Tobias Acksteiner

09/01/2021

Until 400 years ago there was living a bit wacky bird called Waldrapp. He distributed around the whole mediterranen and migrated tirelessly to diverse winter habitats within close communities/colonies. However on the side of humans there were different opinions about this bird with the „rastafarian look“. On one hand he was a precious creature for ornithologists known as the Northern Bald Ibis....

Until 400 years ago there was living a bit wacky bird called Waldrapp. He distributed around the whole mediterranen and migrated tirelessly to diverse winter habitats within close communities/colon…

09/01/2021

Song: "Saint Valantine - Gregory Alan Isakov" All rights of the song belong to the author. Information Stories What's your story? Gallery

Song: “Saint Valantine – Gregory Alan Isakov” All rights of the song belong to the author. Information Stories What’s your story? Gallery   Supported by:

24/11/2020

Why is this magnificent animal actually being called fire salamander? 🤔

Myths and wrong superstitions circulated and existed since early times and during the medival…
As already Plinius „the older guy“ 😉 wrote in his „Naturalis Historia“ (around 77 A.D.) that those unearthly salamanders have apparently the artistry to blow out fires! Thereupon he was sadly often thrown into the flames maybe also in order to prove weather it’s true…🙈

Moreover he was ascribed to be this threatening beast with extremely poisonous skin!

Luckily Salamandra Salamandra were strong enough „to crawl out of the fire hot times“ and survived. But still as you maybe have read salamanders are quite threatened nowadays. After studies and observations fungus disease spreads fastly throughout Europe…

The study „Dynamics of host populations affected by the emerging fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans“ by Benedikt R. Schmidt and other scientists investigated that it is therefore important to keep biosafety rules in mind. Wearing protective clothes disinfecting your gear and shoes is vital that this disease will not spread further or as quick throughout Europe.
Like researchers advise salamanders should also not be translocated.

Because „as is the case for emerging wildlife diseases in general, prevention of emergence and spread is more effective than responses at later stages of the invasion“

23/11/2020

A couple of days ago we went out to search for salamander larvae. In fact I was a bit surprised when we spotted them that they were swimming in this big river which has a quite fast stream. I didn’t brood about it too much though and was just absolutely amazed and happy that we „saw“ salamandra salamandra larvae! While I was after a couple of closer looks a bit skeptical if they really are amphibian larvae as it turned out that they had these weird fins… It was not until I came back home and asked Herpatologist - who is taking very stunning pictures as well btw - who gave me thankfully some advice and insight. The thing I actually saw was a fish called „Cottus Gobio“. And when there are fish in the waters there obviously won’t be any (salamander) larvae as they would eat them.
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Nevertheless as much as it is bit of a shame probably as well for me being a biology student (to be fair I just began my bachelor) it was a great lesson for me! Research before going out and taking pictures is key! (Especially for photographing animals) And it was a great prove for me that myself or maybe in general humans tend to see what we want to see and are also used to see based on our beliefs and past experience. Always good to view things beyond the horizon and look or think outside the box! Don’t want to throw around with fancy quotes but really like this one: „Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited“ Einstein
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What do you think - Did you have such experiences (at the start of your photo/bio career) as well?
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16/11/2020

"Salamandra salamandra" ⁠
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This guy here belongs to the order Urodela and the family Salamandridae which distinguish to other salamanders by lacking grooves on the side of their bodies. Also they possess a "rough" skin with poison glands which they use to defend enemies or competitors. Secretion is apparently also used to prevent bacteria and fungi growth sadly it seems not to work for fungi disease "Bsal" though... ⁠
Often they are hidden under wood or other objects. Active in the evening/night, however if it has enough moisture on rainy days a fire salamander can be seen during the day as well.

11/11/2020

"Corona skin"⁠⠀
This is the skin of a fire salamander. They are threatened by a fungus called Bsal which spreads all around Europe. Bsal and chytrid could potentially wipe out whole amphibian populations! Obviously this has a devastating effect not only for nature but for us as well as they are quite vital for ecosystems and also eat disease spreading insects! Unfortunately the fact that corona originated because of wildlife trade is often kept in the background or little bit silent..However 60% of infectious diseases are like Corona a Zoonotic disease !⁠⠀
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So species protection is definitely climate and human protection!

09/11/2020

The year 2020 was in my opinion a quite difficult one for all of us! After all what happened especially due to bushfires a big amount of species died and now we are in this pandemic its hard to see an end..So it is easy to get in a rut of pessimism. Let's not loose our hope!⁠
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Here the "Kangaroo ghost" and some photos from a bushfire which happened to be while I was on my gap year in Australia. It was definetly not as drastic as the one this year but still I was a bit scared when they said they have to evacuate the whole area I was living at with my host family due to the smoke! My host parents were compared to me much calmer though so we just stayed smokey ;)

08/11/2020

Jump strait into the survey here. (It just takes 5-10 minutes) Feeling a little bit lonely or overwhelemed with all the problems we are facing? Young people seem to be shadows for the big industries... We are about to grow a community where we tell the story and our ideas for the future. The only thing you need to do to participate is to tell your story: [ 243 more words ]

Jump strait into the survey here. (It just takes 5-10 minutes) Feeling a little bit lonely or overwhelemed with all the problems we are facing? Young people seem to be shadows for the big industrie…

08/11/2020

The aim of Tell your Project is to create a documentation of the human-nature relationship. Experiences and adventures in nature are collected as personal narratives along with individual statements about environmental problems. As a photographer myself I am adding the collection with fitting images. I tried to record natural sounds too which can be heard next to the images. Through human noise pollution (Autophonie) natural sounds (Biophonie - actually the music of nature) are prevented. [ 110 more words ]

The aim of Tell your Project is to create a documentation of the human-nature relationship. Experiences and adventures in nature are collected as personal narratives along with individual statement…

03/11/2020

Vielen Dank für alle die bis jetzt ihre Geschichte erzählt haben! Da die Geschichten von Menschen aus Salzburg erzählt wurden, habe ich mir gedacht bringe ich sie wieder als 20 verschiedene Schilder in die Stadt zurück. Am 12. Juli durfte ich eine Ausstellung über das Projekt machen. Das Jugendbüro ermöglichte es mir netterweise den Pegasus Saal im Schloss Mirabell zu mieten. [ 31 more words ]

Vielen Dank für alle die bis jetzt ihre Geschichte erzählt haben! Da die Geschichten von Menschen aus Salzburg erzählt wurden, habe ich mir gedacht bringe ich sie wieder als 20 verschiedene Schilde…

02/11/2020

Die Studie "Cooperating with the wild Past and present auxiliary animals assisting humans in their foraging activities (Edmund Dounias)" hat mich zum nachdenken gebracht und deshalb möchte ich hier die wesentlichen Aussagen zusammenfassen. Warum sollte ein Lebewesen mit einer anderen Art kooperieren und somit sich selbst im eigenen Fortkommen hindern? Warum dienen Menschen aber auch Tiere anderen, obwohl dies ihnen selbst keinen wesentlichen Vorteil erschafft und manchmal sogar auch schadet? [ 1,042 more word ]

Die Studie “Cooperating with the wild Past and present auxiliary animals assisting humans in their foraging activities (Edmund Dounias)” hat mich zum nachdenken gebracht und deshalb mö…