ABC News - The Connecticut woman who was attacked by her friend's chimpanzee in February, revealed the mangled remains of her face on the Oprah Winfrey show today for the first time, publicly showing the remnants of her missing eyes, nose and lips.

Charla Nash reveals her face publicly after being mauled by a pet chimp.Charla Nash, who wakes up every day in a hospital room at the Cleveland clinic where doctors change her bandages daily, told Winfrey she rarely touches her face so as not to learn the full extent of her injuries.

"I don't ask a whole lot about my injuries. I know that I have my forehead," she told Winfrey.

Nash, 56, must drink all of her meals with a straw though a small hole where her mouth used to be, She said she longs for the day when she might be able to eat "a hot dog or piece of pizza."

My Gawd! The video is horrifying and makes me think no wild animals should be allowed as pets.

Suzanne Goldenberg | Oct 28

The Guardian - Bearwalker of the Northwoods reveals how US wildlife biologist Lynn Rogers' extraordinary relationship with wild black bears has enabled him to explode numerous myths about the animals - and discover surprising new behaviour

The wildlife biologist Lynn Rogers had logged thousands of hours studying North America's black bears. He had shot them with tranquilisers before fitting them with ear tags or radio collars. He had drawn their blood and mapped their DNA. And he had tracked their movements with pins on maps.

But none of that had allowed him to really know the creatures. When he did get close to a bear in the wild the animal was usually terrified, caught in a live trap in the woods.

Rogers eventually realised he couldn't hope to know bears unless he won their trust. And so he abandoned scientific detachment and took the daring and controversial step of forming relationships with his study animals, using food to gain acceptance among an extended bear family inMinnesota.

Gaining the trust of the bears has given him a close-up insight into their behaviour and social organisation as well as allowing Rogers to explode myths about them. Contrary to popular belief, for example, he contends that the bears are not violent and do not like honey. PICTURES

Robert Booth | Oct 27

The Guardian - • Restaurant critic says he felt urge to be a primate killer
• Animal campaigners attack 'indefensible' action

Animal welfare groups voiced outrage today after the restaurant critic AA Gill said he shot a baboon on safari "to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone".

In a Sunday Times column, Gill recounted in detail how he shot the creature from 250 yards while hunting in "a truck full of guns and other blokes" in Tanzania. He said he felt the urge to be "a recreational primate killer" before shooting the animal through the lung.

"This is morally completely indefensible," said Steve Taylor, a spokesman for the League Against Cruel Sports. "If he wants to know what it like to shoot a human, he should take aim at his own leg. When man interacts with animals he owes a duty of care. If you are killing to eat, that is a different matter. This is killing for fun".

Gill wrote: "I took him just below the armpit. He slumped and slid sideways. I'm told they can be tricky to shoot: they run up trees, hang on for grim life. They die hard, baboons. But not this one. A soft-nosed .357 blew his lungs out."

Claire Bass, wildlife manager at the World Society for the Protection of Animals: "It's hard to say what's sadder – the unnecessary death of a healthy baboon or that he has so little regard for the life of another creature. The vast majority of visitors to the Serengeti have a fantastic time shooting with cameras, not guns. We condemn the killing and the crude portrayal of it as 'entertainment' in Gill's column."

What an ass!

It is the greatest animal battle on the planet, and it has finally been caught on camera.

A BBC natural history crew has filmed the "humpback whale heat run", where 15m long, 40 tonne male whales fight it out to mate with even larger females.

During the first complete sequence of this behaviour ever captured, the male humpbacks swim at high speed behind the female, violently jostling for access.

The collisions between the males can be violent enough to kill.

Must see video

Some of the German Antarctic Receiving Station (GARS) O’Higgins webcams are up and penguins have arrived. :)

The site link is here, scroll down to see which cameras are active. Their gallery is a treat too. Good thing I didn't rely on SP for penguins...

Oct 15

The Independent -

There has never been a better time to be a foot-tall, slender-tailed, pointy-nosed mongoose with an elevated outlook on life.

Britain has gone mad for these upstanding citizens of the Kalahari desert. Meerkats have burrowed into the public consciousness, colonising our billboards, cinemas and television screens. Their adorable faces, quizzical disposition and trademark posture make them seriously cute (and seriously attractive to marketing men) but the diminutive diggers' biggest fans say meerkat mania is about more than charm and charisma. They are the little guys with big hearts whose struggle for survival and fierce sense of family loyalty not only fascinates scientists and seduces film-makers, but also offers a model of duty and fortitude for us all. The mammals' greatest champions go further. They believe – and read on if this sounds crazy – that, in gloomy times, meerkats have a unique power to make us happy. In Germany, they call them erdmännchen, or "little earth people".

When did this madness begin? The meerkats' star has reached new heights but the animals first peered into our lives more than 20 years ago when David Attenborough introduced us to the curious creatures in the BBC documentary, Meerkats United. The film captivated a generation and has been voted the most popular nature documentary of all time.

You can watch David Attenborough's Meerkats United here

Andrew Buncombe | Sept 25

The Independent - A Cat Ba leopard gecko - AFP/Getty Images

A gecko with spots like a leopard and a fanged frog that preys on birds are among more than 160 new species that have been discovered along the Mekong River but which face the threat of extinction as a result of climate change.

Scientists in south-east Asia said that in 2008 they discovered 100 plants, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and one bird species in the region that spreads over Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand Laos and southern China.

Yet almost before they are fully documented, the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) believes these new species could disappear because of the increased incidence of extreme weather linked to climate change. Floods, droughts and rising sea levels are all threats.

Related:
** Discovered - a species of rat as big as a cat
** Maori legend of man-eating bird is true
** Pictures - other discoveries
** More Pictures

Aug 26

BBC -
(A captive albino axolotl displays its larval gills)

The amphibian that never grew up is on the verge of going extinct in the wild.

New survey work suggests that fewer than 1,200 Mexican axolotls remain in its last stronghold, the Xochimilco area of central Mexico.

The axolotl is a type of salamander that uniquely spends its whole life in its larval form.

Its odd lifestyle, features and ability to regenerate body parts make it a popular animal kept in labs, schools and as pets.

But in the wild, the future is bleak for this "Peter Pan" of animals.

Recent surveys suggest that between 700 and 1,200 axolotls (Ambystoma mexicanum) survive in six reduced and scattered areas within the Xochimilco area of the Mexican Central Valley.

One of these surveys found just a single axolotl in the whole study region.

Paris | Aug 18

Reuters -

France is facing an invasion of bee-eating Chinese hornets which could hasten the mysterious decline in the honey-bee population and threaten bee-keepers' livelihoods, researchers said on Tuesday.

Colonies of Asian hornets, or Vespa velutina, have spread rapidly in southwestern France, a region popular with tourists, and are likely to reach other European countries soon.

"More and more of them are coming and they're colonising France," Quentin Rome, a researcher at the National History Museum in Paris, told Reuters.

The three centimetre-long insects, recognisable by their orange heads and yellow feet, probably arrived in France on a boat carrying ceramic goods from China, researchers believe.

The first hornets were observed in France in 2004, and the most recent study recorded 1,100 nests across the country. The hornet is now firmly established near Bordeaux and has advanced as far north as parts of Brittany in northwestern France. (pic - Ouest France/AFP)

Steve Connor | Aug 6

The Independent - Scientists re-enact tale of crow that managed to drink from half-full pitcher of water

One of Aesop's fables describing a thirsty crow which was able to drink from a half-full pitcher after raising the water level by adding pebbles may have had a basis in real life.

Scientists have found that rooks – a member of the crow family – were able to figure out how to raise the water level in a laboratory container by dropping stones inside to retrieve a tasty worm floating on the surface.

Four different rooks, called Cook, Fry, Connelly and Monroe, quickly discovered that they could raise the water level in a transparent container by adding stones, just like the mythical crow in the fable, which illustrates the virtue of ingenuity and how necessity is the mother of invention.

"We have performed a large number of studies on both corvids [members of the crow family] and apes, and have found that the crow's performance is on a par or often superior to apes. However, it is not particularly useful to say that one species is more or less intelligent than another because often the playing fields aren't even," said Nathan Emery of Queen Mary, University of London, who carried out the work with Christopher Bird at Cambridge.

"This [study] suggests that they can not only think through complex problems requiring the use of tools, but imagine the consequences of their actions without trial-and-error learning, and create novel solutions to these problems that have never been encountered before," Dr Emery said.

Daniel Howden | Aug 6

The Independent - A bloody battle is raging in Eastern Congo over the illegal charcoal trade that is killing the region's great apes

For the past week a remarkable battle has been raging in the mountain forests of Eastern Congo. Park rangers entrusted with protecting some of the world's most endangered gorillas have launched an offensive against the rebel armies in the area and the charcoal industry that helps to support them.

Specially trained wildlife officers, backed by UN troops, have attacked and destroyed hundreds of illegal charcoal kilns deep in the forests of Virunga National Park, in a bid to disrupt the environmentally devastating industry.

The $30m (£17.7m) trade helps fund the myriad armed groups who destabilise this region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and its perpetrators are unlikely to accept the counterattack. Speaking from his mountain base in Rumangabo, the park's director, Emmanuel de Merode, said his men were "braced for a violent reaction" to their strike.

Virunga, Africa's oldest national park, lies across the mountain chain that straddles the border between DRC, Rwanda and Uganda. It is home to the most important remaining population of mountain gorillas.

But the 7,800 sq km reserve is also surrounded by as many as one million people, who have been displaced by the nearly continual civil war that has ravaged North Kivu in the last two decades. The tremendous local demand for cheap fuel for heating and cooking has been exploited by armed groups, and in many cases rogue elements from the Congolese national army, who have profited from a protection racket that has shielded illegal loggers and charcoal kilns from the law.

The lucrative trade has pitted armed rebels against the 200 gorillas and their protectors in a battle for the forest, with often murderous consequences. In June and July of 2007, seven gorillas were slaughtered and the shocking pictures of a dead 500-pound silverback, named Senkwekwe, being carried on poles by grieving villagers sparked a global outcry.

Previous threads here

Linda Stewart | July 30

Belfast Telegraph -

At first glance it looks like a vicious attack as a diver finds her leg clamped in the jaws of a beluga whale.

In fact, the animal was rescuing diver Yang Yun (26) as she floundered during a free diving competition in a tank more than 20ft deep at Polar Land in Harbin, North East China.

The diver made the plunge without diving equipment among the whales in a tank that had been chilled to Arctic temperatures but found her legs crippled by cramp from the freezing cold.

At this point Mila the beluga surged to the rescue, pushing the striken diver back to the surface.

Roger Maynard | Sydney | July 27

The Independent -

Brought to the country as beasts of burden in 1840, today there are one million camels eating the outback

There are more than a million of them and they pose one of the greatest social and environmental challenges to Australia's outback.

They munch their way through desert vegetation, further denuding this arid nation's heartland and threatening its sensitive ecosystem. They damage Aboriginal communities in their search for water, fracturing pipes and knocking air conditioning units off walls. And their population is more than doubling every eight to nine years.

The camel – which was introduced to Australia in 1840 to help transport heavy goods to the remote interior of the country – has now become one of its greatest pests. Dealing with the alarming population growth of one-humped Camelus dromedarius has been vexing governments, conservation bodies and scientists for years.

Now the federal government is to set aside nearly £10m to address the problem, which will almost certainly be solved at the barrel of a gun.

One option being considered is a mass aerial shoot – which experts regard as the most effective and humane method of culling the animals.

Steve Connor | July 24

The Guardian -

Charles Darwin thought the toucan's oversized beak was a sexual lure for attracting potential mates, while some modern-day biologists suggested it was either for peeling fruit or to warn off territorial rivals. A new study has found, though, that the outrageously big structure helps to keep the bird cool in the heat of the tropical day.

The beak of the toco toucan – the largest member of the toucan family – accounts for about one-third of the bird's body length, which is larger than the beak of any other bird for its size. When the 18th-century French naturalist Georges Louis Leclerc, the Compte de Buffon, first described the toucan he labelled its bill, "grossly monstrous".

Although no one has been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation of how the toucan acquired its beak, a team of scientists has been able to show that whatever purposes it may have originally served, it now helps to keep the bird cool, just like the oversized ears of the African elephant. BBC - Infrared Video

Charles Siebert | NYT

The suspicion of a causal relationship between whale strandings and either seismic tests or the use of new high-tech sonar tracking devices in military-training exercises had been mounting for some time. Similar coincidences had been noted off the coasts of Brazil, the Bahamas, the Galápagos Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Japan, as well as in the waters off Italy and Greece. Necropsies performed on a number of the whales revealed lesions about their brains and ears. The results of the examinations performed on the Canary Islands whales, however, added a whole other, darker dimension to the whale-stranding mystery. In addition to bleeding around the whales’ brains and ears, scientists found lesions in their livers, lungs and kidneys, as well as nitrogen bubbles in their organs and tissue, all classic symptoms of a sickness that scientists had naturally assumed whales would be immune to: the bends.

June 25

The Independent - Wallabies snacking in opium poppy fields are getting "high as a kite" and hopping around creating crop circles.

Tasmania is the world's largest producer of legally-grown opium for the pharmaceutical market.

Tasmania attorney-general Lara Giddings told a budget hearing yesterday that she recently read about the wallabies in a brief on the state's large poppy industry.

She said: "We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles.

"Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

Annette Cary | June 11

tricityherald.com - Hanford workers are going after some of the nuclear reservation's most bizarre waste this month -- radioactive wasp nests.

There are so many radioactive nests spread over six acres by H Reactor in northern Hanford that six to 12 inches of top soil are being dug up to remove the nests.

And another 50 to 60 nests built by mud dauber wasps are spread over about 75 acres.

"We can hand dig those with a shovel and buckets," said Dave Martin, radiological engineer for Washington Closure Hanford.

The nests all were built in 2003, when a one-time series of conditions aligned. A circle about a mile wide surrounding H Reactor is the only place at Hanford believed to have the problem with radioactive mud dauber nests.

This was posted a few days ago-- and having been around all types of animals most my life - this didnt surprise me at all -

We raise a few horses and ponies and Sunday a incident happened which could have turned out bad (this happens way too often when raising horses) however in this case the out come was favorable .. It did lead to a few observations by my wife that truly indicate animals know and do way more than we give em credit--

Chrissy had went to Austin for a massage and Brady and I decided to join the son at a friends house and bust a few clay pidgeons ( these arent a unigue bird variety but come in a box for folks to purchase and sharpen their shotgun skills) After awhile I get a frantic message from Chrissy that Sophie (yrling pony filly) is down - barely breathing and looks likes shes dying- fast trip home- we find Chrissy has her up- looks as tho she was stung in the eye by a wasp (on the meat under the eye lid) lil benedryl - she stops shaking- jaw unlocks- - put her in a stall and next day she is fine

Rebecca Morelle | May 26

BBC - Rooks have a remarkable aptitude for using tools, scientists have found.

Tests on captive birds revealed that they could craft and employ tools to solve a number of different problems.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, came as a surprise as rooks do not use tools in the wild.

Despite this, the UK team said the birds' skills rivalled those of well-known tool users such as chimpanzees and New Caledonian crows.

Dr Nathan Emery, from Queen Mary, University of London, an author of the paper, said: "The study shows the creativity and insight that rooks have when they solve problems."

The scientists focused on four captive rooks: Cook, Fry, Connelly and Monroe, and discovered that the birds were able to use tools in a number of ways to solve a variety of problems.

read the rest and watch the videos!

Mark Kinver | May 25

BBC - Medieval fishermen first took to the open seas in about AD1,000 as a result of a sharp decline in large freshwater fish, scientists have suggested.

They say the decline was probably the result of rising population and pollution levels.

The study forms part of a series that examines the impact of humans on life beneath the waves throughout history.

The findings will be presented at a Census of Marine Life (CoML) conference in Canada, which begins on Tuesday.

P.J Huffstutter | Tekamah, Neb. | May 24

LA Times -

Walking through their lowing herd of several hundred cattle, Ali and Kenny Petersen were like two Gullivers on a Lilliputian roundup.

The half-sized cows barely reached Kenny's waist. The ranch's border collie stared eye-to-eye with wandering calves.

"Aren't they sweet?" asked Ali, 52, shooing Half-Pint, Buttercup and a dozen other cattle across a holding pen. "They're my babies, every little one of them."

The Petersens once raised normal-sized bovines on this stretch of Nebraska's rolling eastern grasslands, but with skyrocketing feed costs, the couple decided to downsize.

They bought minicows -- compact cattle with stocky bodies, smaller frames and relatively tiny appetites.

Their miniature Herefords consume about half that of a full-sized cow yet produce 50% to 75% of the rib-eyes and fillets, according to researchers and budget-conscious farmers.

"We get more sirloin and less soup bone," Ali said. "People used to look at them and laugh. Now, they want to own them."

Marcela Valente | Buenos Aires | May 23

IPS - Thousands of visitors are drawn every year to Argentina’s southern Patagonia wilderness region to fish in glacial lakes and crystal clear streams and rivers. But the trout and salmon that they have come to find are not native species, and pose a threat to local biodiversity.

"Despite our recommendations, trout continue to be introduced into lakes and rivers in Patagonia, and we have seen in the latest bird counts that the decline in some aquatic species has been catastrophic," naturalist Claudio Bertonatti, a museum curator and a member of Argentina’s Fundación Vida Silvestre (Wildlife Foundation), told IPS.

Trout and salmon were introduced in Argentina in the early 20th century for recreational fishing in lakes and rivers in the southern provinces of Río Negro, Neuquén, Chubut, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego. The species, which readily adapted to local conditions, breed without human intervention.

But as fishing tourism grew, fish farming took off. Of a total of 2,500 tons of fish raised every year in Argentina, 70 percent are rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), one of the most sought-after species by sports fishers.

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), trout are among the world's 100 most damaging invasive species. Once they have adapted to their new environment, trout deplete native species. Nevertheless, fishing seasons and limits are set to preserve them in Argentina’s southern provinces, to avoid a decline in tourism.

May 19

BBC -

The Komodo dragon has a bite tinged with a deadly venom, according to researchers.

Previously it was thought that Komodo mouths harboured virulent bacteria that quickly infect and subdue prey.

But an analysis of Komodo specimens has shown a well-developed venom gland with ducts that lead to their large teeth.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences report shows that rather than using a strong bite force, Komodos keep a vise-like grip on their prey.

In this way, the venom can seep into the large wounds they make with their teeth.

The study showed that known venomous lizards, such as the Gila monster of the southwestern US, are in the same lineage as Komodo dragons.

It went on to describe how the venom systems in the lizards and snakes actually come from a common ancestor.

Matt Walker | May 19

BBC -

(Baby tucuxi moments before the attack)

Adult tucuxi dolphins have been seen trying to kill a newborn calf of their own species.

It is the first record of these dolphins attempting infanticide.

Although common in many mammal species, infanticide is rarely recorded among cetaceans, the group of animals that includes whales and dolphins.

Until now, the behaviour has only been reported twice in bottlenose dolphins; but the new episode suggests it may be more widespread than was thought.

Tucuxi dolphins (Sotalia guianensis) live either in the freshwater of the Amazonian basin, or in the ocean off the coast of Brazil to Nicaragua.

Adult male marine tucuxis are known to be aggressive to one another during the breeding season, but they had never been seen being aggressive or violent towards younger members of their species.

Ian Sample | May 19

The Guardian - In the first published account of wild animals recognising individuals of another species, the songbirds attacked people who had threatened them in the past

Mockingbirds can remember people who have threatened them and even start dive-bombing them if they see the person again, a study has found.

An urban population of the songbirds ignored most passers-by, but took to the air when they recognised people who had approached their nest days before.

When the birds spotted a previous offender, they started screeching and set off to harass the person with swooping dives, at times grazing the tops of their heads.

The extraordinary behaviour, reported in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is thought to be the first published account of wild animals in their natural setting recognising individuals of another species.