Animals
S


Cow Skull

Second Drug to Treat Cattle Deadly to Vultures

Michael Casey
The Associated Press
Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:01 UTC
Bangkok - A second drug used to treat cattle for pain could be deadly to endangered vultures and should be prohibited as part of a campaign to prevent their extinction, according to a study released Wednesday.

Millions of long-billed, slender-billed and oriental white-backed vultures have died in South Asia - mostly in India - after eating cattle carcasses tainted with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory painkiller given to sick cows.

Now, researchers writing in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters have found that a second drug, ketoprofen, has proven toxic to vultures and should no longer be used to treat livestock in Asia.
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Fish

Scientist Work To Protect Cuba's Unspoiled Reefs

Nick Miroff
NPR
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:35 UTC
Image
© Noel LopezThe reefs of Cuba's Los Jardines de la Reina are protected from fishermen, pollution and fertilizer runoff. The waters are plentiful with huge fish, sharks, sea turtles and saltwater crocodiles.
Cuba has some the most extensive coral reefs in the hemisphere, but political strains between Washington and Havana largely have kept American scientists away.

A new partnership for marine research is trying to change that at one of Cuba's most remote places, far from people and pollution.

Off of central Cuba's southern coast, hundreds of tiny islands stretch into the Caribbean. They are ringed with narrow beaches and thick stands of red mangrove.
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Fish

Blue whale songs are getting deeper, say baffled scientists

Claire Bates
Mail Online
Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:13 UTC
Image
Blue whales are famed for their haunting songs that travel thousands of miles under the ocean. Now scientists have discovered the world's largest mammals are singing in deeper voices every year - and they are not sure why.

A study in the journal Endangered Species Research, has found male blue whales all over the world have lowered their tone. Mark McDonald of WhaleAcoustics first noticed the change about eight years ago when he had to shift automated blue whale song detectors off California to lower frequencies.

He decided to compare the songs in areas ranging from the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean with the help of researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.
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Alarm Clock

US: Bitterroot bighorn pneumonia outbreak worsens

Perry Backus
Ravalli Republic
Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:30 UTC
Darby, Montana - An outbreak of pneumonia in bighorn sheep from the East Fork Bitterroot herd worsened over the past week.

State wildlife biologists collected almost 30 infected bighorn sheep from the area south of Darby. Some of the infected animals were shot in an effort to slow the spread of the disease. Others were found already dead.

"Any hope for a moderate infection rate is waning," said Craig Jourdonnais, the Bitterroot-based biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. "I think we are in full blown die-off mode."
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Sheeple

Australia: Kangaroo Tries to Drown Man, Dog


Fox News
Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:00 UTC
Image
© AP PhotoA startled kangaroo tried to drown an Australian man
An Australian man was almost drowned by a kangaroo after he dived into his farm dam to save his pet dog.

Chris Rickard, 49, of Arthurs Creek, is being assessed by Austin Hospital surgeons after being mauled by the nearly 5-foot roo at 9 a.m. AEDT. He only managed to end the attack when he elbowed the kangaroo in the throat as it tried to hold him under water, The Herald Sun reported.

By then he had already suffered a deep gash across his abdomen as the kangaroo tried to disembowel him with its hind legs, as well as a deep gash across his forehead and further cuts and scratches across his chest.

Speaking from the hospital's emergency department, Mr Rickard said he was walking his blue heeler dog Rocky at the back of his property about a quarter mile from his home when they woke the kangaroo which had been sleeping in long grass near the dam.
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Sun

Extreme drought forces thirsty kangaroos to invade Aussie town


New Tang Dynasty Television
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:29 UTC
Thargomindah, in the outback of Queensland, Australia, is a quiet small town with a population of 203. That is, until nightfall when the town's population doubles with the arrival of hundreds of other Australians...kangaroos and emus desperate to find food and water.

Some 700 miles west of Brisbane, Thargomindah is suffering its worst drought in 50 years. Both the wildlife and grazers are suffering. But as kangaroos reach plague proportion, farmers complain that the animals are eating any new growth available.

[Scott Fraser, Local Farmer]:
"It's possible to shoot seven-hundred a night, they're that thick. They're swarm proportions, you have no idea, it gives you a creepy feeling when you see them that thick."
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Cow Skull

6,000 Thirsty Camels Face Bullet After Terrorising Australian Town


The Guardian
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:03 UTC
Camel Oz
© Northern Territory government/EPA
Northern Territory officials plan mass cull after 6,000 wild camels run amok in Docker River in search of water

Australian authorities plan to round up about 6,000 wild camels with helicopters and shoot them after they overran an outback town in search of water, trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies.

The Northern Territory government announced its plan yesterday for Docker River, a town of 350 residents where thirsty camels have been arriving every day for weeks because of drought conditions.

"The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000 marauding, wild camels," the local government minister, Rob Knight, said in Alice Springs, 310 miles (500km) north-east of Docker. "This is a very critical situation out there, it's very unusual and it needs urgent action."
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Fish

Dumbo of the deep: Discovered in the ocean abyss, the elephant-eared octopod


Mail Online
Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:55 UTC
Dumbo Fish
© PAThe Grimpoteuthis has been nicknamed 'Dumbo' because of the large 'ears' it uses to swim with
What do you get if you cross an octopus with an elephant?

Well, in reality, probably nothing but a squashed octopus.

But with its elephant-like appearance, it's easy to see why this odd creature, found more than a mile beneath the ocean, has been nicknamed Dumbo by scientists.

Never before seen by man, it is a cirrate octopod, and the 'ears' that saw it named after Disney's cartoon elephant are actually fins that it uses to swim.

Marine biologists found the six-foot-long creature on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in their quest to record and name every living thing in the seas.
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Butterfly

Tree-Eating Bugs Threaten Monarch Butterfly in Mexico


PhysOrg
Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:45 UTC
Image
© PhysOrgMonarch butterflies in the Mexican state of Michoacan.
The mysterious Monarch butterfly, which migrates en masse annually between Canada and Mexico, is now facing a new peril: another insect thriving in Western Mexican forests.

Some 8,000 oyamel fir trees - the butterflies' unique mountain habitat each winter -- were cut down in July in a bid to remove beetles that threaten the Monarch's ages-old migration.

But now another small beetle has since taken to devouring the savory tree trunks, further endangering the butterflies' winter colonies.

"We are working to determine how many trees have been affected," said Homero Gomez, president of El Rosario Sanctuary, a premier migrating spot for the Monarch in the western Mexican state of Michoacan.
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Hourglass

US: Bats - The New Canary In The Coal Mine?

Kerry Trueman
The Huffington Post
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:55 UTC
Bat
© Unknown
You may think bats are scary, but what's truly terrifying is the mysterious fungus that's decimating the bat population, according to an article by Stacy Chase in last Sunday's Boston Globe:
At least 1 million bats in the past three years have been wiped out by a puzzling, widespread disease dubbed "white-nose syndrome" in what preeminent US scientists are calling the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in human history. If it isn't slowed or stopped, they believe bats will continue disappearing from the landscape in huge numbers and that entire species could become extinct within a decade.
This would have drastic repercussions for the rest of us. As Tim King, a conservation geneticist with the US Geological Survey in West Virginia, told Chase, "We're at the vanguard of an environmental catastrophe."
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