able to do it, no," he said. An Insurance Council of Australia spokesperson said the organisation was not aware of concerns from members about mushrooms or mushroom risks. They said it was not common for insurers to change their offerings just because of "perceived risk". University of NSW actuarial studies professor Michael Sherris agreed it was unlikely a single court case like Patterson's would influence insurance costs. He said insurance costs in general were rising, and so probably were premiums for tour companies. Professor Sherris said commercial liability insurance sometimes had clauses excluding high-risk activities like skydiving, but exclusions for mushroom tours were unlikely. "Normally, you don't have a mushroom foraging exclusion clause," he said. Adelaide Botanic Garden and State Herbarium senior mycologist Teresa Lebel said there had never been a fatality from death cap mushrooms in South Australia. However, she said the state did have another species, called the deadly dapperling mushroom, that led to a person being badly poisoned in 2022. "They were seriously ill for two to three months afterwards — very fortunate for them that we were able to ID it and get them into treatment quickly," Dr Lebel told ABC Radio Adelaide. Deadly dapperling mushrooms look similar to field mushrooms but have white gills underneath the head. SA Health said recently that death cap mushrooms had been found at several locations in the Adelaide Hills. Dr Lebel said Patterson's trial had led to more interest in fungi from the public, with an uptick in entries on the iNaturalist website, where people can report the location of plants and animals they find in the wild. "It's been sad but fantastic in some ways," she said. However, Ms Pizarro said some people were commenting incorrectly on social media about which fungi were edible. "That really scares me — but once you know the identification method, it shouldn't be that hard," she said. "You just have to make sure that you're 100 per cent every time — there's no wiggle room. "The same for any plant — if you don't know what it is, you're not going to eat it."
ABC News
11-07-2025
- ABC News
Mushroom foraging tours say Erin Patterson murder trial has raised insurance costs
Foraging tour operators say rising insurance costs are making their operations more difficult, but those involved in the insurance industry say it is unlikely to be connected with Erin Patterson's triple-murder trial. This week, Patterson was found guilty of killing three relatives and attempting to kill another by feeding them beef Wellington made with death cap mushrooms. Feresh Pizarro moved to a farm near Robe in South Australia's south-east three years ago to start her business, South Spore. She said had she cancelled her usual autumn and winter tours because of rising insurance costs, and she knew two other businesses similarly affected. Ms Pizarro said she believed the increase in premiums was connected with Patterson's trial. "The insurance went up by ridiculous amounts, so I actually can't make it viable," Ms Pizarro said. "It's a pity, this is what I love. I want people to know and understand the fungi queendom — it's huge. "It's not just about edibles, it's about the role they play. "There are mushrooms that have been proven to eat plastic or completely clean oil spills and transform them into a beautiful little environment." Similarly, Natasha Vorogushin, who runs mushroom foraging tours in Morwell, Victoria, where Patterson was put on trial, said she had only been able to get general public liability insurance, not one specifically tailored for her work. "I've contacted quite a few insurance companies and had trouble finding anyone who would insure me for that specific type of workshop," Ms Vorogushin said. Richard Ford, who runs tours in Mount Macedon, said his employer already had high insurance costs. "She said if they put the insurance up she certainly wouldn't be able to do it, no," he said. An Insurance Council of Australia spokesperson said the organisation was not aware of concerns from members about mushrooms or mushroom risks. They said it was not common for insurers to change their offerings just because of "perceived risk". University of NSW actuarial studies professor Michael Sherris agreed it was unlikely a single court case like Patterson's would influence insurance costs. He said insurance costs in general were rising, and so probably were premiums for tour companies. Professor Sherris said commercial liability insurance sometimes had clauses excluding high-risk activities like skydiving, but exclusions for mushroom tours were unlikely. "Normally, you don't have a mushroom foraging exclusion clause," he said. Adelaide Botanic Garden and State Herbarium senior mycologist Teresa Lebel said there had never been a fatality from death cap mushrooms in South Australia. However, she said the state did have another species, called the deadly dapperling mushroom, that led to a person being badly poisoned in 2022. "They were seriously ill for two to three months afterwards — very fortunate for them that we were able to ID it and get them into treatment quickly," Dr Lebel told ABC Radio Adelaide. Deadly dapperling mushrooms look similar to field mushrooms but have white gills underneath the head. SA Health said recently that death cap mushrooms had been found at several locations in the Adelaide Hills. Dr Lebel said Patterson's trial had led to more interest in fungi from the public, with an uptick in entries on the iNaturalist website, where people can report the location of plants and animals they find in the wild. "It's been sad but fantastic in some ways," she said. However, Ms Pizarro said some people were commenting incorrectly on social media about which fungi were edible. "That really scares me — but once you know the identification method, it shouldn't be that hard," she said. "You just have to make sure that you're 100 per cent every time — there's no wiggle room. "The same for any plant — if you don't know what it is, you're not going to eat it."
