Animals

Population of Mexico's monarch butterflies falls 26%, conservationists find

KiniTV
Sat, 27 Feb 2021 11:57 UTC

The population of monarch butterflies that arrived in Mexico's forests to hibernate this winter fell 26% from a year earlier, the country's Commission for National Protected Areas and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said on Thursday.

Millions of orange and black monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico on a 2,000-mile (3,220-km) journey each year from Canada across North America.

But the butterflies occupied only 2.1 hectares in December 2020, compared with 2.8 hectares the previous winter season, the conservationist group WWF said in a statement.

Comment: Monarch butterfly population getting closer to extinction - less than 2,000 of western population counted wintering in California

Signs and Portents: Mutant two-headed calf worshipped as 'lucky' after owner wins the lottery in Thailand

Jeff Parsons
Metro (UK)
Wed, 17 Feb 2021 19:19 UTC

The dead hermaphrodite baby cow born with two heads in Thailand was worshipped by villagers as lucky.

If you finally hit it big on the lottery, what would you ascribe your winnings to? Perhaps it was the fickle finger of fate that plucked you from the masses. Or, alternatively, perhaps you came into ownership of some kind of lucky talisman.

A villager in Thailand appears to believe the latter as he credits his £480 win on the local lottery from luck inherited after the birth of a malformed calf with two heads.

The poor creature was born with two sets of reproductive organs and an extra ear poking out in the middle of its two heads. Because of its deformities, it couldn't breathe properly and became too weak to eat. It died half an hour after being born.

(Video here)

Ancient Egyptian art reveals extinct goose

The University of Queensland
Tue, 23 Feb 2021 18:33 UTC

As a University of Queensland researcher examined a 4600-year-old Egyptian painting last year, a speckled goose caught his eye.

UQ scientist Dr Anthony Romilio said the strange but beautiful bird was quite unlike modern red-breasted geese (Branta ruficollis), with distinct, bold colours and patterns on its body, face, breast, wings and legs.

"The painting,Meidum Geese, has been admired since its discovery in the 1800s and described as 'Egypt's Mona Lisa'," he said.

"Apparently no-one realised it depicted an unknown species.

"Artistic licence could account for the differences with modern geese, but artworks from this site have extremely realistic depictions of other birds and mammals."

Dr Romilio said no bones from modern red-breasted geese (Branta ruficollis) had been found on any Egyptian archaeological site.

"Curiously, bones of a similar but not identical bird have been found on Crete," he said.

"From a zoological perspective, the Egyptian artwork is the only documentation of this distinctively patterned goose, which appears now to be globally extinct."

See you later alligator? 'Frozen' gators stick noses through ice to survive in Oklahoma

FOX 35 Orlando
Mon, 22 Feb 2021 17:46 UTC

Alligators in Oklahoma went into a deep freeze as frigid, icy temperatures plagued much of the central and eastern United States.

Wildlife photographer David Arbour captured stunning photos of several alligators poking their snouts through the ice to breathe at the Red Slough Wildlife Management Area this week.

While the alligators may appear to be dead, scientists say they're not. It's a survival technique alligators use when the water starts to freeze.

Comment: Back in 2019: American alligators freeze in place to survive arctic blast in North Carolina

Freshwater fish in "catastrophic" decline, one-third face extinction

Sophie Lewis
MSN
Tue, 23 Feb 2021 15:25 UTC

Thousands of fish species are facing "catastrophic" decline — threatening the health, food security and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people around the world. New research shows that one-third of all freshwater fish now face extinction.

According to a report published Tuesday by 16 global conservation groups, 18,075 species of freshwater fish inhabit our oceans, accounting for over half of the world's total fish species and a quarter of all vertebrates on Earth. This biodiversity is critical to maintaining not only the health of the planet, but the economic prosperity of communities worldwide.

About 200 million people across Asia, Africa and South America rely on freshwater fishers for their main source of protein, researchers said in "The World's Forgotten Fishes" report. About one-third of those people also rely on them for their jobs and livelihoods.

Despite their importance, freshwater fishes are "undervalued and overlooked," researchers said — and now freshwater biodiversity is declining at twice the rate of that in oceans and forests.

Eighty freshwater species have already been declared extinct — 16 of them in 2020 alone.

About 100 dolphins found dead on Mozambique beach - 3rd mass stranding of cetaceans globally within 5 days

BBC
Wed, 24 Feb 2021 12:48 UTC

The bodies of about 100 dead dolphins have been found on an island off the coast of Mozambique.

Eighty-six more carcasses were found on Bazaruto Island, north of the capital Maputo, on Tuesday, after a first group was washed ashore on Sunday.

The cause of the deaths is still unknown, the country's environment ministry said, and more experts are heading to the site.

One possible experts are investigating is if a cyclone may have contributed.

Comment: This incident happened amid similar recent mass strandings of cetaceans in other regions of the world, see:

Kangaroo painting is now Australia's oldest known rock art

Ellen Phiddian
Cosmos Magazine
Tue, 23 Feb 2021 18:11 UTC

© Damien Finch / Pauline Heaney
A montage of 39 photographs of the 17,300 year old kangaroo with an accompanying illustration.

An image of a kangaroo has been identified as Australia's oldest known rock painting, dated to over 17,000 years old.

The two-metre-long kangaroo is painted on the ceiling of a rock shelter on the Unghango clan estate, in Balanggarra country in the north-eastern Kimberley region, WA.

A research team led by Damien Finch from the University of Melbourne used radiocarbon dating to determine the ages of mud-wasp nests below and above the painting.

"In these old paintings, the ochre pigment used is an iron oxide," says Finch. "It cannot be dated with any of the current scientific dating techniques. The alternative is to date any suitable material found directly under or on top of the painting. In our work we date mud-wasp nests that are commonly found in rock shelters in northern Australia."

The team found nests below the painting were 17,500 years old, while nests above it were 17,100 years old. This means the painting is in between these two date ranges, "most likely 17,300 years old", according to Finch.

There is older evidence of rock painting in Australia, but not "in-situ" - that is, still on a cave or rock wall. "Two very old fragments of rock with ochre or charcoal lines have been discovered in archaeological excavations in northern Australia," says Finch.

Rare pygmy sperm whale washes up on Sonoma Coast beach in California

Julie Johnson
The Press Democrat
Sun, 21 Feb 2021 14:40 UTC

A dead pygmy sperm whale washed ashore on a Sonoma Coast beach over the weekend, giving marine mammal experts a rare chance to examine a creature that normally spends its life out in the ocean deep.

The intact body of the nine-foot-long pregnant whale beached Saturday on the sand at Salmon Creek, with no clear signs of trauma, said Barbie Halaska, necropsy manager with the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito.

Pygmy sperm whales are pelagic, meaning they live in deeper waters beyond the continental shelf. They are far less likely to wash ashore than other species, such as gray and humpback whales.

"Even if one dies, they don't necessarily strand on land," Halaska said. "Getting to see one is really rare for us."

Halaska and a team of about a half-dozen veterinary technicians, lab assistants and pathology experts went to the beach Sunday and collected the whale's internal organs and head to be more fully examined at the center's Marin County marine mammal hospital.

Wildlife photographer captures 'never before seen' yellow penguin

Michael Zhang
PetaPixel
Thu, 18 Feb 2021 00:00 UTC

A wildlife photographer has shared a once-in-a-lifetime photo of what he believes is a "never before seen" yellow penguin.

Belgian landscape and wildlife photographer Yves Adams was leading a two-month photo exhibition in the South Atlantic in December 2019 when the group made a stop on an island in South Georgia to photograph a colony of over 120,000 king penguins. While unloading some safety equipment and food onto Salisbury Plain, Adams noticed an unusual sight he had never seen before: a penguin with bright yellow plumage.

"I'd never seen or heard of a yellow penguin before," the photographer tells Kennedy News. "There were 120,000 birds on that beach and this was the only yellow one there."

Pod of 49 long-finned pilot whales strand on beach in New Zealand - 9 die

WION
Mon, 22 Feb 2021 14:07 UTC

© NINA HINDMARSH
The worst danger to stranded whales is overheating in the sun, as their dark skin and layers of blubber work to trap heat.

Rescuers in New Zealand had to race against time to save dozens of pilot whales that were stranded on the beachside in New Zealand on Monday.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) reported that a pod of 49 long-finned pilot whales was discovered at Farewell Spit, which is nearly 90 kilometres (55 metres) north of Nelson.

As soon as the pod was discovered, more than 60 people set to work to rescue the whales and bring them back to a healthy life. However, by mid-afternoon nine of the whales from the pod were declared dead.

Comment: This comes just 3 days after 52 short-finned pilot whales died after stranding on a beach in Java, Indonesia.

Quote of the Day

The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs.

This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements.

- Nikola Tesla

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Animals

Population of Mexico's monarch butterflies falls 26%, conservationists find

Signs and Portents: Mutant two-headed calf worshipped as 'lucky' after owner wins the lottery in Thailand

Ancient Egyptian art reveals extinct goose

See you later alligator? 'Frozen' gators stick noses through ice to survive in Oklahoma

Freshwater fish in "catastrophic" decline, one-third face extinction

About 100 dolphins found dead on Mozambique beach - 3rd mass stranding of cetaceans globally within 5 days

Kangaroo painting is now Australia's oldest known rock art

Rare pygmy sperm whale washes up on Sonoma Coast beach in California

Wildlife photographer captures 'never before seen' yellow penguin

Pod of 49 long-finned pilot whales strand on beach in New Zealand - 9 die

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