animalphiles

Albino moose filmed in Norway

A fisherman in Norway made his biggest catch with his video camera recently. Kurt Are Boine Nikkinen spotted a white moose in Tanadalen in northern Norway.

"It stood and looked at me," Nikkinen told Aftenposten.no, "It was completely white and had red eyes."

The Finnmark man had heard rumors of the white moose before and there have been sightings of the animal in the area. Nikkinen believes the moose is a youngster, about a year and a half old. A hunter himself, he said he could never shoot the white moose.

"It would make a special trophy but it won't be on my wall. Such a fine animal should be protected," he said. See Nikkinen's video at Aftenposten.no.

Tiger prefers vous parlez francais

A Siberian Tiger born and raised at a Quebec zoo now lives in Edmonton, Alberta - but seems to prefer the language of his youth.

Boris arrived at the Valley Zoo last May after spending the first seven years of his life at the Granby Zoo in Quebec.

Valley Zoo officials say he was unresponsive at first, but perked up when zookeeper Ginette Heppelle, a French speaker, chatted with him in her native tongue.

Heppelle noted that it was probably the cat's new surroundings that made Boris uncomfortable during his first days in Edmonton. Still, she thinks it could be soothing for him to hear French from visitors.

"If anything, it will just remind him of home and it will probably make him feel pretty good," she said.

Boris is now being trained to understand some English words as part of a behavioural training program that will allow zoo staff to inoculate him with greater ease.

Golden eagle chick is first born in decades in Ireland

A wild Golden Eagle chick has hatched in Ireland's County Donegal, for the first time in almost 100 years.

The exact location of the nest has not been revealed to the public in order to minimise disturbance to the birds. 

The parents were collected as chicks from the Highlands of Scotland. The pair was first spotted together on 1 August 2006 and have been together since.

Golden eagles became extinct in Ireland in 1912. Adults were reintroduced into Glenveagh National Park  in 2001, and despite eggs being laid in 2005 and 2006, this is the first year young have been produced.

The nest actually hatched two chicks, but as normally happens, the second chick died after five days. According to the Golden Eagle Trust, there will be a further wait of seven to eight weeks to see if the remaining chick can continue to grow and hopefully fledge in late July.

The Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, has welcomed the news that a chick has hatched, describing it as 'a marvellous milestone'.

Ants provide "living surface" for fellow travelers

Would you let your co-workers walk all over you? Army ants do it - fitting their bodies into "potholes" to smooth over rough terrain.  It helps keep the colony fed by speeding up the route from nest to prey and back.

Scientists from the University of Bristol say they first noticed the army ants' (Eciton burchellii) unusual behaviour in the insects' native rainforest home in Panama. To investigate this further, the researchers inserted wooden planks, drilled with a variety of different sized holes, into the army ants' trails.

They found that the ants did indeed plug the holes, but the team also discovered that individuals would size-match themselves to a hole for the best fit. The ants range in size from .08 to .4 inches. Biologist Dr. Scott Powell says, "When the ants bump into a hole they cannot cross, they edge their way around it and then spread their legs and wobble back and forth to check their fit. If they are too big, then they carry on and another ant will come along and measure itself in the same way. This carries on until an appropriately sized ant plugs the hole."

At this point, Dr Powell told the BBC News website, the ant becomes a "living surface" remaining in place for hours at a time while thousands of foragers walk back and forth across the trail. At the end of the day, when the traffic eventually diminishes, the ant that forms this motionless plug will detect that and pop out of the hole and run home," Dr Powell said.

The scientists found ant-plugged smoother surfaces speeded up the route from prey to nest and also increased the daily prey intake, which for army ants consists of other species of ants and other bugs.

Co-author Professor Nigel Franks, also from the University of Bristol, added: "I think every road user who has ever inwardly cursed as their vehicle bounced across a pothole - jarring every bone in their body - will identify with this story. When it comes to rapid road repairs, the ants have their own do-it-yourself highways agency."                     

New efforts to save Nepal's rare rhinos

Conservationists have announced new plans to bolster the declining numbers of the one-horned Asian rhino in Nepal, where poaching has reduced the population to fewer than 400.

The Zoological Society of London (ZSL), National Trust for Nature Conservation, Nepal, and Nepalese government will work on anti-poaching and surveying projects. Specially-trained rangers will work in communities to discourage poaching and to encourage active conservation.

Dr. Richard Kock, ZSL conservation programme manager, said that the new rhino plan is a "fantastic step forward" for the species' conservation. The shift in government towards a more inclusive democracy in Nepal mean that we can finally start to address the current conservation crisis."

Tasmanian devils to get help from Taz's gang

Many people's only exposure to tasmanian devils is the whirling dervish known as Taz in the Warner Brothers' Looney Toons cartoons. So it seems fitting that WB is stepping in to help the animals who inspired the popular character.

The devils are threatened by a contagious cancer that causes grotesque facial tumors. 90% of the animals in northwest Tasmania have been wiped out, and the disease is spreading to populations in the south and east. Scientists estimate that within five years, there will be no disease-free population in Tasmania -  the only place in the world where the devils exist outside zoos.

Australian officials say Warner Bros. will donate money from the sale of DVDs featuring Looney Toons (such as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck) to help efforts to save the only wild population of devils in the world. Proceeds will be donated to a fund managed by the University of Tasmania.
photo: Menna Jones

Gay flamingos adopt chick

Headlines just don't get any better. Two male flamingos who have been partners for six years have become parents, "adopting" a chick at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Britain.

Carlos and Fernando had a history of chasing other flamingos off their nests in order to steal the eggs. WWT spokeswoman Jane Waghorn says,  "They were rather good at sitting on eggs and hatching them so last week, when a nest was abandoned, it seemed like a good idea to make them surrogate parents."

When the egg was first abandoned, WWT officials whisked it off to an incubator where it hatched within hours. Staffers were concerned the Carlos and Fernando would not bond with the newborn because the process normally begins when the chicks are "calling" them from inside the egg.

So the chick was carefully placed in an old eggshell, which was taped up and returned to the unsuspecting couple's empty nest. The pair were soon seen 'talking' to the chick inside the egg and a little while later it hatched for a second time - to be greeted by its loving new foster parents.

Waghorn says Gay flamingos are not uncommon. "If there aren't enough females or they don't hit it off with them, they will pair off with other males." Males can produce a type of milk in their throat to feed chicks.

How do you say "I prefer tuna" in Welsh?

A group of dolphins living off the coast of Wales have a language all their own - a distinct dialect from dolphins living nearby off the Western coast of Ireland. Their distinctive set of vocalizations include whistles, barks and groans.

Scientists analyzed 1,882 whistles from the dolphins in the Shannon estuary and bottlenose dolphins in Cardigan Bay in Wales. The study found 32 different sound categories, of which eight were only produced by the Shannon animals.    

"The idea that the sounds are different is not a bad notion -- you'd expect the information had to be different given the diversity of the areas where they reside," Berrow told Reuters, adding he would use the data to create a dictionary of sounds and pursue the research further, should time and money allow.

Tiger numbers in India precipitously low

Conservationists say a tiger census in India has shown the population of the big cats is dramatically smaller than thought. A study by the Wildlife Institute of India indicates there may be 65% fewer tigers in some areas than experts had assumed. Conservationists say that means the last tiger census — which found about 3,500 tigers — was far too optimistic.

"The results are depressing," said Belinda Wright, director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India and one of the foremost big cat conservationists in the country.

Poaching and encroachment on tiger habitat have savaged India's tiger population, which a century ago was believed to number in the tens of thousands. The key to recovery is to ensure tigers are able to hunt, mate and travel between the country's protected reserves, making sure they have enough prey to hunt and keeping inbreeding to a minimum.
photo: Reuters

Sharks capable of "virgin" birth

Scientists have discovered female sharks don't need to have sex in order to reproduce. They can become pregnant through parthenogenesis, in which females fertilize their own eggs. It's a process known to exist in some birds, reptiles, amphibians and bony fishes, but this is the first confirmed case with a shark.

Scientists began their investigation after a female hammerhead shark was mysteriously born at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo in December 2001, in a tank that held three adult, female hammerheads but no males. The 7-inch-long baby was killed within a day its birth, apparently because another fish in the tank, most likely a stingray, attacked it.

Although the three females had been caught before they reached sexual maturity and held in captivity for more than three years, researchers initially thought one of them had stored sperm from a male shark before fertilizing an egg. But the team  determined that the baby shark's genetic makeup perfectly matched one of the females in the tank, with no sign of a male parent.

Lead researcher Demian Chapman says, "It just goes to show, life will find a way."