Go, little Lavender, go!

Excerpts from the Globe's environmental blog.

She was discovered almost frozen to death, flung up against a Cape Cod beach in a sad annual ritual that paralyzes and then kills some of the world's most endangered sea turtles in the frigid North Atlantic. But Lavender and four other Kemp's Ridley turtles were saved from a watery grave by workers and volunteers from Mass Audubon's Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary and slowly warmed back to life.

Last month, Lavender and the other turtles were released on Dowses Beach in Osterville, and we now know she has swum 182 miles and stuck close to the Cape. A satellite transmitter on Lavender's back tracks where she is virtually every minute of the day. Check it out at www.seaturtle.org/tracking and scroll to the National Marine Life Center release in 2008.

The dramatic rescue of sea turtles takes place between October and January after some juvenile turtles, who swam north in the summer to feed on crabs, become trapped in the crook of Cape Cod. Because they are cold-blooded, the low water temperature robs them of the ability to move away.

There are only a few thousand breeding pairs of Kemp's Ridley turtles in the world, so every rescue may help save the species.

Fear has its roots in survival. Being afraid enough to avoid the path of say, a grizzly bear, saves a lot of lives - particularly if you imagine what would happen if you went up to one and tried to shake its paw. Being afraid enough to avoid the path of, say, a grizzly bear saves a lot of lives - particularly if you can imagine what would happen if you went up to one and tried to shake its paw. Assistant professor Evan Preisser said that fear of being eaten can reduce populations as much or even more than the numbers of individuals being killed by predators. That's because to avoid being eaten, many species will spend a lot more time hiding - and less time eating. This can lead to a lower body mass, reduced reproduction rates and a lower rate of survival.

For example, fire ants are "totally freaked out" by a species of parasitoid fly that lays its eggs inside the ants, ultimately killing them. The ants hide so long their entire population becomes weaker. Other research conducted by Oswald Schmitz at Yale University shows grasshoppers can be so afraid of wolf spiders that they would rather starve to death than feed in the spiders' presence.

BETH DALEY