Housewife 'was raised by monkeys'

A Yorkshire housewife claims she spent five years of her childhood living with a colony of capuchin monkeys in Colombia.

Marina Chapman, who now lives in Bradford, says she learnt to catch birds and rabbits with her bare hands after being abandoned in the jungle by kidnappers.

Her time with the monkeys ended when she was discovered by hunters but by her ordeal continued when she was sold to a brothel in the city of Cucuta.

She escaped and spent years on the streets, sometimes being arrested and kept in a cell, but was eventually taken in by a Colombian family to work as a maid in her mid-teens.

In her mid-twenties she travelled with a neighbouring family who went to stay in Bradford on business for six months - and stayed after she met John Chapman, then a 29-year-old bacteriologist, at a church meeting. They married in 1977.

She and her family have now decided to tell her story to help highlight the horrors of human trafficking in South America.

Mrs Chapman believes she was born in about 1950 and that she was kidnapped when she was five before being abandoned in the jungle.

"It's assumed that the kidnap went wrong," said Vanessa James, one of Chapman's two daughters. The film and TV composer has helped her mother with her book, The Girl with No Name.

"All she can remember is being chloroformed with a hand over her mouth. And all she can recall of her life before that is having a black doll as a toddler.

"She obviously learnt to fend for herself and only once got very ill when she ate some poisonous berries.

"I got bedtime stories about the jungle, as did my sister. We didn't think it odd - it was just Mum telling her life. So in a way it was nothing special having a mother like that."

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

Corticosterone and Thyroxine in Cold-Stunned Kemp’s Ridley Sea turtle (Lepidochelys Kempii) - via Herp Digest

Kathleen E. Hunt, Ph.D., Charles Innis, V.M.D., Dipl. A.B.V.P. (Reptile and Amphibian), and Rosalind M. Rolland, D.V.M.

 From the New England Aquarium, 1 Central Wharf, Boston, Massachusetts 02110, USA (Hunt, Innis, Rolland). Correspondence should be directed to Dr. Hunt (huntk@neaq.org).

Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine 43(3):479-493. 2012
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1638/2011-0149R1.1

Abstract: 

Kemp's ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys kempii), a critically endangered species, frequently strand on the shores of Cape Cod (Massachusetts, USA) in late autumn in a state of “cold-stunning” exhibiting low body temperature and related clinical issues. Stranded turtles are transported to the New England Aquarium (Boston, Massachusetts, USA) for treatment and rehabilitation. This study tested the hypothesis that cold-stunned sea turtles might exhibit high corticosterone (“stress hormone”) or low thyroxine (which is often affected by temperature), or both, and that monitoring of both hormones may be useful for assessing recovery. In a retrospective analysis, 87 archived plasma samples were assayed from 56 cold-stunned juvenile Kemp's ridley sea turtles for corticosterone and free thyroxine (fT4). Upon admission, mean corticosterone was the highest yet reported for a population of sea turtles (39.3 ± 2.5 ng/ml; mean ± standard error of the mean [SEM]) and fT4 was usually undetectable. On admission, corticosterone was negatively correlated with white blood cell count but was not correlated with blood glucose. There were no differences in either hormone between survivors and nonsurvivors on admission. After 18+ days in recovery, surviving turtles' corticosterone dropped significantly to levels typical of baseline in other species (0.9 ± 1.0 ng/ml) while fT4 increased significantly (1.3 ± 1.5 pg/ml). During recovery, corticosterone was positively correlated with blood glucose and was not correlated with white blood cell count. Turtles that showed persistent deficits in feeding, activity, or both during recovery had significantly lower fT4 than did turtles with no such deficits. The “high corticosterone, low fT4” endocrine profile seen on admission may be a useful marker of cold-stunning in this and other species. Further studies are necessary to determine whether low thyroid hormones play a causal role in deficits in feeding and activity during recovery. Monitoring of both hormones may be useful for triage, monitoring of recovery, and assessing readiness for release.

Live Shark Found Writhing On Golf Course

You've heard of pool sharks, but golf sharks are an entirely different matter.

Workers at the San Juan Hills golf course in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., were shocked on Monday when they came across a live shark flipping and flapping around the 12th hole tee.

"Our marshalls were doing their rounds and came across the fish writhing on the tee," Melissa McCormack, director of club operations, told The Huffington Post. "It was about two feet long so he put in the back of the golf cart."

Back at the clubhouse, the employees quickly figured out it was a shark, most likely a leopard shark, which are commonly found in bay environments and shallow waters along the West Coast, from as far south as Mazatlan, Mexico northward to Oregon, according to the Capistrano Dispatch newspaper.

As for how it got to the course, McCormack thinks it was meant to be a meal for some predatory bird.

"We're obviously not experts, but there were puncture marks and blood that is consistent with what we would expect those markings to look like," she said.

The course is more than a mile from the nearest ocean and McCormack and crew realized the shark needed to get back there in order to live, NBCSanDiego.com reported.

Read more:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/live-shark-found-on-golf-course_n_2007139.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-news

High-Protein Diet Not So Good for Kitty's Belly, Study Suggests

Your kitten may prefer dining on chicken and salmon, but a high-protein diet may not be the best option for Fluffykins, at least if gut bacteria are any indication. Kittens fed a high-protein, low-carb diet have lower levels of helpful gut bacteria than those fed a more balanced ratio of nutrients, according to a new study. 

Many new cat foods claim they are tailored to the feline's carnivorous nature.

"There are a lot of diets now, all natural, that have high protein and fat and not much dietary fiber or carbohydrates," said study co-author and University of Illinois researcher Kelly Swanson in a press release.

But it isn't clear that high-protein diets are actually good for cats.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/24174-high-protein-cat-diet.html

Blue Iguana Slithers Back from Extinction

Just a decade ago, the Grand Cayman blue iguana was on the brink of extinction, with only 10 to 25 individuals left in the wild. But the reptile has made a major comeback and is no longer listed as a critically endangered species.

The blue iguana, which is only found on the Caribbean island Grand Cayman, now has a population of about 750 thanks to a recovery program. And over the weekend, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) updated its listing of the species from critically endangered to endangered.

An endangered status is probably the best conservationists could ever hope for as far as the reptile is concerned, said Fred Burton, director of the Blue Iguana Recovery Program.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/24159-blue-iguana-slithers-back-from-extinction.html