Friday 29 June 2018

Sacred snappers: The village where crocodiles are welcome


June 19, 2018 by Olympia De Maismont

Crocodiles may be one of the deadliest hunters in the animal kingdom, but in a small village in Burkina Faso it is not unusual to see someone sitting atop one of the fearsome reptiles.

People in Bazoule, around 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the capital Ouagadougou, share their pond with more than 100 of the razor-toothed creatures.

"We got used to the crocodiles when we were young, swimming in the water with them and all that," said Pierre Kabore, just a few metres (yards) away from a crocodile feasting on chicken provided by the village.

"Now we can always approach them and sit on them—and if you have the courage, you can lie on them too. There's no problem, they are sacred crocodiles. They don't do anything to anyone."
According to local legend, the startling relationship with the predators dates back to at least the 15th century.

The village was in the grip of an agonising drought until the crocodiles led women to a hidden pond where the population could slake their thirst.

"The villagers organised a party to celebrate and thank the reptiles," Kabore said.

A celebration known as Koom Lakre is still held every year during which villagers make sacrifices and ask the animals to grant their wishes of health, prosperity and a good harvest.


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Pancreatic cell size linked to mammalian lifespan, finds zoo animal analysis


June 18, 2018, Cell Press

More than two thousand years ago, Greek philosopher Aristotle observed that larger animals tend to live longer than smaller ones. On June 18 in the journal Developmental Cell, scientists report that it's cell size, not body size, that intrinsically correlates with and perhaps affects lifespan. By examining the pancreases of 24 mammalian species—including shrews, humans, and tigers—researchers in Israel, Canada, and Germany found that animals with larger pancreatic cells tend to age faster, while smaller cells seem to go hand in hand with longer lifespans.

"That there was a correlation between two things that are so remote was shockingly beautiful and unexpected," says senior author Yuval Dor, who studies developmental biology at the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada and The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem.

"This study has exposed a trend that seems to transcend all animal life," says co-author Ran Kafri, a computational biologist at the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children in Canada. "It demonstrates that there's a property that can be measured on a single cell that predicts the lifespan of a whole animal."

Scientists had thought that after birth, most mammals' organs, including the pancreas, grow by cell proliferation. However, Dor, Kafri, and colleagues made a serendipitous observation; they needed a higher magnification to look at pancreatic cells of new-born mice through a microscope than they did to look at those of adults, suggesting that each cell's volume was substantially increasing from infant to adult life.

Repeated measurements showed that the growth of individual exocrine pancreatic cells, known as acinar cells, is responsible for much of the overall organ growth after birth. "This was surprising because the assumption was that postnatally, the pancreas grows by increasing the number of cells just like most organs that we think about," says Dor.


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Florida homeowners warned over alligators two days before woman killed



Email sent to community where Shizuka Matsuki lived
Warning after 6ft alligator trapped at resident’s front door

Associated Press in Davie, Florida
Sun 10 Jun 2018 18.17 BSTLast modified on Mon 11 Jun 2018 16.45 BST

Two days before a south Florida woman was killed by an alligator, an emailed warning about a gator was sent out to homeowners in the waterfront community where she lived.

Shizuka Matsuki, 47 and from Plantation, Florida, was killed on Friday at another waterside location in Davie, five miles away. A witness told authorities he saw the woman walking two dogs and then noticed the dogs alone, barking near the water.

A 12ft 6in alligator was trapped and killed and an arm found in its stomach was matched to Matsuki via a tattoo. Her body was found in the lake hours later.

The Sun Sentinel of south Florida reported that it was unknown if Matsuki ever received the warning email from the Isla de Sol Homeowners Association in Plantation.

The email notified residents that a 6ft alligator had been trapped at a resident’s front door and warned people to be mindful of gators, snakes and other wildlife.



Moths fly 1000 kilometres with Earth’s magnetic field as a guide

21 June 2018

Eric Warrant
By Michael Marshall and Andy Coghlan

An Australian moth uses the Earth’s magnetic field to help find its way across the continent. While other insects have been shown to navigate using Earth’s magnetic field, the moth is the first to do so over long distances and at night.

Bogong moths (Agrotis infusa), like the famous monarch butterflies in the Americas, make an epic migration. In spring, about 2 billion of them leave their breeding grounds on the dry, flat plains of south-east Australia, and fly over 1000 kilometres to …

Continued  

Thursday 28 June 2018

King’s College professor leads salamander study, red-back and lead-back salamanders,Pennsylvania, USA - via Herp Digest



KENT JACKSON, STAFF WRITER,JUNE 24, 2018, Citizen’s Voice

SALEM TWP. — As a professor and his students turned over wooden slabs, two salamanders squiggled for cover: red-backs and lead-backs.

Like twins, their names rhyme and they look alike, except for different-colored stripes down their spines.

Brian Mangan, a biology professor at King’s College, noticed difference.

Lead-backed salamanders absorb two times as much mercury as red-backs.

Perhaps their diets or behaviors differ.
Maybe they lose their tails to predators at different rates.
Shedding a tail also sheds mercury, Mangan figures.
Mercury factored into much of the research that Mangan did along the Susquehanna River before he followed salamanders.

Although mercury occurs naturally, it also enters the environment through human activities such as burning coal. Mercury accumulates in the body and poses larger risks to women who might become pregnant, nursing mothers and young children, whose developing nervous systems suffer from exposure.

For years, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission told people to eat no more than two meals a month of fish caught in the river in Northeast Pennsylvania because of mercury. The advisory intrigued Mangan, leading him to study how mercury moves through the river’s ecosystem in crayfish, bass and spiders.

When studying salamanders near the river, Mangan grew curious about a research method in which scientists place pieces of wood, metal or ceramic tile on the ground to attract salamanders.

Do the covers make a habitat better or worse for salamanders, which like wet, cool areas?

The covers might repel rain like roofs or promote condensation, Mangan thought while wondering if covered soil stays cool compared with surrounding ground.

To find out, he arrayed squares of plywood in grids at three areas where salamanders live at the Riverlands natural area owned by Talen Energy.

And he enlisted help.

Two of his students, Neil Mras and Kyle Swetz, lift up each of the 324 plywood squares three times a week. They insert a probe into the soil that measures temperature and moisture content beneath the squares and of uncovered soil nearby.

Calling out moisture content first, Swetz said, “21.7; 20.7” as Mras wrote the figures in a notebook.

“They’re learning the importance of replication,” said Mangan, explaining that too few data points lead to invalid conclusions, while too many exhaust time and money.

Since starting the environmental program at King’s 17 years ago, Mangan obtained grants of $900,000 for research. This summer, the Degenstein Foundation gave $10,000 for the salamander study.

The grant pays for the soil probe and also the salaries of Swetz and Mras.

While collecting data, Mras, a senior from Hunlock Creek, and Swetz, a junior from Hazleton, will learn more about salamanders and the plots they are studying. Because salamanders like mature forests, the students will measure tree diameters.

Gazing into a calibrated mirror shaped like a bowl, Swetz and Mras will compute openings in the tree canopy to ascertain how much rain might reach soil, which they will sample for clay and sand content to rate how soil retains rain.

Using statistics, the students will note variations and look for patterns in their data before sharing findings with other scientists and students at a symposium about the Susquehanna River this fall.

For now, their work can be monotonous.

Mangan tells them to keep alert for sights that don’t make sense.

“This is not biological factory work. You’ve got to look at it as exploration and adventure,” he said as they walked along paths from which they could watch the river and an old canal that is turning to marsh. “You may see something no one has ever seen before.”

Mangan once saw a structure unknown to scientists on the shell of a crayfish. It turned out to be a home built by an aquatic fly.

Curiosity about what he sees continues to give him study ideas.

At a boat launch in Halifax, Dauphin County, he watched hundreds of crayfish scatter, the largest horde he had ever seen.

They were rusty crayfish, probably brought to the Susquehanna River from the Ohio River Basin in the bait buckets of anglers in the mid-1970s. In a study for which he designed traps, Mangan found that the rustys displaced Allegheny crayfish along much of the Susquehanna between Harrisburg and the New York border.

Another creature, the spined micrathena spider, “appears magically in July” so he sought to learn its tricks. While studying the life cycle of the spider, Mangan noticed a difference in micrathenas’ mercury levels based on their distance from a coal-fired electricity plant.

Salamanders in this summer’s study have been scarce.
In the first weeks, the researchers didn’t see any because the plywood was too fresh. Just to get a look at their quarry, they overturned more weathered discs in an older study plot.

As the days warm, salamanders may worm their way underground to stay cool and emerge at night. Their skin has to stay moist because they breathe through it.
Scientific literature says red-backed and lead-backed salamanders, which are morphs of the same species, will climb vegetation on hot summer nights and forage.
“I’d like to see that,” Mangan said.

The salamanders eat ticks, ants, spiders and snow fleas. Of course, other species eat them.

After noting that some of the plywood squares had been overturned at night, Mangan posted game cameras.

Raccoons looking for snacks proved to be the culprits.

Cats kill two million Australian reptiles every day, pushing species to brink of extinction - via Herp Digest



Independent. co.uk Josh Gabbatiss. Science 

Feral animals and pets are posing major threat to nation's unique native wildlife, and have already been implicated in total loss of at least 20 mammals

Nearly two million reptiles are being slaughtered every day by Australia’s cat population, including several species under threat of extinction.

Australia is home to a highly unique array of animals, and many of these creatures are being pushed to the brink of extinction by the nation’s cats.

Across the country, cats have been implicated in the loss of at least 20 mammal species, such as the lesser bilby and desert bandicoot.

The Australian government has already declared war on the feline menace, but a new study by its Threatened Species Recovery Hub is the first to assess the impact on the region’s lizards and snakes.

They found that in total about 650 million reptiles are being killed by Australian cats annually, with the average cat taking 225 every year.

“Some cats eat staggering numbers of reptiles. We found many examples of single cats bingeing on lizards, with a record of 40 individual lizards in a single cat stomach,” said Professor John Woinarski, a conservation biologist at Charles Darwin University who led the research.

The ambitious survey was based on the analysis of over 10,000 cat dietary samples contributed by scientists from across Australia.

At least 11 of the species identified are threatened with extinction, including the great desert skinks and pygmy copperhead snakes.

“Comparing our findings with research from overseas we found that feral cats eat more reptiles in Australia than they do in the US or Europe,” said Professor Woinarski.

“This could be because we have more abundant reptiles in Australia.”

Australia is home to more than 10 per cent of the world’s reptile species, and while Professor Woinarski said cat predation is unlikely to be the biggest threat these animals face, it has clearly been taking a significant toll.

While feral cats were the main cause for concern, the researchers estimated that more than 50 million of the reptile killings were being carried out by pet animals.

Cats are known to be a major threat to biodiversity everywhere, with one previous study finding at least 63 species of birds, mammals and reptiles have been totally eradicated by feline predators.

Humans have transported their furry companions around the world, placing particular pressure on creatures that had never encountered such effective predators before.

According to one apocryphal story, the entire population of Lyall’s wrens on New Zealand’s Stephens Island was wiped out by one cat, which belonged to the island’s lighthouse keeper and was named Tibbles.

Despite the knowledge that cats can wreak such havoc on populations of small animals, little has been known about the impact they are having on reptiles in particular.

Australia’s threatened species commissioner, Dr Sally Box, said: “This new research is sobering, but up to date scientific evidence is important to understanding the devastating impacts of feral cats on our native wildlife.

“Science drives action and my office will continue to work with our partners and the Australian community to protect Australia’s unique native animals from the impact of feral cats.

“The research shows the number of reptiles killed by pet cats and strays is also high. I would like to commend pet owners who are containing their cats, which is both safer for their pets and better for Australia’s wildlife.”

Under the Australian government’s threatened species strategy, more than A$30m (£16.7m) has already been set aside to stop feral cats annihilating native wildlife.

In May the Australian Wildlife Conservancy completed construction of the world’s largest cat-proof fence, creating a sanctuary in central Australia to protect threatened marsupials from the introduced mammals.

World’s first sanctuary for beluga whales to open in Iceland


21 June 2018

By Chris Baraniuk

An open water sanctuary for two beluga whales is to be opened in Iceland next year – the first project of its kind.

Conservation charity Sea Life Trust has spent six years developing a plan to bring the 12 year-old belugas, nicknamed “Little White” and “Little Grey”, from captivity in China to an open water refuge.

Last year, Klettsvik Bay in Iceland’s Westman islands, the location for the film Free Willy, was chosen as the site for a 32,000 square-metre sea pen that will become home to the whales. Building work in the bay has already begun and is expected to be completed in March next year.
Sea Life Trust says it has recently received the crucial authorisation it needs to move the whales in spring 2019 from Changfeng Ocean World in Shanghai, where they are still performing for visitors.

presentation about the sanctuary project posted online says the whales, which have a life expectancy of between 35 and 50 years in the wild, will always be restricted to the sea pen: “Our Belugas will never be able to be released due to their dependency on humans, we simply want to retire them from public performances in line with our values.”
The whales are currently being introduced to equipment such as stretchers to prepare them for transportation. They are also being trained to hold their breath under water for longer and swim faster so that they will better cope with tides and currents at the sanctuary.

Initial results of Orkney trapping trial revealed



The results of the trapping trial designed to help inform plans to remove stoats from Orkney in order to protect Orkney’s internationally important wildlife have been revealed.

The Orkney Native Wildlife Project carried out the trial as part of the nine month development phase that was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund as part of the work to optimise technical aspects of the planned eradication. This will be the world’s largest stoat eradication to date and a first for Europe, so it was important to test some elements of the methodology to ensure it will be successful and to investigate differences in stoat behaviour in Orkney.

In December 2017, lethal humane traps were positioned at three trial sites west of Kirkwall – Grimbister, Hobbister and Wideford. In order to determine their effectiveness, a range of trap types and trap housings and a range of habitats were tested. The traps were then checked eight times between mid-December and the end of February with number, gender and trap location of each stoat caught being recorded.

A total of 41 stoats were caught across the three sites with nearly half (49%) of these caught at the Grimbister site. Overall, eighty-five percent of stoats caught were captured in the double set traps (where there were two traps in each box with an entrance at both ends). Trap were set in improved grassland, rough grassland and moorland, with the vast majority of stoats caught in moorland followed by on the edges of moorland and the coast.

The main finding was that the density of stoats in these three trial areas appears to be high compared to other islands around the world where stoat densities have been estimated during eradications. The estimated density of stoats in the three Orkney areas was 2-4 per km2 compared to the total density of stoats from Secretary Island and Resolution Island in New Zealand of 1.1-1.4 per km2 and 0.7 per km2, respectively. This difference in density is likely to be an underestimate too as the calculated density of stoats caught would be considerably higher over many years of trapping (like that which took place on the New Zealand Islands) compared to the 12 week trapping trial in Orkney. This is the first time that an indication of the abundance of stoats in Orkney has been available.

Wednesday 27 June 2018

T. Rex Couldn't Stick Out Its Tongue



By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | June 20, 2018 05:41pm ET

T. rex may have been a highly successful predator, but it would have been terrible at licking stamps, lollipops or popsicles, thanks to a tongue that was likely fixed to the bottom of its mouth.

A new study calls into question artists’ renditions of T. rex and other dinosaurs that show them with their tongues protruding from gaping jaws — a pose that is commonly seen in modern lizards. But even though lizards are tops at tongue waving, dinosaurs probably couldn't stick out their tongues, researchers recently discovered.

Soft tissue is rarely preserved in the fossil record, so scientists turned their attention to a structure called the hyoid — a group of bones that supports and anchors the tongue. They looked at hyoids in dinosaurs and in their closest living relatives, birds and crocodilians, to see if they could lick the problem of tongue-wagging capabilities in extinct dinosaurs.

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Obama's Ears Inspired the Name of this 550-Million-Year-Old Critter



By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | June 21, 2018 06:36am ET

The ears of former U.S. President Barack Obama are so distinct, they inspired the scientific name of a newly identified, 550-million-year-old critter: Obamus coronatus.

Researchers unearthed fossils of the enigmatic organism in South Australia. In a new study, they described the circular, wreath-shaped creature as having raised, spiraled grooves that turned clockwise.

During O. coronatus' lifetime, in the Ediacara, a period lasting from about 635 million to 542 million years ago, the creature likely lived at the bottom of the ocean floor. There, the marine animal probably lived an immobile life, embedded to the ocean mat — a thick layer of organic matter that covered the early ocean floor, the researchers said. [11 Animals Named After US Presidents]

The O. coronatus fossils weren't found in just one location. The researchers found 36 of the O. coronatus specimens in the Nilpena National Heritage Site, a region known for its Ediacara fossils. The scientists also found several "orphan" specimens on their lonesome in two other spots in the Ediacara Conservation Park. 



Gene-edited farm animals are on their way



By Pallab GhoshScience correspondent, BBC News
20 June 2018

Scientists have created pigs that are immune to one of the world's costliest livestock diseases.

The team edited the animals' DNA to make them resist the deadly respiratory disease known as PRRS - a move that could prevent billions of pounds in losses each year.

However, consumers have traditionally been reluctant to eat genetically altered animals and crops.

This poses a significant barrier to farmers owning gene-edited pigs.

And because genome, or gene, editing (GE) is relatively new, the absence of regulation currently prevents their sale anyway.

GE is different to the more widely used technology of genetic modification. The former involves the precise alteration of an organism's DNA, while the latter is characterised by the introduction of foreign genetic sequences into another living thing.

Two Frogs Were Married by Indian Governor to “Appease Gods” – via Herp Digest



June 25, 2018 By Corey Barnett, World Religion News 

The Frog Wedding Ritual Has Drawn Criticism Across the Country (India)

Minister of State for Women and Child Development Lalita Yadav has been in the headlines for attending and helping to plan a wedding. But it was not a typical wedding. The wedding was between two frogs. The ritual was done to appease the Hindu god of rain, Indra Dev. The ceremony was in Uttar Pradesh, a region struggling with terrible droughts for two years.

Droughts have devastating consequences in India, killing tens of thousands of people through massive famine. A frog wedding, although rare, is occasionally done. It is believed the wedding will help to re-establish a balance in nature. Indian citizens in Uttar Pradesh had carried out a similar ceremony earlier in the month. Yadav claimed the drought happened because nature was not “happy.” She explained that the ritual was what their ancestors would have done to stop the drought. Many political opponents have criticized Yadav for engaging in a bizarre ritual instead of trying to do meaningful policy actions. What has drawn particular ire is Yadav’s claim the ceremony was not supernatural but was utterly logical. JW Player goes here There has been no official comment from the government. There has never been a scientific study to gauge the effectiveness of the ritual in history, making it unclear if it will have any effect on . 


Gardening trade sparks surge in new moths to UK


14/06/2018

An increasing number of new moth species are arriving and settling in the UK as a result of the global reach of the horticultural trade and the changing climate, moth experts have revealed. According to wildlife publisher Atropos and charity Butterfly Conservation, almost 30 new species of pyralid moth have been recorded in the UK in the last 30 years, with eight becoming established residents.

Pyralid moths include some of the largest and most distinctive of the 1,600 species of micro-moths found in the UK. Around 900 species of the generally larger and better known macro-moths are also found here.

The North Sea and English Channel provide a natural barrier to many potential colonising moth species, but the horticultural trade can provide a route into the UK, with eggs, caterpillars or even pupae hitching a ride on imported plants. Climate change is also altering conditions, enabling moths to take advantage of habitats in new areas. This recent increase in new species comes at a time when many of the UK's native moths are in decline as a result of habitat loss and agricultural intensification.

As part of this year's Moth Night, an annual UK-wide event to record and celebrate moths, organisers Atropos, Butterfly Conservation and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology are asking the public to look for pyralid moths in their gardens, the countryside and at specially organised moth trapping events.

Pyralids are often under-recorded, so scientists need new reports of sightings both to determine how these moths are faring across the UK and to spot any new species that have arrived.


Monday 25 June 2018

Clever bees can identify different flowers by patterns of scent



Date:  June 12, 2018
Source:  University of Bristol

New research led by scientists from the University of Bristol and Queen Mary University of London has revealed that bumblebees can tell flowers apart by patterns of scent.

Flowers have lots of different patterns on their surfaces that help to guide bees and other pollinators towards the flower's nectar, speeding up pollination.

These patterns include visual signals like lines pointing to the centre of the flower, or colour differences.

Flowers are also known to have different patterns of scent across their surface, and so a visiting bee might find that the centre of the flower smells differently to the edge of the petals.

This new research, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that bumblebees can tell flowers apart by how scent is arranged on their surface.

Lead author Dr Dave Lawson, from the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, said: "If you look at a flower with a microscope, you can often see that the cells that produce the flower's scent are arranged in patterns.

"By creating artificial flowers that have identical scents arranged in different patterns, we are able to show that this patterning might be a signal to a bee. For a flower, it's not just smelling nice that's important, but also where you put the scent in the first place."

The study also shows that once bees had learnt how a pattern of scent was arranged on a flower, they then preferred to visit unscented flowers that had a similar arrangement of visual spots on their surface.


Research shows diet shift of beluga whales in Alaska inlet



June 16, 2018 by Dan Joling

Beluga whales in Alaska's Cook Inlet may have changed their diet over five decades from saltwater prey to fish and crustaceans influenced by freshwater, according to a study by University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers.

An analysis of isotopes in beluga bone and teeth showed belugas formerly fed on prey that had little contact with freshwater. More recent generations of belugas fed in areas where rivers pour freshwater into ocean habitats.

New information on Cook Inlet belugas is important because the species is endangered and its numbers have not increased despite hunting restrictions and other protections. Mark Nelson, a wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the lead author of the study, called it a little piece of that puzzle.

"If there's something we can do to help them recover, we might start to know what that might be," he said in a phone interview from Fairbanks.

A population of 1,300 belugas in Cook Inlet dwindled steadily through the 1980s and early 1990s. Alaska Natives harvested nearly half the remaining 650 whales between 1994 and 1998. Subsistence hunting ended in 1999 but the population remains at only about 340 animals.


Human activity making mammals more nocturnal, study finds



Research involving 62 species found mammals spent relatively less time being active during the day when humans were nearby

Thu 14 Jun 2018 19.00 BSTLast modified on Thu 14 Jun 2018 22.24 BST

Human disturbance is turning mammals into night owls, with species becoming more nocturnal when people are around, research has revealed.

The study, encompassing 62 species from around the globe, found that when humans were nearby, mammals spent relatively less time being active during the day and were more active at night - even among those already classed as nocturnal.

Experts say such a shift might not only affect particular animals themselves – for example impacting their ability to navigate or find food – but also have numerous knock-on effects across other species.

Kaitlyn Gaynor, first author of the research and a doctoral student at the University of Berkeley, said the findings echoed the past, noting it was only after the extinction of the dinosaurs that mammals started exploring the daylight.

“Humans are now this ubiquitous terrifying force on the planet and we are driving all the other mammals back into the night-time,” she said.

Gaynor said the shift might affect numerous interactions between species, noting that coyotes in California are moving from eating diurnal creatures like squirrels and birds to nocturnal animals like mice, rats and rabbits, while sable antelope in Zimbabwe are less able to access water during the day as they shift towards increased nocturnal behaviour.


Meet the Extinct Cow with a 'Bulldog' Skull



By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | June 15, 2018 03:12pm ET

Nobody would ever say to this cow, "Why the long face?"

The snub-nosed cow, known as a Niata, is a now-extinct breed of domesticated cattle once found in South America. Its shortened, broad profile, unique in cows, was more reminiscent of a bulldog than a bovine; it had a dramatically flattened face and a significant underbite, much like contemporary dog breeds such as pugs, bulldogs and boxers. Naturalist Charles Darwin wrote about Niata cows in 1845, after seeing them for the first time in Argentina. Though their bizarre head shape generated much discussion in the decades that followed, their biology was not well understood.

Recently, scientists conducted the first analysis of the Niata cow's anatomy and genetics, to find out whether the animal's shortened jaw and skull affected its ability to eat and breathe, possibly contributing to the breed's extinction. [Heritage Livestock Are Vanishing Across the United States (Photos)]



Large-scale whaling in north Scandinavia may date back to 6th century



Date:  June 13, 2018
Source:  Uppsala University

The intensive whaling that has pushed many species to the brink of extinction today may be several centuries older than previously assumed. This view is held by archaeologists from Uppsala and York whose findings are presented in the European Journal of Archaeology.

Museum collections in Sweden contain thousands of Iron Age board-game pieces. New studies of the raw material composing them show that most were made of whalebone from the mid-6th century CE. They were produced in large volumes and standardised forms. The researchers therefore believe that a regular supply of whalebone was needed. Since the producers would hardly have found the carcasses of beached whales a reliable source, the gaming pieces are interpreted as evidence for whaling.

Apart from an osteological survey, species origin has been determined for a small number of game pieces, using ZooMS (short for Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometer). The method shows that all the pieces analysed were derived from the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), a massive whale weighing 50-80 tonnes. It got the name because it was the right whale to hunt: it swam slowly, close to shore, and contained so much blubber as to float after being killed.


Sunday 24 June 2018

Can Scotland save its wildcats from extinction?



The secretive mammals are fast disappearing from the Highlands but last-ditch efforts to save them are fraught with challenges

Fri 15 Jun 2018 16.52 BSTLast modified on Fri 15 Jun 2018 22.00 BST

Set deep in mixed woodland of Scots pine and birch, near the banks of the river Beauly in Inverness-shire, several huge, concealed pens contain two breeding pairs of Scottish wildcat.

Wildcats mate from January to March, and their high, anguished breeding calls through the dark winter nights are thought to have inspired tales of the Cat Sith, a spectral feline of Celtic legend that was believed to haunt the Highlands.

“It is a cry that carries over quite a distance and it is spine-chilling if you hear it in the middle of the night,” says Sir John Lister-Kaye, renowned nature writer and director of the Aigas Field Centre. The former Victorian sporting estate, which now offers conservation holidays and environmental education, is one of 20 sites currently participating in a conservation breeding programme led by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS).

“I’m sure that if there were other wildcats nearby they would have been attracted to the calls. But since we started in 2011 we’ve had foxes, pine martins, badgers, one or two domestic cats come and have a look – but not a single wildcat anywhere near.”

The Scottish wildcat is now one of the most critically endangered wild mammals native to the UK, according to a comprehensive analysis by the Mammal Society released earlier this week, which estimated the population at 200 but accepts that the figure may be significantly lower.



Prehistoric frogs in amber surface after 99 million years



By Helen BriggsBBC News
14 June 2018

Frogs trapped in amber for 99 million years are giving a glimpse of a lost world.

The tiny creatures have been preserved in sticky tree resin since the end of the Age of the Dinosaurs.

The four fossils give a window into a world when frogs and toads were evolving in the rainforests.

Amber from Myanmar, containing skin, scales, fur, feathers or even whole creatures, is regarded as a treasure trove by palaeontologists.

Dr Lida Xing of China University of Geosciences in Beijing said it was a "miracle" find.

"In China, frogs, lizards and scorpions are called three treasures of amber," he told BBC News.

"These amber fossils provide direct evidence that frogs inhabited wet tropical forests before the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous."

The fossil record of the earliest amphibians is sparse, which makes the discovery particularly valuable for science.

Dr David Blackburn of the University of Florida, who worked on the fossils alongside Dr Xing, said being small and living in a tropical forest makes the likelihood of ending up in the fossil record "pretty low".

"Frogs have been around on earth for approximately 200 million years," he said.



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