9 posts tagged “animals”

By MICHELLE NIJHUIS
The New York Times
Published: August 25, 2008


I KNOW YOU John M. Marzluff, a wildlife biologist tested crows’ ability to distinguish between faces.

Crows and their relatives — among them ravens, magpies and jays — are renowned for their intelligence and for their ability to flourish in human-dominated landscapes. That ability may have to do with cross-species social skills. In the Seattle area, where rapid suburban growth has attracted a thriving crow population, researchers have found that the birds can recognize individual human faces.

 John M. Marzluff, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington, has studied crows and ravens for more than 20 years and has long wondered if the birds could identify individual researchers. Previously trapped birds seemed more wary of particular scientists, and often were harder to catch. “I thought, ‘Well, it’s an annoyance, but it’s not really hampering our work,’ ” Dr. Marzluff said. “But then I thought we should test it directly.”

To test the birds’ recognition of faces separately from that of clothing, gait and other individual human characteristics, Dr. Marzluff and two students wore rubber masks. He designated a caveman mask as “dangerous” and, in a deliberate gesture of civic generosity, a Dick Cheney mask as “neutral.” Researchers in the dangerous mask then trapped and banded seven crows on the university’s campus in Seattle.

In the months that followed, the researchers and volunteers donned the masks on campus, this time walking prescribed routes and not bothering crows.

The crows had not forgotten. They scolded people in the dangerous mask significantly more than they did before they were trapped, even when the mask was disguised with a hat or worn upside down. The neutral mask provoked little reaction. The effect has not only persisted, but also multiplied over the past two years. Wearing the dangerous mask on one recent walk through campus, Dr. Marzluff said, he was scolded by 47 of the 53 crows he encountered, many more than had experienced or witnessed the initial trapping. The researchers hypothesize that crows learn to recognize threatening humans from both parents and others in their flock.

After their experiments on campus, Dr. Marzluff and his students tested the effect with more realistic masks. Using a half-dozen students as models, they enlisted a professional mask maker, then wore the new masks while trapping crows at several sites in and around Seattle. The researchers then gave a mix of neutral and dangerous masks to volunteer observers who, unaware of the masks’ histories, wore them at the trapping sites and recorded the crows’ responses.

The reaction to one of the dangerous masks was “quite spectacular,” said one volunteer, Bill Pochmerski, a retired telephone company manager who lives near Snohomish, Wash. “The birds were really raucous, screaming persistently,” he said, “and it was clear they weren’t upset about something in general. They were upset with me.”

Again, crows were significantly more likely to scold observers who wore a dangerous mask, and when confronted simultaneously by observers in dangerous and neutral masks, the birds almost unerringly chose to persecute the dangerous face. In downtown Seattle, where most passersby ignore crows, angry birds nearly touched their human foes. In rural areas, where crows are more likely to be viewed as noisy “flying rats” and shot, the birds expressed their displeasure from a distance.

Though Dr. Marzluff’s is the first formal study of human face recognition in wild birds, his preliminary findings confirm the suspicions of many other researchers who have observed similar abilities in crows, ravens, gulls and other species. The pioneering animal behaviorist Konrad Lorenz was so convinced of the perceptive capacities of crows and their relatives that he wore a devil costume when handling jackdaws. Stacia Backensto, a master’s student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who studies ravens in the oil fields on Alaska’s North Slope, has assembled an elaborate costume — including a fake beard and a potbelly made of pillows — because she believes her face and body are familiar to previously captured birds.

Kevin J. McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology who has trapped and banded crows in upstate New York for 20 years, said he was regularly followed by birds who have benefited from his handouts of peanuts — and harassed by others he has trapped in the past.

Why crows and similar species are so closely attuned to humans is a matter of debate. Bernd Heinrich, a professor emeritus at the University of Vermont known for his books on raven behavior, suggested that crows’ apparent ability to distinguish among human faces is a “byproduct of their acuity,” an outgrowth of their unusually keen ability to recognize one another, even after many months of separation.

Dr. McGowan and Dr. Marzluff believe that this ability gives crows and their brethren an evolutionary edge. “If you can learn who to avoid and who to seek out, that’s a lot easier than continually getting hurt,” Dr. Marzluff said. “I think it allows these animals to survive with us — and take advantage of us — in a much safer, more effective way.”

May 26, 2008

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- Australian fishermen have hauled up a 20-foot-long giant squid off the country's southeastern coast.

Skipper Rangi Pene said Monday that the 500-pound squid was already dead when it was caught in a trawler's nets Sunday night in waters more than 1,640 feet deep.

Paul McCoy, a fisheries research biologist, said it took 10 men to lift the squid onto a stretcher and place it in a storage freezer in the city of Portland. A museum will collect it this week.

McCoy said an analysis by the museum would determine the type of squid, its age and possibly how it died.

Iä! Iä! etc.

May 20, 2008

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) -- Police thought they had a goat surrounded after it was spotted going the wrong way on the Cross Island Parkway. An ambulance and fire engine blocked traffic Monday while sheriff's deputies tried to corral the animal on the Charles E. Fraser Bridge, but she jumped.

Fire Battalion Chief Cliff Steedley told The Island Packet of Hilton Head Island the frightened goat plunged as much as 50 feet into Broad Creek.

Rescuers borrowed a boat to get the 70-pound nanny out of the waist-deep pluff mud as it worked its way through the marsh. One firefighter got stuck in the mud and had to be rescued.

Veterinarian Frank Murphy said the goat was fine after the smelly mud was washed off and there has been at least one offer to adopt it.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Three zebras from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus briefly escaped from their downtown venue, but were quickly corralled by their trainer and two handlers.

Mali, Giza and Lima spotted an open door at the 1st Mariner Arena on Thursday and dashed onto Hopkins Place, but were rounded up a half block away.  

Carrie Coleman, a veterinary technician for the circus, said it was a frightening incident, because the animals were in traffic lanes before returning to the sidewalk.

"They may have thought they were headed home," Coleman said, adding that the zebras were not hurt.

The same three zebras, plus a fourth, made a similar escape in June during the circus' visit to Colorado Springs, Colo.

By KIRK JOHNSON
The New York Times
Published: March 19, 2008

BOZEMAN, Mont. — The long, lonely howl of a wolf shatters the early morning stillness. But is it real? Beginning this June, it might be hard to tell, even for the wolves.

One of the most famous sounds in nature is going digital. Under a research project at the University of Montana in Missoula, scientists are betting that the famous call-and-response among wolves can be used to count and keep track of the animals.

Tricked by technology, scientists say, wolves will answer what amounts to a roll call triggered by a remotely placed speaker-recorder system called Howlbox. Howlbox howls, and the wolves howl back. Spectrogram technology then allows analysis that the human ear could never achieve — how many wolves have responded, and which wolves they are.

“With audio software, we’ll be able to identify each wolf on a different frequency, so we can count wolves individually, kind of like a fingerprint,” said David Ausband, a research associate at the University of Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, where Howlbox was developed.  

 The devices, using off-the-shelf technology, cost about $1,300, including $300 for a solar panel. Audio recordings in the wild are nothing new, of course. Bird and amphibian researchers, in particular, have long used recordings to find or flush out critters. Howlbox’s innovations are the tools of digital analysis and programmed instructions that tell Howlbox when to howl, when to sleep because the wolves are sleeping, and how to store each day’s file on a disk.

The experiment will begin with a pilot project in which four Howlboxes will be placed in remote areas of Idaho in June. That month was chosen because it is when the packs gather with their spring-born pups in what is called a rendezvous.

Wolf pups will howl at almost anything, scientists say. But a test here in Montana in January also showed that adult wolves can also be fooled by a good sound system.

Money is a driving force behind the research, much of which is being paid for by the Nez Perce Indian tribe in Idaho, which has deep cultural links to the western gray wolf.

Traditional tracking tools like radio collars and aerial surveillance were used extensively after wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s under the Federal Endangered Species Act. But federal protections will end later this month, and so too will the deep pockets needed for flyovers and catching and collaring.

A spokesman for the Nez Perce tribe, Curt Mack, said Howlbox might be a cost-efficient answer.

“We’re at a transition moment from wolf recovery to long-term management,” said Mr. Mack, the tribe’s gray wolf recovery coordinator. “We need new tools.”

Another issue for Howlbox is the human response. To the uninitiated, a Howlbox-enhanced forest could sound as if wolves were everywhere — a scary proposition. Montana wildlife officials are braced for a public relations campaign if the project moves forward.

“That is something we would not do without touching base with local folks,” said Carolyn Sime, the wolf program coordinator at the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks “They need to know that just because you hear the sound, it doesn’t necessarily mean that wild wolves are howling at their back door.”

Wed Feb 13, 2008
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The most primitive bat ever found fluttered around about 52 million years ago, but lacked a key feature seen in most bats -- the ability to echolocate, hunting and navigating using a kind of sonar.

A team of scientists announced the discovery on Wednesday of a medium-sized ancient bat called Onychonycteris finneyi that possessed fully developed wings and was completely capable of flying. But they said that based on the evidence from its skeleton it lacked the ability to echolocate.  

Kevin Seymour of the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, one of the scientists who describe it in the journal Nature, said this bat appears to settle a long-standing debate of which came first in bats -- echolocation or flight. The answer is flight.

"It is like this is sort of half way to being a modern bat. It's the most primitive bat that we know. It could clearly fly. But it could not echolocate. The evidence from the skull and throat region shows us none of the features that echolocating bats have," Seymour said in a telephone interview.

Bats are the second most common type of mammal living today, constituting a fifth of all mammal species. Only rodents, which make up half of mammals, are more plentiful.

Bats also are an ancient form of mammals, and scientists have struggled to understand their early evolutionary history. Onychonycteris, unearthed in 2003 in southwestern Wyoming, appears to be filling in some important gaps.

"MISSING LINK"

"It's clearly a bat, but unlike any previously known," Nancy Simmons of the American Museum of Natural History in New York said in a statement. "In many respects it is a missing link between bats and their nonflying ancestors."

Echolocation is a form of sonar used by several mammals to navigate and hunt. They use high-pitched sounds to find the location of objects by the sounds reflected from them. Most bats use it to find flying insects to catch in mid-air. Other mammals with this ability include whales, dolphins and shrews.

The scientists called the fossil of Onychonycteris beautifully preserved, representing a previously unknown bat family. But while they call it the most primitive bat, they said a bat with more modern features, Icaronycteris, lived at the same time. Icaronycteris used echolocation, they said.

Seymour said there is nothing unusual about more primitive forms living alongside more advanced ones. "That's completely normal. Think today of the monotremes living in Australia, the egg-laying mammals," Seymour said. These include the platypus.

The wingspan of Onychonycteris was about 12 inches. It had short, broad wings, suggesting it probably could not fly as quickly as most bats that appeared later. Rather than flapping its wings continuously while flying, it may have alternated flapping and gliding while in the air.

Its teeth suggest its diet consisted mostly of insects, like most bats today. It had claws on all five of its fingers, while modern bats have them on only one or two digits of each hand. Its limb proportions are different from all other bats.

Seymour said scientists are not certain from what type of mammal bats evolved, but it could have been a tree-dwelling insectivore like a shrew.

Bats are one of only three types of vertebrates in the history of Earth to develop the ability to fly, joining the flying reptiles called pterosaurs, which went extinct 65 million years ago, and birds.

By ASHOK SHARMA
The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 13, 2008

NEW DELHI -- Conservationists welcomed an Indian government plan to create eight new reserves to protect the country's dwindling tiger population, and called Wednesday for more action to prevent illegal trading in tiger parts.

It will take five years to set up the new reserves, which will cover an area of more than 11,900 square miles at a cost to taxpayers of about $153 million, the government's Tiger Project announced Tuesday. Private groups will also contribute funds.

The aim of the reserves is to protect the existing tiger population and stamp out poaching, said Rajesh Gopal, the Tiger Project secretary.  

"The (government) assessment shows that though the tiger has suffered due to poaching, loss of quality habitat and loss of its prey, there is still hope," Gopal said in a statement.

New estimates suggest India's wild tiger population has dropped from nearly 3,600 five years ago to about 1,411, the Tiger Project said.

Belinda Wright, director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, said the government may have overestimated the number of tigers in 2003, but that the falling numbers were still shocking.

"I think it's a very serious wake-up call," Wright told The Associated Press. The population of tigers in Asia is estimated at around 3,500 today compared to nearly 5,000 in 1997, she said.

Unless the government drastically improves enforcement steps against poachers and illegal wildlife traders, the number of tigers will continue to dwindle, she said, adding that India, Nepal and China - where demand for tiger parts is strongest - should cooperate to prevent the trade.

The Tiger Project plans to employ retired soldiers to patrol the reserves and hunt for poachers. It will also fill empty park ranger posts, establish eco-tourism guidelines to benefit local populations and speed up projects to relocate villages from inside the new tiger reserves.

Many impoverished villagers take on lucrative work for poaching gangs. Some 250 villages - an estimated 200,000 people - will be relocated under the plan, and each relocated family will be given 1 million rupees - about $25,600 - the government said. 

by Iain Rogers
Fri Feb 1, 2008

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German medical student got some unexpected practical experience at the zoo when she gave the kiss of life to a baby tiger choking on a piece of meat, the zoo director said Friday.

The student was passing the enclosure with her toddler son on a visit several weeks ago when she noticed the 4-month-old tiger choking and offered her assistance to the helpless keeper, said Andreas Jacob, director of the zoo in the eastern German city of Halle.

"The tiger tried to eat a piece of meat that was too big and started choking and shaking and then fell over," the student, Janine Bauer, told MDR radio.

"We got the piece out but he wasn't breathing so I tried mouth-to-mouth and heart massage," she added. "After 3-5 minutes he came to, thank God."  

The zoo, which held a ceremony Friday to thank Bauer, has decided to call the tiger Johann, after her one-year-old son.