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From BBC News:
This red dotted animal was elected insect of the year 2007 by
scientists at the Federal Biological Research Centre for Agriculture
and Forestry, Germany.
Due to its markings, the butterfly is commonly
known as "blood droplet", although its species name is Zygaena carniolica.
From BBC News:
Male topi antelope in Africa have to fight off randy females or risk absolute exhaustion servicing the herd.
The species shows a sexual behavior that's the reverse of most animals, in that males are typically choosy, while females are aggressive.
According to research published in the journal Current Biology, this helps males conserve their sperm for the possibility of mating with new females. It therefore increases the chances of fatherhood with the widest possible number of partners.
Dr Jakob Bro-Jorgensen, who revealed the antelopes' complicated reproductive behavior, said: "In cases where the male antelope was free to choose between females, he deliberately went for the most novel mate, rather than the most high-ranking." He added: "However, some pushy females were so aggressive in their pursuit of the male that he actually had physically to attack them to rebuff their advances."
The research was undertaken in the Masai Mara area of Kenya, in the traditional breeding grounds of the topi. Females are fertile for a single day only. The topi antelope (Damaliscus lunatus jimela) come together once a year, for just over a month to mate.
Dr Bro-Jorgensen said: "It is not uncommon to see males collapsing with exhaustion as the demands of the females get too much for them." He observed that each female would mate, on average, with four males, while some reached 12 different partners. And each individual would be mated with approximately 11 times, although one pair was observed together on 36 occasions. "
[The females must] ensure that they become pregnant, and preferably with a hotshot male, so they must focus all their energies on ensuring that males mate with them in that time," Dr Bro-Jorgensen explained. These findings are contrary to conventional sexual selection theory which says males are competitive and females are choosy.
Talking to the BBC News website, Dr Bro-Jorgensen said: "We may not have our eyes open to the fact that opposite sexual conflicts may occur more commonly than we think. Normally, males are persistent and females resistant. What I saw in African topi was unexpected." The synchronized mating activity, and the species' promiscuity, makes males the limited resource and females the competitive ones. It is thought the females are interested in mating with several partners to ensure fertilization, in case their first choice happens to have reduced sperm supply, or is genetically incompatible with them.
From Associated Press:
More than 200 years ago, rats jumped ship for Rat Island. The muscular
Norway rat climbed ashore on the rugged, uninhabited island in far
southwestern Alaska in 1780 after a rodent-infested Japanese ship ran
aground. It was the first time rats had made it to Alaska.
Since then, Rat Island, as the piece of rock was dubbed by a sea captain in the 1800s, has gone eerily silent. The sounds of birds are missing.
That is because the rats feed on eggs, chicks and adult seabirds, which come to the mostly treeless island to nest on the ground or in crevices in the volcanic rock.
"As far as bird life, it is a dead zone," said Steve Ebbert, a biologist at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, whose 2,500 mostly uninhabited islands include the Aleutian chain, of which Rat Island is a part.
State and federal wildlife biologists are gearing up for an assault on the rats of still-uninhabited Rat Island, hoping to exterminate them with rat poison dropped from helicopters. If they succeed, the birds will sing again on Rat Island. And it will be the third-largest island in the world to be made rat-free.
A visitor to the island 1,700 miles doesn't have to look far to find evidence of vermin. The landscape is riddled with rat burrows, rat trails, rat droppings and chewed vegetation. Certain plants are all but gone.
The same for songbirds and seabirds.
Rats have all but wiped out the seabirds on about a dozen large islands and many smaller islands in the refuge, which is home to an estimated 40 million nesting seabirds. Puffins, auklets and storm petrels are most at risk because they leave their eggs and young for extended periods while foraging.
The rats jumped ship beginning in the late 1700s, a problem that worsened in the 1800s when Russian merchant vessels plied the islands, and grew more serious in the 1940s, when hundreds of military ships visited the Aleutian Islands during World War II.
Now, the islands are vulnerable to "rat spills" from freighters traveling the quickest route from the West Coast to Asia. The Aleutians receive about 400 port calls from vessels each year.
Rats have been the scourge of islands worldwide. According to the California-based group Island Conservation, rats are to blame for between 40 percent and 60 percent of all seabirds and reptile extinctions, with 90 percent of those occurring on islands.
"Rats are one of the worst invasive species around," said Gregg Howald, program manager for Island Conservation, which is working with the U.S. government on a plan for Rat Island.
Norway rats typically have four to six litters a year, each containing six to 12 babies. One pair of rats can produce a population of more than 5,000 rats in an area in one year.
The state is joining forces with federal wildlife biologists in a multi-pronged attack to drive the rats from Alaska.
State regulations went into effect this fall requiring mariners to check for rats and try to eradicate them if found. Violators face a year in jail and a $10,000 fine. Corporations could be fined up to $200,000.
The state also is mailing out 15,000 "Stop Rats!" brochures to educate mariners on how to control rats aboard boats and keep them from going ashore.
The brochure tells mariners to kill every rat on board, have traps set at all times, keep trash and food in rat-proof containers, use line guards — funnel-shaped devices that go around mooring lines — to keep rats from getting off or coming aboard, and never throw a live rat over the side. Rats are excellent swimmers.
The assault on the rats of 6,871-acre Rat Island could begin as early as next October. The plan — which involves the use of a blood thinner that will cause the rodents to bleed to death — still must be reviewed and sent out for public comment.
Scientists want to see how the project goes before deciding whether to try to exterminate the rats on other islands.
From Associated Press:
A three month-old panda cub has been named Zhen Zhen, or Precious. Following Chinese tradition, the San Diego Zoo waited
until the cub, which was born Aug. 3, was 100 days old before giving
her a name Monday.
Zhen Zhen (pronounced shen shen) won out over 2,400 names submitted by zoo visitors. Thirty-six percent of voters chose the name from among the four finalists.
The other choices were Li Hua, or Beautiful China; Ming Zhu, or Bright Treasure; and Xiao Li, or Little Beauty.
The cub is still living out of public view in a private den with her mother, the panda Bai Yun, but can be seen via the zoo's Web cam.
Zhen Zhen is the third cub born to Bai Yun and her consort, Gao Gao,
since 2003. The panda couple has been one of the most reproductively
successful ever in captivity.
Photo: Reuters
From Associated Press:
Mexico's president has unveiled a sweeping plan to curb logging and protect millions of
monarch butterflies that migrate to the mountains of central Mexico
each winter.
The plan will put $4.6 million toward additional equipment and advertising for the existing Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, covering a 124,000-acre swathe of trees and mountains that for thousands of years has served as the winter nesting ground to millions of orange- and black-winged monarch butterflies.
President Felipe Calderon said it would help boost tourism and support the economy in an impoverished area where illegal logging runs rampant. "It is possible to take care of the environment and at the same time promote development," the president said.
The new initiative is part of ongoing efforts to protect the butterflies, which are a huge tourist attraction. In some areas, officials can even be found standing guard along highways and slowing cars that might accidentally hit a butterfly flying across the road.
The plan also meshes nicely with one of Calderon's main policy planks: protecting the environment and combatting global warming. He has drawn up a national anti-global warming plan and committed to plant some 250 million trees in 2007.
While the monarch butterfly does not appear on any endangered species lists, experts say illegal logging in Mexico threatens its existence in North America because it removes the foliage that protects the delicate insects from the cold and rain.
"By even taking a single tree out near the butterfly colony you allow heat to escape from the forest and that then jeopardizes the butterflies," said Lincoln Brower, professor emeritus of zoology at the University of Florida.
Brower, who has studied the insects for 52 years, described the Mexican nesting grounds as "the Mecca of the whole insect world."
Each September, the butterflies begin their 3,400-mile journey from the forests of eastern Canada and parts of the United States to the central Mexican mountains. The voyage is considered an aesthetic and scientific wonder.
The butterflies return to the U.S. and Canada in late March, where they breed and cycle through up to five generations before heading back south. Scientists say they are genetically programmed to return to Mexico, where they settle into the same mountains their ancestors inhabited the year before.
A tiny South China Tiger cub could be the key to saving his species from extinction. He was born Friday at a South African reserve. His parents had been sent there from China to breed.
The parents, Cathay and Tiger Woods are being taught how to survive in the wild. The cub has been named Tiger Woods, Jr.
Cathay and her mate Tiger Woods – named after the US golfer – are being taught how to survive in the wild at the reserve. The eventual goal is to release Jr., and any other offspring, into the wild in China, where fewer than 30 of the big cats remain.
Jr. is currently being hand-reared. Although Cathay displayed motherly instincts by cleaning her cub, project staff removed him because they feared he might die in the unseasonally cold weather. He'll be returned to his mother later.
Click here for more awesome pics from The Daily Mail
The vibrant yellows and oranges of autumn have nothing on the newest residents at the Wildlife Conservation Society's Prospect Park Zoo. Just in time for Thanksgiving, the Zoo proudly welcomes two golden lion tamarin brothers. They may be new to their home, but these tiny monkeys with big hair and even bigger personalities are already turning heads, and tails!
Golden lion tamarins are native to Brazil. They weigh in at less than 25 ounces, and from the look of them, one might think most of that weight is hair. The aptly named monkeys have-- considering their small size--an enormous golden orange mane similar to that of a lion. But unlike their feline namesake, the tamarins are omnivores and feed primarily on fruits and insects.
The Zoo's new additions are both around three years old and hail from the Atlanta Zoo. These golden lion tamarins are the first of their kind at the Prospect Park Zoo, and the Zoo plans to start a breeding program by one day introducing a female. But for now, the inquisitive brothers can be found exploring their new home in the Zoo's Animal Lifestyles exhibit.
Even more notable than the adorable appearance and playful personalities of golden lion tamarins is their plight in the wild. The tamarins are native to the heavily populated coastal areas of Brazil, where much of the forest has been destroyed. As a result of this drastic habitat loss, there were once more golden lion tamarins in captivity than in the wild. Fortunately, captive breeding programs have been able to successfully reintroduce some 150 individuals into the wild.
The Prospect Park Zoo is pleased to play a part in the preservation of this species. With some luck and some time, the Zoo hopes to introduce new babies to Brooklyn and to Brazil, to help bolster their wild golden lion tamarin population.
Photo: WCS
From Associated Press:
Several dozen desert bighorn sheep in southern New Mexico will be outfitted this week with new radio collars, enabling biologists to continue monitoring the endangered species.
A helicopter crew armed with net guns and tranquilizers hopes to capture 72 sheep, fit them with new collars and release them back into the wild.
Elise Goldstein, a bighorn sheep biologist with the state Game and Fish Department, said similar efforts to recapture and collar sheep have been made only a couple of times, but nothing on the scale of this week's effort.
Desert bighorn sheep were once found in more than a dozen mountain ranges in central and southern New Mexico, but disease, drought and other factors left the species in poor shape. The state put the sheep on its endangered species list in 1980 and started a restoration program.
Now, there are an estimated 425 desert bighorn in New Mexico — 2 1/2 times more than the number recorded just six years ago.
The department's captive breeding facility in southwestern New Mexico and Arizona also have bolstered the numbers through relocation projects. Goldstein said it's possible desert bighorn could be taken off New Mexico's endangered species list in the next couple of years.
From Associated Press:
Wildlife experts in northeastern India are experimenting with a new
weapon to prevent marauding elephants from destroying homes and crops
and trampling people in villages close to their habitat — super-hot
chilies.
Conservationists working on the experimental project in Assam state said they have put up jute fences smeared with automobile grease and bhut jolokia — also known as the ghost chili and certified as the world's hottest chili by the Guinness Book of World Records. They also were using smoke bombs made from the chili to keep elephants out.
"We fill straw nests with pungent dry chili and attach them to sticks before burning it. The fireball emits a strong pungent smell that succeeds in driving away elephants," Nandita Hazarika of the Assam Haathi (Elephant) Project told The Associated Press on Monday.
Hazarika said the chilies would not be eaten and that the smell would be enough to repel the elephants. He emphasized the measures would not harm the animals.
Northeast India accounts for the world's largest concentration of wild Asiatic elephants; 5,000 are estimated living in Assam alone.
Conservationists say wild elephants increasingly attack human settlements encroaching on their natural habitat. Satellite imagery shows that up to 691,880 acres of Assam's forests were cleared from 1996 to 2000.
More than 600 people have been killed by wild elephants in Assam in the past 16 years and villagers have reacted with an anger that has shocked conservationists. In 2001, villagers poisoned 19 wild elephants to death after they feasted on crops and trampled houses.
"We have been forced to look for ingenious means to keep wild elephants from straying out of their habitats," M.C. Malakar, the state's chief wildlife warden, told the AP.
From Associated Press:
Congo is setting aside more than 11,000 square miles of rain forest to
help protect the endangered bonobo, a great ape that is the most
closely related to humans and is found only in this Central African
country.
U.S. agencies, conservation groups and the Congolese government have come together to set aside 11,803 square miles of tropical rain forest , the U.S.-based Bonobo Conservation Initiative said in a statement issued this week.
The area amounts to just over 1 percent of vast Congo — but that means a park larger than the state of Massachusetts.
Bonobos — often lauded as the "peaceful ape" — are known for their matriarchal society in which female leaders work to avoid conflict, and their sex-loving lifestyle.
The bonobo population is believed to have declined sharply in the last 30 years, though surveys have been hard to carry out in war-ravaged central Congo. Estimates range from 60,000 to fewer than 5,000 living, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
