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Scientists discover million-year-old hidden 'nursery' of Hammerhead Sharks in Galapagos


teleSUR
Mon, 29 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
hammerhead sharks
© WikipediaThe hammerhead sharks grow as long as three meters (yards) and live for up to 50 years.
"The females arrive to give birth and then leave. The young have all the food they need here and the reefs afford protection from large predators," an expert said.

A group of Ecuadorean scientists has discovered a hammerhead shark nursery where they have been born and sheltered for nearly a million years on the Galapagos Islands, the remote archipelago tucked away 1,000 kilometers off South America's Pacific coast.

"It was quite by chance that we found this natural nursery for baby hammerheads, a species that is under a high level of threat," Eduardo Espinoza, the biologist in charge of monitoring ecosystems in the Galapagos Marine Reserve, told AFP.

"It is a unique area, of great interest to conservationists."

Comment: It would be interesting to know how the scientists determined the cave has been used by the hammerheads for a million years...

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Attention

Man bitten by bull shark in Cone Bay, Western Australia

David Baker
The West Australian
Mon, 29 Jan 2018 13:38 UTC
Bull shark
Bull shark
An 18-year-old man has been flown to Perth today after he was bitten twice by a bull shark off the coast near Derby in WA's north, yesterday morning.

SharkSmart said the man was attacked by the shark at Cone Bay at about 8am on Sunday and was treated at Derby Hospital before the decision was made to transfer him to Perth.

It happened at Cone Bay Barramundi Fish Farm, where the teen had been working.

He is in a stable condition after being bitten twice on his right leg but was sent to Perth for likely surgery on damaged tendons.
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Arrow Down

Bill Gates planning to genetically engineer a 'super cow'

Matthew Loffhagen
Outer Places
Mon, 29 Jan 2018 18:31 UTC
GMO Cow
© Keith Weller/USDA
In recent years, Bill Gates has started dipping his toes into unusual pools of creativity.

The grand high emperor of Microsoft is already working on a sprawling, futuristic "smart city" to be built in the Arizona desert, but now he has a second project to devote his time to - he's going to engineer the perfect cow.

Bearing in mind his plan to build a desert city, this isn't a terrible idea - ideally, this genetically engineered bovine will be significantly more hardy than our current and inferior livestock, and will be able to produce milk at far higher temperatures.

Of course, Gates' plan isn't really aimed at creating cows to feed his technological utopia (although he probably won't mind if that's a nice side-effect). Instead, Gates is hoping that these cows will help his ongoing humanitarian work in arid parts of the world where famine and pestilence is still affecting the lives of millions.
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Attention

Dead whale washes up at Fernandina Beach, Florida

Cindy Jackson
News-Leader
Sun, 28 Jan 2018 14:32 UTC
Dead whale washes up on beach
Dead whale washes up on beach
A small, dead whale washed ashore Sunday in Fernandina Beach near the intersection of Bill Melton Road and South Fletcher Avenue and near Beach Access 40.

Representatives from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were on the scene Sunday afternoon as were Nassau County Sheriff's Office deputies to help keep onlookers at a safe distance.

The whale was "anchored" to the shore in an attempt to keep it in place through Sunday night.

A necropsy will be performed on Monday.
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Attention

Shark attacks along US west coast nearly double in 2017 over previous year


CBS Sacramento
Sun, 28 Jan 2018 12:47 UTC
shark attack
A new report says shark attacks rose last year on the West Coast.

The Shark Research Committee says there were nine unprovoked attacks in 2017 — eight in California and one in Washington. That's up from five the year before.

Nobody died but some people were bitten.

The committee says most attacks probably involved great white sharks. In a March attack captured on video, a great white attacked a kayak in Monterey Bay, knocking the kayaker into the water.
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Cloud Lightning

Lightning bolt kills 16 cattle in Zambia


ZNBC
Fri, 26 Jan 2018 19:29 UTC
lightning
Lightning has killed 16 head of cattle in Chipili District in Luapula Province.

Chipili Town Council Chairperson Isaac Kafwimbi says the animals owned by five farmers of Mukanga Village in Chieftainess Mwenda's Chiefdom died on the spot after being struck by lightning in a communally owned kraal.

Mr Kafwimbi says the people of Chipili are still in shocked from the accident.

He says it is sad that at the time when farmers in the district are making efforts to start keeping cattle such an accident can happen.

Mr Kafwimbi has since called on government through the office of the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit to find means of helping the affected farmers.
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Attention

North Atlantic right whale discovered dead off Virginia coast, 1st in 2018

Alexander Quon
Global News
Thu, 25 Jan 2018 12:43 UTC
At least 18 North Atlantic right whales have now died in Canadian and U.S. last year and this winter.
© Center for Coastal Studies/NOAAAt least 18 North Atlantic right whales have now died in Canadian and U.S. last year and this winter.
Another North Atlantic right whale has been found dead, the first to be recorded in 2018 and the 18th since last year.

The whale was reportedly found off the coast of Virginia on Jan. 22.

Jennifer Goebel, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), confirmed the information to Global News on Thursday.

According to NOAA, the remains of the whale appeared to be wrapped in a fishing line.

Based on past experience with entangled whales the NOAA believe the whale was alive and swimming when it encountered the line.
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Attention

17-feet great white shark found dead on the east coast of Luzon Island, Philippines

M G Martin
Philippines Lifestyle News
Wed, 24 Jan 2018 12:15 UTC
17-feet shark
17-feet shark
Fishermen have been warned to take care after a huge Great White Shark washed up off the east coast of Luzon Island.

The 17-feet-long monster was reported in the town of Dipaculao, in Aurora province, today (Wednesday, January 24).

The species is a rare visitor to the warm seas of the Philippines, with only four sightings on record. Nonetheless, it is a protected species by law.

Eddie Fabrigas Rebueno, of the Dipaculao Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, said the find was reported to his office at 6.30am this morning.

He said the shark, a female, did not show any sign of serious injury apart from some bruising on her snout and some missing teeth.
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Rose

Not socially constructed: Wild chimp 'girls' play with 'dolls' too

Brian Handwerk
National Geographic News
Wed, 22 Dec 2010 11:44 UTC
Nature and nurture may both influence gender-based toy choices.
young chimpanzee
© Michael Poliza, National Geographic/Getty ImagesA young chimp in Mahale Mountains National Park, Tanzania (file picture).
It's almost Christmas, and, as the song goes, Barney and Ben hope for Hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots, while Janice and Jen would like dolls that will talk and go for a walk.

Now new research suggests that such gender-driven desires are also seen in young female chimpanzees in the wild - a behavior that possibly evolved to make the animals better mothers, experts say.

Young females of the Kanyawara chimpanzee community in Kibale National Park, Uganda, use sticks as rudimentary dolls and care for them like the group's mother chimps tend to their real offspring. The behavior, which was very rarely observed in males, has been witnessed more than a hundred times over 14 years of study.

"The stick serves no immediate function, they just carry it - sometimes for a few minutes, other times for hours," study leader Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard University, said via email.

Comment: Today's post modernists want you to believe gender is a social construct and claim biology has nothing to do with it. Yet the facts remain the same, there are 2 sexes and hardwired differences inherent in them. As these examples show, they can't simply be explained away as something created only by society and culture. See also: Rooted in our biology: Revealing insights on behavioral sex differences from our primate cousins

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Binoculars

Arctic bird species, seen for the first time in Romania


Romania-Insider.com
Tue, 23 Jan 2018 20:04 UTC
Yellow-Billed Loon
Yellow-Billed Loon
The yellow-billed loon (Gavia adamsii), an arctic bird species, was spotted on the country's Olt river, the Romanian Ornithological Society (SOR) announced. It is the first time the species is identified in Romania.

The bird was recognized by József Szabó, a founding member of SOR, who was in the area with a SOR team to undertake the winter count of the aquatic birds, which takes place at the beginning of the year. It was spotted close to the Ulmi locality, in southern Romania's Olt county.

The yellow-billed loon, also known as the white-billed diver, is a member of the loon or diver family. It breeds in the Arctic and winters mainly at sea along the coasts of the northern Pacific Ocean and northwestern Norway. It occasionally strays well south of its normal wintering range, and has been recorded as a vagrant in more than 22 countries. It is a specialist fish-eater, catching its prey underwater.

Some 1,000 such birds arrive in Europe yearly. It has been spotted also in Belgium, Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, but never in Romania so far. The highest population, of some 20,000 birds, can be found in Canada.
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