Ecuador’s famous Galapagos Islands could be off-limits for tourists after the country’s President declared them at risk and in the midst of an environmental crisis. Most famous for inspiring Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, the Galapagos Islands attract thousand of visitors annually, making them Ecuador’s top tourist destination. But introduced species, illegal fishing and a rapidly growing human population have placed pressure on the archipelago. President Rafael Correa has promised to urgently address the threats. Signing an emergency decree to prevent further harm to the islands, he has left open the possibility of suspending tourism permits temporarily
A claim by South Korean scientists to have created the first cloned wolves is being investigated by officials at the team’s university. The team is led by a former colleague of disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk. The wolf cloning team is suspected of using erroneous data to inflate their claims of having created two cloned wolves, a university statement said. Lee Byeong-chun, a veterinary professor, announced last month that his team had succeeded in cloning the two wolves, named Snuwolf and Snuwolffy. The wolf clones were both born in October 2005.
Despite the huge variation in body size and shape, Great Danes and Chihuahuas are both members of the same species: Canis lupus familiaris. Now, a new study conducted by an international team of scientists led by researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) has identified the gene responsible for this great range of dog sizes. The answer, it seems involve a number of different versions of the gene that encodes for insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1). The gene, IGF1, was identified following genetic analysis that began with screening 463 Portuguese water dogs, a breed that has a lot of diversity in size
A study in the peer-reviewed journal Science shows that mice transgenetically altered with a single human gene are then able to see in full tri-colour vision. Mice without this alteration are normally colour-blind. The scientists speculate that mammalian brains even from animals that have never evolved colour vision are flexible enough to interpret new colour-sense information with just the simple addition of new photoreceptors. Such a result is also indicated by a dominant X chromosome mutation that allows for quad-colour vision in some women
The biggest whale fossil ever discovered in Italy has been found in one of the country’s finest vineyards. The five-million-year-old skeleton, 33ft (10m) in length, was dug up in the northern grape-growing area of Tuscany
A recall of potentially deadly pet food has dog and cat owners studying their animals for even the slightest hint of illness and swamping veterinarians nationwide with calls about symptoms both real and imagined. Some of the 60 million cans and pouches of food have been blamed for kidney failure in scores of animals and killed at least 16 pets. Since Friday, nearly 100 brands of the cuts and gravy
style food have been recalled by Menu Foods of Canada, including popular labels sold at Wal-Mart, Kroger and other large retailers
The Tasmanian Devil, a rare carnivorous marsupial found only on Australia’s southern island state of Tasmania, faces extinction in 10 to 20 years without a cure for the facial cancer now decimating the population. With half the population of this fierce, black furry animal now wiped out, leaving less than 75,000 devils, Professor Hamish McCallum at the University of Tasmania is battling to establish offshore colonies of healthy devils
Every year, Neil Engelman carefully collects his data, stands before his company’s board of directors and is asked the same question: What caused more outages? The lightning or the squirrels? Four of the past five years, the answer has been the squirrels, says Engelman, vice president of operations for the Lincoln Electric System in Nebraska. Nebraska is not alone. Many states are grappling with a big increase in the number of power outages caused by squirrel electrocutions. Squirrels that fry themselves on power lines and transformers cause tens of thousands of blackouts every year
Australian researchers say they have found a previously undiscovered species of taipan. The young snake has been found in the central deserts of Western Australia as part of a biodiversity survey. It was initially thought to be a brown snake, but Professor Steve Donellan from the South Australian Museum says DNA testing revealed it to be an unknown species of taipan. He says there are only two other known species of taipan in Australia, and the last one was found 125 years ago
Our closest invertebrate relative, the humble sea squirt, can regenerate its entire body from just tiny blood vessel fragments. The entire regeneration process, which in part resembles the early stages of embryonic development, can produce an adult sea squirt in as little as a week. The finding could illuminate not only the evolutionary origins of regeneration in all organisms, but also subsequent changes to it during vertebrate evolution
Watch Violet the octopus stalk and kill a live crab.
2a26ref=”http://uk.gay.com/headlines/11114″>Female koalas enjoy lesbian romps, rejecting male suitors and attempting to mate with each other, sometimes up to five at a time, according to researchers. The cute, eucalyptus-eating wombat-like creatures seem to develop this tendency for gay orgies when they are in captivity. In the wild, they appear to remain heterosexual. Scientists monitoring the marsupials with digital cameras counted three gay interactions for every straight one — via Feòrag
There have been direct observations of chimps in the west African savannah modifying sticks to create spears. They then use these spears to kill small mammals and eat them. It is the first time that an animal other than a human has been directly observed in crafting a weapon for the purpose of hunting or killing
SWAT teams training for drug raids casually shoot target dogs, so guess what they do on the real raids? Fascist scumbags. In anything other than a police state, you’d expect the law enforcers to be held to the highest possible standards of conduct; in the US, the police with the biggest guns are unrestrained by ordinary decency. Slaughtering family pets is what I’d expect of a psychopath — via Pharyngula
Enormous deep-sea squid emit blinding flashes of light as they attack their prey, research shows. Taningia danae’s spectacular light show was revealed in video footage taken in deep waters off Chichijima Island in the North Pacific
An animal lover was mauled to death by cheetahs after entering their cage at a zoo in northern Belgium. Karen Aerts, 37, of Antwerp, was found dead in the cage, Olmense Zoo spokesman Jan Libot said. Police said they ruled out any foul play. Authorities believe Aerts, a regular visitor to the zoo, hid in the park late Sunday until it closed and managed to find the keys to the cheetah cage. Karen loved animals. Unfortunately the cheetahs betrayed her trust,
Libot said
Everybody needs a Violet for opening jars.
Reintroducing wild wolves to the Scottish Highlands would help the local ecosystem, a study suggests. Wolves, which were hunted to extinction in Scotland in the late 1700s, would help control the numbers of red deer, the team from the UK and Norway said. This would aid the re-establishment of plants and birds — currently hampered by the deer population, they write in Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Wolves in the northern Rockies will be removed from the endangered species list within the next year a move that would open the population up to trophy hunting. Federal officials are expected to announce the plan Monday. The agency also will finalise removal from the list of a separate population of wolves in the Great Lakes region
Bird flu hasn’t gone away. The discovery, announced last week, that the H5N1 bird flu virus is widespread in cats in locations across Indonesia has refocused attention on the danger that the deadly virus could be mutating into a form that can infect humans far more easily
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