Six new species of goblin spiders named after famous goblins and brownies

Date:  June 21, 2018

Source:  Pensoft Publishers

Fictional characters originally 'described' by famous English children's writer Enid Blyton have given their names to six new species of minute goblin spiders discovered in the diminishing forests of Sri Lanka.

The goblins Bom, Snooky and Tumpy and the brownies Chippy, Snippy and Tiggy made their way from the pages of: "The Goblins Looking-Glass" (1947), "Billy's Little Boats" (1971) and "The Firework Goblins" (1971) to the scientific literature in a quest to shed light on the remarkable biodiversity of the island country of Sri Lanka, Indian Ocean.

Continued  

Wild Sri Lankan elephants retreat from sound of disturbed Asian honey bees

Date:  January 22, 2018

Source:  University of Oxford

Summary:

A new study using playbacks, has for the first time shown that Asian elephants in Sri Lanka are scared of honey bees, much like their African counterparts. The study showed that Asian elephants responded with alarm to the bee simulations. They also retreated significantly further away and vocalized more in response to the bee sounds compared to controls.

Read more  

Sri Lanka destroys huge illegal ivory haul

Government publicly destroys biggest ever illegal ivory haul in bid to show poachers it will not tolerate the violent trade

Tuesday 26 January 2016 10.19 GMTLast modified on Tuesday 26 January 201610.22 GMT

 The Sri Lankan government on Tuesday publicly destroyed its biggest ever illegal ivory haul in what customs officials said was an attempt to show poachers that the island will not tolerate the violent trade.

More than 350 tusks were displayed at the Galle Face promenade in the island’s capital Colombo before being fed into a 100-tonne crusher to be sent to an industrial furnace.

The haul, which experts said came from African elephants slaughtered for their tusks, was seized at Colombo’s port nearly four years ago en route to Dubai from Kenya.

“There are some very small tusks which would have come from baby elephants,” Colombo customs director, Udayantha Liyanage, told reporters.

“We are trying to demonstrate that there is no value for blood ivory ... It is horribly cruel and the elephants suffer for about a week before they die,” he said.

Blood ivory is a term used by activists to describe tusks obtained illegally by slaughtering elephants.

The organisers observed a two-minute silence for the slain elephants before Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim leaders performed funeral rites for the animals.

Liyanage detected the container-load holding 359 pieces of ivory in May 2012 while it was in transit to Dubai from the Kenyan port of Mombasa, falsely labelled as storing plastic waste.

Officials confiscated the ivory in line with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna regulations, the customs director said.

The illegal trade in ivory from African elephants is driven by Asian and Middle Eastern demand for their tusks, which are used in ornaments and medicines.

Most Sri Lankan elephants do not have tusks and the animals are venerated and protected by law.

Read on …

Sri Lanka to start New Year with Ivory burn

Posted on December 25, 2015 by Kevin Heath

Sri Lanka has made an unexpected and sudden U-turn in its resistance to destroy its ivory stockpiles. The government has announced that on 26th January it will burn a stockpile of 5,000 seized tusks to put them beyond economic use.

Sri Lanka has always resisted pressure to destroy its stocks and had announced that seized tusks and ivory would be given to temples and religious buildings. The new mandate, announced on 16th December, will see the government stockpile burned at the Holcim Cement Plant in January 26, 2016. Senior government and NGO members will be present at the burn. The tusks will also undergo a religious ceremony before the destruction.

The 5,000 tusks that will be destroyed represents the killing of at least 2,500 elephants. The tusks were seized by customs on May 14th 2012 and all come from Africa. The consignment was on route to Dubai from Kenya when the consignment was discovered.

Minister Gamini Jayawickrama Perera said the destruction would ensure that the seized ivory would not make its way back onto the illegal market and would be in keeping with international laws to protect the survival of elephants.

Source...

Campaign for temple elephant Saama gathers momentum

A social media campaign asking for the release of the temple elephant Saama from the Alan Mathiniyaramaya Temple in Colombo, Sri Lanka has been growing in strength and numbers over the last few weeks. A petition asking the Sri Lankan Department of Wildlife Conservation to intervene has now more than 8,000 signatures, and been shared on Facebook more than 7,000 times and has been tweeted almost 4,000 times; and it is still growing.

The 27 year-old elephant has been reported as being in bad condition and in need of veterinary care, and following pleas from the public staff from the Born Free Foundation paid a visit to the site. 

A statement released from the charity said: “At the time of the visit, Saama was being bathed in a pool below the Temple by two young handlers. As we approached the pool, staff from the temple approached us and made it clear that our presence was not welcome and we were left with no option but to leave.

Continued ...

Fence of trees to stem human-elephant conflict

21 August 2014 Last updated at 16:52

By Siva Parameswaran

BBC Tamil service

An unprecedented drought in Sri Lanka is exacerbating the longstanding potential for conflict between humans an elephants, reports suggest.

But a "fence" of palmyra trees is starting to yield success.

With forest vegetation and water holes vanishing, hundreds of elephants are reported to have approached settlements in search of food and water.

Sri Lanka has been dealing with the issue for years, and it has led to the deaths of people and elephants.

An average of 50 humans and 160 elephant deaths has occurred annually, statistics reveal.

The palmyra fence is an attempt to find a sustainable solution to human-elephant conflict.

Researchers have told the BBC that the fence has been successfully tested in Sri Lanka.

The option is cost effective, durable and sustainable, Ranasinghe Perera, head of the programme Practical Action in Sri Lanka, told the BBC Tamil Service.

Continued ...

Fish rain down on Sri Lanka village

Many of the fish that rained down were still alive when villagers collected them

Villagers in west Sri Lanka have said they have been surprised and delighted by an unusual rainfall of small fish.

The edible fish fell during a storm and are believed to have been lifted out of a river during a strong wind.

Villagers in the district of Chilaw said they heard something heavy falling and found scores of fish with a total weight of 50kg (110lbs).

It is not the first such incident in Sri Lanka - in 2012, a case of "prawn rain" was recorded in the south.

The most likely cause of this unusual event probably relates to the formation of a tornado. Tornadoes tend to form in areas where large differences in both temperature, humidity and wind speed and direction occur.

Complex meteorological processes result in a rapidly rotating column of air spinning out of the base of storm clouds, often causing huge damage and acting like vacuum cleaners, sucking up any material in their path.

In the Sri Lankan storm, a tornado probably formed over land, drifted over river systems or coastal waters and sucked up light fish that were lifted all the way into the base of the storm cloud. Later the fish were rained out of the cloud.

So why don't we see similar events occurring over places such as the infamous "Tornado Alley" in the USA?

Tornadoes there usually form well away from any mass expanses of water, reducing the likelihood of any fish being sucked up. The stronger tornadoes also tend to form more frequently across large land masses where huge temperature and humidity differences are more commonplace.

Scientists say that "fish rain" usually occurs when swirling whirlwinds over relatively shallow water develops into waterspouts and sucks in almost anything in the water including fish, eels and even frogs.

The marine life can be carried long distances by buffeting clouds even when the waterspout stops spinning.

Continued

Not seen in over 130 years, 'extinct' frog rediscovered in Sri Lanka

Jeremy Hance

mongabay.com 

January 10, 2014

In 1876—the same year that the first telephone call was made—the British scientist Albert Günther described a new species of frog from Sri Lanka, but the species, known as the webless shrub frog (Pseudophilautus hypomelas), was never seen again. Having disappeared into history, scientists considered the species extinct—that is until a 2010 expedition stumbled on 40 mystery frogs. 

"During a nocturnal sampling on the 06 April 2010, about 40 frogs resembling Pseudophilautus hypomelas were noticed from the Peak Wilderness Sanctuary," write scientists, led by L.J. Mendis Wickramasinghe, in the Journal of Threatened Taxa.

 

Read more at

http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0110-hance-hypomelas.html#mgVpoKhmUoSWBmjO.99

Rare Horned Lizards of Sri Lanka Revealed – via Herp Digest

Posted by Liz Langley in Weird & Wild on November 28, 2013

New research on this little-known and much endangered genus of agamid lizard, which is found only in the tropical lowland and mountain cloud forests of Sri Lanka, is poised to shed a great deal of light on these creatures’ unusual horns.

Some other agamids have ornamentation including throat sacs or crests, like the burst of reptilian sunshine that is Lyriocepahlus scutatus (see picture below). The rarest ornaments, however, belong to the closely related Cerataphora lizards: Four of the five species have a horn on their noses that vary in size and shape depending on the species and sex. 

Despite their odd appearance, few studies have been done on these unique lizards, two of which are endangered and three of which are critically endangered, according to The National Redlist 2012 of Sri Lanka.

And the functions of these horns, scientists are discovering, might be as different as the horns themselves.

What’s in a Horn?

Ruchira Somaweera, a zoologist at the University of Sydney and principal investigator in the yearlong field study, which is funded by the National Geographic Society, said the data is still being analyzed, but the primary hypothesis is that the horns are used in communication within specific species. 

Somaweera and his team focused mainly on the critically endangered leaf-nosed lizards (C. tennentii) and found that on these and on rhino horn lizards (C. stoddartii), the males of both species can move their horns slowly at a 45-degree angle while opening their mouths in a threat display.

This may aid in communication between males, he said.

For some species, Somaweera said, the fact that both sexes have horns but they’re larger in males, might mean they have a role in attracting mates: For example, males with bigger horns could be more appealing to females.

Another theory is that the horns may be a form of camouflage helping the reptiles blend into their environment. This theory applies mainly to the leaf-nosed and rough-horned lizard (C. aspera), which may be able to blend in among twigs and leaves on the forest floor. (See “Colorful New Lizard Identified in Vietnam.”)

Adaptable Lizards

As different as their faces are, these lizards’ choices of habitat vary greatly as well. That’s why the team is also researching how lizards, especially C. tennentii, choose where they live, which includes factors such as climate, prey availability, and lack of human threat.

Ceratophora lizards’ current distribution—and scarcity—is shaped largely by historical and current agricultural practices, Somaweera said.

During the late 18th century, “expansive forest cover in Sri Lanka’s central mountain regions began to give way to ‘colonial landscape,’ including land used for cultivation of coffee and then tea, destroying most of the historic range of the rhino-horned C. stoddartii,” he said.

For the leaf-nosed C. tennetii, which is found only in the Knuckles mountain range, the current culprits of habitat loss are tea, pine, and cardamom plantations, he said.

He also said that Sri Lanka has a high population density, “by far the highest among the global diversity hotspots.” In the wet zone where Ceratophora lives, it’s approximately double the national average. The growing population means more land is needed for agriculture and other endeavors.

“On a positive note,” Somaweera said, “our work shows that these lizards are quite adaptable, and as long as there is sufficient canopy cover and [climatically favorable] pockets remaining, they could maintain stable populations in these disturbed habitats.”

Sri Lanka police in doghouse over canine 'wedding'

Sri Lanka's cultural affairs ministry has taken strong exception to a mass "wedding" of police dogs, which used symbols of traditional Buddhist nuptials on the Indian Ocean island.

Culture Minister T.B. Ekanayake demanded an explanation for Monday's ceremony in central Sri Lanka, which was intended to promote a programme to breed more sniffer dogs.

Police "married" nine pairs of dogs on a platform decked with white cloth and flowers symbolic of a traditional marriage ceremony. The brides were decked in mittens, shawls and hats while the grooms wore fancy neckties and shawls.

"Using hallowed national traditions at a dog show must be condemned with contempt," the minister told the state-run Dinamina daily. "They have devalued the (traditional) poruwa (wedding) ritual."

Police spokesman Buddhika Siriwardena said the police department regretted any offence caused to the cultural sensibilities of the population, which is 75 percent ethnic Sinhalese and Buddhist.

"The department wishes to express its deep regret over this matter," he said.

Constables served milk rice and cake to some 2,000 invitees and 20 police dogs attended the ceremony in the town of Kandy.

The dog couples were driven off in a police van to the hill resort of Nuwara Eliya for their "honeymoon".

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/sri-lanka-police-doghouse-over-canine-wedding-084538039.html#WKedJmq

Extraordinary footage of Orcas attacking Sperm whales off Sri Lanka

Rare behaviour caught on film 

May 2013. Shawn Heinrichs, of Blue Square Media, went to Sri Lanka to film Blue whales, but caught some extraordinary footage of an Orca pod attacking a group of sperm whales instead. 

Orca can grow up to 10 metres long, but usually measure 6-8 metres, and males weigh 6-8 tonnes. Sperm whale, by contrast, can grow up to 20 metres long and wiegh as much as 50 tonnes, and possess the largest teeth in the animal Kingdom. 

It is not unusual for predators to take on prey much larger than themsleves, especially when hunting in a pack (think of lions and buffalo, or even giraffe/hippo), but this behaviour has never been filmed before. 

My advice is to turn the sound down, and turn some dramatic music on instead (Ride of the Valkyrie, 633 Squadron), Heinrichs is a better camera man than narrator. 

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/orca-attack.html

Meet the Tarantula as Big as Your Face

Marc Lallanilla, Assistant Editor

Date: 04 April 2013 Time: 11:48 AM ET

It's big, it's hairy, and it's venomous.

The newest spider to give arachnophobes the willies, a tarantula named Poecilotheria rajaeihas been discovered on the island nation of Sri Lanka.

With a leg span of 8 inches (20 centimeters) and enough venom to kill mice, lizards, small birds and snakes, according to Sky News, the crawler is covered in subtle markings of gray, pink and daffodil yellow.

"It can be quite attractive, unless spiders freak you out," Peter Kirk, editor of the British Tarantula Society journal, told the New York Daily News.

Even the scientists studying the spiders admit to being a little freaked out by its size: "It was slightly smaller than the size of the plate we have dinner on," Ranil Nanayakkara, co-founder of Sri Lanka’s Biodiversity Education and Research, told the Daily News.

Tarantulas have been the subject of considerable study lately: Researchers are still trying to determine how or if tarantulas use silk from the spigots on their feet. And in 2012, a scientist reported discovering nine species of colorful Amazonian tarantulas in Brazil.

The newest tarantula, as part of the Poecilotheria genus of arachnids (sometimes called "Pokies" or tiger spiders), is a tree-dwelling spider. All the Pokies, known for being colorful, fast and venomous, are found only in India and Sri Lanka, Wired reports.

"They are quite rare," Nanayakkara told Wired. "They prefer well-established old trees, but due to deforestation the number have dwindled, and due to lack of suitable habitat they enter old buildings."

It's not yet known exactly how rare the newly discovered tarantula is, but there's some concern that habitat destruction is causing their number to dwindle. Additionally, northern Sri Lanka, where the spider was found, has been wracked by political violence in recent years.

"It demonstrates that wildlife continues to survive whilst we are in the throes of conflict and that they can adapt to its changing environment," Kirk told Sky News, "but … we risk destroying the habitats of species new to science and condemning them to extinction before they are even discovered."

http://www.livescience.com/28433-tarantula-poecilotheria-rajaei.html

Sri Lankan Snake Study Reveals New Species, Rich Biodiversity in Island Country

Mar. 12, 2013 — Alex Pyron's expertise is in family trees. Who is related to whom, who begat whom, how did they get where they are now. But not for humans: reptiles.

In 2011, his fieldwork in Sri Lanka studying snake diversity on the island led him to confirm the identity of 60 known species of snakes. With Sri Lankan collaborators, Ruchira Somaweera, an author on snakes and expert on amphibians and reptiles, and Dushantha Kandambi, a local naturalist and snake expert, the team collected the snakes and of those, Dr. Pyron used DNA sequencing technology on 40 of them. The study led to a greater understanding of how all the snakes are related to each other and their evolutionary relationship other species globally.

"We found that Sri Lanka has been colonized by snakes at least five times by totally different snake groups, which have each diversified heavily within the island," said Dr. Pyron, the Robert Griggs Assistant Professor of Biology at George Washington University in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.

Alex Pyron uses DNA sequencing to learn the history of native snakes. 

(Credit: Image courtesy of George Washington University)

Dr. Pyron's findings were recently featured in the March edition of the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.

One finding was a blindsnake, which on its own would be noteworthy but in this case, the blindsnake had a history on the island.

"Molecular data, or DNA, has revolutionized all fields, whether finding genes for cancer or detecting new species. In my field, uses of DNA are twofold: to discover if populations are really new species and two, to determine how species are related. We were able to do both of these things in Sri Lanka. We discovered the blindsnake and we suspected it was a new species, but when we sequenced it, we discovered that it was an entirely new lineage of blindsnake. It's still a blindsnake, but a new genus, a group of blindsnakes that had never been discovered or described.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130312134910.htm

Starry Frog is NOT Extinct After all! – via Herp Digest

Monogobay.com 3/8/13 -In 1853 Edward Frederick Kelaart, a physician and naturalist, collected a strange frog on the island of Sri Lanka then a British colony known as Ceylon. The specimen was a large shrub frog (about 2 inches or 5.5 centimeters long) with black-outlined white specks on lime-green skin. He dubbed it "starry" after its pale specks, but that was last anyone heard of it. Even the holotype—the body of the amphibian collected by Kelaart—went missing. Fast forward nearly 160 years—two world wars, Sri Lanka's independence, and a man on the moon—when a recent expedition into Sri Lanka's Peak Wilderness rediscovered a beguiling frog with pinkish specks.

"These quite stunning frogs were observed perched on leaves in the canopy. They were slow moving, we collected samples which we thought were new species. But after reviewing past work, [especially] extinct species, it was evident that this was Pseudophilautus stellatus," L.J. Mendis Wickramasinghe told mongabay. Kelaart's starry shrub frog, or Pseudophilautus stellatus, had been re-discovered.

Wickramasinghe, the lead author of the paper announcing the discovery in Zootaxa, says one reason why the starry shrub frog remained undetected for so long was its habitat.

"We worked in [parts of the Peak Wilderness Sanctuary] where previous studies had never taken place, in tough and rugged conditions, so hardly any researchers had actually gone to these sites," he explains.

In all the scientists identified 78 individuals during their surveys, but given its scarcity and likely small habitat, Wickramasinghe believes the species should be listed as Critically Endangered. The species is currently imperiled by expanding tea plantations, illegal gem mining, pollution from religious pilgrims, and forest dieback.

Sea Turtles breathe new life (Sri Lanka) – via Herp Digest

Sunday Observer, Sri Lanka, 1/6/13, by W.T.J.S. Kaviratne -Ambalangoda Special Correspondent

There are over 20 turtle conservation centres in Sri Lanka at present. The majority of these “ex-situ” conservation centres are along the coastal stretch of Kosgoda, Induruwa, Seenigama and Habaraduwa on the Southern Coast.

The island’s first turtle hatchery was set up at Kosgoda in 1978 with financial assistance of a German national, Victor Hasselblad, the owner of the company which made the world-famous Hasselblad cameras.

Dr. Upen de Silva, the late Dr. Wickremesinghe and Similias de Abrew were the other partners of this turtle conservation project. After the demise of the founder Similias Abrew who lived in Kosgoda, his son Chandrasiri Abrew undertook the management of the Kosgoda Turtle Conservation Centre. Over four million turtle hatchlings born at the Kosgoda Turtle Conservation Centre had been released so far to the nearby sea, Chandrasiri Abrew said.

According to scientific research, it is estimated that there are eight species of sea turtles in the world. Five of these species are in the habit of frequenting the beach stretches of the South Coast of Sri Lanka.

Loggerhead Turtle (Caretta caretta), Olive Ridley Turtle (Lapidochleys olivacea), Hawskbill Turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata), Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) and Leatherback Turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) visit the Southern, Western and South-Western coastline of Sri Lanka for nesting.

Unlike in the past, the fisherfolk on the South Coast now extend their cooperation for the conservation of turtles and have given up killing turtles for their flesh, Abrew said. The hatchery owners buy the eggs of turtles from the fisherfolk who collect the eggs from the nests at night.

Coral mining and illegal methods of fishing with the use of explosives have already destroyed the foraging grounds of turtles such as coral reefs and sea-grass beds in the ocean.

A turtle has a lifespan of nearly 80 years and a female turtle lays around 80 to 120 eggs in each nest dug into sand in the natural habitats. They lay eggs five times during a season.

The eggs are hatched within 45 - 60 days and after two or three days, the hatchlings come out of the nest and make their way straight to the sea. The hatchlings are known to swim non-stop for two days in a phenomenon known as “juvenile frenzy”.

Juvenile frenzy

Hatchlings do not need anything to feed during this juvenile frenzy as the strength is stored in their bodies. The hatchery owners bury the eggs in hand-dug chambers.

Even though keeping new-born turtle hatchlings in concrete tanks filled with sea water is a controversial environmental issue, contrary to natural conservation known as “in–situ” conservation, the turtle hatchery owners say they keep a very few of the new-borns in their tanks and 80 percent are safely released to the sea within 24 hours, during the dark hours of the evenings. The remaining 20 percent are released after two days.

According to the owners of turtle conservation centres, human activities such as the construction of tourist hotels in close proximity to the beach, removal of foliage in the beach, erecting powerful electric lamp posts on the beach, construction of boulders and beach erosion are some of the factors causing the fast dwindling of turtles.

Many of these turtle conservation centres have become rehabilitation centres as well for the physically handicapped turtles caught on beach stretches. There are blind and injured turtles in these conservation centres undergoing treatment. Some turtles have lost their limbs as a result of being run over by motor boats.

Hatchery owners said they retain albino turtles for nearly five years in the tanks and release them to the sea.

Maintaining a turtle hatchery is very expensive, they said. Nearly Rs. 500,000 needs to be spent to look after a turtle for five years. A large amount of money has to be spent on the construction and repair of tanks, pumping sea water, cleaning and purchasing fish for feeding. They said they depend entirely on the entrance fees charged from tourists and during the off-seasons they find it extremely difficult to maintain the turtle conservation centres.

Rock solid proof of alien life? Scientists claim fossilized algae inside meteorite

Fossilized algae recently discovered inside a Sri Lankan meteorite could finally prove the existence of extra-terrestrial life, claim the authors of the new paper.

In a recently published article in the Journal of Cosmology titled “Fossil Diatoms in a New Carbonaceous Meteorite”, scientists from the UK and Sri Lanka claim to have found fossilized algae in a meteorite.

The paper alleges that “microscopic fossilized diatoms were found in the sample,” which fell in Sri Lanka in December last year. The finding, the work suggests is a “strong evidence to support the theory of cometary panspermia.” The theory argues that life across planets is spread by meteorites and asteroids.  Panspermia suggests that life could have existed on another planet and moved to Earth.

The scientists concluded the paper by saying “the presence of structures of this kind in any extra-terrestrial setting could be construed as unequivocal proof of biology.”

Samples from the rock were collected immediately after a large meteorite disintegrated and fell in the village of Araganwila in Sri Lanka on 29 December 2012.

The scientific community, including Prof Francis Thackeray from the Institute of Human Evolution at Wits University welcomed the report as  “very exciting” yet “very controversial”, as samples could have been contaminated on earth, Business Day reports.

Continued:  http://rt.com/news/meteorite-life-report-mars-310/

A potentially dangerous situation is developing in Sri Lanka’s Yala National Park

Please don't feed the elephants - Written by Srilal Miththapala

January 2013. There is a serious situation developing in Sri Lanka's Yala National Park, due to a particular adult male elephant becoming too acclimatized to tourist jeeps and interacting with the visitors closely.

Mature tusker
This elephant is a mature tusker, known as ‘Gemunu', that has become a very popular & iconic elephant in Yala for over a decade now. However, for the past year, he has begun to have close contact with jeeps, most probably because he is being fed by the tourists or even the jeep drivers in an effort to keep their clients happy. Elephants are very intelligent animals and can learn certain behaviours quickly.

Do's and don'ts for visitors to Yala National Park, which could in some way help mitigate this problem.

Don't take food items into the park. If you have to, please ensure they are in air tight containers so that odours and smells are minimized. 

If you come across Gemunu (very easily distinguished by his big tusks), do not stop, and do try to move away. However, this may not be possible as he stands in the middle of the road and blocks the path. 

In all instances, be guided by the Wildlife Department tracker. But in some instances, due to the demand, trackers are not provided for every jeep. In such cases, please do not allow the jeep driver to show-off by stopping for Gemunu. 

If Gemunu is too close, don't try to drive away, as this may alarm him. Stay quiet and as calm as possible. He is usually very docile and has not harmed anyone.

Do not take any chances, however exciting and exhilarating the experience of having a full grown elephant calmly check you out at such close quarters. Remember he is a WILD ELEPHANT and could be potentially very very dangerous. 

Very often, he gets hemmed-in the middle of a convoy of vehicles. The vehicles in front should move away, without waiting for photo opportunities, allowing other vehicles to also move. 

So far he has been sighted on the main road, but he could possibly come across to the places where people alight from the jeeps to have a snack, such Patanangala. So be careful at any location where you leave your jeep, and if he is sighted immediately get back into your jeeps.

Potentially dangerous
The situation has reached a very critical point, where Gemunu now is bold enough to walk right up to a jeep and put his trunk completely in to the jeep, searching for food items. In fact, last week when I was in Yala, I saw him putting his entire head into a jeep; thankfully there were only two guests in the jeep and they managed to squeeze to the other side while he rummaged around the jeep, took out a knapsack and destroyed it. These guests were extremely traumatized by this experience.

While this certainly provides a once- in- a life-time exciting experience, it could very easily turn into a serious incident. 

The only way to stop this is by gradually ‘teaching' Gemunu that coming and searching the jeeps for food will not yield any success. There is no other way he can be constrained. 

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/yala-elephant.html

Asian elephants have intricate social networks

Social networking elephants never forget

December 2012. Asian elephants typically live in small, flexible, social groups centred around females and calves while adult males roam independently. However, new research shows that while Asian elephants in Sri Lanka may change their day to day associations they maintain a larger, stable, network of friends from which they pick their companions.

Social networking
Researchers followed the friendships among over a hundred female adult Asian elephants in the Uda Walawe National Park in Sri Lanka for five seasons and analysed how these relationships changed over time. While the elephants tended to congregate in groups containing three adult females, there could be as many as 17 in a single group. Social strategies were also variable, with some elephants always being seen in each other's company while others were 'social butterflies' who frequently changed companions. Surprisingly, 16% completely changed their 'top five' friends over the course of the study. Elephants who had few companions were very faithful to them, whereas those who had many tended to be less loyal.

Analysis of elephant 'ego-networks' showed that Asian elephants tended to also associate with larger sets of companions, especially in dry seasons. Social bonds were especially strong when resources were scarce, even to the extent of expelling unfamiliar elephants from sources of water. This may be due in part to the ecology of their environment, because other elephants, which live in drier areas, congregate in greater numbers in wet seasons. It was previously thought that, unlike African savannah elephants, Asian elephants had no extensive social affiliations, but at the population level, extensive clusters of interconnected groups were discovered.

Trunk calls
Dr Shermin de Silva from the University of Pennsylvania explained that, "Elephants are able to track one another over large distances by calling to each other and using their sense of smell. So the 'herd' of elephants one sees at any given time is often only a fragment of a much larger social group. Our work shows that they are able recognize their friends and renew these bonds even after being apart for a long time."

The research was published in published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Ecology

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/sri-lanka-elephants.html

Elephant Relocation Scheme Fails to Prevent Deaths

An attempt to save the lives of both elephants and people by moving the pachyderms away from humans has failed in Sri Lanka, a new study finds.

Instead of the relocated elephants living peacefully in their new homes, they wandered, researchers found. Relocated elephants died more often than problem elephants left in their original range. The relocated elephants also killed more people than elephants that stayed put.

"We were stunned that translocation neither solves the conflict nor saves elephants," study researcher Peter Leimgruber, a research scientist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, said in a statement.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/25362-elephant-relocation-scheme-fails.html

The world’s rarest toad rediscovered in Sri Lanka

Only ever recorded twice in the 1870s

June 2012. Adenomus kandianus was previously known only from two specimens, both deposited in the British Museum. The only record of A. kandianus since the initial description in 1872 was in 1876, making A. kandianus the world's rarest toad.

The species had not been reported since, and was considered extinct. However the toad was rediscovered in the Peak Wilderness Sanctuary one of the few remaining areas in Sri Lanka with a continuous natural forest cover of altitudinal graded forest types, ranging from lowland mixed Dipterocarp forests to montane cloud forests.

Adenomus kandianus is one of the 21 amphibian species thought to be extinct from Sri Lanka after extensive searches over a ten-year period failed to locate this species in the wild. A global amphibian hotspot, the island of Sri Lanka contains 111 species of amphibians that have been described so far, and it also carries the dubious distinction of contributing the highest proportion (60%) to the global list of extinct amphibians.

Click here to read the full paper on Zootaxa 

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