Several sightings of dolphins off the Isle of Man – Are Bottlenose dolphins moving north?

Plentiful herring may be luring the dolphins

May 2013. The unusual sight of a large group of bottlenose dolphins near the Isle of Man this week may be further evidence that they are shifting their summer range northwards, says the marine conservation charity Sea Watch Foundation.

The Manx Whale & Dolphin Watch not only reported around 10 bottlenose dolphins in the north eastern part of the Isle of Man on May 19, but later the same day, a large group of 50-60 bottlenose dolphins, including young calves, were seen off the eastern part of the Island.

Have you seen any Bottlenose dolphins off the Isle of Man or nearby?

Both organisations are calling for members of the public to send in photographs to photo@seawatchfoundation.org.uk of bottlenose dolphins off the Isle of Man or off the north east coast of England and the Galloway coast in the northeast Irish Sea, to see whether they can be matched with any known to frequent Cardigan Bay. Photographs need to show their fins side on which are used for ID in much the same way as fingerprints in humans!

20 Bottlenose dolphins off Abbey Head, Dumfries

Another interesting sighting - a group of 20 bottlenose sightings off Abbey Head, Dumfries and Galloway - was also reported to Sea Watch by Regional co-ordinator, Mark Pollitt, manager of the Dumfries and Galloway Environmental Recording Centre on 20 May. Photographs are again being sought to see whether these dolphins match records either from Cardigan Bay in Wales or form Scottish populations on the west and east coast.

Rissos dolphins

Daphna Feingold, Sea Watch Monitoring officer for the Cardigan Bay bottlenose dolphin Photo ID Project, says: "There were also reports of Risso's dolphins in the Isle of Man area at the same time and of the two species swimming together. Although this is not unheard of, it is quite unusual in UK coastal waters.

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Camera traps open up hidden corners of China

Photos offer rare glimpse into panda habitat

MAY 2013. WWF has released dozens of photographs and video footage of endangered species captured by camera traps in the mountainous giant panda reserves in China, marking this year’s International Day for Biological Diversity. The images and footage, rarely seen before, showcase an array of endangered species in their remote habitats in south-western Sichuan Province, including giant panda, red panda, Tibetan stump-tailed macaque and leopard cat.

“The multimedia materials are obtained under circumstances, where there was little external disturbance and therefore they truly reflect the conditions of those species in the wild,” said Jiang Zeyin, species programme officer at WWF-China.

100 camera traps

The photos have all been taken since 2011, by more than 100 infra-red camera traps set up in six nature reserves by WWF and its partners from the local forestry authority as part of the monitoring effort under the giant panda conservation programme.

With the footage, WWF conservation officers have gained a better understanding of the identification of animal traces and areas of their activities, the study of the impact of human activities on the species and management of nature reserves, according to Jiang.

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'Giant spider' caught on camera on M3

A giant spider has been caught on CCTV camera apparently terrifying motorists on the M3 in Hampshire.

The oversized eight-legged creature was filmed apparently scuttling across junction 6 of the motorway.

Thankfully for passing drivers it was actually a trick of the eye caused by a normal-sized spider sitting on the camera lens.

It was spotted by Road Management System for Europe staff from Hampshire County Council who tweeted the picture which quickly went viral.

"Apart from a giant spider terrorising motorists passing by #M3 J6, #Hampshire's roads are now quiet & incident free," they tweeted.

http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Giant_spider_caught_on_camera_on_M3

Ants and Carnivorous Plants Conspire for Mutualistic Feeding

May 22, 2013 — An insect-eating pitcher plant teams up with ants to prevent mosquito larvae from stealing its nutrients, according to research published May 22 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Mathias Scharmann and colleagues from the University of Cambridge and the University Brunei Darussalam.

The unusual relationship between insect-eating pitcher plants and ants that live exclusively on them has long puzzled scientists. The Camponotus schmitzi ants live only on one species of Bornean pitcher plants (Nepenthes bicalcarata), where they walk across slippery pitcher traps, swim and dive in the plant's digestive fluids and consume nectar and prey that fall into the trap. Though the benefits to the ants are obvious, it has been harder to tell what exactly the plants gain. However, plants that harbor the insects grow larger than those that do not, suggesting a mutualistic relationship exists between the two.

In this new study, researchers demonstrated a flow of nutrients from ants to their plant hosts, and found that plants colonized by insects received more nitrogen than those that did not host ants. Ants appeared to increase the pitchers' capture efficiency by keeping traps clean, and also protected the plants by actively hunting mosquito larvae that otherwise bred in pitcher fluids and sucked up plant nutrients.

Read on

Spotted: 1st Evidence of a Leopard Eating a Chimp

Douglas Main, Staff Writer

Date: 24 May 2013 Time: 03:11 PM ET

Only rarely have people seen what happens when chimpanzees and leopards come into close quarters in the wilds of Africa. On these occasions, chimpanzees have made loud, fearful calls, or played the aggressor: In one case, chimps even surrounded a leopard den and killed a cub.

But the big-brained primates don't always win: For the first time, scientists have found evidence of a leopard eating a chimpanzee.

In Tanzania's Mahale Mountains National Park, researchers spent 41 days collecting African leopard scat from June to August 2012 (summer internship, anyone?). In one of the cat's "offerings," scientists found several chimpanzee patella and phalanges, corresponding to kneecaps and toe bones, respectively. DNA analysis showed that the bones came from an adult female chimp.

The researchers can't be entirely certain that the leopard hunted down the chimp, because the cats occasionally eat dead animals; in other words, it's possible the chimp keeled over and then became leopard chow. However, the finding has led scientists to re-examine three mysterious wounds incurred by three different chimps in Mahale over the last few years. The wounds were deeper than thought to be possible from fights with other chimps, which is what scientists previously thought had happened.

A 2009 study suggested that chimpanzees face only negligible pressure from predators. If it's indeed true that the leopard ate a live chimp, scientists may need to rethink this view and further examine how predation from leopards, or other animals, might have driven thechimpanzee's evolution, the researchers said. One study from 1993 found evidence of lions eating four chimpanzees, also in Mahale Mountains National Park. The park is one of the few places with ongoing research where the range of leopards and chimpanzees overlap, which helps explain why this was witnessed there.

The new research was published online May 21 in the Journal of Human Evolution.

http://www.livescience.com/34681-spotted-1st-evidence-of-a-leopard-eating-chimp.html