Adorable Little Animals That I Make From Wool

My name is Tatyana. I live in Russia, in the beautiful city of St. Petersburg. Since 2006, I engaged in manufacturing animal wool needle felting technique. My love for animals became the main source of my inspiration.

My toys are made of 100% sheep wool, using glass eyes with much thoroughness. This is a rather a difficult job and I spend about two weeks manufacturing one toy.

More info: Instagram

Government officially declares Eastern puma extinct

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Federal officials have declared the Eastern puma extinct, 80 years after the last confirmed sighting of a graceful wildcat that once roamed widely from the Upper Midwest to the Atlantic seaboard.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced this week it was removing the animal from the endangered species list. The move completes a process started in 2015, when the agency proposed dropping federal protections for the Eastern puma, which is also known as the cougar, mountain lion and catamount. Its territory ranged from Michigan and southern Ontario to New England, the Carolinas and Tennessee.

The action is largely a formality, as the last known member of the population was seen in 1938. But it was necessary because a species can be listed as endangered only if it’s believed to still exist.

“Given the period of time that has passed without verification of even a single Eastern puma, the Service concludes that the last remaining members of this subspecies perished decades ago,” the Fish and Wildlife Service said in a Federal Register notice.

Some pumas have turned up occasionally in Eastern states in recent decades, the agency said. But genetic and forensic testing shows they had been released or escaped from captivity, or had wandered in from the West.

The puma once was the most widely distributed land mammal in the Western Hemisphere but has disappeared from two-thirds of its original range since European settlement began, the agency said.

Its decline resulted from poisoning, trapping, hunting and bounty programs aimed at wiping out the species, along with loss of forested habitat and a sharp drop-off in the 1800s of whitetail deer, the puma’s primary food source.

The Florida panther, an endangered separate sub-species, is the only remaining breeding population east of the Mississippi.

The federal agency said it considered feedback from scientists and the general public before making the decision to declare the Eastern puma extinct.

Although historically classified as a distinct sub-species, recent evidence suggests the Eastern puma may have been the genetic equal of other U.S. puma or cougar populations, said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group. The Fish and Wildlife Service said further analysis is needed to determine whether that’s true.

Either way, Robinson said, declaring the Eastern puma extinct removes a barrier to transporting wildcats from the West in hopes of rebuilding populations in Eastern and Midwestern states.

“It provides a green light for discussion and hopefully action,” Robinson said. “We need large carnivores like cougars to keep the wild food web healthy. Cougars would curb deer overpopulation and tick-borne diseases that threaten human health.”

It would be up to the states to initiate such efforts, Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Meagan Racey said. Many places in eastern North America probably could support pumas, which are adaptable and can live in grasslands, forests, mountains and swamps, she said.

“Wild cougar populations in the West have been expanding their range eastward in the last two decades,” Racey said. “While individual cougars have been confirmed throughout the Midwest, evidence of wild cougars dispersing farther east is extremely rare.”

A young male cougar traveled about 2,000 miles from South Dakota through Minnesota, Wisconsin and New York before dying on a Connecticut highway in 2011. A cougar of unknown origin was killed in Kentucky in 2014.

Why we must respect the rights of all sentient animals

The only way to recognize the moral personhood of animals is to accord them a right not to be property—and that means the abolition of animal exploitation.

Both of us are advocates for the rights of nonhuman animals. That doesn’t mean we believe that animals should have all of the same rights as humans—it would make no sense to say that animals should have the right to drive cars or vote (even though we might have better political leadership if they could).

In fact when we talk about animal rights we’re referring to one right in particular: the right not to be property. Why is that so important?

All of us have interests—states of affairs that we prefer, desire, or want. There are two ways to protect these interests. The first is to protect them only to the extent that this produces desirable consequences. The second is to protect them despite these considerations—as rights.

A person’s interest in living is protected as a right; others must respect your interest in continuing to live even if killing you would benefit other people. So even if your organs could be used to save the lives of leading scientists, inventors or artists who will die without organ transplants, your interest in not being used as a forced organ donor would still be protected because you have the right to life.

However much people may disagree about what rights human beings should have, we can all agree that they all have the right not to be chattel slaves. Why is that? Because if a person is a slave, they are not considered to be a being who matters morally—to be, in other words, a person. Instead they become a thing that only has an economic value that is determined by their owner. If a human being is going to count morally, they must have the right not to be property. If they don’t have this right they will be used as a resource whenever other people believe that they will benefit from doing so.

Society extends the right not to be property to all people irrespective of their intelligence, beauty, strength or any other characteristic. It doesn’t matter whether a person is a genius or has a learning disability. No-one should be the property of someone else. Slavery still exists, but no one defends it.

The same reasoning holds for nonhuman animals. If animals are to matter morally, and not be just things, they cannot be treated as property, since if they are property they have no intrinsic moral value. Their only value is that accorded to them by their owners. The only reason we deny this right to nonhumans is that they are not human. But that is no different from using any other morally irrelevant characteristic such as race or sex to justify slavery or otherwise fail to accord equal consideration to others.

The only characteristic that animals must have in order to matter morally is sentience. It is not necessary that they have humanlike minds. If they are sentient, they have interests, including the interest in continuing to live and in not suffering pain or distress. That is all that is necessary.

If we agree that animals matter morally, we are committed to recognizing that all sentient nonhumans have a moral right not to be used as property. This requires that we stop using animals as resources. In other words, we must be morally committed to stop eating, wearing, or otherwise using animals.

This position may sound radical, and in the sense that the rights position requires the abolition of all institutionalized exploitation, it is. But since most people already believe that it is wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering on animals it’s really just an extension of current and widely-shared convictions. If the principle of unnecessary suffering is going to mean more than avoiding the infliction of gratuitous harm, it must rule out any suffering or death that’s imposed for reasons of pleasure, amusement or convenience. But those are the only reasons we have for almost all of our current animal use—uses that are, for the most part, transparently frivolous.

For example, our most numerically significant use of animals is for food. We kill about 60 billion land animals and one trillion sea animals annually. Putting aside any possible situation in which someone will starve if they do not eat animal foods because those are the only foods available, this killing and suffering is completely unnecessary. There is no compulsion. We could all be as healthy—if not healthier—if we ate only plants.

Moreover, animal agriculture causes a good chunk of the ecological damage that is threatening human survival. And we could feed many more humans if we consumed plants directly rather than fed plants to animals who are then consumed.

If we stopped exploiting animals for food, clothing, sport, and entertainment we would get to almost the same point as that which is embraced by advocates of animal rights. So the animal rights position is not especially radical relative to what we say we already believe.

The only use of animals that is not transparently frivolous is in helping to cure serious human illnesses. There is a considerable dispute about whether such use is really necessary for the purpose, but for argument’s sake let’s assume that without animal use we will fail to discover important information that is medically beneficial.

Why do we think animal use in this context is acceptable? The standard response is that nonhumans, unlike humans, are not rational, or otherwise lack the moral value of humans, so unlike human beings they can be ‘sacrificed’ for the sake of some wider social benefit. But we would never say that humans who are not rational or who are otherwise not considered to be cognitively ‘normal’ have a lesser degree of moral value, and can therefore be ‘sacrificed’ to benefit ‘normal’ human beings.

Indeed, we protect people from being used as resources for others even if that use will benefit society, because we recognize that they have an inalienable right not to be so used. To reject this right where nonhumans are involved and where the only difference is species is an example of the speciesism that a rights position prohibits.

If the right not to be used as property was recognized and respected, it would require the abolition of all institutionalized animal use. This would necessitate the end of all domestication, but it would not mean that conflicts between humans and nonhumans would disappear. There would still be non-domesticated animals living away from humans in woods and jungles, as well as those who live amongst us such as squirrels, rabbits, rats, mice, birds, and many other creatures. We would still need a framework to govern our interactions with these creatures but, if we no longer engaged in the exploitation of nonhuman domesticates it would be easier to develop a solid framework for these other situations.

Do we have to recognize the right of animals not to be property? Couldn’t we just do a better job of protecting animals who continue to be owned by human beings? In theory, we could, of course, treat animals better, but there are powerful economic interests that work against doing so in practice. It costs money to protect animal interests, and the more we protect those interests the more expensive it becomes. Someone—usually the consumer—has to pay that cost. The result is that the standard of animal welfare is very low; even supposedly ‘higher welfare’ products involve treatment of nonhumans that, were humans involved, would constitute torture.

However supposedly ‘humanely’ an animal is treated they will still be exploited or killed for purposes for which we think it appropriate to use no humans, and in our view that is morally unjustifiable. The only way to recognize the moral personhood of animals is to accord them a right not to be property—and that means the abolition of animal exploitation.

See the World's Newest Marine Park in the Pacific Ocean

For the health of the ocean and all who depend on it, this is big news: In November, Mexico became the latest nation to create a large, fully protected marine reserve.

The manta ray, shown here, is one of at least 37 species of sharks and rays that have been documented in the archipelago. 

The Revillagigedo Archipelago National Park, the country's largest marine protected area, is larger than the state of New York and protects 57,176 square miles (148,087 square kilometers) from fishing and other extractive activities.

The Revillagigedo Islands and their system of seamounts are a critical waypoint for large migratory species traversing the Pacific Ocean, including whales, dolphins, sea turtles, tunas, billfish and 37 types of shark and ray. The islands are also home to more than 360 species of fish, 26 of which are found nowhere else on the planet.

Take a dive beneath the surface with us and check out some of the natural treasures that are now safeguarded in Revillagigedo.

The Revillagigedo Archipelago is a critical waypoint for migratory species such as dolphins, whales, sharks, tunas, and sea turtles.

Humpback whales, which seek warmer waters for their calving grounds, make their winter home in Revillagigedo.

At least 366 species of fish, including 26 found nowhere else on the planet, call the Revillagigedo Archipelago home.

In May and June, large schools of silky, Galapagos, and silver tip sharks frequent Revillagigedo's warm waters.

 

 

Matt Rand directs the Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project. He works with citizens, governments and scientists around the world to protect and conserve some of the Earth's most important and unspoiled marine environments.

Genetic Testing Might Have Just Explained Why Huskies’ Eyes Can Be Blue

In doing so, it helped show why dogs might be a better target for direct-to-consumer genetic testing than humans.

In an era when direct-to-consumer genome sequencing has been marred by ethical concerns,  rightful skepticism, and Nazis’ fixation with using it to trace their ancestry (many have been disappointed by what they found), a new study may help salvage the field by turning to a previously untapped pool of subjects: dogs.

The research is the first of its kind to be conducted in nonhumans. It drew on data from more than 6,000 customer dogs in an effort to identify the genetic mutation responsible for blue eyes, a striking trait that’s relatively common in Siberian huskies but rare among other breeds in which it sometimes appears, like border collies and corgis. This meant sifting through the genomes of the dogs who did have blue eyes versus those who didn’t to see if any mutations were common to the former group and (mostly) absent from the latter. Owners conducted DNA tests from Embark and completed online surveys detailing their dogs’ breed and appearance, which included uploading “profile photos” for their pups; the scientists, from Embark and Cornell University, took care of the rest.

 The data allowed them to identify a novel association: An allele on chromosome 18, carried by just 10 percent of dogs in the data set overall, was present in 100 percent of blue-eyed Siberian huskies and may be responsible for blue eyes in the breed. It seems likely that a duplication upstream of the gene ALX4, involved in mammalian eye development, is responsible—if so, breeders who can check for the variant in their dogs’ DNA will be better able to select for the trait.

Prospective blue-eyed puppies aside, the success of this first study, now in preprint, speaks to the approach’s potential: Being able to crowdsource genotypic and phenotypic information can lead to key discoveries regarding not just eye color but also more complex traits, behaviors, and overall health. Artificial selection in the form of careful breeding has also left dogs particularly well suited to this kind of analysis—from German shepherds to Chihuahuas, there’s a huge diversity of phenotypes on display, but genomewide divergence is pretty moderate except at the alleles underlying those differences, which is what this kind of testing can help identify.

There’s another reason this small study is exciting. Giving up our own data for such studies is something people are understandably wary of, but the stakes are considerably lower for our pets. And direct-to-consumer DNA studies in other animals could yield worthwhile results—for both them and us. A 2005 paper published in Briefings in Functional Genomics described dogs as “an unrivalled model for the study of human disease,” and regions of the canine genome have already been causally linked to more than 70 Mendelian diseases—heritable disorders caused by a single mutation as opposed to a more complex combination of genes—many of which have human analogues. And since there’s less sequence divergence between humans and dogs than humans and mice (and they’ve cohabitated with us since the hunter-gatherer days), their genomes may be able to reveal things that the murine model can’t. A recent study found that mice first colonized human settlements about 15,000 years ago, but our relationship with dogs may go back more than twice as far. Having shared our environment for so long—and seen us through some key transitions in the process—might put dogs in a unique position to tell us about ourselves.

That’s not to say you should take a genetic testing company’s claims about what your dog’s genes mean for his health without a grain (or more than a grain) of salt. Even if a region of the genome is associated with heritable diseases, that doesn’t necessarily mean a dog or its offspring are guaranteed to have it—we just don’t know enough yet to justify the sweeping, context-less claims many kits are notorious for making. If anything, the benefit of individual testing is that it provides the data for the larger-scale studies that can begin to lay the groundwork for meaningful genome analysis. If you want to sequence your dog’s genome, just remember the result will probably be more meaningful to science than to your ability to care for your pet.

GIANT Lego animals to bring wild adventure trail to life for Manchester kids

Lego fans will be able to set their sights on giant animals built from thousands of the colourful bricks at a wild adventure trail.

An enormous otter, a kingfisher and a flamingo will be among the models forming part of the trail at Martin Mere Wetland Centre.

Around half an hour's drive from Manchester, the site, in Burscough, gives families the perfect opportunity to get close to nature.

Depending on the season you can spot everything from ducklings to migrating swans.

There's loads of fun to be had outside, with a muddy meadow and play areas for kids of all ages, and at weekends and in school holidays, they can join in activities in the craft room between 1pm and 4pm.

But it's the Lego trail that many visitors flock to see and this year it will kick-off on May 9 and run until June 24 - with three new models joining this year's crowd.

Once families have completed the trail, they can collect a certificate from the information desk, before making their own model at the Lego brick play table.

Lego brick workshops will also be available to book online from February 10.

Other events taking place at the site this year include Dusty’s North West Puddle Jumping Championships this February.

The event - which costs 50p to enter on top of usual admission fees and is open to all ages - is on at 2pm daily from February 10 to 18.

On top of that there are daily feeds and talks including a chance to meet the site's three cheeky Asian otters. You watch them forage, swim, rest, sleep and bath in the sunshine.

The first Lego animal trail opened at the site in 2015, with 10 individually-designed Lego brick characters on display.

The trail is included in the usual admission fee - adults £11.45, children £6.13, under fours free, or a family ticket for two adults and two children £29.90.

For details of the 2018 spring trail visit the WWT Facebook page here or the WWT website .

Meet the street animals that stole scientists’ hearts

Cats and dogs that wander on to field sites can become cherished companions — but their presence isn’t always welcome.

Archaeologist Louise Hitchcock went to Israel in 2017 to look for artefacts from the Iron Age. She also found something else — a large dog who wormed his way into her heart.

The mongrel was skinny and skittish when he appeared at the dig site where Hitchcock, who studies Greek prehistory at the University of Melbourne in Australia, was working. A previous owner had apparently dumped him, and no local family wanted him. “I liked him, and I just couldn’t let him be abandoned again,” Hitchcock says. Apprehensively, she shipped him home.

Today, the 35-kilogram saluki mix, who is named Fred, enjoys a life of walks and belly rubs. Although he was fearful and occasionally aggressive in Israel, he has since become mellow and friendly, Hitchcock says. “He will now go up to strangers and want to have his neck scratched.”

Like Hitchcock, many researchers spend substantial time in the field, where they might confront large numbers of apparently homeless cats and dogs. For some scientists, animals that wander up to a research site provide welcome companionship. But they can also pose a direct threat to scientific projects (see ‘Hounded and harassed’).

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Stray cat

Peeping tom: a street cat looks on as an archaeologist examines a stone wall in Thasos, Greece. Credit: Chelsea Gardner

Archaeologist Louise Hitchcock went to Israel in 2017 to look for artefacts from the Iron Age. She also found something else — a large dog who wormed his way into her heart.

The mongrel was skinny and skittish when he appeared at the dig site where Hitchcock, who studies Greek prehistory at the University of Melbourne in Australia, was working. A previous owner had apparently dumped him, and no local family wanted him. “I liked him, and I just couldn’t let him be abandoned again,” Hitchcock says. Apprehensively, she shipped him home.

Today, the 35-kilogram saluki mix, who is named Fred, enjoys a life of walks and belly rubs. Although he was fearful and occasionally aggressive in Israel, he has since become mellow and friendly, Hitchcock says. “He will now go up to strangers and want to have his neck scratched.”

Like Hitchcock, many researchers spend substantial time in the field, where they might confront large numbers of apparently homeless cats and dogs. For some scientists, animals that wander up to a research site provide welcome companionship. But they can also pose a direct threat to scientific projects (see ‘Hounded and harassed’).
Hounded and harassed

Free-roaming cats and dogs imperil some native species, complicating the work of scientists who study those creatures. Published studies say that dogs have contributed to the extinction of 11 vertebrate species (T. S. Doherty et al. Biol. Conserv. 210, 56–59; 2017) and cats to the extinction of at least 63 (S. R. Loss and P. P. Marra Front. Ecol. Environ. 15, 502–509; 2017). Dogs and cats not only eat native species; they can also transmit fatal diseases.

When Abi Vanak began studying the interactions of wild carnivores at a nature reserve in India, he set up camera traps to monitor the local jackals, foxes and jungle cats. Instead, dogs were the most frequently photographed carnivore, says Vanak, a conservation scientist at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment in Bangalore, India.

Vanak and his colleagues presented authorities with a plan to reduce dogs’ impact, but met with little success. If he could do it again, he would present his team’s ideas to village councils, which would help to win community support, he says.

Bonaventura Majolo, a primatologist at the University of Lincoln, UK, knew of two dog attacks on wild Barbary macaques, Macaca sylvanus, while he was studying the endangered species in Ifrane National Park, Morocco. In each case, the monkey that was bitten soon disappeared — an almost certain sign that it had died.

Conservation biologist Joel Berger acted swiftly when he and his colleagues saw dogs chase a mother and baby takin, Budorcas taxicolor, a threatened goat-like herbivore. After the baby became stranded in the middle of a river at Jigme Dorji National Park in Bhutan, the researchers warmed it and gave it fluids.

But they did not see it again, nor did they see two additional calves that had become separated from their mothers by dogs that year. “We assume that their fates are not positive,” says Berger, of Colorado State University in Fort Collins and the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City.

In many countries, cultural attitudes rule out the killing of invasive predators to protect wildlife, Berger notes. He urges researchers whose study animals are at risk to work with local conservation groups and government officials. He also recommends that scientists publish studies about the impact of dogs and cats to help motivate governments to act.

Wild rovers

Free-roaming ‘street dogs’ number perhaps 300 million globally, says Andrew Rowan, chief scientific officer at the Humane Society of the United States, based in Washington DC. Studies of ‘street cat’ numbers are limited, but Rowan’s self-described “crude estimate” of the worldwide cat total is 700 million; this includes cats that live in a community setting and those claimed by humans.

Inevitably, some of these street animals are hurt or sick, prompting some scientists to intervene or even to adopt one. Yet helping a suffering creature while in the field is not always easy. Time is often limited, and a step that would be simple at home, such as taking an injured animal to a vet, can be daunting in a region where such services are scarce.

But social media — which provides easy access to information and resources — and a growing global network of voluntary groups have eased the path for scientists who are troubled by the plight of needy animals.

The lives of free-roaming animals — and local attitudes towards them — vary enormously. In parts of the Caribbean, street dogs are well nourished and treated affectionately, says ecologist Ryan Boyko, who heads the canine DNA-testing company Embark Veterinary in Austin, Texas, and has sampled DNA from street dogs in nearly 40 countries. But in other places, such as parts of Africa, street dogs are emaciated, riddled with open sores and covered with parasites.

The dog that ultimately found a home with Hitchcock was, by comparison, in good health. Although thin and tick-ridden, he was neither injured nor sick. His sudden appearance at the dig site, in a remote national park, led Hitchcock to suspect that someone had left him to fend for himself.

Whenever possible, scientists who want to help such animals should first try contacting local groups, says Meredith Ayan, executive director at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals International in New York City. Facebook is a good resource for finding local rescue groups. Community members are likely to know which animals that seem to be strays are actually associated with a household and don’t require feeding or care. Animal organizations with an international presence and vets might also be able to help.

Many animal-welfare groups advise caution for scientists in the field when it comes to feeding animals. Indiscriminate handouts, say group representatives, might create friction with local people and disrupt animals’ routines. “Once you leave, these animals don’t have food again,” says Joy Lee, who until the end of 2017 was based in Ahmedabad, India, where she worked for Humane Society International, an animal-protection organization that is active around the world.

Pet predicaments

That fate was exactly what Hitchcock feared for Fred and a second dog that appeared with him. “People were turning them into pets,” she says. “I thought, ‘In three weeks we’re going to leave and they’re just going to be discarded again.’ ” It seemed unlikely that Fred and his canine companion Fi belonged to the closest village, which was five to ten kilometres away.

Besides, Fred was timid, whereas the local sheepdogs were so aggressive that, for her own safety, Hitchcock feared to approach the shepherds to make enquiries. Worried about Fred and Fi’s future, she and others began working to find them homes.

An archaeologist friend helped Hitchcock to contact a local professor of veterinary medicine, who gave the dogs inoculations and tick medication. An Israeli scientist working at the site used the messaging app WhatsApp to find an adoptive family. But Fred’s family decided to give him up, and his only remaining option was a job as a prison guard dog. “That didn’t sound very good to me,” Hitchcock says. “I just had to rescue him.”

Researchers who, like Hitchcock, are troubled by the plight of such animals might want to support local vaccination drives. And many animal-welfare advocates recommend campaigns to sterilize free-roaming animals and return them to the community. But such trap-neuter-return, or TNR, programmes are controversial: modelling suggests that they can curtail populations in suitable areas, yet sustained success requires intense and long-lasting efforts, and few TNR programmes are rigorously monitored (P. S. Miller et al. PLoS ONE 9, e113553; 2014).

Meanwhile, the number of community organizations devoted to animal support is rising. In many parts of the world, the chance of finding a local partner is much higher than it was even five years ago, says conservation biologist John Boone at the Great Basin Bird Observatory in Reno, Nevada, who has studied the population dynamics of street cats.

And scientists who want to do more than donate money to support inoculation and other solutions can help in other ways. On two trips home to Toronto, Canada, from a field site in Greece, archaeologist Chelsea Gardner’s checked luggage included five large kennels, each holding a dog bound for an adoptive or foster family. Non-profit groups, such as Canada’s Paws Across the Water, arranged the placements, often through social media.

The groups also paid the animals’ airfares, which can cost Can$700 (US$550). It was up to Gardner, a faculty member at Mount Allison University in Sackville, to navigate customs with two or three baggage carts stacked with dogs. “We’re definitely a spectacle,” says Gardner. “People say, ‘Are they all yours?’”

A researcher who spends an extended period at one site can help by providing a foster home. Archaeologist Maria Liston of the University of Waterloo in Canada, who does field work in Greece, donates money to Nine Lives Greece, a local group. She also fosters cats in her Athens apartment — so many last year that “I lost track, honestly,” she admits, before guessing that the number was between 15 and 20.

Can’t help falling in love

Then there are the scientists who, like Hitchcock, fall in love with an animal. Among them is Ovee Thorat, a PhD student in conservation science and sustainability studies at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment in Bangalore, India. When a scrawny kitten began loitering at Thorat’s field station in Gujarat, about 1,500 kilometres away, the scientist felt compelled to help. She fed the kitten, dewormed her and named her Billo, a Hindi word that translates roughly to ‘beautiful girl’. Billo returned the favour, staying close to Thorat during the weeks and months when no other researchers lived at the field station.

When Thorat finished her fieldwork, she could not take Billo with her to her shared city apartment. So she asked the field-station staff and research crew to take care of her pet. Billo became the darling of the field station, where she is fed and cosseted.

Moving a new pet to a distant country is trickier than passing it on to colleagues. A scientist shipping an animal from India, for example, should set aside US$2,000 at a minimum, Lee advises, though the costs will depend on the destination and airline. Securing permits in India is complicated; the alternative is an Indian pet-shipping company that can handle the red tape.

After deciding to adopt Fred, Hitchcock turned to Terminal4Pets, an Israeli pet-travel agency, to help arrange his journey. The paperwork was minimal, but the costs were not: they came to about Aus$7,000 (US$5,500), most of it for Fred’s flights, his six-month quarantine in an Israeli kennel and a 10-day quarantine in an Australian kennel.

In some places, taking home a furry companion is easier than it was once. A single ‘pet passport’ is accepted by every country in the European Union and applies to dogs, cats and ferrets travelling between member states. The United Kingdom no longer imposes a six-month quarantine on incoming cats and dogs that have EU passports. Dogs imported to the United States are exempt from the federal requirement for a rabies vaccination if departing a country without rabies.

Adopted animals from war-torn countries can experience something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder, Ayan says. “It takes a while for the stress to wear off,” she says, and in a few cases, animals cannot adapt to their new homes. Fred takes anti-anxiety medication, although Hitchcock hopes to end the regimen within a year.

Sometimes intervention leads to a happy outcome. Fred, for example, initially feared car rides, vet visits and lifts, and Hitchcock worried that he’d chew up the house and clash with her little terrier. Now, he is outgrowing his anxieties, he doesn’t chew or bark and he doesn’t attack Hitchcock’s other dog.

Another story that ended well began on Gardner’s excavation site in Greece, when she and a friend started caring for two starving, tick-covered puppies. The closest shelter was far away and overrun with dogs, so the researchers fed the puppies, gave them flea and tick medicine and acclimatized them to humans in the hope that someone would adopt them. Wary of getting attached, the scientists called them only Brown Dog and Black Dog.

When Gardner returned to the site in 2017, she saw Brown Dog again — in a yard, wearing a collar. “That’s exactly what we had hoped for,” she says. “Something came of putting in all that time and effort. It was really a nice, happy ending for at least one of those dogs.”

Gut instinct makes animals appear clever

Animals, including humans, can make surprisingly good decisions just based on the food in their stomach, new research suggests.

The study, led by the University of Exeter and published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, shows that surviving in difficult and dangerous conditions does not necessarily require high brain power.

Instead, animals should be sensitive to their body condition, such as how hungry they are.

Hunger acts as a sort of memory of past food availability, which tells them what conditions are probably like now.

A team led by Dr Andrew Higginson, from the University of Exeter, used computer modelling to predict how animals should behave to maximise their survival when the food supply is unpredictable and the environment contains predators.

According to the model, an animal that bases its decisions only on its current energy reserves can survive almost as long as one that uses its brain to calculate the best thing to do.

Dr Higginson said: "Many of us sometimes get 'hangry': when hunger makes us emotional and changes our behaviour. Our model explains why there is link between our gut and our decisions: hunger can act as a memory telling us there's not been much food around, which it's important to respond to in the wild."The usefulness of such memory means that animals, including humans, may appear to be processing a great deal of information in the brain when in fact they are just following their gut."

An animal's body condition tells it how successful it has been in the past, which is a useful guide to how it should behave tomorrow.

This simple, physiological form of memory may have allowed animals to avoid investing in brain tissue, which requires a large amount of energy.

Professor John McNamara, from the University of Bristol's School of Mathematics and a member of the team, said: "If it costs a lot of resources to be so clever, then natural selection will have found a cheaper way to make decisions.

The ability to use internal states such as hunger as a memory will have reduced the need to evolve big brains."

The findings raise the possibility that simple memories may also be encoded in other physiological states, such as emotions.

This might be why it takes a long time to calm down after feeling threatened. Since the threat may come back, the emotion keeps the body ready to fight or flee.

The researchers say it is possible that their usefulness as a 'memory' is the reason humans and other animals have emotions.

The research has implications for conservation too.


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-01-gut-instinct-animals-clever.html#jCp

Centipedes Eat Animals 15 Times Their Size Thanks To This Powerful Toxin, Study Finds

A bite from a venomous centipede can cause swelling and excruciating pain. And for a mouse - even one 15 times larger than a centipede - the bite can be deadly.

Most predators hunt smaller animals. Blue whales, the largest carnivores on earth, are an extreme example: Each day a whale swallows millions and millions of crustaceans called krill that are about the size of an aspirin tablet. Centipedes, though, do not abide by this rule.

Researchers in Venezuela have seen centipedes skitter up cave walls to eat much heavier bats. And scientists studying centipedes in China observed a golden head centipede, weighing three grams, as it defeated a 45-gram mouse. The centipede quickly subdued its much larger prey thanks to an unusual and potent venom.

"Comparison is difficult to establish among venomous animals because of their preying habit," said Shilong Yang, an expert in venom and toxins at the Kunming Institute of Zoology in China. But, to Yang's knowledge, the centipede holds a record by capturing prey 15 times its body weight within 30 seconds.

Yang and his co-authors, in a report published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identified the toxin that gives centipedes this deadly ability. They isolated a molecule in centipede venom, a peptide, which they named Ssm Spooky Toxin. (The golden head centipede, also known as the Chinese red-headed centipede, has the scientific name Scolopendra subspinipes mutilans, hence Ssm.) The toxin blocks the movement of potassium into and out of mammal cells.

Healthy cells can push potassium ions through their membranes. Cells in airways, for instance, need this flow of potassium ions to control muscle contractions and keep a mouse breathing. Ssm Spooky Toxin halts this flow like an overzealous traffic cop.

Because potassium channels exist throughout the body, "centipedes' venom has evolved to simultaneously disrupt cardiovascular, respiratory, muscular and nervous systems," Yang said. "This molecular strategy has not been found in other venomous animals." The study authors hypothesize that the toxin halts blood flow to the heart, leading to heart failure and ultimately death.

This research suggests that a drug called retigabine might neutralize the centipede toxin, Yang said. Retigabine, an anticonvulsant used to treat epilepsy, opens the potassium channels that the centipede toxin blocks. (In June 2017, pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline announced it would discontinue the production of retigabine, citing low demand among patients with epilepsy.) In lab tests, retigabine inhibited the effects of centipede venom in monkeys; equivalent human data does not exist.

Human deaths from centipedes appear to be exceedingly rare. As of 2006, physicians reported in the Emergency Medicine Journal, there were only three recorded cases of people who had died of centipede venom.

The bites do not need to be fatal to be mightily unpleasant. In Hawaii, centipedes have been known to send victims to emergency clinics. Between 2007 and 2011, for Hawaiian emergency visits classified as having natural causes, centipedes were responsible for 1 in 10 cases, on a par with bee and wasp stings.

Hidden cameras offer unique glimpse of animals in the wild

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — How does a bighorn sheep say "cheese?"

This 2011 photo from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service motion-activated camera shows an elephant seal in the Channel Islands National Park off the coast of Southern California. Motion-detecting wildlife cameras devices are getting smaller, cheaper and more reliable, and scientists across the United State are using them to document elusive creatures like never before. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP)

Some charismatic critters caught by motion-detecting wildlife cameras seem to know how to strike a pose. But it's not just show business. As these devices get ever smaller, cheaper and more reliable, scientists across the U.S. are using them to document elusive creatures like never before.

"There's no doubt — it is an incredible tool to acquire data on wildlife," said Grant Harris, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Remote cameras have photographed everything from small desert cats called ocelots to snow-loving lynx high in the Northern Rockies.

 (This 2017 photo from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service motion-activated camera shows an osprey poses at the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia. Motion-detecting wildlife cameras are yielding serious science as well as amusing photos. From ocelots in the desert to snow-loving lynx high in the Northern Rockies, remote cameras are exposing elusive creatures like never before. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP)

Harris cited photos of javelinas, pig-like desert mammals, and coatimundi, members of the raccoon family, taken at higher latitudes in recent years. That could mean global warming is expanding their range northward, he said.

Other scientists deploying remote cameras include researchers with the Wyoming Migration Initiative, who use global positioning to map the movements of elk, mule deer and antelope in and around Yellowstone National Park. They only have so many collars to track animals, meaning there's a limit to the GPS data they can gather, said Matthew Kauffman, a University of Wyoming associate professor and initiative director.

 (This 2014 photo from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service motion-activated camera shows a black-tailed prairie dog Maxwell National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. Motion-detecting wildlife cameras devices are getting smaller, cheaper and more reliable, and scientists across the United State are using them to document elusive creatures like never before. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP)

"You see one animal migrating, you don't know if it's migrating by itself, if it's migrating with a calf, or if it's migrating with 40 other animals," Kauffman said.

Remote cameras — which can be left in the backcountry for days, weeks or even months — help fill in blanks by showing how many animals are on the move over a given period, he said.

Where to position them requires careful forethought. Clustering several around a watering hole, for instance, might produce many images but not a thorough profile of a population. But a purely data-driven approach might not yield any useful photos.

 (In this 2017 photo from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service motion-activated camera, a vulture comes in for a landing at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. Motion-detecting wildlife cameras are yielding serious science as well as amusing photos. From ocelots in the desert to snow-loving lynx high in the Northern Rockies, remote cameras are exposing elusive creatures like never before. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP)

"There's this tension between subjectivity in where you put your camera and where it's statistically sound," Harris said.

Sometimes smart-alecky humans turn up among the images. "I've seen people moon cameras, and that's always funny," he said.

Remote video can also reveal details about animal behavior, including the mewling sounds of migrating mule deer. And live-streaming cameras for everything from bison in Saskatchewan, Canada, to the underwater kelp forest off California's Channel Islands are always popular.

As with all human intrusion into nature, remote cameras have downsides. Animals such as wolverines and bears have been known to attack them, though whether out of curiosity or aggression is hard to say.

Also, remote cameras have become popular tools to help hunters scout for game, prompting a debate over fair-chase ethics. Then there's the whole subjective thing about going into nature to get away from it all, including surveillance cameras.

But to answer that original question: A bighorn sheep that looks like it's smiling probably isn't saying "cheese" but sniffing pheromones and other scents in what's called a flehmen response, said Harris.

About the Red Panda

Red pandas, like giant pandas, are bamboo eaters native to Asia’s high forests. Despite these similarities and their shared name, the two species are not closely related. Red pandas are much smaller than giant pandas and are the only living member of their taxonomic family.

Red pandas are endangered and are legally protected in India, Bhutan, China, Nepal and Myanmar. Their primary threats are habitat loss and degradation, human interference and poaching.

Researchers believe that the total population of red pandas has declined by 50 percent over the past two decades. It is probable that this decline will continue in the coming years. Red pandas are present in some protected areas throughout their range, including parks in Myanmar, Bhutan, India, Nepal and China. Despite regulations, livestock grazing, hunting and logging still occur throughout many of these protected areas.

Habitat loss is primarily attributed to logging, grazing livestock, demand for firewood, human encroachment and farming. The decrease in suitable habitat for red pandas has coincided with the increase in human populations throughout Asia; with human encroachment comes livestock, agriculture and dogs, all of which produce different threats to this species.

Herds of livestock can compete with red pandas for available bamboo leaves and degrade their habitat. Clearing land to make way for crops reduces available food and shelter. And domestic dogs can hunt or transmit disease, such as canine distemper, to red pandas. Additionally, fragmentation resulting from habitat loss has resulted in inbreeding, as red panda populations become increasingly isolated.

Poaching and illegal trade of red pandas has reportedly been on the rise and has also contributed to their population decline. The presence of red panda pelts, meat and other items has increased in the trade of illegal products, as have instances of live red pandas trafficked into the pet trade.

These threats are compounded by increasing climate change and natural disasters, inadequate enforcement of laws and regulations, and limited investment in red panda conservation by local governments.

Red pandas have bred with some reliability in zoos throughout North America, Europe and Asia. As they decline in the wild, growing and maintaining self-sustaining populations in zoos is a high priority as a hedge against extinction and to learn more about species biology.

Part of the difficulty in conserving red pandas relates to their unique habitat. These animals require a specific set of circumstances to optimize survival, including proximity to water sources, appropriate forest cover and altitude, and sufficient bamboo. As human encroachment continues to grow, these ideal habitats become increasingly more difficult to find. Bamboo grows unreliably in degraded habitats, which adds additional stress to the situation.

The Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute has been at the forefront of red panda conservation, with more than 100 surviving cubs born since 1962.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has prioritized four major categories of action for conserving red pandas: protect against habitat loss, reduce habitat degradation, reduce deaths of red pandas (through poaching and removing man-made threats) and improve awareness.

Why Do Dogs and Cats Eat Grass?

Nobody is really quite sure why our furry friends eat grass.

If you're a dog owner like me, you're used to seeing your dog eat just about anything. My Loretta Lou is a chocolate Lab. Once, when she was 2, she ate an entire jar of cranberry pills — extra strength. How she got the top off is still a mystery. I rushed her to the vet, who gave her medicine to make her vomit. One dose. Two doses. Nothing. Little Lou never threw up, nor did she have diarrhea. All she wanted to do afterward was catch a Frisbee. My vet looked puzzled.

Loretta also eats grass every spring and summer, which is no surprise. Dogs often eat grass. But unlike her daycare buddies, Loretta never throws up. One grass blade. Two grass blades. Three or four. Nothing. Not even a hack or a cough. Loretta has a cast iron stomach.

I'm not sure why Loretta, and by extension most other dogs, eats grass. No one is. Most people believe dogs eat it because they are lacking something in their diets, or because they are ill. That simply isn't the case.

In 2008 researchers at the University of California at Davis tried to cut through the weeds and shed some light on the mystery. They sent out surveys to 25 veterinary dog-owning students. All reported their canines ate grass. None said they observed any signs of illness before their dogs chowed down. Eight percent said their dogs hurled afterward.

Those same researchers also surveyed 47 dog owners who took their pets to the university's teaching hospital for outpatient care. Seventy-nine percent said they saw their pets eating plants, mostly grass. Four dogs were ill beforehand. Only six dogs vomited afterward.

Scientists then opened the survey up to 3,000 people who answered a series of online questions (researchers ultimately pared the useable surveys down to 1,571). Sixty-eight percent saw their dogs eating plants (mostly grass) on a daily or weekly basis. Only 8 percent showed signs of sickness beforehand. Twenty-two percent watched as their dogs vomited afterward.

"Contrary to the common perception that grass eating is associated with observable signs of illness and vomiting, we found that grass eating is a common behavior in normal dogs unrelated to illness and that dogs do not regularly vomit afterward. Vomiting seems to be incidental to, rather than caused by, plant eating," writes Dr. Benjamin Hart, one of the authors of the study, which was published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science.

Dr. Cailin Heinze, a nutritionist at the Cummings Veterinary Medical Center at Tufts University, who was not involved in the study, shakes her head when asked to explain why dogs eat grass in general, and why some dogs vomit while others do not. "Lots of them do it, we don't know why," she said in an email. "Sometimes it is associated with nausea/vomiting, and sometimes it isn't. It doesn't seem to be associated with diet."

Perhaps Loretta and other dogs just like the taste of grass. Maybe they like the texture. Who can say for sure.

As for cats? Researchers in the same study found that grass-eating is also common in cats, and has nothing to do with upset stomachs or other illnesses. Most cats, like dogs, do not vomit afterward.

Whether they eat grass or not, my cats hurl all the time. Hairball? Hurl! Eat too much wet food? Hurl! Get chased by Loretta? Hurl some more! Find a mouse at night? Kill it, rat it and then hurl its mangled body on the carpet so I can step on it in the dark of morning.

Vomit on the carpet; vomit on the bed; vomit on the dining room table. Even in my sneaker.

People Are Sharing Pics Of Their Cats Acting Weird

Have you ever walked into a room, looked at your cat, and thought ‘this creature must be out of this world’? Yup, cats are major weirdos and their behavior is something the simple mind of a mortal human finds difficult to grasp.

Felines sleep in the most awkward positions one can imagine. They make the strangest facial expressions. Sometimes the kitties even decide to do things the way humans do, and that's when things get even more funny and bizarre.

So My Friends Cat Does This

For Some reason my Sister Cat Sits like this Everyday

This is How My Friend Found The Cat in the Bathroom

This is My Friends Cat Eating Dinner

She Saw the Kids Playing On it and Now She Meows Until you Rock Her

Just A Cat Sitting On Some Stairs

How Many Cats Does it take to Change a Light Bulb?

I know Cats Like to Sleep in Weird Positions, But this one is the Winner

Russian Fisherman Reveals Terrifying Deep Sea Creatures

Murmansk-based Roman Fedortsov has shed light on the strange world of the deep sea through a series of creepy images.

Human beings have only explored 0.05 per cent of the deep sea, but in the depths are genuinely alien creatures with saucer-like eyes, human-like teeth and eight legs.

Mr Fedortsov works on a trawler and fishes in what has been dubbed the “twilight zone”, a shallow ocean which opens onto the Arctic Ocean.

It is what is known as the Mesopelagic zone, an area between 60 to 3,300 feet (200 to 1,000 metres) below the surface.

Below this is the bathyal zone, an area of total darkness spanning 2,200 to 13,000 feet (1,000 to 4,000 metres).

Mr Fedortsov has revealed one of the most rarely seen fish, the bearded sea devil in a photo shared on Twitter.

He has also tweeted images of a frilled shark, which is often called a living “relic” due to its primitive features and a longhorn cowfish, with long horns that protrude from the front of its head as well as a cookiecutter shark, part of the “sleeper shark” family.

There are also photos of the chimaera, a fish commonly known as the “ghost shark”.

Chimaera are known for their winged fins and long, whip-like tails.

It also has green eyes which glow, but only when exposed to light.

In the depths of the ocean, ghost sharks appear to have sunken, 'dead' eyes.

Mr Fedortsov began sharing his remarkable finds in 2016.

But, some of his discoveries have left him stumped.

One photo showing an alien-like creature with a massive jaw and sharp teeth, the Russian trawler-man said: “We're still arguing about this one. What is it?”

Some people on Twitter suggested it could be a deep-sea dragonfish from the genus Malacosteus.

But not all catches are fish as one picture reveals an orange “sea spider”.

Sea spiders are marine arthropods with long, spindly legs that are roughly the size of a human hand.

These sea “spiders” are a type of primitive marine arthropod called pycnogonids and they grow to massive sizes in a phenomenon known as polar gigantism.

Deep-sea creatures can look even more alien if they live more deeply within the ocean.

This is because pressure can affect the appearance of some when they are brought to surface.

Thousands of feet below they are under extreme pressures and while some can withstand dramatic vertical migrations, the lower pressure of the world are known to cause metabolic problems.

Some even alter their shape and the effect can be seen in the case of the blobfish, a creature voted the world’s ugliest animal.