Rarest Ape Filmed

The world's rarest ape, the Cross River Gorilla, has been filmed for the first time in Cameroon.

That's wonderful- but can it help with conservation efforts?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/

6832855/Worlds-rarest-ape-filmed-for-first-time.html

-Brown Rhino

Rhino Poaching Surge

      Rhino poaching is up in Africa and Southeast Asia, despite conservation efforts.  Rhino poaching is especially high in Zimbabwe, because poachers are rarely caught there.

   Rhinos are primarily poached for their horns, which can actually be taken off without harm to the rhino by experienced rangers (read: rangers with tranquilizer guns).  It's sad that the rhinos are being killed for, basically, nothing.  Not to mention, the horns are useless.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8388606.stm

-Brown Rhino 

Extreme Weight Loss

    Lucy, the elephant at Edmonton Zoo, has lost 180 kilograms in 1 month on a new fitness regimen.  Zookeepers say that they hope she will lose 270 more kilos in the future to reach a healthy weight.

    Meanwhile, animal rights groups are pressing for Lucy to be moved to California, saying the Canada climate is too cold for an elephant.  Zoo officials say that Lucy is too sick (due to arthritis and respiratory problems) to move.

-Brown Rhino

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/

lucy-the-elephant-losing-weight-recovering-health

-vet-says/article1395130/

The Kangaroo Strikes Back

    A kangaroo attack happened recently in Australia.  Okay, it wasn't actually an attack.  In fact, it was Chris Rickard's dog who struck first and chased the 1.5-meter-tall kangaroo underwater.

    Big mistake.

    The kangaroo attacked the dog and dragged it underwater.  As the dog was drowning, Rickard attempted to rescue his pet.  In response, the kangaroo attacked Rickard, slashing him with its legs.

    Both Rickard and his dog survived, but had to be taken to the hospital.
    Well, what kind of a dog chases something as big as a human?  It may have deserved being half-drowned: such a dog is dangerous.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/

729781--raging-kangaroo-slashes-man-attacks-dog

-Brown Rhino

Mustelid Podcast from the Staff of Biosphere

It is incredible how often such simple animals make the news. We chose four stories of the mustelid family that were written within the last year and made it into a podcast, offering background information on the animals.
To see our podcast, please see:

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Pygmy Hippo born at Colchester Zoo

A baby pygmy hippo has recently been born at the Colchester Zoo in England.  This is fortunate because the pygmy hippo, a smaller but outwardly similar relative of the hippo, is a critically endangered species.

Apparently "tiny hippo" isn't an oxymoron after all: look at the photo!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/

6773261/Zoo-celebrates-birth-of-baby-pygmy-hippo.html

-Brown Rhino 

Poll Results 2

The Anaconda won the reptiles and birds popularity poll, defeating the penguin, the ostrich, the pelican, the pigeon, the parrot, the gharial, the iguana, the cobra and (barely) the raven and the crocodile.

Congradulations!

Photo by Steven G. Johnson

-Brown Rhino 

Animals that may go extinct before we know it

Humans have already been the reason behind the extinction of many animals, and are at the moment the reason that most animals threatened. For example, the Felidae are described as the second-greatest family of predators, next to humans. They have had incredible evolutionary success, about 11 million years ago diversifying into many different species, which spread around the world. (See works of O'Brien for more on cat evolution.) Yet today, most of the 37 species of cats, excluding the house cat, are endangered or threatened. In the past century and a half, the Barbary Lion, Caspian Tiger, Javan Tiger, Bali Tiger, and Cape Lion have become extinct.

The Iberian Lynx is the world's most endangered cat species, numbering at 120 individuals.
(http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=critically-endangered-species)
 The Amur leopard has 30-45 individuals extant in the wild, such a critical condition that conservation programs are breeding Amur leopards to reintroduce them into the wild. Hopefully humans can preserve some of other species' habitat and stop their hunting before these species are lost. An endangered status is horrible, but extinction is (mostly) permanent.

- Černa Kočka

Three Old Crocs

Three new crocodile species dating to the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era have been found in Africa:

"RatCroc", a plant-eating variety;

"BoarCroc", a sabertoothed variety;

"PancakeCroc", a flat variety.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-11-19-crocfossil_N.htm

-Brown Rhino 

Slim Sponge Sheds

    The sponge Halisarca caerulea can absorb its body weight in carbon in 1.5 days.  Despite this, it barely grows in size at all.  Now, researchers have found that the reason for it slow growth is that its cells divide very quickly, but are also shed from the sponge extremely quickly.  This is apparently done to protect the sponge from toxic substances: any such substances will be quickly flushed out from the sponge.

http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_how-the-sponge-stays-slim_1312829

-Brown Rhino 

Anctarctic Feeding Frenzy

Researchers have captured on film a feeding frenzy in the deep waters of the Southern Ocean.  When a seal died, its carcass sank to the sea bottom.  The first to arrive were nemertine worms, which inserted their proboscis into the dead body and sucked out the interior.  The holes were soon filled by animals such as marine roly-polies.  Slower animals, such as sea stars and sea urchins, arrived later and also digested the giant carcass.

Scientists estimate such a bounty occurs in that area only once in 10 years, but that may not be true, since what would be the chances of capturing it on film then?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8378000/8378512.stm

-Brown Rhino

World's Only Captive Hairy-Nosed Otter Gets New Home

photo by Dmitry Azovtsev

http://www.daphoto.info

June 18 of 2008, the one of the few remaining hairy-nosed otters was given a new home. Dara, rescued when his mother was killed by a fisherman, was put into a wildlife center in the Phnom Tamau Zoological Garden and Rescue Centre, in Cambodia, with a blessing by Buddhist monks.
These otters live in seasonally flooded forests. Cambodia reserves nearly a quarter of its land for conservation, unlike neighboring countries, whose habitat has been lost in logging and agriculture.
The hairy-nosed otter was believed extinct until 1998. Today it lives only in some areas of Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Sumatra, and is the world’s rarest species of otter. Otters are killed by the illegal international fur trade, taken as pets, or killed to use in traditional medicine. Fishermen kill otters, because the otters can break their nets and traps to steal their catch. Also, climate change could cause a change in the water flow, so that the otters could lose more their habitat in the flooded forests. Hydro dams on the Mekong already block some of this water.
Conservation International and Cambodia’s Fishery Administration are working to extend the Kampong Prak fish sanctuary at Tonle Sap Lake for otter habitat. CI researches and monitors the otter population at Tonle Sap, trains law enforcement rangers there, and promotes awareness of the otters through education and discussion in schools and communities. A captive population was started to fight the species’ extinction, but Dara is only the first. They still need to find him at least a wife.
CI has been researching Cambodian otters from 2006, and reviewed the hairy-nosed for the red list of endangered species, and succeeded changing its status from data deficient to endangered. This will make the otter a higher priority in protection.

-Černa Kočka

Along Came a Spider Part VIII

There are 40 thousand species of spiders.  Each is estimated to have as many as 1000 different poisons it uses to catch prey.  Research before has focused on the venoms of larger species, such as tarantulas.  New research, however, has shown that there are many interesting chemicals in the poisons of many smaller species.  One of those venoms blocks acidic ion channels, which means that it can decrease pain without much ill effect by itself.  Further research is ongoing.

http://www.lifescientist.com.au/article/
328567/feature_plumbing_peptides_spider_toxins?pp=1

-Brown Rhino

Along Came a Spider Part VII

The number of Australian Redback spider bites is up in Japan.  The invasive species is related to the black widow and very poisonous.  No deaths have been reported in Japan so far, but the antivenom had to be used for the first time in Japan this year. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aWpZMmJaEUVk

-Brown Rhino

Along Came a Spider Part VI

A spider smuggler has been caught in Brazil.  The man, Lee Ardern, was attempting to escape to the UK with 900 bird-eating spiders, which is forbidden as it is not allowed to carry Brazilian animals out of Brazil without permission.  Ardern claims that the spiders were caught by him in Paraguay.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8360438.stm

-Brown Rhino

Along Came a Spider Part V

A vegetarian spider has been found in Central America- the first such spider out of 40 thousand species.  It retains many hunting instincts, but uses them only to outwit the ants that guard flowers- its favorite food.  It sometimes eats ant larvae, but even so, Bagheera kiplingi has a plant-based diet- a first for a spider.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com

/news/2009/10/091012-vegetarian-spider.html

-Brown Rhino

Hope for a Species

Black-footed ferrets are one of the most endangered species on earth. But now there is hope.

There were two black-footed ferret births on June 20th and 21st. There was nothing spectacular about the births except that both were results of inseminations with frozen semen from males that had died over a decade ago. Such things are often unsuccessful, and it gives hope to scientists that the species may thrive yet again.

-bexchada

CO2 Levels Impact Shell Growth in Aquatic Organisms

A new study conducted showed that increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been impacting the shell growth of aquatic animals such as crabs and sea urchins. The sea urchin on the left was raised in waters with extremely high CO2 levels, while the sea urchin on the right was raised in CO2 conditions similar to the current situation. The difference is substancial.

When CO2 becomes dissolves in water, the water becomes slightly acidic. In addition to that, CO2 in water reduces the amount of carbon ions available, which organisms use to build their shells. For these reasons, scientists were concerned with the shelled organisms.

Fortunatly, animals are quick to adapt. Research has shown that, although the creatures' shells are eaten away by the acidic water, the organisms just adapt and create tougher shells more quickly to compensate.

This may be because the total amount of dissolved inorganic carbon available to them is actually increased when the ocean becomes more acidic, even though the concentration of carbonate ions is decreased.

-bexchada

Along Came a Spider Part IV

Jeremy Barker, leader of the database project 

A new database that catalogues spider venom is being created in Australia.  Spiders are the group of animals with the greatest variety of poisons.  Now this group is being catalogued by potential use as, for example, biodegradable pesticides.

Ironic that the first group of substances to be catalogued this way are poisons. 

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it

/it-business/spider-venom-database-to-aid

-researchers/story-e6frganx-1225805516265

-Brown Rhino

Bacterial Antibiotic Resistance May not Be Solely Caused by Antibiotic Misuse

For years, the thought was that bacterial antibiotic resistance was caused by the misuse of antibiotics. Though this has been proven true, recent research has shown that everything from proper use to the lack of use of antibiotics can crete antibiotic resistance.
Low-level resistance preceeds high-level resistance. Should one bacterium grow slightly resistant to an antibiotic, that bacterium can still be overwhelmed with a slightly stronger or larger dosage of the antibiotic. It is when this bacteria is not eradicated that problems arise. This bacterium can, over a shockingly short period of time, acquire even stronger immunities to antibiotics, and even become resistant to multiple types. Through Darwin's 'survival of the fittest', this one bacterium lives to proliferate indefinitly, breeding thousands, millions of resistant clones that grow even stronger.
Through the proper use of antibiotics, it allows the stronger bacteria to proliferate more readily, supplying more space and eliminating opponents. Through not using antibiotics at all, plasmids are transfered among bacteria without being killed in their hosts. In this way, bacterial antibiotic resistance can spread, even in enviroments that are using antibiotics properly or not using them at all.

-bexchada

Along Came a Spider Part III

It took four years, but for the first time, spider silk has been used for weaving a huge 3.3 by 1.2 meter tapestry.  This incredibly strong material has always been a pain to collect because of its owners' rather unwilling demeanor and thus problems involved in collecting the silk.  Now, however, the spiders have been hooked up to machines.  Despite this, the massive amount of spiders still took a very long time to produce the silk, which is why the method will not soon go commercial.

http://www.core77.com/blog/materials

/new_production_method_enslaved_

spiders_produce_huge_tapestry_15369.asp

-Brown Rhino 

Frog! fish???

 Find the fish!!!!!
















by MIT <(-'.'-)>

Naked Mole Rats May Be the Key to Stroke and Heart Attack Recovery

Naked mole rats are hairless, pink, practically blind rodents that are of the most repulsive earth-dwelling creatures. Despite this, they may be the answer to the recovery from occurances that deprive the brain of oxygen for extended periods of time such as heart attack, stroke, and drowning. Naked mole rats can be deprived of oxygen for up to 30 minutes and remain without brain damage; the most of any mammal.
Study of these mammals' brains may yeild clues to extended neurological health. The connections in the brain are often severed when deprived of oxygen, leaving the victim of such deprivation less in control of thoughts or movement than previously. Study of the naked mole rat may reveal what must be changed in order to speed recovery. For a more thourough story, see:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091130141313.htm

-bexchada