inkycircus

Newsflash - London not so filthy after all!

It's official! London really isn't that dirty anymore! Well, the wetlands around Greater London aren't anyway. Squacco herons haven't been seen in the vicinity of my home town for a century and a half, but one was spotted in Crossness Nature Reserve in Bexley on the 29th of May. More importantly, the bird didn't take one sniff of the local sights and hotfoot it home again, it's been there ever since. The nature reserve has recently spend a hefty wedge on regenerating their wildlife zones, so they're understandably delighted.

The heron was last seen in London in 1866. For a little historical perspective, that was the middle of Queen Victoria's reign, the year after Abraham Lincoln died, and the year (according to wikipedia) that Darwin decided to grow his fantastic world-beating beard. 1866 was also the year the urinal was patented, the year that the Canadian Parliament met for the first time, and the year that root beer and dynamite were invented. But all of those events are frankly boring compared to the last known sighting of a squacco heron in north west London. So the arrival of one of these small beige birds (it's London, of course the bird would be beige, no hot pink flamingoes for us) after such a long time is big news for British twitchers (and anyone who cares about a nice clean environment).

Via BBC News.

How to avoid being lunch

THE STUDY ISN'T ABOUT ATLAS MOTHS BUT I COULDN'T RESIST THE PIC. (PHOTO: TRIJNE)

In the good ole natural selection race, he who adapts best survives. Take for example a butterfly's fancy wing spots that are meant to look like scary eyes. It's a clever tactic. Moths have evolved a similarly cunning method of evading capture and certain death, which was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

Some moths make noises and some don't, but doctoral student Jesse Barber from Wake Forest University has noticed that there is more of a motive than mere musicality to the moth's sounds. Bats eat moths, and prefer the taste of some to others. This study used three types of moth, two nice-tasting, and one nasty-tasting, and offered them to bats. The unappetizing moths made noises as they flew, and the bats soon learned that noise=yuk. So when offered a selection of more delicious moths the bats avoided the noisy ones and scoffed the silent ones. The tasty, noisy moths live to flutter another day, and descent with modification marches on. Go Darwin.

My great-aunt was a shark you know

I CAN DEFINITELY SEE THE FAMILY RESEMBLANCE... (PHOTO:NATASHAW)
I was on a trip in South America once, and was trying to spell my name to a ticket agent to buy a bus ticket. The poor woman got a bit confused in the hustle and bustle, and got my name wrong, writing down "Katie Jaws" on my ticket. Turns out she was prescient, because I am related to sharks. Well, according to ABC News Australia we all are actually.

Long ago in the ancient mists of time (450 million years ago to be exact), we shared a relative with our toothy friends. The elephant shark has some genes that are nearly identical to ours, meaning we have more in common with it than we do with other species closer to us on the evolutionary tree. We also have genes in common with mice and dogs, but that's not so suprising since we're all mammals. But we do have at least two things in common with sharks, so it does make sense these traits or characteristics would be expressed in our genes. For one, a shark's immune system is similar to ours, as sharks have all four types of white blood cells that humans have. The other thing we have in common with sharks is sex. Fish that should be closer to us on the evolutionary tree abstain from sex, preferring to keep fertilisation tidily outside the body. Sharks don't do this, and in case you hadn't noticed, neither do we.

Will we ever post about things that aren't fuzzy again??

Probably not.

I've been primed to love white lions ever since getting hooked on Osamu Tezuka's "Kimba the White Lion" manga series (which I'm convinced Disney soooooo ripped off in The Lion King. More here). 

So when I was recently confronted with the adorable sight of four white lion cubs recently born to the Jurques Zoological Park in France, I was immediately incapacitated.

These pale puffs aren't albinos. Instead they carry the recessive "chinchilla mutation" that only crops up when both parents carry it. This means that when zoos deliberately try and breed white lions, they face the danger of falling into the pit of an inbreeding depression - which is what happened with white tigers. Still, this marshmallow of a creature might persist only in captivity. Wild white lions were first recorded in 1928 but the mutation that causes their blanching seems to have been lost in the wild since.

Pet Allergy Saga Part: XIVIIII

(PHOTO: Hajor)

So you know how I am all allergic to everything warm and snuggly and pet-like? And that I love animals more than people? How my first word was "cat" and before I even spoke I used to point at dogs from my pram and pant like a puppy in hopes my mother would take me over to see them?

Well the world is getting a lot better for the likes of me. There's non-shedding dogs like poodles (we have one), hairless cats like the Sphinx or the Devon Rex (that's next). And of course the genetically engineered Allerca cats - at only $4,000 pop (I'm saving).

And now there's another animal to add to my growing menagerie of IgE neutral pets. The Mexican hairless dog, Xoloitzcuintles or xolos for short. These wee dudes are anything new, however. They date back to the Aztecs (or so they say) where the dogs were believed to be sacred. For example, holding a pup to your belly could supposedly cure cramps. And in dire medical situation, you could even eat one.

They might be a bit shiny, but really, I think I'd rather snuggle it than barbecue it.

Fiddling with the food chain

Is is ok to kill a shark to save a seal? Not an easy decision to make. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration thinks it's ok, and is currently seeking permission from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources to kill 10 sharks in the coming year. The seal in question is the Hawaiian Monk Seal, and the shark is the Galapagos Shark.

The justification for the plan is that the monk seal is classified as endangered (IUCN - Hawaiian Monk Seals) and the sharks are not. They've asked for and got permission to do this before, so they clearly think it's a good way to protect the few seals that are left.

The sharks don't give an arse for the IUCN red list, or the fact that we meddlesome humans think that Monk Seals are cute and worthy of protection. We see an endangered species, they see lunch. Protecting endangered species is never a straightforward task, because the animals are never killed 'just because'. If a poacher has killed an elephant, he's not done it just to be mean. He's done it because the ivory is obscenely valuable and he can make a large amount of money from it. If we stop him, his livelihood is gone. And in stepping in to protect a disappearing species, you sometimes have to take extreme steps, like sacrificing one group of animals for another.

However, the shark is classified as near-threatened (IUCN - Galapagos Shark) meaning it is not vulnerable now but is likely to be in the near future. I would therefore hope that anyone making decisions like this has the mantra Beware The Cane Toad echoing their heads the whole time as an example of when we can get it wrong. We as a species do not have a particularly good track record in meddling with the natural world. But with that in mind, it is possible to get it right, and hopefully the NOAA will manage to do just that for the seals.

(PHOTO: PKEMP)

Lock up your scooters

 There's an orangutan on the loose. Mopeds in a Taiwan zoo faced a grizzly fate when a 150kg beast escaped from his cage and went on the rampage. The animal got a brief taste of freedom before the zoo keepers faced him with "weapons and shields", tranquilised him and returned him to his cage. The video of the great escapee (complete with truly spectacular orange fringed fur) can be found at BBC News, or, with less commentary but available to viewers across the pond, at local news station wkyc.com. Fringe or no fringe, he can stay away from my scooter thank you very much...

ONE DAY SOON, FREEDOM SHALL BE MINE. MWA HA HA. (PHOTO: IMAGE00139)

Hugh Hefner's bunnies in danger!!!

The Lower Keys Marsh Rabbit's numbers are dwindling, as they fail to live up to their reproductive stereotype, to the imagined shame of their namesake Hugh Hefner.

Yes that's right. The same man that is known for dawdling in the playboy mansion with babes aplenty funded some research in the 1980s that ID'd a subspecies of rabbit that dwells in the Florida Keys. Hence its latin name Sylvilagus palustris hefneri.

The grey and white-tailed bunny was put on the endangered species list in 1990 but it's numbers have plummeted in recent years. In the past two years alone, its numbers have dropped by half.

But wildlife officials are going to trap stray and feral cats this week in a bid to boost the Hefbunnies numbers.

Seriously, where IS that walrus?

A while back, I wrote about a project that planned to track walruses as they make their whiskery way around Greenland. When I mentioned the project, the BBC hadn't yet got its dedicated web area going. They have now, but have sadly lost contact with all but one of the walruses.

However, the sole representative of the walrus satellite party is still pottering about and can still be tracked via the BBC map here. She is known as Walrus 2 (not a very imaginative name) and is, at present, chilling out on the east coast of Canada. A very fine choice of holiday destination, I'm sure you will agree. Go check it out.

(PHOTO: CHOLIN)

Bird brained

WHERE THE HELL AM I? WHO MOVED MY COUNTRY? (PHOTO: WILDTHING)
This website has been a bit feathery lately, in the past week alone we've had lost albatrosses and hovering vultures, and now we've got a disorientated Magellanic penguin. This little creature managed to get impressively lost while on the prowl for snacks, wandering over 3000 miles too far north from his home in Chile and beaching up in Peru. Peruvian conservationists fear that the new arrival will be scorned by the local Humboldt penguin population, adding discrimination to his list of woes (which include an injured wing and entirely understandable disorientation). So once said penguin has rested and healed, the plan is to return him to his home forthwith.

Via Yahoo! News.