Animals
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Bulb

Dolphin species attempt 'common language'

Matt Walker
Earth News
Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:50 UTC
dolphin
© L.May-ColladoA Guyana dolphin leaps to escape the attention of a bottlenose dolphin

When two dolphin species come together, they attempt to find a common language, preliminary research suggests.

Bottlenose and Guyana dolphins, two distantly related species, often come together to socialise in waters off the coast of Costa Rica.

Both species make unique sounds, but when they gather, they change the way they communicate, and begin using an intermediate language.

That raises the possibility the two species are communicating in some way.
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Arrow Down

China Experts Say Panda Suffocated to Death in Japan


Agence France-Presse
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 09:00 UTC
Image
© Agence France-PresseMale giant panda Kou Kou
Chinese experts sent to Japan to investigate the death of a giant panda on loan to a zoo have determined that the animal died of asphyxiation, state media reported Saturday.

Kou Kou died last month at the Oji zoo in the western port city of Kobe after it had received an anaesthetic so that veterinarians could extract semen from the 14-year-old male panda to impregnate his partner, Tan Tan.

Experts found that Kou Kou had suffocated when "objects in its stomach went into its lungs, leading to asphyxiation," the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Earlier, reports suggested the experts believed that the death could have been caused by an overdose of sedatives and were questioning why Japanese veterinarians were extracting semen outside the animal's mating period.

A breeding agreement between Beijing and Tokyo includes the stipulation that Japan pay 500,000 dollars in compensation if a panda dies due to human error, state media reported previously.
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Attention

US: Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep Ravaged by Disease

Laura Zuckerman
Reuters
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 17:29 UTC
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© Ryan Hagerty/U.S. Fish and Wildlife ServiceBighorn sheep are pictured in Montana in this photograph taken on February 27, 2006 and obtained on October 2, 2010.
Across the northern Rocky Mountains, bighorn sheep are dying by the hundreds from pneumonia and alarmed wildlife officials are hunting and killing the majestic animals to halt the spread of the disease.

Since winter, nine disease outbreaks across five states in the West have claimed nearly 1,000 bighorns, prized as a game animal for the prominent curled horns of the adult males, or rams.

Scientists recently confirmed what they long suspected -- the cause of the plague is contact between the wild bighorns and domestic sheep flocks.

Putting the blame on domestic sheep has heightened a furious debate between advocates of the wild bighorns and sheep ranchers -- one skirmish in a bigger war between proponents of economic interests and those seeking protection of remaining wild areas and species in America's West.
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Binoculars

US: Bull Sharks Making Homes in Waters of South Alabama

Ben Raines
Alabama Live
Fri, 01 Oct 2010 04:00 UTC
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© Wikipedia Commons/Albert kokBull sharks born in waters around south Alabama are staying in the area and using the rivers as they get larger.
Bull sharks are common in Dog River, Fowl River and the rivers of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, according to a tracking effort conducted by the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.

During the last two years, 34 newborn sharks have been fitted with radio tags that transmit signals to receivers set up in the rivers around Mobile Bay.

While last year's data suggested that the babies were making use of the coastal rivers, it has now become apparent that sharks coming into their second year are staying in the area and using the rivers as they get larger.

The researchers said they also routinely catch adult bull sharks in Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound, some longer than 6 feet.
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Binoculars

East Africa: Rare Pink Hippo Spotted


The Telegraph, UK
Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:45 UTC
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© Burrard-Lucas/BarcroftThe rare pink hippopotamus stands next to a river in the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya
Rare pictures of a pink hippopotamus have been captured by British photographers.

Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas, were visiting the Masai Mara in Kenya, hunting the wildebeest migration, only to find a pink hippo.

"Our guide had mentioned that he had heard rumours of this rare hippo from a fellow guide, however, he was not told where it lived and he had never come across it before," said Will, 26.

"After a rather uneventful morning, we stopped on the banks of the Mara River for a picnic breakfast.

"After a while, to our great surprise, we spotted the pink hippo emerge onto the far bank of the river."
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Binoculars

Australia Faces Worst Plague of Locusts in 75 Years

Paul Rodgers
The Independent, UK
Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© AlamyIt's a bug's life: an Australian plague locust
Ideal breeding conditions for grasshoppers are expected to cost farmers billions

Australia's Darling river is running with water again after a drought in the middle of the decade reduced it to a trickle. But the rains feeding the continent's fourth-longest river are not the undiluted good news you might expect. For the cloudbursts also create ideal conditions for an unwelcome pest - the Australian plague locust.

The warm, wet weather that prevailed last summer meant that three generations of locusts were born, each one up to 150 times larger than the previous generation. After over-wintering beneath the ground, the first generation of 2010 is already hatching. And following the wettest August in seven years, the climate is again perfect. The juveniles will spend 20 to 25 days eating and growing, shedding their exoskeletons five times before emerging as adults, when population pressure will force them to swarm.

It is impossible to say how many billions of bugs will take wing, but many experts fear this year's infestation could be the worst since records began - 75 years ago. All that one locust expert, Greg Sword, an associate professor at the University of Sydney, would say was: "South Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria are all going to get hammered."
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Binoculars

Australia: Locust Bands Found in Northwest New South Wales


World News Australia
Thu, 23 Sep 2010 06:17 UTC
Image
© The Daily Telegraph
Surveillance aircraft have captured images of "supersized" bands of locusts in northwestern NSW that are more than three kilometres in length.

NSW Primary Industries Minister Steve Whan has released the footage of the locusts near Walgett, taken during the first aerial surveillance mission of the plague season.

Mr Whan said there were now 102 confirmed locust reports across NSW, with aircraft on Wednesday detecting the insects in 16 locations near Walgett.

"What we've seen from the footage is supersized bands of locusts, more than three kilometres long, eating fodder and crops in northern NSW," Mr Whan told reporters at NSW Parliament on Thursday.

"This has confirmed our prediction that the northwest will be the first front in the battle against the locust plague.
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Arrow Down

South Africa: Poacher Killed by Great White Shark

Stewart Maclean
The Telegraph, UK
Sat, 25 Sep 2010 05:47 UTC
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© Alfred Weissenegger/Rex FeaturesThe attack took place on Tuesday between Dyer Island and Pearly Beach, east of Cape Town.
A poacher in South Africa has been eaten by a great white shark during an illegal fishing trip.

Khanyisile Momoza, 29, was attacked as he harvested valuable perlemoen shells in the waters near Gansbaai in South Africa.

The fisherman was among a group of 12 poachers who had tried to swim to safety after spotting the shark in shallow waters.

A friend of Mr Momoza, who witnessed the attack, said: "There was screaming and crying. We just swam, we didn't look back.

"We were swimming in a group but he was a bit behind us.

"It jumped out of the water with him and then it took him down."
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Igloo

Up to a millions lambs could die as New Zealand freezes over


TVNZ
Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:02 UTC
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© TVNZ
Farm lobby group Federated Farmers says this month's spring storm in Southland looks set to cause the agricultural sector greater economic losses than the Canterbury earthquake imposed on farmers, and they want the government to declare it an adverse event.

"Federated Farmers is now working with Agriculture Minister David Carter on a medium scale adverse event declaration," a federation spokesman said tonight.

Such a declaration could give help such as that provided to farmers in recent serious droughts, including funding for a rural support trust to offer financial advice.

Agriculture Minister David Carter will tomorrow visit the small farm the federation's national president, Don Nicolson, and his wife Gail run at Waimatua, southeast of Invercargill, and the farms of Matthew and Vanessa Richards and David and Alana Clarke.
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Bizarro Earth

The Oil and the Turtles

Alex Shoumatoff
Vanity Fair
Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:14 UTC
Ridley-turtle hatchling
© Gary BraaschRidley-turtle hatchlings head into the Gulf in Tamaulipas, Mexico.
Every year, Rancho Nuevo, 900 miles southwest of the Deepwater Horizon blowout, sees a spectacular phenomenon: the arribada - mass nesting - of the Kemp's ridley sea turtle, which has already neared extinction. This year, thousands of baby ridleys swam off toward a deadly new enemy.

Of all the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the Deepwater Horizon blowout, no one single species is being directly affected as much as the critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle. Only 8,000 adult females nested in 2009, and the adult males are thought to be even fewer. Those that remain have been hit hard. Most of the surviving juveniles inhabit the waters 20 to 30 miles from shore, feeding and growing in the same currents and gyres that collected the bulk of the four million barrels spewed by the now capped well. There were confirmed reports of ridleys being burned alive in the pools of corralled, concentrated oil that BP had been burning off during the spill.
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