Botswana condemned for lifting ban on hunting elephants

Country with Africa’s largest elephant population says its growth is affecting farmers

Jason BurkeAfrica correspondent

Thu 23 May 2019 12.43 BSTFirst published on Thu 23 May 2019 09.33 BST

Conservationists have reacted with outrage and concern to a decision by Botswana to lift its ban on elephant hunting.

The southern African country said the move was justified by an increase in population and its impact on farmers’ livelihoods.

“The whole world is turning away from hunting. It is increasingly seen as an archaic practice. This is very, very damaging to the image of Botswana as a global leader in elephant conservation,” said Dr Paula Kahumbu, an expert and activist based in Kenya.

Others called the decision “disappointing”.

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Hunt for bogus asthma cure threatens pangolins

The most trafficked mammal on the planet is in dangerous decline

Robin McKie

Sun 24 Mar 2019 08.59 GMT

One of nature’s most remarkable creatures, the pangolin, is being driven to extinction as hunting and trafficking have soared in recent years. Studies have discovered that hundreds of thousands of these distinctive, scaly animals are now being killed every year to satisfy markets in Asia, making it the most trafficked and poached mammal on Earth.

The pangolin is hunted for its meat – and also for its scales, which are believed to have important medicinal properties as cures for poor circulation, skin complaints and asthma.

Last January, authorities in Hong Kong seized 8.3 tonnes of pangolin scales in a shipment from Nigeria bound for Vietnam. It was one of the largest confiscation of the animal’s scales ever made and its weight suggests that around 13,800 animals died to make up the consignment.

In addition, in February, Malaysian customs officers seized 1,800 boxes that contained 30 tonnes of frozen pangolins and pangolin parts. Ironically, the confiscation was made only a few days before World Pangolin Day was held on 16 February this year.

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Male killer whales hunt more than females

February 5, 2019, The Company of Biologists

 It's hard to tell just how imperilled killer whales are. With several different forms—some of which may even be different species—it's unclear which are at serious risk and which are less vulnerable. But one group is definitely in jeopardy. 'The southern resident killer whale population was listed as endangered in the United States in 2005', says Jennifer Tennessen from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), USA and the decline of Chinook salmon in the Pacific Northwest—which are consumed by the population of ~75 whales—is believed to be one of the causes. While shipping also poses a risk to the animals, NOAA has been monitoring them for a decade and one of the scientists' main goals was to estimate how much fish the charismatic whales capture. But, with the majority of pursuits occurring beneath the waves, Tennessen and her colleagues needed to develop a technique based on the animals' manoeuvres that would allow them to identify when the mammals were successful. They publish their discovery that killer whale hunts are not always successful and that male killer whales hunt more than females in Journal of Experimental Biology.

Heading into the Salish Sea, between Vancouver Island, British Columbia and Washington State, Tennessen and her colleagues—Marla Holt, Candice Emmons, Brad Hanson, Jeff Hogan and Deborah Giles—attached tags to 21 whales to record their sounds and underwater movements. Then the team followed the animals, noting where they surfaced and what they were up to, in addition to retrieving the remains of any meals. 'Fieldwork is one of the most exciting yet simultaneously challenging aspects of the research', says Tennessen, describing how she and her colleagues tracked the animals from small inflatable boats in all conditions.

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Active participation in group-hunts earns wild chimpanzees meat access

September 10, 2018, Max Planck Society

Wild chimpanzees of the Taï National Park, Ivory Coast, hunt in groups to catch monkeys. By observing group-hunts and meat sharing, an international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, found that chimpanzee hunting behavior is a cooperative act that earns participants a fair share of the prey.

"Chimpanzee hunting success increased when more chimpanzees participated in the hunt or in joint prey searches prior to the start of a hunt", says Liran Samuni of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and first author of the study. "The sharing of meat following successful hunts encouraged hunt participation, as prey catchers shared more frequently with hunters than non-hunters, despite similar begging attempts."

Furthermore, the researchers found that chimpanzee hunting behavior was associated with the activation of oxytocin, a neuro-hormone established as a facilitator of cooperative behavior in humans and other animals. Oxytocin activation during chimpanzee hunting is a potential mechanism facilitating cooperative hunting. "Our new study provides strong support for the cooperative nature of hunting behavior in some wild chimpanzees, likely facilitated by neuroendocrine and behavioral mechanisms", says senior author Roman Wittig.

Like with humans, hunting success is likely motivation and performance dependent, with little guarantee that the effort invested in hunting will pay off. A mechanism in which active hunt participants that did not catch the prey are still rewarded with meat, a highly valuable food source, supports future cooperation to potentially increase performance.

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New York State DEC Eliminating Commercial Harvest of Diamondback Terrapin-Closing Hunting Season Aids Conservation of Diamondback Terrapin Turtle Species – via Herp Digest

Press Release NYSDEC-9/19/21

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and Commissioner Basil Seggos announced today that the agency is adopting regulations to eliminate commercial harvest of diamondback terrapins and add the species to the list of native turtles with no open season. 

The closure on harvest will go into effect beginning May 1, 2018.

“Diamondback terrapins depend upon a steady diet of mollusks and crustaceans, making them an excellent indicator for the health of New York’s estuarine habitats,” Commissioner Seggos said. “If diamondback terrapins are doing well in a bay, you know you have a healthy population of blue mussels, clams, and blue crabs, too. Closing the hunting season is an important step in the conservation of diamondback terrapin populations in New York.” 

Diamondback terrapins are a turtle species that live in brackish waters associated with the lower Hudson River, Long Island Sound, Peconic Bay, and the coastal embayments along the south shore of Long Island. The diamondback terrapin was identified as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need in the 2015 New York State Wildlife Action Plan due to documented threats from habitat loss, nest predation, and incidental capture. The turtles are sometimes accidentally trapped in crab pots and other commercial fishing gear. 

Populations of diamondback terrapins plummeted in the early 20th Century due to unregulated harvest for turtle soup. After a rebound throughout most of the last century, new declines in diamondback terrapin populations along the Atlantic Coast led to the closure of commercial harvest in all states in the terrapin’s range with the exception of New York. 

The current action closes commercial harvest of terrapins throughout their range. In addition to closing New York’s open season, the diamondback terrapin has been added to the list of native turtles to protect all life stages of the species from being collected from the wild. DEC will continue to evaluate and pursue additional actions to improve the status of the diamondback terrapin populations in New York.

The final diamondback terrapin season will close April 30, 2018, with licenses expiring May 4, 2018. 

Information on the life history of the diamondback terrapin may be found by visiting http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/59652.html.

The Regulatory Impact Statement for the revision to the regulation may be viewed at http://www.dec.ny.gov/regulations/109828.html and the Notice of Adoption for the revised regulation can be viewed in the New York State Register (https://www.dos.ny.gov/info/register/2017.html).

Scary Snake Strategy: Cuban Boas Hunt in Packs

By Kacey Deamer, Staff Writer | June 6, 2017 01:35pm ET

When cave-dwelling Cuban boas fancy a meal, they band together to hunt for bats by concealing themselves along the cave entrance and forming a wall of deadly snakes before launching their coordinated strikes, according to a new study on the rare occurrence of snakes hunting in packs.

Though snakes are sociable, researchers have largely considered the reptiles to be solitary in their hunting and eating. But these new observations of the Cuban boas' pack-hunting offer evidence that some snakes hunt in groups. Of the 3,650 snake species known in the world, only a few have been observed hunting in the wild, according to the scientists.

And coordination among snakes to catch prey has never been proved, said study author Vladimir Dinets, a professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, who specializes in animal behavior. 

"It is possible that coordinated hunting is not uncommon among snakes, but it will take a lot of very patient field research to find out," Dinets said in a statement.



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Sea stars filmed hunting squid and squabbling over eating it

30 May 2017

By Chelsea Whyte

It’s like going back in time. NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer has completed more than two weeks of ocean exploration beginning near Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa, and ending near Honolulu in Hawaii. Some of the animal behaviour it recorded has previously been documented only in fossils hundreds of millions of years old.

“For all of the places we went, it was the first time we were getting to have eyes down in the deep sea,” says Scott France, a deep-sea biologist at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who was on the ship.

Those eyes come in the form of remote submersibles that light up the sea floor and transmit live video to the team and the public around the world.

“We saw brittle stars capturing a squid from the water column while it was swimming. I didn’t know that was possible. And then there was a tussle among the brittle stars to see who got to have the squid,” says France.
Living fossils

The team also saw snails attached to crinoids, sometimes called sea lillies for their graceful branches.

“We saw this amazing footage of the snail that seemed to be eating a crinoid. No one had seen this before,” says Del Bohnenstiehl at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, a geologist on the ship. “A scientist from the Smithsonian said he had seen it in the fossil record, but never live.”



Continued and video

Snakes, thought to be solitary eaters, coordinate hunts, study shows - via Herp Digest

Date: May 23, 2017

Source: University of Tennessee at Knoxville

Snakes, although as social as birds and mammals, have long been thought to be solitary hunters and eaters. A new study from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, shows that some snakes coordinate their hunts to increase their chances of success.

Vladimir Dinets, a research assistant professor of psychology at UT, observed the Cuban boa -- the island nation's largest native terrestrial predator -- in bat caves for the study.

Many Cuban caves shelter large bat colonies, and in some of them small populations of boas regularly hunt the bats as they fly out at dusk and return at dawn. Dinets noticed that the boas hung down from the ceiling of the cave entrance and grabbed passing bats in midair. He found that if more than one boa was present, the snakes coordinated their positions in such a way that they formed a wall across the entrance. This made it difficult or impossible for the bats to pass without getting within striking distance of at least one boa.

Such group hunts were always successful, and the more snakes were present, the less time it took each to capture a bat. But if there was only one boa, it sometimes failed to secure a meal.

These findings were recently published open-access in the journal Animal Behavior and Cognition.

To date, only a handful of snakes have been observed to hunt in groups, and coordination among them -- or among any other group-hunting reptiles -- has never been proven, Dinets said.

Only a few of the world's 3,650 snake species have ever been observed hunting in the wild, so very little is known about snakes' diverse hunting tactics.

"It is possible that coordinated hunting is not uncommon among snakes, but it will take a lot of very patient field research to find out," Dinets said.

He added that observing the Cuban boa, although an amazing spectacle, is becoming increasingly difficult since only the most remote caves still have boas. The boas are being hunted for food and possibly pet trade.

"I suspect that if their numbers in a cave fall, they can't hunt in groups anymore and might die out even if some of them don't get caught by hunters," Dinets said. "A few of these caves are in national parks, but there's a lot of poaching everywhere."

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

            1          Vladimir Dinets. Coordi n a ted Hunting by Cuban Boas. Animal Behavior and Cognition, May 2017 DOI: 10.12966/abc.02.02.2017

How polar bears find their prey: Researchers find the answer is blowing in the wind

April 12, 2017 

Researchers at the University of Alberta have demystified the way that polar bears search for their typical prey of ringed seals. The answer, it turns out, is simple: they follow their nose using the power of wind. 

Using satellite telemetry data collected from 123 adult polar bears in Canada's Hudson Bay over 11 years, the researchers merged the movements of polar bears with wind patterns to explore how they looked for seals.

They hypothesized that when a bear smells prey, it moves up-wind to find it. But what is a bear to do before it smells anything at all?

"Predators search for prey using odours in the air, and their success depends on how they move relative to the wind," explained Ron Togunov, University of Alberta alumnus and lead author on the study. "Travelling crosswind gives the bears a steady supply of new air streams and maximizes the area they can sense through smell."

While this phenomenon had been suspected in many animals, it had not been quantified in mammals until now.

The best conditions for olfactory hunting, explained UAlberta professor Andrew Derocher, co-author and renowned polar bear expert, takes place at night during the winter.

"Crosswind search was most frequent when winds were slow, when is is easier to localize the source of a certain smell, and at night when bears are relatively active and when vision is less effective, so bears rely more heavily on their sense of smell."

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