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Sea ice in Antarctica has hit a worrisome milestone, reaching its lowest recorded extent this week, according to data from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. The daily ice area recorded on Tuesday represents an all-time low: 2.25 million square kilometers (872,204 square miles).

While Arctic sea ice has shown a relatively steady decline in square mileage over the past three decades as global temperatures rise ( see for yourself), its southern counterpart has yielded more erratic and controversial data since monitoring began in the late 1970s. The February 14 mark for Antarctic sea ice surpasses lows seen around this time in 1997.

In 2012, Antarctic sea ice actually hit a record monthly high, with scientists theorizing that melting ice shelves were contributing to the growth. Since then, further evidence of Southern Hemisphere ice melt has accumulated, with recent dramatic photos showing aerial views of western Antarctic ice scored with cracks.

Melting ice at the Earth's poles is yet another indicator of global warming and causes concern about attendant sea-level rise and other climate impacts. Though the timing and extent of those impacts are a matter of scientific debate, the trends lend urgency to countries' efforts to curb the greenhouse gas emissions from coal and other fossil fuels that are contributing to a warmer climate.

NSIDC Director Mark Serreze told Reuters that the new numbers were preliminary and still needed to be confirmed, but that "unless something funny happens, we're looking at a record minimum in Antarctica."

The NSIDC reported at the end of last year that both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice had hit record monthly lows in November: "For the globe as a whole, sea ice cover was exceptionally low," it said.

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Antarctica's Sea Ice Shrinks to New Record Low

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Sea ice in Antarctica has hit a worrisome milestone, reaching its lowest recorded extent this week, according to data from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. The daily ice area recorded on Tuesday represents an all-time low: 2.25 million square kilometers (872,204 square miles).

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Scientists study how animals walk and run by putting them on treadmills - from elephants and alligators to animals as tiny as an ant. Recently, researchers used a custom-made treadmill to study desert ants' fancy footwork, to better understand the mechanisms they use to navigate home.

This wasn't a scaled-down versions of the treadmill you'd find at a gym. Rather, the ants were tethered above a lightweight sphere. As the insects scampered forward - sometimes stopping and changing direction - the sphere would roll beneath them, and sensors recorded every step they took.

Using this equipment, researchers were able to reproduce ant homing behavior in a treadmill setting for the first time, analyzing the ants' movements in unprecedented detail to evaluate their walking speed and changes in gait as the insects searched for their nest. [ Step Lively! Ants' Gaits Tracked on Treadmill | Video]

Spherical treadmills have been used in studies of small animals since the 1960s, but they have not been sensitive enough to follow the speedy motion of ants' tiny legs. For the new study, researchers built a treadmill made especially for ants. It incorporated a hollow, air-suspended Styrofoam ball that was highly responsive to the ants' movements, which the scientists tracked using optical mouse sensors.

Researchers designed a new type of spherical treadmill that responds to ants' delicate steps.

Credit: Matthias Wittlinger

"Our new design enables us to study the fast-running and very quickly turning desert ants," study co-author Matthias Wittlinger, a research fellow with the Institute of Neurobiology at Ulm University in Germany, told Live Science in an email.

The treadmill spins responsively as the ant walks; to keep the ant oriented but still able to move freely, tiny leashes made from a filament of dental floss were glued to the ants' back, then attached to pins that were suspended above the sphere. While this delicate attachment sounds tricky to perform, Wittlinger reported that it generally only took a few seconds to glue an ant to its tether.

Ants were captured at a feeder located about 33 feet (10 meters) from their nest entrance, so they had already identified a route that would lead them back to the nest. Once they were placed on the treadmill, they trotted toward the nest's presumed location through mechanisms that prior studies had shown were critical to ant navigation: using the position of the sun and patterns of polarization in the sky as a compass, and calculating the distance by counting their own strides, Wittlinger said

The treadmill allowed the scientists to record the direction and speed of the walking ants; the flexible tether enabled the animals to move with a more natural body posture than had been possible in past studies - "Old designs had the animal rigidly fixed," Wittlinger said.

"They virtually travel for many meters on the treadmill, as if they were running in the open field," he explained.

Desert ants walk on treadmills to help scientists understand homing behavior.

Credit: Matthias Wittlinger

The study authors reported that the ants would begin their treadmill journeys with a direct approach - heading straight for the nest. But when the insects didn't find the nest where they expected it to be, they adopted a different locomotion pattern, which Wittlinger identified as "search mode."

The study's findings showed for the first time that when ants realize that they're lost, they switch to "search mode," slowing down and then moving in a looping pattern, Wittlinger told Live Science in an email.

By reproducing conditions that test this complex behavior in ants - navigating home - in an artificial setting, the scientists could control and adjust a variety of parameters, to better understand the mechanisms and neural signals related to navigation, Wittlinger explained.

The findings were published online Feb. 15 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

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Scientists study how animals walk and run by putting them on treadmills - from elephants and alligators to animals as tiny as an ant. Recently, researchers used a custom-made treadmill to study desert ants' fancy footwork, to better understand the mechanisms they use to navigate home.

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In a surprise finding, scientists say the amount of pollutants in the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench -one of the most remote locations on Earth-is so high that it outpaces the amounts found in a heavily polluted Chinese river.

Crustaceans that live in the trench, which extends 36,000 feet (11,000 meters) below sea level, were captured by a robotic submarine. In the journal Nature, Ecology & Evolution, scientists reported that they found 50 times more pollutants in those crustaceans than in crabs from paddy fields fed by the Liaohe River, one of the most polluted rivers in China.

The chemicals discovered by scientists include two persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, produced between the 1930s and 1970s. The study reports that about 1.3 million tonnes of these chemicals were produced globally in that timeframe, and some of them were released into the environment because of industrial accidents and discharges, landfill leaks, or incomplete incineration. Since POPs don't break down easily, they linger in the environment long after they arrive in it.

"We still think of the deep ocean as being this remote and pristine realm, safe from human impact, but our research shows that, sadly, this could not be further from the truth," Alan Jamieson of Newcastle University in the UK, who led the research, told the Guardian. "The fact that we found such extraordinary levels of these pollutants really brings home the long-term, devastating impact that mankind is having on the planet."

The POPs that found their way into the trench were most likely from industrialized regions in the Northwest Pacific. They sank through the water column (from being trapped underneath sinking substances like degrading plastic and debris from the nearby Great Pacific Garbage Patch) and collected in the trench, where they have stayed because the trench doesn't get a lot of water flowing into it to disburse the chemicals.

It's possible that POPs built up fast in the trench. Sinking radiation from the 2011 Fukushima Daichi nuclear disaster allowed scientists to figure out how fast material from the surface sinks: the amount of time it takes is between three and six months.

The trench and nearby areas are home to a variety of creatures, including deep-sea snailfish, glowing jellyfish, and giant amoebas, that could have been exposed to these chemicals despite the trench's remote location.

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Deepest Place on Earth Contains 'Extraordinary' Pollution Levels

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In a surprise finding, scientists say the amount of pollutants in the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench -one of the most remote locations on Earth-is so high that it outpaces the amounts found in a heavily polluted Chinese river. Crustaceans that live in the trench, which extends 36,000 feet (11,000 meters) below sea level, were captured by a robotic submarine.

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Gall wasps may feel confident as they infest oak trees for shelter and sustenance, but their wasp enemy has an even more insidious agenda, according to Rice University scientists.

The wasp known as Euderus set, or E. set, deposits an egg in the developing gall wasp's woody haven. The young E. set eventually chews its way to freedom -- through its host's head.

Rice researchers nicknamed it the "crypt-keeper" wasp and said it's a rare example of hypermanipulation, in which a parasite is manipulated by another parasite.

E. set and its gory emergence are described in two papers led by Rice evolutionary biologists Kelly Weinersmith and Scott Egan.

The first paper, in the open-access journal ZooKeys this month, describes the new wasp species in detail. The second, released in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, details the species' ghoulish strategy.

The discoverers named their wasp for Set, the Egyptian god of evil and chaos who trapped his brother Osiris in a crypt, killed him and then cut him into little pieces.

The tiny, iridescent parasite hijacks its host, Bassettia pallida, which would normally mature inside the crypt (aka the gall) and tunnel its way out to freedom in the spring. A female E. set deposits an egg into the crypt, where it manipulates the growing gall wasp, typically making its emergence hole too small.

When the wasp tries to escape, its head lodges in the hole. E. set can then consume the gall wasp's internal organs and emerge, "Alien"-like, from its head case.

"It could be the parasitoid cues hosts to excavate early, but makes them do it less well than usual," said Weinersmith, who studies parasites. "They only go part way and then they get stuck.

"That's what I love about parasite manipulation of host behavior," she said. "So many of the stories that have been uncovered are just as cool as the coolest science fiction movie."

Egan originally discovered the wasp on the Gulf Coast of Florida in the summer of 2014 before finding it in trees at Rice and in an oak tree in his front yard. As part of this study, E. set has now been found in Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana.

"I was walking on a path through the sand dunes with my daughter that summer while on a family vacation and of course, I can't not grab bugs everywhere I go," said Egan about spotting a tree branch of interest. "It ended up being this rare cynipid (gall wasp) that I don't see around here very often, and in a much higher density. Then I couldn't stop myself."

Weinersmith first saw it while chatting with Egan during one of their initial meetings at Rice. "He had this cup of stuff on his desk," she recalled. "Anytime Scott sees a gall, he cuts it off, sticks it in a cup, puts a coffee filter over it and waits to see what emerges."

"A couple of weeks later, animals started coming out," Egan said. "I did some dissections, shaved off the head with a razor blade, got into the wood and in the belly of these beasts was another little tiny larva, sitting in the abdomen. I immediately called Kelly."

The researchers hope to discover how E. set triggers the change in Bassettia's behavior. "One hard thing is that we can't see what's happening until they come out," Weinersmith said. "We're talking to people to see if we can CAT scan the branches in various stages."

But they already know how badly E. set needs its host. To see how well it could tunnel, they taped thin strips of bark over the dead heads and waited. The experiments showed the crypt-keeper was about three times more likely to die in the crypt if it had to dig through the head case and the bark.

Because close to 600 species in the Eulophid family are found in North America, and many attack or serve as biocontrol agents for agricultural pests, the researchers would also like to know if E. set's manipulations are more common.

" Euderus set represents one of many millions of undescribed parasitic wasps with peculiar lifecycles," said Andrew Forbes, co-author on both papers. His lab at the University of Iowa studies the evolution of parasitoid wasps, which he described as one of the most species-rich groups of animals on the planet.

Weinersmith noted the gall wasp victim is hardly unknown. Literally millions of specimens are in the possession of the American Museum of Natural History, most brought there by the entomologist Alfred Kinsey, who later earned renown for his human sexuality research.

"Scott was going through some of those museum samples and saw this phenomenon in those branches," she said. "So it's been in museums for years, there for people to see. But we couldn't find any evidence that other people noticed this phenomenon and thought, 'Maybe something weird is happening here.'"

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insects (including butterflies); trees; new species; pests and parasites; animals; cats; agriculture and food; nature

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Insidious wasp gets ahead by tunneling through host's head: Scientists find 'crypt-keeper' parasite infects another parasite, modifies its behavior

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Gall wasps may feel confident as they infest oak trees for shelter and sustenance, but their wasp enemy has an even more insidious agenda, according to Rice University scientists. The wasp known as Euderus set, or E. set, deposits an egg in the developing gall wasp's woody haven. The young E.

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It's no fish tale: The Greenland shark is the longest-lived vertebrate on the planet, a new study says.

The animal, native to the cold, deep waters of the North Atlantic, can live to at least 272 years-and possibly to the ripe old age of 500. (Related: " Meet the Animal That Lives for 11,000 Years.")

"We had an expectation that they would be very long-lived animals, but I was surprised that they turned out to be as old as they did," says study leader Julius Nielsen, a biologist at the University of Copenhagen.

Because of its remote habitat and elusive nature, the giant shark is poorly understood, including how long it lives.

Some research had suggested they grow extremely slowly, less than half an inch (a centimeter) per year, suggesting a life span well beyond those of other vertebrates.

Determining a bony fish's age can be easily done by analyzing their otoliths, or ear stones. But sharks, which are made mostly of cartilage, lack this kind of hard, calcified tissue. ( Read more about sharks, the lords of the sea, in National Geographic magazine.)

So scientists found another way to figure out the age of Greenland sharks: looking into their eyes.

Fishy Estimates

The researchers analyzed 28 female Greenland sharks that had died accidentally during the Greenland Institute for Natural Resources ' commercial fish-monitoring program.

"The secret behind the success of this study is that we had young and old animals, medium-sized and large animals, and we could compare them all," Nielsen notes.

Greenland sharks have a unique eye structure in that the lens grows throughout an animal's lifetime. The older an animal gets, the more layers are added to the lens. Scientists can't count the layers as they would tree rings, but they can remove all the layers that have been added over the years until they reach the center, or the embryonic nucleus, of the lens. (See " Rare Whales Can Live to Nearly 200, Eye Tissue Reveals.")

This tissue is composed of proteins that were formed when the shark was a young pup. Scientists can analyze the chemical composition of the eye lens nucleus to estimate an animal's age.

Radiocarbon dating of the 28 Greenland sharks' lens nuclei revealed a maximum life span of at least 272 years, according to the study, published August 11 in the journal Science.

The largest shark in the study, at 16.5 feet (five meters) in length, was estimated to be approximately 392 years old. Nielsen says there is some uncertainty around that estimate. He and his colleagues determined with 95 percent certainty that the shark was between 272 and 512 years old, and it was most likely around 390.

What's more, because female Greenland sharks are reported to reach sexual maturity at lengths greater than 13 feet (four meters), they likely would start breeding at 156 years of age.

It's unknown why they live so long, but cold environments cause low body temperatures, which in turn means slow metabolism-and thus less damage to animals' tissues.

These results are crucial, Nielsen says, because the Greenland shark population is unknown. If the species is rare, the death of even one long-lived animal could be a huge loss. (See " Slow Sharks Sneak Up on Sleeping Seals [and Eat Them]?")

Not only is the shark sometimes caught by accident during fishing-a phenomenon called bycatch-but its habitat may be disturbed by climate change and many countries' increased focus on the Arctic for fishing, oil, and other natural resources.

"The longevity is remarkable, but I hope the public recognizes how important that is with regard to how we manage and conserve Arctic and deepwater ecosystems," says Aaron Fisk, an ecologist at the University of Windsor who was not involved with this research.

"If Greenland sharks live this long and don't reproduce until they are 150 years old, their population is vulnerable to exploitation."

Nielsen agrees: "It's important for policymakers to keep in mind that this is an extremely long-lived and slowly maturing animal.

"Fisheries should do what they can to minimize bycatch. We need to have some respect for them."
Follow Mary Bates on Twitter and Facebook.

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272-Year-Old Shark Is Longest-Lived Vertebrate on Earth

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It's no fish tale: The Greenland shark is the longest-lived vertebrate on the planet, a new study says. The animal, native to the cold, deep waters of the North Atlantic, can live to at least 272 years-and possibly to the ripe old age of 500.

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Scientists have discovered a new parasitic wasp species with a life cycle so diabolical, they named it after Set, the Egyptian god of evil and chaos.

Meet Euderus set, otherwise known as the crypt-keeper wasp.

Native to the southeastern United States, this species lays its egg inside the tiny, wooden chambers that another parasitic wasp species, the gall wasp ( Bassettia pallida), carves out in sand live oak trees. These knobby protuberances, known as galls, are sort of like tree cysts induced by the presence of the host wasp's young.

Once the egg hatches, the crypt-keeper larva burrows into the other wasp and takes over its mind, forcing it to start tunneling through the tree's bark to freedom-a feat the crypt-keeper struggles to perform on its own. ( Read more about mindsucking parasites in National Geographic magazine.)

Even more insidious, the larva then forces its victim to drill a hole too small for its own escape. Once the larger wasp is wedged in the opening it's created, the crypt-keeper consumes its host from the inside out, finally erupting from B. pallida' s forehead out into the world.

It's worth noting that the crypt-keeper's namesake, Set, was thought to have control over other animals like hyenas and serpents. He also trapped his brother, Osiris, in a crypt, where he murdered him and mutilated his remains.

Even Kelly Weinersmith, a parasitologist at Rice University and lead author of a new study on the crypt-keeper, says the behavior is creepy.

As a claustrophobe, she shudders at what B. pallida must endure-"being stuck inside of a tight tunnel with no room to move, all the while having your insides eaten out." ( Read about hundreds of new parasitic wasps species found in Costa Rica.)

"But it's also awesome and amazing that a parasitoid has managed, through natural selection, to manipulate its host in this particularly cool way," says Weinersmith, whose study was published recently in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Tales From the Crypt

Most of us are familiar with the idea of parasitism, in which one creature-think a leach or tick- makes its living at the expense of another.

Hyperparasites are parasites that take advantage of other parasites, such as parasitic wasps that lay eggs in other parasitic wasps that in turn lay eggs in caterpillars. ( See more pictures of impressively gruesome parasites.)

But a parasite ( E. set) that manipulates the behavior of another parasite ( B. pallida) that manipulates the behavior of its host (creating galls in oak trees)?

This kind of macabre Russian nesting doll is called hypermanipulation, and it's much less understood.

"It's safe to say these researchers have uncovered something special," says Emily Meineke, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University who studies the interactions between parasitoids and their hosts.

What's more, Meineke was impressed with how the researchers showed that the crypt-keeper benefits by manipulating its host.

Weinersmith and colleagues did this by sealing crypt-keepers inside galls without another wasp to hijack, and then recording how many made it out on their own. In the end, crypt-keeper wasps were three times more likely to die in their crypts without the help of the other wasp species. ( Check out five more mind-control parasites with clever behaviors.)

"There are plenty of examples of hyperparasitism among parasitoid wasps, but manipulation of a complex behavior, and being able to document that it improves fitness, is certainly rare," says Meineke.

Right Under Our Noses

In addition to learning how the crypt-keeper can mind-control its host, Weinersmith and colleagues want to find out how widespread this behavior may be in other species. ( See our interactive graphic of zombie parasites.)

After all, the species lives in the heavily populated southeastern U.S., not some tributary off the Amazon River. ( Scott Egan, the study's senior author, originally discovered E. set on Florida's Gulf Coast, and spotted it again on trees at Rice University in Houston.)

" E. set and its amazing biology could very easily be incredibly common and we simply hadn't noticed it until just now," notes Andrew Forbes, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Iowa and study co-author.

"We have only recently begun to come to terms with the fact that parasitoid wasps outnumber all of the other insects, and that we really don't even have a good grasp of how many species might be out there," he says.

"It is almost certainly millions, and we know virtually nothing about what most of them are doing."
Follow Jason Bittel on Twitter and Facebook.

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New Crypt-Keeper Wasp Is Parasite That Bursts From Host's Head

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Scientists have discovered a new parasitic wasp species with a life cycle so diabolical, they named it after Set, the Egyptian god of evil and chaos. Meet Euderus set, otherwise known as the crypt-keeper wasp.

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Why did the alligator cross the road? To get to the other side ... very, very, slowly.

A viral video of a massive, and monstrous alligator known unofficially as "Humpback" has just been posted on the Facebook page of a natural reserve in Florida.

The giant alligator was caught trekking slowly across a trail at the Circle B Bar Reserve near Lakeland, Florida. The creature is an American alligator, a species that spans the slow-moving rivers and swampy marshlands ranging from North Carolina to Texas.

Though a face-to-face with "Humpback" would be terrifying, he is not an unusually large creature for his kind. Males of the species can reach a whopping 11.2 feet (3.4 meters) in length, according to the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. Given his size, Humpback is likely a male.

"By our standards, he's big but nothing out of the ordinary for the preserve," according to a post on the Polk County Government Florida Facebook page.

So far, there's no word on exactly how old Humpback is, though American alligators typically live to about 50 years old, and are big enough to become top predators by about 4 years old, according to the Smithsonian National Zoo.

"Generally, alligators that have gotten that big are good at avoiding things that might be detrimental to them like humans," said Laura Brandt, senior wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "This is probably an older alligator that's been around," she said, referring to "Humpback."

And age is unlikely the cause of his glacial gait. Rather, "alligators are adapted for living in the water, not so much for living on land. So he has a lot of weight to carry on those four little legs he's got," Brandt told Live Science. "When they're on land, unless they're chasing something, that's how they walk."

Alligators are known to reach speeds of up to 35 mph (56 km/h) in short bursts, according to Brandt. "For an animal that size, it's going to be a short burst and then he's going to run out of energy," she said.

This frigthening speed is one of the many reasons to steer clear of the gators when in reserves like Circle B Bar, said Jeff Spence, the Polk County parks and natural resources director. When in gator country, people should stay alert, keep to trails and avoid the water, keep a close eye on children, and pack out any food they brought in, Spence said. If they see a nesting alligator or one, like Humpback, crossing a trail, they should back out the way they came, he added.

"If there is an incident with the gator, it will not be a good outcome. Gators this large are not relocated. We ask everyone to be respectful of all wildlife, be safe and enjoy our natural environment," Spence told Live Science in an email.

Originally published on Live Science.

Editor's Note: Thish article was updated to add information from Laura Brandt and Jeff Spence.

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Later Gator! Video of Giant 'Humpback' Alligator Goes Viral

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Why did the alligator cross the road? To get to the other side ... very, very, slowly. A viral video of a massive, and monstrous alligator known unofficially as "Humpback" has just been posted on the Facebook page of a natural reserve in Florida.

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This image released by Universal Pictures shows Dennis Quaid with a dog, voiced by Josh Gad, in a scene from "A Dog's Purpose." A spokesman for American Humane said Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2017 that it has suspended its safety representative who worked on the set of the film when a frightened German shepherd, not shown, was forced into churning waters. AP

"A Dog's Purpose," a new film slated for a Jan. 27 release, has been marketed as a heartwarming story about the deep bonds between humans and their dogs. The movie has even inspired some who saw the trailer s to host fundraisers for animal shelters.

But now the film is facing calls for a boycott after a video surfaced showing one of the dogs used in the movie being forced to enter choppy water despite being visibly frightened, then struggling to stay afloat as cameras rolled.

TMZ, which first published the video, reports that a representative from American Humane Organization, the organization that oversees film productions in the U.S. to ensure animal safety, was present while the events shown in the video took place. That representative has now been placed on administrative leave, per the Associated Press.

In a statement to TMZ, Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment, the studios that produced the movies, said they were investigating the incident. TMZ also reports that the project's director, Lasse Hallström, was present when the video was recorded.

PETA immediately condemned the video and called for a boycott of the movie.

""New footage shows a terrified dog who is forced into churning water on set," PETA senior vice president Lisa Lange said in a statement to USA Today. "At one point, a dog who is in danger of drowning has to be rescued."

PETA also published a video contrasting the footage of the video with the finished footage in the film's trailer, which seems to show the animal diving into the water to save a drowning child.

Actor Josh Gad, who voices the dog in the film, issued a statement on Twitter Wednesday evening, saying he has also reached out to "the production team and the studio to ask for an explanation of these disturbing images."

Gad also said he was never actually present while the movie was being filmed.

The incident revealed by TMZ allegedly took place in November 2015.

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Hollywood filmmakers are under fire after video seems to show animal abuse on set

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TMZ first published the video from the set of "A Dog's Purpose" in which a German Shepherd is forced to enter choppy water despite against its will. Later, the video seems to show a dog drowning in the water as trainers rush to assist it.

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China, the world's largest seafood producer, has done something extraordinary. For the past 20 years, despite minimal management and some of the most intense industrial fishing in the world, it has maintained large catches of key species in its most productive waters.

That same kind of intense, lightly managed industrial fishing has collapsed other fisheries, such as Newfoundland's cod fishery in the 1990s. China's ability to sustain its catches has puzzled scientists, some of whom have even questioned the accuracy of the country's catch reports.

A new study from UC Santa Barbara, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests another explanation: By reducing the population of predatory fish, China has increased populations of preyed-upon species.

"If you fish down the large predatory fish, then you can catch more small prey fish, because they are no longer being eaten before you get to them," explained lead author Cody Szuwalski, a fisheries scientist in UCSB's Sustainable Fisheries Group. The group is a collaboration of the campus's Marine Science Institute and Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.

Key to the success of this approach is that predators typically need to eat 10 pounds of prey to add one pound to their own weight, so fishing out predators tends to increase prey catches by much more than it reduces predator catches.

This shortening of the food chain by removing predators to increase harvests is common on land. In fact, it's a key feature of modern farming. "If farmers could earn as much from raising venison on a field as they can from growing corn on it, they probably wouldn't try to keep deer out of their fields," said co-author Matt Burgess, a postdoctoral researcher in the Sustainable Fisheries Group.

But in the oceans, shortening the food chain looks different, because who eats whom in the fish world is generally based on body size rather than species. Bigger fish eat smaller fish, even when the two are from the same species (cannibalism) or the smaller fish are the juveniles of predator species and the bigger fish are adults of prey species. So while it's unlikely that an adult gazelle would eat a baby lion, an adult sardine certainly would eat a young largehead hairtail, a predatory species that is one of China's most common catches.

The study was based on a model of the East China Sea ecosystem built to account for this size-based feeding as well as the history of intense trawl fishing in the region. The model was able to roughly re-create reported catches of all major species.

The research also correctly predicted that under China's current approach, even catches of such predator species as the largehead hairtail would remain high, although they would consist mainly of 1-year-old fish. "This is exactly what you see when you visit Chinese fish markets," Szuwalski said.

Beyond providing an answer to an important fisheries puzzle, the study also offers important lessons for fishery management in Asia. When used to simulate various possible management strategies in the East China Sea, the model predicted that Western-style, single-species management would decrease catches by reversing changes to the food chain that have so far allowed catches to remain high. The same could be true in many other major fishing countries, particularly in East Asia, where fishing histories are similar to those in China.

"The standard refrain is that most countries can catch more by managing their fisheries like we do," said co-author Christopher Costello, co-principal investigator of the Sustainable Fisheries Group. "What if we're giving them the wrong advice?"

Given the negative impacts on biodiversity and potentially reduced ecosystem resilience in the face of climate change, "engineering" ecosystems by removing predators to enable large harvests is not necessarily an advisable long-term fishery management strategy. Still, the study suggests, in places where predator removal has already occurred, managers need to take the food chain into account to avoid unexpected consequences. Indeed, the model predicts that it is possible -- at least in China -- for such ecosystem-level management to increase catches, revenue and biomass.

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fish; fisheries; wild animals; ecology; sustainability; environmental awareness; ocean policy; environmental policies; land management

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China, the world's largest seafood producer, has done something extraordinary. For the past 20 years, despite minimal management and some of the most intense industrial fishing in the world, it has maintained large catches of key species in its most productive waters.

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These arthropods' unusual digestive system can act like a heart and gills

NEW ORLEANS - A newfound way of delivering oxygen in animal circulatory systems depends mostly on food sloshing back and forth in the guts.

This discovery came in sea spiders, or pycnogonids, which can look like legs in search of a body. Their spookily long legs hold stretches of digestive tract, which wouldn't fit inside the creatures' scrap of an abdomen. Waves of contraction sweeping up and down the leggy guts cause blood outside the guts to move too, evolutionary physiologist Art Woods of the University of Montana in Missoula said January 8 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. As lumpy surges of partly digested food rise and fall, blood that has picked up oxygen by diffusion whooshes to the rest of the body, Woods proposed.

"Essentially they use their legs like gills," says Jon Harrison, an evolutionary physiologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, who was not involved in the

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It takes guts for a sea spider to pump blood

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These arthropods' unusual digestive system can act like a heart and gills NEW ORLEANS - A newfound way of delivering oxygen in animal circulatory systems depends mostly on food sloshing back and forth in the guts. This discovery came in sea spiders, or pycnogonids, which can look like legs in search of a body.

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For white rhinos, poop emojis would be the status update of choice.

Credit: Linn Currie/Shutterstock.com

In the world of Harry Potter, wizards and witches communicate via the magical Floo Network. White rhinos, however, use a less magical and smellier communication system: a poo network.

Scientists recently discovered that white rhinos' dung contains status updates, with the feces odor broadcasting chemical signals about a rhino's age and sex, and about whether females are in heat or if males have staked out territory.

And forget about private messaging - rhinos use shared defecation areas to leave dispatches that can be "read" by all the other rhinos in their social group, according to a new study. [ The Poop on Pooping: 5 Misconceptions Explained]

Communication through urine is well known in many animal species, with males frequently spraying urine to mark their territories and establish dominance. But less is understood about the role dung might play in animals' social communication, the study authors reported.

The researchers suspected that dung likewise included chemicals that can relay specific messages related to mating and territory.

And they were particularly interested in animals that group together and poop together, defecating in communal sites and later making scents of all those mixed - and fragrant - olfactory signals.

Rhinos have poor eyesight, which means they depend heavily on their sense of smell to interpret the world around them, according to study lead author Courtney Marneweck, a doctoral candidate in the School of Life Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

For a socially minded rhino, community toilets known as middens - where male and female rhinos of all ages deposit their dung - could thereby be vital reservoirs of information about their group, Marneweck told Live Science in an email.

But to understand how that worked, the scientists had to dive into dung more deeply, to investigate rhino poop's unique chemistry and to identify the chemical compounds used by rhinos for scent-coded bulletins.

A prior study had suggested that white rhinos could sniff out the sex of a fellow rhino from the dung it left behind, but for the new study, Marneweck and her colleagues wanted to identify the specific chemicals and link them to messages about territorial claims and sexual availability.

Dung odors are composed of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which the researchers collected and analyzed from white rhinos in South Africa's Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park.

Once the VOCs were identified, the scientists linked them to observable behaviors in white rhinos - identifying possible threats or mates. To further test whether they were interpreting the chemicals correctly, the researchers reproduced the VOCs and presented male rhinos with samples of fake dung soaked in one of three artificial odors: the scent of a territorial male, the smell of a sexually receptive female and a neutral scent.

The scientists found that male rhinos responded to the artificial dung much as they did to real dung. The rhinos showed elevated interest in the "female" odors and assumed postures acknowledging a potential threat from the "male" odors, the authors wrote in the study.

The results revealed promising new opportunities for future research, such as further exploring scent-related animal behavior, or using known chemical signatures for conservation strategies, such as encouraging breeding between isolated groups to promote genetic diversity. Even captive breeding programs could benefit from stimulating rhinos' sense of smell, Marneweck said.

"There are a lot of different avenues that are opened now, which is really exciting," she added.

The findings were published online Tuesday (Jan. 10) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

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Rhinos' Communal Toilets Are Poo-Powered Social Networks

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In the world of Harry Potter, wizards and witches communicate via the magical Floo Network. White rhinos, however, use a less magical and smellier communication system: a poo network. Scientists recently discovered that white rhinos' dung contains status updates, with the feces odor broadcasting chemical signals about a rhino's age and sex, and about whether females are in heat or if males have staked out territory.

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170111132812.htm

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Tilikum, the most famous killer whale in the United States, died Friday after a year-long illness and quarter century of performances streaked with violence.

The many-tonned orca - believed to be 36 years old and linked to the deaths of three people in that time - likely succumbed to a lung infection early in the morning, according to a statement released by SeaWorld.

The whale died at the Orlando marine park where he spent most of his life, "surrounded by the trainers, care staff and veterinarians that provided him around-the-clock world-class care," the statement reads.

Tilikum had been sick since last spring, when a SeaWorld veterinarian, voice cracking, warned that the whale's bacterial infection was "chronic and progressive."

We're saddened to announce the passing of Tilikum, a beloved member of the SeaWorld family for 25 years. https://t.co/T7Y3fTgecp pic.twitter.com/vLfpi5szCc

- SeaWorld (@SeaWorld) January 6, 2017

SeaWorld eulogized a "long and enriching life" that "inspired millions of people." Others noted a dark current in the whale's biography.

[Will SeaWorld survive without orca shows?]

"From the moment he was taken from his ocean family, his life was tragic and filled with pain," reads a statement from PETA, one of many groups that Tilikum inspired to fight against whale captivity.

Tilikum "has shouldered a fraught history, emerging as the symbol of both orcas' elegance and their capacity for violence," The Washington Post's Yanan Wang wrote in a profile of the whale last March.

Born wild in the icy waters of west Iceland, Wang wrote, he was first netted in 1983 - in an era when killer whales were coveted by marine parks and adored by crowds.

Tilikum was taken from the ocean to a concrete tank, Wang wrote, held there for a year before being shipped to British Columbia to perform at Sealand of the Pacific.

A trainer told CNN that Tilikum was the easiest to work with in Sealand's stable. He was virile, too, siring many calves before 1991, when a part-time trainer slipped into the orca tank.

A whale grabbed 20-year-old Keltie Byrne's foot and pulled her underwater, Wang wrote. The whales thrashed her around the tank. She screamed until she drowned.

[SeaWorld fined $75,000 in death of trainer]

Sealand never recovered. "They closed in 1992, a year after selling their killer whales to SeaWorld," which reportedly wanted Tilikum for breeding at its state-of-the-art theme park, Wang wrote.

Tilikum spent seven years in Orlando before another body turned up in his tank.

In 1999, 27-year-old Daniel Dukes was released from a county jail and apparently snuck into the park at night. He was found drowned and draped across Tilikum's back, Wang reported.

Still, the whale drew crowds, even after February 2010, when SeaWorld's star trainer and spokesmodel Dawn Brancheau leaned over Tilikum's tank and was grabbed in his jaws by her hair.

She was thrashed in the water, like Byrnes before her. Like the others, she died.

Yet the show went on. Tilikum returned to public performances after a year-long hiatus, Wang reported.

His public image did not begin to change - and SeaWorld's with it - until the documentary "Blackfish" was released in 2013.

Heartbreaking news. SeaWorld has announced the passing of Tilikum #RIPTilikum #Blackfish pic.twitter.com/oR8qwzsOpd

- Blackfish (@blackfishmovie) January 6, 2017

Largely centered around Tilikum and his body count, the film portrayed the whale as a victim of captivity - made "psychotic," as one researcher put it.

SeaWorld called the movie propaganda. But within a year, a backlash against the park had caused SeaWorld's attendance to fall and its stock prices to dive.

Southwest Airlines ended a 26-year-old partnership with the marine park. The company's chief executive resigned. Animal rights groups called for Tilikum's freedom, while lawmakers talked of banning captive whale breeding.

In 2014, SeaWorld announced that it would the stop the practice voluntarily.

"Society is changing," the organization said. Tilikum's "will be the last generation of orcas at SeaWorld."

[SeaWorld ends captive breeding program, says current batch of killer whales 'will be the last']

The whale had not performed since his illness was announced last year, though the park posted regular reports on his health for his fans.

"Tilikum has some good days and some not so good days," reads an update from June.

Tilikum died much older than most captive orcas, SeaWorld said Friday. The Post has noted that wild whales live much longer.

He sired at least 21 calves before his death, 14 of them at SeaWorld.

The company still owns 28 orcas, among its parks in Orlando, San Antonio, Spain and San Diego. The San Diego park will hold its last killer whale show this weekend.
More reading: Tilikum, the SeaWorld killer whale at the center of 'Blackfish,' is slowly dying Three whales have died at SeaWorld San Antonio in the last six months Beleaguered SeaWorld admits employees spied on animal rights activists

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Tilikum, the infamous orca that killed a SeaWorld trainer, is dead

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Tilikum, the most famous killer whale in the United States, died Friday after a year-long illness and quarter century of performances streaked with violence. The many-tonned orca - believed to be 36 years old and linked to the deaths of three people in that time - likely succumbed to a lung infection early in the morning, according to a statement released by SeaWorld.

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http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/01/basic-instincts-gender-butterfly/

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Evolution is working hard to rescue some urban fish from a lethal, human-altered environment, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis, and published Dec. 9 in the journal Science.

While environmental change is outpacing the rate of evolution for many other species, Atlantic killifish living in four polluted East Coast estuaries turn out to be remarkably resilient. These fish have adapted to levels of highly toxic industrial pollutants that would normally kill them.

The killifish is up to 8,000 times more resistant to this level of pollution than other fish, the study found. While the fish is not commercially valuable, it is an important food for other species and an environmental indicator.
Genetic diversity speeds evolution
What makes Atlantic killifish so special? Extremely high levels of genetic variation, higher than any other vertebrate -- humans included -- measured so far. The more genetic diversity, the faster evolution can act. That's one reason why insects and weeds can quickly adapt and evolve to resist pesticides, and why pathogens can evolve quickly to resist drugs created to destroy them.

Not all species are so lucky, however.

"Some people will see this as a positive and think, 'Hey, species can evolve in response to what we're doing to the environment!'" said lead author Andrew Whitehead, associate professor in the UC Davis Department of Environmental Toxicology. "Unfortunately, most species we care about preserving probably can't adapt to these rapid changes because they don't have the high levels of genetic variation that allow them to evolve quickly."
Evolution a pollution solution? Not for most of us
The scientists sequenced complete genomes of nearly 400 Atlantic killifish from polluted and nonpolluted sites at New Bedford Harbor in Massachusetts; Newark Bay, New Jersey; Connecticut's Bridgeport area; and Virginia's Elizabeth River. The sites have been polluted since the 1950s and 1960s by a complex mixture of industrial pollutants including dioxins, heavy metals, hydrocarbons and other chemicals.

The team's genetic analysis suggests that the Atlantic killifish's genetic diversity make them unusually well positioned to adapt to survive in radically altered habitats. At the genetic level, the tolerant populations evolved in highly similar ways. This suggests that these fish already carried the genetic variation that allowed them to adapt before the sites were polluted, and that there may be only a few evolutionary solutions to pollution.

The study lays the groundwork for future research that could explore which genes confer tolerance of specific chemicals. Such work could help better explain how genetic differences among humans and other species may contribute to differences in sensitivity to environmental chemicals.

"If we know the kinds of genes that can confer sensitivity in another vertebrate animal like us, perhaps we can understand how different humans, with their own mutations in these important genes, might react to these chemicals," Whitehead said.

"This study shows that different populations of Atlantic killifish exposed to toxic pollution evolve tolerance to that pollution through changes in one molecular pathway," said George Gilchrist, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the study along with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. "This pathway may play a similar role in many animals exposed to pollutants, with slightly different adaptations in response to different toxicants."

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evolutionary biology; nature; wild animals; environmental awareness; pollution; environmental issues; environmental policies; ocean policy; land management

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Against the tide: A fish adapts quickly to lethal levels of pollution: What's its secret? And can humans learn from it?

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Evolution is working hard to rescue some urban fish from a lethal, human-altered environment, according to a study. Atlantic killifish living in four polluted East Coast estuaries have adapted to levels of highly toxic industrial pollutants that would normally kill them.

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At last, scientists may have an answer to a question every dog owner asks: Does your pet remember the things you do together? For people, at least, the ability to consciously recall personal experiences and events is thought to be linked to self-awareness. It shapes how we think about the past-and how we predict the future. Now, a new study suggests that dogs also have this type of memory, indicating that the talent may be more common in other animals than previously recognized.

The study, "is a creative approach to trying to capture what's on a dog's mind," says Alexandra Horowitz, a dog cognition scientist at Barnard College in New York City who was not involved in the research.

The idea that nonhuman animals can consciously remember things they've done or witnessed in the past, called episodic memory, is controversial-largely because it's thought that these animals aren't self-aware. But scientists have shown that species like Western scrub jays, hummingbirds, rats, and the great apes-those that have to recall complex sequences of information in order to survive-have "episodiclike" memory. For instance, the jays remember what food they've hidden, where they stashed it, when they did so, and who was watching while they did it.

But what about recalling things that aren't strictly necessary for survival, or someone else's actions? To find out whether dogs can remember such details, scientists asked 17 owners to teach their pets a trick called "do as I do." The dogs learned, for instance, that after watching their owner jump in the air, they should do the same when commanded to "do it!"

"But that alone doesn't prove episodiclike memory," says Claudia Fugazza, an ethologist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and the study's lead author. "You have to test them when they don't expect it."

So in the next round of training, the owners taught their dogs to lie down after watching them do something like touching an open umbrella or stepping up on a chair. They were no longer required to imitate. "And then we surprised them," Fugazza says. Again, an owner performed an action, but this time after the dog laid down, the owner ordered, "Do it!" The dog then had to recall what it had seen its owner do, even though it had no expectation that it needed to remember the action. The dogs were tested in this way both 1 minute and 1 hour after watching their owners.

The dogs succeeded in 33 of 35 trials. That suggests that dogs have something similar to episodic memory, Fugazza and her team report today in Current Biology. But the longer the canines wait, the more trouble they have recalling the action. That's similar to human episodic memory, which decays at a faster rate when an event isn't intentionally recorded, the researchers say. For instance, you're more likely to remember your first kiss than a hug last week from your spouse.

"It shows that our dogs remember events much like we do, and [it] blows out of the water the old way that most scientists would characterize animal memory," says Brian Hare, a dog cognition expert at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who was not involved in the study. "Our dogs' memories aren't based simply on repetition and reward."

Discovering that this type of memory is not unique to humans means it "did not evolve only in primates, but is a more widespread skill in the animal kingdom," Fugazza says. Indeed, parrots, dolphins, and killer whales could be the next ones to be tested, because other researchers have already taught these species to "do as I do." Most likely, they remember more than we think.

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At last, scientists may have an answer to a question every dog owner asks: Does your pet remember the things you do together? For people, at least, the ability to consciously recall personal experiences and events is thought to be linked to self-awareness. It shapes how we think about the past-and how we predict the future.

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A reindeer on the Norwegian island of Svalbard.

Credit: BMJ | Shutterstock.com

Reindeer are shrinking, and it's not because they're on a diet for the holidays. Rather, climate change is making it difficult for them - and their gestating fetuses - to survive extreme winters, new research shows.

The findings are the culmination of a 16-year study on the reindeer living in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago located between Norway and the Arctic. In 1994, the adult reindeer in Svalbard weighed an average of 120 lbs. (55 kilograms), but in 2010, they weighed less than 108 lbs. (49 kg), on average - a 10- to 12-percent drop in weight, said lead study researcher Steve Albon, an emeritus population ecologist at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland.

The drop in weight was linked to warmer winters and summers, he said. Reindeer typically mate in late October and give birth in early June, he said. During the cold, dry winter months, reindeer, including those that are pregnant, forage under the snow for lichen, a slow-growing organism that's part fungi and part algae, Albon said. [ 6 Surprising Facts About Reindeer]

But warm winter temperatures have increasingly brought rain, not snow, Albon said. Then, when temperatures drop, the wet ground freezes like an ice rink, with the reindeer's tasty lichen stuck beneath the ice.

Unable to get to their food, hundreds, if not thousands, of reindeer die, and pregnant reindeer that survive either lose their fetuses or give birth to smaller calves, Albon said. In fact, 61,000 reindeer starved to death in Siberia following a rain-on-snow event in 2013 to 2014, according to a November 2016 study published in the journal Biology Letters.

"In the winter, over the 20 years we've been working there [Svalbard], the temperature has gone up 9 degrees Celsius [16.2 degrees Fahrenheit]," Albon told Live Science. "It's more likely that you'll get these periods where the temperatures go above freezing, and if there's any precipitation, [it later freezes]."

At first, the researchers noticed these ice-rink events happening every six years - in 1996, 2002 and 2008. But then, the icy events began happening every other year year, in 2008, 2010 and 2012, "and we realized that this was related to the warming climate," Albon said. "The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet, especially this part of the Arctic."

Albon and his Norwegian colleagues initially visited Svalbard's reindeer to learn more about their response to parasites. As they measured and weighed the reindeer year after year to see the effect of parasites, they noticed a troubling pattern: There was a huge variation in the number of pregnant females in 1996, 2002 and 2008, the same years the ice-rink events happened. Moreover, the researchers recorded a decline in the adults' skeletal size and weight from the 1990s to the early 2000s, the researchers said.

This happened despite the warmer summers, which led to increased vegetation for the reindeer to eat. Over a 20-year period, the summer temperatures increased by about 2.7 F (1.5 C), Albon said.

"In the summer, 1.5 Celsius doesn't sound like much, but if you increase from a mean [average] of 6 degrees Celsius [42.8 F] in July to 7.5 degrees Celsius [45.5 F], you'll find you get a doubling in vegetation productivity," Albon said. "That's a very substantial change."

Despite this cornucopia of food during the summer, the winters continued to wear on the reindeer. "They were losing more weight, they were losing their fetuses, so there was fetal mortality," Albon said. [ Species Success Stories: 10 Animals Back from the Brink]

In contrast, "if the winter was cold and dry, the mothers could get to the food, and the calves would be born at size and likely to be more viable," he said. "That very early growth, even in utero, dictates the rest of life."

The warmer summer adds a complication, Albon said. When Svalbard is warm and sprouting with food, reindeer are more likely to mate. That means the reindeer population is growing despite the frequent, severe ice-rink winters, he said.

It's possible that limited winter resources due to increased population may partly explain the "shrinking"-reindeer phenomenon, Albon and his colleagues wrote in their study.

But regardless of the cause of the "shrinking," the smaller reindeer face different challenges than their normal-size brethren. These smaller reindeer have a disadvantage during the winter because their metabolism is higher than that of regularly sized reindeer, but there's less food available for them to eat. Yet during the warmer summers, these smaller reindeer may have an advantage because it's easier for them to dissipate heat, which is high when they're nursing, Albon said.

If too many reindeer shrink, it also spells bad news for the herd. If the adults in a reindeer population are, for the most part, more than 110 lbs. (50 kg) in April, the population tends to increase. But if the reindeer are mostly under that weight, the population tends to decline, Albon said.

For the time being, the researchers are waiting for the reindeer born in the past few years to reach age 6, when they become mature adults. Only then will the researchers have a better idea of how climate change is affecting the reindeer's population numbers, he said. However, another study, presented at the American Geophysical Union Meeting on Monday (Dec. 12), found that climate change might be responsible for shrinking reindeer populations in northern Russia.

Reindeer are hardly the only animal that is "shrinking" due to climate change. The phenomenon isn't a new one - when the planet got warmer in the past, beetles, bees, spiders and even pocket gophers also shrank, according to fossil evidence, Live Science reported in 2011.

More recently, reports have tied shrinking bison, salamanders and other animals to climate change.

The reindeer research, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, was presented Monday at the British Ecological Society meeting in Liverpool, England.

Original article on Live Science.

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Rudolph Is Shrinking: Climate Change Is Starving Santa's Reindeer

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Reindeer are shrinking, and it's not because they're on a diet for the holidays. Rather, climate change is making it difficult for them - and their gestating fetuses - to survive extreme winters, new research shows. The findings are the culmination of a 16-year study on the reindeer living in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago located between Norway and the Arctic.

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It's no fish tale: The Greenland shark is the longest-lived vertebrate on the planet, a new study says.

The animal, native to the cold, deep waters of the North Atlantic, can live to at least 272 years-and possibly to the ripe old age of 500. (Related: " Meet the Animal That Lives for 11,000 Years.")

"We had an expectation that they would be very long-lived animals, but I was surprised that they turned out to be as old as they did," says study leader Julius Nielsen, a biologist at the University of Copenhagen.

Because of its remote habitat and elusive nature, the giant shark is poorly understood, including how long it lives.

Some research had suggested they grow extremely slowly, less than half an inch (a centimeter) per year, suggesting a life span well beyond those of other vertebrates.

Determining a bony fish's age can be easily done by analyzing their otoliths, or ear stones. But sharks, which are made mostly of cartilage, lack this kind of hard, calcified tissue. ( Read more about sharks, the lords of the sea, in National Geographic magazine.)

So scientists found another way to figure out the age of Greenland sharks: looking into their eyes.

Fishy Estimates

The researchers analyzed 28 female Greenland sharks that had died accidentally during the Greenland Institute for Natural Resources ' commercial fish-monitoring program.

"The secret behind the success of this study is that we had young and old animals, medium-sized and large animals, and we could compare them all," Nielsen notes.

Greenland sharks have a unique eye structure in that the lens grows throughout an animal's lifetime. The older an animal gets, the more layers are added to the lens. Scientists can't count the layers as they would tree rings, but they can remove all the layers that have been added over the years until they reach the center, or the embryonic nucleus, of the lens. (See " Rare Whales Can Live to Nearly 200, Eye Tissue Reveals.")

This tissue is composed of proteins that were formed when the shark was a young pup. Scientists can analyze the chemical composition of the eye lens nucleus to estimate an animal's age.

Radiocarbon dating of the 28 Greenland sharks' lens nuclei revealed a maximum life span of at least 272 years, according to the study, published August 11 in the journal Science.

The largest shark in the study, at 16.5 feet (five meters) in length, was estimated to be approximately 392 years old. Nielsen says there is some uncertainty around that estimate. He and his colleagues determined with 95 percent certainty that the shark was between 272 and 512 years old, and it was most likely around 390.

What's more, because female Greenland sharks are reported to reach sexual maturity at lengths greater than 13 feet (four meters), they likely would start breeding at 156 years of age.

It's unknown why they live so long, but cold environments cause low body temperatures, which in turn means slow metabolism-and thus less damage to animals' tissues.

These results are crucial, Nielsen says, because the Greenland shark population is unknown. If the species is rare, the death of even one long-lived animal could be a huge loss. (See " Slow Sharks Sneak Up on Sleeping Seals [and Eat Them]?")

Not only is the shark sometimes caught by accident during fishing-a phenomenon called bycatch-but its habitat may be disturbed by climate change and many countries' increased focus on the Arctic for fishing, oil, and other natural resources.

"The longevity is remarkable, but I hope the public recognizes how important that is with regard to how we manage and conserve Arctic and deepwater ecosystems," says Aaron Fisk, an ecologist at the University of Windsor who was not involved with this research.

"If Greenland sharks live this long and don't reproduce until they are 150 years old, their population is vulnerable to exploitation."

Nielsen agrees: "It's important for policymakers to keep in mind that this is an extremely long-lived and slowly maturing animal.

"Fisheries should do what they can to minimize bycatch. We need to have some respect for them."
Follow Mary Bates on Twitter and Facebook.

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272-Year-Old Shark Is Longest-Lived Vertebrate on Earth

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It's no fish tale: The Greenland shark is the longest-lived vertebrate on the planet, a new study says. The animal, native to the cold, deep waters of the North Atlantic, can live to at least 272 years-and possibly to the ripe old age of 500.

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A new Duke University-led study finds that more than 200 bird species in six rapidly developing regions are at risk of extinction despite not being included on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

The study, published Nov. 9 in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, used remote sensing data to map recent land-use changes that are reducing suitable habitat for more than 600 bird species in the Atlantic forest of Brazil, Central America, the western Andes of Colombia, Sumatra, Madagascar and Southeast Asia.

Of the 600 species, only 108 are currently classified by the IUCN Red List as being at risk of extinction.

The new analysis, however, reveals that 210 of the species face accelerated risks of extinction and 189 of them should now be classified as threatened, based on the extent and pace of habitat loss documented by recent remote sensing.

"Good as it is, the Red List assessment process dates back 25 years and does not make use of advances in geospatial technologies," said Stuart L. Pimm, Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. "We have powerful new tools at our fingertips, including vastly improved digital maps, regular global assessments of land use changes from satellite images, and maps showing which areas of the planet are protected by national parks."

By not incorporating this type of modern geospatial data directly into its assessments, Pimm said, the Red List is underestimating the number of species at risk and causing scientists and policymakers to overlook priority areas for conservation.

"The Red List employs rigorously objective criteria, is transparent, and democratic in soliciting comments on species decisions," he stressed. "That said, its methods are seriously outdated."

For instance, while the Red List currently includes estimates of the size of a species' geographical range in its assessment process, it fails to account for how much preferred habitat remains within that range, said Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela, the new study's lead author, who received her Ph.D. from Duke earlier this year.

"Some bird species prefer forests at mid-elevations, while others inhabit moist lowland forests," she said. "Knowing how much of this preferred habitat remains -- and how much of it has been destroyed or degraded -- is vital for accurately assessing extinction risks, especially for species that have small geographical ranges to begin with. But it's ignored in the current Red List assessment process."

"When these factors are accounted for, some species that are not currently considered at risk of extinction likely have ranges that are smaller than those that the Red List otherwise quite sensibly decides are at risk," said study co-author Clinton Jenkins, who directs the biodiversity mapping site http://www.biodiversitymapping.org.

Added Ocampo-Peñuela, "Natural habitats in the most biodiverse places on Earth are disappearing, pushing species toward extinction a thousand times faster than their natural rates. Preventing these extinctions requires knowing what species are at risk and where they live," she said. "With better data we can make better decisions, and have a greater chance of saving species and protecting the places that matter."

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extinction; new species; nature; endangered animals; ecology; geography; rainforests; exotic species

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Remote sensing data reveals hundreds more species at risk of extinction

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A new Duke University-led study finds that more than 200 bird species in six rapidly developing regions are at risk of extinction despite not being included on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. The study, published Nov.

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A new National Geographic video showing humpback whales in a graceful ballet around a passenger boat in the South Pacific is a whale-watcher's dream.

The behavior of the whales is called "mugging," an all-purpose term marine biologists use to describe whales approaching a boat. Sometimes they stay for mere minutes, said Stephanie Stack, a marine biologist at the Pacific Whale Foundation in Hawaii. Other times they stay for hours.

Regulations prevent boat captains from running their engines within 100 yards of a whale, Stack told Live Science. Thus, the boat has to stay put until the whales, or "muggers," decide to swim away. [ See Photos of Researchers Tracking Humpback Whales in the South Pacific]

"People don't seem to mind" that delay, Stack said. "It's the best thing that can happen on a whale watch."

The video, shared by National Geographic on Facebook, was taken near the New Caledonia archipelago in the South Pacific. Three whales circle a boat calmly, occasionally breaching with an eruption of spray from their blowholes. A drone captured the footage, creating a bird's-eye view in which the whales nearly dwarf the boat.

Here, a humpback whale breaches off Sydney, Australia, during a whale-watching tour on June 23, 2011. Humpback whales sometimes show "mugging" behavior where they encircle a boat, sometimes just out of curiosity.

Credit: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

Humpback whales ( Megaptera novaeangliae) can grow up to 60 feet (18 meters) in length, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The whales migrate farther than any other mammals, traveling from summer feeding grounds as far north as Maine and Alaska to winter calving grounds near Hawaii or the Dominican Republic, according to NOAA. They can eat up to 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg) of tiny crustaceans, plankton and miniature fish a day, straining it through the comb-like baleen in their mouths.

Mugging seems to be motivated by curiosity, said Stack, who wasn't involved in the taping of the New Caledonia encounter. The whales aren't aggressive or stressed during these episodes, and sometimes engage in a behavior called "spy hopping." That's when a whale slowly lifts its head out of the water, bringing at least one eye above the waterline to find out what's happening above the surface.

"They're just investigating," Stack said.

Occasionally, a female humpback will mug a boat while trying to avoid an unwanted suitor, Stack said. She will use the boat as a shield between her and a persistent male. In general, Stack said, mugging is relatively uncommon, but seems to happen more often off the coast of eastern Australia in the Pacific than near Hawaii.

Original article on Live Science.

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Humpback Whales 'Mug' Boat in South Pacific (Video)

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A new National Geographic video showing humpback whales in a graceful ballet around a passenger boat in the South Pacific is a whale-watcher's dream. The behavior of the whales is called "mugging," an all-purpose term marine biologists use to describe whales approaching a boat.

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Somewhere in the warm waters off the Florida Keys lives a fish named Sylvia. She is six feet long, friendly as a golden retriever-and a rarity. Fabien Cousteau named the distinctive Atlantic goliath grouper after famed ocean scientist Sylvia Earle when the curious fish and her larger companion repeatedly visited Cousteau during his expedition in the undersea laboratory Aquarius off Key Largo in 2014.

The other grouper was named JYC, after Cousteau's grandfather, Jacques Cousteau.

"As ocean icons, it seemed normal that two beautiful goliath groupers we saw almost every day would be named after my grandfather and Sylvia," Cousteau says. "I didn't know it was her favorite fish until much later."

Not all hold such a reverential view of the goliath grouper, which can reach 800 pounds. Fished to near extinction in its western north Atlantic habitat by 1990, U.S. states and the federal government banned catching the goliath -and now, the population is making a comeback.

It is still listed as critically endangered, however, and is rarely seen in many places where it was once plentiful. But as numbers recover, sports fishermen and charter boat operators in the Keys complain that the fish has become a pest.

Oversize Appetite?

Several videos online show the goliath grouper's antics, which, includes a grouper dragging a fisherman and stealing his catch.

"There are a lot of spots we don't go to anymore because you won't catch anything," says Brice Barr, a charter boat skipper and president of the Key West Charter Fishermen's Association. "The goliaths will catch every single fish that you hook. They hear the sound of our boats and that's the dinner bell. They know they are going to get fed."

Barr and others also blame goliath groupers for the decimating fish stocks on the Florida reef, including snapper and smaller grouper. ( See more National Geographic magazine pictures of goliath groupers.)

"They're not selective in what they eat," Barr says. "If you ask most fishermen, they say we need to get rid of the goliath. These top predators are becoming so protected, they are starting to prey more and more on the rest of the fish."

The arguments may sound plausible on the docks, but do not add up in the science lab, says Chris Koenig, a retired University of Florida marine biologist who has studied goliaths for decades.

"People make up all kinds of reasons why the fish must be destroyed," Koenig says. "This is a native species. They were part of the natural environment. They have been here for millions of years, much longer than we have."

Koenig, whose fascination with goliath groupers dates to his boyhood when the fish was considered worthless, and his wife, Florida State University scientist Felicia Coleman, posted a "fact or fiction" paper online to refute false claims and clarifying the groupers' dining habits and biology.

"We've been trying to knock down these arguments for years," Koenig says. "People think because it is big, it has to eat a lot. But in the Gulf of Mexico, the snapper fishery has been below sustainable levels for 20 years."

Big Game of the Ocean

Nor is the grouper especially ferocious.

"The longest teeth in their mouth are an eighth of an inch. Sure, they are sharp, but you have to provoke them, and then, the worst they can do is give you a rash," Koenig says. "Sharks will take your hand off. Goliath suck their prey, they have such a weak bite."

Koenig says the push to lift the ban on catching goliath grouper has more to do with sport than anything else.

Among trophy fish caught in the Florida Keys, the goliath grouper has long held special distinction. In historical photographs featuring man and fish posed side by side, the goliath is almost always larger than the client who caught it-which is an essential part of its appeal.

Goliath groupers, which live up to 40 years, can measure as much as eight feet in length. Catching one is the ocean equivalent of hunting big game. Only sharks, rarely caught, are bigger.

"Nobody's going to hold up a minnow and smile next to it," Koenig says.

Swimming with Giants

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has conducted three population counts, in 2004, 2010, and 2015 in an effort to determine if the grouper has recovered enough to lift the fishing ban. ( See a map of the Atlantic goliath grouper's range.)

None of the counts convinced officials to reopen the goliath grouper fishery so far.

"We don't really know how low the population got right before the closure," says Amanda Nalley, the commission's spokesperson. "We estimate that it probably we below 5 percent of its original size-a very, very low level."

Nalley adds the commission has no plans on the horizon to the reconsider grouper's status.

Dan DeMaria, a commercial diver who used to hunt goliaths with a spear when they were plentiful, now thinks they are worth more alive than dead. Ecotourism has discovered the fish, drawing divers and tourists from around the world to swim with them, and DeMaria says that is the best outcome for the long-lived fish.

"One fish can be seen hundreds of times," he says.

The experience becomes even more exotic during mating season, when goliaths migrate north to cooler waters just off Palm Beach, Florida, and gather in groups of 50.

Koenig agrees. "Nowhere else in the world can you swim up to a fish that is the size of a small Volkswagen and pet it on the face and see about 30 of them around you," he says. "That is a thrilling thing."

Creating a Win-Win

Ecotourism can only help so much-Koenig notes that groupers are still being caught illegally.

He's finalizing a new analysis of the behemoth, in which he lays out a plan for reopening the juvenile goliath grouper to fishing on a limited, sustainable basis. His data suggests this type of fishery may better protect the goliath in the end.

"They are killing them now and leaving them on the bottom," since it's breaking the law to possess a grouper.

"If you come to some kind of compromise where the fishing group gets their piece of the pie and the diving group gets their piece of the pie, and we don't see any changes in the population density, everybody's happy."

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800-Pound Groupers Making a Comeback-But Not Everyone's Happy

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Somewhere in the warm waters off the Florida Keys lives a fish named Sylvia. She is six feet long, friendly as a golden retriever-and a rarity. Fabien Cousteau named the distinctive Atlantic goliath grouper after famed ocean scientist Sylvia Earle when the curious fish and her larger companion repeatedly visited Cousteau during his expedition in the undersea laboratory Aquarius off Key Largo in 2014.

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One of the world's largest, most endangered, and most mysterious freshwater fish has yielded a new surprise: a likely new species-and possibly several more-have been lurking in the backwaters of the Amazon.

New research published by National Geographic explorer Donald J. Stewart and colleagues L. Cynthia Watson and Annette M. Kretzer in the journal Copeia this week reveals strong genetic evidence for an unknown new species of arapaima that was found at several locations in southwestern Guyana.

Long, narrow giants, arapaimas live in tropical South America. They can grow up to 10 feet long and weigh 440 pounds. They breathe air through a primitive lung, and tend to live in oxygen-poor backwaters. ( See photos of arapaimas and other megafish.)

Stewart, who is also a biology professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in New York, says the team sampled hundreds of the giant fish in the Essequibo and Branco River basins in Guyana. The Branco is part of the Amazon system while the Essequibo drains separately into the Atlantic. The team found two sets of fish with highly distinct genetic markers at three locations in the Essequibo.

The genetic markers indicate the fish have not bred across the two groups for a long time and they are likely so different that they represent distinct species, says Stewart. At least one is therefore new to science.

"If you have two types of fish swimming along together but not interbreeding that's pretty good evidence they are new species," Stewart explains. "But we still have to work out the details."

A Complicated History

Arapaimas have long been a poorly studied group, in part because they are hard to catch and they live in remote areas. Scientists in the early and mid 19th century thought there were several distinct species in the Amazon, but then a British scientist published a paper in 1868 arguing that all arapaimas belong to a single species, with regional differences.

That was the prevailing view until 2013, when Stewart published a paper proving that another species existed, based on physical characteristics. That specimen, collected in 2001 in Amazonas State, Brazil, was named Arapaima leptosoma, referring to the fact that it has a slimmer body.

But now at least one more species must be added to the arapaima family tree, in addition to the historic species Arapaima arapaima. In fact, Stewart suspects there may be even more distinct species in other parts of the animal's range, and he intends to continue the work of finding them.

"I think we'll have many more species before we're done," he says.

Saving the Species?

The classification isn't just academic, though. Arapaimas are highly endangered, thanks to pollution and disruption of their habitat and centuries of fishing pressure. Their meat was historically prized by indigenous peoples, some of whom used it for ceremonial purposes. A moratorium on their capture was enacted in 2002, but illegal poaching continues.

Scientists aren't sure how many arapaimas are left but they think it is probably around 5,000 in the Essequibo, up from a low of around 800 in 2012. But just how many remain in each species is unknown, making the conservation status of some potentially dire.

"We need to pay attention to this diversity so we don't eliminate one of them," says Stewart.

As an example, if one of the species spawns at an older age fishermen might end up wiping that animal out without realizing it.

Further, "it's hard to argue for conservation if you don't know it's there," says Stewart. "The more of these we can recognize the more arguments we can make for getting the resources to protect them."

The species has long been cherished in the Amazon as a symbol of the river. "Some people consider it a flagship species that we need to conserve, kind of like a tiger or an elephant," says Stewart.

Correction: This story was updated on December 5 to clarify that the fishing moratorium was enacted in Guyana in 2002 not 2012, A. leptosoma has not had genetic work done yet, and the Essequibo drains separately from the Amazon.

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New Giant, Air-Breathing Fish Discovered

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One of the world's largest, most endangered, and most mysterious freshwater fish has yielded a new surprise: a likely new species-and possibly several more-have been lurking in the backwaters of the Amazon. New research published by National Geographic explorer Donald J. Stewart and colleagues L. Cynthia Watson and Annette M.

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http://www.livescience.com/56974-ancient-bird-cells-survive-in-fossil.html

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http://www.livescience.com/57028-invasive-python-ate-three-deer.html

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Snake black market poses risk to humans and wildlife

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The illegal reptile trade in Australia, including venomous snakes, could put our wildlife, the environment and human lives at risk, a new study has found.

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During election season, everyone can relate to woodpeckers: We all feel like banging our heads against the wall.

The birds handle it better, though, so Weird Animal Question of the Week was pleased to look into Derek Halas's question: "Why don't woodpeckers get headaches?"

Little Drummer Bird

It's a tough one to answer, says Walter Koenig, an ornithologist at Cornell University, via email. But, he says, if pecking caused pain and injury, "presumably they wouldn't be around for very long"-a hurt bird would likely succumb to predators.

There are more than 300 species of woodpeckers worldwide, and they peck wood for a variety of reasons: to excavate nest cavities, dig for insects or sap, or create holes to store food.

When selecting wood, the birds usually target trees weakened by fungal decay, which are easier to crack, Jerome Jackson, a behavioral ecologist at Florida Gulf Coast University, says via email.

The tapping is also "usually done with glancing blows-not a direct hit-thus not so hard on the woodpecker," he says. (See " Weasel Rides Woodpecker in Viral Photo-But Is It Real?")

Some woodpeckers practice drumming (watch video) -a superfast pecking that attracts mates and defends territory-on a resonant surface, like a hollow tree. That allows for a louder noise while avoiding punishing impact.

Acorn woodpeckers of North and Central America have another strategy: They carve out individual holes into trees, each just big enough to "squeeze in a single acorn"-storage for leaner times, Jackson says.

In a recent incident in California, acorn woodpeckers stashed 300 pounds of acorns into a wireless antenna, disrupting communication in nearby towns. ( Watch the incredible video.)

Bird Brains

Woodpeckers also have, well, a head for pecking.

For one, woodpeckers have tiny brains-just 0.07 ounce. The bigger the brain, the higher the mass and thus the higher the risk of brain injury, says Lorna Gibson, a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT who has studied woodpecker brains.

"Size is the most important thing," says Gibson, an avid bird-watcher who documented her results in a video series.

Another factor that protects woodpecker noggins is the limited time the tree and their bill are in contact, she says. It's brief-just one-half to one millisecond. By comparison, a typical human head injury happens between about three and 15 milliseconds.

Boneheaded

The outside of a woodpecker's skull is made of dense bone, while the inside is porous bone, Gibson says.

The force applied during pecking is "distributed around the skull to the sturdy bone at the base and the back," keeping the pressure off the brain, says Richard Prum, evolutionary ornithologist at Yale University, via email. (Related: " Woodpeckers Are Pros at Protecting Their Brains.")

Woodpecker brains also fit snugly in those skulls, preventing the organ from banging around. The orientation of the brain is also important, MIT's Gibson says: It sits at an angle toward the back of its head, like a half orange with the flat side facing the front. That creates more surface area to absorb those exacting blows.

A 2011 study suggested that the hyoid apparatus, a bone-and-muscle structure that wraps around a woodpecker's skull, also keeps the brain safe.

"The bottom line," Prum says, "is good evolutionary design."
Have a question about the weird and wild world? Tweet me, leave me a note in the comments or find me on Facebook. Weird Animal Question of the Week answers your questions every Saturday.

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During election season, everyone can relate to woodpeckers: We all feel like banging our heads against the wall. The birds handle it better, though, so Weird Animal Question of the Week was pleased to look into Derek Halas's question: "Why don't woodpeckers get headaches?"

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from research organizations
Credit: RICHARD ARONSON/Florida Institute of Technology
Scientists have found that a genetic mutation in the eyes of right whales that hampers their ability to see in bright light may make them more susceptible to fatal entanglements in fishing gear, one of the major causes of death for this critically endangered mammal.

The study of this whale species, which numbers less than 500 individuals remaining in the Western Atlantic Ocean, may also help scientists better understand how vision works in other mammals, including people.

Florida Institute of Technology doctoral student Lorian Schweikert and her adviser, Michael Grace, professor of neuroscience and senior associate dean of science, worked with Jeffry Fasick, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Tampa, to characterize this newly discovered mutation in Northern right whales and Bowhead whales. Their results suggest that this mutation may seriously harm the whales' ability to visually avoid entanglement.

According to their new study, "Evolutionary Loss of Cone Photoreception in Balaenid Whales Reveals Circuit Stability in the Mammalian Retina," published this month in the Journal of Comparative Neurology, the normal light-detecting proteins in cone photoreceptor cells are missing in these whales, demonstrating for the first time the complete loss of cone-based light detection in any mammal.

In light of the findings, the Florida Tech and University of Tampa team cloned and sequenced the gene that encodes a cone opsin protein. Humans possess several different opsin genes that provide excellent color vision, but whales and their relatives were thought to only possess one. Now researchers are finding some whale species in which that single gene is fundamentally broken.

Working in Florida Tech's Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory and the Center for High Resolution Microscopy, the scientists went on to study how this mutation affects the wiring of the whale retina by studying the bowhead whale, a resident of the Arctic. Schweikert and Grace found that rod cells -- light-detectors that operate in dim-light conditions -- remain, while functional cone cells are completely absent in the bowhead whale retina.

Said Schweikert, "Cone cells are normally required for vision in bright light. With only rods, right whales may have very poor vision when they surface to breathe. This may make it difficult for them to avoid entanglement in fishing gear -- one of the leading causes of death of these critically endangered animals."

Unexpectedly, however, the cone opsin mutation thought by scientists to hinder operation of the retina may actually enhance dim-light vision in these whales -- a finding that provides insight into the effects of mutations on the health and function of the human retina.

"Understanding sensory systems in critically endangered species opens a window that may help us better understand how to protect them," Grace said. "It's a fantastic bonus that analyzing whale vision eyes may help us better understand how our own eyes operate."

Journal Reference:

Lorian E. Schweikert, Jeffry I. Fasick, Michael S. Grace. Evolutionary loss of cone photoreception in balaenid whales reveals circuit stability in the mammalian retina. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 2016; 524 (14): 2873 DOI: 10.1002/cne.23996

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dolphins and whales; endangered animals; mammals; genetics; evolutionary biology; biology; animals; new species

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Genetic mutation in whale eyes may increase mortality risks

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from research organizations Credit: RICHARD ARONSON/Florida Institute of Technology Scientists have found that a genetic mutation in the eyes of right whales that hampers their ability to see in bright light may make them more susceptible to fatal entanglements in fishing gear, one of the major causes of death for this critically endangered mammal.

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abenezer seyfaw

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As the oceans fill with plastic debris, hundreds of marine species eat astonishing amounts of it. Yet the question of why so many species, from the tiniest zooplankton to whales, mistake so much of it for food has never been fully explored.

Now a new study explains why: It smells like food.

Algae are consumed by krill, a small crustacean that is the primary food source for many sea birds. As algae breaks down naturally in the ocean, they emit a stinky sulfur odor known as dimethyl sulfide (DMS). Sea birds in the hunt for krill have learned that the sulfur odor will lead them to their feeding grounds.

It turns out that floating plastic debris provides the perfect platform on which algae thrives. As the algae breaks down, emitting the DMS odor, sea birds, following their noses in search of krill, are led into an "olfactory trap," according to a new study published November 9 in Science Advances. Instead of feeding on krill, they feed on plastic.

"DMS is the dinner bell," says Matthew Savoca, a doctoral student at the University of California, Davis, and lead author of the study. "When people hear the dinner bell, we know food is going to be in the area. This is the same sort of idea. Once the birds' noses have told them this is where they should expect to find krill, it gets their foraging mode turned on, and their threshold is down for what the food is. "

Plastic debris has been accumulating rapidly in the world's ocean, roughly doubling every decade. In 2014, a global analysis measured ocean plastic at a quarter of a billion metric tons, much of it suspended in small rice-sized particles. More than 200 animal species have been documented consuming plastic, including turtles, whales, seal, birds, and fish. Seabirds are especially at risk; a study published last year by scientists in Australia concluded that virtually all seabirds have consumed plastic.

Scientists have long known that ocean plastic is consumed because it looks like food. Sea turtles, for example, often mistake flimsy, clear plastic bags for jellyfish. Other marine animals, including fish, gobble bits of rice-sized micro plastics broken down by sunlight and wave action because they resemble the small particles they normally eat. ( See the first of its kind map of ocean plastic pollution.)

But the study of how odors might play a role in marine animals' consumption of plastic is the first of its kind. Sovaca teamed up with a scientist who studies how odors affect decision-making and a food and wine chemist to determine what smell could be the culprit.

"This does not disprove that plastic might look enticing," he says. "Often, it's the smell that gets animals foraging in the area and turns their feeding mode on. It adds another layer on top of it. It is far more likely that a seabird will eat it if it looked and smelled like food."

Chelsea Rochman, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Toronto, who studies the toxic effects of plastic consumed by fish, called the study an important step toward understanding why marine animals are eating plastic.

"Throughout the literature on plastic debris, you see researchers write statements implying that animals are 'choosing' to eat plastic debris without a proper test or explanation of why," she says. "This is the first group to really dive into the details of why."

Savoca's team decided to focus on birds already severely affected by plastic consumption: albatrosses, petrels, and shearwaters. They began the study by placing buoys of micro plastics in bags in Monterey Bay and Bodega Bay off the California coast. After three weeks, they retrieved the buoys and tested them in the lab for smell.

"They reeked of sulfur," Savoca says.

It didn't take long to identify DMS as a strong predictor of plastic consumption and the "keystone infochemical" that drew marine animals to plastic as if it was krill. Odor extraction tests confirmed that three common varieties of plastic acquired a "DMS signature" in less than a month. The team also found, not surprisingly, that the birds most attracted to the DMS odor are the albatrosses, petrels, and shearwaters that are most severely affected by plastic consumption.

Many of those birds nest in underground burrows, and juvenile birds spend many more months on the ground than birds that nest above the surface. Consequently, burrow-nesting birds rely much more heavily on their sense of smell to get around.

"We should be paying more attention to those species," Savoca says.

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Animals Eat Ocean Plastic Because it Smells Like Food

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As the oceans fill with plastic debris, hundreds of marine species eat astonishing amounts of it. Yet the question of why so many species, from the tiniest zooplankton to whales, mistake so much of it for food has never been fully explored. Now a new study explains why: It smells like food.

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/earthworms-england-largest-heaviest/

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What Paul Rees recently discovered among his vegetables in England's Cheshire County is anything but garden variety: a gigantic earthworm.

Rees's stepson, George, named the behemoth Dave. He's the longest earthworm recorded in the United Kingdom-almost 16 inches-but it's his mass that has really impressed scientists. Dave weighs nearly an ounce, almost twice as heavy as any other wild earthworm ever seen. That's about the size of a small chocolate bar.

Before Dave, the largest earthworm ( Lumbricus terrestris) was a Scottish specimen found in 2015 that weighed about half an ounce. ( Read about the biggest insect that ever lived.)

In London, the Natural History Museum's Emma Sherlock said she was astonished by the find.

"I was bowled over by the size of the worm when I opened the plastic box they sent it in," Sherlock said in the press release. (The museum told National Geographic that Sherlock was not available for an interview.)

"I look forward to seeing if anyone can find an even bigger example by taking part in the Earthworm Watch survey this autumn," says Sherlock, who also chairs the Earthworm Society of Britain.

To the chagrin of many of his social media fans, Dave was killed for scientific reasons and will now be on display as part of the museum's collection.

Twitter users expressed their anger at the worm's fate at #davetheworm and even created a Twitter account for the dead invertebrate, @PoorDaveTheWorm.

Earthworms Make Happy Soil

This earthworm species is common throughout Europe, where they usually reach lengths of between eight to 10 inches. Because earthworms have many predators, the invertebrates normally do not survive long enough in the wild to reach Dave's proportions. Their life span is unknown, but the worms have reached six years old in captivity.

Dave also plays an equally huge role in his ecosystem by keeping soils healthy. The animals boost the soil's carbon storage by mixing in decomposing plant material, which also helps improve soil fertility. (Also see " Mysterious Mounds in South America Are Likely Worm Poop.")

For instance, earthworm burrows increase the amount of air and water in soil, making the land aerated and productive. ( Test your soil IQ.)

"With worms this size, Paul [Rees] must have an incredibly fertile and well-drained vegetable plot with decaying matter quickly recycled back into the soil," Sherlock said.

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World's Heaviest Earthworm Found, Then Killed

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What Paul Rees recently discovered among his vegetables in England's Cheshire County is anything but garden variety: a gigantic earthworm. Rees's stepson, George, named the behemoth Dave. He's the longest earthworm recorded in the United Kingdom-almost 16 inches-but it's his mass that has really impressed scientists.

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https://reefbuilders.com/2016/10/27/rainbow-acanthophyllia-2/

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Reef Builders | The Reef and Marine Aquarium Blog

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Jake Adams has been an avid marine aquarist since the mid 90s and has worked in the retail side of the marine aquarium trade for more than ten years. He has a bachelor's degree in Marine Science and has been the managing editor of ReefBuilders.com since 2008. Jake is interested in every facet of the marine aquarium hobby from the concepts to the technology, rare fish to exotic corals, and his interests are well documented through a very prolific career of speaking to reef clubs and marine aquarium events, and writing articles for aquarium publications across the globe. His primary interest is in corals which Jake pursues in the aquarium hobby as well as diving the coral reefs of the world.

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Rainbow Acanthophyllia Makes its Way to America Acanthastrea, Coral, LPS Corals, News Reef Builders | The Reef and Marine Aquarium Blog

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Jake Adams has been an avid marine aquarist since the mid 90s and has worked in the retail side of the marine aquarium trade for more than ten years. He has a bachelor's degree in Marine Science and has been the managing editor of ReefBuilders.com since 2008.

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Two-headed sharks may sound like a figment of the big screen, but they exist-and more are turning up worldwide, scientists say.

And a 2011 study described conjoined twins discovered in blue sharks caught in the Gulf of California and northwestern Mexico. Blue sharks have produced the most recorded two-headed embryos because they carry so many babies-up to 50 at at time, says study leader Felipe Galván-Magaña, of the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico.

Now, Spanish researchers have identified an embryo of an Atlantic sawtail catshark with two heads, according to a new study in the Journal of Fish Biology. While raising sharks for human-health research in the laboratory, a team noticed the unusual embryo in a see-through shark egg.

The catshark embyro was not your average two-headed beast-it's the first such specimen known from an oviparous shark species, or a shark that lays eggs.

Researchers opened the egg to study the specimen, and study leader Valentín Sans-Coma says it's unknown whether the deformed animal would have survived. Because it's the first such conjoined twin found in egg-laying sharks, its likely that such offspring don't live long enough for people to find them.

Mutation Causes

Two-headed sharks have been few and far between, so it's tough to know what's behind the mutations. ( See more shark pictures.)

Sans-Coma and colleagues say a genetic disorder seems to be the most plausible cause for the two-headed catshark, since the embryos were grown in a lab among nearly 800 specimens. To the best of their knowledge, the eggs were not exposed to any infections, chemicals, or radiation.

But wild sharks' malformations could come from a variety of factors, including viral infections, metabolic disorders, pollution, or a dwindling gene pool due to overfishing, which leads to inbreeding, and thus genetic abnormalities. (See " New Diseases, Toxins Harming Marine Life.")

For another recent study, marine scientist Nicolas Ehemann examined two such specimens: A smalleye smooth-hound shark and a blue shark, found by fishermen off Venezuela's Margarita Island. The animals, which would not have survived, are the first two-headed sharks found in the Caribbean Sea, according to Ehemann's research bulletin.

Overfishing to Blame?

Ehemann, a master's student at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico, believes that if the two-headed fetuses are more prevalent in nature, then overfishing is a strong culprit as it may cause the gene pool to shrink.

Galván-Magaña, who authored the 2011 study, doesn't think two-headed sharks are more common-but rather that there are more scientific journals around to publish accounts.

Galván-Magaña has seen other bizarre sharks, too, including a "cyclops" shark, caught off Mexico in 2011, with a single, functioning eye at the front of its head. The dusky shark fetus's single eye is the hallmark of a congenital condition called cyclopia, which occurs in several animal species, including people.

Meanwhile, Ehemann says shark deformities are a difficult topic to research because the specimens are so rare.

"I would like to study these things, but it's not like you throw out a net and you catch two-headed sharks every so often," he says. "It's random."
Follow Joshua Rapp Learn on Twitter.

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Two-Headed Sharks Keep Popping Up-No One Knows Why

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Two-headed sharks may sound like a figment of the big screen, but they exist-and more are turning up worldwide, scientists say. And a 2011 study described conjoined twins discovered in blue sharks caught in the Gulf of California and northwestern Mexico.

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Kailey Norem

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This election night, while most Americans will be focusing on places like Ohio and Florida, voters in Massachusetts will get to determine the fate of countless animals.

Question 3 on Massachusetts' ballot would simply require that baby veal calves, breeding pigs in the pork industry and egg-laying hens have enough space to stand up, lie down, turn around and extend their limbs, and that suppliers of veal, pork and eggs into the state's food supply follow this modest standard.

It's really that basic, yet it would represent a major positive change for many of the most abused animals in agribusiness.

There are thousands of egg-laying hens in Massachusetts who, at this moment, are confined in barren cages so small they can't even spread their wings. In the industry, it is common for each hen to have less space than an iPad to live for her entire life.

The Massachusetts market still allows a baby veal calf to be removed from his mother shortly after birth and spend his life chained by the neck inside a cage so small he can't even turn around. He's trapped in this torturous condition for four months. His legs are so weak after this depravation that he's unable to walk to his own slaughter.

Also still legal is artificially inseminating a breeding pig and forcing her to live inside cages barely larger than her own body. She's essentially forced to live in a metal coffin, driven mad by the confinement. After a few weeks, she gives up, experiencing what veterinarians called "learned helplessness." That's her life virtually every day for four years.

Fortunately, voting YES on Question 3 would eliminate these cruelties. And science tells us that what's better for animals is often better for food safety. Removing hens from these cruel cages reduces the chances of Salmonella, a leading food-borne illness. That's one of the reasons the Center for Food Safety and Consumer Federation of America endorse a YES vote on Question 3.

A YES vote also aligns with the common ethics of family farmers who believe animals deserve better lives. With more than 100 Massachusetts family farmers supporting Question 3, along with the United Farm Workers, the measure is a chance for the family farm model to win out against the factory-like conditions that are bad for animals and people alike.

With Question 3 costing consumers-according to egg industry and Iowa State University studies-mere pennies, it's no wonder polls show it's ahead by a wide margin. But passage is not self-executing.

Well-funded factory farm interests are combatting this modest measure, including an out-of-state oil and cattle tycoon who's fought against puppy mill reforms. He is joined by the Iowa-based National Pork Producers Council, which lobbies to keep breeding sows locked in cages, as well as a Nebraska attorney who previously compared poor families to raccoons scavenging through trash cans.

While some of the leading egg industry groups aren't actively campaigning against the measure-since many producers are already moving away from cage confinement-the fringe group National Association of Egg Farmers, which opposes any laws regarding the treatment of hens, is combatting the measure.

Massachusetts voters have a unique opportunity to stand up to big agribusiness interests by standing with The Humane Society of the United States, ASPCA, Massachusetts SPCA and more than 500 Massachusetts veterinarians who endorse the YES on 3 vote. People know that all animals-including farm animals-deserve protection from cruelty. A YES vote on Question 3 will make 2016's Election Day a historic moment for reasons well beyond who next occupies the White House.

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The Fate of Millions of Animals Will Be Determined on Election Day

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Massachusetts voters have a chance to significantly help the most abused animals in agribusiness.

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By Samantha Craven, Project Manager, The Reef World Foundation

Have you felt a difference in your climate lately? Noticed unpredictable weather patterns? Longer, hotter summers? Well, corals have felt it too. Over the last year, marine scientists, conservationists and divers worldwide have worried about the current global coral bleaching event. Temperature stress is one of the main culprits behind coral bleaching, and as both climate change in general and El Niño events drive sea-surface temperatures ever higher, our corals are facing their biggest challenges ever. The outlook is terrifying, but there is a lot that divers can do to keep hope for coral reefs alive. The first step is becoming better educated about the bleaching threats facing coral reefs.

Stressed Out

Corals are sensitive animals, and anything outside of their normal environment or comfort zone causes them great physical stress. We mostly associate bleaching with temperature stress, when the surrounding waters are higher or lower than their optimum range, 68 to 89 F (20 to 32 C). Pollution, sedimentation, disease and physical impacts like a touch from a diver can stress them out too.

When corals become too stressed, their mutually beneficial relationship with photosynthetic algae (zooxanthellae), which lives in their tissues, gets a bit rocky. Zooxanthellae provide coral with their rich colors and 80 percent of their nutritional requirements. If conditions become too hot or too environmentally stressful in another way, the coral will expel the zooxanthellae. Without these algae, the coral polyp is transparent and we can see its white calcium-carbonate skeleton, which is what we mean when we say a coral is "bleached.

When you see bright-white corals, the coral animal is still alive, albeit on an extreme diet. The food it catches on its own is only 20 percent of what it needs. If the stress is removed in time, coral will accept zooxanthellae back into their tissues and get on with life as normal. But if the stress goes on too long, the coral will die, and the skeleton will become overgrown with visible, fleshy algae. This type of algae covers any spaces new coral recruits could land, so there is no replenishment of live coral. Once this pattern has taken hold, we start to see an ecological shift from coral to algae-dominated reefs that house much lower biodiversity.

Global Problems

Mass coral bleaching occurs when corals bleach on a regional or global scale; there have been 60 recorded events between 1979 and 1990. Global coral bleaching events are the worst, defined as mass-bleaching events in all three tropical ocean basins - the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. There have only been two global coral-bleaching events in recorded history. In 2015, scientists confirmed that we're experiencing the third at a severity heretofore unseen.

The first global coral bleaching event, from 1997 to 1998, caused at least 15 percent of global reefs to die. In 2010, it was a little less severe. However, the 2015 to 2016 event is predicted to impact up to 38 percent of the world's reefs. Devastating images have come out of the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific so far and, as El Niño continues to grow into potentially the strongest-ever recorded event, the worst may be yet to come.

The outlooks for the Western Pacific, Coral Triangle and Indian Ocean are bleak, and new footage has just emerged from the Great Barrier Reef. This doesn't just bode badly for the diver's love of the aesthetically pleasing reefs, but also for the millions of people who rely on this ecosystem, which provides food, coastal protection and tourism income, and even supports life that makes the air we breathe.

Despite its widespread effects, we still understand very little about bleaching or a reef's ability to withstand such stress. Why do some species bleach but not others? Why are some reefs annihilated while others recover? Paying heed to lessons learned from the two previous bleaching events, where we were caught unprepared, scientists are keeping close tabs on the current event, which is set to last at least for the rest of 2016.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch program has a wealth of resources to help scientists focus their efforts. Using years of satellite data about the surface conditions of the sea, they can see what parts of the ocean are experiencing warmer temperatures than the same weeks in previous years, and work out the severity of the risk of coral bleaching. Anyone can access these predictions and use them to manage how they use the reef.

What can you do?

There are two main avenues through which divers can be part of the solution; the first is to no longer be part of the problem. Remember that many things can stress corals, including direct damage from divers, anchors, and sunscreen, to name a few. The more stresses the coral animal has to juggle, the less resilient it will be to the big problems, like mass bleaching. You can help the resilience of reefs by ensuring that your diving behavior has the least impact possible. Don't touch or kick anything, and choose operators with sustainable practices, as well as ones that don't use anchors, such as Green Fins members.

The second is to be a citizen scientist. The more we know about bleaching, the better we can manage its impacts. You can be part of the global data-collection team, with a range of options to report bleaching sightings:

NOAA has a clear and comprehensive survey for you to fill out, wherever you are in the world.

Reef Check Malaysia is collecting bleaching data to help it mobilize teams to badly affected areas, but is interested in data from other regions as well.

Green Fins Thailand, in conjunction with the Phuket Marine Biological Center, is calling for reports.

This is a critical year for corals around the world, but as scary as the numbers are, we can still make a difference. Even with the prediction that 38 percent of reefs will be impacted by the current global coral bleaching event, we can still do our part to help them survive. It all boils down to resilience - the corals' capacity to recover from this challenge. Scientists think that removing local stressors may be the reefs' best chance in the face of these global threats.

Every choice you make on your dive vacation counts, from choosing your operator to making sure your gauges are tucked away, to staying clear of the reef at all times and tipping the guide who holds you while you take a photo so you don't cause any damage. And when it comes to the seemingly intractable problem of global warming as a whole, remember - individual, day-to-day choices matter too. Eat less fish and meat, if any. Say no to unnecessary plastics. Bike more, drive less.

These may seem like small actions to deal with enormous threats, but your choices are no small thing. Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries globally, and each time someone makes choices to lessen his or her personal impact, either at home or away, it makes a difference.

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By Samantha Craven, Project Manager, The Reef World Foundation Have you felt a difference in your climate lately? Noticed unpredictable weather patterns? Longer, hotter summers? Well, corals have felt it too. Over the last year, marine scientists, conservationists and divers worldwide have worried about the current global coral bleaching event.

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You're not seeing double. A young cow calf with two faces became the longest living example of the rare genetic mutation in late October, passing the previous calf record of 40 days, Caters News reports.

The calf, known as Lucky, lives on a farm in Campbellsville, Kentucky. Owners Brandy and Stan McCubbin told Caters they have come to love the calf and "treat it like their baby," although they were surprised by its unusual appearance when they first saw it a few weeks ago.

"It's something I've never seen before and I think it's amazing," Stan McCubbin told local news station WDRB. ( Learn about Venus the two-faced cat.)

"I'm just thinking, 'How many days do we have?' and I mean, it's a blessing that we get to go through this with our children and our family and it's just something unique and rare," Brandy McCubbin told WDRB.

The calf was named Lucky by the McCubbins' five-year-old daughter, Henley, after her parents told her the rare animal was lucky to be alive. Most such genetic or developmental defects are aborted in the womb, although a few make it to birth. Most of those die within a few days.

For a two-faced or two-headed animal to make it to adulthood is extremely rare. It's considered ultrarare in the wild, although two-faced cat "Frank and Louie" lived to at least 12 years old, thanks to the care of its owners.

So far, Lucky has been doing well, the McCubbins said, although the middle two of her eyes don't work. She can only walk in circles and falls down a lot.

Lucky needs some help eating, and both mouths move at the same time.

When Stan first saw the calf, he thought he was seeing two animals lying close together. But then he was "blown away" by what he saw.

Developmental biologist Arkhat Abzhanov at Imperial College, London told the BBC that rare two-faced and two-headed animals develop in a few different ways. Sometimes, a single fertilized egg does not separate completely. ( Learn about the two-headed dolphin found in Turkey in 2014.)

Other times, a gene that controls for head width gets overexpressed, and a head grows so large in the womb that it actually splits into two faces or heads.

"Those kind of mutants are rare, but they're reported in domestic animals and in the wild," Abzhanov told BBC.

The condition of having two faces is called diprosopus or craniofacial duplication.

The opposite affect can also occur, when a head gets so narrow that it collapses in on itself, producing a " cyclops."

Another possibility is that certain cells-called an organizer group-that trigger development of a head or face somehow get transported to another part of the body.

Whatever the exact cause, the McCubbins say they are committed to taking care of Lucky and making sure the calf is as comfortable as possible, for as long as possible.

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Rare Two-Faced Calf First to Survive Past 40 Days

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You're not seeing double. A young cow calf with two faces became the longest living example of the rare genetic mutation in late October, passing the previous calf record of 40 days, Caters News reports. The calf, known as Lucky, lives on a farm in Campbellsville, Kentucky.

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Hunting, deforestation, and cattle ranching in Mesoamerica have become a triad of trouble for the white-lipped peccary ( Tayassu pecari), an ecologically important species now threatened with regional extinction, according WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and a group of experts at a recently held meeting in Belize.

WCS recently hosted a symposium at the 20th Mesoamerican Society for Conservation Biology Congress, which brought together leading scientists for an emergency assessment of the rapidly declining white-lipped peccary in Mesoamerica. The objectives of the Symposium were to document the current status of this pig-like species, to map recent reductions in its range across Mesoamerica, and to propose conservation actions to protect the species.

Hunting and deforestation for agriculture and cattle ranching have driven precipitous declines of the white-lipped peccary in most Mesoamerican countries. As the only large mammal that moves in large herds in forested environments, this species represents one of Central America's true wildlife spectacles, and plays a key role in ecosystem function of the region's forests. Peccary herds can number up to 200 individuals and range as widely as 120 square kilometers (more than 46 square miles).

However, herd sizes like this are becoming ever rarer as hunting depletes populations and disrupts their social structure. In Mexico and Guatemala, the species' distribution range has been reduced by more than 84 percent in the last 30 years. In Honduras and Nicaragua, only a few remnant populations remain. In El Salvador, the species is already locally extinct.

Dr. Omar Figueroa, the Belizean Minister of Environment, presided over the symposium, which brought together leading mammal researchers from Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. The group outlined the threats facing white-lipped peccary populations in each country. Collectively, the scientists mapped the current known locations of remaining white-lipped peccary populations and compared these with the past extent of their range to develop an idea of the rate of loss.

Experts led by Dr. Rafael Reyna-Hurtado of El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) are calling for an increase in the official International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) extinction threat level from 'Vulnerable' to 'Endangered' in Mesoamerica. A map of the species' current range will be released in the coming weeks. The group of scientists and conservationists also signed a pledge committing themselves to jointly propose and implement conservation actions to save the species.

"The white-lipped peccary is an important ecosystem engineer for the extremely threatened forests of Mesoamerica," said Dr. Jeremy Radachowsky, Director of WCS's Mesoamerica and the Western Caribbean Program. "A coordinated regional plan is required to prevent this keystone species from disappearing from the region."

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is deeply concerned about the plight of white-lipped peccaries in Central America," said Ani Cuevas, Program Officer for the Central America program. "We are pleased to support this group of scientists in assessing the range and population status of this bellwether species for healthy forests. Collaboration from a variety of partners will be critical to achieving effective conservation of this important species."

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nature; new species; extinction; ecology research; wild animals; endangered animals; endangered plants; mating and breeding

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Peccaries of Mesoamerica now highly threatened, warn experts

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Hunting, deforestation, and cattle ranching in Mesoamerica have become a triad of trouble for the white-lipped peccary ( Tayassu pecari), an ecologically important species now threatened with regional extinction, according WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and a group of experts at a recently held meeting in Belize.

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TripAdvisor, the popular travel review website, and its ticket sales company, Viator, said Tuesday they no longer will sell tickets to hundreds of tourist attractions that are widely accepted as cruel to wild animals, reversing a policy under which the companies had resisted considering the welfare of animals when promoting trips.

The move to stop selling tickets to elephant rides, swim-with-dolphin experiences, and attractions that allow visitors to pet tigers and other exotic animals comes after a one-and-a-half-year protest campaign by the London-based animal welfare group World Animal Protection and reporting by National Geographic's Wildlife Watch, which drew attention to TripAdvisor's continued promotion of such attractions at a time when dozens of other tour and travel companies were moving away from them.

Such attractions have been shown to cause animals psychological and physical trauma that can shorten their lives. They also result in more animals being taken from the wild for tourism.

When being trained to carry visitors, elephants go through a "crush," which often involves being beaten with nail-tipped sticks and immobilized in small cages. Tigers and lions often are drugged to make them sedate and safer for tourists to pet and take photos with. Dolphins kept captive for tourists to swim with are unable to hunt, roam, and play as they would in the wild, which raises their level of stress and can result in behavioral abnormalities. ( Learn more about humane and inhumane wildlife attractions here.)

When National Geographic asked TripAdvisor about its policies earlier this year, a company spokeswoman said it wasn't TripAdvisor's place to steer users in any particular direction with regard to animal attractions.

But now the company, which has one of the world's busiest travel websites, is not only ending sales to many animal attractions, it's also developing a portal to educate tourists on animal welfare practices and the conservation implications of various wildlife tourist attractions. World Animal Protection, Oxford University's WildCRU, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and other animal welfare, conservation, and sustainable tourism groups will be involved in its development, the company said.

"TripAdvisor's new booking policy and education effort is designed as a means to do our part in helping improve the health and safety standards of animals, especially in markets with limited regulatory protections," Stephen Kaufer, TripAdvisor's president and CEO, said in a statement.

The company will immediately stop selling tickets to certain attractions, and the ticket sales of others will end by early 2017, when the education portal will be launched.

All animal attractions, even those that are no longer bookable, will still be available to be reviewed on TripAdvisor and will be linked to the education portal.

"We believe the end result of our efforts will be enabling travelers to make more thoughtful choices about whether to visit an animal attraction and to write more meaningful reviews about those attractions," Kaufer said.

A study released last year by World Animal Protection and WildCRU found that tourists aren't very good at determining whether a wildlife attraction is humane or not. Researchers found that even attractions that experts judged as clearly inhumane often got good reviews on TripAdvisor. For example, reviewers overwhelmingly rated tiger attractions, which the study's authors ranked as among the most inhumane, as "excellent" or "very good."

That's why it's so important for TripAdvisor to step up and educate its users, said Steve McIvor, CEO of World Animal Protection.

"This animal abuse is a hidden by-product of the tourism industry. Millions of people look at TripAdvisor every day to guide what they see and do," McIvor said in an email. "This is a significant step towards ending the sale of hundreds of cruel wildlife activities and sends a message to the travel industry and millions of users that wildlife entertainment such as taking tiger selfies or riding elephants is not something you should do."

This story was produced by National Geographic's Special Investigations Unit, which focuses on wildlife crime and is made possible by grants from the BAND Foundation and the Woodtiger Fund. Read more stories from the SIU on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas tongwildlife@natgeo.com.

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TripAdvisor Halts Ticket Sales to Cruel Wildlife Attractions

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TripAdvisor, the popular travel review website, and its ticket sales company, Viator, said Tuesday they no longer will sell tickets to hundreds of tourist attractions that are widely accepted as cruel to wild animals, reversing a policy under which the companies had resisted considering the welfare of animals when promoting trips.

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Earlier this week, a bald eagle was rescued from a car grille near Jacksonville, Florida, after being blown by the savage winds of Hurricane Matthew. And Monday, an animal rescue center in Orlando announced that it had taken in more than a hundred animals -many of them babies-injured in the tempest.

Back to Nature Wildlife Refuge has "seen a major influx of injured and displaced wildlife these last few days because of hurricane Matthew," the group writes on its Facebook page.

The post says many baby squirrels are being treated, as well as raccoons, rabbits, and birds.

When a local TV station visited the center, they found baby animals kept in boxes, covered with blankets, awaiting treatment, or resting. The youngest animals require feeding around the clock.

One baby squirrel had been blown out of a tree. Local people kept it warm on the way to the shelter, where they dropped it off. ( See how Hurricane Matthew's storm surges may represent the new normal.)

The refuge, which also recently built a new building, is straining under the work and expense needed to care for the animals, its leaders told TV station KIRO-7.

"You can help!" the refuge wrote on its Facebook page. "Right now we are in need of t-shirts, baby blankets, fleece or light blankets, towels, wheat bread, unsalted assorted nuts, canned cat and dog food."

The group is also asking for cash donations.

Florida largely dodged the worst of Hurricane Matthew, which could have caused even more death and loss of property. As it stands, the storm's human death toll has exceeded one thousand, with most deaths recorded in the Caribbean, especially Haiti. At least 32 people have been reported killed in the U.S.

And about that eagle stuck in the car grille? It was removed by Clay County Sheriff's officers, who took it to another rescue center, B.E.A.K.S. -- Bird Emergency Aid and Kare Santuary.

The driver of the car that had trapped the eagle hadn't been aware of the bird until the good Samaritan pointed it out (having first thought it was a prop, until it moved).

The eagle, a seven-year-old male, did not sustain serious injuries and is reportedly recovering well from the ordeal.

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Baby Animals Rescued From Aftermath of Hurricane Matthew

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Earlier this week, a bald eagle was rescued from a car grille near Jacksonville, Florida, after being blown by the savage winds of Hurricane Matthew. And Monday, an animal rescue center in Orlando announced that it had taken in more than a hundred animals -many of them babies-injured in the tempest.

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Pigs saved in truck crash - but survivors were still led to slaughterhouse

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Forty pigs were killed in an accident in Burlington, Canada, while survivors roamed free before being recaptured 'right around the corner' from meat plant

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Population reports for what is known as one of North America's most endangered mammals, the black-footed ferret, came in positive this fall.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department recently completed population surveys in Meeteetse and Shirley Basin. Both areas report higher than average ferret sightings.

"It's been a good year for ferrets in Wyoming," said Jesse Boulerice, Wyoming Game and Fish Department nongame biologist.

In July this year, 35 ferrets were released on the Lazy BV and Pitchfork Ranches, outside Meeteetse, Wyoming. This is the same spot where ferrets were rediscovered 35 years ago when they were thought to be extinct. During surveys this fall, over half of those resettled ferrets were spotted or caught and identified, some still residing in the same burrows in which they were initially released.

"We ended up observing or capturing 19 of the 35 ferrets released, one of the highest post-release capture rates at a new reintroduction site," said Nichole Bjornlie, Game and Fish nongame mammal biologist. "It's validating to find these ferrets in the same place we put them."

Both Boulerice and Bjornlie note if a ferret wasn't spotted, it doesn't mean it is deceased. The ferret could have dispersed, as they are known to do, to another location with dense prairie dog colonies outside the survey zone.

"In the Meeteetse area, we surveyed 8,500 acres. We found some ferrets traveled over three miles from their original release site," said Boulerice.

Black-footed ferret surveys in the Shirley Basin area also reported increased sightings. Surveyors were able to see 34 ferrets and capture 19. Notably, blood samples from all captured ferrets were negative for plague, distemper, and tularemia. Ferrets were reintroduced to the Shirley Basin 25 years ago. This was the first wild reintroduction site in the country.

In both locations, black-footed ferrets are surveyed at night using a spotlight to catch a glimpse of their distinctive bright emerald green eyeshine. Once spotted, surveyors will set a trap for the ferret in their burrow. The Meeteetse area ferrets, who were all captive-born kits when released in July, were scanned for their unique identifier number (Passive Integrated Transponder or PIT tag) and released with a dye mark so they wouldn't be recaptured. Meeteetse ferrets received all vaccinations and disease tests before being released in July. Ferrets in Shirley Basin, who range from kits to mature adults, received a more thorough physical, vaccinations, and PIT tags, if needed.

Looking forward, black-footed ferrets have much potential, but their population growth depends on habitat conditions, good prairie dog density, and controlling disease. Black-footed ferrets breed in March and early April, with litter size ranging from 1-5 kits. Surveys next fall will be able to show the success of ferrets back in Meeteetse on a larger scale when wild-born kits will be counted.

"It has been exciting to put ferrets back in Meeteetse, restore a top predator on the landscape, and see them function again in a working ecosystem," said Bjornlie.

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good news for the black-footed ferret in wyoming

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Good news for the Black-footed ferret in Wyoming

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Population reports for what is known as one of North America's most endangered mammals, the black-footed ferret, came in positive this fall. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department recently completed population surveys in Meeteetse and Shirley Basin. Both areas report higher than average ferret sightings.

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An aquarium worker in Singapore has died after being stung in the chest by a stingray, Underwater World Singapore announced Wednesday.

Philip Chan, 62, the aquarium's head diver, was prepping stingrays for transfer to another aquarium Tuesday when he was hit. Chan was taken to a hospital, where he died.

"This was a tragic accident," the aquarium's owner, Haw Par Corporation, said in a statement.

The aquarium, which opened in 1991, has been closed to the public since June and has been working on transferring its animals to other captive facilities. It's been operating with a skeleton crew of employees during its decommissioning process.

Transfer of animals has been suspended pending investigations into Chan's death.

The tragic incident calls to mind the death of Australian conservationist "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, who died in 2006 after being stung multiple times by a stingray off the Great Barrier Reef.

The venomous barb of a ray pierced Irwin's heart in an incident authorities called a rare freak accident. Footage of the encounter at Batt Reef was recorded, and "it shows that Steve came over the top of the ray, and the tail came up and spiked him here [in the chest] and he pulled it out," Irwin's friend, director, and producer John Stainton said in a press conference at the time.

"And the next minute he's gone. That was it. The cameraman had to shut down."

Such deaths are extremely rare, scientists say. Normally wary of people, stingrays are not considered aggressive and typically use their venom-tipped tails only under duress. Rather than a targeted attack, incidents often appear more as a defensive reflex.

Since stingrays can be found in shallow coastal waters in many parts of the world, experts often advise caution when entering the water, to avoid stepping on or surprising a ray that may be lurking on the bottom.

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Rare Fatality Mirrors 'Crocodile Hunter' Death by Stingray

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An aquarium worker in Singapore has died after being stung in the chest by a stingray, Underwater World Singapore announced Wednesday. Philip Chan, 62, the aquarium's head diver, was prepping stingrays for transfer to another aquarium Tuesday when he was hit. Chan was taken to a hospital, where he died.

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Africa's overall elephant population has seen the worst declines in 25 years, mainly due to poaching -- according to IUCN's African Elephant Status Report launched at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES, taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The report is an authoritative source of knowledge about the numbers and distribution of African elephant populations across their 37 range states in sub-Saharan Africa.

It presents more than 275 new or updated estimates for individual elephant populations across Africa, with over 180 of these arising from systematic surveys. The report summarizes -- for the first time in almost a decade -- elephant numbers at the continental, regional and national levels, and examines changes in population estimates at the site level.

Based on population estimates from a wide range of sources -- including aerial surveys and elephant dung counts -- the estimates for 2015 are 93,000 lower than in 2006. However, this figure includes 18,000 from previously uncounted populations. Therefore, the real decline from estimates is considered to be closer to 111,000. The continental total is now thought to be about 415,000 elephants, although there may be an additional 117,000 to 135,000 elephants in areas not systematically surveyed.

The surge in poaching for ivory that began approximately a decade ago -- the worst that Africa has experienced since the 1970s and 1980s -- has been the main driver of the decline, while habitat loss poses an increasingly serious, long-term threat to the species, according to the report.

"These new numbers reveal the truly alarming plight of the majestic elephant -- one of the world's most intelligent animals and the largest terrestrial mammal alive today," says IUCN Director General Inger Andersen. "It is shocking but not surprising that poaching has taken such a dramatic toll on this iconic species. This report provides further scientific evidence of the need to scale up efforts to combat poaching. Nevertheless, these efforts must not detract from addressing other major and increasingly devastating threats such as habitat loss."

With over 70% of the estimated African elephants, Southern Africa has by far the largest number of the species -- approximately 293,000 elephants in systematically surveyed areas. Eastern Africa holds about 86,000 (20%) estimated elephants, while Central Africa has about 24,000 estimated elephants (6%). West Africa continues to hold the smallest regional population with approximately 11,000 (under 3%).

Eastern Africa -- the region most affected by poaching -- has experienced an almost 50% elephant population reduction, largely attributed to an over 60% decline in Tanzania's elephant population. Although some sites have recorded declines, elephant numbers have been stable or increasing since 2006 in Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda, and range expansion has been reported in Kenya.

Central Africa's forest elephant population has been substantially affected by poaching for ivory, since the 1990s. The Democratic Republic of Congo used to hold one of the most significant forest elephant populations in Africa, which has now been reduced to tiny remnants of its former size. Gabon and Congo now hold Africa's most important forest elephant populations but both have been affected by heavy poaching in recent years, as have the forest and savannah populations of Cameroon. The savanna populations of Chad have taken heavy losses and those in the Central African Republic have almost completely disappeared.

West Africa's elephant populations are mostly small, fragmented and isolated with 12 populations reported as lost since 2006 in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Togo, Guinea and Nigeria. The elephant population in the trans-frontier "WAP" complex that straddles the border between Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger remains the strong-hold of West Africa's elephant population.

While poaching has not had the same impact in Southern Africa as in other areas, the region is now also facing the emergence of a growing poaching threat. Population declines have been observed in Mozambique and some areas in Zimbabwe, while major populations in Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe are stable or increasing, and there is evidence of elephant range expansion in Botswana. There is still uncertainty about the size of the KAZA trans-frontier elephant population -- the single largest on the continent -- and it remains critical to undertake a coordinated survey of this population.

"This is the first time since 2006 that we have produced an African elephant status report with a continent-wide update and analysis of elephant numbers and distribution," says Holly Dublin, Chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission's African Elephant Specialist Group (AfESG) who led the preparation of the report. "This report highlights how important it is to regularly monitor, assess and analyse the status of the African elephant. Understanding population numbers and their distribution is crucial in order to recognise threats faced by the species, target conservation actions and assess their effectiveness. This has been possible thanks to the IUCN African Elephant Specialist Group's incredible network of experts and partners."

Estimates for savanna populations across the continent have improved in both reliability and coverage and many forest populations in Central Africa have been surveyed for the first time.

"This report not only provides information on the changes in elephant numbers but, because it is spatial, it also shows where these changes are occurring," says first author of the report Chris Thouless, Chair of the AfESG's Data Review Working Group. "It tracks many elephant populations over time at the site level, allowing us to learn more about why elephant populations are lost or persist in certain areas. This detailed information is essential for understanding what is driving changes in elephant populations."

The report has been produced by the IUCN Species Survival Commission's African Elephant Specialist Group, in partnership with Vulcan Inc, a Paul G. Allen company, and Kenya-based charity Save the Elephants. It draws on data from the African Elephant Database of the IUCN African Elephant Specialist Group, which is the most comprehensive spatial database on the status of any wide-ranging mammal species in the wild.

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wild animals; endangered animals; ecology research; nature; mammals; animals; drought; new species

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Poaching behind worst African elephant losses in 25 years

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Africa's overall elephant population has seen the worst declines in 25 years, mainly due to poaching -- according to IUCN's African Elephant Status Report launched at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES, taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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One day while Justin Schmidt was riding his bicycle, something went terribly wrong.

"I was huffing and puffing, so my mouth was open, and this damn honeybee flew right in and stung me on the tongue," he says. He tumbled to the ground, flailing in agony. Later he described the sting as "immediate, noisome, visceral, debilitating. For 10 minutes, life is not worth living."

It wasn't the worst sting possible (we'll get to that), but its intensity surprised him-which is surprising in itself, because Schmidt, a University of Arizona entomologist, has been stung over a thousand times and is famous for developing the Schmidt Pain Scale for Stinging Insects, a four-point scale with descriptions of agony that read like hoity-toity tasting notes for Scotch.

The red paper wasp, for instance, rates a 3 with pain that's "caustic and burning, with a distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut." (See: " The Worst Places to Be Stung? Ask This Guy ")

Normally a honeybee sting is nothing to Schmidt. "Boring," he says. But on the tongue, it was a whole different matter. Clearly, where you're stung can matter as much as what stings you.

So when a Cornell graduate student named Michael Smith contacted him a few years ago with a plan to sting himself all over his body to map the pain, Schmidt had some advice: Don't sting yourself in the eye, kid. But otherwise, go for it.

Smith, who studies bee biology, had been comparing notes with beekeepers and realized that everyone knew stings hurt worse in some places than others, but no one had ever systematically measured the pain. Would pain vary reliably on different body parts? Why do some places hurt worse? "Someone's got to do it," he says, "so as a scientist you go out there and make it happen. It's curiosity; that's what motivates you."

He proceeded to sting himself with honeybees multiple times in each of 24 places on his body, from the top of his head to the tip of his middle toe, and he didn't dodge the scary bits-the nipple, scrotum, and penis. What resulted was the most scientific look ever at the worst places to be stung.

Combine that with Schmidt's pain index by insect, and you've got a good roundup of worst-case scenarios for stings. And that begs a question: What's the ultimate sting? The apotheosis of insect-induced agony?

When I asked both scientists for the worst possible combination, they agreed that a bullet ant to the nostril would probably top the chart for intensity. Schmidt gave the bullet ant a 4 out of 4 on his index and describes the sting as "like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel."

Smith found that the two most painful places to be stung are the nostril and the upper lip, followed by the penis shaft. The penis got more attention in press coverage, but Smith says "the nostril is really where it's at." And it makes sense that bees often target the nose, along with the mouth and eyes-they're crucial to breathing and vision. "Pain isn't for nothing," Smith says; it motivates us to protect our vital functions.

But there's one thing that Schmidt says might be even more horrific. "A warrior wasp to the nose or lip would be up there," he says, and in some ways worse because you'd have intense swelling that could last for days. "You'd get inflated and red, and you get the misery down the line."

The bullet ant, in contrast, doesn't cause much swelling, and in fact doesn't even leave much of a mark.

"It's almost disappointing to go through that and be rendered a babbling idiot, crying, and not even have a big red spot to show people," Schmidt says. "They take away even that satisfaction."

Despite the pain they've endured, both scientists say it's worth it to learn about some of the world's most fascinating animals. "I'm living the dream," Smith says. "I'm working with bees." Since his pain research, he has finished one of the most exhaustive studies ever of the inner workings of a beehive, measuring every detail of a colony from birth to death. And now he's figuring out what triggers bee puberty-yes, bees and almost all other animals have some kind of puberty.

I asked Schmidt what he thinks is the coolest thing he's learned about stinging insects. "I've learned a strange thing," he says. "The relationship between stinging insects and humans is really about us. It's psychological warfare-and they're winning. They've got us terrified of them."

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This Is the Worst Insect Sting in the World

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One day while Justin Schmidt was riding his bicycle, something went terribly wrong. "I was huffing and puffing, so my mouth was open, and this damn honeybee flew right in and stung me on the tongue," he says. He tumbled to the ground, flailing in agony.

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Finding new species may call to mind images of scientists tracking mysterious footprints in the mud or cutting paths through the dense jungle.

But sometimes, a discovery is as easy as getting a frog to open its mouth and say, "Ah."

Such is the case for Lenomyrmex hoelldobleri, a new tropical ant species found in the belly of a diablito, or little devil frog ( Oophaga sylvatica), in Ecuador.

The diablito, a kind of bright orange poison frog, is known for its love of ants, says Christian Rabeling, a myrmecologist at the University of Rochester, New York. The new ant species is named after Bert Hölldobler, a German evolutionary biologist and ant expert, for his 80th birthday.

Because ant-eating frogs go hunting for bugs in tiny and hard-to-access places, scientists use them as a tool to go where they can't go. By capturing a wild frog and flushing their stomachs, the amphibians vomit whatever is in their bellies-revealing potential treasures, like the new ant.

"Sometimes people think that our world is very well explored. Nothing could be farther from the truth," says Rabeling, who led a new study on the ant, published September 19 by the journal ZooKeys.

Mysterious Ant

Because the only known specimen of L. hoelldobleri is a dead one from a frog's stomach, scientists know almost nothing about it.

A glimpse through a high-powered stereomicroscope at that ill-fated ant, however, has offered a few clues. (See " Watch: Ants Use Giant Jaws to Catapult Out of Death Trap.")

"The shape of the mandibles reminds me of forceps," says Rabeling. This may mean that the ant, which is less than a quarter of an inch long, uses its mouthparts to pry even smaller prey animals, such as termites, out of tight crevices. "But I am just speculating," he admits.

If the scientists could find living L. hoelldobleri in the Ecuadoran rain forest, the team could submit the little guys to a "cafeteria test," which means offering an animal multiple prey items to see what it prefers. (See " Surprising Ant 'Mixing Bowl' Found in Manhattan.")

"The difficulty is finding the ants!" says Rabeling.

The little devil frog, obviously, has figured out how to locate them-and for good reason.

Poison frogs get their namesake chemical defenses from alkaloids found in the ants and other critters they consume, says Jonathan Kolby, a National Geographic grantee and director of the Honduras Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Center.

"Physiologists regard ants as mini chemical factories," adds Rabeling. The insects likely use the chemicals as signals to communicate with other ants in their complex societies.

As for where the ants get their alkaloids, Kolby says some species may acquire it from the plants they eat. But what role, if any, L. hoelldobleri may play in the poison game is anyone's guess.

Belly of the Beast

Because many amphibians are endangered-the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists O. sylvatica as near threatened-any research with wild frogs must be done carefully, and only by trained experts, Rabeling notes. ( Read more about why amphibians are vanishing.)

To flush the stomach, scientists insert a soft tube into the amphibian's mouth and gently fill it with water, prompting whatever the frog has eaten recently to flow out of its mouth and onto a tray. The frog can then be safely returned to its natural habitat.

This is not the first time a new species has been found inside another animal's stomach, by the way. Kolby points to the example of Dunn's earth snake ( Geophis dunni), which was found in the stomach of a coral snake ( Micrurus nigrocinctus) in Nicaragua in 1932.

Furthermore, it seems L. hoelldobleri had some company in the little devil frog's stomach. The research project that first identified the new ant also found several other as-of-yet undescribed insects.

It seems the little devil's frog's belly might be the gift that keeps on giving.
Follow Jason Bittel on Twitter and Facebook.

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Finding new species may call to mind images of scientists tracking mysterious footprints in the mud or cutting paths through the dense jungle. But sometimes, a discovery is as easy as getting a frog to open its mouth and say, "Ah."

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Fake rhino horn cell phone cases coming to a store near you? It may sound strange, but that's what one San Francisco-based startup has in mind-and it thinks such products can save the animals.

The company, Pembient, plans to bioengineer fake rhino horn that artists could carve into lifestyle items such as jewelry, libation cups, and chopsticks, according to CEO Matthew Markus. Then the merchandise will be sold in China and Vietnam, where demand for rhino horn fuels rampant rhino poaching in Africa.

Pembient hopes synthetic horn-priced at about one-eighth that of the reported $60,000-a-kilogram that genuine horn commands-will flood the market. Prices for the real thing would fall, goes the argument, curbing the economic incentive for poachers-and helping save rhinos in Africa.

Poachers have targeted rhinos in recent years at unprecedented rates. Last year, they slaughtered a record 1,200 in South Africa-home to most of the world's rhinos-and have wiped away an increasing number of them in the country each year since 2008. (That's after a rumor that rhino horn had cured a Vietnamese politician's cancer, and demand in the country skyrocketed.)

Pembient emerged on the startup scene in January, when biotech incubator IndieBio decided to fund the venture and offer it a spot in its inaugural class. By isolating the gene for rhino keratin, the chief ingredient in wild horn (and in human hair and fingernails), Pembient says it's managed to 3-D print genetically identical knock offs.

At first the company planned to focus on selling synthetic rhino horn powder before offering larger products. Several companies were interested in buying the powder to mix with beer and skin cream, among other things. The items would have been marketed to East Asian consumers, who tout rhino horn as a status symbol and a sign of strength. Some mistakenly believe that it can heal everything from hangovers to cancer.

But many conservationists attacked Pembient's idea, asserting that fake rhino horn won't solve the poaching problem and could even make it worse. They say that rhino horn powder-infused products could open more markets for illicit horn. "These are entirely new uses of rhino horn that will reach an entirely new audience," Cathy Dean, the international director of Save the Rhino, told World Finance in September.

For now, the company is shifting its emphasis away from synthetic powder because, as Markus says, "we've gotten a lot of pushback. The carving process and the durable goods market seems very interesting to us because it's been around for such a long time and it's something that people maybe understand a little bit better." He also thinks that intact horn is "what the market really desires" because it's the "ultimate marker of authenticity."

A recent trip to Vietnam helped influence Markus's decision to jump straight to "carvables," the scraps of which he says he learned end up in the medicinal market anyway.

"I frankly don't see that it's any better, to be honest," says Susie Watts, a consultant for WildAid and co-chair of the Species Survival Network Rhino Working Group, referring to Pembient's move to put faux powder on the back burner. While she's aware that people buy rhino horn jewelry, Watts has never heard of rhino horn cell phone cases and chopsticks.

But opposition to Pembient's synthetic horn plans extends beyond the possible new market it could create. "There's very little, if any, relief on wild populations when we see commercial farming develop or commercial trade of a protected species," says Douglas Hendrie, manager of the wildlife crime and investigations unit for conservation group Education for Nature - Vietnam. "The wild trade continues right alongside."

Hendrie points to China's legal one time sale of 73 tons of ivory in 2008, which arguably fueled the current elephant poaching crisis. China's legal tiger farms have also stoked demand for wild tiger parts, according to wildlife activists.

Patrick Bergin, CEO of the African Wildlife Foundation, also believes that inserting fake horn into the market could counteract efforts to educate people about why they shouldn't buy wild horn, a strategy most activists push as the best way to reduce demand.

"If you start to nuance that message with some rhino horn is good, some of it is bad, some of it is legal, some of it is illegal," he says, "you lose people and lose the clarity of the message."

There's also concern that fake horn could increase the workload for law enforcement in countries already struggling to contain the illicit trade. According to Hendrie, Vietnam doesn't have the enforcement capacity to regulate the black market along with the legal one.

As for the United States, the Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces wildlife law, hasn't taken a stance on Pembient's venture. Spokesman Gavin Shire says the agency is "looking at this and the implications of it." One consideration could be the Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Act of 1998, which bans the export of any substance intended for human consumption that's labeled or advertised as containing "any substance derived" from a rhino.

Markus says he's working with regulatory agencies to address any legal concerns. He expects he'll have about a year to figure it out, while his team nails down the science for constructing faux horn that's as carvable as real rhino horn. In the meantime, the CEO knows he'll have to contend with more opposition.
This story was produced by National Geographic's Special Investigations Unit, which focuses on wildlife crime and is made possible by grants from the BAND Foundation and the Woodtiger Fund. Read more stories from the SIU on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ngwildlife@natgeo.com.

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Can Fake Rhino Horn Stop the Poaching of a Species at Risk?

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Fake rhino horn cell phone cases coming to a store near you? It may sound strange, but that's what one San Francisco-based startup has in mind-and it thinks such products can save the animals. The company, Pembient, plans to bioengineer fake rhino horn that artists could carve into lifestyle items such as jewelry, libation cups, and chopsticks, according to CEO Matthew Markus.

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An adult female redback spider (Latrodectus hasselti) with a dead male near her mouthparts.

Credit: Copyright Maydianne Andrade/Photo by Ken Jones

For some species of spiders, mating comes with a deadly risk - the possibility of being eaten by their much larger female partner. But in two species of widow spiders - the venomous spider group that includes black widows - males deploy an ingenious strategy to avoid being cannibalized during sex, according to a new study.

Scientists recently discovered that widow spider males Latrodectus hasselti and Latrodectus geometricus prefer to mate with females that are not yet sexually mature but which still have internal structures that are capable of storing sperm, which the males access by piercing the female's exoskeleton.

This sexual sneak attack is a win-win situation for the male. He literally plants the seeds to successfully fertilize the female at a later date, and is able to scuttle away from the encounter with his dignity - and his head - intact. [ In Photos: The Amazing Arachnids of the World]

Sexual cannibalism is common in widow spiders, but males mating with immature females to avoid being cannibalized is behavior that was previously unheard of, the researchers wrote in a new study.

Study co-author Maydianne C. B. Andrade, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, has studied widow spiders for nearly two decades, but had never observed this behavior until recently. She told Live Science in an email that it was first brought to her attention by a member of her research team - M. Daniella Biaggio, the study's lead author.

Biaggio reported that not only were the males mounting immature females, but they were also difficult to separate from their partners.

"Step into my parlor." A male redback spider enters a female's web.

Credit: Copyright Maydianne Andrade/Photo by Ken Jones

Once the scientists realized that the spiders were mating, they isolated the females and later found that their eggs had been successfully fertilized, noting in the study that the females molted normally and subsequently produced offspring, even though they had not mated as adults.

Andrade explained that after she presented her preliminary findings at a conference, she was approached by another scientist, Yael Lubin from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, whose doctoral students Iara Sandomirsky and Ally R. Harari had observed similar behavior in widow spiders. The researchers decided to combine their efforts in a new study investigating the activity that had been hiding in plain sight.

"Dani Biaggio and Iara Sandomirsky discovered the behaviors," Andrade said. "They brought 'new eyes' to the system."

This mating strategy is challenging for males - the window of opportunity for finding a female that has recently developed her sperm-storing receptacles but is not yet sexually mature is small, Andrade explained. And there is still much to be learned: How the males even find the immature females, which don't produce the signature "come hither" pheromones that mature females emit; what the physical cost is to females that are fertilized before they're sexually mature; and how widespread this behavior is - not just in widows, but in other sexually cannibalistic spider species as well.

"The focus in widow research has largely been on cannibalism and related phenomena; very few field studies include a systematic examination of behavior throughout the lifespan," Andrade said in an email. "I suspect this will change," she added.

The findings were published online Sept. 21 in the journal Biology Letters.

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Male Widow Spiders Survive Sex by Mounting Immature Virgins

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For some species of spiders, mating comes with a deadly risk - the possibility of being eaten by their much larger female partner. But in two species of widow spiders - the venomous spider group that includes black widows - males deploy an ingenious strategy to avoid being cannibalized during sex, according to a new study.

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Twenty dolphins were slaughtered on Friday in the southwestern Japanese town of Taiji, marking the beginning of the cove's infamous annual dolphin hunt, according to local media, Agence France-Presse reports.

The hunt has attracted global condemnation since 2009, when it was featured in the Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove, which depicted how fishermen round up some 1,000 dolphins a year to sell to marine parks or kill for meat. The slaughter turns the cove red with blood. In 2015, the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums banned the buying and selling of dolphins from the controversial hunt, after protests and pressure from the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, a global industry organization. ( Pictures: Scenes from the Taiji Roundup)

"For several days the hunters have been pursuing pods offshore, who were able to escape capture," said Ric O'Barry, the founder of the Dolphin Project, in an email. "This pod of Risso's dolphins was not so lucky. The senseless slaughter of the adult dolphins, while forcing the young to fend for themselves in the open sea, should serve as a call to action for everyone."

For this year's hunt, which runs from September until March, the Japanese government set a kill quota of 1,820 dolphins of various species, according to the Dolphin Project, about the same as last year. In addition, trainers will be allowed to choose about 150 live bottlenose dolphins, which have been pre-sold to marine parks around the world. Many more dolphins are likely injured or killed than what is officially reported, the organization adds.

Advocates around the world protested on September 1, decrying the cruel nature of the hunt.

"The killing of dolphins is indefensible given our scientific knowledge of dolphins, which has demonstrated their sophisticated cognitive abilities including self and social awareness," Diana Reiss, a Hunter College psychologist who studies dolphin behavior and advised The Cove, told New Scientist in 2013.

Conservationists hope the spotlight of the 2020 Olympics will encourage the government to ban the hunts.

"We are urging the Japanese government to consider the global spotlight on Japan for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and end the dolphin hunts and their whaling activity," said Mark Palmer, the associate director of the marine mammals project at the nonprofit Earth Island Institute.

Learn more from our past coverage of the Taiji dolphin hunt:

This story was produced by National Geographic's Special Investigations Unit, which focuses on wildlife crime and is made possible by grants from the BAND Foundation and the Woodtiger Fund. Read more stories from the SIU on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ngwildlife@natgeo.com.

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First Dolphins Killed in Japan's Notorious Hunt

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Twenty dolphins were slaughtered on Friday in the southwestern Japanese town of Taiji, marking the beginning of the cove's infamous annual dolphin hunt, according to local media, Agence France-Presse reports. The hunt has attracted global condemnation since 2009, when it was featured in the Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove, which depicted how fishermen round up some 1,000 dolphins a year to sell to marine parks or kill for meat.

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Ecologist and conservationist Rodrigo Medellínwants your brand to be bat-friendly.

Bats have long been among the world's most despised animals, due largely to myth and Hollywood's fascination with vampire bats. But Medellín is trying to lead a the perceptual transformation of the bat, from blood-sucking demon to unsung nature hero, and hopes a bat-friendly tequila will provide a major public relations boost.

Aside from consuming loads of crop-destroying insects, bats are plant pollinators, and Medellín's prized lesser long-nosed bat pollinates the cactuslike blue agave plant, the single plant species from which Mexican tequila is produced.

Habitat destruction has been especially harmful to the lesser long-nosed bat, first listed as a threatened species in Mexico in 1994. By 2008 it was well on its way to recovery, thanks largely to Medellín, a tireless advocate who's been dubbed the " Bat Man of Mexico" for his work with bats. (Medellín, a Rolex Laureate and National Geographic grantee, has also worked to help a variety of other plant and animal species.)

Over 20 years ago, Medellín initiated research to identify and ultimately help protect the lesser long-nosed bat's caves. His efforts also prompted educational programs that dispelled bat myths and underscored their benefits to thousands of Mexicans.

And he was instrumental in persuading farmers to allow agave plants to flower. Previously, many farmers, seeking to boost the agave's sugar content, cut off the flowers before they could be pollinated, instead using mono-cropped agave. But after crops were decimated by disease caused by a mixture of fungus and bacteria, some farmers, on Medellín's advice, began setting aside 5 percent of their land for flowering agave.

In fields where farmers have allowed plants to flower, "they're full of food and bats are visiting-it's nothing short of historic,'' say Medellín, 58. "This is the way things were done six generations ago."

In 2014, Medellín hooked up with the nonprofit Tequila Interchange Project, an alliance of producers, scientists, and bartenders that advocates the preservation of traditional agave farming, more naturally pollinated wild agave, and other sustainable, environmentally friendly practices.

By year's end, tequila brands certified as "bat-friendly" will be on the market in the U.S., the world's biggest tequila consumer, under the Tequila Cascahuin, La Alteña, Siete Leguas, and Don Mateo distillery labels, Medellín says.

"This is nothing short of a dream come true," says Medellín, who hopes enthusiasts snap up the brands, leading to more demand and broader, bat-friendly farmology. "It will help save the bat and tequila at the same time."

Medellín, a professor of ecology and conservation at the Institute of Ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, isn't just about bats. He's working on saving Mexico's jaguars, which now number about 3,800 in the wild. He'll be in Johannesburg, South Africa, later this month at the 2016 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Conference of the Parties.

"I'm hoping to compare notes in conservation strategies on lions, tigers and leopards,'' he says. "We're trying to understand why jaguars cannot sustain the level of encroachment by humans that allow the other big cats to survive in other countries."

Additionally, Medellín will lobby for CITES protection of the thresher and silky sharks.

National Geographic produced this content as part of a partnership with the Rolex Awards for Enterprise.

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The Bat Man of Mexico; Tequila's Super Hero?

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Ecologist and conservationist Rodrigo Medellínwants your brand to be bat-friendly. Bats have long been among the world's most despised animals, due largely to myth and Hollywood's fascination with vampire bats. But Medellín is trying to lead a the perceptual transformation of the bat, from blood-sucking demon to unsung nature hero, and hopes a bat-friendly tequila will provide a major public relations boost.

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Japan has killed 333 minke whales-including more than 200 pregnant females-as part of this year's Antarctic whale hunt, according to the country's Institute for Cetacean Research.

On Wednesday, four ships returned from their 115-day expedition to conduct "scientific" whaling activities. The hunt was in blatant disregard of the International Court of Justice's 2014 ruling that challenged the scientific legitimacy of the program.

The International Whaling Commission, which regulates the industry, has banned commercial whaling since 1986, but an exemption for scientific studies remains. Japan has long been accused of using this exemption as cover for commercial whaling activities.

As marine mammal biologist Leah Gerber told National Geographic in 2014:

Once a Japanese ship lands a whale, there is some semblance of scientific activity, including collecting organs for use in research, Gerber said. But the bulk of the whale goes to market, she said, where it's sold for consumption.

After the international court ruling, Japan halted its whaling activities briefly, but then resolved to begin whaling again in the 2015-2016 season. It revised its program to be more scientific, and it lowered its quota of whales by about two-thirds.

Still, many scientists derided the new plan, and the International Whaling Commission could not reach a consensus on whether it met requirements. And while the quota reduction looked good on paper, it didn't make much of a difference in practice, according to Astrid Fuchs, the whaling program manager for the nonprofit organization Whale and Dolphin Conservation. In previous years, Japan has killed between 200-400 Antarctic minke whales each year. This year's 333 isn't out of the ordinary.

Also part of its plan: targeting females. Japan maintains that it must capture and kill juvenile and adult females in order to determine the age at which minke whales reach sexual maturity. Japan wants to use this data in its quest to demonstrate the minke whale population is healthy enough for regular whaling, Fuchs said.

And because it's breeding time in the southern seas, 90 percent of the females Japanese whalers killed were pregnant.

The expedition was part of a 12-year plan to kill nearly 4,000 whales in Antarctic waters. The conservation status of Antarctic minke whales is unclear, but some analyses have found a 60 percent reduction when comparing the 1978-91 period and the 1991-2004 period, which would qualify it for endangered status.

This story was produced by National Geographic's Special Investigations Unit, which focuses on wildlife crime and is made possible by grants from the BAND Foundation and the Woodtiger Fund. Read more stories from the SIU on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ngwildlife@natgeo.com.

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Japan has killed 333 minke whales-including more than 200 pregnant females-as part of this year's Antarctic whale hunt, according to the country's Institute for Cetacean Research. On Wednesday, four ships returned from their 115-day expedition to conduct "scientific" whaling activities.

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A bird so rare that it is now extinct in the wild has joined a clever animal elite - the Hawaiian crow naturally uses tools to reach food.

The bird now joins just one other corvid - the New Caledonian crow - in this exclusive evolutionary niche.

Dr Christian Rutz from St Andrews University described his realisation that the bird might be an undiscovered tool user as a "eureka moment".

He and his team published their findings in the journal Nature.

"I've been studying New Caledonian crows for over 10 years now," Dr Rutz told BBC News. "There are more than 40 species of crows and ravens around the world and many of them are poorly studied.

"So I wondered if there were hitherto undiscovered tool users among them."

Previously, Dr Rutz and his colleagues have reported that New Caledonian crows have particular physical features - very straight bills and forward-facing eyes. The researchers suggested these might be tool-using adaptations.

Breeding programme

They then searched the crow family for species with similar features, and Dr Rutz said he quickly realised that the "Hawaiian crow was the perfect candidate for further investigation".

Though it will now be something of a scientific celebrity, the Hawaiian crow has recently been rescued from the very brink of extinction.

Dr Rutz worked with colleagues at San Diego Zoo Global, who had brought the last remaining wild birds into captivity to start a breeding programme to save the species - those birds provided the scientist with a unique testing ground.

"We effectively tested the entire species," Dr Rutz told BBC News.

"At the time, there were 109 crows in captivity - we tested all of them, presenting them with a foraging task."
Crow in crisis
The Hawaiian crow or 'alalā ( Corvus hawaiiensis) is extinct in the wild and all the birds that remain are being kept in captive breeding. The last few birds were brought into captivity in a desperate effort to save this species from extinction. There are now 130 birds in captivity, and the team at San Diego Zoo Global are preparing for them to be released into the wild later this year.

According to zoo president Douglas Myers, this study marks an important milestone for the recovery programme.

"The discovery that 'alalā naturally use tools is of great significance," he said, "especially at this critical stage of our recovery efforts, as it provides completely unexpected insights into the species' ecological needs."

That task consisted of logs with holes and crevices that were baited with food that was just out of a bill's reach.

"They were able to pick up sticks from the aviary," said Dr Rutz, "and of all the birds we tested, 93% used [the sticks as] tools. This suggests this is a species-wide skill.

"They were incredibly dextrous in the way that they handled the sticks, shortened them when they were too long, and discarded them if they were not happy with them."

Since New Caledonian and Hawaiian crows both evolved on remote islands, the researchers think "something special" is happening on these islands that, at least in birds, drives the evolution of this highly unusual behaviour.

Dr Rutz added that the discovery also opened up the possibility of comparing these tool-using birds with primates that have similar skills, to work out what drives the evolution of these skills on such very different branches of the evolutionary tree.

Well-known primatologist Dr Jane Goodall provided the first detailed report of tool use in wild chimpanzees and a St Andrews University statement quoted Dr Goodall as describing this finding as "especially wonderful".

"Each of these discoveries shows how much there is still to learn about animal behaviour, and it makes me rethink about the evolution of tool use in our own earliest ancestors," she commented.

"Let this discovery serve to emphasise the importance to conserving these and other animal species so that we can continue to learn ever more about the range of their behaviour before they vanish for ever in the sixth great wave of extinction. We owe it to future generations."
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A bird so rare that it is now extinct in the wild has joined a clever animal elite - the Hawaiian crow naturally uses tools to reach food. The bird now joins just one other corvid - the New Caledonian crow - in this exclusive evolutionary niche.

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More than 300 wild reindeer were recently killed by lightning at a Norwegian national park, officials say.

The Norwegian Environment Agency has released haunting images of reindeer-including 70 calves-that seemingly fell over where they stood in the grasses of Hardangervidda, the largest high mountain plateau in northern Europe.

The national park, the largest in Norway with wild reindeer populations, spans some 8,000 square kilometers (3,088 square miles) and is home to 10,000 to 11,000 wild reindeer.

While specifics on the lightning strike are still unknown at this time, it's likely that the dead reindeer were a herd that huddled together to weather a severe thunderstorm that rolled through the area on Friday.

It's not the first time that lightning has caused animal herds to die en masse. In 1990, a thunderstorm killed 30 cattle on a farm in Orange County, Virginia, leaving their bodies scattered in a field. In 2005, a lightning strike killed 68 cows at a dairy farm outside Dorrigo in New South Wales, Australia. And in 2008, lightning outside of Montevideo, Uruguay, struck a paddock's wire fence, killing 52 of the cattle grazing inside. ( See more reindeer pictures.)

"I've heard of groups of cow [getting killed] when it strikes the ground," says Steve Goodman, a scientist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Satellite Service. "The lightning can spread for hundreds and hundreds of meters, for sure."

In an interview with the Associated Press, agency spokesperson Kjartan Knutsen said the scale of the wildlife deaths was unprecedented in the country.

"We have not heard about such numbers before," he said.

But Goodman notes that Norway is not particularly prone to severe lightning. Satellite data from NASA's Global Hydrology Research Center show that in an average year, southern Norway sees fewer than one lightning strike per square kilometer.

In contrast, the world's biggest lightning hot spot, Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo, gets struck more than 232 times per square kilometer in an average year-and endures nighttime thunderstorms 297 days of the year.

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Lightning Kills More Than 300 Reindeer in Rare Mass Death

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More than 300 wild reindeer were recently killed by lightning at a Norwegian national park, officials say. The Norwegian Environment Agency has released haunting images of reindeer-including 70 calves-that seemingly fell over where they stood in the grasses of Hardangervidda, the largest high mountain plateau in northern Europe.

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Schoolchildren worldwide may now have more African animals to memorize: Four species of giraffe could roam the continent, a new study says.

Until now the consensus has been that there's just one giraffe species, with nine subspecies. But the authors of the study claim they've uncovered clear genetic differences among four populations of the long-necked herbivore: the northern giraffe, southern giraffe, reticulated giraffe, and Masai giraffe.

"It was surprising to see these different subspecies were genetically so distinct-there was no intermixing," says Axel Janke, co-author of the study, published September 8 in the journal Current Biology.

How could such large creatures be hiding in plain sight? Part of the reason is that scientifically "the giraffe is a neglected species. Only 400 scientific papers have been written about giraffes, versus 20,000 papers on white rhinos," says Janke, an evolutionary biologist at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center, in Germany.

A global focus on endangered or heavily poached species, such as the elephant, compounded with our fascination with carnivores such as lions, have also contributed to the giraffe's obscurity, he says. "Despite its size, the giraffe has been completely overlooked."

As the world has turned its attention elsewhere, during the past 15 years numbers of the world's tallest animal have plummeted from an estimated 140,000 to around 90,000 today-what some scientists call a "silent extinction." (See " Inside the Fight to Stop Giraffes' 'Silent Extinction.'")

Giraffe expert John Doherty, who was not involved in the study, says in an email that he welcomes the study "as a valuable contribution to the continuing giraffe taxonomy debate." But he notes that the authors "are by no means the first to suggest more than one species of giraffe."

In addition, says Doherty, of the Nairobi-based Reticulated Giraffe Project and Queen's University Belfast, the study's proposed classification relies solely on genetic data and not important body characteristics or other factors. Considering that, "it would be more than premature to present their findings as definitive."

Doherty also says he supports the authors' highlighting the "urgent need to address giraffe conservation across the African continent."

The Namibia-based Giraffe Conservation Foundation first approached Janke several years ago about developing genetic markers to distinguish subspecies of giraffes, which live throughout sub-Saharan Africa and look similar.

The foundation, which has permits to shoot small darts at the animals to collect useful scientific information, provided Janke and colleagues with about 200 biopsy samples from giraffes throughout the continent.

Janke first examined the samples' mitochondrial DNA-the DNA that's passed down by mothers-and found that the differences between the giraffe populations "were as large as between that of polar and brown bear," he says. (Doherty notes that "since brown bears are widely regarded as a species complex that includes polar bears, this is not a valid analogy.")

When Janke analyzed the samples' nuclear genes-located in the cell nucleus-"one marker after another told us the same story," he says. "We saw distinct groups." ( See 14 incredible pictures of giraffes.)

For instance, all nuclear genes have mutations, and he found that mutations common to one group of giraffes were completely different from those of another group.

Janke says he was reluctant initially to name the giraffes as separate species, but the data show it's "absolutely justified."

"It's a wonderful thing-something new and cool and big that doesn't happen that much in science," says David O'Connor, a conservation ecologist with San Diego Zoo Global, who collaborates with the Giraffe Conservation Foundation.

The discovery is also great news for efforts to help giraffes, whose conservation has long been complicated by a lack of scientific knowledge.

Knowing what giraffe species exist "help us working in the field to better prioritize what we're doing," O'Connor said on Monday at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'s World Conservation Congress. (Related: " Giraffes, Zebras Face Surprising Top Threat: Hunting")

Simply naming the species may put pressure on governments to reallocate resources to help giraffes, he says.

But Doherty cautions that "an approach based solely on genetic analyses can sometimes undermine rather than reinforce conservation efforts."

For instance, the study suggests that a giraffe called Thornicroft's be included with the Masai species, though the two populations are separated by large distances and play a vital role in their own habitats. According to Doherty, protecting the two groups independently maintains their evolutionary potential. Lumping them together may "reduce rather than enhance the conservation importance accorded to them."

The two species in the direst straits are the northern and reticulated giraffe species.

The northern giraffe-which has three subspecies, the Kordofan, Nubian, and West African-has a combined population of fewer than 5,000 animals. Many live in unstable areas in central Africa, and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Kordofan is being hunted for its tail, which is considered a status symbol.

The reticulated giraffe has one of the most rapid declines, O'Connor says, with an 80 percent drop in recent decades because of habitat loss and poaching.

Study co-author Janke points out that the IUCN lists the giraffe as a species of least concern, but now that the population of roughly 90,000 is divided into four subsets-including two with fewer than 10,000 animals each-a new conservation status may be warranted.

"Hopefully [the new study] will really shine the spotlight on these unique and important animals," O'Connor adds. "They are really an icon of Africa-they exist nowhere else."
Read more stories about wildlife crime and exploitation on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ngwildlife@natgeo.com.

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Africa May Have New Giraffe Species-And This Could Help Protect Them

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Schoolchildren worldwide may now have more African animals to memorize: Four species of giraffe could roam the continent, a new study says. Until now the consensus has been that there's just one giraffe species, with nine subspecies.

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There are dog people. There are cat people. And then there are guinea pig people ... or parrot people ... or red-eyed tree frog people.

Private ownership of exotic pets is allowed in many states throughout the United States, and thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever for people to purchase whatever feathered, furred or finned pet they desire. But just because you can own an exotic pet, doesn't mean you should.

Purchasing or adopting any type of pet requires careful thought and consideration - and exponentially so for exotic animals. Here are five things you should carefully consider before you bring an exotic pet into your home.

The rules: Did you know that it's illegal to possess a chimpanzee in the state of California? In Illinois, it's against the law to own or care for any animal that might be considered "dangerous," and that includes any kind of venomous reptile. The same goes for Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, New York and several other states. Many states have strict laws regulating the type of pets you are allowed to own and the type of permits you're required to have if you wish to own them. Start here for information about your state's requirements for exotic pets.

The costs: This is a big one. When you adopt a dog or cat, you can assume that you'll be able to pick up all of the food and supplies you need to care for that animal at your local big box store. But that's not necessarily the case for exotic animals. And though the frog or parrot or snake itself may not cost that much, the cost of caring for it might be, and these are costs that you need to know ahead of time.

"Exotic pets typically need special caging, specialized diets and forms of enrichment that can all become quite expensive especially in larger exotics pets," said Sharman Hoppes, associate clinical professor at Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences.

A guinea pig munches on some basil leaves - but do you know what kind of food he should be eating? (Photo: TJ Images/Shutterstock)

The research: Before you bring home an exotic animal, you need to know everything there is to know about what it takes to properly care for this animal. "Before buying an exotic pet, research everything about them," Hoppes said. "Questions such as where they come from, their diet, if they climb, their social ability, how big will they get as adults, diseases they are susceptible to, and how long they live are essential before purchasing an exotic pet," Hoppes added.

Other questions to ask include what size cage or enclosure will it need? What does it need to eat? What is its temperament? And how much interaction will it want or need? Many small animals require stimulation outside of the cage - from floor time to cuddle sessions.

The care: Check to find out if there is a veterinarian in your area who will care for your pet in case of an emergency. If not, you many find yourself driving for hours every time your pet needs a vaccination. And you may want to find out how much those annual visits are going to cost. While a regular checkup for a dog or cat may cost around $100, an examination for an exotic animal can cost anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending upon whether or not anesthesia is necessary for the doctor to complete the checkup.

You also need to find out what your pet can and cannot eat and where you can find it. What are your pet's daily requirements in terms of vitamins, minerals, calories, protein, and what foods or supplements will they need to consume to meet those needs?

The fit: Another major consideration about adopting any pet - but especially an exotic pet - is how well this animal will fit into your life. "Many exotic pets are not good with children, and your new girlfriend or boyfriend may not like your large macaw who wants to bite them or may be afraid of your pet kangaroo that can kick and box with the power of Muhammad Ali," noted Hoppes.

If you already have other pets, it's important to consider how these animals will interact with your new pet. In some instances, you may be able to bring your pets to the exotic animal shelter to see how they will all get along.

Ready to adopt? Once you've done all of your homework, it's time to start looking for your new pet. Be sure to check your local rescue centers first. Of course, this is something that you would want to do for any pet, but the stakes are even higher for exotic animals that are purchased or adopted on a whim and then abandoned at the first complication.

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5 things to ask before you adopt an exotic pet

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There are dog people. There are cat people. And then there are guinea pig people ... or parrot people ... or red-eyed tree frog people. Private ownership of exotic pets is allowed in many states throughout the United States, and thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever for people to purchase whatever feathered, furred or finned pet they desire.

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Giant panda Mei Xiang rests in her enclosure in the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 24. (Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)

If you ask some wildlife conservationists, it's time to break out the celebratory bamboo and digest the chunks for 14 hours at a go.

Giant pandas are no longer endangered, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, the nongovernmental organization that maintains the authoritative list of the world's rarest species. Officially, the panda is now "vulnerable" - a species still at risk, but a step back from the brink of extinction.

But the Chinese government is not yet ready to agree with the new classification.

The IUCN announced the panda's status change in Hawaii on Sunday, in an update to the organization's Red List. That list contains nearly 83,000 species, of which nearly three in 10 are threatened with extinction. The panda was not the only animal to get a status update. A sharp decrease in an Eastern gorilla subspecies, as The Washington Post reported, led to a classification of "critically endangered." Species are classified on a spectrum from "least concern" to "extinct," a system the IUCN uses to inform and influence government wildlife policies.

"The improved status confirms that the Chinese government's efforts to conserve this species are effective," the IUCN said in a statement. When the IUCN first classified pandas in 1965, the organization listed the species as "very rare." Pandas would remain rare - or, in newer terminology, endangered - until the animal's most recent update.

The rumors of this panda's death were greatly exaggerated

Marco Lambertini, the director general of the WWF, said in a statement, "The recovery of the panda shows that when science, political will and engagement of local communities come together, we can save wildlife and also improve biodiversity." The panda is particularly dear to the WWF, as the wildlife conservation organization has used the large black-and-white mammal as its symbol for more than five decades.

In the mountains of southwestern China, the only remaining wild habitat for the panda, the Chinese government recently established dozens of wildlife reserves. The pandas, for their part, seem to appreciate the buffer zones; Sichuan and the other provinces surrounding the mountains are some of China's most rapidly developing. China has stepped up arrests for poaching pandas to the point that the pelt trade is nigh extinct. By best estimates, the population appears to be slowly increasing, and the animals have been spotted in areas that were panda-less for decades.

But it is difficult to count the animals with absolute confidence - a widely used method relies on identifying individuals from tooth marks in bamboo, extracted from scat. China has surveyed wild pandas four times since 1974. In the third survey, completed in 2004, China found bite-mark evidence for 1,596 animals; a decade later, the most recent survey documented 1,864 pandas in an effort that required 60,000 person-days and took place across some 17,000 wooded square miles.

Complicating the matter is the fact that biologists have criticized the accuracy of comparing those surveys. As Nature magazine pointed out in 2015, the latest survey took place over a larger area. And although DNA testing can give more accurate panda counts, fecal samples collected in the fourth survey were " not sufficiently fresh " to provide genetic material, according to the IUCN.

World's largest gorilla moved to 'critically endangered' status

This uncertainty is why some experts and Chinese officials are not celebrating the IUCN update.

Marc Brody, an adviser to China's Wolong Nature Reserve, told National Geographic that "it is too early to conclude that pandas are actually increasing in the wild - perhaps we are simply getting better at counting wild pandas."

China will continue to keep the panda under first class protection; the country has made the panda a particular conservation focus, far more so than river dolphins, pangolins and other rare species.

"If we downgrade their conservation status, or neglect or relax our conservation work, the populations and habitats of giant pandas could still suffer irreversible loss and our achievements would be quickly lost," China's State Forestry Administration, which spearheads the giant panda survey, said in a statement to the Associated Press on Monday. "Therefore, we're not being alarmist by continuing to emphasize the panda species' endangered status."

Even in making the change, the IUCN acknowledged the precariousness of the update. Climate change threatens the current abundance of bamboo, the panda's staple food. Over the next 80 years, an estimated 35 percent of these forests could disappear. If so, the panda is apt to be officially endangered once again.

Scientists find the secret to panda procreation: Love

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Giant pandas no longer endangered? Not so fast, some experts say.

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If you ask some wildlife conservationists, it's time to break out the celebratory bamboo and digest the chunks for 14 hours at a go. Giant pandas are no longer endangered, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, the nongovernmental organization that maintains the authoritative list of the world's rarest species.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/are-chickens-happier-when-theyre-cage-free-its-hard-to-tell-for-sure/2016/07/29/46bdf1d4-4878-11e6-90a8-fb84201e0645_story.html

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What makes a chicken happy?

Happiness is hard to measure, which makes it easy to ignore.

Our animal agriculture has become progressively more efficient; livestock grows faster on less feed. To accomplish that, most animals have been taken indoors, kept in progressively smaller spaces for their progressively shorter lives.

But are they unhappy?

A lot of people are asking the question, and animal welfare concerns are beginning to get traction, particularly when it comes to chickens. Several recent announcements are grounds for optimism that animals' well-being will start playing a bigger role in how large companies raise the ones that give us meat, milk and eggs.

United Egg Producers, a trade association whose members own 95 percent of our country's egg-laying hens, has announced an agreement to end the culling of male chicks by 2020. "Culling" is killing, and our current system sends male chicks, useless in the egg business, to a grisly death, either by grinding or gassing.

The grinding is the grisliest. The pictures of hours-old (cute, fluffy) chicks being tossed into high-speed grinders are stomach-churning. We could argue over whether that procedure is consistent with animal welfare - after all, it is a near-instant death - but now we won't have to. Even those who defend the practice have to be happier with the system that's replacing it: determining an embryo's gender while it's still in the egg, and using the male eggs for something else (pet food, for example).

That is a clear win. For animals, but also for the industry, which now has eggs it can use for constructive purposes, rather than those useless male chicks. And I think we all win when no worker has the grim and heart-hardening job of throwing baby chicks into a grinder.

Not everyone agrees on another trend in the egg world: going cage-free.

Everybody's doing it! Supermarkets (and not just Whole Foods, but also Costco, Albertsons, Kroger, Walmart and others). Restaurants (including McDonald's, IHOP, Applebee's, Taco Bell). Manufacturers (Unilever, Hershey's, Nestle, ConAgra). Also food-service companies, hotels and resorts. The timelines differ, but there's no question that demand for cage-free chickens will change industry practices.

Scientists who study the impact of different production practices almost inevitably conclude that each system has advantages and disadvantages. Yes, chickens can "perform a greater repertoire of behaviors" in a cage-free system, one recent evaluation concludes, but it warns that those behaviors include cannibalism. Taking animals out of cages and giving them litter to scratch around in also provides a "greater opportunity for disease and parasites" and increases the number of bone fractures.

And what of the downside of confinement? Is being caged stressful? Painful? We don't really know. Of stress, the evaluation says that "less is understood." And we don't always know when people are in pain, so how are we supposed to figure out whether a chicken's hurting?

It's hard to make the liberty-vs.-security calculation when the costs of liberty (injury, mortality, predation, disease) are measurable but the benefits (well-being, happiness, freedom from pain) often aren't. But I don't think the list of potential harms of going cage-free can justify keeping a bird in a cage so small she can't spread her wings, and I'm very glad to see the balance shifting.

A similar cost-benefit analysis is happening in the organic world, where new animal-welfare rules are being considered. One of the requirements for chickens - both egg layers and meat birds - would be outdoor access. And quite a bit of it. Regulations proposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture call for a maximum of 2.25 pounds of bird per square foot of outdoor space for egg layers, and a 5-pound maximum for meat birds. (A typical laying hen weighs about five pounds, and a meat bird grows from hatching to six or seven pounds in six or seven weeks.)

According to Nate Lewis, senior crops and livestock specialist with the Organic Trade Association, predators and pathogens are the "main concern" of the organic producers who are pushing back against the new regulations. He calls those threats real, but he points out that most farms are good at keeping predators out, and that all the flocks that got avian flu last year were confined indoors. Those who favor the new regulations (and Lewis's group does) say that allowing chickens to express natural behaviors - scratching in soil, tracking down insects, dust-bathing in the sun - trumps concerns about disease or predators.

Science can't adjudicate this dispute yet. Although science isn't silent on well-being, and animal scientists can measure cortisol (an indication of stress) and play behavior (an indication of relaxation), some of the issues surrounding conditions in confined animal operations defy scientific rigor.

My husband and I have watched the liberty-vs.-security trade-off play out in our back yard. We've raised chickens for some six years, and I'm ready to say that they're happier when they have plenty of room, access to sunlight and ground to scratch up. I arrived at that opinion in the same way you figured out what makes your cat, or your dog, or your parakeet happy. Animals - even chickens - have plenty of ways of telling us what they like and don't like.

They like it when you bring them melon seeds. Also corncobs. They don't like strange noises, or when another chicken is in the nest box they want. (They always seem to squabble over the same one, even when several are empty.) And they like to go outside. They pace back and forth next to the door when they see you coming. As soon as the door opens, they bolt.

We live on two wooded acres and, until recently, we let our chickens have the run of the place during the day. At night, they went home to their predator-proof (so far) run, and we locked them away from our local carnivores: raccoons, coyotes and other nocturnal hunters. In the morning, we opened the door and let them range free. Liberty!

We got a firsthand lesson in the perils of outdoor access when a fox (a daytime hunter, which we'd never had before) moved into our neighborhood and snatched half of our flock in one afternoon. Now, our birds stay in their run, which has sunshine and deep litter and things to climb and perch on, as well as plenty of elbow room, but no outdoor access. The fox tipped the balance to security.

You can't extrapolate from a backyard flock to a commercial one - if you're raising tens of thousands of birds, you don't bring them cantaloupe innards - but some of the fundamental questions are the same. Does increased risk of disease or predators mean that we should keep birds indoors? Are chickens that don't go outside, chickens that don't even have a concept of "outside," unhappy? And if they are less happy, are we willing to sacrifice some well-being to provide inexpensive eggs and meat for people?

These are some of the questions being debated as consumer pressure increasingly shines a light on the practices of industrial animal farming. And Perdue Farms is stepping up. The company has been in the vanguard of changing conventional practices since it became the first big producer to start phasing out antibiotics (less an issue of animal welfare than of human health, since using antibiotics in livestock contributes to antibiotic-resistant bacteria) back in 2002.

Perdue has started installing windows and environmental enrichments in chicken houses and is focused on increasing bird activity. (Exercise benefits chickens, as it does humans.) Perdue Senior Vice President Bruce Stewart-Brown told me that "it's appropriate to start paying attention to what chickens want." About 10 percent of Perdue birds have outdoor access, and that "has allowed us and me to get a better perspective on what it adds and what the challenges are," he said. "Not every area is appropriate for outdoor access. There are climates where it's way more comfortable in the chicken house. When you can have shading and pasture, we have some really great setups." (Perdue is also instituting new stunning systems at slaughterhouses, an important step.)

Me, I'd like to see more liberty, although the inevitable cost is some security. I can't say for sure that an animal with more room to move, access to sunshine and a varied environment is happier, but that's my best guess.

It has been about a decade since I bought conventional chicken or eggs, and I'm watching these developments with cautious optimism. It may not be long before a Perdue chicken, raised in a windowed chickenhouse with perches and hiding places, is what's for dinner.

More from Food:

Unearthed column archive

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Animal happiness matters. But how do we know what that is?

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What makes a chicken happy? Happiness is hard to measure, which makes it easy to ignore. Our animal agriculture has become progressively more efficient; livestock grows faster on less feed. To accomplish that, most animals have been taken indoors, kept in progressively smaller spaces for their progressively shorter lives.

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Explore National Geographic. A world leader in geography, cartography and exploration.

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It looks like it could be a cartoon character, but it's real. And this little squid is making waves on the internet.

Researchers from the Nautilus exploration vessel were cruising along the deep sea floor off California's coast when they came upon the bright purple creature with giant, stuffed-animal-like eyes.

"Whoa!" they exclaim in unison.

"It looks fake," one says. And those googly eyes? "It looks like they just painted them on," another says, to peals of laughter.

In fact, the researchers can't contain their giggles as the look at the adorable creature. "It's like some little kid dropped their toy," one comments. The stubby squid stays stoic, gazing straight ahead with its huge eyes throughout the entire 2.5 minute video. You can watch the squid's big moment here:

Weekend Edition Saturday caught up with Samantha Wishnak, a science fellow on board the Nautilus. She says the little cephalopod has garnered a big reaction. "I think it definitely captured the imagination of both our researchers on board and our hundreds of viewers who were watching when we discovered this guy."

And that adorable wide-eyed expression? "We probably encountered the squid at a time it wasn't expecting to see a 5,500 pound underwater robot moving towards it," says Wishnak. "Scuba divers actually encounter these squid at scuba diving depths, and they say that when their dive lights turn on them, they get the similar kind of deer-in-the-headlights look."

She says this kind of stubby squid are tougher than they look - they're "ambush predators you don't want to encounter if you're a shrimp." Wishnak thinks the squid was out hunting when the crew found it. Here's more:

"They're actually nocturnal hunters so they spend a lot of the day actually burrowed in the sea floor with just their eyes poking out. And then when they feel comfortable, when it's time to hunt, they'll actually start creeping along looking for their next meal."

They're also not always quite so purple, she says, because of a neat trick that involves activating a "little sticky mucus jacket." That means "pebbles, sand, whatever they're sort of burrowing in will stick to that jacket and give them a nice extra layer of camouflage," Wishnak says. Then, they lie in wait, "and whenever a small fish or a shrimp crawls by it'll actually sort of turn off that mucus jacket and slide out of the sediment to lunge for their next meal."

Pretty fierce for a creature that resembles an adorable emoticon.

Craving more deep-sea fun? Take a gander at this "remarkable little octopod," found earlier this year near Hawaii.

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'Googly-Eyed' Stubby Squid Captures Internet's Attention

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It looks like it could be a cartoon character, but it's real. And this little squid is making waves on the internet. Researchers from the Nautilus exploration vessel were cruising along the deep sea floor off California's coast when they came upon the bright purple creature with giant, stuffed-animal-like eyes.

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In February, people started calling Lisa Bloch, communications director for the Marin County Humane Society, with some weird observations: Coyotes were attacking cars in the suburb north of San Francisco.

At first, Bloch thought the animals might be suffering from rabies, but as the calls continued to trickle in, she knew it couldn't be the feared neurological disease. If it were, the coyotes would have long since died. (Related: " Do Animals Get Drunk?")

Then, someone suggested that perhaps the coyotes had eaten some hallucinogenic wild mushrooms. Given that Marin County is known for what Bloch calls "a liberal attitude towards psychedelic substances," the hypothesis seemed plausible.

Though the theory quickly caught the public's attention, it's almost certainly untrue.

"It's likely someone had fed the animals from a car, and when other motorists didn't feed them, the coyotes got angry and attacked," she said.

Although California's coyotes haven't been dropping acid, other wild animals have been known to get high.

In Siberia, reindeer (the animal North Americans call caribou) are common-and so is the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria.

Biologists have documented reindeer getting high enough to fly Santa's sleigh, causing them to act almost as if drunk, running around aimlessly, making strange noises, and twitching their heads.

Poppy farmers on the Australian island of Tasmania have reported wallabiesentering their fields to consume the plants, which are grown as the raw materials for prescription painkillers. Reports did not specify which species of wallaby was indulging its green thumb. (Also see " Why Backyard Birds Are Getting Drunk on Fermented Berries.")

After eating the poppies, the small, kangaroo-like animals would run around in circles before finally passing out, according to a BBC report.

However, scientists have not confirmed this behavior.

In 1995, marine biologist Lisa Steiner was observing a school of rough-toothed dolphins near the Azores (map) when she noticed a few of them pushing around an inflated pufferfish.

Odd behavior, given that pufferfish produce tetrodotoxin, one of the most toxic and lethal substances known on Earth.

Steiner hypothesized in a 1995 research paper that the dolphins were consuming minute amounts of tetrodotoxin to get high.

Garfield had his lasagna, but most house cats prefer the effects of catnip ( Nepeta cataria).

A member of the mint family, the catnip plant produces an intoxicatingchemical called nepetalactone, which, when inhaled or ingested, causes reactions such as anxiety, hyperactivity, sleepiness, and drooling.

And it's not just Fluffy that feels the effect of catnip: Lions, tigers, leopards, cougars, and lynxes also respond to catnip, which grows in the wild worldwide. The effect is harmless and generally wears off after about 15 minutes.

Colorado State University emergency vet Tim Hackett sees lots of dogs who have accidentally consumed illicit drugs (or, in the case of marijuana, formerly illicit drugs).

Most of the time, he says, dogs aren't trying to get high-they just get into food or other items that their humans have left out. (See "' Drunk' Bats Fly Right-Study Surprises Scientists.")

"If they see a platter of brownies, they aren't going to stop at just one. They're going to eat until everything is gone," Hackett says.

The chocolate, butter, and oil in pot brownies, which induce vomiting, are more dangerous to a dog than the drug. But the added marijuana can weaken canines' head muscles and cause them to choke on their vomit.

Hackett is interested in the potential therapeutic properties of marijuana for dogs, but since they seem to metabolize the drug much more slowly than humans, giving Fido a blunt is decidedly not a good idea.

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No, Coyotes Don't Get High-But These Animals Do

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In February, people started calling Lisa Bloch, communications director for the Marin County Humane Society, with some weird observations: Coyotes were attacking cars in the suburb north of San Francisco. At first, Bloch thought the animals might be suffering from rabies, but as the calls continued to trickle in, she knew it couldn't be the feared neurological disease.

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Gorgeous new footage may shed light on one of the mysteries of the largest animal that ever lived: How do blue whales nurse? (See updates at bottom.)

National Geographic Explorer and marine ecologist Leigh Torres made the likely discovery of nursing while on a research cruise in the South Taranaki Bight off the western coast of New Zealand. On February 5, the Oregon State University professor got video that she thinks shows a mother blue whale and her calf nursing beneath the waves.

Although she can't definitely say that's what the pair was doing, the fact that the smaller whale kept alternating between breathing at the surface and swimming under its mother to spend some time at the same spot strongly suggests nursing, says Torres. This would make it the first footage of nursing in blue whales Torres was aware of (since the publication of this story, two photographers have come forward with earlier footage that may also show the behavior).

Torres and her team spotted the pair of whales while searching the area in their research vessel. They kept a safe distance away and launched a small drone into the sky, as Torres has done before to measure whale size and to count gray whales off the U.S. West Coast. ( Read more about or support Torres's work.)

"We had no idea they were [likely nursing] when we saw them from the vessel," says Torres. "But from the overhead perspective we could clearly see this coordinated behavior between mother and calf. It was beautiful to see."

Blue whales have nipples that are covered by folds of skin, in order to make their bodies sleeker in the water. Precisely how calves can access the milk is unknown, but Torres says it is likely some combination of the mother flexing her abdominal muscles to expose the nipple and then squirting the milk into her baby's mouth (they don't have the flexible lips for suckling that many land mammals posses).

Blue whale milk is extremely rich, composed of about 40 percent fat and 13 percent protein. In contrast, human breast milk is much more watery and is composed of only four percent fat and one percent protein. Still, blue whale calves must consume 50 gallons (190 liters) of milk a day, during which time they gain 200 pounds (90 kilograms).

Blue whales nurse for five to seven months, during which time they put on 38,000 pounds (17,000 kilograms). The calf in the video is likely four to six months old, says Torres. ( See more footage of a blue whale mom and calf.)

Sign of a Healthy Population?

Torres thinks the whales in the video belong to the pygmy subspecies of blue whales. Despite the name, they are still huge, growing to about 89 feet (27 meters) long, compared to about 112 feet or 34 meters long for the biggest blue whales, the Antarctic sub species. Little is known about how many pygmy blue whales there are (one estimate says about 10,000), how many live off New Zealand, or where they go in the ocean.

On her research trip in February, Torres saw five pairs of mothers and calves in a small area, including the pair in the video, as well as ten other adult whales. Such a high concentration of the animals is unusual, though it could be at least partially attributed to a rich supply of krill, their primary food source.

"Seeing nursing activity and a number of pairs shows us that this population is reproducing and that this is an important area for moms to come and raise their young," says Torres.

Pygmy blue whales, like all blue whales, were hunted nearly to extinction in the first half of the 20th century. Torres is optimistic that they seem to be making a slow comeback, but much more information is needed.

Blue whales continue to be threatened by unintentional collisions with ships and loud noises from oil and gas development, which can interfere with their ability to communicate with each other.

Torres hopes to return to New Zealand soon to continue studying the whales. "The area needs to be managed appropriately in terms of protection of blue whales and their habitat," she adds.

Note: After we published this story a reader alerted us to this older video on YouTube, which also purports to show a blue whale calf nursing. After watching the video, Torres says it's possible that's what is going on but says the calf isn't visible enough to tell. "Our video is much more convincing that they are nursing because the calf is repeatedly 'stationed' below the mother for an extended period," she says.

A second reader, nature filmmaker Patrick Dykstra, alerted us to footage he took in mid-2015 that also may show blue whales nursing. The clips shared online are too brief to determine but Dykstra says he had recorded several minutes of the behavior. Out of consideration for these two sources we have amended the title of this story to reflect the fact that Torres's video may not be the first of the behavior in the species, as we first thought.
Updated on March 8 at 10:30 am ET.

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Exclusive Video May Show Blue Whale Calf Nursing

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Gorgeous new footage may shed light on one of the mysteries of the largest animal that ever lived: How do blue whales nurse? (See updates at bottom.) National Geographic Explorer and marine ecologist Leigh Torres made the likely discovery of nursing while on a research cruise in the South Taranaki Bight off the western coast of New Zealand.

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The huge gap between current CMS offerings and what the world needed occurred to me during my time as CTO of The Huffington Post. When we were acquired by AOL in 2011, I inherited 53 properties built on dozens of different content management systems. It wasn't long after that I soon realized they were all built by IT people who didn't fully grasp the concepts of traffic and distribution. That's why in 2012 I launched RebelMouse as the first platform to create the "social front page" - a hub where users could aggregate social feeds all in one place. It went viral with eight million users worldwide. The viral success made me realize that there wasn't a CMS to bring it all together, yet.

One of the main reasons I launched RebelMouse was because I recognized that a huge shift in advertising would happen, and that content would become marketing very quickly. And it did.

Today, I am extremely proud of the powerful product we've created. RebelMouse was built to solve the complex intersection of product, engineering, editorial, and revenue. It's allowed us to create a next-generation CMS unlike any other - backed by some of the best venture capitalists in the world - and is responsible for launching some of the biggest media sites such as Axios and The Dodo, both of which saw massive success upon launch.

But our team still sees plenty of sites - including brands, publishers, and personal influencers - not reaching their full potential. A lot of the time it's because they're bogged down with a clunky CMS like WordPress. We're all trying to publish and make money in a competitive industry that's always changing. But to be frank, WordPress isn't keeping up with the industry fast enough. There's a lot you need in and out of a CMS to survive and succeed in this digital climate, and we've created a solution that quickly responds to every industry shift and algorithm curveball.

Here are six reasons why RebelMouse is different from WordPress and worthy of a replatforming process that's simple and can be completed in a matter of days.

1. RebelMouse Is a Centralized CMS

RebelMouse is a centralized CMS, unlike other common web solutions like WordPress and Drupal. WordPress is a decentralized model that requires every platform update to be completed independently. This means that - of the 87 million plus versions of WordPress that are currently live on the internet - each update has to be implemented one by one.

Operating your business on a decentralized model is a big security risk. Every time there's a security threat, the core developers at WordPress must deploy patches in the form of product updates. From there, it's up to the managing developers of each individual site to deploy and configure around these updates to avoid breaking custom code and plugins. And this happens a lot. Since its launch in 2003, WordPress has released 238 product updates, many of them to address gaps in security.

Since we operate on a centralized model, every update on our platform is updated at one time, and sometimes multiple times a day. Usually our clients never notice the difference. We protect the data of our clients and make sure their sites are not only risk-free, but also operating at continuous peak performance.

But this doesn't mean our platform is closed off by any means. We use the languages of the open web, and any developer can easily learn our platform to create high-quality work without the burden of relying on unstable and fragmented WordPress plugins and updates.

2. More Than Just Tech

We've never been one to stick to boxes at RebelMouse. We started out on the cutting edge of social in 2012, and stayed close to the heart of digital publishing ever since. That's why our clients don't get a stagnant software platform like WordPress. Instead, they get a full-service creative agency full of content optimization specialists, social media gurus, and monetization experts. We blur the line between product and strategy to drive success.

Our content migration process from WordPress to RebelMouse is simple. And once it's completed, we don't waste any time optimizing your site for page speed. From there, we restructure your content strategy so you can see results at scale. Here are some of the strategy services we offer:

Monetization: We believe saving costs is the new revenue stream. Our lean tech model creates new opportunities for monetization, and our strategy team uses data-driven methods to make sure your site is getting maximum return.

Social: In 2018, engagement is the key metric to watch to drive sustainable growth. Using our social tools, we can help you create deep connections that spark conversation in the social ecosystem.

Audience Loyalty: It's easy to have viral moments both on site and via social, but those instances can be fleeting. Organic loyalty is what's required to ensure steady growth. We help you take advantage of the social ecosystem's universe of creators and influencers to help you grow a loyal community.

Search: The RebelMouse CMS has the tools to help you optimize each post for SEO. LIke everything else in the current digital climate, the strategy around search is always changing. We'll make sure your current efforts are up to snuff.

3. User-Focused Site Experience

Media sites have become really complicated over time. The industry let intrusive ads take over the internet, and now we're all left cleaning up the mess and re-prioritizing user experiences to get users back and make them stick. When we launched Axios on our new Social UX for Media layout in 2017, it mimicked the social feeds to drive more pageviews, engagement, and user satisfaction. It's a design structure that sees success on our other properties, too, including Dance Magazine and EcoWatch.

Our platform also has a powerful layout tool called Particle Assembler which creates beautiful designs. Instead of leaning heavily on an expensive developer team, Particle Assembler lets content creators design gorgeous layouts within a few clicks. Whatever works best for your brand, we'll guide you through the right design and site navigation that will bring next-level growth to your business.

4. Better Social Distribution Tools

A lot of publishers were slower to understand the importance of distributed publishing when digital started to gain steam. Luckily, it's something we've been working to perfect since we launched our CMS in 2012. Producing quality content is only half the battle - after all, there's no point in publishing engaging content if nobody is around to read it. This is why dynamic distribution is so important in order to succeed in today's digital world. And the good news is that tackling this doesn't have to be a solo effort.

At RebelMouse, we believe we live in a universe of creators. Not only will your fellow creators take interest in the topics you publish about, but they'll also share your content and validate your message.

That's why we created Discovery, an important part of our enterprise-level toolset that's available from right within our Entry Editor where you create articles. Using proprietary technology, Discovery enables you to identify key pages and profiles that could be interested in sharing your content. And through varying levels of social outreach, you can repurpose and share content from your Discovery findings in a way that validates the original message of those influencers. From there, you amplify the content through your own social channels.

This sharing cycle has led to the success of some of our biggest clients. The Dodo - one of the most successful new media companies to date - used Discovery to become the center of all things animals on the internet. It can do this for you, too.

5. Modern Authoring Tools

Chances are the CMS platform you're using was created before social. If that's true, you may still view content on your website and in social feeds as two different entities you have to control and manage. We're here to blur those lines for you and take publishing where it needs to be in 2018.

Our Entry Editor isn't simply a way to publish articles. It's a full-blown toolset for content creators. Before each piece of content is pushed live, it can be optimized for design, social, and SEO. We've also created a new content workflow that ensures every content team is on the most efficient path to publish.

Your writers, editors, creators, and community deserve tools that make them fast and efficient. It's also important that they follow a process that enforces best practices, so that the CMS itself is training your team with every post as they onboard.

6. Easy-to-Understand Analytics

It's important for you to manage your writers, see their performance, enable them to learn from each other, and help them become data driven. RebelMouse analytics provide you with a clear view of who is performing, what posts are working, and where that content is gaining traction.

Our CMS operates on a data-driven product cycle. Everything we release at RebelMouse is subjected to a small percentage of traffic and A/B tested for performance impact. Our testing includes how each version affects pagespeed and user experience. We then take these results and check to see how they correlate with bounce rate, time on site, pages per session, and conversion to goals - such as shares, subscriptions, and purchases. We also take big data and distill it into easy-to-consume insights that you can quickly act upon. You can view how each post is performing on search and social, right from within the Entry Editor.

In addition, we have a deep Google Analytics integration, so you can easily add in components, promos, third-party units, and ad units. But most importantly, as these pieces are being added, they're set up in staged environments automatically, and the traffic performance from these tests can be traced back to impact on bounce rate, pages per session, session duration, number of shares, percent of shares per visit, and unique custom goals for your business.

Let's Start Working Together

We migrate sites from WordPress all the time, and it's a fast process. Even if replatforming isn't an option for you at the moment, we can still offer you our creative agency services to make sure you're reaching your biggest audience possible. Let's create something together. Request a proposal to get in contact with a Rebel.

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6 Reasons to Upgrade to RebelMouse from WordPress

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The huge gap between current CMS offerings and what the world needed occurred to me during my time as CTO of The Huffington Post. When we were acquired by AOL in 2011, I inherited 53 properties built on dozens of different content management systems. It wasn't long after that I soon realized they we...

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Making a big comeback in Florida

Green sea turtles
( Chelonia mydas) are listed as endangered by the IUCN.

Endangered green sea turtles are making a huge comeback along the central Florida coast.

10/7/2015

Researchers this week have counted 12,026 nests in the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge along the Broward County coastline. That number exceeds the 2013 record of 11,839 nests, and will likely grow, since there are two more weeks of nesting this year.

"Back in the 1980s the beaches UCF monitored hosted less than 50 green turtle nests a year," said Kate Mansfield, a UCF assistant professor of biology. "It is a really remarkable recovery and reflects a 'perfect storm' of conservation successes-from the establishment of the Archie Carr, to implementing the Endangered Species Act, among many other conservation initiatives. It will be very exciting to see what happens over the next 20 plus years."

Mansfield leads the Marine Turtle Research Group at the University of Central Florida. The team of students and research scientists monitor turtle counts on the beach during turtle nesting season, May to October. They have been monitoring all turtle nests on the 13-mile stretch of beach - the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge - for more than 30 years.

There are two other kinds of endangered turtles that use the Carr Refuge for nesting. Leatherbacks and loggerheads also come to Florida's beaches, which support about 80 percent of all sea turtle nesting in the United States. Designated as a national wildlife refuge in 1991, Archie Carr has one of the largest nesting beaches for loggerhead turtles in the Western Hemisphere.

More news >>

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This story was based on information obtained from the University of Florida. Source >>

About Chelonia mydas: For the most part adult green sea turtles eat marine plant life. Young turtles have a more carnivorous diet. Green turtles grow to a length of about five feet (1.5 m). Adults usually weigh in the range of 150-419 pounds (68-190 kg). Big individuals can weigh more. The largest known C. mydas: tipped in at 871 pounds (395 kg). Its carapace alone was a full five feet long. You can tell a green turtle from the closely related Hawksbill Turtle ( Eretmochelys imbricata) because the green turtle's snout is very short and its beak is unhooked. (Moreover, you're a lot more likely to see a green turtle, because E. imbricata is critically endangered.)

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Green Sea Turtles: Making a big comeback in Florida

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Green sea turtles( Chelonia mydas) are listed as endangered by the IUCN. 10/7/2015 Researchers this week have counted 12,026 nests in the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge along the Broward County coastline. That number exceeds the 2013 record of 11,839 nests, and will likely grow, since there are two more weeks of nesting this year.

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When Paleolithic painters decorated the walls of the caves at Chauvet, in France, they chose stunning motifs of horses and other animals. For them, as for most of us, plants were just there in the background, vegetating away. Sure, a daisy can be cute, a redwood impressive. But compared to a cheetah or an elephant, most plants are, well, boring.

With his new book, Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years Of Plant Life and the Human Imagination, British author Richard Mabey pushes back against this prejudice to make us see that plants are as thrilling as animals and have been key to our relationship with the world.

Speaking from his home in Norfolk, England, he recalls growing up near Harry Potter's Whomping Willow; why trees were so often the inspiration for myths and magic; and how a woman in Italy has demonstrated that some plants can remember-and learn from-their experiences.
Nature's superstars are animals like chimps or cheetahs. You think plants are just as amazing. Convince us.
What can plants do that cheetahs can't? They can regenerate when 90 percent of their bodies have been eaten away. They can have sex at long distances and communicate with approximately 20 more senses than an animal has. Those are very pragmatic arguments. But I think they're valuable just because they're there. We tend to judge plants not as autonomous organisms but in terms of what they can do for us. But they're astonishing in their own right and deserve to be given the same ethical status as animals.
The seventies classic The Secret Lives of Plants Tell us about Monica Gagliano's experiments with mimosa pudica, aka the "sensitive plant." We all know about the World Wide Web. But you describe something called the "wood wide web." Tell us about it. claimed carrots screamed when picked. The "new botany" is making similar claims about plant intelligence. Are those claims just as whacky? I gather you grew up near Harry Potter's Whomping Willow. Tell us a bit about your childhood and how you got into plants. Trees have often featured in mythology and magic, haven't they?
No! [Laughs] I think that seventies generation believed plants were not only intelligent but conscious, which is a dramatically different thing. What the new botany is suggesting is that plants are sensitive and problem-solving but bypass the need for self-consciousness and brain activity that we assume is necessary for intelligence. People who think this are often accused of being anthropocentric, believing that plants are behaving like humans. The philosopher Daniel Dennett marvelously riposted that critics of this theory are "cerebrocentric," believing intelligent behavior is not possible without the infinitely superior human brain. What the new work shows is that plants, by means we do not yet fully understand, are capable of behaving like intelligent beings. They are capable of storing-and learning from-memories of what happens to them.

Monica Gagliano is a very gifted and off-the-wall plant physiologist, or "plant neurobiologist," as she likes to call herself. She did this famous experiment where she potted up a number of mimosa plants, long known as the "sensitive plant." As far back as the 18th century, it was known to react to any kind of touch or threat by curling up its leaves, in sequence, up the stems.

What Gagliano did was simulate the touch action by dropping these potted mimosas a fixed distance to the ground, so they received a mild physical shock. To start with, all of them closed their leaves in the proscribed fashion. On the second and third drop, rather less did. And by the end of a large number of drops, none of them were closing up.
Plants employ amazingly ingenious methods to propagate. Tell us about some of your favorites.
Conventional botanists who saw the experiment said, "They're just tired!" [Laughs] But she repeated the experiment with the same plants a week, and then a month, later. They all responded in the same way: They didn't react to being dropped by folding up their leaves. But when they were simulated in the conventional way, like being grasped by a hand, they all immediately closed up.
How is climate change altering the plant landscape? Are you pessimistic?
By comparison, bees can only retain memories of places to find honey for three days. But the mimosa plants appeared to be able to "remember" the difference between an apparent and a real threat, and retained this discrimination in their memory.

It's long been known that the trees in a forest are connected by mycorrhizal fungi. This means fungi that live symbiotically with the roots of forest trees. The forest trees can't grow without them because they haven't got enough access to the minerals in the soil, and the fungi can't grow without the trees because they have no chlorophyll and therefore can't manufacture sugars. It's a beautiful symbiosis in which all trees are involved.

What has now begun to be discovered is that the mycorrhizal fungi don't surround just one tree. By using radioactive trace elements, the researchers were able to show that nutrients were being passed by the fungi between different species of trees over a large area. The trees that were not so good in the winter, like aspens, were being given food manufactured by the conifers, which do much better in winter, and vice versa. So the fungus is actually helping to distribute food amongst forest trees so that they all benefit at the right time.
This interview was edited for length and clarity. Simon Worrall curates Book Talk. Follow him on Twitter or at simonworrallauthor.com.
Messages about predators are also being sent. If a tree is attacked by insects, pheromonic chemicals are distributed through the mycorrhizal fibers beneath the soil, as well as being blown through the air by the trees, to warn other trees that an insect attack is imminent and to prepare themselves by producing more tannin in their leaves. [Laughs] It's quite a chatty system.

I got into plants at the age of six as an unconsidered hunter-gatherer. [Laughs] I was one of those lucky children growing up at a time when we were allowed to run wild in the countryside. At the edge of our back garden was the abandoned landscape park of the author Graham Greene's uncle: about 100 acres of collapsing arboretums, tennis courts, and extraordinary tangles of undergrowth. During the holidays our neighborhood gang spent our days out there. We built camps and learned the qualities of different woods for supporting structures, providing water-proofing or making fires. We also learned the old country custom of eating hawthorn leaves, which only later in my life I learned were called "bread and cheese. "

In my teenage years, I explored the big estates around Ashridge, where there were these enormous, ancient beeches. One of them I called the Queen Beech: a 400-year-old, low-slung pollard with four enormous branches that touched the ground, like a weird, marine gastropod. I wrote about it in a book called Beechcombings. Later, the tree was reanimated as the Whomping Willow in the Harry Potter films. They took the basic template of the low-slung lower branches and CGI'd them into these whirling tentacles that the Whomping Willow uses to defend itself.

There are lots of features of trees that did, and still do, impress themselves on the human imagination. They often appear like mannequins; they have bodies and limbs. We use the words interchangeably. We talk about the trunk of both a tree and a human; we talk about roots and limbs. The amazing lengths of trees' lives also impressed humans. Many species of trees can live from between 500 to 1,000 years and even up to 5,000 years. Our ancestors passed down the life stories of individual trees through their folk memories.

A tree's powers of regeneration is also impressive. If you cut a tree down, you would think it suffers the same death as a human being whose body is cut in half. But it doesn't. Various deciduous trees and conifers survive quite well if cut right down to the ground. Indeed, the only way to kill most trees is to dig them out.

Witnessing the amazing ways in which trees can renew themselves would have been wonderfully mysterious to people and given them the impression that trees have powers of life beyond the normal. Yet, despite this, Neolithic people didn't worship trees or have images of them. It was animals that fascinated them.

I think the orchids are the only plant family on Earth to use sex pheromones to attract insects rather than the enticing smell of nectar. The insects are drawn inside because they experience a chemical message from the orchid similar to the one they get from a female of the same species. Having entered the orchid, attracted by this scent, they are then manipulated by the orchids in intriguing ways: They are taken through mazes, in which they pick up pollen, or flip trap doors that shut them inside the orchid. When the bees fly out, they are super-charged sexually and so attract more females.

I probably should be pessimistic but I'm temperamentally an optimist. Obviously when climate change is dramatic, like in parts of North Africa, where you're getting the advance of desert at an amazing rate and spectacular droughts, it's going to have a profound impact on plant life. In more temperate areas, like Britain, if we assume that the current run of very mild, wet winters is part of climate change, what it's doing is promoting the spread of plants capable of surviving wet conditions, and also promoting much later flowering. Plants that normally flowered in the spring or summer are now either continuing to flower into winter, or having a second flowering, something very common in the Mediterranean region.

One of the discoveries being made is that Lamarck's theory, which was discredited for a century, is now being shown to be true. Acquired characteristics can be inherited. The new science of epigenetics is finding that a number of changes produced in organisms during their own lifetime are passed on to their offspring. So far, it's a limited number. But stresses due to climate, virus invasion or changes in soil can actually change the genome of the organism.

The automatic assumption that plants are victims, incapable of learning how to cope with new conditions, is an insult and runs contrary to the new evidence.

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There Is Such a Thing as Plant Intelligence

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When Paleolithic painters decorated the walls of the caves at Chauvet, in France, they chose stunning motifs of horses and other animals. For them, as for most of us, plants were just there in the background, vegetating away. Sure, a daisy can be cute, a redwood impressive.

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The world's tiniest penguin may be in big trouble.

Warming ocean waters could make finding food increasingly difficult for the little penguin, Eudyptula minor, which stands less than a foot (0.3 meter) tall.

Because their prey is sensitive to heat, "we're seeing that warm years are quite bad for the penguins, and it's not hard to see that if the temperature keeps going up, things might get worse," says Gemma Carroll, a graduate student at Macquarie University in Sydney.

Though perhaps not as beloved as koalas or kangaroos, little penguins are some of Australia 's most charismatic creatures.

Many live in island colonies along the country's eastern and southern coasts, where tourists delight in nightly penguin parades as the birds waddle up on shore.

But in general the creatures are homebodies, venturing out from their colonies mainly to hunt fish. (See also"Penguin Numbers Plummeting-Whales Partly to Blame?")

Concerned about declines in populations of little penguins-also called fairy penguins-over the past few decades, Carroll has been visiting and tracking a group of birds on Montague Island for three years. She presented her results this week at the American Geophysical Union's Ocean Sciences meeting in New Orleans.

Life for little penguins is made possible by the East Australian Current, a great rush of water from the tropics that stirs up the seafloor in the spring.

Plankton feed on a swirl of nutrients from the bottom, becoming in turn a meal for bigger critters in the local food chain. This banquet of life nourishes the sardines on which little penguins dine.

Concerned about this influx of heat, Carroll strapped GPS sensors to about 60 wild birds from 2012 to 2014. She also outfitted them with accelerometers that detected their body movements.

A computer program based on data from captive birds at the Sydney Zoo deciphered those movements, flagging each time a wild penguin caught a fish. (See " Our Favorite Penguin Pictures: Fuzzy Chicks, Expert Divers, More.")

Penguins prowling for fish, the data showed, tended to shy away from warmer waters. "Penguins always seem to make a beeline for waters that are cooler" and likely to have more fish.

In warmer years, moreover, the penguins caught fewer fish in November and December, during the Australian summer.

Carroll said she suspects that warmer waters also may change when sardines arrive or spend their time, making hunting more challenging.

"The fish have a very narrow preference for temperature," she says.

She cautioned that more work remains to be done, and that climate change is not the only threat facing the penguins.

Others include human activities, as well as booming predator populations such as native seals and animals introduced by people, including cats, dogs, and foxes.

Dee Boersma, a conservation biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, has recorded declines in Magellanic penguins in Argentina, partly due to them having to travel farther to find food.

"I wouldn't say which factor [threatening penguins] is the most important," says Boersma, who wasn't involved in the new research.

"But climate change is going to be a big problem for penguins."

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The World's Smallest Penguin May Be In Danger

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The world's tiniest penguin may be in big trouble. Warming ocean waters could make finding food increasingly difficult for the little penguin, Eudyptula minor , which stands less than a foot (0.3 meter) tall.

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Approximately 10,000 to 12,000 blacktip sharks are currently swimming off the Florida coast, but while these numbers may seem menacing, shark researchers say it's not unusual to see these animals - visible as tiny dark spots in aerial photos and video - in the area at this time of year.

These annual visitors are there to feed on fish and bask in warm coastal waters, according to Stephen Kajiura, a professor of biological sciences at Florida Atlantic University who conducts a survey of the migrating sharks every winter. And don't panic - these sharks typically have little interest in people, Kajiura told Live Science.

Visitors to those beaches could even catch a glimpse of the blacktips breaching, leaping out of the water "like dolphins," Kajiura said. [ On the Brink: A Gallery of Wild Sharks]

Kajiura began surveying the blacktip sharks in 2011, counting them after they migrate to south Florida during the winter. He said these numbers are typical during the peak of the blacktips' winter sojurn in the area, which begins in mid-January and lasts until the end of March.

Thousands of sharks spotted in south Florida waters are part of a colony of seasonal visitors that migrate and spend the winter in this region.

Credit: Mark Mohlmann

The sharks, which grow to about 6.5 feet (2 meters) in length, spend their summer months near Georgia and the Carolinas, where they mate and birth their pups, Kajiura said.

During their Florida stay, these colonies of blacktip sharks, so-named for the distinctive black markings on the tips of their dorsal fins and tails, gather in coastal waters stretching from Miami to Jupiter Inlet, covering a distance of about 80 miles (129 kilometers).

And the 10,000 to 12,000 estimate represents only the sharks that are visible in the narrow band of water about 660 feet (200 meters) from the shore, Kajiura said, and is "a gross underestimate" of how many sharks there are in total.

To conduct the surveys, Kajiura mounts a high-definition video camera and a digital still camera to point out the window of a small plane as it flies adjacent to the beach. He later downloads the stills and footage to count all the visible sharks in the water.

"We see lots more sharks on the other side of the plane, so there's a lot more out there that we're simply not counting in the survey," Kajiura told Live Science. "We simply don't know how big this school is, how far it extends off into deeper water," he said.

10,000 sharks may be "the tip of the iceberg" for a much larger colony, according to Stephen Kajiura, who conducts the annual shark survey.

Credit: Mark Mohlmann

But people have little to fear from these seasonal visitors, Kajiura added. They feed on small, shiny fish, so swimmers should avoid wearing reflective watches or jewelry that might be mistaken for the sharks' prey. And when the water is murky or when it's dark out, a shark may be more likely to confuse light signals from human movement with prey activity.

Otherwise, "they're not curious types," Kajiura said, and as long as people exercise common sense and don't harass the sharks, the blacktips will likely just avoid them completely.

And lucky beachgoers might even catch a glimpse of the colony without ever entering the water.

"You can literally sit on the beach and you can watch the blacktips jumping and spinning and splashing back into the water," Kajiura said. "They're not out to get you, you're not part of their diet, so you may as well go to the beach and enjoy the phenomenon."

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Why 10,000-Plus Sharks Are Hanging Out in Florida Waters

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Approximately 10,000 to 12,000 blacktip sharks are currently swimming off the Florida coast, but while these numbers may seem menacing, shark researchers say it's not unusual to see these animals - visible as tiny dark spots in aerial photos and video - in the area at this time of year.

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Wildlife Services-ever heard of it? No, not the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That's something different. The Fish and Wildlife Service is part of the Department of the Interior, charged with enforcing wildlife laws, restoring habitat, and protecting fish, plants, and animals. Wildlife Services isn't your state fish and game commission, either, which issues hunting and fishing licenses and manages local wildlife.

Wildlife Services is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and it specializes in killing wild animals that threaten livestock-especially predators such as coyotes, wolves, and cougars. Outside the ranching community, few have heard of Wildlife Services.

Since 2000, the agency has killed at least two million mammals and 15 million birds. Although it's main focus is predator control in the West, Wildlife Services also does things like bird control nationwide at airports to prevent crashes and feral pig control in the South.

Reporter Christopher Ketcham's investigation, out this month in Harper's Magazine, doesn't mince words. The article is called " The Rogue Agency: A USDA program that tortures dogs and kills endangered species." Ketcham exposes Wildlife Service's use of poisoned bait, neck snares, leghold traps (which are banned in 80 countries), aerial gunning, and cyanide traps to go after animals that have attacked, or allegedly attacked, livestock grazing on public lands. Ketcham's sources-former Wildlife Services trappers-told him they've witnessed or participated in these practices themselves and that they go on to this day.

Ranchers who graze their cattle and sheep on public lands say the service is vital, that they couldn't sustain their operations without "taking care of the predation," as rancher John Peavey in Idaho told Ketcham. If livestock get killed, ranchers are entitled to full compensation for the dead animal, Ketcham says, plus they can call in Wildlife Services to take out the predator.

But in most cases, the article notes, killing predators is not a scientifically sound wildlife control method. Killing an adult male mountain lion, for example, tends to lead to more attacks on livestock because that established male kept out the more aggressive teenagers. Studies have shown that this is true for wolves and black bears too. And as for coyotes-an ecologist found that where coyotes are culled, more pups in a given litter are likely to survive. That's why even though Wildlife Services has killed nearly a million coyotes in the past decade, their numbers always bounce back.

Ketcham's reporting tells of indiscriminate killing and inhumane methods-from family pets getting stuck in traps to the use of poison that causes a slow and painful death. Ketcham's report also raises questions about how America's public land is being managed, land that exists as much for the coyotes as for the ranchers, as much for the hikers and their dogs as for the fishermen and deer hunters.

It's an issue that Ketcham, who's currently a fellow at MIT's Knight Science Journalism Program, has spent years investigating, and one he's passionate about. He spoke to Wildlife Watch earlier this week.
The headline is pretty strong: "The Rogue Agency." Can you explain?
Congressman Peter DeFazio would tell you that it's unaccountable and secretive. He has tried to get information about its finances and its operations, and he couldn't get it.

Wildlife Services seems to be freely violating their directives, especially when it comes to the EPA's rules on the use of pesticides. [A whistleblower Ketcham interviewed filed a complaint about how some supervisors would help employees cheat on their tests to get certified to use poison in the field.] They appear not to be operating with any kind of science-based system to justify their lethal control against wildlife. And when their own trappers are found to be committing what appear to be cruel and inhumane acts against wildlife, nothing happens to those trappers.
How did it get to be like this?
Since its founding in 1885, Wildlife Services has served one purpose-to clean up the American West for the ranching industry, so they wouldn't have to deal with predators or other animals they deemed pests. There's an old ethos in the ranching community-control and domination of the landscape. It's an almost biblical mandate to dominate the natural world.
Why has hardly anyone heard of this agency?
These are not people who are forthcoming about information. I spent a year working on this story, and contacted Wildlife Services multiple times to ask to go out in the field with a trapper to observe their lethal control operations. They never granted me that request, claiming it would endanger me. Then I sent them a list of 35 questions, almost none of which were directly answered. If they're not going to a respond to an informational request from a senior congressman in the House, do you think they're going to answer a reporter?
You interviewed a former Wildlife Services trapper, Carter Niemeyer, who said ranchers refuse to accept the true cost of their business model. What does he mean by that?
Ranchers who run their livestock on public land impose a huge cost on the public in terms of direct subsidies provided by the federal government, and also via indirect subsidies like the government's predator control programs. Take the case of Idaho sheep rancher John Peavey. He tells me that to feed his cattle with a haying outfit on private land would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. When he lets his sheep out to graze on public grass, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars he keeps in his pocket. How he turns a profit, then, is by feeding off the taxpayer-a common loathsome practice of business known as corporate socialism. He also imposes a cost on the public's wildlife: He has them killed to ensure the safety of his animals. Accepting the real cost of running livestock in the backcountry of the public domain would mean accepting that when you put defenseless domesticated animals out into the wild, they are occasionally going to get eaten. And you have to also accept that wolves have every right to eat them. It's their land too.
What do you want people to take away from this?
The public needs to be outraged, needs to take action. That means creating a countervailing public interest to the dominant special interest of the livestock industry. If there's any sort of trouble on public lands that affects ranchers in any minor way, that stockman calls his congressman, calls his county commissioner, calls his councilman. He gets in their office, gets in their face, and starts yelling. We need a countervailing representative like that for the public interest, for the wild.

Read the Harper's Magazine story and online companion piece.
This story was produced by National Geographic's Special Investigations Unit, which focuses on wildlife crime and is made possible by grants from the BAND Foundation and the Woodtiger Fund. Read more stories from the SIU on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ngwildlife@natgeo.com.

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This Government Program's Job Is to Kill Wildlife

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Wildlife Services-ever heard of it? No, not the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That's something different. The Fish and Wildlife Service is part of the Department of the Interior, charged with enforcing wildlife laws, restoring habitat, and protecting fish, plants, and animals.

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Well after its discovery a decade ago, the sleek swimmer called the Omura's whale remained an enigma. Reports of live animals were vague and unconvincing, leaving the whale's habits and even its markings a mystery.

Now, scientists are starting to piece together the secret life of the little-seen species.

Recent expeditions off Madagascar revealed the whales devouring tiny shrimp-like creatures, as well as guzzling large mouthfuls of "dirty water"-a phenomenon scientists can't yet explain.

"People see our photos and videos and say, 'What are they feeding on? I don't see anything there,'" says Salvatore Cerchio, a marine mammal biologist at the New England Aquarium and leader of the first team to document the whales' lives.

The whales' seemingly invisible food supply only adds to the mystique of the Omura's whale, whose habitat, lifestyle, and social lives make them standouts in the whale world.

Even so, the Omura's has avoided the limelight. It wasn't until 2003 that Japanese researchers identified it as a species in its own right rather than a petite version of the similar-looking Bryde's whale. Genetic data confirmed the whale as its own species in 2006.

It's no surprise-at least to scientists-that a 35-foot (about 10-meter) long animal could elude detection, says Francine Kershaw, a marine mammal science fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Sea surveys are costly, says Kershaw, who wasn't involved in the new study. And the Omura's keeps a relatively low profile compared to showboatslike humpbacks, which make eye-catching leaps out of the water.

Even after it was unmasked in the scientific literature, the Omura's was still known only from dead specimens, some hauled onto whaling ships, others stranded on coastlines.

Then came the Omura's big moment.

Scouting for dolphins near Madagascar a few years ago, Cerchio spotted some medium-size whales. After the DNA analysis came back, on December 24, 2014, Cerchio learned he'd stumbled onto Omura's whales-"a very nice Christmas gift," says Cerchio, a National Geographic explorer.

With their striking dark-light patterns and super-streamlined profile, Omura's whales are a combination of "grace and beauty," says Cerchio, whose work was supported by the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission. "They are stunning animals." ( See National Geographic's amazing whale pictures.)

Cerchio's team made 44 sightings of the whales off Madagascar during 2013 and 2014 and more than 80 sightings in 2015.

The team's first round of data, published in October 2015 in the journal Royal Society Open Science, suggest that these Omura's at least are homebodies. The sightings also suggest the Omura's sticks to tropical and subtropical waters.

For a whale, that's doubly unusual. Most whales migrate, often over long distances, and most spend at least some of the year in cooler waters closer to the poles, where food abounds.(See " Life in Antarctica Relies on Shrinking Supply of Krill.")

The tropics, on the other hand, provide slim pickings for baleen whales like Omura's, which filter small organisms through their mouths.

"We call it the very thin soup," says marine-mammal biologist Matt Leslie of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who wasn't part of the new study. So "one of the big questions is how they make their living."

Cerchio's team, which observed the whales swallowing murky water as recently as late 2015, suspects the whales are filtering out food such as fish eggs or tiny plankton that are almost invisible to the human eye.

The new observations also showed the Omura's social habits are distinctive. It doesn't form tight-knit pods like many other whale species, but it isn't solitary either.

Instead the Omura's was seen hanging out in loose groups of up to a half-dozen animals. Animals stay within hearing range of each other, but give each other plenty of personal space.

The whales sing a low, repetitive melody that they may repeat for an hour or more. Occasionally multiple whales raise their voices in an Omura's chorus. Perhaps males are gathering around a female and fighting it out via song, says Cerchio. Or perhaps they're wooing her with ballads.

Next, the team hopes to identify the mystery food in the whales' gulps of seawater and to understand how oil and gas exploration planned for their habitat will affect them.

"As a species, we think ... we know so much," says the Scripps Institution's Leslie.

"But we don't. We're still scraping the edge of the iceberg in terms of what we know about oceans."

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This Bus-Size Whale Is Even More Unusual Than We Thought

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Well after its discovery a decade ago, the sleek swimmer called the Omura's whale remained an enigma. Reports of live animals were vague and unconvincing, leaving the whale's habits and even its markings a mystery. Now, scientists are starting to piece together the secret life of the little-seen species.

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An estimated 150,000 Adelie penguins living in Antarctica have died after an iceberg the size of Rome became grounded near their colony, forcing them to trek 60km to the sea for food.

The penguins of Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay used to live close to a large body of open water. However, in 2010 a colossal iceberg measuring 2,900 square kilometres became trapped in the bay, rendering the colony effectively landlocked.

Penguins seeking food must now waddle 60km to the coast to fish. Over the years, the arduous journey has had a devastating effect on the size of the colony.

Since 2011 the colony of 160,000 penguins has shrunk to just 10,000, according to research carried out by the Climate Change Research Centre at Australia's University of New South Wales. Scientists predict the colony will be gone in 20 years unless the sea ice breaks up or the giant iceberg, dubbed B09B, is dislodged.

Penguins have been recorded in the area for more than 100 years. But the outlook for the penguins remaining at Cape Denison is dire.

"The arrival of iceberg B09B in Commonwealth Bay, East Antarctica, and subsequent fast ice expansion has dramatically increased the distance Adélie penguins breeding at Cape Denison must travel in search of food," said the researchers in an article in Antarctic Science.

"The Cape Denison population could be extirpated within 20 years unless B09B relocates or the now perennial fast ice within the bay breaks out"

"This has provided a natural experiment to investigate the impact of iceberg stranding events and sea ice expansion along the East Antarctic coast."

In contrast, a colony located just 8km from the coast of Commonwealth Bay is thriving, the researchers said.

The iceberg had apparently been floating close to the coast for 20 years before crashing into a glacier and becoming stuck.
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150,000 penguins die after giant iceberg renders colony landlocked

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An estimated 150,000 Adelie penguins living in Antarctica have died after an iceberg the size of Rome became grounded near their colony, forcing them to trek 60km to the sea for food. The penguins of Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay used to live close to a large body of open water.

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A male leopard which entered a school in the Indian city of Bangalore injured six people trying to capture it.

A scientist and a forestry employee were among those mauled during the near 10-hour long effort to corner the dangerous animal on Sunday.

The leopard, which strolled into the Vibgyor International school, was eventually tranquillised and released.

A recent wildlife census estimated that India has a leopard population of between 12,000 and 14,000.

The eight-year-old male was spotted strolling inside the school premises in the Kundalahalli area.

Footage on the school's security cameras showed it attacking a man near a swimming pool.

Conservation scientist Sanjay Gubbi and forest department employee Benny Maurius were injured when they tried to corner the animal and tranquillise him, reports say.

"It was a long struggle to capture the leopard. Although it was injected with tranquillisers it could be captured only around 20.15 local time when the medication took full effect," senior police official S Boralingaiah told reporters.

Wildlife official Ravi Ralph told the BBC Hindi's Imran Qureshi that the leopard possibly strayed into the school from a patch of forest not far from the school.

The captured animal has been moved to a national park and the six injured people, including a cameraperson of a TV channel, have been treated for minor injuries.

Leopards and other big cats have been known to stray into populated areas, and conservationists have warned that such confrontations may increase as humans encroach on animal habitats.

Last year a male leopard spent five hours with its head stuck in a metal pot in a village in the northern state of Rajasthan.

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A male leopard which entered a school in the Indian city of Bangalore injured six people trying to capture it. A scientist and a forestry employee were among those mauled during the near 10-hour long effort to corner the dangerous animal on Sunday. The leopard, which strolled into the Vibgyor International school, was eventually tranquillised and released.

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A strange fossil wildebeest had hollowed-out headgear that let it trumpet like a dinosaur.

The Ice Age beast, named Rusingoryx atopocranion, lived on Kenya's Rusinga Island between 75,000 and 50,000 years ago, back when the area was carpeted in dry grasslands. The species was previously only known from partial skulls, but now a bonebed has revealed that they were more bizarre than anyone expected.

New Rusinga excavations turned up six Rusingoryx skulls, ranging from juvenile to adult, that were more complete than any found before. "The first time I saw them my jaw completely dropped," says paleontologist Haley O'Brien of Ohio University, lead author of the study. The research was supported by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration.

Incomplete fossils had led paleontologists to suspect Rusingoryx had some kind of tapir-like proboscis, but the new skulls showed that the mammal instead had a high nasal dome in front of its eyes. And it was hollow, encasing a circuitous nasal passage.

"There aren't any living animals with a nasal apparatus like this," O'Brien says, but there are some fossil ones. Outside and in, the nose of Rusingoryx resembles the hollow crests of the "duckbilled" dinosaurs Corythosaurus and Lambeosaurus, which lived about 75 million years earlier. "Both groups essentially push the nasal part of their airway into the crest, and they're using similar suites of bones to form the crest itself."

Other paleontologists are just as surprised. Royal Ontario Museum paleontologist David Evans, an expert on hadrosaurs, says he was "blown away" by the Rusingoryx skulls and that "the resemblance between Rusingoryx and some hollow-crested dinosaurs in the form of the nasal structures is truly striking."

The big question that always faces paleontologists when they uncover a bizarre structure is whether or not that odd appendage had a function, and what that function was. In the case of Rusingoryx, O'Brien says, "we used a process of elimination."

One of the early ideas, O'Brien says, is that the expanded nose of Rusingoryx was better at cooling or warming incoming air. All mammals have some ability to do this, even humans, thanks to scroll-like bones called turbinates that increase the surface area inside the nose. Given that Rusingoryx lived in "a hotter, drier savanna than what we have today," O'Brien says, it seemed possible that the mammal's nose was an enhanced air conditioner, but the dome's internal anatomy didn't hold up this conclusion.

Combat was another possibility, especially since hoofed herbivores, from bison to bighorn sheep, have regular head-to-head clashes. But these mammals have extra thick skulls and horns, O'Brien says, and Rusingoryx didn't. "The skull bones of Rusingoryx are incredibly thin," O'Brien says, "so using that dome for head-butting would have been a really, really dangerous idea."

"That left us with sound, which sounded kind of crazy until we looked at vocal behavior of other artiodactyls," O'Brien says. Many social, hoofed herbivores are chatty and have ways to modulate their vocal tracts to make a range of wails and grunts. This seemed to be the best fit for Rusingoryx, and the anatomy and acoustic models fit the hypothesis. "Between the anatomy, the pencil-and-paper physics, and the vocal behavior of living artiodactyls, sound production made a lot of sense," he says.

So what did Rusingoryx sound like? From the nasal loop, O'Brien says, "We calculated a frequency of between 250 and 750 hertz, which is not only pretty low, it also overlaps with the sonic frequencies of a vuvuzela." That means a herd of Rusingoryx might have sounded like a stadium full of fans at the South Africa World Cup. With added soft tissues, Rusingoryx may have been capable of even deeper vocalizations that would have been inaudible to us. " Rusingoryx could very likely make a low trumpeting sound but there's a good chance it could also vocalize in stealth mode."

While Evans points out that such a dome was likely important for visual display and recognition, too, he agrees that "the case of vocalization as the primary function of the nasal dome in Rusingoryx is by far the most convincing." And this shows that the evolution of bizarre skulls aren't just driven by combat or showing off.

While we'll never know exactly what Rusingoryx sounded like without the soft tissues of the throat, O'Brien says, it's clear that these were vocal beasts that thrived and perished very close to us in time. Imagining what a herd of these nosy mammals would have sounded like, O'Brien calls it a "Pleistocene cacophony."

Correction: Haley O'Brien's name was spelled incorrectly as "O'Brian" in an earlier version of this story.

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A strange fossil wildebeest had hollowed-out headgear that let it trumpet like a dinosaur. The Ice Age beast, named Rusingoryx atopocranion, lived on Kenya's Rusinga Island between 75,000 and 50,000 years ago, back when the area was carpeted in dry grasslands.

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One of the largest rescues of companion animals in the history of the ASPCA is being carried out in North Carolina, where 600 or more dogs, cats, horses and other animals have been seized from a no-kill shelter.

About 300 dogs and puppies were already in a new temporary shelter Friday where 10 vets and 39 volunteers and staffers with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals were caring for them. The rest were on their way. Some had untreated injuries and illnesses, and investigators found dozens of carcasses on the 122-acre site, said Tim Rickey, ASPCA vice president of field investigations and response department.

Once the animals were moved and placed in clean kennels with shavings and raised beds, many of the animals seemed much happier, ASPCA shelter director Ehren Melius said.

"They were ecstatic," he said. "Our goal is to make each day better for them than the day before."

The animals had been held at The Haven-Friends for Life, a private shelter in Raeford that last had a license from the state in June 2015, managed by Stephen Joseph and Linden Spear, who appeared in court Thursday on animal cruelty charges. Their attorney didn't return a message.

An inspection by the state Agriculture Department in September found many deficiencies, including inadequate water and medical care.

After investigations following complaints in June and again on Monday, and the Spears' failure to correct shortcomings found during last year's inspections, the veterinarian who leads the Agriculture Department's animal welfare section denied their application to be a legal animal shelter and warned Tuesday of thousands of dollars in fines if operations continued.

Nancy Moore, who is allowing the couple to stay at her Southern Pines home, said she has supported the Haven with donations for the past 10 years and visited regularly. She described the shelter as a well-maintained operation that has adopted-out thousands of well-cared-for dogs and cats over the years.

"I think they have provided a tremendous service in terms of the community, and certainly for animals. I would say they have dedicated their lives to basically taking care of them," Moore said Friday.

Four of the rescued dogs were being treated for respiratory illnesses in a sick room, including a puppy that slept in a tiny ball at the back of her kennel. Some were taken to specialists for treatment of injuries, such as a broken leg, or illnesses, ASPCA officials said. One dog suffering from kidney failure was euthanized.

The majority were in the ASPCA's warehouses located about an hour southwest of Raleigh, grouped in pods that attempted to follow how they were grouped at the Haven. Rickey said the number of rescued animals could be as high as 650 when the operation is completed. That's the second-largest companion animal rescue in the history of the ASPCA, which saved more than 700 cats in Florida in 2012. The organization also once rescued 4,000 roosters in a cockfighting raid.

One pure white dog sat on a bed at the edge of his kennel, legs crossed in genteel manner. In another kennel, a light-colored pit bull mix was jumping excitedly. Other dogs slept, or watched visitors nervously. The ASPCA allowed a visit to the animals on the condition that their exact location not be reported, to avoid security problems for the staff and the animals, which need at least a month of care before any are ready to be adopted, spokeswoman Natasha Whitling said.

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ASPCA makes record seizure of 600 animals from NC no-kill shelter

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One of the largest rescues of companion animals in the history of the ASPCA is being carried out in North Carolina, where 600 or more dogs, cats, horses and other animals have been seized from a no-kill shelter.

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Wolverines are notoriously elusive and ill-tempered, so they aren't easy to count and study. But after one was photographed in the rugged Uinta Mountains of northeastern Utah last year, the U.S. Forest Service decided to launch a search for more.

Funding was limited, so the agency teamed up with a nonprofit to enlist volunteer citizen scientists to set and check camera traps high in the mountains. The Bozeman, Montana-based group Adventure Scientists (AS) recruited 30 volunteers for the tough task, which involved running or hiking loops of roughly 25 miles (40 kilometers) in the wilderness over six weekends.

Trained by scientists and AS staff, the volunteers set out camera traps at 34 stations, starting in May and monitoring them through September. Each time they visited, they changed memory cards and batteries and freshened the bait.

The volunteers were recruited from the trail running community and included several professional ultrarunners, who run very long distances. Most hailed from the Salt Lake City area, which is a few hours from the study sites.

The project was funded by AS and a matching grant from the National Forest Foundation. AS was founded in 2011 by Gregg Treinish, who is also a National Geographic explorer. The group's mission is engaging outdoor and adventure enthusiasts in citizen science projects that provide social and environmental benefits.

We spoke with Mike Kautz, who oversees the Utah wolverine project as a program director with AS.

Why did you need ultrarunners?

After the wolverine was spotted in the area last year, the Forest Service was interested in trying to find out how many there are. Camera trapping is a great model for this kind of science, because wolverines are really solitary and live in remote places. So the cameras needed to be set deep into wilderness areas. We thought ultrarunners would be able to cover the distances needed better than, say, day hikers.
What kind of bait did you use?
We set out three types of nonfood rewards to attract wolverines. We used a tuna can that is cracked open, but not enough so animals can get any food out of it. They can only smell it. We also used a piece of carpet that is sprayed with perfume- which has been shown to attract animals -and a hollowed out beef bone that is coated with skunk scent, since wolverines consider dead skunks a prey item.
What did the camera traps reveal?
We collected over 3,000 nights worth of footage from the cameras. We did not get any photos of wolverines or of the Canada lynx, which the Forest Service was also interested in. We think that shows how elusive these animals are. We also got useful baseline information that could be compared against future studies, to see how things change.

We also got tons of footage of other species, like mountain lions, black bears, and elk. The abundance of wildlife was fascinating.
Do you think this project could be replicated elsewhere?
Absolutely! At first, we wondered if people would be willing to put in such long days over weekends, over a number of months. But we had a great response. It shows that there is a lot of interest on the part of outdoors people to give back.

People enjoyed being outside, connecting to their public land, and observing the changes on the land over the course of the project, as the seasons changed.
This interview has been edited.

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Searching for Wolverines by Running Through the Woods

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Wolverines are notoriously elusive and ill-tempered, so they aren't easy to count and study. But after one was photographed in the rugged Uinta Mountains of northeastern Utah last year, the U.S. Forest Service decided to launch a search for more.

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An issue of Harper's Weekly from 1871 depicted the doomed whalers in the Arctic Ocean.

Credit: Robert Schwemmer Maritime Library

Before sea ice formed along Alaska's Arctic coastline this winter, marine archaeologists discovered the wrecks of two 19th-century ships that likely met their demise during a famous whaling disaster.

In September 1871, 33 whaling ships became stuck in pack ice off the coast of Wainwright, Alaska. The captains waited in vain for a change in winds, which they hoped would free the ships and let them get back to hunting bowhead whales. But within weeks, the vessels were destroyed by the crushing grip of the ice and more than 1,200 crew members were stranded.

The men eventually had to evacuate and leave their ships behind. They were rescued by a fleet of standby whaling ships, which had to give up much of their own lucrative cargo to take on their survivors. Though no one died, the economic consequences were severe. [ See Photos of the 19th-Century Arctic Shipwrecks]

"The loss of the ships was a significant blow to the whaling industry, particularly the New Bedford (Massachusetts) companies, which owned most of the vessels lost," said Brad Barr, an archaeologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"The event has been attributed as possibly a major contributory factor in the demise of whaling in the U.S.," Barr told Live Science, estimating that the total loss from the incident would have been equivalent to slightly more than $33 million in 2015.

Using sonar and other underwater sensing technologies, Barr and a team of researchers recently conducted a survey along a stretch of Alaska's coast where they hoped to find lost whaling fleets. The team discovered the magnetic signatures of two shipwrecks, according to an announcement from the NOAA. Underwater video provided better images of the sunken hulls, revealing metal anchors, fasteners, pins, ballast and brick-lined pots that were used to heat whale blubber, turning it into oil. Crabs can even be spotted crawling around the doomed vessels in the footage.

Among the artifacts discovered with the 19th-century shipwrecks: a small anchor, a chain plate, and an iron knee that was likely part of the ship's frame.

Credit: NOAA

Barr said that right now it's hard to say conclusively that these two vessels were among the 33 lost in 1871, but there are a lot of signs that point to that identification. Of all the known vessels that were lost in this particular area, well more than half sank in the 1871 event, Barr said, and both wrecks spotted have the types of beams and hull timbers that would be expected in a whaling ship from the later half of the 19th century.

The discovery is part of a trend: As sea-ice levels shrink due to climate change, ocean explorers have better opportunities than ever to search for wrecks off Alaska's northern coast.

"While there is still annual sea ice in this area, it arrives later and leaves earlier than in 1871," Barr told Live Science. "The area we mapped appears to be subject to a great deal of sediment movement just offshore, and I suspect that if there are pieces of wreckage buried there, they might be exposed by these conditions."

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Crushed by Ice: Ships from 1871 Whaling Disaster Possibly Found

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Before sea ice formed along Alaska's Arctic coastline this winter, marine archaeologists discovered the wrecks of two 19th-century ships that likely met their demise during a famous whaling disaster. In September 1871, 33 whaling ships became stuck in pack ice off the coast of Wainwright, Alaska.

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A mountain lion, which was legally killed by an unidentified hunter, was found to have a set of teeth growing out of the side of his head.

The Idaho State Journal reported the lion was harvested near Weston on Dec. 30 and baffled wildlife officials after a conservation official sent a picture to the Idaho Fish and Game's Southeast Regional Office in Pocatello.

"It has all of us scratching our heads," biologist Zack Lockyear told the State Journal. "It's a bizarre situation and a bizarre photo."

Idaho Fish and Game said in a news release Friday officials cannot fully explain the abnormal deformity on the lion's head, but did offer some theories as to why the lion had teeth and apparently whiskers growing out of the part of its head.

"It is possible that the teeth could be the remnants of a conjoined twin that died in the womb and was absorbed into the other fetus. It is also possible that deformity was a teratoma tumor. These kinds of tumors are composed of tissue from which teeth, hair, and even fingers and toes can develop. They are rare in humans and animals."

Lockyer told the State Journal that another possible theory could be that the lion suffered an injury to its jaw and it healed in an odd way. However, he said that theory is probably unlikely.

Officials added in the statement that biologists in the region have never seen this kind of deformity before.

The mountain lion was killed at the end of the year. It was initially seen attacking a dog on the hunter's rural property in Weston. The lion was chased off, but its tracks were followed through other properties in the area and then through the hills.

Within three hours of the attack, the hunter tracked the animal with the use of hounds and killed the big cat legally. The hunter's dog survived the mountain lion's attack, officials said.

Mountain lions can be legally hunted in Idaho and are treated as big game animal much like elk and mule deer. They can only be pursued during certain seasons in areas that are open to hunting and have the proper license and tag.
Click for more from The Idaho State Journal.

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Mountain lion found with unusual deformity

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A mountain lion, which was legally killed by an unidentified hunter, was found to have a set of teeth growing out of the side of his head. The Idaho State Journal reported the lion was harvested near Weston on Dec.

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The huge gap between current CMS offerings and what the world needed occurred to me during my time as CTO of The Huffington Post. When we were acquired by AOL in 2011, I inherited 53 properties built on dozens of different content management systems. It wasn't long after that I soon realized they were all built by IT people who didn't fully grasp the concepts of traffic and distribution. That's why in 2012 I launched RebelMouse as the first platform to create the "social front page" - a hub where users could aggregate social feeds all in one place. It went viral with eight million users worldwide. The viral success made me realize that there wasn't a CMS to bring it all together, yet.

One of the main reasons I launched RebelMouse was because I recognized that a huge shift in advertising would happen, and that content would become marketing very quickly. And it did.

Today, I am extremely proud of the powerful product we've created. RebelMouse was built to solve the complex intersection of product, engineering, editorial, and revenue. It's allowed us to create a next-generation CMS unlike any other - backed by some of the best venture capitalists in the world - and is responsible for launching some of the biggest media sites such as Axios and The Dodo, both of which saw massive success upon launch.

But our team still sees plenty of sites - including brands, publishers, and personal influencers - not reaching their full potential. A lot of the time it's because they're bogged down with a clunky CMS like WordPress. We're all trying to publish and make money in a competitive industry that's always changing. But to be frank, WordPress isn't keeping up with the industry fast enough. There's a lot you need in and out of a CMS to survive and succeed in this digital climate, and we've created a solution that quickly responds to every industry shift and algorithm curveball.

Here are six reasons why RebelMouse is different from WordPress and worthy of a replatforming process that's simple and can be completed in a matter of days.

1. RebelMouse Is a Centralized CMS

RebelMouse is a centralized CMS, unlike other common web solutions like WordPress and Drupal. WordPress is a decentralized model that requires every platform update to be completed independently. This means that - of the 87 million plus versions of WordPress that are currently live on the internet - each update has to be implemented one by one.

Operating your business on a decentralized model is a big security risk. Every time there's a security threat, the core developers at WordPress must deploy patches in the form of product updates. From there, it's up to the managing developers of each individual site to deploy and configure around these updates to avoid breaking custom code and plugins. And this happens a lot. Since its launch in 2003, WordPress has released 238 product updates, many of them to address gaps in security.

Since we operate on a centralized model, every update on our platform is updated at one time, and sometimes multiple times a day. Usually our clients never notice the difference. We protect the data of our clients and make sure their sites are not only risk-free, but also operating at continuous peak performance.

But this doesn't mean our platform is closed off by any means. We use the languages of the open web, and any developer can easily learn our platform to create high-quality work without the burden of relying on unstable and fragmented WordPress plugins and updates.

2. More Than Just Tech

We've never been one to stick to boxes at RebelMouse. We started out on the cutting edge of social in 2012, and stayed close to the heart of digital publishing ever since. That's why our clients don't get a stagnant software platform like WordPress. Instead, they get a full-service creative agency full of content optimization specialists, social media gurus, and monetization experts. We blur the line between product and strategy to drive success.

Our content migration process from WordPress to RebelMouse is simple. And once it's completed, we don't waste any time optimizing your site for page speed. From there, we restructure your content strategy so you can see results at scale. Here are some of the strategy services we offer:

Monetization: We believe saving costs is the new revenue stream. Our lean tech model creates new opportunities for monetization, and our strategy team uses data-driven methods to make sure your site is getting maximum return.

Social: In 2018, engagement is the key metric to watch to drive sustainable growth. Using our social tools, we can help you create deep connections that spark conversation in the social ecosystem.

Audience Loyalty: It's easy to have viral moments both on site and via social, but those instances can be fleeting. Organic loyalty is what's required to ensure steady growth. We help you take advantage of the social ecosystem's universe of creators and influencers to help you grow a loyal community.

Search: The RebelMouse CMS has the tools to help you optimize each post for SEO. LIke everything else in the current digital climate, the strategy around search is always changing. We'll make sure your current efforts are up to snuff.

3. User-Focused Site Experience

Media sites have become really complicated over time. The industry let intrusive ads take over the internet, and now we're all left cleaning up the mess and re-prioritizing user experiences to get users back and make them stick. When we launched Axios on our new Social UX for Media layout in 2017, it mimicked the social feeds to drive more pageviews, engagement, and user satisfaction. It's a design structure that sees success on our other properties, too, including Dance Magazine and EcoWatch.

Our platform also has a powerful layout tool called Particle Assembler which creates beautiful designs. Instead of leaning heavily on an expensive developer team, Particle Assembler lets content creators design gorgeous layouts within a few clicks. Whatever works best for your brand, we'll guide you through the right design and site navigation that will bring next-level growth to your business.

4. Better Social Distribution Tools

A lot of publishers were slower to understand the importance of distributed publishing when digital started to gain steam. Luckily, it's something we've been working to perfect since we launched our CMS in 2012. Producing quality content is only half the battle - after all, there's no point in publishing engaging content if nobody is around to read it. This is why dynamic distribution is so important in order to succeed in today's digital world. And the good news is that tackling this doesn't have to be a solo effort.

At RebelMouse, we believe we live in a universe of creators. Not only will your fellow creators take interest in the topics you publish about, but they'll also share your content and validate your message.

That's why we created Discovery, an important part of our enterprise-level toolset that's available from right within our Entry Editor where you create articles. Using proprietary technology, Discovery enables you to identify key pages and profiles that could be interested in sharing your content. And through varying levels of social outreach, you can repurpose and share content from your Discovery findings in a way that validates the original message of those influencers. From there, you amplify the content through your own social channels.

This sharing cycle has led to the success of some of our biggest clients. The Dodo - one of the most successful new media companies to date - used Discovery to become the center of all things animals on the internet. It can do this for you, too.

5. Modern Authoring Tools

Chances are the CMS platform you're using was created before social. If that's true, you may still view content on your website and in social feeds as two different entities you have to control and manage. We're here to blur those lines for you and take publishing where it needs to be in 2018.

Our Entry Editor isn't simply a way to publish articles. It's a full-blown toolset for content creators. Before each piece of content is pushed live, it can be optimized for design, social, and SEO. We've also created a new content workflow that ensures every content team is on the most efficient path to publish.

Your writers, editors, creators, and community deserve tools that make them fast and efficient. It's also important that they follow a process that enforces best practices, so that the CMS itself is training your team with every post as they onboard.

6. Easy-to-Understand Analytics

It's important for you to manage your writers, see their performance, enable them to learn from each other, and help them become data driven. RebelMouse analytics provide you with a clear view of who is performing, what posts are working, and where that content is gaining traction.

Our CMS operates on a data-driven product cycle. Everything we release at RebelMouse is subjected to a small percentage of traffic and A/B tested for performance impact. Our testing includes how each version affects pagespeed and user experience. We then take these results and check to see how they correlate with bounce rate, time on site, pages per session, and conversion to goals - such as shares, subscriptions, and purchases. We also take big data and distill it into easy-to-consume insights that you can quickly act upon. You can view how each post is performing on search and social, right from within the Entry Editor.

In addition, we have a deep Google Analytics integration, so you can easily add in components, promos, third-party units, and ad units. But most importantly, as these pieces are being added, they're set up in staged environments automatically, and the traffic performance from these tests can be traced back to impact on bounce rate, pages per session, session duration, number of shares, percent of shares per visit, and unique custom goals for your business.

Let's Start Working Together

We migrate sites from WordPress all the time, and it's a fast process. Even if replatforming isn't an option for you at the moment, we can still offer you our creative agency services to make sure you're reaching your biggest audience possible. Let's create something together. Request a proposal to get in contact with a Rebel.

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6 Reasons to Upgrade to RebelMouse from WordPress

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The huge gap between current CMS offerings and what the world needed occurred to me during my time as CTO of The Huffington Post. When we were acquired by AOL in 2011, I inherited 53 properties built on dozens of different content management systems. It wasn't long after that I soon realized they we...

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A pair of buff beagles may have the edge in doggy body-building contests. Scientists in China changed the dogs' genes to make the small hounds extra-muscular.

The dogs are the latest addition to a menagerie of animals - including pigs and monkeys - whose genes have been "edited" by scientists. The pups' genes were altered with a powerful technology called CRISPR/Cas9.

Cas9 is an enzyme that cuts through DNA. CRISPRs are small pieces of RNA, a chemical cousin of DNA. The RNAs guide the Cas9 scissors to a specific spot on DNA. The enzyme then snips the DNA at that spot. Wherever Cas9 cuts the DNA, its host cell will try to repair the breach. It will either paste the cut ends together or copy unbroken DNA from another gene and then splice in this replacement piece.

Tying together broken ends can result in mistakes that disable a gene. But in the dog study, those so-called mistakes were actually what the Chinese scientists had been aiming for.

Liangxue Lai works at the South China Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in Guangzhou. His team decided to test whether CRISPR/Cas9 would work in dogs. These researchers used it to target the gene that makes myostatin. This myostatin protein normally keeps an animal's muscles from getting too big. Breaking the gene can cause muscles to bulk up. Natural mistakes in the gene, called mutations, work that way in Belgian Blue cattle and dogs called bully whippets. These mutations have not caused those animals health problems.

The researchers injected the new gene-editing system into 35 beagle embryos. Of 27 puppies born, two had edited myostatin genes. The team reported its success October 12 in the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology.

Most cells in an animal have two sets of chromosomes and, thus, two sets of genes. One set comes from mom. The other is inherited from dad. These chromosomes provide all of an individual's DNA. Sometimes the copy of a gene from each chromosome set match one another. Other times they do not.

One of the two dogs that had mutations in the myostatin gene was a female puppy named Tiangou. She was named after a "heaven dog" that appears in Chinese myth. Both copies of the myostatin gene in all of her cells contained the edit. At 4 months, Tiangou had more muscular thighs than an unedited sister.

The second puppy carrying the new edit was male. He carries double mutations in most of his cells, but not all. He was named Hercules, after an ancient Roman hero noted for his strength. Alas, Hercules the beagle was not more muscular than other 4-month-old puppies. But both Hercules and Tiangou have packed on more muscle as they've grown. Lai says their fur may now be concealing how ripped they are.

That the researchers could produce two puppies with edited myostatin genes shows that the gene scissors works in dogs. But the small share of puppies with the gene edit also shows that the technique is not very efficient in these animals. Lai says the process just needs to be improved.

Next, Lai and his colleagues hope to make mutations in beagles that mimic natural genetic changes that play a role in Parkinson's disease and in human hearing loss. That might help scientists who study those diseases develop new therapies.

It also might be possible to use the gene scissors to create dogs with specific features. But Lai says the researchers have no plans to make designer pets.

Power Words

Cas9 An enzyme that geneticists are now using to help edit genes. It can cut through DNA, allowing it to fix broken genes, splice in new ones or disable certain genes. Cas9 is shepherded to the place it is supposed to make cuts by CRISPRs, a type of genetic guides. The Cas9 enzyme came from bacteria. When viruses invade a bacterium, this enzyme can chop up the germ's DNA, making it harmless.

cell The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. Typically too small to see with the naked eye, it consists of watery fluid surrounded by a membrane or wall. Animals are made of anywhere from thousands to trillions of cells, depending on their size.

chromosome A single threadlike piece of coiled DNA found in a cell's nucleus. A chromosome is generally X-shaped in animals and plants. Some segments of DNA in a chromosome are genes. Other segments of DNA in a chromosome are landing pads for proteins. The function of other segments of DNA in chromosomes is still not fully understood by scientists.

CRISPR An abbreviation - pronounced crisper - for the term "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats." These are pieces of RNA, an information-carrying molecule. They are copied from the genetic material of viruses that infect bacteria. When a bacterium encounters a virus that it was previously exposed to, it produces an RNA copy of the CRISPR that contains that virus' genetic information. The RNA then guides an enzyme, called Cas9, to cut up the virus and make it harmless. Scientists are now building their own versions of CRISPR RNAs. These lab-made RNAs guide the enzyme to cut specific genes in other organisms. Scientists use them, like a genetic scissors, to edit - or alter - specific genes so that they can then study how the gene works, repair damage to broken genes, insert new genes or disable harmful ones.

DNA (short for deoxyribonucleic acid) A long, double-stranded and spiral-shaped molecule inside most living cells that carries genetic instructions. In all living things, from plants and animals to microbes, these instructions tell cells which molecules to make.

embryo The early stages of a developing vertebrate, or animal with a backbone, consisting only one or a or a few cells. As an adjective, the term would be embryonic - and could be used to refer to the early stages or life of a system or technology.

enzymes Molecules made by living things to speed up chemical reactions.

gene (adj. genetic) A segment of DNA that codes, or holds instructions, for producing a protein. Offspring inherit genes from their parents. Genes influence how an organism looks and behaves.

gene editing The deliberate introduction of changes to genes by researchers.

genetic Having to do with chromosomes, DNA and the genes contained within DNA. The field of science dealing with these biological instructions is known as genetics. People who work in this field are geneticists.

molecular biology The branch of biology that deals with the structure and function of molecules essential to life. Scientists who work in this field are called molecular biologists.

mutation Some change that occurs to a gene in an organism's DNA. Some mutations occur naturally. Others can be triggered by outside factors, such as pollution, radiation, medicines or something in the diet. A gene with this change is referred to as a mutant.

myostatin A protein that helps control the growth and development of tissues throughout the body, mostly in muscle. It's normal role is to ensure that muscles don't become overly large. Myostatin is also the name given to the gene that contains the instructions for a cell to make myostatin. The myostatin gene is abbreviated MSTN.

RNA A molecule that helps "read" the genetic information contained in DNA. A cell's molecular machinery reads DNA to create RNA, and then reads RNA to create proteins.

technology The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry - or the devices, processes and systems that result from those efforts.

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A pair of buff beagles may have the edge in doggy body-building contests. Scientists in China changed the dogs' genes to make the small hounds extra-muscular. The dogs are the latest addition to a menagerie of animals - including pigs and monkeys - whose genes have been "edited" by scientists.

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(Image: © Wikimedia Commons)

The biggest primate that ever walked the Earth may have died out because of its giant size and limited diet, new research suggests.

Little is known about the mysterious Gigantopithecus blacki, a distant relative to orangutans that stood up to 10 feet (3 meters) tall and weighed up to 595 lbs. (270 kilograms).

However, a new analysis of its diet suggests it lived and ate exclusively in the forest. When its forest habitats shrank about 100,000 years ago, the enormous ape may not have been able to snag enough food to survive and reproduce, and went extinct as a result, said study co-author Hervé Bocherens, a paleontologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. [ 6 Extinct Animals That Could Be Brought Back to Life]
"Dragon teeth"
Scientists know almost nothing about the mysterious ape. The first hint of its existence came in 1935, when German paleontologist Gustav von Koenigswald happened upon Gigantopithecus molars in a pharmacy in China; the molars were labeled as " dragon teeth," which practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine believe can heal a variety of maladies.

For years, that was the only trace of the greatest ape that ever lived. Since then, however, researchers have found dozens of teeth and a few partial jaws of Gigantopithecus in several spots in southern China, Vietnam and even India.

"There is no skull, no postcranial skeleton. Everything is very mysterious," Bocherens told Live Science.

Based on fossils, researchers believe G. blacki roamed throughout Southeast Asia for at least 1 million years, going extinct around 100,000 years ago. Its morphology suggests its closest living relatives are orangutans, meaning that African primates such as chimps are more closely related to humans than to G. blacki, he said. [ In Photos: A Game-Changing Primate Discovery]
Overgrown pandas?
Scientists still knew relatively little about how the gigantic beast lived and why it died out, though theories abound. Noting the similarity between the large size of G. blacki's molars and the overgrown chompers of giant pandas, some have argued G. blacki dined exclusively on bamboo. But wear and tear on the teeth of G. blacki suggested it ate a diet heavy on fruits, with leaves and roots in the mix, Bocherens said.

To get a better picture, Bocherens and his colleagues conducted a chemical analysis of a Gigantopithecus blacki tooth first uncovered in a cave in Thailand near a dam teeming with other fossils, including remnants of orangutans, deer, buffalo and porcupine. (The dam has since been completed and the site has washed away, Bocherens said.)

Because grasses and leafy plants use slightly different chemical pathways for photosynthesis, grasses accumulate higher levels of carbon-13 (meaning carbon with seven neutrons) than carbon-12 (which has six neutrons). As animals up the food chain eat these plants, they retain the chemical signature of their diet in the ratio of these carbon isotopes present in their bones and teeth. As a result, the scientists were able to identify the diet and habitat of G. blacki based on the ratio of carbon isotopes in its tooth enamel. The team also analyzed the dietary signature of the other large mammals found at the Thailand site, as well as the diets of existing large mammals.
Doomed to extinction
It turned out that G. blacki ate, and presumably lived, exclusively in forested regions. But the carbon ratios in the other animals from the cave revealed they were eating a mix of foods from both the savanna and the forest. That suggests that at the time the gigantic ape lived, Southeast Asia was a mosaic of forest and savanna. So Gigantopithecus blacki lived near huge swaths of grassland, yet didn't forage in the nearby grasslands.

The combination of this restricted diet and its huge size may have doomed the giant creatures, Bocherens said.

"Living in the forest was really the only option for Gigantopithecus. So if the forest disappears, there is no possibility to find another habitat," Bocherens said.

It's likely that each time the climate got cooler and drier at various points in the Pleistocene epoch, the forested region shrank and the population of G. blacki crashed. Sometime around 100,000 years ago, a cold snap occurred and there were simply too few of the giant beasts left to survive, the researchers speculate.

As supporting evidence for this hypothesis, Bocherens notes that similar "population bottlenecks" reduced the range of orangutans from almost all of Southeast Asia to their current tiny habitats in the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo. However, orangutans have smaller bodies and can reduce their metabolism to very low levels during seasons when fruit is unavailable, which likely helped keep their population stable during periods when forest habitat was sparse. Gigantopithecus may not have had that option.

Still, the story doesn't completely explain why G. blacki disappeared when it did, Bocherens said.

"There were a lot of fluctuations of climate, and there were also colder and drier conditions." Bocherens said. "I see this as a beginning study. It's putting a new piece in the puzzle, and the puzzle is not very complete."

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(Image: © Wikimedia Commons) The biggest primate that ever walked the Earth may have died out because of its giant size and limited diet, new research suggests. Little is known about the mysterious Gigantopithecus blacki , a distant relative to orangutans that stood up to 10 feet (3 meters) tall and weighed up to 595 lbs.

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A world-first QUT study revealing light exposure plays a role in the weight of preschool children has been published by international research journal PLOS ONE.

PhD student Cassandra Pattinson and colleagues Simon Smith, Alicia Allan, Sally Staton and Karen Thorpe studied children aged three to five, from six Brisbane childcare centres. At time 1, they measured children's sleep, activity and light exposure for a two week period, along with height and weight to calculate their BMI, then followed up 12 months later.

"At time 1, we found moderate intensity light exposure earlier in the day was associated with increased body mass index (BMI) while children who received their biggest dose of light -- outdoors and indoors -- in the afternoon were slimmer," said Ms Pattinson of the Environmental Light Exposure is Associated with Increased Body Mass in Children study.

"At follow-up, children who had more total light exposure at Time 1 had higher body mass 12 months later. Light had a significant impact on weight even after we accounted for Time 1 body weight, sleep, and activity.

"Around 42 million children around the globe under the age of five are classified as overweight or obese so this is a significant breakthrough and a world-first.

"Artificial lighting, including light given off by tablets, mobile phones, night lights, and television, means modern children are exposed to more environmental light than any previous generation. This increase in light exposure has paralleled global increases in obesity."

The research team is from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation and the Centre for Children's Health Research.

Ms Pattinson said it is known the timing, intensity and duration of exposure to both artificial and natural light have acute biological effects in mammals.

"The circadian clock -- also known as the internal body clock -- is largely driven by our exposure to light and the timing of when that happens. It impacts on sleep patterns, weight gain or loss, hormonal changes and our mood," Ms Pattinson said

"Factors that impact on obesity include calorie intake, decreased physical activity, short sleep duration, and variable sleep timing. Now light can be added to the mix."

Ms Pattinson said the next step was to figure out how the research can be used in the fight against obesity in children.

"We plan to conduct further studies with pre-schoolers and also infants," she said.

"Animal studies have shown that timing and intensity of light exposure is critical for metabolic functioning and weight status. Our findings suggest that the same applies to us.

"This research suggests that exposure to different types of light (both artificial and natural) at different times now needs to be part of the conversation about the weight of children."

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diet and weight loss; obesity; vitamin d; fitness; dieting and weight control; child psychology; child development; obstructive sleep apnea

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Light exposure and kids' weight: Is there a link? World-first study revealing light exposure plays a role in the weight of preschool children

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Light exposure plays a role in the weight of preschool children, a world-first study reveals. The researchers studied children aged three to five, from six childcare centers, measuring the children's sleep, activity and light exposure for a two week period, along with height and weight to calculate their BMI, then followed up 12-months later.

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The biggest sea-dwelling crocodile ever found has turned up in the Tunisian desert. The whopper of a prehistoric predator grew to over 30 feet long (nearly ten meters) and weighed three tons.Paleontologists have dubbed the new species Machimosaurus rex and describeit Monday in the journal Cretaceous Research.

Although the recovered remains are fragmentary, enough remained in the 120-million-year-old rock to identify the reptile as the largest known member of a peculiar lineage of crocodiles that spent their lives almost entirely at sea.

"This is a neat new discovery from a part of the world that hasn't been well-explored for fossils," says University of Edinburgh paleontologist Stephen Brusatte, who was not involved with the new study.

The fossils, including a skull and a smattering of other bones, were discovered by Federico Fanti of the University of Bologna in Italy and colleagues with support from the National Geographic Society.

Big Bite

Scientists are awaiting the discovery of a more complete skeleton to figure out exactly how large Machimosaurus rex was. But assuming that the new species had similar proportions as its close relatives, Fanti estimates that Machimosaurus rex stretched about 31 feet (9.6 meters) in length.

While not as large as some of its later, distant relatives that lived in freshwater, that makes Machimosaurus rex the biggest ocean-dwelling member of the crocodile family tree.

The biggest freshwater croc ever, Sarcosuchus imperator, lived 110 million years ago, grew as long as 40 feet (12 meters), and weighed up to eight metric tons (17,500 pounds). Since the time of this and other giants such as the alligator Deinosuchus, many crocodile lineages have died out, leaving today's saltwater crocs closely related.

The carnivore's teeth may hint at what it fed on in the ancient ocean. " Machimosaurus rex had stocky, relatively short and rounded teeth," Fanti says, "and a massive skull capable of a remarkable bite force." This cluster of features leads Fanti to suggest that the croc was a generalist hunter that took a variety of prey, including large marine turtles.

"It would likely have been something of an ambush predator, hanging around in shallow water hunting turtles and fishes and maybe waiting for some land animals to come a little too close to the shore," Brusatte adds.

Tough Survivor

For scientists, the most important aspect of Machimosaurus rex isn't so much its size as when it lived.

Paleontologists have long debated whether or not there was a mass extinction at the end of the Jurassic period, 145 million years ago. The group that includes Machimosaurus, called the teleosaurids, is among those thought to have died out.

The discovery of Machimosaurus rex in later rocks from the Cretaceous hints that if there was a mass extinction, it didn't kill off life planetwide. "The new find adds to growing evidence that a lot of marine reptiles made it across the boundary and through the supposed extinction," Brusatte says.

Rather than being a rapid extermination, the extinction may have been a more drawn-out transition. "In our interpretation," Fanti says, "the end-Jurassic event was global in its effects but was mostly likely a complex sequence of local biological crises that are still poorly documented."

One of the outstanding mysteries is why the marine crocodiles didn't reclaim their former glory. Even though the family of Machimosaurus rex survived for longer than thought, they didn't appear to thrive as they had in the Jurassic.

While Machimosaurus rex was certainly impressive in size, Brusatte says, "it may have just been a dead croc walking."
Machimosaurus and other ancient crocodiles will be featured in "Crocs - Ancient Predators in a Modern World," at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C., from Jan. 27 to May 8, 2016.

Read Brian Switek's blog Laelaps on NationalGeographic.com. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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The biggest sea-dwelling crocodile ever found has turned up in the Tunisian desert. The whopper of a prehistoric predator grew to over 30 feet long (nearly ten meters) and weighed three tons.Paleontologists have dubbed the new species Machimosaurus rex and describeit Monday in the journal Cretaceous Research .

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The planet's largest fly faces two new challengers, which were discovered collecting dust in old museum cabinets.

With wingspans as wide as a hand and finger-length bodies, the newly described insects are almost as eye-popping as their world-record relative, Gauromydas heros.

Scientists identified G. mateus and G. papaveroi from 14 forgotten specimens found in collections in Brazil, France, and Costa Rica that date back to the 1930s.

These specimens are the only known trace of the two new species, according to study leader Julia Calhau, of the University of São Paulo's Museum of Zoology in Brazil.

With body lengths of up to 1.7 inches (4.3 centimeters) and wingspans of up to 3.5 inches (9 centimeters), neither species in the small sample rivals the largest examples of G. heros.

But Calhau believes they might- if more flies can be found in museums or in their wild habitat of Central and South America.

"The range size of G. heros is large-32 to 70 millimeters [1.3 inches to 2.7 inches]-and the two new species could vary drastically in length as well," says Calhau, whose study appeared November 26 in the journal Zootaxa.

While the museum specimens are labelled with capture locations in Argentina, Brazil, and Costa Rica, tracking down their living descendants will be a major challenge.

Nothing is known about the lives of G. mateus and G. papaveroi, Calhau says, and even previously known Gauromydas flies are incredibly elusive.

Torsten Dikow, a research entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., is a world expert on mydas flies ( Mydidae), the family to which these goliaths belong.

But even he has never set eyes on a living Gauromydas fly. "We know very little about their biology because they are so rarely observed," says Dikow, who wasn't part of the study team. (Also see " Why Giant Bugs Once Roamed the Earth.")

One explanation is that "the flies are just rare," and the adults are "active for a very short time of the year," he says.

In addition, the winged adults mimic both the appearance and high, fast-flying behavior of large pepsid wasps-also known as tarantula hawks.

This helps the flies scare off predators, but they may succeed in frightening off entomologists, too.

While Gauromydas flies are quite harmless, "you don't want to be stung by such a wasp," Dikow says.

Much of what we do know about giant flies is thanks to a researcher who managed to locate breeding sites of G. heros in southeastern Brazil in the 1940s.

The scientists observed the insects mating near leafcutter ant nests, in which they laid their eggs. The fat grubs feasted on beetle larva that scavenge in ant-waste chambers.

As for the adults, "I believe they are nectar feeders, as they have developed mouthparts and were seen visiting flowers," Calhau noted.

The same may be true of the newfound species, she says, since the original specimen labels reveal that some of the monster flies were caught using agave nectar as bait.

Time will tell whether G. mateus and G. papaveroi will earn the title of biggest fly, but they aren't likely to be in the running for fly heavyweight champ. (Also see " Cricket Has World's Biggest Testicles.")

Pantophthalmid flies, or timber flies, as they're sometimes known, "are shorter, but might be heavier because they are stockier," Dikow says.

These flies are hardly ever encountered either-so don't worry, you aren't gonna need a bigger fly swatter.

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World's Biggest Fly Faces Two New Challengers

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The planet's largest fly faces two new challengers, which were discovered collecting dust in old museum cabinets. With wingspans as wide as a hand and finger-length bodies, the newly described insects are almost as eye-popping as their world-record relative, Gauromydas heros. Scientists identified G. mateus and G.

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Harry Welsh

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The world's first "test tube" puppies have been born after years of attempts, say scientists in the US.

The in-vitro fertilisation success paves the way for conserving endangered breeds and could help in the fight against human and animal diseases, say researchers at Cornell University.

The seven beagle and cross-bred beagle-spaniel puppies were born to a surrogate mother.

They were from the same litter but have three sets of parents.

Frozen embryos were implanted in a female dog using techniques similar to those used in human fertility clinics.

Problems with freezing embryos have caused difficulties in the past, but the group say they have perfected this and other techniques.

Rare breeds

Lead researcher Dr Alex Travis, from Cornell's college of veterinary medicine, said: "We have seven normal happy healthy puppies."

He added: "Since the mid-1970s, people have been trying to do this in a dog and have been unsuccessful.

"Now we can use this technique to conserve the genetics of endangered species."

The researchers say IVF is a powerful tool to help endangered species of dog such as the African wild dog.

It could also be used in the study of inherited human and dog diseases.

Dogs share many similar diseases with humans - almost twice as many as for any other species.

Dr Travis said the work was an important milestone.

"In vitro fertilisation is a really powerful tool to help preserve endangered species of dog," he told the BBC.

"IVF is also important for the health of our pets because it opens up the possibility that we could identify certain genes that cause disease and then fix those."

Secret birth

The puppies were born in the summer.

Their existence was kept secret until the findings were formally announced to the scientific world this week.

They have reportedly been named Ivy, Cannon, Beaker, Buddy, Nelly, Red and Green, and all but one has gone to a new home.

The research, published in the journal PLoS One, has been described as a "major step forward" in medicine.

Prof David Argyle, head of the school of veterinary medicine at the University of Edinburgh, which was not part of the study, said the new techniques would help understanding of inherited diseases in both dogs and people.

"Importantly, it is becoming apparent that dogs and humans share many common biology, diseases and syndromes, and it is likely that these new techniques could have significant benefit for the study of human diseases as well as canine diseases," he added.

Follow Helen on Twitter.

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The world's first "test tube" puppies have been born after years of attempts, say scientists in the US. The in-vitro fertilisation success paves the way for conserving endangered breeds and could help in the fight against human and animal diseases, say researchers at Cornell University.

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http://news.discovery.com/animals/whales-dolphins/belugas-blow-bubble-shapes-based-on-mood-151208.htm

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The huge gap between current CMS offerings and what the world needed occurred to me during my time as CTO of The Huffington Post. When we were acquired by AOL in 2011, I inherited 53 properties built on dozens of different content management systems. It wasn't long after that I soon realized they were all built by IT people who didn't fully grasp the concepts of traffic and distribution. That's why in 2012 I launched RebelMouse as the first platform to create the "social front page" - a hub where users could aggregate social feeds all in one place. It went viral with eight million users worldwide. The viral success made me realize that there wasn't a CMS to bring it all together, yet.

One of the main reasons I launched RebelMouse was because I recognized that a huge shift in advertising would happen, and that content would become marketing very quickly. And it did.

Today, I am extremely proud of the powerful product we've created. RebelMouse was built to solve the complex intersection of product, engineering, editorial, and revenue. It's allowed us to create a next-generation CMS unlike any other - backed by some of the best venture capitalists in the world - and is responsible for launching some of the biggest media sites such as Axios and The Dodo, both of which saw massive success upon launch.

But our team still sees plenty of sites - including brands, publishers, and personal influencers - not reaching their full potential. A lot of the time it's because they're bogged down with a clunky CMS like WordPress. We're all trying to publish and make money in a competitive industry that's always changing. But to be frank, WordPress isn't keeping up with the industry fast enough. There's a lot you need in and out of a CMS to survive and succeed in this digital climate, and we've created a solution that quickly responds to every industry shift and algorithm curveball.

Here are six reasons why RebelMouse is different from WordPress and worthy of a replatforming process that's simple and can be completed in a matter of days.

1. RebelMouse Is a Centralized CMS

RebelMouse is a centralized CMS, unlike other common web solutions like WordPress and Drupal. WordPress is a decentralized model that requires every platform update to be completed independently. This means that - of the 87 million plus versions of WordPress that are currently live on the internet - each update has to be implemented one by one.

Operating your business on a decentralized model is a big security risk. Every time there's a security threat, the core developers at WordPress must deploy patches in the form of product updates. From there, it's up to the managing developers of each individual site to deploy and configure around these updates to avoid breaking custom code and plugins. And this happens a lot. Since its launch in 2003, WordPress has released 238 product updates, many of them to address gaps in security.

Since we operate on a centralized model, every update on our platform is updated at one time, and sometimes multiple times a day. Usually our clients never notice the difference. We protect the data of our clients and make sure their sites are not only risk-free, but also operating at continuous peak performance.

But this doesn't mean our platform is closed off by any means. We use the languages of the open web, and any developer can easily learn our platform to create high-quality work without the burden of relying on unstable and fragmented WordPress plugins and updates.

2. More Than Just Tech

We've never been one to stick to boxes at RebelMouse. We started out on the cutting edge of social in 2012, and stayed close to the heart of digital publishing ever since. That's why our clients don't get a stagnant software platform like WordPress. Instead, they get a full-service creative agency full of content optimization specialists, social media gurus, and monetization experts. We blur the line between product and strategy to drive success.

Our content migration process from WordPress to RebelMouse is simple. And once it's completed, we don't waste any time optimizing your site for page speed. From there, we restructure your content strategy so you can see results at scale. Here are some of the strategy services we offer:

Monetization: We believe saving costs is the new revenue stream. Our lean tech model creates new opportunities for monetization, and our strategy team uses data-driven methods to make sure your site is getting maximum return.

Social: In 2018, engagement is the key metric to watch to drive sustainable growth. Using our social tools, we can help you create deep connections that spark conversation in the social ecosystem.

Audience Loyalty: It's easy to have viral moments both on site and via social, but those instances can be fleeting. Organic loyalty is what's required to ensure steady growth. We help you take advantage of the social ecosystem's universe of creators and influencers to help you grow a loyal community.

Search: The RebelMouse CMS has the tools to help you optimize each post for SEO. LIke everything else in the current digital climate, the strategy around search is always changing. We'll make sure your current efforts are up to snuff.

3. User-Focused Site Experience

Media sites have become really complicated over time. The industry let intrusive ads take over the internet, and now we're all left cleaning up the mess and re-prioritizing user experiences to get users back and make them stick. When we launched Axios on our new Social UX for Media layout in 2017, it mimicked the social feeds to drive more pageviews, engagement, and user satisfaction. It's a design structure that sees success on our other properties, too, including Dance Magazine and EcoWatch.

Our platform also has a powerful layout tool called Particle Assembler which creates beautiful designs. Instead of leaning heavily on an expensive developer team, Particle Assembler lets content creators design gorgeous layouts within a few clicks. Whatever works best for your brand, we'll guide you through the right design and site navigation that will bring next-level growth to your business.

4. Better Social Distribution Tools

A lot of publishers were slower to understand the importance of distributed publishing when digital started to gain steam. Luckily, it's something we've been working to perfect since we launched our CMS in 2012. Producing quality content is only half the battle - after all, there's no point in publishing engaging content if nobody is around to read it. This is why dynamic distribution is so important in order to succeed in today's digital world. And the good news is that tackling this doesn't have to be a solo effort.

At RebelMouse, we believe we live in a universe of creators. Not only will your fellow creators take interest in the topics you publish about, but they'll also share your content and validate your message.

That's why we created Discovery, an important part of our enterprise-level toolset that's available from right within our Entry Editor where you create articles. Using proprietary technology, Discovery enables you to identify key pages and profiles that could be interested in sharing your content. And through varying levels of social outreach, you can repurpose and share content from your Discovery findings in a way that validates the original message of those influencers. From there, you amplify the content through your own social channels.

This sharing cycle has led to the success of some of our biggest clients. The Dodo - one of the most successful new media companies to date - used Discovery to become the center of all things animals on the internet. It can do this for you, too.

5. Modern Authoring Tools

Chances are the CMS platform you're using was created before social. If that's true, you may still view content on your website and in social feeds as two different entities you have to control and manage. We're here to blur those lines for you and take publishing where it needs to be in 2018.

Our Entry Editor isn't simply a way to publish articles. It's a full-blown toolset for content creators. Before each piece of content is pushed live, it can be optimized for design, social, and SEO. We've also created a new content workflow that ensures every content team is on the most efficient path to publish.

Your writers, editors, creators, and community deserve tools that make them fast and efficient. It's also important that they follow a process that enforces best practices, so that the CMS itself is training your team with every post as they onboard.

6. Easy-to-Understand Analytics

It's important for you to manage your writers, see their performance, enable them to learn from each other, and help them become data driven. RebelMouse analytics provide you with a clear view of who is performing, what posts are working, and where that content is gaining traction.

Our CMS operates on a data-driven product cycle. Everything we release at RebelMouse is subjected to a small percentage of traffic and A/B tested for performance impact. Our testing includes how each version affects pagespeed and user experience. We then take these results and check to see how they correlate with bounce rate, time on site, pages per session, and conversion to goals - such as shares, subscriptions, and purchases. We also take big data and distill it into easy-to-consume insights that you can quickly act upon. You can view how each post is performing on search and social, right from within the Entry Editor.

In addition, we have a deep Google Analytics integration, so you can easily add in components, promos, third-party units, and ad units. But most importantly, as these pieces are being added, they're set up in staged environments automatically, and the traffic performance from these tests can be traced back to impact on bounce rate, pages per session, session duration, number of shares, percent of shares per visit, and unique custom goals for your business.

Let's Start Working Together

We migrate sites from WordPress all the time, and it's a fast process. Even if replatforming isn't an option for you at the moment, we can still offer you our creative agency services to make sure you're reaching your biggest audience possible. Let's create something together. Request a proposal to get in contact with a Rebel.

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6 Reasons to Upgrade to RebelMouse from WordPress

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The huge gap between current CMS offerings and what the world needed occurred to me during my time as CTO of The Huffington Post. When we were acquired by AOL in 2011, I inherited 53 properties built on dozens of different content management systems. It wasn't long after that I soon realized they we...

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/051207-pigs-boars-cows-animals-science-weird/

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This is some pig: A wild boar is a celebrity in Germany after joining a small herd of cows on a farm near Hamburg.

Farmer Dirk Reese has watched the bristly interloper-which he calls Banana-integrate into the herd over the last couple of months, according to news reports. The cows seem unbothered by the new addition, and the boar acts right at home among them.

Much of what we hear these days about wild boar is bad news, about their invasive and destructive nature as their populations spread across the U.S. and Europe.

But in this case, the animal is doing no harm-and its intelligence and need for companionship may explain why it decided to join the herd.

"One thing we've learned about pigs [both wild and domestic] is that they are very socially complex," says Lori Marino, executive director of the Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy in Utah.

"In the wild they live in a social group-a male will be with several females, their babies, and immature males. And in captivity we've seen time and again that housing them alone makes them very unhappy. When you put them together, they get the stimulation they need and just blossom."

Pigs are also every bit as intelligent as dogs, she says. (Also see " Picky Pigs Take Washing Certain Foods Seriously.")

"We don't know why this [boar] is alone, but clearly it left the forest and latched on to whomever it could find," she says. "Pigs are smart; this one knew what it was doing."

Cows, also very social, may be brighter bulbs than once thought, too, she says.

"There's more going on there than you'd think; they're not just a bunch of big animals with their heads down, chewing grass."They develop friendships, hold grudges, and have excellent memories, for example.

Another reason the boar-and-cow family seems to jibe is they're similar creatures.

As ungulates-hooved mammals-there's some overlap in behavior. "It's not like a pig hanging around with a lion," Marino says.

Boar also munch grass, but mostly they root around for underground snacks, which means competition for food isn't really an issue for this mixed group. (See " Why We Love-And Loathe-The Humble Pig.")

"It's a cute little mistake, but it also shows how socially flexible these animals are. Everyone is getting something out of the relationship."

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Why a Wild Pig Befriended a Herd of Cows

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This is some pig: A wild boar is a celebrity in Germany after joining a small herd of cows on a farm near Hamburg. Farmer Dirk Reese has watched the bristly interloper-which he calls Banana-integrate into the herd over the last couple of months, according to news reports.

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151202-mongolia-climate-change-snow-leopards-livestock-world-wildlife-fund/

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(Image: © © Mariano Sironi, Instituto de Conservación de Ballenas)
This story was updated at 10:50 a.m. ET on Dec. 2.
Hundreds of baby whales died off the coast of Argentina between 2003 and 2014, and seagulls may have played a role in their deaths, a new study suggests.

While you might think of seagulls as mere pests - squawking masses of feathers that loom over the beach, waiting for dropped potato chips - these birds pose a serious threat to several species of animals, including the southern right whale ( Eubalaena australis).

Gull harassment of right whales off Argentina's Península Valdés has been observed since the 1970s. That's when kelp gulls ( Larus dominicanus) were first seen pecking the skin and blubber off the backs of adult female whales that use this sheltered spot off Argentina's Atlantic coast as a calving ground. Since then, researchers from universities and conservation institutions in Argentina and the United States have monitored how the gulls interact with the local whale population. Their most recent observations of the gulls' continued harassment of right whales - and this behavior's potential link to soaring calf deaths - were published last month (Oct. 21) in the journal PLOS ONE. [ Beastly Feasts: Amazing Photos of Animals and Their Prey]

The kelp gulls' feisty feeding behavior has gotten progressively worse since it was first documented, said Victoria Rowntree, a research associate professor in the biology department at the University of Utah and one of the authors of the new study.

However, the relationship between gulls and right whales started innocently enough. The birds would hover over the giant mammals as they breached, or jumped out of the water to breathe, Rowntree told Live Science. When breaching, some of the whale's dead skin is sloughed off, floating to the surface and providing a tasty snack for gulls, she said. But several decades ago, the gulls adapted this behavior to include pecking at resting whales as they swim near the surface of the water.

"A graduate student [Peter Thomas] observing the whales noticed that the seagulls had begun to land on top of the mothers and peck at them, making a hole," Rowntree said. "Then, in subsequent attacks throughout the season, they'd make the hole larger."

These holes, or lesions, grew to be large ovals. But starting in the 1990s, something changed: Fed-up mother whales started defending themselves against the birds' attacks by changing their posture -keeping their backs underwater when they swan near the surface, Rowntree said. This was good news for mother right whales, but bad news for their babies.

"The zero- to three-month-old calves don't know how to keep their backs underwater," Rowntree said. "Their backs are too small to arch, and now, the gulls' primary targets are the newborn calves."

In the 1980s, when mother whales were still the gulls' primary targets, the average right whale calf had just two small lesions on its back. But by the 2000s, the average number of lesions on the calves' backs had grown to 20. One calf that had been repeatedly pecked at by the birds had lesions covering 19 percent of its back, the study found.

The increase in lesions on baby whales in recent years is linked not only to a decrease in lesions on mother whales but also to an increase in the frequency of gull attacks, according to the study, which states that such attacks have increased "dramatically" over the past three decades. By the late 1990s, mother-calf pairs were spending an estimated 20 percent of daylight hours dealing with such attacks, Rowntree said.
Cause of death: unknown
But is this surge in gull attacks (and, therefore, wounded baby whales) truly linked to an increase in calf deaths? That's the question that researchers are trying to answer. At least 626 right whale calves died off Península Valdés between 2003 and 2014, but the study authors are not sure why so many of the animals perished.

The data collected by the study authors confound the issue. While the severity of legions on baby right whales has increased moderately from year to year, there has been a large year-to-year variance in calf deaths since 2000. In other words, more wounds do not necessarily mean more calf deaths in any given year.

But there are a number of hypotheses about how constant harassment from gulls, coupled with the wounds these animals inflict, might contribute to the mortality rate of baby whales. For one thing, the researchers suggest that dealing with the near-incessant attacks leaves little time or energy for nursing or playing, both of which are important to baby whales' healthy development.

The constant stress caused by the gulls and the open wounds they inflict might also inhibit a calf's ability to fend off other threats, like dehydration, parasitic infection or even hunger (a baby whale feeds on its mother's milk, which could be diminished as she uses up fat stores to flee gull attacks).

And whales aren't the only marine mammals that endure attacks by hungry seagulls. In Namibia, seagulls peck out the eyes of juvenile Cape fur seals, making them highly vulnerable to repeat attacks in which the gulls consume the baby seals' skin and blubber. This research suggests that attacks by kelp gulls could potentially lead to the deaths of "young marine mammals" that can't easily recover from injuries caused by the gulls, according to the authors of the new study.

Whether the gulls are directly responsible for the deaths of so many baby whales remains a mystery, but one thing is for certain: These birds are, if nothing else, "successful opportunists," Rowntree said.

Editor's Note: This story was updated with revised information from Victoria Rowntree.

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Angry Birds? Seagulls Implicated in Baby-Whale Deaths

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(Image: © © Mariano Sironi, Instituto de Conservación de Ballenas) This story was updated at 10:50 a.m. ET on Dec. 2. Hundreds of baby whales died off the coast of Argentina between 2003 and 2014, and seagulls may have played a role in their deaths, a new study suggests.

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A group of female-only animals that reproduce by cloning have adapted to different environments by taking up DNA from other organisms.

Most animals reproduce sexually, and the mix of genes from both parents helps each generation to take on new characteristics. If these characteristics are favorable to the environment, then over time they will spread through the whole population. However, one microscopic animal group hasn't had sex for at least 50 million years.

Bdelloid rotifers are a group of microscopic animals that live in wet habitats such as ponds, streams and soil, and on mosses and lichens. Less than half a millimetre long, these animals produce offspring that are genetic clones of their mothers, and males have never been found. Bdelloids have been around for over 50 million years, apparently without sexually reproducing.

It has long been a mystery how these creatures adapted to changing conditions and diversified into a large number of species without the benefits of sexual reproduction. Previous work found that bdelloids had taken up DNA from other organisms - known as horizontal gene transfer - and speculated that this might in some way have compensated for the lack of sex.

Adapt and survive

A new study, led by Imperial scientists, has revealed that bdelloid rotifers are still taking up significant amounts of new DNA to help them adapt to their environments, and that this is how they continue to evolve and diversify. The study found that different bdelloid rotifer species have taken up DNA from a wide variety of organisms, including fungi and bacteria, as they adapted to specific environments.

The study, published this month in BMC Biology, shows that sexual reproduction is not the only way to introduce the variation needed for species to adapt to different conditions.

The team looked for the genetic basis of differences among species by sequencing genetic information from four closely related species of bdelloids in different habitats.

They found that bdelloid species have taken up thousands of genes from plants, bacteria, fungi, and single-celled organisms.
Bdelloid rotifers under the microscope.
Most of these genes were acquired by the common ancestor of all bdelloids, and so are present in all modern species, but a substantial number are only present in only one species. Lead author and former PhD student in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial Isobel Eyres explains: "Our results show that foreign DNA has contributed to genetic divergence among species of bdelloids.

"For example, one of our species lives on moss whereas the others live in ponds. The moss species has acquired a different set of foreign genes, potentially helping it to meet the different challenges of living there. The genes code for proteins involved in breaking down food and surviving stressful conditions such as desiccation (drying out)."

"We estimate that one foreign gene has been incorporated into each species every 78,000 years, on average'" adds co-author Professor Tim Barraclough from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial.

"Although this rate is probably too low to compensate for the costs of asexuality in full, it is likely that bdelloids also take up DNA from each other or from other animals by the same mechanism. This is harder to detect but is something we are hoping to pin down in our future work".

Repair and upgrade

Exactly how bdelloids take up DNA remains uncertain. One idea is that it happens by mistake when bdelloid chromosomes are repaired following damage caused by desiccation. The ability to recover from complete desiccation is another special feature of bdelloid biology.

However, the present study found that foreign genes have also been taken up in bdelloids that cannot survive desiccation and live in permanently aquatic habitats (such as ponds), albeit at a slower rate. This means that desiccation cannot be the only mechanism for DNA uptake in bdelloids.

Professor Barraclough adds: "Bdelloid rotifers are a remarkable group of animals that challenge our understanding of evolutionary processes. Most people are unaware of their existence, yet every time you step on soil or clear moss from a pavement, you come into close proximity to these strange and fascinating animals."

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' Horizontal gene transfer in bdelloid rotifers is ancient, ongoing and more frequent in species from desiccating habitats' by Isobel Eyres, Chiara Boschetti, Alastair Crisp, Thomas P. Smith, Diego Fontaneto, Alan Tunnacliffe and Timothy G. Barraclough is published in BMC Biology.

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All-female animals adapt without sex by stealing foreign DNA | Imperial News | Imperial College London

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A group of female-only animals that reproduce by cloning have adapted to different environments by taking up DNA from other organisms. Most animals reproduce sexually, and the mix of genes from both parents helps each generation to take on new characteristics. If these characteristics are favorable to the environment, then over time they will spread through the whole population.

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Three zoos in the United States-Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo, Wichita's Sedgwick County Zoo and the Dallas Zoo-intend to import 18 African elephants from Swaziland. The 3 male elephants and 15 females were born in the wild and range from 6 to 25 years old, according to a press release by the zoos.

The project is being overseen by Room for Rhinos, a partnership between the zoos and officials in Swaziland. The zoos say the move is essential because the elephants are crowding out rhinos and other animals in Swaziland-and if they don't come to the U.S., they'll have to be killed.

In an open letter, 80 conservationists, scientists, and animal welfare advocates around the world have condemned the plan. They argue that elephants confined in zoos display abnormal behavior, suffer physical disabilities, and die young-and too often.

According to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which promotes and oversees zoos in the U.S., there are 160 African elephants and 139 Asian elephants in its affiliated institutions.

Room for Rhinos says the elephants will be housed in top-notch exhibition quarters: Henry Doorly Zoo's elephant habitat is new-part of a $73-million-dollar expansion-and Sedgwick County Zoo's habitat is the third largest in the country.

In Swaziland, a private nonprofit trust called Big Game Parks manages three game reserves, including Hlane Royal National Park and Mkhaya Game Reserve, which hold some 33 elephants.

The zoos say they want to bring in the elephants "to improve the sustainability of elephants in North America," according to Dennis Pate, director of the Henry Doorly Zoo. Another reason, as reported in the Omaha World-Herald, is that they plan to use the three male elephants for breeding.

Elephants, especially babies, draw crowds. "It's not a question of 'if' but a question of 'when' we will have young elephant calves born here," said Mark Reed, Sedgwick County Zoo's director, in the Wichita Eagle."That's going to skyrocket the attendance like nothing ever has here."

In 2012, an award-winning special report by the Seattle Times found that the infant mortality rate of elephants in U.S. zoos was almost triple that of elephants in the wild. "Of the 321 elephant deaths for which the Times had complete records," the report states, "half were dead by age 23, more than a quarter of a century before their expected life spans of 50 to 60 years."

The reporters analyzed zoo fatalities from the past 50 years and found that most elephants "died from injury or disease linked to conditions of their captivity." These included "chronic foot problems caused by standing on hard surfaces to musculoskeletal disorders from inactivity caused by being penned or chained for days and weeks at a time."

Swaziland has been experiencing a serious drought, and according to Room for Rhinos, the elephants in the reserves are "consuming the parks' tree and plant life faster than it can naturally regenerate."

Room for Rhinos says it's now putting new emphasis on conserving rhinos and that "the habitats currently decimated by the impact of a few dozen elephants have the potential to support hundreds of black and white rhinos." Although African elephants are being poached in the tens of thousands every year, their overall numbers are still estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Rhinos, on the other hand, have been reduced continent-wide to about 25,000.

The signers of the open letter say the rationale behind the import-that the elephants pose, as Room for Rhinos says, a "significant threat to other wildlife, which range more widely in the major portions of the reserves"-is "highly questionable" and that the plan is "a business transaction" with "no single redeeming virtue."

According to an environmental assessment by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is evaluating the import proposal, the elephants lived in two fenced enclosures totaling around 15,000 acres -a fraction of the reserves' total areas.

No information has been made public as to the numbers of rhinos in these fenced areas, nor any documentation of habitat competition between the rhinos and elephants, according to the letter.

If the elephants can't be brought to the U.S. zoos, Big Game Parks claims that the only option is to cull them.

Such a drastic step is "unethical," says conservationist Ian Redmond, ambassador of the United Nations Environment Programme's Convention on Migratory Species and one of the signers of the open letter. "Anyone who has experienced elephant behavior and cognition would see elephants as beings of higher order and intelligence. An elephant is a being who deserves respect."
The Export-Import Approval Process
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Laury Parramore said the service "may authorize the import of live African elephants from Swaziland if regulatory requirements under the Endangered Species Act and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species [CITES] are met." The service is accepting public comments until November 23 and will take those into consideration when making its determination.

Under international law set by CITES, which regulates the international wildlife trade, Swaziland's elephants are threatened with extinction. Therefore, CITES stipulates, trade in the species must be only be authorized in exceptional circumstances.

That means the import must not be "detrimental to the survival of the species involved" and that the elephants must "not to be used for primarily commercial purposes."

It's unclear under CITES whether a country should consider imports for zoological exhibition a "primarily commercial purpose." But David Favre, an animal law professor at Michigan State University who has written a book about international trade in endangered species, writes that CITES allows zoos to import animals even though they'll make money from displaying them.

"There has never been a conclusion in CITES that zoos are not commercial institutions," says Liu Yuan, a CITES communications officer. "It all depends on the nature of each transaction, and the decision has to be made by the importing country."

Swaziland also must evaluate and approve the transfer, once the U.S. has given approval. Swaziland's CITES official charged with granting an export permit is Ted Reilly, and as it happens, Reilly is also the CEO of Big Game Parks. (Listen to Reilly discussing why the elephants should go to the zoos here.)

Neither Reilly nor Big Game Parks responded to repeated requests for comment on the export-import plan.

This isn't the first time Big Game Parks has sent elephants to U.S. zoos. In 2003, two of its reserves held 30 adults and 6 calves, and wildlife managers, citing overpopulation, arranged for 11 elephants to go to San Diego Zoo and Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo. The zoos paid $133,000 for the elephants. If this hadn't happened, Big Game Parks said at the time, the elephants would have had to be killed.

Born Free, an animal advocacy organization, sued unsuccessfully to prevent the 2003 export.

What's happening now, says Cynthia Moss, the founder of Kenya's Amboseli Trust for Elephants, a conservation and research organization, "is the same thing, absolutely. Same group. Basically what they're doing is farming elephants. They're breeding them to export."

Will Travers, the president of Born Free, agrees. "I see no logic to this export except U.S. zoos want elephants, and Swaziland would like to have the cash."

The Fish and Wildlife Service reports that the zoos have agreed to give Big Game Parks $450,000 over the next five years in exchange for the elephants.

Big Game Parks's argument that the elephants are destroying the habitat for other wildlife is "nonsense," said Keith Lindsay, a conservation biologist and scientific adviser for the Amboseli Trust for Elephants.

"They're kept in such small parts of the reserves, and there are huge areas with no elephants," he said. Besides, "Elephants eat trees-that's what they do. If there are a lot of elephants in a small space and not a lot of trees, that's what will happen."

Even if a reserve does have too many elephants, Will Travers says, there are reasonable alternatives to killing some or sending them to zoos.

One possibility is immunocontraception, a non-invasive birth control method that has been used successfully in South Africa. Another is to move the elephants to reserves elsewhere in Swaziland. Reportedly, South Africa has said it would be open to taking them.

As Dereck Joubert, a wildlife filmmaker and National Geographic explorer-in-residence, points out, elephants have been relocated successfully before, including from Botswana to Angola and within Mozambique and Malawi.

"Wild elephants and zoos are a horrible combination," Joubert says. "Elephants need to roam and feed and interact with others daily, hourly, year after year. They need to revisit ancient burial sites and wander ancestral paths. They need the opportunities to be playful, to stand and just be with their sisters and aunts and extended families, and they need to hear a call from five miles away from a nearby clan."

They need to live that way, he says, "to be whole. And they can't be whole in a zoo."
Christina Russo is a freelance writer who has reported on animal issues for more than a decade. Follow her on Read more stories about wildlife crime and exploitation on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ngwildlife@natgeo.com.Twitter.

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Should U.S. Zoos Be Allowed to Import 18 African Elephants?

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Three zoos in the United States-Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo, Wichita's Sedgwick County Zoo and the Dallas Zoo-intend to import 18 African elephants from Swaziland. The 3 male elephants and 15 females were born in the wild and range from 6 to 25 years old, according to a press release by the zoos.