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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170306151722.htm

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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/feb/28/asda-sell-free-range-milk-cows-reared-outside-six-months

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http://www.lifewithdogs.tv/2017/02/heroic-dog-saves-three-people-from-being-crushed-to-death-in-a-snow-fort-collapse/

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A Nova Scotia man, his, son, and his son's friend are incredibly lucky to be alive today after a snow fort they were building caved in, burying each of them under at least a thousand pounds of snow. But lucky for them, their heroic dog, Zoose, dug the man out, allowing him to call for help to save the kids.

Steve Bayers, his son Ben, and Ben's friend Adam Inch were having fun building a snow fort on Saturday afternoon when the roof of their structure suddenly collapsed, burying all three deep enough that their screams could not be heard more than even a few inches away.

"We were all trapped," Steve told Global News. "I knew it was very serious when my arms were pinned underneath me and my leg, my heel was into my back and my foot was twisted up and I couldn't get any of my limbs free."

"I didn't know what happened," Ben said. "I thought someone just jumped on me and then I realized the weight just kept gaining and gaining and that's when I realized I couldn't move and I started panicking."

"It was pitch black and we heard everybody screaming and stuff, we were right beside each other, at the top of your lungs and couldn't hear them very well," Adam added.

Just then, five-year-old Zoose came to the rescue! He had been outside playing too, but wasn't in the same area when the snow gave way, and immediately got to work digging his people out.

"The dog dug in and started to pull the back of my jacket and I knew at that point, if I could get an arm or a leg free and get my leg untwisted, I had a chance of getting out and helping the kids," Steve said. [Zoose] was the inspiration. I can't say it enough."

Once Steve was unpinned, he was able to yell loudly enough for neighbor Peter Mansfield to come rushing over to free the boys.

"I heard the hollers of Steve and I just come over and started shoveling trying to get the kids out," Peter said.

Steve suffered a broken fibula (OUCH!) and a twisted knee, Ben was concussed, and Adam lucky remained unscathed. Of course, had it not be for Zoose, all three of them surely would have suffocated under the tremendous weight of the snow.

"I happen to be a structural engineer and my son was trapped in it," explained Adam's father, Jimmie. "When I calculated it out, there was probably 1,200 pounds on top of each of them."

Way to go, Zoose - someone give that doggie a steak!

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Heroic Dog Saves Three People from Being Crushed to Death in a Snow Fort Collapse

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Steve suffered a broken fibula and Ben was concussed, but had it not be for...

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ben blades- It's awittle baby supernova! awwwwe

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ben blades- It's awittle baby supernova! awwwwe

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http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/02/15/baby-supernova-discovery-hints-at-how-star-explosions-are-born.html

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Scientists estimate the Mongolian saiga population to be about 10,000, which means this deadly infectious disease outbreak has killed about 25 percent of the endangered antelope.

Credit: Buuveibaatar Bayabaatar/ Wildlife Conservation Society

A critically endangered species of antelope is dying by the thousands from a deadly infectious disease outbreak in Mongolia, and scientists fear there could be "catastrophic consequences" for the threatened animals and their ecosystem.

Since December 2016, about 2,500 Mongolian saiga ( Saiga tatarica mongolica) - a unique subspecies of saiga antelope - have died from a livestock virus. Scientists estimate the Mongolian saiga population to be about 10,000, meaning the deadly outbreak has killed about 25 percent of the endangered steppe-dwelling antelope. The virus, known as PPR or peste des petits ruminants, was introduced to the Mongolian saiga population in September, from infected goats and sheep, scientists said.

Though the die-off rate has slowed, it could have repercussions throughout the local environment, said Amanda Fine, a veterinarian and associate director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) Wildlife Health Program in Asia. [ Photos: A 2015 Mass Die-Off of the Endangered Saiga Antelope]

"The situation is tragic and widespread," Fine said in a statement. "Along with the impact to the saiga population, this event has the potential to produce cascading catastrophic consequences on the ecosystem. For example, ibex and argali may be affected, and rare snow leopards may suffer the effects of a diminished prey base."

PPR, which is also known as sheep and goat plague, is highly contagious and can infect up to 90 percent of an animal herd once introduced, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The disease is spread via body fluids, feces and close proximity, and symptoms include fever, anorexia, diffuclty breathing and more. After just a few days affected animals become depressed, very weak, and severely dehydrated, according to the FAO. The FAO and the World Organization for Animal Health are working to eradicate PPR by 2030, but the disease is known to have infected animal populations in more than 70 countries.

In Mongolia, a rapid-response team has begun collecting samples from the dead and diseased saiga in an effort to stop the spread of infection and determine how to support the species' recovery.

"The best way to prevent PPR is through further immunization of livestock in not only saiga range areas, but [also] other affected-species range areas," Fine said. "Stress-free conditions for recovering saiga and access to food and water resources should be provided in order to save the last population of Mongolian saiga from extinction."

The saiga face other threats aside from illness. People use the antelope's horns in traditional medicine, making the animals vulnerable to poaching. More than 90 percent of the saiga population has been lost in recent decades, according to WCS officials.

Original article on Live Science.

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Endangered Antelopes Face 'Catastrophic' Die-Off

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This is the first known deadly infectious disease outbreak in the endangered Mongolian saiga population.

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pandas no longer endangerd; gorrilla numbers decline - cnn

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The population of the giant panda rose 17% from 2004 to 2014. The gorilla population declined more than 70% in the past 20 years.

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/wildlife-watch-china-legal-ivory-market-african-elephants/

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/01/wildlife-watch-giant-clam-regulations-china/

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A fearsome, wolf-size otter with a large head and a powerful jaw once swam around the shallow, swampy waters of ancient China, likely hunting for clams and other shellfish, a new study finds.

The 6.2-million-year-old beast is among the largest otter species on record, the researchers in the new study said. At 110 lbs. (50 kilograms), the animal would have been about twice the size of the modern-day South American giant river otter ( Pteronura brasiliensis) and about four times the size of the Eurasian otter ( Lutra lutra), the researchers said.

"This extinct otter is larger than all living otters," said study lead researcher Xiaoming Wang, a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in California. [ See images of the fearsome wolf-size otter]

Researchers discovered the otter's remains in 2010, after a Chinese and U.S. field team found a nearly complete skull in Shuitangba quarry, located in southwestern China.

"The skull was unlike [that of] any other animals found so far, and that's when we realized that this is something unique and important," Wang told Live Science.

The wolf-size otter lived in a shallow swamp surrounded by thick vegetation.

Credit: Mauricio Antón

However, piecing the skull together was a challenging feat. "Because the skull was preserved in soft brown coal, it has been badly crushed into a pancake-like shape during the compaction of soft sediments," Wang said.

By using a computed tomography (CT) scanner, study co-author Stuart White, a professor emeritus of maxillofacial radiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, was able to digitally restore the skull's 3D shape. Wang compared the reconstruction to "playing a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, only to be done by computer mouse rather than by hands."

Because the skull was flattened like a pancake, researchers did a computed tomography (CT) scan of the fossil. Each color in this digital scan represents an individual fragment.

Credit: Stuart C. White

Later, in 2015, the researchers found more fossils in the quarry belonging to the same species; these finds included lower jaws, teeth and several limb bones, Wang said.

A cranial analysis showed that while the skull of the newly discovered creature is like that of an otter, it has badger-like teeth, Wang said. This inspired the researchers to name the newfound species Siamogale melilutra, because "meles" is Latin for badger and "lutra" is Latin for otter, Wang said.

S. melilutra belongs to an "obscure group of extinct otter in East Asia [that] diverged early from the main otter lineage and formed a distinct group of its own," Wang said. Until now, researchers only knew about this lineage from fossilized teeth found in Thailand, the scientists said.

The skull is like that of an otter, but the teeth are like those of a badger.

Credit: Xiaoming Wang

Moreover, the new findings suggest that S. melilutra belongs to one of the oldest and most primitive otter lineages, one that goes back at least 18 million years, to the European, badger-like animal Paralutra, the researchers said.

It's unclear why S. melilutra was so big, the researchers said. Usually, when carnivores evolve to be large, it's so that they have the strength to subdue prey, Wang said.

"But in our fossil otter, it is more likely a mollusk eater, and its powerful skull and jaws may be designed to crack tough shells of clams," he said.

Wang noted that modern sea otters also crack mollusks. But in addition to using their powerful teeth, these modern species also use tools - that is, rocks - to smash open the shells. [ 10 Animals That Use Tools]

"Perhaps our fossil otter had not learned to use rocks, and instead [would] apply brute strength to crush hard shells," Wang said.

This question is just one of many that researchers have about S. melilutra, said study co-researcher Denise Su, a curator at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

"We are working to answer questions regarding its paleobiology, like, 'How did it swim? How did it move on the ground? Why is it so large?'"

The study was published online today (Jan. 23) in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.

Original article on Live Science.

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Adorable Terror: Wolf-Size Otter Hunted in Ancient China

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More than 6 million years ago, a wolf-size otter swam through the swampy waters of ancient China, crushing clams with its powerful teeth.

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How do birds perfect their pitches? The chemical dopamine spikes when they sing right, and dips when they drop a note, new data show.

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Where's 'Granny'? Oldest Orca Is Missing, and the Worst Is Feared

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A killer whale thought to be over 100 years old and known affectionately as "Granny" has not been sighted in several months and is thought to be deceased.

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Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, in a region known as the Manú Biosphere Reserve, Shirley Jennifer Serrano Rojas crouched near a stream. She listened while her audio recorder tracked the noise of the rain forest around her. Then she heard something: an unfamiliar frog's croak, not far off. But as soon as she snapped her head to locate the source of the sound, it disappeared.

It was the summer of 2013, and Serrano Rojas-a senior field scientist with the Crees Foundation -had been surveying amphibians in this part of Peru. She had heard all kinds of calls, but she didn't recognize this one.

Back at camp later that day, her advisor, Andrew Whitworth, listened to the recording and confirmed Serrano Rojas' suspicions: She had likely come across a new species.

Further trips to the same stream finally netted the mysterious singer: a black poison frog with two orange stripes down its body. Further years of study-including genetic and evolutionary analysis-confirmed that Ameerega shihuemoy was indeed new to science.

The description of the frog was published on January 16 in the journal Zootaxa.

Poison frogs, also known as poison dart frogs, belong to a diverse group that is commonly associated with curare and other toxins, with which indigenous people have historically laced their hunting spears. But herpetologists are interested in studying the frogs for reasons beyond their toxicity, says evolutionary biologist Kyle Summers of East Carolina University.

For example, poison frogs rear their young in a remarkable way. Unlike most male frogs, which move on after the female has laid her eggs, male poison frogs will stay and care for the eggs, making sure they remain hydrated and covered with water. The male will then move the tadpoles to small pools of water, while the mother lays more eggs-to serve as food-for her growing brood.

The frogs' brightly colored bodies are also a curiosity. "The striking coloring probably serves as a warning to predators that these frogs aren't good to eat," Summers says.

It's no secret that chunks of the Amazonian rain forest are lost every year to human activities, which means that scientists like Serrano Rojas are racing against time to log new species before they're destroyed. The Manú Biosphere Reserve is part of the Peruvian government's efforts to try to protect some of the country's biodiversity.

The reserve includes a national park-which is protected from commercial activities and road building-and some bordering areas that have less protection and serve as a buffer zone to the park. (Read more about Manú here.)

Serrano Rojas was working in the buffer zone when she first heard the call of Ameerega shihuemoy. "It was an exciting discovery, but the species is threatened with extinction," she says. "It could get worse if we don't make conservation plans."

Summers agrees. The Manú Biosphere Reserve is a hot spot for frogs and other species, he says, and this discovery underscores just how little we know about the region. He believes many poison frog species remain to be discovered.

The problem, he says, is that "they're disappearing before we can study them."

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New Poisonous Frog Species Discovered in Peru

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Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, in a region known as the Manú Biosphere Reserve, Shirley Jennifer Serrano Rojas crouched near a stream. She listened while her audio recorder tracked the noise of the rain forest around her. Then she heard something: an unfamiliar frog's croak, not far off.

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Tilikum was at the center of the 2013 CNN documentary "Blackfish."

"Tilikum passed away early this morning, January 6, surrounded by the trainers, care staff and veterinarians that provided him around-the-clock world-class care," SeaWorld said on its website.

SeaWorld reported in March that the orca -- estimated then to be 35 -- may be dying. It also announced then that it would no longer house the whales at its water parks.

"Tilikum had, and will continue to have, a special place in the hearts of the SeaWorld family, as well as the millions of people all over the world that he inspired," SeaWorld president and CEO Joel Manby in a statement. "My heart goes out to our team who c ared for him like family."

The company has come under fire for its treatment of killer whales since the 2013 CNN documentary.

A post on the Blackfish Twitter account said, "Heartbreaking news. SeaWorld has announced the passing of Tilikum #RIPTilikum #Blackfish"

The film gave a disturbing portrayal of the captivity of the killer whales in SeaWorld. The Orlando-based water park operator responded to the film by calling it false, misleading and "emotionally manipulative" propaganda.

In a Twitter post on Friday, the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals shared a photo of the whale with the message: "R.I.P. Tilikum Dead after three decades of misery."

In March, when SeaWorld announced that the killer whales currently in its care will be the last generation of the mammals enclosed at the water parks, the company said, "Why the big news? SeaWorld has been listening and we're changing. Society is changing and we're changing with it."

Other whales remain at the water park.

"The orcas will continue to live at SeaWorld for many years to come, inspiring guests in new and natural ways," the company said on its website at the time "They will continue to receive the highest-quality care based on the latest advances in marine veterinary medicine, science and zoological best practices."

PETA said SeaWorld had not gone far enough.

Tilikum became a part of SeaWorld 25 years ago, according to the company. The whale was near the high end of the average life expectancy for male killer whales according to an independent scientific review.

"While the official cause of death will not be determined until the necropsy is completed, the SeaWorld veterinarians were treating a persistent and complicated bacterial lung infection," SeaWorld said Friday.

"The suspected bacteria is part of a group of bacteria that is found in water and soil both in wild habitats and zoological settings."

Treatment included "combinations of anti-inflammatories, anti-bacterials, anti-nausea medications, hydration therapy and aerosolized antimicrobial therapy," according to SeaWorld.

"Tilikum's life will always be inextricably connected with the loss of our dear friend and colleague, Dawn Brancheau," the SeaWorld statement added.

Brancheau, 40, died in 2010 from "multiple traumatic injuries and drowning" after the 12,000-pound killer whale grabbed her ponytail and pulled her underwater in front of shocked onlookers at Shamu Stadium, the Orange County Sheriff's office reported then.

Rescuers were not immediately able to reach Brancheau because of the "whale's aggressive nature," the sheriff's office said at the time.

She was recovered by SeaWorld staff members after Tilikum was coaxed into a smaller pool and lifted out of the water by a large platform on the bottom of the smaller tank, authorities said.

Tilikum had been linked to two other deaths. He and two other whales were involved in the drowning of a trainer at a Victoria, British Columbia, marine park in 1991. The trainer fell into the whale tank at the Sea Land Marine Park Victoria and was dragged underwater as park visitors watched.

In 1999, Tilikum was also blamed for the death of a 27-year-old man whose body was found floating in a tank at SeaWorld, the apparent victim of a whale's "horseplay," authorities said then. The sheriff's office said the man apparently hid in the park until after it closed, then climbed into the tank.

Tilikum was captured off the coast of Iceland and sired 21 calves in captivity. SeaWorld now has 22 orcas at its three facilities in Orlando, Florida; San Antonio, Texas; and San Diego, California.

Many people expressed sadness over the whale's passing on social media Friday, while others labeled Tilikum "a murderer."

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Killer whale at center of 'Blackfish' dies

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Tilikum was at the center of the 2013 CNN documentary "Blackfish." "Tilikum passed away early this morning, January 6, surrounded by the trainers, care staff and veterinarians that provided him around-the-clock world-class care," SeaWorld said on its website. SeaWorld reported in March that the orca -- estimated then to be 35 -- may be dying.

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Worker mauled to death at California sanctuary by her favorite lion | CNN

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On Wednesday, a 24-year-old Seattle woman was killed when she was mauled by a 350-pound African lion inside a cage at the sanctuary where she was interning.

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Puppies prick up their ears to human cooing but adult dogs are unmoved by it, according to a new study.

Scientists have found that humans use a sing-song cadence, similar to that used towards babies, when talking to dogs - regardless of the age of the animal. But the tone only draws the attention of puppies: older dogs showed no preference over normal human speech.

"The use of pet-directed speech is extremely widespread, but its functional value has barely been studied," said Nicolas Mathevon, lead author of the research from the University of Lyon at Saint-Etienne.

The research, he adds, could also shed light on human use of baby-talk: both might have a common purpose in attempting to engage with a listener that cannot speak.

In the first stage of the research, 30 women were each presented with images of a puppy, an adult dog and an elderly canine and recorded uttering a sentence involving phrases such as "hello cutie!", "who's a good boy?" and "come here sweetie pie!". They were also asked to repeat the phrase in their normal tone to a researcher.

The researchers found that when talking to dogs, humans typically use higher-pitched, slower tempo speech with a greater degree of variation in pitch than when talking to each other. The effect was most pronounced when chatting to puppies, with participants increasing their pitch by 21% on average compared to normal speech.Mathevon says the results, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B by researchers from the UK, US and France, provide clues as to why humans address their pets in a similar way to babies. "The fact that human speakers employ dog-directed speech to communicate with dogs of all ages is interesting because it could mean that we use this kind of speech pattern when we want to facilitate interaction with a non-speaking listener, and not only a juvenile listener," said Mathevon.

The researchers also found that while puppies showed no difference in response between puppy-talk over speech directed at adult dogs, they did show a greater response to puppy-talk over human-directed speech. Adult dogs, on the other hand, showed no difference in their response to the recordings.

That is unexpected, the authors say, and could be down to dogs showing less interest in the voices of strangers as they age. Alternatively, the use of dog-directed speech might tap into an innate receptiveness to high-pitched sounds in puppies - a trait that disappears as they age.

Evan MacLean, evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Arizona, said that the research was another piece of evidence of the overlap between human-dog and parent-child relationships. "As a result of selection for juvenile traits, dogs emit a lot of signals that scream 'baby' to humans, which can facilitate special kinds of interactions with dogs, normally reserved for children," he said. "The question we don't have a great answer to is whether there are long term functional consequences of interacting with dogs in this way (e.g. effects on word learning), or if this is just a byproduct of the baby-like cues that dogs inundate us with."

But Catherine Laing, a researcher in neuroscience at Duke University in North Carolina who was not involved in the study, disagreed with the suggestion that similarities in the pitch of baby-talk and pet-talk indicates a link to non-speaking listeners. She points out that the two forms of speech have many differences - not only in the type of words used and how they are articulated, but also in the interactions between listener and adult.

"Baby-talk [or infant-directed speech] is complex and aimed at supporting language learning, and we can't say the same about the observations made in this paper," she said.

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Puppies' response to speech could shed light on baby-talk, suggests study

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Puppies prick up their ears to human cooing but adult dogs are unmoved by it, according to a new study. Scientists have found that humans use a sing-song cadence, similar to that used towards babies, when talking to dogs - regardless of the age of the animal.

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Hibernating Bears: Help for Alzheimer's

When animals and humans collide, zoonotic diseases, which jump from animals and humans, such as Ebola, result. Other times, though, Mother Nature's impact on human life can have a positive - even life-saving - result.

Animal and human diseases can be so similar that there's a trend in medicine toward M.D.'s and veterinarians joining up to solve medical mysteries, and treat patients. "Mammals are mammals are mammals," Dr. Larry Norton, an oncologist and deputy physician-in-chief for breast cancer programs at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, told ABC News after a meeting between the two disciplines at The Bronx Zoo. "There are more similarities than there are differences between the species. When these similarities [in illness] arise, they convey important information. The more knowledge we have about cancer in mammals, for example, the more we can help all the mammals - whether it's humans or the animals."

In some cases, an animal's natural protection against disease might help scientists unlock treatments for certain conditions in humans.

For example, what happens to bears' brains while they hibernate could lead to potential treatments for Alzheimer's disease.

U.K. researchers induced hibernation in mice to study brain activity. In doing so, they identified a pathway that might help keep bears' brains intact during this seasonal sleep. Their findings are published in the journal .

When bears hibernate, an estimated 20 to 30 percent of their synapses - the connections between brain cells - are lost. But when spring's warmer temperatures hit, these connections are restored with no memory loss, the BBC explained.

After observing the synapse development in both younger and older mice, scientists found only the younger ones regained their synapses, thanks to the chemical RBM3. This prompted researchers to test the idea that RBM3 could be artificially boosted to stop synapse death in humans.

For patients with early-stage Alzheimer's, synapse death is the first to occur; death of entire brain cells soon follows.

Right now, the research is extremely preliminary - just "an interesting concept," the BBC wrote. But it could pave the way to memory-strengthening treatments in humans.

Read on for more ways incredible animals are advancing human medicine.

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10 Animals That May Hold Human Disease Secrets | The Weather Channel

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Incredible animals are advancing human medicine.

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Slip-sliding outer covering also aids in Houdini escapes

View the video

NEW ORLEANS, La. - Skin that mostly hangs loose around hagfishes proves handy for living through a shark attack or wriggling through a crevice.

The skin on hagfishes' long, sausage-style bodies is attached in a line down the center of their backs and in flexible connections where glands release slime, explained Douglas Fudge of Chapman University in Orange, Calif. This floating skin easily slip-slides in various directions. A shark tooth can puncture the skin but not stab into the muscle below. And a shark attack is just one of the crises when loose skin can help, Fudge reported January 5 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.

Hagfishes can fend off an attacking shark by quick-releasing a cloud of slime. Yet video of such events shows that a shark can land a bite before getting slimed. To figure out how hagfishes might survive such

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Unusually loose skin helps hagfish survive shark attacks

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Hagfish skin that easily slips and slides can be a lifesaver in crises such as shark attacks.

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Thailand: 10 crocodiles break loose from zoo | The Indian Express

At least 10 crocodiles have broken loose from a zoo in Nakhon Si Thammarat province of Thailand after floods hit the area. According to a government official, all the reptiles, deer and rare bird species had escaped from Tha Lad Zoo that houses more than 10 crocodiles, some measuring up to five metre long, Xinhua news agency reported.

Authorities said crocodiles were swimming through rising flood waters and warned the locals to take special caution. Municipal workers tried to locate the animals in order to keep them away from populated areas but the rising water level made the task complicated. Torrential rain and flooding continued to ravage 10 provinces in the south of Thailand, affecting at least 700,000 people and disrupting transport.

For all the latest World News, download Indian Express App

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Thailand: 10 crocodiles break loose from zoo

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Authorities said crocodiles were swimming through rising flood waters and warned the locals to take special caution.

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The tail of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur, including bones, soft tissue, and even feathers, has been found preserved in amber, according to a report published today in the journal Current Biology.

While individual dinosaur-era feathers have been found in amber, and evidence for feathered dinosaurs is captured in fossil impressions, this is the first time that scientists are able to clearly associate well-preserved feathers with a dinosaur, and in turn gain a better understanding of the evolution and structure of dinosaur feathers.

The research, led by paleontologist Lida Xing of the China University of Geosciences, was funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Expeditions Council.

The semitranslucent mid- Cretaceous amber sample, roughly the size and shape of a dried apricot, captures one of the earliest moments of differentiation between the feathers of birds of flight and the feathers of dinosaurs. ( Learn more about the evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and birds.)

Inside the lump of resin is a 1.4-inch appendage covered in delicate feathers, described as chestnut brown with a pale or white underside.

CT scans and microscopic analysis of the sample revealed eight vertebrae from the middle or end of a long, thin tail that may have been originally made up of more than 25 vertebrae.

Based on the structure of the tail, researchers believe it belongs to a juvenile coelurosaur, part of a group of theropod dinosaurs that includes everything from tyrannosaurs to modern birds.
Feathered, but Could It Fly?
The presence of articulated tail vertebrae in the sample enabled researchers to rule out the possibility that the feathers belonged to a prehistoric bird. Modern birds and their closest Cretaceous ancestors feature a set of fused tail vertebrae called a pygostyle that enables tail feathers to move as a single unit.

"[A pygostyle] is the sort of thing you've seen if you've ever prepared a turkey," says study co-author Ryan McKellar, curator of invertebrate paleontology at Canada's Royal Saskatchewan Museum.

The dinosaur feathers feature a poorly defined central shaft (rachis) and appear to keel to either side of the tail. The open, flexible structure of the feathers is more similar to modern ornamental feathers than to flight feathers, which have well-defined central shafts, branches, sub-branches, and hooks that latch the structure together.

In a report in June of this year by the same research team, Cretaceous-era bird wings preserved in amber revealed feathers remarkably similar to the flight feathers of modern birds.

The current study concludes that if the entire length of the dinosaur tail was covered in the type of feathers seen in the sample, the dinosaur "would likely have been incapable of flight." Rather, such feathers may have served a signaling function or played a role in temperature regulation, says McKellar. ( Could dinosaurs fly?)

Maybe we can find a complete dinosaur.

The weakly developed tail feathers also suggest that the owner of the Cretaceous tail falls somewhere lower down on the evolutionary tree of theropod dinosaurs, "perhaps a basal [primitive] maniraptoran," Xing suggests, referring to the subgroup of coelurosaurs that includes oviraptorosaurs and therizinosaurs. ( See the oviraptorosaur that paleontologists have dubbed the "chicken from hell.")
Destined for Jewelry, but With a Silver Lining
The amber sample-formally called DIP-V-15103 and nicknamed "Eva" in honor of paleobotanist Eva Koppelhus, the wife of co-author Philip Currie -comes from a mine in the Hukawng Valley in Kachin state, northern Myanmar. Amber from this region most likely contains the world's largest variety of animal and plant life from the Cretaceous period.

It was one of more than a dozen amber samples with significant inclusions that were collected by Xing and his research team in 2015 at a well-known amber market in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state. Two of the other samples contained the dinosaur-era bird wings published earlier this summer.

The majority of Burmese amber is used in jewelry and carvings, and the "Eva" sample had already been subject to shaping by the time it was collected by the researchers.

The modification had a silver lining, however: It offered "a nice cross section" through the tail that enabled the scientists to study the chemistry of the exposed surface, notes McKellar.

That study revealed the presence of ferrous iron, a decomposition product from the blood hemoglobin that was once present in the dinosaur's soft tissue.

"The fact that [the iron] is still present gives us a lot of hope for future analysis, to obtain other chemical information on things like pigmentation or even to identify parts of the original keratin," says McKellar. "Maybe not for this particular specimen, but for other [samples] down the road."

Meanwhile, Xing believes that the "nearing end" of a decades-old conflict between the Myanmar government and the Kachin Independence Army, which controls the Hukawng Valley, will lead to increased scientific access to the amber mines and, in, turn, to an increase in spectacular discoveries.

"Maybe we can find a complete dinosaur," he speculates, rather confidently.

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First Dinosaur Tail Found Preserved in Amber

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The tail of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur, including bones, soft tissue, and even feathers, has been found preserved in amber, according to a report published today in the journal Current Biology .

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yazan Damer

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Ravenous 14-Foot Python Caught with 3 Deer in Its Gut

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An invasive Burmese python snake slithering around the Florida Everglades has set a new world record by chowing down on three deer.

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Human Nature - Conservation International Blog

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Editor's note: Conservation International (CI) Vice President of Asia Pacific Marine Programs Mark Erdmann is a pioneer in the study of walking sharks, having discovered three of the nine total species over the past 10 years. New research reveals that the species' ranges are significantly smaller than previously thought, which could put their survival more in doubt.
My fascination with walking sharks began a decade ago, when I first encountered one of these strikingly colored animals on a night dive while conducting a CI-led marine Rapid Assessment Program survey of Cendrawasih Bay in Indonesia's Bird's Head Seascape.

Also known as bamboo or epaulette sharks, these curious little bottom sharks are only active at night, when they emerge from hiding places to "walk" about the reef in search of food. Though seemingly a peculiar mode of locomotion for a shark, they are adapted for poking their heads under corals and into nooks and crannies in search of crabs, shrimps, small fishes and various mollusks; they can even use this skill to crawl above water between isolated tide pools.

As it turned out, that first walking shark I ran into was a species new to science (subsequently named Hemiscyllium galei), and video of its unique walking behavior was broadcast around the world. The sharks' newfound celebrity status was the driving impetus for the Blue Auction, where CI and partners auctioned the naming rights to 11 fish species discovered in the Bird's Head. The walking shark was the star of that event, fetching $500,000 that was immediately used to launch the Kalabia, a shrimp trawler turned marine conservation education vessel in the Raja Ampat archipelago. The brightly painted ship now travels from village to village delivering a customized conservation education curriculum to primary school children - often giving them their first look at the marine life in their own backyards.
New findings
Kalabia is the local name for the walking shark, which is the much-loved mascot of the program. Indeed, over the years we've found that the walking shark is a great conservation ambassador for its "toothier" cousins, allowing us to start important discussions with communities and government about shark and ray conservation, and leading to the declaration of Southeast Asia's first shark and ray sanctuary in Raja Ampat in 2012!

In the seven years following that first discovery in Cendrawasih Bay, we've uncovered three more new species of walking shark, bringing the total to nine species in the genus Hemiscyllium. Our studies on these enigmatic creatures over the past decade have revealed a host of unusual aspects to their ecology and distribution that we've just published in a major review of the genus along with colleagues from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, University of Queensland and Australia's CSIRO.

Previous studies on walking sharks have indicated relatively wide-ranging and overlapping distributions for the initially known five species, most being reported from either the coast of the northern half of Australia and/or the circumference of the island of New Guinea. However, in reality we have found that each of the nine species has highly restricted, non-overlapping ranges that form a ring around northern Australia, New Guinea and the satellite Indonesian islands of Raja Ampat, Aru and Halmahera.

The reason for these relatively tiny geographic distributions of each walking shark species appears to be related to their unusual form of reproduction.

Most coral reef fishes "broadcast spawn" in the water column, with the resulting fertilized eggs (and tiny larvae which hatch within a few days' time) then drifting in the currents for days or weeks. This method provides a great mode of dispersal which can result in distributions spanning entire ocean basins.

By comparison, the walking sharks are oviparous, laying specialized egg cases which hatch into juveniles that are essentially miniature adults - with very little chance of long-distance movements. This extremely limited dispersal potential has resulted in highly-restricted ranges for each of the species.

Our new understanding suggests a more complicated conservation road ahead for walking sharks, as isolated species with smaller ranges are often more vulnerable to localized threats such as pollution or overfishing. The discovery may lead to increased calls for specific protections for walking sharks, as did a similar finding on giraffes earlier this year.
Mark Erdmann is a marine scientist and the vice president of CI's Asia Pacific marine programs. Want to read more stories like this? Further reading for email updates. to Conservation International.
Fortunately, many of the walking sharks are already at least partly protected through inclusion of significant parts of their ranges in marine protected areas; the Bird's Head Seascape marine protected area network, for instance, covers habitat occupied by three of the walking shark species, with one of these ( Hemiscyllium freycineti) completely protected by the Raja Ampat Shark and Ray Sanctuary. Nonetheless, several species currently have no specific protections, so we hope the results of this study will spur further conservation efforts on behalf of these most endearing elasmobranchs - not only for their benefit, but for the wider ocean and all who depend on it.

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Why 'walking' sharks are at greater risk of extinction than we...

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Although the habitats of many walking sharks are at least partially protected, new research reveals their survival may be in doubt.

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

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The amount of electricity generated from UK coal power stations is on track to fall by two-thirds this year, a decline which analysts said was so steep and fast it was unprecedented globally.

Climate change thinktank Sandbag said the drop was due to a doubling in the price of a carbon tax and the lower price of gas. The group has written to the chancellor, Philip Hammond, urging him not to water down the carbon floor price in this month's autumn statement, which the steel industry has been lobbying the government to do.

Using data up to the end of October from the Office for National Statistics and the national grid, the thinktank estimated coal generation would fall 66% by the year's end. Coal generation fell 23% in both 2015 and 2014 on the year before, and 10% in 2013.

Energy industry sources said the forecast for 2016 appeared to be broadly in line with expectations.

This year has seen a series of record lows for coal after three major plants closed, including the last remaining coal plant in Scotland. For several days in May the country's coal plants produced no power for the first time in more than a century, and output was so low that from April to September, solar panels generated more power.

"It's on top of four years' worth of falls," said Dave Jones, an analyst at Sandbag. "That fall is completely unprecedented. Everyone's talking about what they can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, people talk a few percentage points here or there, but 66% is completely unprecedented in any country ever."

Jones said the price of a tonne of carbon doubling from £9 to £18 in 2015 under the carbon floor price scheme was the driving force making coal plants uneconomic. Gas, which has been cheaper this year, has largely filled the gap in recent months.

The government last year pledged to phase out coal power entirely by 2025 to help meet its climate change commitments, but is yet to issue a consultation on the move. Sandbag said the decline in coal had seen emissions from the fuel go from 22% of the UK's total carbon footprint in 2012, to just 5% now.

Official statistics show emissions dropped 4% in 2015 due to a rapid decline in coal, and the fall will almost certainly be much greater this year.

"The carbon price support has driven a remarkable decarbonisation of UK electricity," said Jones. "The UK is now on track for a coal phase-out before 2025, but the chancellor must maintain the carbon price support, or emissions will begin growing again."

UK Steel confirmed it was lobbying the government to reduce the carbon floor price to bring down energy prices.

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UK coal-powered electricity projected to fall by record amount

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Data points to unprecedented decline of two-thirds this year due to doubling of carbon tax and low gas price

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worker killed by lion

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Worker mauled to death at California sanctuary by her favorite lion | CNN

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On Wednesday, a 24-year-old Seattle woman was killed when she was mauled by a 350-pound African lion inside a cage at the sanctuary where she was interning.

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World's rarest whale seen for the first time.

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A whale that is almost unknown to science has been seen for the first time after two individuals -- a mother and her male calf -- were stranded and died on a New Zealand beach. A report in the November 6th issue of Current Biology offers the first complete description of the spade-toothed beaked whale ( Mesoplodon traversii), a species previously known only from a few bones.

The discovery is the first evidence that this whale is still with us and serves as a reminder of just how little we still know about life in the ocean, the researchers say. The findings also highlight the importance of DNA typing and reference collections for the identification of rare species.

"This is the first time this species -- a whale over five meters in length -- has ever been seen as a complete specimen, and we were lucky enough to find two of them," says Rochelle Constantine of the University of Auckland. "Up until now, all we have known about the spade-toothed beaked whale was from three partial skulls collected from New Zealand and Chile over a 140-year period. It is remarkable that we know almost nothing about such a large mammal."

The two whales were discovered in December 2010, when they live-stranded and subsequently died on Opape Beach, New Zealand. The New Zealand Department of Conservation was called to the scene, where they photographed the animals and collected measurements and tissue samples.

The whales were initially identified not as spade-toothed beaked whales but as much more common Gray's beaked whales. Their true identity came to light only following DNA analysis, which is done routinely as part of a 20-year program to collect data on the 13 species of beaked whales found in New Zealand waters.

"When these specimens came to our lab, we extracted the DNA as we usually do for samples like these, and we were very surprised to find that they were spade-toothed beaked whales," Constantine says. "We ran the samples a few times to make sure before we told everyone."

The researchers say they really have no idea why the whales have remained so elusive.

"It may be that they are simply an offshore species that lives and dies in the deep ocean waters and only rarely wash ashore," Constantine says. "New Zealand is surrounded by massive oceans. There is a lot of marine life that remains unknown to us."

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dolphins and whales; new species; animals; marine biology; sea life; endangered animals; fish; biology

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World's rarest whale seen for the first time

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A whale that is almost unknown to science has been seen for the first time after two individuals -- a mother and her male calf -- were stranded and died on a New Zealand beach. A new report offers the first complete description of the spade-toothed beaked whale (Mesoplodon traversii), a species previously known only from a few bones.

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Of all physical sensations, ticklishness is perhaps the most mysterious. Why do we laugh in response to tickling? Why are certain body parts more ticklish? Why can we not tickle ourselves? Indeed, the mystery of ticklish perception has been discussed for more than two millennia by great intellectuals including Aristotle and Charles Darwin. Despite such long-standing interest, the mechanism of ticklishness remained elusive.

The new study investigated tickling in rats. Earlier work had shown that young rats respond with 50 kHz ultrasonic "laughter-calls" to tickling by humans. In the novel study rats also reacted enthusiastically to the tickling: they emitted numerous calls. As judged by their calls, rats were most ticklish on the belly and underneath their feet. Rats often performed unsolicited joy jumps after tickling, a behavior that can be seen in joyful subjects in various mammalian species. Rats also played with the researcher's hand and chased it, and emitted similar calls during play.

Is ticklishness a trick of the brain that rewards interacting?

The researchers (Shimpei Ishiyama & Michael Brecht) then went on to investigate the response of the rat's brain to such tickling. Specifically, the investigators studied the rat's somatosensory cortex, a large brain structure that contains an ordered representation of the body and handles stimuli on the body. In the trunk region of the somatosensory cortex, the researchers observed nerve cells that responded strongly to tickling. Interestingly, the researchers found very similar brain responses during play behaviours as during tickling, even though the rats were not touched by the scientist. Making rats anxious -- which reduces ticklishness - also reduced the activity in these cells and suppressed the calls. Remarkably, rats emitted calls just to electric stimulation of the cells in the trunk region of the somatosensory cortex without being tickled. Taken together, these results suggest that activity in the trunk somatosensory cortex represents ticklish sensation.

Professor Michael Brecht, who led the study, says: "The data much look like we identified the ticklish spot in the rat brain. I also find the similarity of brain responses to tickling and play remarkable. Perhaps ticklishness is a trick of the brain that rewards interacting and playing."

Why are we ticklish? Video of rats being tickled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ukqZj9xWyk

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animals; mice; biology; mammals; animal learning and intelligence; behavioral science; rodents; biotechnology

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Why are we ticklish? Rats are surprisingly ticklish when their mood is right

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Of all physical sensations, ticklishness is perhaps the most mysterious. Why do we laugh in response to tickling? Why are certain body parts more ticklish? Why can we not tickle ourselves? Indeed, the mystery of ticklish perception has been discussed for more than two millennia by great intellectuals including Aristotle and Charles Darwin.

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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/10/20/man-comes-face-to-face-with-6-foot-snake-that-suddenly-slithers-out-of-hiding-but-where-it-popped-out-might-be-scarier/

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

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Hero dog helps pull girl from icy river | CNN

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A dog named Rocky is being hailed for pulling a 9-year-old girl from an icy river on Easter Sunday. His owner, Adam Shaw, 27, is getting similar praise.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3922048/Swifter-swift-Brazilian-bat-clocked-100mph-fastest-flier-animal-kingdom.html

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/tufted-puffins-die-off-bering-sea-alaska-starvation-warm-water-climate-change/

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Ancient Cave Lion Cubs Found Crushed and Frozen in Russia

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More than 30,000 years ago, a pair of 1-week-old cave lions suckled a meal of milk and then died hours later when their den collapsed. Scientists found the frozen mummies of the squished cubs.

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/sharks-two-headed-oceans-mutations/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/sharks-two-headed-oceans-mutations/

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Lolong, world's largest captive crocodile, dies in Philippines | CNN

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Lolong, the world's largest crocodile in captivity, has died in the southern Philippines.

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Ancient 'Seal' Used Pool-Ball-Size Eyes for Deep-Sea Hunting

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An ancient seal with enormous eyes is the youngest known member of its family, which went extinct during the Miocene epoch.

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Imagine a snake that has legs but can still slither. That's how snakes used to be, and there's evidence that legs have reemerged in some snakes. Why?

Trying to discover whether snakes evolved to slither and reevolved to produce legs, or whether there's another explanation for what appears to be double evolution, two scientists recently discovered the "Sonic hedgehog" gene in pythons.

Sonic hedgehog is a gene that is necessary for limb development, one of several genes named after the hedgehog-like spines that grow from embryos when limb development begins.

"It's one of the strangest body plans in vertebrates," University of Florida biologist Martin J. Cohn said when describing the findings.

An enhancer controls the activation of the Sonic hedgehog gene, causing it to flicker on and off. In snakes, a mutation in the enhancer keeps the gene from staying in the "on" position, allowing for limbs to grow.

"In lizards, Sonic hedgehog stays on and acts as the motor, driving limb development all the way down into the fingers and the toes," explained Cohn.

In the recent study Cohn and Francesca Leal published in Current Biology, researchers discovered Sonic hedgehog flickered to "on" at certain stages of python development. That's why pythons sometimes have small claws protruding from their skin: They are beginning to develop limbs.

What that means is it's possible for the pythons of today to grow legs-and it doesn't require an entire evolutionary cycle for them to do so. They just need the right genetic mutation to help along the limbs they already have.

What that means is it's possible for the pythons of today to grow legs-and it doesn't take a whole evolutionary cycle to do so.

Cohn sees future implications for evolutionary study.

"I think it could provide a foundation for doing further comparative studies to look at how organs and structures are lost over evolutionary time."

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Imagine a snake that has legs but can still slither. That's how snakes used to be, and there's evidence that legs have reemerged in some snakes. Why? Trying to discover whether snakes evolved to slither and reevolved to produce legs, or whether there's another explanation for what appears to be double evolution, two scientists recently discovered the "Sonic hedgehog" gene in pythons.

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

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An underwater photographer got unexpectedly close to his subject when a great white shark broke into his cage.

The incident took place near Guadalupe Island, Mexico, where divers frequently descend into the shark-filled waters, and shocking incidents like this have occurred several times over the past year. And surprisingly, this phenomenon may also be beneficial to the sharks.

As the above video, released Thursday, shows, the diver and shark were both put in danger when the shark chased a piece of bait into a cage, blindly smashing through a large hole and becoming trapped.

Speculating as to why this may have happened, underwater photographer Brian Skerry, who has been diving with sharks for decades, thinks the use of bait contributed. The boat crew had thrown a rope with tuna tied to it into the water to lure the shark closer.

"If you bait repeatedly and the cage has a big opening, the shark will follow it in and at the last minute open its mouth, close its eyes, and end up running into the cage," Skerry said.

According to Skerry, while the diver was not in tremendous danger of being bitten, he could easily have been slammed and hurt by the 2,000-pound fish if he remained in the cage.

The videographer, Brian Ernst, said he and the crew were worried for the diver's safety.

"The shark is trying to get out of the cage and was going crazy. We were thinking we might be seeing somebody die. Luckily the crew were thinking properly, opening up the top of the cage. A few seconds later, we saw the great white flinging out."

Leaving the cage presented its own set of challenges. Tied to the boat with an air hose and weighted down to stay at the bottom of the cage, the diver had to think fast in order to escape the cage without letting the weights around his waist pull him to the ocean floor.

The diver exited the cage through the hole opened up by the shark but maintained a hold on it so he didn't sink. When the shark escaped, he was able to rise to the surface, returning through the same hole.

The shark was likely uninjured, according to Skerry, but it was difficult to tell from the video. The blood may be from the bait, a chipped tooth or another small injury.

In a similar incident Monday, also near Guadalupe Island, a shark swam into an open-top cage and became stuck, forcing dive operators to tie a rope around the predator's tail to free it from the cage. Divers were also forced to squeeze past the shark to escape after the shark bit through their air hose. In that case as well, the shark was likely attracted by the tuna attached to the cage.

"It was a shark enticed by the scent of tuna, not humans. I suspect and hope this incident prompts some changes in the operations, mainly the design of the cages so that this cannot happen again," said Katie Yonker, director of operations for Bluewater Travel, a company that regularly takes shark dive tours to the area.

Skerry emphasized that these incidents are relatively rare and more or less inevitable with the increased prevalence of shark diving. "It is generally a freak accident and is sometimes hard to avoid," he said.

Why This Might Be Good

While shark cage accidents have become more common, the increased popularity of shark cage diving has done some good, Skerry said.

"When I started diving with sharks 30 years ago, no one was interested in seeing them. Now there are shark ambassadors around the world. They've done some good things in trying to change the view most people have that they are dangerous villains."

Ernst confirmed this experience, emphasizing the gentle nature of the animals.

"The sharks were completely awesome. They were not trying to break into the cage, they were just going for the bait," said Ernst. "They weren't trying to attack the humans."

Sharks are also in danger. Estimates for the number killed per year for their fins range from a hundred million to 273 million. "We can't kill a hundred million sharks a year and expect the ocean to remain healthy," said Skerry.

He adds that diving in shark cages to witness sharks firsthand has helped to raise awareness of sharks' dwindling numbers and nuanced behavior, and it's helped spur advocacy efforts worldwide.

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Why Sharks Are Getting Stuck in Diver Cages - and the Impact on Conservation

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An underwater photographer got unexpectedly close to his subject when a great white shark broke into his cage. The incident took place near Guadalupe Island, Mexico, where divers frequently descend into the shark-filled waters, and shocking incidents like this have occurred several times over the past year.

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Researchers have found that great apes may have theory of mind, meaning they realize that others' minds hold different thoughts, feelings and knowledge than one's own.

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Honey bee colonies in the United States have been dying at high rates for over a decade, and agricultural pesticides -- including fungicides, herbicides and insecticides -- are often implicated as major culprits. Until now, most scientific studies have looked at pesticides one at a time, rather than investigating the effects of multiple real-world pesticide exposures within a colony.

A new study is the first to systematically assess multiple pesticides that accumulate within bee colonies. The researchers found that the number of different pesticides within a colony -- regardless of dose -- closely correlates with colony death. The results also suggest that some fungicides, often regarded as safe for bees, correlate with high rates of colony deaths. The study appeared online September 15, 2016, in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

"Our results fly in the face of one of the basic tenets of toxicology: that the dose makes the poison," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an assistant professor of entomology at UMD and senior author on the study. "We found that the number of different compounds was highly predictive of colony death, which suggests that the addition of more compounds somehow overwhelms the bees' ability to detoxify themselves."

The researchers followed 91 honey bee colonies, owned by three different migratory commercial beekeepers, for an entire agricultural season. The colonies began their journey in Florida and moved up the East Coast, providing pollination services for different crops along the way. They also spent time in locations meant for honey production, as well as "holding areas" where beekeepers prepare large numbers of colonies for upcoming pollination contracts.

A total of 93 different pesticide compounds found their way into the colonies over the course of the season, accumulating in the wax, in processed pollen known as bee bread and in the bodies of nurse bees. At every stop along the beekeepers' itinerary, the researchers assessed three different parameters within each colony: the total number of pesticides; the total number of "relevant" pesticides (defined as those above a minimum threshold of toxicity); and each colony's "hazard quotient," a measure devised by other researchers to integrate the total hazard posed to each colony by the cumulative toxicity of all pesticides present.

All three measures correlated with a higher probability of colony death or queen failure. In addition, the researchers found between five and 20 different pesticide residues in every sample of bee bread that exceeded a hazard quotient's safety threshold. The highest number of pesticides accumulated in the colonies early on, shortly after beekeepers placed colonies into early season flowering crops like apples and blueberries. Honey production stopovers and holding areas offered the bees some respite from further contamination.

The study results also suggest that some fungicides, which have led to the mortality of honey bee larvae in lab studies, could have toxic effects on colony survival in the field. In the current study, pesticides with a particular mode of action also corresponded to higher colony mortality. For example, the fungicides most closely linked to queen deaths and colony mortality disrupted sterols -- compounds that are essential for fungal development and survival.

"We were surprised to find such an abundance of fungicides inside the hives, but it was even more surprising to find that fungicides are linked to imminent colony mortality," said Kirsten Traynor, a postdoctoral researcher in entomology at UMD and lead author on the study. "These compounds have long been thought to be safe for bees. We're seeing them at higher doses than the chemicals beekeepers apply directly to the colonies to control varroa mites. So that is particularly concerning."

The current study borrows a concept from human cancer research: the "exposome," or the sum total of chemicals an organism is exposed to over its lifetime. But instead of looking at individual bees, the researchers assessed each colony as a single "superorganism" that functions as a single, cohesive unit.

Within this framework, the researchers tracked the death of queen bees, which is a life-threatening event for the colony as a whole. In some cases, a colony is able to create a new queen, but if those efforts fail the entire colony will die. In the current study, colonies with very low pesticide contamination in the wax experienced no queen events, while all colonies with high pesticide contamination in the wax lost a queen during the beekeeping season.

"This is a huge problem for beekeepers currently. Not long ago, a queen would typically last up to two years. But now many commercial beekeepers replace the queens in at least half of their colonies every spring in the hopes that this will prevent premature queen deaths," Traynor explained. "Even with such measures, many queens still don't make it through one season."

The research team did not find a significant contribution from neonicotinoid pesticides. These compounds, derived from nicotine, are currently some of the most common pesticides in use globally. Because of their ubiquitous use, neonicotinoids have received significant media attention for their potential role in honey bee declines.

"We just did not find neonicotinoids in the colonies," vanEngelsdorp explained. "There were some trace residues of neonicotinoids in a few samples, but not nearly on par with other compounds. However, it's possible we did not test the right matrix -- we did not test nectar, for example -- or that the product breaks down faster than others in the collection process or that neonicotinoids are simply not very prevalent when crops are flowering."

Because industrial practices have changed since the researchers collected the data for this study, Traynor and vanEngelsdorp acknowledge that further research could reveal new patterns in the relationship between pesticides and honey bee health. But the current study nonetheless offers some important insights for beekeepers and farmers alike.

"We have to figure out ways to reduce the amount of products that bees are exposed to while still helping farmers produce their crops," vanEngelsdorp said. "This will require careful examination of spray plans, to make sure we only use the products we need, when we need them, in order to reduce the number of products bees are exposed to while pollinating different crops."

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agriculture and food; food and agriculture; mating and breeding; invasive species; exotic species; hurricanes and cyclones; pollution; grassland

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High number of pesticides within colonies linked to honey bee deaths

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Honey bee colonies in the United States have been dying at high rates for over a decade, and agricultural pesticides -- including fungicides, herbicides and insecticides -- are often implicated as major culprits. Until now, most scientific studies have looked at pesticides one at a time, rather than investigating the effects of multiple real-world pesticide exposures within a colony.

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

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The van crawls away from the city and bumps along rural roads for more than two hours before arriving at a slaughterhouse near the Mekong River. Ching hangs back while the translator touches base with the boss of the operation. The air is thick with mosquitoes; April is the hottest month of the year, and temperatures already are rising.

Soon a truck arrives, stacked with long cages full of dogs, their paws and muzzles sticking out through the wire grates. As the cages are loaded onto a dolly one at a time, the dogs whimper and whine. They're wheeled into the slaughterhouse as toddlers and women holding babies look on. Sheltered by a roof but open on both sides, the killing floor is wet and dirty. Large bowls of boiling water are bubbling and steaming atop individual fires; Ching knows what will be coming next.

This isn't his first time in a slaughterhouse. He's prepared for the horror, at least as much as one can prepare for something so shocking. He likens his state of mind to that of soldiers in war. "They don't really think about the small things that are happening," Ching says. "Their body's kind of in overdrive."

"There's this moment where you come into the slaughterhouse and the dogs are screaming, and when you rescue them they know who you are." -Marc Ching

As the workers use steel poles to herd the dogs out of the cages, Ching stands with arms crossed in front of his chest, holding his iPhone in his hand as he covertly documents the scene.

The images will join an archive of more than 300 videos and 5,000 photos Ching has shot overseas in less than a year. Since September 2015, he's made six solo trips to China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea. His M.O. in each case is similar: Employing a driver and a translator to help with logistics, he goes undercover as a dog-meat buyer, visits slaughterhouses and documents torture. Then Ching tries to leave with as many dogs as he can.

"There's this moment where you come into the slaughterhouse and the dogs are screaming, and when you rescue them they know who you are," Ching says. "And it's the most beautiful thing ever. That moment's actually pretty addicting."

He's witnessed dogs burned alive with blowtorches, scalded to death in boiling water and beaten with bats while hanging by their necks. And he says he's been assaulted, shot at, hospitalized and "almost died, like, four times."

Ching has rescued 349 dogs overseas in eight months, he says, but less than a third of them have made it back to the United States. He says the majority of them die in his arms en route to the vet, which can be a four-hour car ride away. He once rescued a dog that had had all four legs cut off (letting the dogs bleed to death is one way they're killed).

"She just bled out on the way to the vet and died," Ching says. "To me, at least you know someone's with you. You don't die in a place of hell."

When he's not on rescue missions to Asia, Ching runs an organic pet food store and holistic treatment center in Sherman Oaks, out of which he also operates a shelter for abused dogs. Up until August of last year, before he went on his first mission to Asia, "My life was perfect," he says. He's been married for more than seven years, has two healthy kids and owns multiple businesses.

"Someone asked me, if I knew how it was going to change my life, would I have done it still," he says of his rescue missions. "No. I believe in the cause, but the way it impacts your life ... I wasn't prepared for this."
Warning: The video below includes footage Ching captured on his missions and is extremely graphic.
Inside the Petstaurant on Van Nuys just south of Ventura, several recovering dogs - some of them with three legs, missing eyelids and patchy fur - are sprawled out on beds, shyly curled up in corners and nuzzling volunteers.

There's Frankie, a 12-pound poodle mix who found her way to Ching's care by way of L.A.'s East Valley Animal Shelter. Her owners allowed her to become infested with maggots. There's Jack, a 40-pound mixed breed who, when Ching found him in Thailand, had a leg so badly fractured that it had to be amputated. Then there's Annie, a 2-year-old survivor of the South Korean meat trade, who had her leg hacked in a slaughterhouse.

Ching's own journey, from leaving his native Hawaii to setting up his shelter in L.A. to going undercover overseas, has been as remarkable as that of the many dogs he's rescued. He says he felt a calling to come to the aid of these animals. "A lot of us have suffered to become who we are today," he says. "I feel like I'm trying to save myself."

Ching was born to a teenage mother who gave him up for adoption. He says he went on to suffer from "identity issues," getting into drugs and trouble as a teenager. Some of this turmoil is evidenced by the many tattoos that wind their way up his biceps; he now keeps them covered up and has tried to get a few removed, saying they no longer represent the person he is today.

He says his personal crises inspired him to help those who have suffered.

"Some people find themselves through helping others," Ching says. "The more they rescue, the more they piece themselves back together."

Ching, who is Japanese and Korean, was adopted by Chinese and Japanese parents. He says he learned most of what he now knows about health and wellness from his grandparents. As a child, he worked at his grandmother's private holistic medicine practice in Hawaii, where he learned to mix herbs and provide holistic care.

When Ching was 17, he moved to Las Vegas to attend college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; he then came to California, where he got his bachelor's and master's of business administration from California Coast University, an online college. Outside the classroom, Ching continued to refine what his grandmother had taught him, developing his own form of new-age Eastern medicine for pets and people.

While in college, Ching had a small pit bull mix named Mila, who got very sick and later died from inflammatory bowel disease. After multiple visits to the vet, he became disheartened by the way Mila was treated. In Hawaii, many pet owners turn to holistic treatments and believe animals should be fed from similar food sources as humans, he says.

He ultimately decided he wanted to apply his experiences in Hawaii to a business in California, so he began making organic dog chow - without processed ingredients and starches, which, he says, can create and exacerbate health problems. Ching started distributing samples of his product at local farmers markets in 2010 and went on to open the Petstaurant a year later.

His decision to pursue this particular career was a departure from his family's expectations. His father is a stockbroker, as are his sister and two brothers. Ching was expected to follow suit.

"In Asian tradition, the oldest son is supposed to do what the father does," Ching says.

Instead, Ching got "every single credit card" he could and built his business from the ground up, expanding the Petstaurant storefront to include his rescue group, the Animal Hope & Wellness Foundation. There aren't many shelters dedicated exclusively to abused dogs, he says, because they require an enormous amount of care and often suffer from lingering ailments, which rack up thousands of dollars in medical bills.

Ching began getting tips from other rescuers and calls from local shelters when they received abused dogs. He has sniffed out animal cruelty cases on his own, too - sometimes before the city can. Between the tip line he established, which goes straight to his cellphone, and the messages he receives through social media, Ching has investigated numerous claims of animal abuse.

He stakes out locations like a cop on a drug bust; when he feels that he has confirmed cruelty, he knocks on the person's door to broker a deal. Ching typically offers to refrain from turning the alleged abuser over to police if, in exchange, he or she hands the dog over to him. It hasn't always gone smoothly. A few months ago, when Ching was attempting to rescue a shar-pei from an abusive owner in a suspected crack house, he was bitten on the back - by a human.

Ching and his Animal Hope & Wellness Foundation have been able to develop a strong cyber network of support, with more than 53,000 Instagram followers. It's not surprising that he's amassed tens of thousands of devotees; his social media posts are deeply personal, exhaustive and often written from the point of view of the dogs he saves.

He got a flood of Instagram followers last year, thanks to a 2½-pound Chihuahua named Staples. She had been dropped off at a vet's office in Coachella with her mouth stapled shut, Ching says. This, combined with not eating, caused her to vomit acid into her mouth, leading to an infection in her throat and sinuses.

Staples eventually died from her injuries, but not before a fellow rescuer brought her to the attention of Ching, who took Staples to his shelter and tried to nurse her back to health. After a visitor (Ching thinks it was a celebrity) published a social media post about Staples, the Petstaurant was flooded with people.

"This one little life paved the way for so many," Ching says.

In June 2015, Ching read about the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, where an estimated 10,000 dogs are tortured, killed and eaten each year.

"Part of me thought it wasn't true," Ching says. He knew dogs were eaten in China but believed the claims of torture were exaggerated.

He wanted to see for himself - and help in some way. Ching recalls that his wife initially was dubious of his decision (Ching doesn't speak Cantonese or Mandarin and didn't have any connections in China), but she soon told him to follow his heart.

Humane Society International estimates that about 30 million dogs are slaughtered for meat in Asian countries each year. Although it's not illegal to sell or eat dog meat in China, there are a variety of other laws and regulations that dog traders often violate, including selling poisoned dog meat (from dogs who died of poisoning) and transporting dogs that have a vaccination record. In addition to the horrifying ethical concerns surrounding the way dogs are housed and slaughtered, activists stress the health risks of preparing and eating dog meat, including an increased risk of contracting cholera or rabies.

Dog-meat eaters typically claim that it's part of their culinary history, has a variety of health benefits, enhances virility or is simply good luck.

Organizers of the 5-year-old Yulin festival argue that their summer-solstice event honors a long-standing Chinese tradition, but Peter J. Li, China policy specialist at Humane Society International, disagrees: "It was a new festival created by the dog-meat traders to promote dog-meat sale."

"There's nothing fast or humane about any of the forms we've seen of killing." -Kelly O'Meara, Humane Society International

The "vast majority" of dogs in the meat trade are stolen pets or guard dogs, according to the Animals Asia Foundation. Li, who's also an associate professor of East Asian politics at the University of Houston-Downtown, says young, uneducated men steal dogs from rural villages - dog-napping until they've gathered enough of them to sell to meat traders.

In Beijing, the International Center for Veterinary Services, which offers medical and surgical treatment for pets, also receives animals that are strays, abandoned or have been rescued from meat trucks; it works with a number of dog rescuers like Ching. However, Ching is the only one who goes directly to the slaughterhouses, posing as a dog-meat buyer, CEO and founder Mary Peng writes in an email to the Weekly.

"Marc puts himself directly in harm's way to try to collect evidence of the brutal practices in these black markets," she writes.

Peng first met Ching in September, when he showed up at her clinic with seven dogs he had just saved. Since then, she's helped him nurse back to health 18 of the 23 dogs he's brought into her clinic for treatment.

Often, dogs rescued from the meat trade started out in pet markets, Peng explains, but when they get sick and treatment becomes too costly, the vendors abandon the animals or sell them to slaughterhouses to "cut their losses."

Each of Peng's interactions with Ching has been "brief but intense," she writes. They typically discuss treatment plans and adoption schedules for the dogs, as well as big-picture issues such as why the meat trade flourishes despite domestic and international outcry.

The method in which dogs are slaughtered varies from country to country, but one constant remains: "There's nothing fast or humane about any of the forms we've seen of killing," says Kelly O'Meara, director of companion animals and engagement for Humane Society International.

O'Meara oversees the organization's campaign against the dog-meat trade, which is currently focused on China, South Korea and Vietnam. In South Korea, Labradors, golden retrievers and other household breeds are raised and slaughtered on "dog farms." They're held in elevated cages, given just enough food to survive and forced to endure frigid temperatures in the Korean winter, O'Meara says. Eventually, they're killed via anal electrocution. "They endure misery from start to finish," she says.

Ching estimates that his trips to Asia alone have cost $300,000 - for travel, drivers, translators and all the preparation that goes into planning each trip. For each mission, Ching pays researchers on the ground to scout slaughterhouses and line up the buys, offering bonuses for finding large operations. After a rescue, medical bills for the dogs add up fast: One pup can cost the foundation thousands of dollars.

That figure doesn't include the international airfare Ching purchases for each dog he relocates to the United States, and the care they receive when back on American soil.

As news of Ching's rescue efforts has spread, he's begun to receive a slow influx of donations, but most of his foundation's work is bankrolled by his own businesses. In addition to the Petstaurant and a health and wellness center for human patients in Encino, Ching owns Herban Theory, an organic supplement company also based in Encino, and Valia, an herbal skin care and supplement line in Beverly Hills.

"These dogs specifically, they want to live. They have this will about them. They're telling me with their eyes." -Lisa McTarsney, who fosters dogs for Ching's rescue organization

Helping these animals is a lot for a single individual to take on.

Ching is "overloaded" with responsibilities, says Valarie Ianniello, who has been the director of operations for Ching's Animal Hope & Wellness Foundation since February. Ianniello had been volunteering with animal-rescue groups for eight years when she saw a Facebook post about Ching and began following him online. A few months later, she realized that the Petstaurant was just a few blocks from her home and headed over there, hoping to volunteer. Upon meeting Ching, Ianniello says, she was immediately struck by his kindness and gratitude.

"I just knew I was home," she says of Ching's shelter. "I knew this was the place I was supposed to be."

Ianniello has been working more than 50 hours a week to reform Ching's slapdash operation, which she describes as lacking basic policies and procedures such as a volunteer sign-in sheet or a formal adoption process. She also is reconfiguring Ching's website and organizing an "army of volunteers," which includes about 10 dedicated regulars, as well as 50 to 100 others who come in when they can to walk or play with the dogs.

Lisa McTarsney, who's been part of Southern California Bulldog Rescue for 13 years and has a rotating brood of abused and special needs dogs at home, has been fostering dogs for Ching's foundation since earlier this year. "These dogs specifically, they want to live," she says. "They have this will about them. They're telling me with their eyes."

McTarsney fostered and eventually adopted Faith, a white teacup of a dog with big, pointy ears (whom she eventually renamed Foxy). Ching rescued the dog in Korea, where she had been hanged and beaten. At first, Faith couldn't look at a human, not even in a mirror, and she'd pee herself from trembling so badly, McTarsney says. The day McTarsney decided to adopt Faith was "one of the happiest days" of her life.

"I just felt connected to her in a way I've never felt with a dog," she says.

During his visit to the slaughterhouse in Phnom Penh, Ching was able to rescue 16 dogs. Unfortunately, only four are still alive. Most of the others died from the injuries they sustained that day.

Ching will return to Cambodia next month to bring those four dogs home to the United States. He'll also head to China, this time as a political activist protesting the Yulin festival. He's invited his Instagram followers to join him and before the festival is planning to purchase advertising to push for compassion.

Ching's researchers also have brokered a deal for him to take over an entire slaughterhouse on his next trip. He hopes to rescue at least 20 dogs and then blow up the entire operation with dynamite. In exchange, Ching will help the slaughterhouse owners open a vegetarian restaurant as their new source of income.

"I think this whole experience has taught me a lot about compassion," Ching says. "If dogs can love in the way they do and forgive, then it really shows me that there's hope for humanity."

Although Ching says he will continue to try to save as many dogs as possible, his end game is to bring sweeping reform to countries abroad, so dogs like the hundreds he's rescued no longer need rescuing.

While activists push for abolition of the dog-meat trade, Ching says that even the passing and enforcement of animal-cruelty laws would be a step in the right direction.

To do this, he's hoping to harness a little star power. Many of these countries are obsessed with celebrity culture, Ching says, so if he can win support from someone with a big name, he or she could appeal directly to the population and say: "I've seen the proof, I've seen the videos, I cannot stand for this, and you shouldn't as a country."

Ching got this idea in large part from a successful campaign that former NBA star Yao Ming led in China against shark fin soup, for which fins are obtained by cutting them off a shark and leaving the animal to die. Ming fronted a public awareness campaign for a wildlife advocacy group to spread the word, and after just two years, shark consumption was down 50 percent in the country.

"People didn't identify with his cause," Ching says. "They identified with him."

For now, though, Ching is settling back into home life.

Less than a week after he returned from his latest trip, he was still shaken. His hands trembled as he scrolled through the hundreds of graphic photos and videos he took. After he touched down in the United States, he sent his family to Legoland for a week, he says, because "it was clear I just couldn't be around them."

Coming home is the hardest part, he explains. The reality of what he's witnessed begins to sink in, and he must try to readjust to the banalities of everyday life. He says he's spent a lot of time in his car recently; the small, confined space makes him feel more secure.

"Everybody's telling me I have to go to therapy, but there's no words to talk about [it]," Ching says. "There are just no words."

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Marc Ching Goes Undercover to Rescue Hundreds of Dogs From Asian Slaughterhouses

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"Someone asked me, if I knew how it was going to change my life, would I have done it still. No. I believe in the cause, but I wasn't prepared for this."

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Bumblebee Set to Become Officially Endangered

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This bumblebee species is likely affected by pathogens and pesticides.

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http://www.earthtouchnews.com/natural-world/animal-behaviour/cottonmouth-vs-copperhead-heres-why-this-unusual-snake-battle-is-one-for-the-books

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A dinosaur that could camoflage.

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

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Sea shepherds!!!

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Sea Shepherd claims new ship can 'outrun' Japanese whalers | CNN

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Anti-whaling activist group Sea Shepherd announced its 11th whale defense campaign Tuesday with the launch of a custom-built vessel, which it claims will have the requisite muscle to take on Japanese whaling fleets.

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Colorfull ;)

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Stroll down the lanes and alleys of Kolkata's Galiff Street on any Sunday morning, and you'll see hundreds of wild-caught native and exotic birds for sale, crammed into wire cages of all shapes and sizes. You'll hear a cacophony of bird calls and flapping wings. From their makeshift stalls, traders shout all kinds of bird names, vying for customers' attention.

When I went there in July, I saw jet-black hill mynahs with their neon orange beaks, finch-size green avadavats with their yellow bellies and zebra-striped flanks, lovebirds, cockatoos, and various parakeets.

There were even chicks in improbable shades of flamboyant orange and green. A local vendor peddling a cage full of them said they were the babies of rare birds, in great demand as pets.

Pet birds have long been a part of Indian culture. Folktales and royal texts are replete with mynahs, parrots, and pigeons that adorned imperial courts and entertained wealthy families. Today the birds are still popular as pets, and they increasingly feature as good-luck charms at weddings and other celebrations, where they're released into the air.

A blanket ban on the sale and export of native Indian birds has been in place for the past 25 years, yet the wildlife trade-monitoring group TRAFFIC has recorded more than 450 of India's 1,300 native bird species for sale in domestic and international markets.

Furthermore, no prohibition exists on the domestic sale of captive-bred exotic birds in India, so trappers and traders often skirt the ban on the trade of native birds by disguising them as exotics, touching them up with dye, or even paint, to make them look like rarer native birds and increasing their value.

That's what happened to those bright orange and green chicks. They were dyed.

Bird Disguises

Dyed birds of all species can be found at India's markets. Take the rose-ringed parakeet, a green bird with gray rings around its neck that is native to India and is a favorite in the pet trade. Some traders will add a dab of catechu, a brown dye from the acacia tree, on its shoulder feathers to make it resemble the less common, more expensive Alexandrine parakeet. Or traders may paint the parakeet's head orange and sell it as an imported exotic bird. Another disguise: Black dye is applied to the parakeet's entire body so the trader can sell it as a pricey "rare mutation." Other dyes used include shoe polish, lamp soot, spray paint, oil, coal dust, textile dyes, and food coloring, says a trader at the Galiff Street market.

Red avadavats, or munias, are dyed to be sold for 10 times more as rare green avadavats. Spotted owlets are stained with tea water and have feathers glued to their heads to be passed off as hard-to-find brown fish owls, which are sacrificed during the Indian festival of Diwali to usher in prosperity, according to Abrar Ahmed, former principal investigator for TRAFFIC India's live bird trade project. (Related: Photos reveal massive annual falcon hunt in India.)

Many of the dyes contain chemicals that are absorbed by the birds' skin, which can sicken them, says Nikunj Sharma, a spokesman and government affairs liaison with the India branch of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

And the dyeing process can be traumatic. One person holds the bird by its wings and legs, and the other paints it using dye-soaked cotton. Because traders work fast to color as many birds as they can, they're often careless, according to Sharma. Dye may drip into the birds' eyes, causing inflammation or even partial blindness. Chicks may be dipped in a bowl of liquid dye to give them more uniform color. Or they may have liquid poured over them and then be tossed from hand to hand like hot potatoes to even out the color. Because chicks are so delicate, Sharma says, this can kill them.

The deception itself can also put birds at risk. "When the color fades, revealing the original identity of the bird, or when chicks outgrow their painted feathers, many of these species die due to ill treatment of the duped buyers, who do not know what to do with them," says Asad Rahmani, an ornithologist at the Bombay Natural History Society, one of India's largest wildlife research organizations.

From Forest to Market

Trappers often use cruel and indiscriminate methods to capture birds, such as spreading glue onto branches and using insects or bird decoys as bait. Birds land on the branch and get stuck. In their efforts to free themselves, they may injure their legs or wings, and they often lose feathers. They're helpless until a trapper shows up to detach them. Later, the birds are cleaned with a mixture of kerosene and cow dung ash. (Related: Across the Mediterranean, millions of birds are killed for food, profit, and cruel amusement.)

Trappers also use very fine, nearly invisible nets to catch birds. Ornithologists use these mist nets to trap birds they want to study, and when used correctly and checked often, they rarely cause harm. But that's not always the case with trappers looking for birds to sell. Many birds struggling to free themselves from the nets suffer injuries.

Tilotama Varma, with India's Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, the government organization tasked with combating organized wildlife crime, says there's a lot of room to improve how India protects its native birds. She wants to see more surveillance along the country's borders and more law enforcement at markets, and she says certain species should be given India's highest level of wildlife protection.

Another approach, says Deepak Apte, director of the Bombay Natural History Society, is to pay illegal bird trappers to instead protect birds. The traditional trappers are experts, he says, with knowledge and skills that can be put to good use. "With this, more than 10,000 trappers in India can be converted into protectors."

Moushumi Basu is a freelance journalist from India with a passion for writing about wildlife and the environment.

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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Dyed But Alive, Disguised Birds Skirt Laws and Fetch High Prices

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Stroll down the lanes and alleys of Kolkata's Galiff Street on any Sunday morning, and you'll see hundreds of wild-caught native and exotic birds for sale, crammed into wire cages of all shapes and sizes. You'll hear a cacophony of bird calls and flapping wings.

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Yosemite National Park to expand by 400 acres | CNN

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Thanks to a generous land donation, Yosemite National Park will grow by an additional 400 acres of wetlands and meadow habitat on its western boundary. It is the largest planned expansion for the California park in nearly 70 years.

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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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Python kills security guard in Bali | CNN

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A python has killed a security guard near a luxury hotel in Bali, Indonesia.

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Who Knew? Cats Like to Work for Their Food

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Food puzzles, originally developed for zoo animals, can help indoor kitties thrive both physically and mentally.

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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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Bats hunt in the dark using echolocation, meaning they use echoes of self-produced sounds bouncing off objects to help them navigate. But that doesn’t mean that bats can’t see.

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Anton Owens

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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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Dontay Taddese

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

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Amaya Williams

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Cincinnati Zoo welcomes new bundle of joy | CNN

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For your daily dose of cuteness, check out this newborn giraffe taking its first steps in Ohio.

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Hayden Lutjen

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A horrific video, showing the killings of stray dogs by lethal injection in the Iranian city of Shiraz, has sparked protests in at least two major cities and drawn condemnation from animal rights defenders across the country.

The footage, which has gone viral in Iran, depicts a group of men cruelly putting down stray dogs by injecting what seems to be acid. The animals are shown twitching in agony before they die.

It appears to be part of a regional effort to control the canine population, often carried out by private contractors, but the local authorities deny any link to the incident.

The video has triggered rare protests in recent days against animal cruelty in the capital Tehran and the southern city of Shiraz. On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered in front of Iran's environment agency in Tehran, holding up placards and wearing orange ribbons, to demand perpetrators to be brought to justice.

Some of the placards read as: "stop killing animals", "stop animal cruelty", "dogs are man's best friends" and "dogs are angels created by God". Similar protests have also been taken place in Shiraz in front of the city's main municipality last week.

Protesters in Tehran demanded the country's head of environmental protection organisation, Massoumeh Ebtekar, to reassure them that those behind the brutal killings will be prosecuted.

Ebtekar, who serves as a vice-president in Hassan Rouhani's cabinet, appeared among the protesters and promised her agency would introduce laws to protect animal rights. She subsequently wrote to the country's interior minister asking him to put an end to unconventional methods used to curb the population of stray dogs or control infections spread by them.

Targol Ghasemi, one of the protesters, told the state news agency that such killings are against animal rights. "Activists want the killings to be stopped and instead we should make a shelter for them and vaccinate them," she told the Irna news agency.

An Iranian protester in Shiraz holds up a placard showing a picture of a dog, reading as: "Don't kill me". Photograph: Reza Ghaderi/IRNA

But in at least one place in Iran, the picture is different. In the city of Tabriz, animal rights activists, led by Jila Pourirani, have managed to persuade local authorities to stop the killings of stray dogs and instead give activists permission to run a shelter. It's called Pardise animal shelter and has since become home to a large number of stray dogs. They are also active on Facebook.

Dogs have made news in Iran for other reasons as well. Last year, Iranian MPs proposed a bill to make it a criminal offence to keep dogs as pets or walk them in public, with offenders subject to 74 lashes or a fine.

Iran's morality police, usually deployed in public places, have previously cracked down on dog owners, cautioning them or confiscating their animals.

According to Islamic custom, dogs are unclean. Iranians avoid keeping them at home in general, though a minority, especially in north Tehran's wealthy districts, enjoy keeping pets.

Hardliners in Iran are particularly worried about what they call a "cultural invasion" from the west and see pet ownership, especially of dogs, as an imitation of western culture. Senior officials have previously warned citizens against dog ownership and Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, a prominent hardline cleric, has also issued a fatwa against keeping dogs.

Despite this, dog ownership appears to be on the rise.

A group of Iranians staging a protest in Shiraz against the killings of stray dogs. Photograph: Reza Ghaderi/IRNA

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Iranian video showing stray dogs' killings sparks protests in major cities

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Protesters in Tehran and Shiraz demand an end to the killings of stray dogs by lethal injection and instead want the authorities to vaccinate and shelter them

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Harambe, a western lowland gorilla, was fatally shot on May 28. (Jeff McCurry/Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden via Cincinatti Enquirer via AP)

Two days after Harambe the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla was fatally shot to save a toddler's life, the zoo's director, Thane Maynard, lamented the death as a "loss to the gene pool of lowland gorillas." Most media reports on the killing, meanwhile, mentioned that western lowland gorillas, of which Harambe was one, are critically endangered.

When a toddler fell into a zoo enclosure 20 years ago, he was saved - by a gorilla

A 3-year-old boy fell into an endangered gorilla's enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo on May 28, and a witness captured the scene as onlookers shouted for help (Kimberley O'Connor/ViralHog)

What does one thing have to do with the other? Not all that much, at least not in the present day. Here's why.

What gene pool was Maynard talking about?

He was referring to the gene pool of the 360 or so captive gorillas at accredited zoos in the United States. These zoos are guided by the gorilla " Species Survival Plan," a group that shares information on gorilla care, research, advocacy, breeding, transfer plans and even a "studbook," which outlines the family tree of every captive gorilla. The goal is to ensure the population remains healthy, which means having enough gorillas to prevent inbreeding and moving gorillas around so that they don't end up mating with relatives. Harambe was transferred from the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Tex., in 2014, with the idea that he would breed with females in Cincinnati.

'It could have been very bad': Gorilla killed after boy falls into Cincinnati zoo exhibit

But keeping gene pools healthy was not much of a zoo mission before the 1970s, said Jeffrey Hyson, an expert on U.S. zoos and a historian at Saint Joseph's University, in Philadelphia. "That was partly a recognition that there is this almost moral obligation on the part of zoos to preserve" animals whose habitats are being destroyed, he said, "and partly a belated recognition that you need to manage captive breeding more carefully. ... There was rampant inbreeding in zoo populations, which led to all sorts of birth defects and health problems."

The Cincinnati Zoo's director says officials were right to kill a gorilla that had grabbed a young boy who fell into the exhibit over the weekend. (Reuters)

What's the deal with western lowland gorillas in the wild?

These gorillas - whose scientific name is the wonderful gorilla gorilla gorilla - live in the dense and remote rainforests of central and western equatorial Africa, where they're hard to study and count. For that reason, population estimates vary wildly, from 30,000 to 200,000; most estimates, however, hover around 100,000. That might sound like a lot of gorillas, but since 2007, the species has been listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as "critically endangered," which means they have a high risk of going extinct. According to the IUCN, the population has declined by more than 60 percent in the past 25 years.

Family of boy who fell into gorilla exhibit asks for zoo donations in animal's me

There are several reasons for this. Western lowland gorillas are widely hunted for meat, and their body parts are used as medicine and "magical charms," according to the World Wildlife Fund, which probably means dozens are killed every day with nary a blip of the attention Harambe's death received. Baby gorillas are captured and sold as pets. Ebola, which killed thousands of people in West Africa two years ago, has also been devastating to these gorillas. Some scientists say it has killed one-third of them. They're also losing wide arcs of their forest home to logging and mining.

On top of that, the IUCN says, the species doesn't reproduce quickly, which means that even if poaching and Ebola ended tomorrow, the population wouldn't recover for at least 75 years. Before then, the agency says, habitat loss and climate change will become even bigger threats. So it's hard to see how the gorillas will make it in the wild unless humanity makes rapid, dramatic and very complicated changes.

So do zoo gorillas like Harambe help this situation?

Not directly, at least not now. First, some history. Hyson, the professor, said zoos started really getting interested in breeding endangered species in the 1960s, as colonialism began ending in Africa and newly independent states started developing land. That made the supply of many zoo animals - which until that time were often imported from Africa - more tenuous. The environmental movement was also emerging in the United States, Hyson said, and suddenly the idea of zoos as a modern-day Noah's Ark, which could help save threatened species from doom, gained currency.

Today, most, if not all, endangered animals bred in zoos will never be introduced into the wild. Harambe and other zoo gorillas have known no life but captivity. Still, zoos carefully manage the gene pools not only for the animals' health but also because they are viewed as an "insurance policy" in case of their extinction, said Michael Hutchins, a former executive director of the Wildlife Society and former director and chair of conservation and science at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).

"They don't know," Hutchins, who is now at American Bird Conservancy, said of zoos. "Maybe they will put them out in the wild someday."

For now, that's a big maybe.

Zoos "have done amazing work in preserving animals that are nearly extinct in the wild in some cases," Hyson said. "The vast majority of zoo animals, especially mammals, are captive-bred. But I do think there's an important ethical question about, well, bred for what? In the overwhelming majority of cases, it's bred to be another generation in the zoo."

But zoos say they help with wildlife conservation. What do they mean?

Many zoos tout conservation as a key part of their mission, though that was not always the case. Hyson said the first U.S. zoos, in the 19th century, were places to see exotic animals, full stop. Animals were purchased from dealers or "collected" in Africa, and the breeding they did was incidental. Talk about conservation became more common in the 1960s.

But it remains controversial whether zoos mean what they say about conservation, or whether what they do has an impact. This week, I asked Smithsonian's National Zoo, the AZA and the Wildlife Conservation Society - which manages conservation projects around the world as well as zoos in New York - to talk about this. The WCS flat-out said no, and the National Zoo and AZA didn't respond to interview requests.

According to publicly available information and experts, though, zoos promote wildlife conservation in a few ways. One is by raising funds for conservation projects in the wild. The AZA's 2014 conservation report says 241 U.S. zoos spent $154 million on conservation initiatives in 130 countries that year. Among other efforts, the Cincinnati Zoo says it helps fund a long-running gorilla field study in Congo, and it also collects donated cellphones, which it says helps reduce the demand for coltan mining in gorilla habitats.

Hutchins said zoos also allow scientists to conduct important research that can't be done in the wild and serve as training grounds for biologists. The animals, he said, act as ambassadors for their kind, teaching visitors about their importance and the threats to them.

"They're connecting with people who don't have any other experience with wildlife. These are urban populations; they're not traveling to Africa, for the most part," Hutchins said. "They're not ever going to see a gorilla except on TV." Quality zoos, he said, "are probably needed more than ever, because the situation in the wild for animals is just not good. We're still losing habitat and losing species, and we shouldn't be giving up on these institutions that are so focused on them."

Then do zoos inspire new generations of conservationists?

That's unclear. The AZA says they do and cites studies supporting that claim. But when British sociologist Eric Jensen and colleagues surveyed 5,661 zoo-and-aquarium-goers in 19 countries for a study that published in Conservation Biology in 2014, their findings were more ambiguous. Most visitors reported having a greater understanding of biodiversity and conservation.

"But the challenge for zoos and aquariums now is how to use these findings to directly improve the conservation of biodiversity, because it's important to remember that an increase in knowledge does not necessarily lead to a change in behavior," Jensen said at the time.

One of the most prominent naysayers of zoos' claims about conservation is David Hancocks, a longtime zoo director and architect. As he argued to Conservation magazine in 2013: "If you strip away the rhetoric of what zoos claim they do and what they actually do, it's still 99.99 percent putting animals on show."

Hyson said that's probably also the way many visitors see it.

"I often like to say that people go to zoos for the same reason today that they went to zoos 160 years ago: To see exotic animals up close and active," he said. "The mission, they have changed; the frame and the design, they have changed. But that visitor experience is still fundamentally the same."

Back to the gene pool. What does the loss of Harambe mean?

It's impossible to know how many baby gorillas Harambe might have sired. But Maynard, the Cincinnati Zoo director, said genetic diversity in the captive gorilla population is so crucial that the zoo harvested the gorilla's sperm after his death, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. He also said other scientists have contacted the zoo about other uses for the ape's remains, such as storing tissue for future research.

As for those critically endangered gorillas in the African forests? The best hope, probably, is that Harambe's globally publicized death will do more to bring attention to their plight than a more uneventful life at the zoo ever could have.

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What Harambe's death means for a critically endangered species of gorilla

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Two days after Harambe the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla was fatally shot to save a toddler's life, the zoo's director, Thane Maynard, lamented the death as a "loss to the gene pool of lowland gorillas." Most media reports on the killing, meanwhile, mentioned that western lowland gorillas, of which Harambe was one, are critically endangered.

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Worlds largest gorilla species at risk of extinction 

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Worlds largest gorilla species at risk of extinction 

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Miranda Huston

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An infant Grauer's gorilla rides on an adult gorilla's back.

Credit: A.J.Plumptre/WCS

The population of the world's largest ape has collapsed over the last two decades. Fewer than 4,000 Grauer's gorillas remain in the wild, and now conservationists warn that the animals are at risk of extinction.

Officials from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced Sunday (Sept. 4) that they're raising the threatened status of the Grauer's gorilla from " endangered" to "critically endangered," the highest category before extinction.

"Critical endangered status will raise the profile of this gorilla subspecies and bring attention to its plight," Andrew Plumptre, the lead author of the new listing, said in a statement. "It has tended to be the neglected ape in Africa, despite being the largest ape in the world." [ Image Gallery: 25 Primates in Peril]

Grauer's gorillas ( Gorilla beringei graueri) are a subspecies of the eastern gorilla. They are found in fragmented forest habitats in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they mainly subsist on fruit and other plants and can grow up to 5.5 feet (168 cm) tall and weigh up to 440 lbs. (200 kg).

Earlier this year, the Wildlife Conservation Society and Fauna and Flora International released a report documenting a77-percent drop in the number of Grauer's gorillas over the span of a single generation, from an estimated 17,000 individuals in 1995 to 3,800 today.

The authors of the report pointed to bushmeat hunting and civil war in the DRC as major drivers of the population collapse and recommended that the species be listed as critically endangered.

Bushmeat hunting and civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are major drivers of the collapse of the population of Grauer's gorillas, researchers say. Here, the skulls of poached Grauer's gorillas.

Credit: A.J.Plumptre/WCS

The new listing means that all gorillas -including eastern and western gorillas -are now considered critically endangered.

The other subspecies of the eastern gorilla is the mountain gorilla ( Gorilla beringei beringei), which is already listed as critically endangered. The population of mountain gorillas has, however, been increasing. There are now an estimated 880 individuals, up from about 300 in 2008, according to the IUCN's latest data.

The changes to the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species were announced at the organization's World Conservation Congress in Hawaii.

Among the other species whose threatened status was raised was the plains zebra ( Equus quagga), which was once considered a species of "least concern" but is now "near threatened." The animal's population in Africa dropped by 24 percent over the past 14 years, from around 660,000 individuals to just over 500,000 animals, mostly due to hunting, according to the IUCN.

In a bit of good news, the giant panda ( Ailuropoda melanoleuca), which had been listed as endangered since 1990, had its status downgraded to "vulnerable." The IUCN lauded conservation efforts that have helped boost the panda population in China, but warned that climate change could wipe out a large chunk of the bears' bamboo habitat during the next century.

Original article on Live Science.

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World's Largest Gorilla Species at Risk of Extinction

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The population of the world's largest ape has collapsed over the last two decades. Fewer than 4,000 Grauer's gorillas remain in the wild, and now conservationists warn that the animals are at risk of extinction. Officials from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced Sunday (Sept.

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Ethan Haskins

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A giant panda at the Bifengxia Giant Panda Breeding and Conservation Center in Sichuan Province.

Credit: Binbin Li

The giant panda, commonly a symbol for conservation, is no longer considered an endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

In an update to their Red List of Threatened Species on Sunday (Sept. 4), which assesses a species' conservation status, the IUCN reported the giant panda population has improved enough for the endangered species label to be downgraded to "vulnerable."

A nationwide census in 2014 found 1,864 giant pandas in the wild in China, excluding cubs - an increase from 1,596 in 2004, according to the IUCN. Including cubs, the current population count is approaching 2,060, the organization said. The report credits forest protection and reforestation measures in China for increasing the available habitat for the species. [ Baby Panda Pics: See A Cub Growing Up]

"The decision to downlist the giant panda to 'vulnerable' is a positive sign confirming that the Chinese government's efforts to conserve this species are effective," the IUCN noted in its assessment.

The giant panda was once widespread throughout southern China, and is revered in the country's culture. The IUCN's first assessment of the species in 1965 listed the giant panda as "very rare but believed to be stable or increasing."

The species has been the focus of an intensive, high-profile conservation campaign to recover an endangered species since the 1970s, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) - which has used the panda in its logo since 1961.

"For over fifty years, the giant panda has been the globe's most beloved conservation icon as well as the symbol of WWF," Marco Lambertini, director general of the WWF, said in a statement. "Knowing that the panda is now a step further from extinction is an exciting moment for everyone committed to conserving the world's wildlife and their habitats."

Decades of conservation efforts have included the banning of giant panda poaching - their hides were considered a commodity - as well as the creation of the panda reserve system, increasing available habitats. There are now 67 reserves in China protecting nearly 5,400 square miles (14,000 square kilometers) of habitat and 67 percent of the panda population, reported CNN.

"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," Lambertini said in the statement.

The Chinese government's partnerships with the international organization have also spread conservation and breeding efforts. In June, a healthy male cub was born in a Belgian zoo. The captive population is not taken into consideration by IUCN for the Red List, which is specific to species in the wild. However, the captive population being bred for recovery and reintroduction are part of the overall conservation picture, according to Joe Walston, Vice President of Conservation Field Programs for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

The giant panda is not completely in the clear, however. The IUCN warned that climate change and decreasing bamboo availability could reverse the gains made in the past few decades. More than one-third of the panda's bamboo habitat could disappear in the next 80 years, according to the IUCN.

"It is a real concern, and this is emblematic of what species are facing globally with regard to climate change," Walston told Live Science of the threat to habitat and food supply. "The most important thing we can do at the moment is to be able to grow the extent and range of that habitat and by doing that you allow pandas to move across landscapes."

Wildlife as a whole can adapt to short-term changes and season extremes, Walston said, but they need to space to move and adapt.

As such, conservation efforts continue and the giant panda will continue to be considered "a conservation-dependent species for the foreseeable future," the IUCN's report concluded.

Original article on Live Science.

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Giant Panda Is No Longer Endangered Species

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The giant panda, commonly a symbol for conservation, is no longer considered an endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In an update to their Red List of Threatened Species on Sunday (Sept.

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Hillary Clinton wants you to know what she thinks about animals

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Hillary Clinton wants you to know what she thinks about animals

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Joe Pauli

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Former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton speaks during a White House forum to counter wildlife trafficking in 2013. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
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Hillary Clinton has 31 "issues" listed on her official campaign website, arranged alphabetically from "Alzheimer's disease" to "workforce and skills."

Last week, she added another: " Protecting animals and wildlife."

Clinton is known for being pretty wonky, so the addition of yet another policy statement isn't terribly surprising. And there's nothing very groundbreaking in it: Clinton calls for ending the slaughter of horses for human food (which doesn't happen anymore in the United States), stronger regulation of puppy mills, rescue plans for zoo animals in case of natural disaster and fighting wildlife trafficking.

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But the inclusion of this particular topic is certainly a sign of times. Americans' concern about - some might say obsession with - animals is growing, and politicians and corporations are increasingly taking notice.

A 2015 Harris poll found that most Americans consider their pets to be part of the family. A growing minority thinks animals should have the same rights as humans, according to a 2015 Gallup poll, while a majority is "very or somewhat concerned" about animals at research labs, circuses, zoos and, to a lesser extent, farms that raise them for food.

"Animal rights have been top of mind for Americans in recent years because of an increasing number of films and news stories depicting the poor treatment of animals," Gallup said in a statement on the poll.

The changing public attitudes have helped drive some major corporate changes in recent years, as Humane Society president Wayne Pacelle argues in his new book, " The Humane Economy." Hundreds of companies, including behemoths such as McDonald's and Walmart, have vowed to use only eggs laid by chickens that aren't caged and buy pork from suppliers that don't confine pregnant pigs in cramped stalls known as "gestation crates." SeaWorld has ended orca breeding, and Ringling Bros. has retired its circus elephants. Giorgio Armani has sworn off fur.

The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus's Asian elephants had their final performances in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and Providence, R.I., on May 1, 2016. (Video: Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post, Photo: Bill Sikes/The Washington Post)

Politicians also need to start thinking about animal welfare - if they don't already, said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). He is the co-chair of the Congressional Animal Protection Caucus, whose members highlight issues and legislation affecting animals.

"This is one of the most important political movements that no one thinks about," Blumenauer said. "It's gone mainstream."

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Animal welfare remains an issue more heartily embraced by Democrats, however, who tend to be less tight with farming and gun-rights groups that are often at odds with animal- and wildlife-protection organizations. The caucus Blumenauer chairs has 128 members, but only 19 are Republicans, according to his office.

So it's probably not surprising that both Democratic presidential candidates get high marks from the Humane Society of the United States for their records on animal issues.

As a senator for eight years, Clinton twice earned 100 percent ratings on the organization's "Humane Scorecard," which rates members of Congress based on their voting records on animal protection legislation; other years she was in the 70s and 80s. The organization praised her for co-sponsoring bills to crack down on puppy mills, speaking out against slaughtering sick cows for use in school lunches and, as secretary of state, for launching a campaign against the illegal ivory trade. As first lady, it noted, she also took Socks the cat on visits to schools and hospitals.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has also been a "steady and consistent supporter of animal protection," the Humane Society Legislative Fund's president, Michael Markarian, wrote in a blog post in January. He started out with lower scores on the "Humane Scorecard" while in the House, but in recent years he's earned a few 100s in the Senate, where he has co-sponsored legislation on protecting pets in situations of domestic violence and making malicious animal cruelty a felony. Defenders of Wildlife also gives Sanders a 100 percent lifetime rating for "pro-conservation" votes.

Sanders's official website doesn't include an animal welfare statement, but a group supporting him, Feelthebern.org, has published a summary of his positions. It calls him "an advocate of animal welfare and ensuring animals' humane treatment."

As for Republican candidate Donald Trump? He doesn't have a voting record to look at, and his website doesn't address the topic.

But there are a few somewhat ambiguous hints from his past. In 1993, Trump held a news conference to announce the end of a horse high-diving performance at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, which the Trump Taj Mahal casino and hotel owned. Animal welfare groups had strongly criticized the act, and Trump said "he disliked it from the start," according to the Press of Atlantic City.

He has defended his sons' trophy hunts in Africa, though he has also said he's "not a believer in hunting." But in a more recent interview with Outdoor Life, he referred to having introduced people to hunting and wanting to bring "the next generation of hunters into the game."

Last year, Trump expressed disapproval of the Ringling decision to end its elephant performances.

When asked about where he stands on animal and wildlife issues, Hope Hicks, a Trump spokeswoman, said in an email that "Mr. Trump will continue to release policies and positions in the coming weeks."

She didn't say whether he'll include something on animals. But given these times, it won't be shocking if he does.
Read more: It's official: America's first national mammal is the bison Nest cam livestreams bald eagle parents feeding a cat to their eaglets Got rats? These homeless cats are for hire.

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Hillary Clinton wants you to know what she thinks about animals

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Americans' growing concern about animal welfare issues is influencing politics and corporations.

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Giant panda species no longer endangered

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Giant panda species no longer endangered

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Drake Gibson

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A giant panda at the Bifengxia Giant Panda Breeding and Conservation Center in Sichuan Province.

Credit: Binbin Li

The giant panda, commonly a symbol for conservation, is no longer considered an endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

In an update to their Red List of Threatened Species on Sunday (Sept. 4), which assesses a species' conservation status, the IUCN reported the giant panda population has improved enough for the endangered species label to be downgraded to "vulnerable."

A nationwide census in 2014 found 1,864 giant pandas in the wild in China, excluding cubs - an increase from 1,596 in 2004, according to the IUCN. Including cubs, the current population count is approaching 2,060, the organization said. The report credits forest protection and reforestation measures in China for increasing the available habitat for the species. [ Baby Panda Pics: See A Cub Growing Up]

"The decision to downlist the giant panda to 'vulnerable' is a positive sign confirming that the Chinese government's efforts to conserve this species are effective," the IUCN noted in its assessment.

The giant panda was once widespread throughout southern China, and is revered in the country's culture. The IUCN's first assessment of the species in 1965 listed the giant panda as "very rare but believed to be stable or increasing."

The species has been the focus of an intensive, high-profile conservation campaign to recover an endangered species since the 1970s, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) - which has used the panda in its logo since 1961.

"For over fifty years, the giant panda has been the globe's most beloved conservation icon as well as the symbol of WWF," Marco Lambertini, director general of the WWF, said in a statement. "Knowing that the panda is now a step further from extinction is an exciting moment for everyone committed to conserving the world's wildlife and their habitats."

Decades of conservation efforts have included the banning of giant panda poaching - their hides were considered a commodity - as well as the creation of the panda reserve system, increasing available habitats. There are now 67 reserves in China protecting nearly 5,400 square miles (14,000 square kilometers) of habitat and 67 percent of the panda population, reported CNN.

"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," Lambertini said in the statement.

The Chinese government's partnerships with the international organization have also spread conservation and breeding efforts. In June, a healthy male cub was born in a Belgian zoo. The captive population is not taken into consideration by IUCN for the Red List, which is specific to species in the wild. However, the captive population being bred for recovery and reintroduction are part of the overall conservation picture, according to Joe Walston, Vice President of Conservation Field Programs for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

The giant panda is not completely in the clear, however. The IUCN warned that climate change and decreasing bamboo availability could reverse the gains made in the past few decades. More than one-third of the panda's bamboo habitat could disappear in the next 80 years, according to the IUCN.

"It is a real concern, and this is emblematic of what species are facing globally with regard to climate change," Walston told Live Science of the threat to habitat and food supply. "The most important thing we can do at the moment is to be able to grow the extent and range of that habitat and by doing that you allow pandas to move across landscapes."

Wildlife as a whole can adapt to short-term changes and season extremes, Walston said, but they need to space to move and adapt.

As such, conservation efforts continue and the giant panda will continue to be considered "a conservation-dependent species for the foreseeable future," the IUCN's report concluded.

Original article on Live Science.

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Giant Panda Is No Longer Endangered Species

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The giant panda, commonly a symbol for conservation, is no longer considered an endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In an update to their Red List of Threatened Species on Sunday (Sept.

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Snake kills two boys during sleepover, Canadian police say

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Snake kills two boys during sleepover, Canadian police say

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Kyle Fuhrman

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Snake kills two boys during sleepover, Canadian police say | CNN

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Two boys were found dead Monday morning in a Canadian town. Their suspected killer is a python.

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Python kills security guard in Bali | CNN

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A python has killed a security guard near a luxury hotel in Bali, Indonesia.

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Sea Anemone Proteins Could Help Fix Damaged Hearing

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The proteins that sea anemones use to repair their feathery tentacles could also one day be used to fix damaged cells in a mammal's ear.

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Europe leads growing market in offshore wind power - Nature

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Offshore capacity on the rise despite high costs of installation.

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Hadley Oehlert

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IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Astronaut Scott Kelly has completed his nearly year-long mission aboard the international space station.

- NASA/Bill Ingalls / (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

- Kirill Kudryavtsev / Pool via AP

- KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV / Pool via AP

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Coming Home: A Look Back at Scott Kelly's Year in Space

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Astronaut Scott Kelly has completed his nearly year-long mission aboard the international space station.

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The managing director of a Zimbabwe mining company, Godfrey Nyakudya, has been fingered as the kingpin behind elephant killings with cyanide during the past three years.

More than 300 animals died this way for their ivory in Hwange National Park between 2013 and 2014, and 100 more across the country last year. The effects of cyanide on elephants that drink water or eat food laced with it are horrific.

"But who's using it? And where does it come from?" asked Oscar Nkala in a report here last year.

Dilute sodium cyanide solution is used to dissolve and separate gold or silver from ore.

According to the special investigations unit of Nehanda Radio, based in Bulawayo, the home of Nyakudya's mining company, Nyakudya is wanted in connection with "the manner in which he dealt with cyanide that was used during the chemical poaching in Zimbabwe since 2013." Nyakudya is alleged to have imported cyanide from South Africa without proper documents.

The radio station said that an employee of Nyakudya's company did not have a permit to handle and transport cyanide. The employee, who wishes to remain unnamed for fear of his life, said that each time a cyanide consignment was delivered, it was offloaded at night. Another employee, also anonymous, said that no paperwork existed showing how and where the chemical was going.

The source claimed that four tons was sold to How Gold Mine, near Bulawayo, but he said, "To my surprise, my friends who were truck drivers told me some cyanide was transported to Hwange." The only mining done in the Hwange area is for coal, which doesn't use cyanide.

Nyakudya is being held in jail in Bulawayo, awaiting an appearance in court next week.

Some other wildlife crime busts and convictions around the world this past week:

PIG-NOSED TURTLE SEIZURE: Authorities at Soekarno Hatta International Airport, in Jakarta, Indonesia, confiscated nearly 8,000 freshwater turtles headed for Hong Kong, reports TRAFFIC, an organization that monitors wildlife trade. The majority of the animals-3,737-were pig-nosed turtles, which are classified as "vulnerable" and found in Australia and New Guinea.

SEA URCHIN POACHING: Police in Javea, a coastal town in Spain, caught two people poaching sea urchins, according to Euro Weekly, and confiscated 321. Only "traditional methods of fishing for the delicacy," are permitted in Spain, the publication notes. It's illegal to dive for sea urchins in Spain, and catches are limited to 24 per person.

TURTLE SMUGGLING: A man arrested earlier this month for illegally importing 38 turtles into Canada has been fined $3,500 and placed on probation for two years, says CTV News. He had carried the turtles in plastic bags strapped to his legs.

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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Mining Director Busted for Elephant Poisonings

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In this week's crime blotter, getting to the bottom of gruesome elephant killings in Zimbabwe.

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144-year-old arctic shipwreck discovered; climate change to thank? - cnn

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144-year-old Arctic shipwreck discovered; climate change to thank? - CNN

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Archaeologists have discovered parts of two 19th-century whaling ships in the Arctic, thanks to sonar technology, intrepid divers and ... climate change?

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New clues about how Earth got its moon | CNN

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Researchers compared Earth rocks and moon rocks and determined that a head-on collision with another planet created our moon.

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Ninth planet?

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Beyond Neptune, in the farthest reaches of our solar system, is Planet Nine.

At least, that is what two Caltech professors believe. This isn't a dwarf planet, like the recently downgraded Pluto. It's up to 10 times as massive as Earth. Also, it's far away - about 20 times as distant as Neptune, with an orbit around the Sun that could take as long as 20,000 years to complete.

It seems like an incredible discovery. The problem? Nobody has actually seen the planet.

"We see how it has pushed around objects in the distant solar system, so we know it's there," Mike Brown, one of the Caltech researchers behind the discovery, told NBC News. "We haven't spotted precisely where it is yet."

It all started 13 years ago with the discovery of Sedna in the Kuiper Belt, the distant region of our solar system beyond Neptune.

Smaller than Pluto, Sedna had a strange orbit. It was affected by the gravitational pull of something large - but that something clearly wasn't Neptune. As scientists began discovering more objects in the Kuiper Belt, a pattern started to emerge.

"There was no 'ah-ha!' moment," Brown said. "We kept trying to prove it was something else, because a planet seemed ridiculous."

Brown and Konstantin Batygin, whose findings where published Wednesday in The Astronomical Journal, weren't the only people noticing these odd, far-flung orbits.

Two years ago, at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., astronomer Scott Sheppard also found objects in the Kuiper Belt that seemed to be clustering around some unknown body. He thought it might be a planet, but couldn't be sure.

"We expected people either to debunk those results or dive deeper," Sheppard told NBC News.

Nobody has debunked his research. Instead, the new paper puts his work "on a much more stable foundation," he said.

The turning point for Brown was when he and Batygin started predicting the presence of objects, and then found them.

Five of those objects were entering the plane of the solar system at a 90-degree angle, which is very hard to explain without the presence of a large planet, he said.

"In my head, that was the moment where I thought, 'Oh my god, this is real,'" Brown said. He also found six objects in the Kuiper Belt whose clustering was only given a 0.007 percent chance of being random.

The evidence of Planet Nine was mounting. It seemed fitting that Brown would make the discovery, since he was the one who found Eris in 2005, creating the category of "dwarf planet" that would eventually be used to define the former ninth planet of the solar system, Pluto.

But why did it take so long to find a planet that - in the grand, cosmic scale - is basically in our backyard?

Our solar system is a speck in the universe, but by human standards, it's still really big: around 9 billion miles across, according to NASA.

In the last few years, scientists have been able to analyze more of it than ever. While telescopes are getting bigger, that really isn't what is pushing the change. Construction of the Samuel Oschin telescope, which was used to find Sedna, was finished at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego in 1948.

The driver of change has been the cameras that are attached to the telescopes. Compare the clunky digital cameras of the 1990s, which could capture around 1 megabyte of data, to the 12-megapixel camera on the iPhone 6S. A similar shift happened in astronomy.

"The cameras are getting bigger and better," Sheppard said. That allows researchers to not only spot fainter objects, but to cover a wider area of space more quickly.

For example, a swath of sky that would take the Hubble Space Telescope 500 images to capture could take only a single image for a telescope connected to a new digital camera.

"We're looking for a needle in a haystack," Sheppard said. "In the past, we were basically looking through a straw for that needle. Now it's more like looking through a big pipe. We're able to find things much more efficiently."

In a single night, he said, astronomers can get up to a terabyte of data from a telescope. Sifting through that data for signs of moving objects takes a lot of computing power. Over the past decade, that process has also become a lot more efficient.

"Something that took a day to complete five years ago could probably be done in few hours now," Sheppard said.

What does that mean for Planet Nine? Now that astronomers know its rough orbit, it should only take a few years to nail down where, exactly, Pluto's replacement is hiding - if it exists. Brown is fairly confident that it does.

"We're pretty convinced it's there, or else we wouldn't have published the paper and potentially made ourselves look like idiots," he said. He conceded, however, that "until it's actually imaged, nobody is going to believe for sure that it's out there."

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How Scientists (Possibly) Found the Solar System's Ninth Planet

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Beyond Neptune, in the farthest reaches of our solar system, is Planet Nine. At least, that is what two Caltech professors believe. This isn't a dwarf planet, like the recently downgraded Pluto. It's up to 10 times as massive as Earth.

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While 98 people were bitten by sharks last year, the highest number on record, the odds of getting bitten are still quite low.

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Luis Ruiz

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A hunter tracking down a mountain lion has stumbled upon a biological mystery.

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High levels of vitamin D are linked to improved fertility and reproductive success, a study of wild sheep has found.

The study, carried out on a remote Hebridean island, adds to growing evidence that vitamin D -- known as the sunshine vitamin -- is associated with reproductive health.

Experts hope that further studies will help to determine the relevance of the results for other mammals, including people.

Researchers led by the University of Edinburgh measured concentrations of a marker linked to vitamin D in the blood of an unmanaged population of Soay sheep, on St Kilda.

Scientists found that sheep with higher levels of vitamin D in their blood at the end of the summer went on to have more lambs in the following spring.

The study offers the first evidence that an animal's vitamin D status is associated with an evolutionary advantage.

Vitamin D is produced in the skin of sheep and other animals, including people, after exposure to sunlight. It can also be found in some foods, including certain types of plants. It is essential for healthy bones and teeth and has been linked to other health benefits.

Many studies in the lab have linked vitamin D to reproductive health in animals and humans. This is the first evidence of the link in wild animals.

Scientists carried out the research as part of a long-term study on the evolution of Soay sheep. The animals have lived wild for thousands of years on the islands of St Kilda, a world Heritage site owned and managed by the National Trust for Scotland.

The research is published in the journal Scientific Reports. It was funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Natural Environment Research Council.

Dr Richard Mellanby, Head of Small Animal Medicine at the University's Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, who led the research, said: "Our study is the first to link vitamin D status and reproductive success in a wild animal population.

"Examining the non-skeletal health benefits of vitamin D in humans is challenging because people are exposed to different amounts of sunlight each day. Studying the relationship between skin and dietary sources of vitamin D -- and long term health outcomes -- is more straightforward in sheep living on a small island."

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vitamin d; vitamin; dietary supplements and minerals; vitamin e; wild animals; veterinary medicine; animals; mammals

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Sunshine vitamin linked to improved fertility in wild animals

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High levels of vitamin D are linked to improved fertility and reproductive success, a study of wild sheep has found. Experts hope that further studies will help to determine the relevance of the results for other mammals, including people.

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160111-insects-animals-science-praying-mantises-3d-vision/

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Busy eyes can make ears go temporarily deaf | Science News

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When challenged with a tough visual task, people are less likely to perceive a tone, suggesting that perceptual overload can jump between senses.

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

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151208-vatican-photo-ark-wildlife-photos-cop21/

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

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Solar-powered plane lands in Hawaii | CNN Business

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The Solar Impulse 2, a solar-powered plane, has landed in Hawaii. This ends a dangerous leg in an attempt to fly around the world. CNN's David Molko reports.

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What if the internet that humans currently use could be extended to other species?

This is the kind of idea that the musician Peter Gabriel has long been interested in. As part of the Interspecies Internet project, which he has been working on with pioneers such as Vint Cerf, one of the architects of the internet, and academics such as Neil Gershenfeld, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Gabriel is planning to run an experiment at Monkey World, the Dorset-based chimp rescue centre.

If the experiment goes ahead - a spokesperson for Monkey World said the plans were still at a very early stage and wouldn't comment further - the hope is to see if chimpanzees could learn to use videoconferencing to communicate with each other. "The idea is to extend a big video network that already exists in labs at [MIT] so that different species including our own have a chance to communicate," said Gabriel. "I am also interested in how they would use the internet to communicate." After that, he would be looking at how they could communicate with us.

Exciting as it sounds, there are likely to be obstacles. "In the 70s there was the idea to try and teach [chimpanzees] sign language to see if that would help them communicate with us," says Dr Bridget Waller, director of the Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Portsmouth. "We don't really do that any more. It's more about trying to work out what their communication - their calls, facial expressions and gestures - is about, rather than trying to teach them artificial ways of communicating." Primates are also very territorial, she says, and if they think an animal they don't know is in their enclosure, there may be issues.

Will this project improve communication with humans? "I think we're already pretty good at communicating with primates when they're in captivity," says Waller. "We use touchscreens in our facility at the Isle of Wight, with macaques. We have shared communication systems in place. We know what some of their facial expressions and gestures mean. Whether videoconferencing will help that, I'm not entirely sure." If nothing else, technology might enrich the lives of captive primates, she says. "Primates are complex creatures and they need to be stimulated when we keep them in captivity."

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Peter Gabriel's pet project: teaching monkeys to Skype

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The singer is planning an experiment at Monkey World in Dorset to see if chimps can use videoconferencing to chat to each other - or even to us

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

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When dawn breaks on Futou Ling, a mountain on Hainan Island off China's south coast, the last remaining gibbons begin to sing.

Males climb to the treetops, where their voices will carry the farthest, and start warbling, hooting, and shrieking. Females and youngsters join in, creating an intense musical cacophony that fills the tropical forest.

Samuel Turvey and Jessica Bryant are ready at their listening posts. When they hear the song of the gibbons, they run toward it.

"The Hainan gibbon," says Turvey, a senior research fellow at the Zoological Society of London, "is the world's rarest ape, the world's rarest primate and, almost certainly, the world's rarest mammal." (Only three northern white rhinos remain, but that is a subspecies of white rhino.)

Some 28 gibbons survive in a six-square-mile (16-square-kilometer) patch of rainforest in Bawangling National Nature Reserve, in western Hainan. They are found nowhere else. With such a tiny population, there's a high risk of a random catastrophic event-a typhoon, a forest fire, an outbreak of infectious disease -wiping out the entire species.

On November 24, when the International Union for Conservation of Nature released its latest report on the world's 25 most endangered primates, the Hainan gibbon figured prominently, with the lowest recorded numbers of any species. Turvey and Bryant's sprint through the forest is part of an international conservation effort to prevent the gibbons becoming the first primate to be driven extinct by humans. The researchers' aim is to fully understand the lives and needs of these little-known apes, so they can work out the best plan to save them.

But first they have to find them.

The Threats: Deforestation and Gibbon Paste

Weighing in at around 17 pounds (8 kilograms), the Hainan gibbon spends its entire life up in the canopy. Males and younger individuals of both sexes have black fur; adult females are a lustrous, orangey gold.

Family groups typically comprise a male, two females, and their babies, although several young "solitaries" that haven't yet found a mate roam the forest alone.

Historically, Hainan was home to thousands of gibbons. The species was devastated by poaching-a gluey paste, made from boiling the whole animal, was used as a general tonic in Chinese medicine-and by deforestation. From the 1960s, the forest was selectively logged for valuable timber, such as rosewood, and clear-cut to make way for state-owned rubber plantations.

As lowland rainforest disappeared, the gibbons were pushed up to higher altitudes. Here, the tropical trees that produce the gibbons' favorite foods- soft, sugar-rich fruit, including wild lychees, rambutans, and figs-give way to oak trees, and the gibbons must supplement their diet with , leaves, shoots, and insects. "We don't know what impact this sub-optimal habitat has on the population," says Turvey, "but it may be putting them under increased stress."

Bushwhacking for Gibbon Scat

Jessica Bryant has spent several seasons, both rainy and dry, tracking the gibbons. She and her colleagues start their day at 4 a.m. with a quick bowl of congee (a thick rice porridge that's a Chinese breakfast staple), then hike an hour up to the ridgeline. As the sun cracks the horizon, the gibbons burst into song.

"Every gibbon species has a slightly different call," says Bryant. "In my opinion, the Hainan gibbon's haunting song is the most beautiful of all."

The scientists don't have long to locate the gibbons before they fall silent. "If we don't find them in time, we have to wait another one or two hours until they sing again," says Bryant. "And when it's raining they don't sing. They'll head to the lower branches, take shelter under some leaves and huddle together looking grumpy."

Having found the gibbons, the team follows them. The apes use powerful arms and long fingers to swoop from tree to tree with acrobatic grace. A hundred feet below, it's a very different scene: The scientists are scrambling uphill and down, whacking through undergrowth, being scratched by thorns and persecuted by leeches.

All this for the purpose of gathering gibbon scat-a task that requires keen eyes. "The feces drops a long way down from the canopy, bouncing off branches and breaking into small fragments before hitting the ground," Bryant says. "It's really hard to spot in amongst the vegetation and leaf litter." But the scat, if she can find it, yields DNA that reveals the sex of the gibbons.

The overall goal is an accurate census of the Hainan gibbon's dwindling population and of its prospects for rebounding. "If we can find out how many there are, and where they live, we can focus on protecting and reforesting those areas," Bryant says.

More Endangered Than Pandas

Running parallel to the scientific research is an effort to drum up support for the gibbons among people who used to sell them for gibbon paste. The eastern flank of Futou Ling "is an extremely poor area," says Bosco Chan, head of the China Conservation department at Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden (KFBG) in Hong Kong. "Previously, the villagers made money from rubber, but the market price has dropped. And they used rainforest products freely for generations-collecting timber and rattan for construction, hunting animals, and gathering fruits, herbs, mushrooms, and other 'jungle foods'."

Chan's KFBG team is helping the villagers develop sustainable agriculture-raising pigs, beekeeping, and cultivating Alpinia oxyphylla, a highly-prized, ginger-like medicinal herb that grows under the rubber trees. "We cannot simply bar locals from the forest," Chan says. "To avoid conflict, we try to bring benefits as well as enforcing rules."

To enforce the rules against poaching, KFBG has hired influential local men as park rangers. It seems to be working. "Once in a while people are caught with rifles [illegal in China], or dead squirrels or deer, but as far as we know, no gibbons have been killed recently," says Chan. The rangers have also helped plant more than 80,000 fast-growing native fruit trees to reforest the lower slopes.

Meanwhile, to raise public awareness, Chan's team has sponsored gibbon-themed village fêtes, published a gibbon picture book, and handed out gibbon-adorned fai chun -the red banners hung on doorways at Chinese New Year. "Many local children were aware of the plight of China's giant pandas," Chan says, "but had no idea that a far more endangered species was living on their doorstep."

Starting next year, Turvey and Bryant plan to build canopy bridges to help the gibbons, which are clumsy on the ground, move through the fragmented forest. And with international help, including from the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, they're drawing up an emergency response plan to keep the gibbons from being wiped out by a storm or other calamity. Richard Young of the Durrell Trust has seen situations this dire before. "The Mauritius kestrel was down to four individuals when we stepped in," he says. "Their population now stands at 400. So we know what's possible."

Last summer Jessica Bryant began experimenting with a new technique for finding gibbons, especially the solitaries that rarely sing: She broadcasts recordings of gibbon song. On the first trial, a male called back. The team tracked him and found that he wasn't solitary after all. He had a female and baby with him. The discovery boosted the number of known breeding groups from three to four.

"I was overjoyed," says Bryant. "I've been working on the species for five years, and it has been a great privilege, but also tremendously difficult. This kind of breakthrough makes it all worthwhile."

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The World's Rarest Ape Lives-and Sings-on a Chinese Island

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When dawn breaks on Futou Ling, a mountain on Hainan Island off China's south coast, the last remaining gibbons begin to sing. Males climb to the treetops, where their voices will carry the farthest, and start warbling, hooting, and shrieking. Females and youngsters join in, creating an intense musical cacophony that fills the tropical forest.

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A newly discovered collection of rare dinosaur tracks is helping scientists shed light on some of the biggest animals ever to live on land.

Hundreds of footprints and handprints made by plant-eating sauropods around 170 million years ago have been found on the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

The discovery -- which is the biggest dinosaur site yet found in Scotland -- helps fill an important gap in the evolution the huge, long-necked animals, which were the biggest of the dinosaurs.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh identified the tracks in layers of rock, which would have been at the bottom of a shallow, salt water lagoon when the prints were made.

By analysing the structure of the footprints, the team found that the dinosaurs were early, distant relatives of more well-known species, such as Brontosaurus and Diplodocus. The Skye dinosaurs likely grew to at least 15 metres in length and weighed more than 10 tonnes.

The footprints -- the largest of which is 70 cm in diameter -- are the first sauropod tracks to be found in Scotland. Until now, the only evidence that sauropods lived in Scotland came from a small number of bone and teeth fragments.

Fossils from the Middle Jurassic Period are extremely rare, and the Isle of Skye is one of the few places in the world where they can be found.

The discovery is helping scientists to reimagine the habitats and lifestyles of the world's biggest dinosaurs. Together with similar tracks found recently in other parts of the world, the Skye trackways reveal that sauropods spent lots of time in coastal areas and shallow water. It was previously thought that large dinosaurs were purely land-dwellers.

A University of Edinburgh-led team found the trails during fieldwork in collaboration with Skye's Staffin Museum and other Scottish institutions.

The study, published in Scottish Journal of Geology, was supported by the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.

Dr Steve Brusatte, of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, who led the study, said: "The new tracksite from Skye is one of the most remarkable dinosaur discoveries ever made in Scotland. There are so many tracks crossing each other that it looks like a dinosaur disco preserved in stone. By following the tracks you can walk with these dinosaurs as they waded through a lagoon 170 million years ago, when Scotland was so much warmer than today."

Dr Tom Challands of the School of GeoSciences, who took part in the discovery and research, said: "This find clearly establishes the Isle of Skye as an area of major importance for research into the Mid-Jurassic period. It is exhilarating to make such a discovery and being able to study it in detail, but the best thing is this is only the tip of the iceberg. I'm certain Skye will keep yielding great sites and specimens for years to come."

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new species; biology; soil types; extinction; dinosaurs; paleontology; ancient dna; fossils

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A nanofiber hydrogel infused with snake venom may be the best material to stop bleeding quickly-and may perform better than anticoagulants, a new study suggests.

The hydrogel called SB50 incorporates batroxobin, a venom produced by two species of South American pit viper. It can be injected as a liquid and quickly turns into a gel that conforms to the site of a wound, keeping it closed, and promotes clotting within seconds.

The findings suggest the hydrogel may be most useful for surgeries, particularly for patients who take anti-coagulant drugs to thin their blood.

"It's interesting that you can take something so deadly and turn it into something that has the potential to save lives."

The hydrogel may be most useful for surgeries, particularly for patients who take anti-coagulant drugs to thin their blood.

"It's interesting that you can take something so deadly and turn it into something that has the potential to save lives," says Jeffrey Hartgerink, a chemist at Rice University.

Batroxobin was recognized for its properties as a coagulant-a substance that encourages blood to clot-in 1936. It has been used in various therapies as a way to remove excess fibrin proteins from the blood to treat thrombosis and as a topical hemostat. It has also been used as a diagnostic tool to determine blood-clotting time in the presence of heparin, an anti-coagulant drug.

"From a clinical perspective, that's far and away the most important issue here," Hartgerink says. "There's a lot of different things that can trigger blood coagulation, but when you're on heparin, most of them don't work, or they work slowly or poorly. That obviously causes problems if you're bleeding.

"Heparin blocks the function of thrombin, an enzyme that begins a cascade of reactions that lead to the clotting of blood," he says. "Batroxobin is also an enzyme with similar function to thrombin, but its function is not blocked by heparin. This is important because surgical bleeding in patients taking heparin can be a serious problem. The use of batroxobin allows us to get around this problem because it can immediately start the clotting process, regardless of whether heparin is there or not."

Works in 6 seconds

The batroxobin combined with the hydrogels isn't taken directly from snakes, Hartgerink says. The substance used for medicine is produced by genetically modified bacteria and then purified, avoiding the risk of other contaminant toxins.

For the study, published in ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering, researchers combined batroxobin with their synthetic, self-assembling nanofibers, which can be loaded into a syringe and injected at the site of a wound, where they reassemble themselves into a gel.

Tests showed the new material stopped a wound from bleeding in as little as six seconds, and further prodding of the wound minutes later did not reopen it. The researchers also tested several other options: the hydrogel without batroxobin, the batroxobin without the hydrogel, a current clinical hemostat known as GelFoam and an alternative self-assembling hemostat known as Puramatrix and found that none were as effective, especially in the presence of anti-coagulants.

The new work builds upon extensive development of injectable hydrogel scaffolds that help wounds heal and grow natural tissue. The synthetic scaffolds are built from the peptide sequences to mimic natural processes.

"To be clear, we did not discover nor do any of the initial investigations of batroxobin," Hartgerink says. "Its properties have been well-known for many decades. What we did was combine it with the hydrogel we've been working on for a long time.

"We think SB50 has great potential to stop surgical bleeding, particularly in difficult cases in which the patient is taking heparin or other anti-coagulants," he says. "SB50 takes the powerful clotting ability of this snake venom and makes it far more effective by delivering it in an easily localized hydrogel that prevents possible unwanted systemic effects from using batroxobin alone."

SB50 will require FDA approval before clinical use, Hartgerink says. While batroxobin is already approved, the hydrogel has not yet won approval, a process he expects will take several more years of testing.

The National Institutes of Health and the Welch Foundation supported the research.
Source: Rice University

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Snake venom hydrogel stops bleeding in 6 seconds

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A nanofiber hydrogel infused with snake venom may work better than anti-coagulants to stop bleeding quickly, a new study suggests.