Beavers given native species status after reintroduction to Scotland

Move hailed as first formal reintroduction of a once native mammal in the UK

Severin Carrell Scotland editor

Thursday 24 November 2016 17.21 GMT

Large populations of wild beavers living in the southern and western Highlands of Scotland are to be allowed to expand naturally after ministers granted them protected status.

For the first time since it was hunted to extinction about 300 years ago, the beaver will be officially designated as a native British species,the Scottish environment secretary announced on Thursday.

Rosesanna Cunningham said this was the first formal reintroduction of a once native mammal in the UK, a significant milestone in the slow process of rewilding parts of the British isles. Until now, official reintroductions have focused largely on birds of prey, though wild boar have colonised forests in southern England after escaping from farms and parks. The beavers were reintroduced to Scotland from Norway.

Conservationists said they were delighted. The Scottish Wildlife Trust said beavers created new wetlands, which supported otters, water voles and dragonflies, and helped to regulate flooding and reinvigorate woodland.

Jonathan Hughes, the SWT’s chief executive, said: “This is a major milestone for Scotland’s wildlife and the wider conservation movement. Beavers are one of the world’s best natural engineers. Their ability to create new wetlands and restore native woodland is remarkable and improves conditions for a wide range of species.”

Cunningham’s announcement was seen by zoologists and conservationists as inevitable: dozens of European beavers have been illegally and stealthily released in the Highlands or have escaped from private collections over the past decade. Previously captive beavers have also tried to colonise parts of southern England. 

Read on 

Search is over for a mate for Jeremy the 'lefty' snail

November 28, 2016 

 

A nationwide search to find a mate for a 'one in a million' rare mutant garden snail has been successful. 

In October, Dr Angus Davison in The University of Nottingham's School of Life Sciences appealed to the public for their help in match-making for Jeremy, who with a left-handed, anti-clockwise spiralling shell is a mirror image of other brown garden snails.

Dr Davison needs the offspring from Jeremy and another left-coiling or sinistral snail to be able to study the genetics of this rare condition, which may offer valuable insights into a common understanding of body asymmetry in other animals, including humans.

Following the appeal via the national media and a #snaillove hashtag on Twitter, Jeremy became a media sensation, with his story featuring on prime time BBC current affairs and comedy programmes including BBC Radio Four's Today Programme, Have I Got News For You and No Such Thing as the News.

His stardom has led to him being paired with Lefty the snail from Ipswich, whose owner Jade Sanchez Melton heard about the appeal from a member of the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

 

Jade said: "Scientifically speaking, this is something which I believe has never been done and I am going to be fascinated to see whether breeding these two snails will result in more lefties or whether their offspring will feature the more common clockwise coiling shells."

Jade has had a fascination with snails from a very young age and keeps and breeds a variety of the molluscs as pets. She keeps more than 300 snails in 30 tanks and one aquarium and her collection includes native UK species and water snails, as well as a variety of South American snail and the impressive Giant African Land Snail, which grow up to 20 cm in length.

Jade discovered Lefty just under a year ago, crawling up a tree, and immediately recognised it as something special, initially suspecting that it may be an imported species of some kind.

Jeremy has been taken to Ipswich to meet Lefty and Jade will be observing them for around two weeks to see whether they mate. She will be looking for obvious signs of a pairing that would include the presence of so-called 'love darts', sharp spikes made of calcium which snails stab into each other's bodies during the process of mating, and of course, any eggs resulting from a union.

Read more at:

Gorilla mobs attacking single individuals suggests new type of behavior for them

November 28, 2016 by Bob Yirka report

(Phys.org)—A trio of researchers studying gorillas in Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda has reported on a developing trend observed in mountain gorillas—mobs attacking single individuals for unknown reasons. In their paper published in Scientific Reports, Stacy Rosenbaum, Veronica Vecellio and Tara Stoinski describe three mob attacks that have been observed by several human witnesses over the past decade and offer some possible explanations. 

For most of the modern study of gorillas in their native environment, the consensus has been that they are generally docile with one another—there have been observations of males fighting, sometimes to the death, but for the most part, the life of the gorilla was thought to be one of mostly peaceful. But now, it appears that the peace can be disturbed by the occasional mob attack on a single individual or, as the researchers note, two individuals.

In the first witnessed attack, back in 2004, Rosenbaum was actually one of the witnesses. She describes the incident as arising seemingly out of nowhere. A single male the team had named Inshuti approached a group of gorillas the researchers had named the Beetsme. After some initial rebuffs, the lone male continued to seek acceptance. Then one of the gorillas screamed—the witnesses could not say if it was Inshuti or a member of the group. That was followed by three adult males chasing Inshuti until they caught him and pinned him to the ground. Soon thereafter, the rest of the Beetsme group arrived and all of them (including females and youngsters) participated in causing harm to Inshuti—from pulling hair to scratching and kicking. The leader of the Beetsme sunk his teeth into the gorilla's flesh and shook it like a fighting dog. The mob attack continued for just a few minutes, but then stopped just as quickly as it had started. The attackers walked away and Inshuti slunk into the underbrush to attend to his wounds.

The researchers report on two other similar incidents, one of which included an attack on Inshuti and another male. They note that mob attacks by other apes, including chimps, is common, as in humans, but until these recent incidents, it was thought gorillas were gentle giants, unlikely to engage in such violence. The team admits they do not know why the gorillas have begun acting like mobs at times but note that it has occurred during a time when the mountain gorilla population has grown due to conservation efforts.

Read more at: