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Not everything was destroyed in the fire. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 Gilbert Bochenek.

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Three hives containing a population of over 180,000 bees were left unscathed by this week’s devastating fire.

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Despite the roof of the historic Parisian cathedral being shrouded in flames on Monday, the hives, which were situated on the roof of the building’s first floor, survived without so much as a scratch.

“Thank goodness the flames didn’t touch them,” said beekeeper Nicolas Geant. “It’s a miracle.”

For several days following the fire it was unclear whether or not the hives had been destroyed. It wasn’t until aerial photos were taken that it was possible to confirm that they had survived.

“I was incredibly sad about Notre Dame because it’s such a beautiful building, and as a Catholic it means a lot to me,” said Geant.

“But to hear there is life when it comes to the bees, that’s just wonderful.”

Beekeeping on rooftops is surprisingly common in Paris with several prominent buildings hosting their own hives as part of a concerted effort to help curb the decline in bee populations.

In total there are thought to be at least 700 hives spread across the city.

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(For the source of this, and many other quite interesting articles, and to watch a video relating to it, please visit: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/327071/miracle-as-bees-survive-notre-dame-blaze)

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Scientists change monkey minds using low-intensity ultrasound

By Rich Haridy

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In a new study, low-intensity ultrasound has been used to disrupt a cognitive process known as counterfactual thinking in macaques monkeys. (Credit: hecke06/Depositphotos).

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Amphibious, four-legged whale fossil might be a missing link

By Michael Irving – 

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Whales weren’t always the giants of the sea that we know today – their ancestors plodded around on land before taking to a more aquatic lifestyle. Now a team of palaeontologists has uncovered the fossil bones of a strange new “missing link” whale species, which had four legs and was amphibious.

Named Peregocetus pacificus, the whale species was dated to about 42.6 million years ago, during the middle Eocene epoch. Measuring 4 m (13 ft) long, its four legs, tail and snout make it look more like an otter than a whale.

The creature was clearly just as comfortable on dry land as it was in the water. The team discovered tiny hooves on the tips of its toes – a holdover from its land-dwelling ancestors, which also gave rise to animals like camels and pigs. But they also found clues that indicated those toes were webbed, helping Peregocetus swim. The structures of the vertebrae in its tail, similar to those in beavers and otters, also suggested that its tail played a key role in swimming.

Although Peregocetus isn’t the first four-limbed amphibious whale species to be discovered, it does help plug a big hole in the origin story of whales. It’s long been thought that these amphibious whales originated somewhere around southern Asia more than 50 million years ago, before making their way westward to Africa, then the Americas.

This discovery fits into that narrative nicely. These bones were found in southern Peru, in a coastal desert region named Playa Media Luna, indicating they’d reached South America 42.6 million years ago. After that, it’s believed they migrated up to North America.

“This is the first indisputable record of a quadrupedal whale skeleton for the whole Pacific Ocean, probably the oldest for the Americas, and the most complete outside India and Pakistan,” says Olivier Lambert, corresponding author of the study. “We will keep searching in localities with layers as ancient, and even more ancient, than the ones of Playa Media Luna, so older amphibious cetaceans may be discovered in the future.”

The research was published in the journal Current Biology.

Source: Cell Press via Science Daily

An audio version of this article is available to New Atlas Plus subscribers.    More audio articles

(For the source of this, and many other interesting articles, please visit: https://newatlas.com/amphibious-whale-fossil/59169/)

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The superbug-fighting potential of fish slime

By Nick Lavars –

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Zebras’ stripes found to keep flies from landing

By Ben Coxworth –

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It was just last month that we heard about a study which indicated that fewer horseflies landed on mannequins with stripes painted onto them. The research was inspired by observations that zebras also tend not to be bothered much by flies. A separate study now offers an explanation as to why that’s the case.

Conducted by scientists from the University of Bristol and the University of California – Davis, the second study involved zebras and domestic horses living at a stable in North Somerset, UK. Utilizing video analysis techniques, it was found that while equal numbers of horseflies circled both types of horses, far fewer actually landed on the zebras.

In order to determine if the stripes were responsible for this difference, the researchers proceeded to cover all of the animals in cloth coats that were either solid white, solid black, or zebra-striped. Sure enough, regardless of whether it was a zebra or a domestic horse wearing the coat, flies landed on the solid colors while largely avoiding the stripes.

It would therefore seem to follow that other variables, such as zebras’ odor or behaviour, weren’t factors in keeping the flies from landing. When flies did land on the zebras, however, the wild horses were more diligent about swishing their tails or running away to get rid of them.

UC Davis wildlife biologist Tim Caro observes zebra behavior in response to biting fly annoyance.

So, what is it that flies don’t like about stripes?

“This reduced ability to land on the zebra’s coat may be due to stripes disrupting the visual system of the horseflies during their final moments of approach,” says U Bristol’s Dr. Martin How. “Stripes may dazzle flies in some way once they are close enough to see them with their low-resolution eyes.”

A paper on the research, which was led by UC Davis’ Prof. Tim Caro, was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Sources: University of Bristol, UC Davis, PLOS via EurekAlert

An audio version of this article is available to New Atlas Plus subscribers.

More audio articles

(For the source of this, and many additional interesting articles, please visit: https://newatlas.com/zebras-horses-flies-stripes/58583/)

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Woolly Mammoth

Its cells, 28,000 years-old, were reactivated by science.

A team of Japanese and Russian scientists has successfully “reawakened” cells from a 28,000-year-old woolly mammoth, according to a study published recently in Scientific Reports.

The cells came from an extraordinarily well-preserved woolly mammoth discovered in Siberian permafrost in 2012 and nicknamed “Yuka”.

Using a process called nuclear transfer, the scientists took nucleus-like structures from Yuka and implanted them into mouse oocytes, which are highly specialized cells that facilitate embryonic development.

The scientists then used a live-cell imaging technique to observe how the structures reacted in their new environment. They saw traces of biological activity.

“I was looking under the microscope at night while I was alone in the laboratory,” 90-year-old Akira Iritani, a co-author on the new study who’s spent years working toward resurrecting the woolly mammoth, told CNN. “I was so moved when I saw the cells stir. I’d been hoping for this for 20 years.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40546-1/

(For the source of this, and other equally interesting articles, please visit http://www.BigThink.com).

[T-Rex next…?]

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Enriched mouse house may make for happier lab mice – and scientists

By Ben Coxworth –
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If you want to study a mouse’s natural behaviour, then perhaps it isn’t best to grab the animal and place it in a setting where it’s required to perform a certain task at a certain time. That’s the thinking behind Autonomouse, a cage that’s designed to make life easier for lab mice, and to produce more accurate results in behavioural studies.

Developed by a team at Britain’s Francis Crick Institute, Autonomouse houses multiple mice living in a social group, who are supplied with running wheels, ladders, and unlimited access to food and water. The system can reportedly run for up to 18 months with only minimal human intervention, although there’s no word on how waste-removal is handled.

All of the mice have uniquely-coded RFID chips inserted under their skin. These are detected by a reader device, that’s able to ascertain factors such as each animal’s current weight, its activity level, and how much water it’s drinking.

Additionally, the chips are used to detect when an individual mouse enters a special “training room.” When this happens, the door to that room is closed behind the mouse, temporarily keeping other mice from entering. The animal is then left to perform a given learning task, which the room is set up for, and which is the object of the study. Behavioural data is automatically recorded, and linked to that specific mouse.

“Working with an unstressed, group-housed cohort of mice that train themselves at the time of day that suits them, without the intervention of researchers over long periods of time, makes our experiments better and more efficient,” says study leader Dr. Andreas Schaefer.

An open-access paper on the research – which includes plans for the Autonomouse system, which other institutes are welcome to use – was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Source: Francis Crick Institute

(For the source of this, and other interesting articles, please visit: https://newatlas.com/autonomouse-lab-mouse-house/58785/)

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There are an awful lot of insects. It’s hard to say exactly how many because 80 percent haven’t yet been described by taxonomists, but there are probably about 5.5 million species. Put that number together with other kinds of animals with exoskeletons and jointed legs, known collectively as arthropods — this includes mites, spiders, and woodlice — and there are probably about 7 million species in all.

Despite their ubiquity in the animal kingdom, a recent report warned of a “bugpocalypse,” as surveys indicated that insects everywhere are declining at an alarming rate. This could mean the extinction of 40 percent of the world’s insect species over the next few decades.

See also: Humans Are Killing All the Bugs, and It’s Time to Get Worried About It

What is particularly worrying is that we don’t know exactly why populations are declining. Agricultural intensification and pesticides are likely a big part of the problem, but it’s certainly more complicated than that, and habitat loss and climate change could also play a part.

Although some newspaper reports have suggested that insects could “vanish within a century,” total loss is unlikely — it’s probable that if some species die out, others will move in and take their place. Nevertheless, this loss of diversity could have catastrophic consequences of its own. Insects are ecologically important, and if they were to disappear, the consequences for agriculture and wildlife would be dire.

The Sprawling Kingdom of Bugs

It’s difficult to overstate how many species there are. Indeed, the 7 million estimate above is likely a major underestimate. Lots of insects that look alike — so-called “cryptic species” — are distinguishable only by their DNA. There are an average of six cryptic species for every easily recognizable kind, so if we apply this to the original figure, the potential total number of arthropods balloons to 41 million.

Even then, each species has multiple kinds of parasites which are mostly specific to just one host species. Many of these parasites are mites which are themselves arthropods. Conservatively allowing just one kind of parasitic mite per host species brings us to a potential total of 82 million arthropods. Compared with only around 600,000 vertebrates — animals with backbones — that’s 137 species of arthropod for every vertebrate species.

Astronomical numbers like these caused the physicist-turned-biologist Sir Robert May to observe that “To a good approximation, all [animal] species are insects.” May was good at guessing big numbers — he became the UK Government’s chief scientist — and his quip in 1986 now seems pretty close to the mark.

That’s just diversity, though. How many individual insects would be lost in a mass extinction? And how much might they weigh? Their ecological importance will likely depend on both measures. It turns out that insects are so numerous that even though they are small, collectively, their weight far outstrips that of the vertebrates.

Perhaps the most celebrated ecologist of his generation, the Harvard ant enthusiast E.O. Wilson estimated that each hectare (2.5 acres) of Amazonian rainforest is inhabited by only a few dozen birds and mammals but well over 1 billion invertebrates, almost all of which are arthropods.

That hectare would contain about 200kg dry weight of animal tissue, 93 percent of which would be made up of invertebrate bodies, and a third of that being just ants and termites. This is uncomfortable news for our vertebrate-centric view of the natural world.

The Wriggling Foundations of Life

The role allotted to all these tiny creatures in the grand scheme of nature is to eat and be eaten. Insects are the key components of essentially every terrestrial food web. Herbivorous insects, which make up the majority, eat plants, using the chemical energy plants derive from sunlight to synthesize animal tissues and organs. The job is a big one, and is split into many different callings.

Caterpillars and grasshoppers chew plant leaves, aphids, and plant hoppers suck their juices, bees steal their pollen and drink their nectar, while beetles and flies eat their fruits and devastate their roots. Even the wood of huge trees is eaten by wood-boring insect larvae.

In turn, these plant-eating insects are themselves eaten, being captured, killed, or parasitized by yet more insects. All of these are, in their turn, consumed by still larger creatures. Even when plants die and are turned to mush by fungi and bacteria, there are insects that specialize in eating them.

Going up the food chain, each animal is less and less fussy about what kind of food it will eat. While a typical herbivorous insect might consume only one species of plant, insectivorous animals (mostly arthropods, but also many birds and mammals) don’t much care about what kind of insect they catch. This is why there are so many more kinds of insect than birds or mammals.

Because only a small fraction of the material of one kind of organism is transformed into that of its predators, each successive stage in the food chain contains less and less living matter. Even though efficiency in this process is known to be greater higher up the food chain, the animals “at the top” represent only a few percent of the total biomass. This is why big, fierce animals are rare.

See also: Crops Already Ravaged by Climate Change Face a New Threat: Hungrier Bugs

And so it’s obvious that when insect numbers decrease, everything higher up in the food web will suffer. This is already happening — falling insect abundance in Central American tropical forest has been accompanied by parallel declines in the numbers of insect-eating frogs, lizards, and birds. We humans ought to be more careful about our relationship with the little creatures that run the world. As Wilson commented:

“The truth is that we need invertebrates, but they don’t need us.”

Knowing about insects and their ways is not a luxury. Wilson’s friend and sometime colleague Thomas Eisner said:

“Bugs are not going to inherit the Earth. They own it now.”

If we dispossess them, can we manage the planet without them?

This article was originally published on The Conversation by Stuart Reynolds. Read the original article here.

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3 Itsy Bitsy Reasons Spiders Aren’t Out to Get You

Don’t believe the web of lies.

By Gerhard J. Gries and Andreas Fischer –

(For the source of this, and other interesting articles, please visit: https://www.inverse.com/article/53322-why-you-shouldn-t-be-afraid-of-spiders/)

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“Zombie deer disease,” a mad cow-like infection spreading in the US, explained

Getty Images.

 

A mad cow-like infectious disease that can turn the brains of deer, elk, and moose into “Swiss cheese” is spreading in at least 24 states — and some experts are warning that it could eventually make its way into humans.

Known as chronic wasting disease, the fatal progressive neurodegenerative illness was first identified in the 1960s. Like mad cow, the disease is spread by prions, the zombie-like pathogenic proteins that aren’t alive and can’t be killed. When they infect an animal, they eat away at its brain, causing a cascade of symptoms that resemble dementia and eventually lead to death. While the disease is still rare, researchers believe it’s more widespread than ever due, in part, to how humans trade deer and other hoofed mammals.

“What we’ve seen over the last few decades is that it’s slowly spreading in wild deer populations,” said Peter Larsen, an assistant professor in veterinary sciences at the University of Minnesota who has been studying the pathogen. It’s also spreading among captive deer, elk, and reindeer, which are transported around the country and overseas to hunting ranches, petting zoos, and Christmas-themed farms. That’s how the disease ended up in South Korea, Larsen said. (It’s been identified in Canada and Norway, too.)

When new outbreaks start, they are virtually impossible to contain because, unlike viruses and bacteria, prions can’t be killed. There’s also no good way to find them. So we’re talking about an indestructible, killer pathogen that could be lurking anywhere.

Researchers have long wondered whether the disease, like mad cow, can make the leap into humans. (Mad cow in people is known as Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.) Late last summer, we got a preliminary and frightening answer. In a paper published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, researchers from Scotland and Canada showed via an experiment in a petri dish that prions from sick animals can indeed infect human cells.

Since then, there’s been no direct evidence of human disease, even in people who ate meat that later tested positive for the pathogenic prions. Still, the experimental research spurred Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, to compare chronic wasting disease to mad cow recently.

Osterholm, it turns out, also warned the British government of the risks of mad cow before hundreds of people were infected in the UK and around the world in the late 1990s. Sitting before a state committee in Minnesota on February 7, he called the chances of humans becoming infected with chronic wasting disease “probable” and “possible,” adding: “The number of human cases will be substantial and not isolated events.”

“We don’t want to find out 10 years from now,” Osterholm told Vox, “that we should have been doing something in 2019 but didn’t.”

According to Larsen, it’s not time to freak out, but he warned that this is a growing public health threat. People should not consume infected meat, he said, while also noting there’s actually no good way to know if meat is infected. “There is currently no way for people to rapidly test for prions in meat, on meat processing surfaces, or in live deer,” he said.

Let’s walk through what we know about this emerging infectious disease.

1) What is “zombie deer disease”?

Scientists don’t know where the name “zombie deer disease” emerged. Instead, they refer to chronic wasting disease, a fatal progressive neurodegenerative illness believed to affect deer, elk, reindeer, and moose. It was discovered in farmed deer in Colorado in the 1960s, and it’s been intriguing scientists ever since.

The disease is caused by prions, which are not viruses or bacteria. Prions are almost indestructible pathogenic proteins that trigger cells, particularly in the brain and spinal cord, to fold abnormally and start clumping. When that happens, the infected animals begin to develop an array of awful symptoms — dementia, hallucinations, and difficulty walking and eating. The animals eventually become wobbly and disoriented. Those symptoms worsen over time, and since there’s no cure, they always lead to death.

[This] is a neurodegenerative disease — not a Hollywood zombie disease

The disease got its name because when prions overtake an animal, it begins losing weight and wasting away. The prions “turn the brain into Swiss cheese,” Larsen said.

But Larsen called “zombie deer disease” an unfortunate and potentially misleading moniker. “I have only seen one deer that has died of [chronic wasting disease] and it was emaciated,” he said. “There are no zombie-like symptoms. Instead, the symptoms are what you would expect to see of a very sick animal: thin, weak, and unable to function normally.

“It is important to remember that [this] is a neurodegenerative disease — not a Hollywood zombie disease.”

2) How does it spread in animals?

An animal with chronic wasting disease can spread prions to other animals through direct or indirect contact with bodily fluids such as feces, saliva, blood, or urine. That means that the disease can spread if an infected deer is wounded, for example, and its blood touches an uninfected animal; or if a healthy animal comes into contact with soil, food, or water that’s been contaminated by a sick deer.

That’s not all, Larsen said. Because prions are so robust, they can survive in environments — farms, forests — for years, decades even. “So let’s say you have a deer with chronic wasting disease, and it started shedding [prions] in its urine, feces, saliva.” If that deer dies on the forest floor, the prions can survive and bind to soil, where plants soak them up. Those plants can then spread prions through their leaves, Larsen said.

“So it’s spreading in the wild, slowly. And every year, we see more and more cases of chronic wasting disease.”

3) How would it spread to people?

There have been no documented cases of chronic wasting disease in people, but researchers think it’s possible and becoming more likely, as infections become more prevalent in animals.

So far, the only evidence scientists have of spread beyond hoofed mammals, like deer, is indirect. In lab experiments, scientists have shown that the disease can spread in squirrel monkeys and mice that carry human genes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. In a yet-to-be-published study, macaques — a primate species that’s genetically similar to humans — that were fed infected meat contracted the disease.

“Experiments are [also] being performed where researchers take environmental samples, like rocks or pieces of wood, that have [pathogenic] prions on them,” said Larsen. “They then place these contaminated objects in cages with transgenic hamsters and the hamsters develop the disease.”

In a recently published study, researchers found that chronic wasting disease prions infected human cells in a petri dish. But there’s another study tracking people who ate venison that had been exposed to chronic wasting disease in 2005, and so far, they’ve shown no symptoms. It’s possible they were exposed to a less virulent strain of the disease, or that the prions didn’t manage to infect human cells, or that the disease is still incubating in them, Larsen said. “The jury is still out on the dangers of human consumption.”

Even so, the CDC says the experimental studies “raise the concern that [chronic wasting disease] may pose a risk to people and suggest that it is important to prevent human exposures to [the disease].” The most likely way this could happen is if a person, such as a hunter, eats contaminated meat.

That brings us to another troubling fact about chronic wasting disease: “With a prion, you can’t [cook it off]. The temperatures needed to destroy it are far beyond what you can cook with,” Larsen said.

The only way to make prions noninfectious is by using lye, a strong alkaline solution that drastically changes the pH balance, and autoclaving — or pressure-treating them — at 270 degrees Fahrenheit. “Most people don’t have access to this approach,” Larsen said, and “the point is that it’s difficult to manage [infectious] prions in the environment because we don’t know exactly where they lurk.” That brings us to the next problem with this disease.

4) Where is zombie deer disease in the US?

Well, we only know where chronic wasting disease was. Deer can only be diagnosed after they’ve died (researchers need to access tissues that are deep in the animal’s brain, and to test those). But animals can carry the pathogens for years and not show any signs or symptoms. “That deer could go on a 40-mile trip, sprinkling [infected] prions in its feces or urine,” said Larsen. “If we go and say this is a [chronic wasting] deer on this point on the map, what you don’t see on that map is everywhere that deer has been in the last two years.”

As of January 2019, 251 counties in 24 states had reported chronic wasting disease in free-ranging deer, the CDC reported. You can see them here:

CDC

Again, though, researchers think the range of spread is much broader. The CDC has also noted that some states have better animal disease surveillance systems than others, so the current map may be more a reflection of where detection is strongest (and of past disease) than where the deadly prions are currently spreading in the US.

5) Can we stop the disease from spreading?

Since there’s no way to eradicate and cure the disease right now, researchers are recommending that states where it’s known to be spreading try to contain it by identifying sick animals.

Now, here’s another problem: The tools available to do that right now are very limited. The diagnostics for detecting the disease in animals are not always accurate, not all states have access to them, and, again, they can only confirm the presence of the infection in an animal after it’s already dead. It can also take days or weeks to get results. That means the disease may be on the move — or in meat people are eating — for a while before anyone knows it’s there.

“The real test we need is for deer that’s killed, so people know whether the meat [they’re] eating is infected,” Osterholm said.

Along with Osterholm, Jeremy Schefers, a veterinary diagnostician at the University of Minnesota, was recently entreating lawmakers in his state for research funding to develop better diagnostic tools and help scientists answer basic questions about chronic wasting disease. Here’s Schefers speaking to the Minnesota Post:

We need to find infected animals before their death, but we don’t have a test. … We need to know how other animals move CWD prion[s] around the environment, but we don’t have a test for that.

We need to know if the local butcher shop is contaminated and if it can be effectively cleaned, but we don’t have a test for that. We need to know if prions move from the soil into plants and potentially are infective, but we don’t have a test for that. … I want to know how much is in the soil and I want to know how much of it takes to infect something, but we don’t have a test for that.

All hunters need access to a test that can be easily purchased and quickly detect CWD in their deer before it’s cut up into 100 pieces and fed to their family. Those hunters don’t have access to a test.

6) How can people protect animals and themselves?

Health officials are most concerned about the potential for hunters to be to exposed to the disease through animals carrying prions. So anyone who finds themselves hunting in areas where chronic wasting disease is known to spread should take the following precautions, according to the CDC:

• No shooting, handling, or eating elk or deer that look unhealthy or “are acting strangely.”
• When field-dressing (or removing the organs of) a hunted animal, wear latex or rubber gloves, avoid touching the animal’s organs — especially the brain and spinal cord tissues — and avoid using utensils that are also used at home.
• Get deer or elk meat tested for prion disease before eating the meat. Yet the CDC also warns that since the diagnostic tools for the disease are still limited, “A negative test result does not guarantee that an individual animal is not infected” with chronic wasting disease, though it “may reduce your risk of exposure.”
• When getting the meat commercially processed, ask the butcher if they handle and process multiple animals at one time (to avoid cross-contamination).

So what about consumers of game meat, like venison, and the restaurants that serve it? On that, Larsen didn’t have a comforting answer.

He advised that anyone who eats game meat, or a restaurant that serves game, ask about where the meat came from. And restaurants should be making sure their meat is free of the disease. Again, in practice, that’s not easy because of how long it takes to get results from diagnostic tests.

“If you’re a hunter, and shoot a deer to feed your family or sell, are you going to wait two weeks [for a test result]?” Larsen asked. “How do you keep the meat fresh?”

But while consumers might have the right to know whether their meat has been infected with the pathogenic prions, there’s currently no efficient way to get an answer.

“Humans have interacted with deer for centuries,” Larsen said, “for food, sport, or simply watching them in the wild.” That tradition is “under attack now because of this pathogen.”

(For the source of this, and many other important articles, please visit: https://www.vox.com/2019/2/21/18233227/zombie-deer-disease-map/)

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In Controversial Study, Tiny Fish Appears as Self-Aware as Chimps, Dolphins

Some scientists refuse to accept it.

By Peter Hess –

In a paper recently published in the journal PLOS Biology, an international team of researchers led by Masanori Kohda, Ph.D., a professor specializing in fish behavior at Osaka City University, outlines how the cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) shows signs of self-recognition while looking in a mirror. In doing so, the fish, known for its ability to live off of the parasites it cleans off of other fish, appears to pass the test for “mirror self-recognition” — long considered a hallmark of self-awareness in animals.

Whether it means the cleaner wrasse is self-aware — or that this is a really bad test of self-awareness — is now up for debate.

When researchers uncovered mirrors in the fishes’ tanks, seven out of 10 of the fish in the study attacked it, meaning they probably viewed their reflections as rivals. But over the course of a week, they attacked the mirror less and less often and eventually stopped almost entirely. As this behavior died down, another took its place: The wrasses began swimming upside-down, which has never been observed before in either solo wrasses or groups. The fish, it seemed, were inspecting their reflections in a new way.

Things got even more interesting when the researchers put a mark on the fishes’ throats that they could only see in the mirror.

Rather than biting at the reflection, as a cleaner wrasse would when cleaning another fish (a move that would mean the fish failed the test), the fish appeared to try to scrape the mark off themselves by diving to the bottom of the tank and scraping their own throats on the aquarium pebbles. When the researchers used a transparent mark, or removed the mirror, the first didn’t seem to notice it, suggesting that seeing the mark in the mirror was the cue that led the fish to try to clean themselves.

The results have sparked controversy among the scientific community. Some researchers view the mirror test as an “all-or-nothing” measure that doesn’t account for subtle differences in animal cognition and behavior. Just because the fish look like they’re self-aware, they argue, doesn’t mean they have a clear sense of “self” in the same way that humans do.

“Complex cognitive capacities evolve bottom-up in small incremental steps from more basic traits shared across a wide range of species,” writes Frans de Waal, Ph.D., a professor of primate behavior at Emory University, in an accompanying editorial commissioned by PLOS to address the debate. “Therefore, we do not expect all-or-nothing cognitive differences between related species. Yet, for the capacity of self-awareness, we still live with a ‘Big Bang’ theory, according to which this trait appeared out of the blue in just a handful of species, whereas the vast majority lacks it.”

While the test may be an imperfect way to measure self-awareness, the results nonetheless indicate that cleaner wrasses, well known for being intelligent, are exhibiting some kind of behavior that merits further study.

The cleaner wrasse is so helpful that larger species let it be instead of eating it.

The study’s authors explain that the mirror self-recognition test involves three phases before the animal is marked in a place it can’t see without a mirror: “(i) social reactions towards the reflection, (ii) repeated idiosyncratic behaviours towards the mirror, and (iii) frequent observation of their reflection.” And as described in the paper, the fish engaged in all these behaviors.

What de Waal argues is that it’s not clear that the fish are really trying to clean themselves because of what they saw in the mirror. Perhaps they are just cleaning themselves reflexively after seeing what they think is another individual with a skin parasite. After all, the scraping behavior isn’t a new behavior.

“True, self-scraping is not a behavior one would expect if these fish interpret their reflection as another individual, but is this enough reason to conclude that they perceive the fish in the mirror as themselves?” he writes. “After all, the most compelling evidence for the latter would be unique behavior never seen without a mirror, whereas self-scraping, or glancing, is a fixed action pattern of many fish. We may need an in-depth study of this particular pattern before we can ascertain what it means when performed in front of a mirror.”

A major part of this problem is that the tests that can be performed on a fish are fairly limited. Unlike an elephant’s trunk or a chimpanzee’s fingers, the wrasse doesn’t have an appendage that it uses to explore its own body. Therefore, scientists can only infer why the fish is scraping the rock in the aquarium, whereas a chimp inspecting its body, for instance, is pretty clear sign that it understands it’s looking at itself in a mirror.

So is the cleaner wrasse as smart as a dolphin? For now, it’s hard to say. But it’s clear that scientists need to figure out a new way to assess animal intelligence.

(For the source of this article, and to watch a video relating to it, please visit: https://www.inverse.com/article/53117-is-a-cleaner-wrasse-self-aware/)

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Microplastics discovered in the guts of sea turtles all over the world

  Nick Lavars –
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Divers encounter 26-foot deep-sea worm in New Zealand

By Emma Mills –

The creature is thought to be a Pyrosome, a huge hollow colony made up of thousands of individual organisms.

Diver  Andrew Buttle, 48, said: “Having never seen one in person or even footage or photos of one before, I was quite incredulous and elated that such a creature existed.

“It was very puzzling but also fantastic to be able to view it right up close and spend so much time with it.

“The island is 48 kilometres from the mainland, and there is a vast amount of fish life and nutrients in the water that may have had the right circumstances to become so large.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Pyrosomes, genus Pyrosoma, are free-floating colonial tunicates that live usually in the upper layers of the open ocean in warm seas, although some may be found at greater depths. Pyrosomes are cylindrical or cone-shaped colonies made up of hundreds to thousands of individuals, known as zooids. Colonies range in size from less than one centimeter to several metres in length. They are commonly called “sea pickles”.

In 2017, pyrosomes were observed to have spread in unprecedented numbers along the Pacific coast of North America as far north as Alaska. The causes remain unknown, but one hypothesis is that this bloom may have resulted in part from unusually warm water along the coast over several preceding years. Scientists were concerned that should there be a massive die-off of the pyrosomes, it could create a huge dead zone as the decomposition of their bodies consumed much of the oxygen dissolved in the surrounding seawater.

(For the source of this article, and to watch a video about it, please visit:  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/07/divers-encounter-26-foot-deep-sea-worm-new-zealand/amp/)

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What’s going on with Hawaiian seals? Nobody nose

By Matthew Robinson, CNN –

An endangered Hawaiian monk seal was spotted with an eel lodged up its nostril in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

(CNN) Endangered seals are baffling conservationists with an unlikely predicament — getting eels stuck up their noses.

The Honolulu-based Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program (HMSRP), part of the United States’ NOAA Fisheries agency, posted a photo on its Facebook page Monday that showed a seal with the slippery creature lodged firmly in its right nostril.

This undignified incident is just the latest in a long (and wriggly) line of eel invasions to strike the Hawaiian monk seals — a phenomenon that was first spotted in the summer of 2016 off Hawaii’s Lisianski Island.

“Mondays … it might not have been a good one for you but it had to have been better than an eel in your nose,” the HMSRP joked on its Facebook page.

The Hawaiian monk seal is one of the rarest seal species in the world and is classed as endangered in the US. The majority of the population lives around eight remote islands of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and it was estimated in 2016 that only 1,427 animals remain.

Scientists are concerned the eels could carry infections and may hamper the seals from diving.

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“We have reported on this phenomenon before, which was first noted a few years back. We have now found juvenile seals with eels stuck in their noses on multiple occasions,” the HMSRP added.

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Charles Littnan, the HMSRP’s lead scientist, noted that researchers are still baffled by the phenomenon.

“This is a good example that no matter how well studied or watched an animal is, it is always going to present you with something you have never seen before,” he told CNN. “Sometimes it is an amazing demonstration of intelligence or physical ability, sometimes it is a juvenile seal with an eel stuck in its nostril.”

The NOAA has proposed two hypotheses: first, that eels launch themselves defensively at the seals while they are foraging for food, shoving their mouths and noses into the crevices of coral reefs and under rocks.

Another theory the agency suggests is that a seal may swallow an eel whole and then regurgitate it through its nose.

Speaking to The Guardian, Littnan said some of the eels are lodged so far in that trying to remove them is like a “magician’s handkerchief trick,” as conservationists have to keep “pulling and pulling.”

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The conservation agency reassured concerned viewers on Facebook that the eel was successfully removed, saying that the procedure required light restraint of the seal and a slow, steady pull on the eel, taking around 30 seconds in total.

“In all cases the eel was successfully removed and the seals were fine. The eels, however, did not make it,” the agency said on Facebook.

Animal lovers nevertheless took to Facebook to express their alarm, questioning why an eel would undertake such a foolhardy mission.

“What kind of heavenly goodness resides up a seal’s nose that makes eels willing to risk their lives for it?” one wrote.

Despite the eels’ successful extraction, they could pose a serious threat to the seals. The HMSRP has warned that the seals are at risk from infections and toxins produced by microalgae that accumulate in coral reef-associated fish. Nose blockages could also hamper the seals’ ability to dive, as the mammals typically need to close their nostrils when under water.

(For the balance of this rather interesting article please visit: https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/americas/seals-eels-nostril-hawaii-intl-scli/index.html)

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The mystery of how, and why, wombats produce cubic poop

  Rich Haridy –

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Wombat poo has mystified scientists for years. The shy Australian marsupial is unique for being the only animal in the world to produce cubic poo. A team of researchers has finally uncovered exactly how this quiet animal produces its square feces, and the discovery could lead to novel manufacturing techniques.

Poo comes in a variety of shapes, however the cubed dung of wombats is unique in the animal kingdom. Scientists have long wondered how this freakish feces is created. We can say for sure it is not because the animal’s have square anuses, but apart from that this has remained quite the odd biological mystery.

“The first thing that drove me to this is that I have never seen anything this weird in biology. That was a mystery,” says Patricia Yang, a mechanical engineer from Georgia Institute of Technology, who became fascinated with how this oddly-shaped poop was created. “I didn’t even believe it was true at the beginning. I Googled it and saw a lot about cube-shaped wombat poop, but I was skeptical.”

Yang and colleagues joined forces with an Australian biologist from the University of Tasmania to try and solve this mystery. The researchers obtained two dissected intestinal tracks from wombats that had been euthanized after suffering injuries from motor vehicle accidents.

Wombats have an extraordinarily slow digestive process. It can take anywhere from eight to eighteen days for food to completely pass through its very long digestive system, however the new research revealed that the cubic shape of its dung isn’t formed until it reaches the final parts of the intestine. The feces stays in a relatively liquid state until it reaches the final 8 percent of the intestine where it begins to shape into small cubes.

“This shape change was due to the azimuthally varying elastic properties of the intestinal wall,” the researchers write in an abstract, recently presented at the Annual Meeting of the APS [American Physical Society] Division of Fluid Dynamics. “By emptying the intestine and inflating it with a long balloon, we found that the local strain varies from 20 percent at the cube’s corners to 75 percent at its edges. Thus, the intestine stretches preferentially at the walls to facilitate cube formation.”

Of course it isn’t unreasonable to be wondering why these animals evolved such a sophisticated way to produce cubed poo, when no other animal in the world found the need to do the same. Wombats have notoriously bad eyesight, so they communicate using scent markings. The animal’s poo frequently acts as territorial markers letting other wombats know who runs a given burrow.

It is hypothesized that because of the importance of poo as a communicative tool, the animal evolved the cube-shaped excretion as a way to efficiently pile up structures of droppings. After all, you couldn’t exactly build a large pile out of round droppings as effectively as you could if it were square blocks.

The new research is not just an academic scat investigation either, it may also render quite the pragmatic outcome. Yang suggests that this method could be applied to our current manufacturing processes.

“We currently have only two methods to manufacture cubes: We mold it, or we cut it. Now we have this third method,” says Yang. “It would be a cool method to apply to the manufacturing process — how to make a cube with soft tissue instead of just molding it.”

The new research was presented at the 71st Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics.

Source: SciMex

An audio version of this article is available to New Atlas Plus subscribers.

More audio articles

(For the source of this, and other equally interesting articles, please visit: https://newatlas.com/wombat-square-poo-study/57289/)

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WWF report reveals a 60% decline in wildlife populations since 1970

  Nick Lavars –

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Thrilling natural wonders in the 54th Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards

  Rich Haridy –

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In its 54th year, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is the world’s longest running nature photography competition. This year’s winning image, an extraordinary picture of two golden snub-nosed monkeys in central China, affirms this competition’s place as one of the most spectacular annual celebrations of nature.

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The competition was originally started by BBC Wildlife Magazine in 1965, and in 1984 the Natural History Museum came on board to help make it the massively impressive event that it is today. The competition is divided between Adult and Youth sections, with 16 Adult categories ranging from Animal Portraits to Urban Wildlife.

The big award is the Photographer of the Year, with a £10,000 (US$13,000) prize. This year’s top award went to Dutch photographer Marsel van Oosten, with an image titled The Golden Couple. Captured in China’s Qinling Mountains, the gorgeous photograph immortalizes a pair of endangered golden snub-nosed monkeys, of which a population of only around 22,000 remain.

‘This image is in one sense traditional – a portrait,” says Chair of the judging panel, Roz Kidman Cox. “But what a striking one, and what magical animals. It is a symbolic reminder of the beauty of nature and how impoverished we are becoming as nature is diminished. It is an artwork worthy of hanging in any gallery in the world.”

The overall Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year winning image (seen above) is just as sublime. From 16 year old South African photographer, Skye Meaker, it is a captivating shot of a leopard waking from a nap in Botswana. Judge Alexander Badyaev, comments on Meaker’s winning image, “With precisely executed timing and composition, we get a coveted glimpse into the inner world of one of the most frequently photographed, yet rarely truly seen, animals.”

Other incredible winning shots, selected from more than 45,000 entries, include a spectacular overhead shot of crabeater seals resting on an ice floe (above), a heart-wrenching image of a female mountain gorilla mourning her deceased baby, and a remarkable look at the mud-handling skills of mud-dauber wasps.

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London-based readers can check out all 99 of the top photographs in this year’s competition right now at the Natural History Museum. Entries for next year’s competition opened on October 22.

Take a look through our gallery at some more incredible highlights from this remarkable competition.

Source: Wildlife Photographer of the Year

(For the source of this article, plus additional photos, please visit: https://newatlas.com/wildlife-photographer-award-2018-gallery/56838/) 

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Moose Cavalry

Moose cavalry are military units of cavalrymen mounted on moose (Eurasian elk, Alces alces alces) rather than the more usual horses. There are legends that state that the Mansi people of Western Siberia rode moose into battle but there is no evidence of this. In 17th-century Sweden Charles XI trialled the use of moose as a replacement for horses, which had to be imported. However they proved susceptible to disease, hard to feed and fearful of the sound of gunfire. The use of moose cavalry by the Soviets in the Winter War of 1939 and 1940 is also reported but seems to stem from a 2010 Popular Mechanics April Fools’ Day article.

Russia

Legends state that the Mansi people of Western Siberia rode into battle mounted on moose. The antlers of the animals are said to have been painted red. No evidence of such use has been found. In the 18th-century Catherine the Great is said to have outlawed the domestication of the moose out of fear that dissidents exiled to Siberia might use them as mounts in any armed rebellion against her. The story is believed to be apocryphal.

Sweden

The moose (Eurasian elk, Alces alces alces) had been used in Sweden to draw the sleighs of the Royal couriers since at least the reign of Charles IX. They proved effective in this role, able to travel around 230 miles in a day. As a development of this role Charles XI (1660 – 1697) trialled the use of moose cavalry. The intention was to replace the horses of one of his cavalry regiments with moose, to avoid the need to import horses as was the contemporary practice. It was anticipated that the animals would cause fear in the horses of enemy cavalry, allowing formations to be broken without the need for artillery or musketry. The idea was presented to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

During training it was found that the moose was too fearful an animal to allow itself to be ridden into battle, taking fright at the sound of gunfire. They were also said to be of too peaceful a nature for the purpose. Moose were also more susceptible to disease than horses and there was difficulty in feeding the animals which were used to foraging across large areas rather than being fed on fodder in pasture.

April Fools’ Day hoax

It has been claimed by various sources that Joseph Stalin attempted to introduce the moose as a replacement for horses in Soviet cavalry regiments based in the northern parts of the country during the 1930s. The story is thought to have been popularised by a 2010 April Fools’ Day article published in the Russian language edition of Popular Mechanics.

The article made the claim that 1,500 moose cavalrymen had been trained for service in the 1939-40 Winter War. It was stated that machine guns were mounted to the antlers of the moose. Among the more outlandish claims made was that the start of the war was postponed to avoid clashing with the moose mating season and that the animals could distinguish between the Russian and Finnish languages spoken at a distance of over a kilometre. The article included several photographs supposedly showing members of the moose cavalry unit. These were in fact posed by members of Popular Mechanic’s publishing house dressed in reproduction Red Army uniforms with the moose superimposed in post-processing. A graphics artist, Vitas Chernyauskas, mocked-up the front cover of an instruction manual for the unit, based on contemporary Soviet documents and this was also included in the article.

The hoax article was widely reproduced in Russian media over the following years, often without the April Fools’ Day disclaimer carried in the original article. Posters on military history forums often claimed to have seen, or even read, copies of the fictional instruction manual. The coverage in newspapers, satirical sites and social media meant that the story gained a measure of credence as a historical fact. Moose were later successfully domesticated in Soviet Russia but as livestock, for their milk and antlers.

In 2017, a war museum in Lakhdenpokhya, Karelia, Russia showcased the doctored photographs from the Popular Mechanics article in an exhibition as a recent discovery of historic documents. The exhibition claimed that the “war moose” had been trained by the Soviet army for four years.

The story, sourced from the museum exhibition, was covered by the Finnish national public broadcaster Yle in a television broadcast and as an online news article in June 2017. Yle was informed of the errors in the story by a member of the public but only issued a correction one month later. As a consequence they were investigated by the Finnish media regulator the Council for Mass Media in Finland for failures in fact checking and responding to the error report. The erroneous story is still available on the Yle website including the doctored images from Popular Mechanics but with a disclaimer and link to the Council for Mass Media’s findings.

There is some information relating to Soviet moose cavalry trials that pre-dates the 2010 hoax. In 2004 the manager of the Kostroma Moose Farm, where the Soviets domesticated the moose for milk production in the 1940s, claimed that the trials were carried out in the 1930s. He claimed that “Stalin thought elk could replace horses in cavalry regiments based in the north … but this did not work out, and the idea was abandoned”.

(For the source of this article, and for references, please visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_cavalry)

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Bear 409 was named “Fattest Bear” at Katmai National Park and Preserve on Tuesday. Used with permission from Katmai National Park and Preserve.

The results are in. And this year’s winner in Katmai National Park and Reserve‘s annual “fattest bear” contest is 409 Beadnose.

“Her radiant rolls were deemed by the voting public to be this year’s most fabulous flab. Our chubby champ has a few more weeks to chow down on lingering salmon carcasses before she heads up the mountains to dig herself a den and savor her victory,” the national park posted on Facebook.

Katmai National Park, located in southwestern Alaska, declared the winner of its weeklong competition late Tuesday. People could vote on social media on which bear looks to be the fattest in the preserve.

This is the fourth year the national park has held the competition.

It began with 12 bears and, by process of single elimination, culminated Tuesday in a final face-off of fatness between Bear 409, whom the park described as a “gigantic gal” with a “marvelous muffin top,” and Bear 747, a “blimpy boar” whose “belly barely has clearance with the ground.”

The Fat Bear Week bracket began with 12 bears and ended with one glorious winner on Tuesday night: 409 Beadnose. Used with permission from Katmai National Park and Preserve. 

The national park posted photos of bears in head-to-head matchups throughout Fat Bear Week, with the bear whose photo received the most Facebook “likes” advancing to the next round.

While voting closed Tuesday night, votes for Bear 409 clocked in at just under 7,000 likes compared with Bear 747’s 3,000 likes on Wednesday morning.

Bear 409 at the end of June and at the end of September. Used with permission from Katmai National Park and Preserve.

Bear 747 at the end of June and at the end of August. Used with permission from Katmai National Park and Preserve.

“All of it is a fun — and it is fun — way to educate people on the struggle for survival that these bears go through and the dramatic changes involved that. They are going to lose about one-third of their body weight over winter hibernation, and in order to survive the next year, they have to gain all of that back, in a few short weeks over the summer,” Andrew LaValle, a park ranger at Katmai, told NPR.

“As fun and silly as this thing is, there is a serious undertone to it,” he said. “They’re fishing and eating as much as they are because they have to. It is a game of life and death for them, with serious consequences.”

LaValle said they estimate both bears in the Fat Bear Tuesday final to be just over 1,000 pounds, saying 747 might be larger based on the size of his frame. “It is all just estimated — we don’t have them step on any scales or anything — so, we can only guess, and that’s part of the fun of it,” LaValle said.

(For the balance of this article please visit: https://www.npr.org/2018/10/10/655937903/alaska-national-park-declares-fattest-bear-winner/)

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Parrot returns to British owner speaking Spanish – four years after disappearing

Grey African parrot vanished from British owner’s home in Torrance, California in 2010 before reappearing in the same town

• Rose Troup Buchanan –

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The Elephant Bird Regains Its Title as the Largest Bird That Ever Lived

History has not been kind to the elephant bird of Madagascar. Standing nearly 10 feet tall and weighing up to 1,000 pounds — or so researchers believed — this flightless cousin of the ostrich went extinct in the 17th century, thanks in part to humans stealing their massive eggs, either to feed their own families or to repurpose them as giant rum flasks. Or both.

More recently, the bird’s designation as the heaviest in history was challenged by the discovery of the slightly larger, unrelated Dromornis stirtoni, an Australian flightless giant that went extinct 20,000 years ago.

But a new study seeks to restore the elephant bird’s heavyweight title. After taxonomic reshuffling and examination of collected elephant bird remains, researchers say that a member of a previously unidentified genus of the birds could have weighed more than 1,700 pounds, making it by far the largest bird ever known.

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Over the centuries, scientists have competed to collect and display the largest elephant bird bones. But, “nobody’s done any real cohesive research on these birds,” said James Hansford, a paleontologist at the Zoological Society of London and lead author of the study, resulting in a taxonomic muddle for the feathered giants. As a result, more than 15 elephant bird species had been identified across two genera (the plural of genus, the name for a group of closely related species).

To sort out the elephant bird family tree, Dr. Hansford hoped to determine where one species ended and the next began. He traveled the globe with a measuring tape examining thousands of elephant bird bones. He then used data on modern birds and algorithms to help determine how large the birds might have grown.

His conclusion, published recently in the journal Royal Society Open Science, is that there were actually three genera of elephant bird rather than two, and four species rather than 15: Mulleornis modestus, Aepyornis hildebrandti, Aepyornis maximus and Vorombe titan.

One of those species, A. maximus, had long been considered the heaviest elephant bird, until a British scientist in 1894 claimed to have discovered an even larger species, Aepyornis titan. Other researchers dismissed the finding, saying A. titan was simply an unusually large member of the A. maximus clan.

But Dr. Hansford reports that A. titan is not only its own species but a separate genus of much larger elephant bird, as evidenced by the distinct size and shape of all three limb bones. He has named the species and genus Vorombe titan; vorombe is a Malagasy word meaning “big bird.”

(For the balance of this article please visit: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/science/largest-elephant-bird.html/)

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Asexual, all-female termite colonies found to do just fine without males

  Michael Irving –

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Fish-catching praying mantis surprises scientists

  Ben Coxworth –

Praying mantises may not actually pray, but they do prey heavily on their fellow insects, along with other small land animals. Now, however, for the first time, scientists have documented a praying mantis catching and eating fish.

Measuring 5.6 cm in length (2.2 inches), the male Hierodula tenuidentata mantis was observed last March in a rooftop garden located in Karnataka, India.

The water garden, with the praying mantis visible at right  (Credit: Rajesh Puttaswamaiah)

Over five consecutive days, it paid daily visits to a plant-pot water feature in that garden, where it would perch on the leaves of water lilies and water cabbage plants floating on the surface. It proceeded to reach down into the water, grabbing and eating at least two guppies every day, for a total of nine fish over the five-day period.

For one thing, such behaviour is interesting simply because of its novelty.

Praying mantises have previously been claimed to catch small creatures such as birds, lizards, frogs, newts, mice, snakes and turtles. Not all of these attacks have been scientifically validated, however, or they were induced by people in a controlled setting. By contrast, this is reportedly the first scientific report of a fishing mantis, and of one that did so without any human intervention.

More notably, the observation confirms the theory that a single invertebrate species can impact a whole ecosystem, as the praying mantis was eating guppies that in turn fed on aquatic insects. It additionally shows that mantises have unexpectedly good night vision, as all of the catches took place either at sunset or late at night.

What’s more, the fact that the insect kept returning to the same spot over multiple days may indicate that mantises possess sophisticated cognitive skills, including the ability to learn from their experiences.

(For the balance of this article please visit: https://newatlas.com/fish-eating-praying-mantis/56455/)

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They’re back! It’s tarantula time at Bandelier

By Joanie Budzileni –

Around here, in Bandelier National Monument and many other parts of New Mexico, everyone starts noticing tarantulas about this time of year.  Autumn is the time when males mature and start out on their quest to find a mate.  This exposes them to many dangers, from hawks and skunks, which want to eat them, to fast-moving cars, to people who just find them creepy and may think they should be squashed.

Tarantulas have been around for more than 16 million years, and comprise more than 900 species found across the world. They do have venom, but in ones around here, it is about equivalent to a wasp sting unless someone is allergic to the proteins that accompany the venom.  New world tarantulas also have barbed urticating (stinging) bristles which they can brush from their abdomens in self defense; these are particularly harmful if breathed into the lungs, and can do permanent damage to eyes.  But generally tarantulas are pretty easy-going creatures.

They are spiders, with eight legs, even though they have two other sets of appendages that sometimes make it look like they have 12 legs.  Tarantulas are hunters, preying on such creatures as centipedes, millipedes, beetles, and even smaller spiders. In turn, they are considered food by predators including hawks, owls, coyotes, foxes, and snakes. They are very long lived, given the chance; females may live 30-40 years, spending most of that time in their burrow when they’re not hunting.  Males mature in 2-5 years and seldom live more than a year or so after that, partly because of having to go out into the world to find a female.

The wandering individuals seen in fall on the roads and elsewhere are almost certainly males, trying to reproduce in the short time available to them.  The females stay at their burrows, and the males follow hormone scents to try to find them.  If you see one of these males, be kind. Remember that all native creatures are protected in Bandelier National Monument. If he’s in a dangerous location like a road, and it’s feasible, consider helping him across. Definitely be aware for your own safety – fast-moving cars aren’t good for people, either. Wear gloves, or find something flat for him to crawl onto.  Place him off the road or trail in the direction he was traveling.  Certainly don’t squash him.  Let him proceed on his mission to provide future generations of tarantulas! Hopefully these big hairy spiders will share the earth with us for another 16 million years.

For information about Bandelier National Monument, contact the Bandelier Visitor Center at 505-672-3861 x 517 or visit www.nps.gov/band, on Facebook, BandelierNPS.

About the National Park Service. More than 20,000 National Park Service employees who care for America’s 417 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Visit us at https://www.nps.gov, on Facebook www.facebook.com/nationalparkservice, Twitter www.twitter.com/natlparkservice, and YouTube www.youtube.com/nationalparkservice.

For further information contact:  Joanie Budzileni, 505-672-3861, ext. 511 — Bandelier National Monument, 15 Entrance Road, Los Alamos, NM 87544

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Study tests whether seaweed in cattle feed reduces emissions

By Terence Chea –

DAVIS, Calif. (AP) — University of California researchers are feeding seaweed to dairy cows in an attempt to make cattle more climate-friendly.

UC Davis is studying whether adding small amounts of seaweed to cattle feed can help reduce their emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that’s released when cattle burp, pass gas or make manure.

In a study this past spring, researchers found methane emissions were reduced by more than 30 percent in a dozen Holstein cows that ate the ocean algae, which was mixed into their feed and sweetened with molasses to disguise the salty taste.

“I was extremely surprised when I saw the results,” said Ermias Kebreab, the UC Davis animal scientist who led the study. “I wasn’t expecting it to be that dramatic with a small amount of seaweed.”

Kebreab says his team plans to conduct a six-month study of a seaweed-infused diet in beef cattle starting in October.

More studies will be needed to determine its safety and efficacy, and seaweed growers would have to ramp up production to make it an economical option for farmers.

Dairy farms and other livestock operations are major sources of methane, a heat-trapping gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide.

(For the balance of this article, plus a video, visit: https://www.apnews.com/835789442443441baab77a3077870634) 

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Modular hexa-hives claimed to be better for your bees

  James Holloway –

A new beehive system made up of a series of hexagonal prisms may be just what your bees need. The Honeycomb Hives system is designed to tackle bee colony losses by making hives which apparently keep pests out, get rid of condensation and which retain heat more efficiently – all problems which can be a bane to honey bees.

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As you may have guessed, the hexagonal shape is the key. Take condensation, for example. The creators of Honeycomb Hives reckon flat-top hives will cause condensation to drip back down onto the bees, which can be lethal to them in winter (I’m no bee expert, but a spot of Googling seems to confirm that this is indeed a thing.) A hexagonal prism affords an angled roof, so the condensation runs down these and the side walls, causing less damage.

Temperature-wise, the advantages of the hexagonal shape are down to the ratio of comb space to box space, which means the bees have to work less hard to stay warm (so the theory goes). The makers of Honeycomb Hives also claim their build quality means fewer “crevices, corners and cracks” for predators like moths and beetles to hide in.

The hives come in a couple of configurations for bee-ginners. The Starter Hive is ideal for absolute novices, needless to say. Flex-Hives are a step up, offering newbies a bit more flexibility to organise a small colony in different ways. The aptly-named Long-Hives are designed for larger colonies and apparently offer even greater flexibility in setting up a hive as you’d like.

The modular, stackable Fold-Hives are where the real action is (says the chap that knows nothing about beekeeping). It appears that these can be stacked and scaled as needed, reducing the amount of lifting required, and only a few bees are exposed at any one time when removing covers.

Honeycomb Hives can come with numerous accessories, including various frames, feeders, observation panes and pollen traps, as well as Nuc Boxes for attracting and catching swarms of bees.

The creators of Honeycomb Hives are seeking funding on Kickstarter, where you’ll be stung for US$147 for a super early bird Starter-Hive. Flex-Hives start at $287 while a three Fold-Hive system starts at $447. The bees’ knees, a 7-unit Fold-Hive, can be had for $997.

Should all go well, Honeycomb Hives are due to ship in March 2019, should the campaign reach its target, which is looking by no means certain at this stage. Still, given the recent news that honey is quite a good thing to take if you have a cough (probably), perhaps it’s not a bad time to get into beekeeping.

Check out the buzz in the video at: https://newatlas.com/honeycomb-hives/56126/

(Source: Kickstarter by way of https://newatlas.com/honeycomb-hives/56126/)

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Prehistoric turtle lacked a shell, but had a beak

  Ben Coxworth –

Eorhynchochelys, depicted in its natural habitat (Credit: IVPP).

In the past decade, scientists have discovered the fossilized remains of two prehistoric turtles that had a partial shell, but that lacked the toothless beak of modern turtles. Recently, however, a fossil turtle was found that had no shell at all, but that did have a beak. It’s given scientists a new understanding of the animals’ evolution.

Known as Eorhynchochelys sinensis, the turtle was over six feet long (2 m) and lived approximately 228 million years ago – it likely inhabited shallow waters where it foraged in the mud for food. Its fossilized skeleton was unearthed in China, by a team led by Li Chun of China’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

(Credit: Adrienne Stroup, Field Museum)

Although its long-tailed body did have the “Frisbee shape” of today’s turtles, its spine and ribs still hadn’t joined together to form a single shell. The front part of its jaws, however, had already developed into a beak.

According to a new international study, the fact that it had a beak before other ancient turtles, but it didn’t have the partial shell that they did, is an example of mosaic evolution. Essentially, this means that different ancestral species of a modern animal evolved different traits at different times, with those traits eventually all occurring in one animal.

“This impressively large fossil is a very exciting discovery giving us another piece in the puzzle of turtle evolution,” says Nick Fraser, an author of the study from National Museums Scotland. “It shows that early turtle evolution was not a straightforward, step-by-step accumulation of unique traits but was a much more complex series of events that we are only just beginning to unravel.”Additionally, features of the turtle’s skull indicate that it was part of the diapsid family of reptiles, which also includes modern lizards and snakes. Previously, scientists had wondered if prehistoric turtles instead belonged to the anapsid family.

“With Eorhynchochelys’ diapsid skull, we know that turtles are not related to the early anapsid reptiles, but are instead related to evolutionarily more advanced diapsid reptiles,” states another of the study’s authors, Olivier Rieppel of Chicago’s Field Museum. “This is cemented, the debate is over.”

Eorhynchochelys, incidentally, is Latin for “dawn beak turtle” (as in the first beaked turtle), while sinensis means “from China.”

The study, which also involved scientists from the CAS Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, and the Canadian Museum of Nature, is described in a paper that was recently published in the journal Nature.

(Sources: Field Museum, Naturevia: https://newatlas.com/prehistoric-beaked-shell-less-turtle/56037/)

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• Every February, white petals blanket first the almond trees, then the floor of the central valley, an 18,000-square-mile expanse of California that begins at the stretch of highway known as the Grapevine just south of Bakersfield and reaches north to the foothills of the Cascades. The blooms represent the beginning of the valley’s growing season each year: Almond trees are first to bud, flower and fruit. At the base of the trunks sit splintered boxes — some marked with numbers, some with names, some with insignias — stacked two boxes high on a wooden pallet that fits four stacks. Inside the boxes are bees, dancing in circles and figure-eights and sometimes just waggling. With almond season comes bee season. Everyone in the valley knows when it’s bee season. There are bee-specific truckers; motels occupied by seasonal workers; annual dinners to welcome the out-of-towners; weathered pickups with license plates from Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas and Florida parked in front of orchards at all hours of the night. And those ubiquitous boxes.
• This year the beekeepers responsible for those bees gathered on a mid-February Saturday for a potluck lunch at a community center in Kerman, a small town of ranch houses wreathed by acres upon acres of almond orchards. The meeting was supposed to kick off the pollinating season, but the beekeepers, many of them wearing tucked-in plaid shirts and trucker caps with dirt-curled bills, had already been at work for a couple of weeks, summoned to the state early by a heat wave. The sun beckoned the blossoms, and the blossoms begged for the bees. Farmers have a window of just a few weeks when pollination has to happen, otherwise the nuts won’t set, which is what it’s called when blossoms are pollinated and kernels emerge. When the nuts don’t set, much of a crop can be lost. By the time of the potluck, it seemed as if the season were already at its midpoint.

The beekeepers lined up to fill their paper plates with pork chops, baked beans, chicken, rice, salad and three different kinds of cake. Teri Solomon, the organizer of the event and a longtime local beekeeper, collected $10 each for lunch. A list of speakers was taped to the table where she sat — respected beekeepers, bee brokers, scientists, a Fresno County sheriff’s police detective and a rep from the Almond Board of California. Topics of the day included the steady growth of the almond industry, the science of pollination, agricultural theft (hence the cop) and the ever-more-imperiled state of honeybees. That last item carried the most weight with the crowd, as they were all struggling to maintain the vast numbers of bees needed for almond pollination. Bees are central to an enormous agricultural industry — about one of every three mouthfuls of food we eat wouldn’t exist without bee pollination — and beekeepers’ custodianship of billions of these delicate animals is as much an art as it is a science. Beekeepers themselves, Solomon confided, are funny creatures: solitary in the field, trying to anticipate the needs of a finicky insect and, unlike that insect, social only once in a while. “We’re an odd bunch, very individualistic in nature,” she said. “But we’re in trouble.”

Mostly the beekeepers and bee brokers — the agents who negotiate contracts between beekeepers and farmers — were trying to get a sense from one another of how badly bee populations had been hit, how much each was charging per hive and how much they could increase that price for the next season. There was talk of disease, pesticides, drought, floods, suburban sprawl, parasites. They talked shop: Which menthol strips are you using to inoculate your bees? How often do you change the treatment-laced pad placed in the hive to keep your bees healthy? Are the wafers or quick strips more effective for mites? Where do you apply them in the box, and for how long? Does the medication affect the performance of the bees? Can you get rid of a mite infestation, or are preventive measures the only option?

• (For the balance of this very interesting article please visit: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/magazine/the-super-bowl-of-beekeeping.html/)

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The geographic distribution of places named after animals provides an indication of the former range of those animals

 

 

 

 

In Feral, his book proposing a re-wilding of our natural environment, George Monbiot refers to Shifting Baseline Syndrome as a major cause in our misperception of what is ‘natural’.

As individuals, we lack a multi-generational perspective. Our environment is in its ‘natural’ state when we are young, or so we assume. The only environmental destruction we really notice is what occurs within our own lifetimes.

Humanity’s baseline for what is natural keeps shifting with every new generation, clouding our view on longer processes of environmental damage and degradation.

Shifting Baseline Syndrome can have perverse effects on our attempts at nature conservation – sometimes, we conserve the environmental destruction, rather than restoring the environment to its previous natural state.

Monbiot has a particular bone to pick with the sheep that are used to maintain large tracts of Britain in a near-desert condition. Those sheep are an invasive species, he argues, and the medieval switch to a wool-based economy destroyed the richly biodiverse forests that covered most of the island.

America too is subject to the paradox of ecological degradation: its scope is so massive that it’s hard for us as individuals to notice. These maps suggest some interesting markers to get a sense of the discrepancy between our ‘natural environment’, and that of previous generations.

They compare the geographic spread of cities and towns (see note #1, below) in America named after native animals and the current geographic distribution of those species. As you may have expected, most indicate a huge reduction in the range of said animals.

Let’s start with bears: as the map indicates, they roam far and wide: from the Appalachians all the way into Maine, on the coasts of Virginia, in Florida, along the Mississippi in Louisiana, in Arkansas and Missouri, throughout the west and the Pacific states. Most ‘bear’ towns align more or less with the animal’s current range:

• Bear Valley and Bear Valley Spring, Big Bear City (2) and Big Bear Lake (all in California),
• Bear River in Wyoming and Bear River City in Utah;
• White Bear Lake in Minnesota, Upper Bear Creek in Colorado and Bear Creek Village in Pennsylvania;
• Bear Rocks also in Pennsylvania and Bear Dance in Montana;
• Bear Flat in Arizona and Bear Grass in North Carolina;
• Three places called Bear Lake (two in Michigan (3) and one in Pennsylvania);
• and four towns all called Bear Creek (in Montana, Wisconsin, Florida and California).

But some indicate that the majestic predator once had an even wider distribution:

• two towns also called Bear Creek, in Texas and Alabama;
• Four Bears Village in North Dakota;
• and a town simply called Bear, in Delaware.

It’s worse for wolves: they’re limited to two relatively small areas near the Canadian border, far away from most ‘wolf’ towns:

• Two towns called Wolf Lake, one in Minnesota, the other in Michigan;
• Wolf Point, Montana (4) and Wolf Creek, Utah;
• Lone Wolf, Oklahoma (5) and Wolfdale, Pennsylvania;
• Wolf Summit, West Virginia and Wolf Trap, Virginia.

Judging by the places named after the animal, elk used to be prevalent across most of the country. ‘Elk’ towns are concentrated in the Midwest:

• Elk Run Heights and Elk Horn, both in Iowa (6);
• Elk Point in South Dakota and Elk Creek in Nebraska;
• Elk River in Minnesota and Elk Mound in Wisconsin;
• Elk City and Elk Falls, close to each other in Kansas; and another Elk City in Oklahoma.

Some elk towns are further east:

• Elk Rapids in Michigan, Elk Grove Village (7) in Illinois and Elk Creek in Kentucky;
• Banner Elk (8), North Carolina and Elk Garden, West Virginia.

The current range is limited mainly to the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest, with small scattered patches elsewhere. Some elk towns actually in elk country:

• Elk Creek and Elk Grove, both in California;
• Elk City and Elk River, both in Idaho;
• Elk Plain in Washington and Elk Ridge in Utah and Elk Mountain (9) in Wyoming.

Badgers are holding firm in most of the country, absent only from the eastern third of the country (and a small part of the northwest). There are still badgers in all badger towns on this map:

• Three towns simply called ‘Badger’ (in Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa);
• and one called Badger Lee, Oklahoma.

Beavers are everywhere, except in much of California, Nevada and Florida. And so are beaver towns, with concentrations in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada and Oregon.

• Seven towns are just called ‘Beaver’ (in Arkansas, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah and West Virginia);
• Six towns called ‘Beaver Creek’ (two in Ohio, one each in Oregon, Maryland, Minnesota and Montana);
• Five towns called ‘Beaver Dam’ (in Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio, Nevada and Wisconsin);
• Three towns called ‘Beaverton’ (in Alabama, Michigan and Oregon) and two called ‘Beaverdale (in Iowa and Pennsylvania);
• And then there’s Beaver Valley in Arizona, Beaverville in Illinois, Beaver City and Beaver Crossing in Nebraska, Beaver Bay in Minnesota and Beaver Dam Lake in New York, and Beaver Falls and Beaver Springs in Pennsylvania (10).
• 
• Poor wolverines: clinging on to a dwindling strip of land in the northwest, with small colonies remaining in California and on the Nevada-Utah border. Where are the times when they roamed Michigan in such numbers that two towns in that state – Wolverine Lake, near Detroit, and Wolverine, near the top of the state’s Lower Peninsula – were named after them?Map found here at Data is Beautiful on Reddit.Strange Maps #931Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.(1) The dots represent populated places, i.e. cities, towns or census-designated places as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. The maps do not include other topographical features named after said animals (e.g. Wolverine, an unincorporated community in Kentucky, Wolverine Canyon in Utah, Wolverine Creek in Kansas, or Wolverine Hill and the Wolverine Mine, both in Michigan). Species ranges come from natureserve.org.(2) Big Bear City is the location of a quartz dome that is worshipped as the Eye of God by the Serrano, a tribe native to the area.(3) One township in Kalkaska County, the other in Manistee County.(4) A city in the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and the home of the annual Wild Horse Stampede, “the Grandaddy of Montana Rodeos”.(5) Named after a Kiowa chief rather than the animal.(6) But not Elkader, named after Abdelkader ibn Muhieddine, a 19th-century Algerian fighter against French colonialism.(7) Despite being surrounded by a largely industrial area and its proximity to O’Hare International Airport, Elk Grove Village is home to a small herd of elk – indeed kept in a grove. The herd was brought to the area in the 1920s and is maintained by the Chicago Zoological Society. Unrelatedly, Elk Grove Village also is the hometown of Billy Corgan and James Iha, both of the band Smashing Pumpkins.(8) By the early 19th century, elk had disappeared from the area. The National Park Service has now reintroduced small numbers of elk to western North Carolina.(9) The setting of Elk Mountain, a graphic novel about the relationship between superheroes and the communities they defend.(10) That’s not counting the names of half a dozen other places in Pennsylvania, including Big Beaver and New Beaver.
• (Source of article, and for other fascinating articles, visit: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/these-maps-show-how-much-range-americas-wild-animals-have-lost/)

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Accident-Prone Koala Rescued For Third Time After Getting Stuck In Fence

The large male adult koala was totally calm when a rescue organization found and unhooked him.

By Jenna Amatulli –

We’ve all had bad days here and there, but this poor koala seems to have had more than a few.

A South Australia koala had to be saved by Fauna Rescue of South Australia volunteers for the third time when he was found stuck in a fence at the SA Power Networks’ Happy Valley substation.

Fauna Rescue volunteer Sally Selwood told Adelaide Now that it looked “like he’s crawled under the fence to go somewhere, as they do, and then sat up as he was under the fence and got his head caught.”

“But he didn’t have the brains to bob back down again to get out.”

OK, Sally. Or maybe he just wanted to see his volunteer friends again — specially when you consider that Selwood also told the publication that the koala was “quite calm” and that he’s “known” to them.

Previously, the koala ran into trouble when he was found at the bottom of a tree in January 2016. He was “not very responsive” and subsequently spent a week with Fauna Rescue until he was well enough to be released back into the wild.

In an unlucky twist of fate, Fauna Rescue had to care for him again in November 2016 after he was hit by a car. He spent some more time in their care and was purportedly totally OK until his most recent fence incident.

While most koalas don’t resemble cats with their seemingly nine lives, this eucalyptus-loving friend does. Here’s hoping he has many more accident-free adventures in the future!

(Source of article and additional comments: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/accident-prone-koala-rescued-for-third-time-after-getting-stuck-in-fence_us_5b5211a2e4b0b15aba8e7878/)

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More than 100 goats descend on a neighborhood in Boise

The goats chowed down on flowerbeds, leaves and grass before being rounded up.

by Ethan Sacks –

Residents of an Idaho neighborhood woke up Friday morning to a sight that really got their goat.

An invading herd of more than 100 goats rampaged through the neighborhood of West Boise, devouring flowerbeds, grass and leaves as they moved from yard to yard on a recent Friday morning, NBC affiliate KTVB reported.

Representatives of the company that owns the animals, We Rent Goats, arrived at the scene and managed to herd the goats onto a truck around 9 a.m., less than two hours after the initial calls were fielded by Animal Control.

As the goats were rounded up by their handlers, a throng of onlookers and reporters — rivaling the goat herd in size — gathered to watch.

“The neighborhood banded together to force them into one lawn while they were waiting for us,” We Rent Goats owner Matt Gabica told NBC News. “Everyone seemed to be enjoying it. There were tons of little kids around there. Mothers brought infants in strollers to see the goats.”

We Rent Goats, according to its website, provides rentals of herds of the animals to landowners in need of mowing large swathes of grass. The animals apparently specialize in chowing down on weeds.

The animals apparently specialize in chowing down on weeds.

“The company has insurance and will be following up with neighbors whose landscaping was damaged. Animal control will also be following up with the company,” Boise city government spokesman Mike Journee said in an email.

The 118 goats that got loose were originally corralled near Ada County Highway District retention pond, broke through several slats of a wooden fence to scour the area for more food, the Idaho Statesman reported.

The breakout wasn’t exactly the stuff of heist movies.

“Apparently, they just leaned on the fence and it broke,” said Gabica.

(To see a video of the “goat invasion” visit: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-100-goats-descended-neighborhood-boise-n897356/)

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Scientists discover rare dolphin-whale hybrid near Hawaii

A wholphin? A dhale? It’s actually called a…

by Stephen Johnson –

Kimberly A. Wood under Cascadia Research Collective NMFS permit 20605

Scientists have discovered a rare hybrid between a melon-headed whale and a rough-toothed dolphin in waters near Kauai, Hawaii.

The discovery, made last year, was confirmed this week in a report released by researchers with the Cascadia Research Collective, a nonprofit which in August 2017 conducted a two-week project to photograph, tag and record audio of marine mammals.

The hybrid was the team’s “most unusual finding,” said project lead Robin Baird.

“We had the photos and suspected it was a hybrid from morphological characteristics intermediate between species,” Baird told The Garden Island newspaper. “We were able to get a biopsy sample of the animal.”

A genetic analysis revealed the animal was likely a first-generation hybrid between a female melon-headed whale (a rarely seen type of whale) and a male rough-toothed dolphin, marking what’s thought to be the first-ever documented discovery of a hybrid between the two mammals.

The researchers named it steno bredanensis.

“Hybrids among different species of whales and dolphins have been previously recorded, but this is the first case of a hybrid between these two species, and only the third confirmed case (with genetics) of a wild-born hybrid between two species in the family Delphinidae,” or oceanic dolphins, Baird told Fox News.

Photo of liger: Алексей Шилин

The dolphin hybrid was a rare find, but crosses between species in the animal kingdom are actually quite common.

A mule, for instance, is a hybrid between a male donkey and a female horse. There’s also more exotic hybrids–zonkeys (donkey and zebra), ligers (lion and tiger), pizzlies (polar and grizzly bear), beefalo (domestic cow and buffalo) and wolfdogs. And, perhaps surprisingly, you might even be a hybrid yourself, considering scientists have identified slight traces of Neanderthal DNA in humans.

Many animal hybrids are possible, but few survive past the first generation. That’s because two animal species are unlikely to have the same number of chromosomes, and hybrids won’t be able to reproduce if their parents are too genetically dissimilar. Even if hybrids can reproduce, they’d likely face other challenges in their environment, like being disadvantaged by their uniquely inherited traits or competition from other species. It’s for these reasons that hybrids in the plant kingdom are often more successful.

Mark Interrante – wholphin – via Flickr

Still, some dolphin hybrids have successfully reproduced. Kekaimalu, the only known living first-generation wolphin, which is a cross between a false killer whale and Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, gave birth to a female calf in 2004, and today the two live together at Oahu’s Sea Life Park. However, that baby was the result of her third pregnancy; her first offspring died in infancy, the other at age 9.

Much remains a mystery about the newly discovered dolphin hybrid, but the Cascadia Research Collective team hopes to learn more about it and other marine mammals in another project in the Hawaiian waters this August.

(Article source: https://bigthink.com/stephen-johnson/scientists-discover-rare-dolphin-hybrid-near-hawaii)

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1 Hen, 76 Ducklings: What’s the Deal With This Picture?

By Sarah Mervosh –

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There’s a Really Weird Link Between Cats And Entrepreneurs

Paul Hanaoka – https://unsplash.com/photos/OvLBv6F6DGE. 

A protozoan parasite found in cats could be having a rather odd effect on the brains of humans it infects, which under the right circumstances just might turn them into the next Elon Musk.

Toxoplasma gondii is famous for messing with the minds of mice, robbing them of the ability to evaluate risk. There’s some circumstantial evidence hinting at a similar effect on our own minds, which although tenuous, is well worth a closer look.

Research led by the University of Colorado has combed databases of information examining the coincidence of T. gondii infections and entrepreneurial activity across the globe.

They also turned to students and business professionals for a simple spit-test to track their body’s history of Toxoplasma gondii.

The research team was looking for some hint that there was a relationship between the go-getting, risk-taking characteristics of business hot-shots and a past brush with the mind-bending parasite. Which was pretty much what they found.

Almost 1,500 students who tested positive for exposure to T. gondii were 1.4 times more likely to be a business major. They were also 1.7 times more likely to have an emphasis on ‘management and entrepreneurship’.

As for the 197 business professionals the researchers evaluated, being T. gondii positive made them 1.8 times more likely to have started their own business at some point.

Country-level databases on infection rates over the past 25 years also showed an interesting pattern – there was a consistent pattern where infections could be used to predict business startups, as well as a lower reported fear of failure.

At face value, we could assume Toxoplasmosis might do weird things to the brain, potentially lowering inhibitions that might make the rest of us a little more concerned about the risks of sinking time and money into a new venture.

After all, the microscopic cat-borne pathogen responsible for the disease can turn the average cowering mouse into a rodent that shows no aversion to the smell of cat, while causing them to forget where they are.

It’s thought this could be an evolved characteristic, helping the parasite jump between cats through their food supply.

This raises the question of whether there’s a similar neurological effect on humans. It certainly seems to play havoc with our immune system, rewiring our inflammatory response in order to survive.

But our own brains?

On one hand, we’re hardly cat food. On the other, mice are often used as miniature models of human biology – the development of similar symptoms in us isn’t inconceivable.

Some studies hint that a T. gondii infection could make some people more aggressive. But the numbers aren’t convincing, and counter studies have failed to make links between psychological conditions or personality traits and the disease.

This new approach suggests something more subtle could be going on – an influence that isn’t significant enough to give rise to serious psychological conditions, but one that could still potentially nudge people into throwing caution to the wind.

It’s not the first study to step back and look for subtle signs of the parasite’s gentle persuasion across a culture.

Other studies have noticed a correlation between infection rates and neuroticism, for example.

Others have found a negative link between T. gondii and economic performance, suggesting what makes some people risk-takers could increase insecurity and low ability to trust, weakening institutions rather than helping them grow.

The usual caveats concerning correlations apply here, and it’s important not to take the sum of research together in drawing conclusions.

Nobody is suggesting you should go out and buy your kids a cat in the hope it will infect them with the skills to help them to take over Silicon Valley.

Nonetheless, the study does provide an interesting perspective on the ways epidemiology can have a small but powerful force on the psychology that builds culture.

And maybe, just maybe, shows why cats deserve their place of worship on the internet.

The findings are due to be published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

(For the source of this and other interesting articles please see: https://www.sciencealert.com/toxoplasma-gondii-correlation-entrepreneurial-characteristics-global-economics/)

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Game Cam Captures Bear Bathing On Barranca Mesa (Los Alamos)

Submitted by Carol A. Clark

on July 13, 2018 – 9:31pm

A game cam captures a bear taking a bath earlier this month in the backyard of a home on Kachina Street on Barranca Mesa in Los Alamos, NM.  Photo by Andrew Delorey

(For more interesting Los Alamos related stories visit: https://www.ladailypost.com/content/game-cam-captures-bear-bathing-barranca-mesa/)

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The Insane-Sounding But Totally Real World War II Plot to Bomb Japan With Bats

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200-million year old monster pushes back the clock on giant dinosaurs

  Michael Irving –

At about 10 tons, Ingentia prima was the  first giant dinosaur (Credit: Jorge A. González)

Most of the classic creatures that come to mind when you think of dinosaurs are from the Cretaceous period, when evolution seems to have hit its stride and splashed out with things like the huge, long-necked sauropods. But dinosaurs weren’t always giants – during the earlier Triassic period they were mostly chicken-sized critters, and they didn’t really grow to be massive until the Jurassic. Now, the discovery of a new species in Argentina is pushing back the clock on dinosaur gigantism by up to 30 million years.

The creature has been dubbed “Ingentia prima” (Latin for “first giant”), and it’s been classed as a sauropodomorph, the group that would later evolve into the gigantic sauropods. Although it has a much shorter neck and more theropod-like feet, the family resemblance is clear. Ingentia has been estimated to have weighed about 10 tons, which is huge for its time but makes it a relative lightweight next to some of its descendants like Patagotitan, the largest land animal to ever walk the Earth.

“Before this discovery, gigantism was considered to have arisen during the Jurassic period, about 180 million years ago, but Ingentia prima lived at the end of the Triassic, between 210 and 205 million years ago,” says Cecilia Apaldetti, lead author of a study describing the new find. “It is a true giant, especially for that moment of evolution where most of the animals that coexisted did not exceed two meters in height and the largest reached, at most, three tons.

“That is why we see in Ingentia prima the origin of gigantism, the first steps so that, more than 100 million years later, sauropods of up to 70 tons will come into being, as Argentinosaurus or Patagotitan, from southern Argentina.”

The team also found biological evidence for just how the creature managed to get so big so early. Ingentia seems to have had a respiratory system much like that of modern birds: in addition to lungs, it had a pair of air sacs that would allow it to have a reserve of oxygenated air and let it cool down faster.

“Ingentia had pneumatic cavities in its bones, which indicates the presence of highly developed air sacs, a very efficient breathing system such as that of current birds, and that consequently lightened his weight,” says Oscar Alcober, co-author of the study.

(For the balance of this article please visit: https://newatlas.com/isgentia-prima-first-giant-dinosaur/55408/)

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Seal jumps onto fishing boat to escape hungry killer whales

By Ben Hooper – 

A quick-thinking seal managed to avoid becoming a meal for some killer whales by boarding a nearby charter fishing boat.

Nick Templeman said he and a partner were doing a survey on transient orcas when they spotted a pod of the killer whales chasing a seal near Campbell River in the waters of British Columbia.

Templeman said the seal took off swimming toward a nearby charter boat.

“When it all took place, it took literally about 30 seconds for that seal to come over 150 feet towards the other boat,” Templeman told CTV News. “All of a sudden it comes up and around, up on the swim grid, and it all just started to take place, just like that.”

The seal jumped up onto the Pacific Yellowfin, a charter boat captained by Colin Griffinson of Pacific Yellowfin Charters.

“We said, what will we call the seal if we actually ended up keeping it?” Griffinson told the Columbia Valley Pioneer. “We just joked that we’d call it Lucky.”

Video filmed aboard the boat shows the seal hiding at the back near the motors while the killer whales swam nearby.

(For full story, and video, visit: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2018/07/05/Seal-jumps-onto-fishing-boat-to-escape-hungry-killer-whales/5591530797214/)

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by Robby Berman –

A spider tiptoes before heading to the sky. (University of Bristol)It’s been a longstanding mystery: Spiders have been seen hundreds of miles out to sea and thousands of feet up in the air. They are amazing creatures, but flight per se isn’t one of their skills. And yet: A spider climbs to the top of a branch, releases a fan of silk, and off it goes — It’s called spider “ballooning.”Charles Darwin found the phenomenon puzzling when he saw a swarm land on the H.M.S. Beagle some 60 miles offshore.

“A beautiful day: but the wind has been steadily against us.— In the evening all the ropes were coated & fringed with Gossamer web — I caught some of the Aeronaut spiders which must have come at least 60 miles. How inexplicable is the cause which induces these small insects, as it now appears in both hemispheres, to undertake their aerial excursions.”

The obvious explanation might be that their web catches the breeze and carries them away, but this notion doesn’t quite fly. Spiders balloon only in very light winds of less than three meters per second and wind couldn’t pull out enough silk to explain how they travel so far and get up so high anyway. A 1939 aerial collection expedition of the U.S. Department of Agriculture sampled high-altitude insects — calling them “plankton of the air” — and found substantial numbers of Araneida as high as 5,000 feet above Tallulah, LA.

Another idea was that they were somehow leveraging the earth’s electromagnetic charge, but that idea had never been studiously tested. Now two scientists from the University of Bristol, Erica L. Morley and Daniel Robert, have shown that spiders balloon by taking advantage of the earth’s electrical field.

The electric field around a tree

It’s been known since early in the last century that there is always an active atmospheric potential gradient (APG). On days with unsettled weather, the APG may strengthen.

APG measured for 30 min periods across 3 days at the University of Bristol (Morley, et al)

If you have a grounded sharp object, such as a tree, rising into the APG, the electrical field, or “e-field,” around the tree can get quite charged. Close in around branch tips, sharp leaves, and needles, voltages can reach tens of kilovolts per meter.

Voltage scale bar, the e-field around an oak tree, the fields around its branch tips. (Morley, et al)

The experiments

Spidey senses tingle

Spiders have fine mechanosensory hairs called trichobothria that are hypersensitive to sound and air motion. Morley and Robert placed spiders in an enclosed plastic box, positioning them on strips of cardboard, and exposed them to voltages similar to what they might encounter in nature — the researchers saw the trichobothria respond, “It’s like when you rub a balloon and hold it up to your hairs,” Morley tells The Atlantic.

Trichobothria under a scanning electron microscope (Morley, et al)

Tiptoe

Just as interestingly, the spiders began to straighten their legs, raise their abdomens and release silk, called “tiptoeing,” when a voltage was present. The only time spiders tiptoe like this is just before they balloon.

Tiptoeing on a dandelion seed head (Michael Hutchinson)

Up and down

What one might consider final confirmation of the theory would that when an e-filed was induced in this utterly windless environment, the spiders actually began ballooning. When it was switched off, they came down. The researchers could actually control spiders’ altitude with electricity.

(For the balance of this article please visit: https://bigthink.com/robby-berman/it-turns-out-spiders-fly-on-magnoelectricity/)

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India Court Declares Legal Rights of “Entire Animal Kingdom”

“Animals cannot be treated merely as Property”

By Mari Margil –

On July 4, the High Court of Uttarakhand at Naintal in northern India issued a ruling in a case brought to end cruelty of horses used in transport. The court declared that:

“Every species has an inherent right to live and are required to be protected by law.”

The decision is part of unprecedented advancement in the growing Rights of Nature movement that includes the work of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). Beginning in 2006, CELDF assisted the first communities in the United States – the very first places in the world – to advance the rights of nature into law.  CELDF has now assisted more than three dozen communities across the U.S., as well as the first country in the world – Ecuador – to secure the rights of nature to exist and flourish.

In this week’s India case, Narayan Dutt Bhatt v. Union of India & others, the High Court explained that declaring the animal kingdom as possessing rights is necessary “in order to protect and promote greater welfare of animals including avian and aquatic.”

Citing the growing extinction rates of animals – which today exceeds 1,000 times natural background rates – the Court explained, “The loss of one species causes immense damage to the entire ecosystem.”

Further, the Court explained that the growing environmental crises across the globe – including climate change – reveals “there are gaps in laws” that need to be addressed to protect the environment.

Such laws treat nature, including animals, as property without legal rights.  The Court asserted that this needs to change. “Animals cannot be treated merely as property” existing for human use.  Rather, the Court wrote that to address this deficiency in the law related to the environment, “New inventions are required to be made in law to protect the environment and ecology,” including the recognition of legal rights of nature.

The ruling by the High Court follows rulings it issued in 2017. The Court declared legal rights of certain ecosystems, including the Ganges River.  Similarly in Colombia, the Courts issued two rulings in which the Atrato River and the Colombian Amazon region now possess legal rights.

Courts are reaching these decisions as they witness the severe decline of the environment, despite numerous environmental laws.  As Colombia’s Constitutional Court explained in its 2016 decision recognizing rights of the Atrato River, in which it described the many ways in which human activity was jeopardizing the environment, “(J)ustice with nature must be applied beyond the human scenario and must allow nature to be a subject of rights. Under this understanding, the Court considers it necessary to take a step forward in jurisprudence….”

In its ruling this week, the High Court describes the growing movement to recognize rights of nature.

(For the balance of this article please visit: https://celdf.org/2018/07/press-release-india-court-declares-legal-rights-of-entire-animal-kingdom/)

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Crickets are Nature’s Thermometer: How Counting Cricket Chirps Can Tell the Temperature

By Gerard West –

There are many reasons why crickets chirp to one another. It is a way for them to communicate. Crickets will chirp to warn each other of approaching danger. Male crickets chirp to scare off other males from getting the female they have their sights set on, and then use chirping to attract the female. Crickets chirp by rubbing the edges of their wings together.

But did you know they can also communicate with us in a very specific way? Crickets’ chirps can tell us the temperature!

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Counting Crickets’ Chirps

Two methods exist to tell the current temperature by counting cricket chirps. One converts cricket chirps to Fahrenheit, and the other converts them to Celsius.

To convert cricket chirps to Fahrenheit, count the number of chirps that occur within 14 seconds. Then, add 40 to the number to get the temperature.

An example is: 25 chirps + 40 = 65 degrees Fahrenheit

In order to convert cricket chirps to Celsius, count the number of chirps within 25 seconds. Then divide that number by 3, and then add 4 to get the temperature in Celsius.

An example is: 30 chirps/3 + 4 = 14 degrees Celsius

Why Does Counting Crickets’ Chirps Work?

Crickets are cold-blooded like all insects. They adapt to the temperatures around them. So, the temperature outside affects the amount of energy crickets have available to chirp, among other chemical bodily actions.

When the temperature is warm, crickets are able to chirp at a faster rate. When the temperature is cool, their chirping slows down. This is one reason you may not hear crickets chirping in the winter months, whereas a hot summer night is full of them. For many, cricket chirping is a sound synonymous with summertime.

(Source: https://yourweatherwatcher.com/post/crickets-natures-thermometer-counting-cricket-chirps-can-tell-temperature/)

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Why This Dutch Town Installed Bat-Friendly LED Street Lights

By Brian Spaen –