April 29, 2007, 7:25 PM CT

The Chimpanzee Stone Age

Before this study, chimpanzees were first observed using stone tools in the 19th century. Now, thanks to this new archaeological find, tool use by chimpanzees has been pushed back thousands of years. The authors suggest this type of tool use could have originated with our common ancestor, instead of arising independently among hominins and chimpanzees or through imitation of humans by chimpanzees.

This study confirmed that chimpanzees and human ancestors share for thousands of years several cultural attributes once thought exclusive of humanity, including transport of raw materials across the landscape; selection and curation of raw materials for a specific type of work and projected usage; habitual reoccupation of sites where garbage and debris accumulate; and the use of locally available resources. Nut cracking behaviour in chimpanzees is transmitted socially, and the new discoveries presented in this study shows that such behaviour has been transmitted over the course of many chimpanzee generations. Chimpanzee prehistory has deep roots!

The study of our living closest relative, the chimpanzee, constantly highlights new aspects of human evolution, and a better protection of this endangered species will guarantee that we can continue uncovering new facets of our past. Relevant finds come from all parts of the African continent, including the rainforest, and not just the classical east African homeland......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

April 29, 2007, 4:00 PM CT

Bill To Protect Bristol Bay

Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA), Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD), and Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) has recently introduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that would permanently prohibit oil and gas leasing in Bristol Bay, Alaska and the surrounding waters in the Bering Sea.

On January 9, 2007, President Bush rescinded a long-standing presidential moratorium that prohibited drilling in Bristol Bay. In July, the Minerals Management Service will release a 5-year plan that is expected to recommend oil and gas development in Bristol Bay and other areas along our nation's fragile coastlines.

"Congressmen Inslee, Gilchrest and Hinchey are coming to the rescue of Bristol Bay, and all the people who depend on it, at its time of greatest need," said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund. "Oil and gas drilling in Bristol Bay is a risk we can't afford to take. It would jeopardize the nation's most important fishery, hundreds of communities reliant on fishing and a treasure trove of wildlife".

Bristol Bay is the epicenter of the Bering Sea fishery whose commercial salmon, halibut, herring and crab fisheries generate more than $2 billion annually. Sport hunters and fishermen flock to the bay each year, pumping millions more into the economy. And the region's spectacular wildlife supports scores of Alaskan natives who rely on a healthy ecosystem for food......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

April 29, 2007, 3:57 PM CT

First-Ever Camera Trap Video of Rare Borneo Rhino

WWF has captured the first-ever "camera trap" footage of a species that just a few people have ever seen. WWF and Malaysia's Sabah Wildlife Department released footage of a Borneo Rhino which shows it eating, walking to the camera and sniffing the equipment. The first still photo of a Borneo rhino was captured only last year.

Researchers estimate there are between 25 and 50 rhinos left on the island of Borneo, the last survivors of the Bornean subspecies of Sumatran rhinos. The rhinos live only in the interior forests of Sabah, Malaysia, an area known as the "Heart of Borneo."

"These are very shy animals that are almost never seen by people," said Mahedi Andau, director of the Sabah Wildlife Department. "This video gives us an amazing opportunity to spy on the rhino's behavior."

There have been no confirmed reports of rhinos on Borneo apart from those in Sabah for almost 20 years, leading experts to fear that the species may now be extinct on the rest of the island. The rhino's threats include poaching, illegal encroachment into key rhino habitats, and the fact that the remaining rhinos are so isolated that they may rarely or never meet to breed.

"This astonishing footage captures of one of the world's most elusive creatures," said Carter Roberts, CEO and president of World Wildlife Fund. "Tremendous progress has been made in recent years to secure the rhino's habitat but so much more needs to be done considering this species may very well disappear in the next 10 years"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

April 29, 2007, 12:14 AM CT

Elephants as Roadkill

What was once the remote heart of wild Africa has become an increasingly fragmented wilderness, crisscrossed with roads and swarming with human activity. The new roads that cut through the Congo Basin have spawned numerous human settlements and serve as direct conduits for loggers and poachers who come seeking the forest's bounty. For the little-known forest elephant, a native of the forests of west and central Africa, researchers are calling these roads highways of death.

A new study coordinated by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) observed that as encroachment into the forest increases, elephant numbers are plummeting, especially near roadways where ivory poachers travel. A booming illegal ivory trade to China and other countries is driving poaching in central Africa. In response to the new threat, elephants are retreating to the remote depths of national parks.

The researchers walked more than 3,700 miles in five countries, covering more than 26,000 square miles. They counted elephant dung to tally individuals as well as elephant carcasses left behind by poachers. The surveys were conducted under the auspices of MIKE (Monitoring of the Illegal Killing of Elephants), a program authorized by a resolution from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) to look at poaching trends. Forest elephants have not been previously studied on this scale since 1989, when their population was estimated at 170,000 individuals......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

April 29, 2007, 12:11 AM CT

Good News for Gorillas

Mountain gorillas are still hanging tough in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, one of only two places in the world where these endangered great apes live. A recent census in the park observed that the population has increased by 6 percent since the last census in 2002, up from 320 to 340 individual gorillas. Staff from Uganda Wildlife Authority, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Max Planck Institute of Anthropology, and other groups conducted the latest survey between April and June 2006.

"This is great news for all of the organizations that have worked to protect Bwindi and its gorillas," said WCS researcher Dr. Alastair McNeilage, who also directs the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation in Bwindi. "There are very few cases in this world where a small population of endangered primates is actually increasing".

The scientists surveyed the distribution, size, and makeup of the Bwindi population, and gauged human impacts on the gorillas. Because the gorillas inhabit a relatively small area-Bwindi Impenetrable National Park covers only 127 square miles-the team was able to count every family group in the forest. In addition to tallying trails and nests, they used genetic samples from fecal specimens to identify and distinguish individual gorillas......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

April 24, 2007, 11:07 PM CT

Hibernating Bears Conserve More Strength

A fascinating new study from the May/June 2007 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology quantifiably measures the loss of strength and endurance in black bears during long periods of hibernation. T.D. Lohuis (Alaska Department of Fish and Game) and his coauthors find that black bears in hibernation lose about one-half as much skeletal muscle strength as humans confined to bed rest for similar periods of time do.

"Fasting, unweighting, or immobility results in compromised muscle function," explain the authors. They continue, "Because bears are confined and anorexic for several months during winter but can still retain muscle protein and display sustained activity if disturbed, we measured skeletal muscle strength, fatigue resistance, and in vivo contractile properties of intact muscles in bears within their natural dens".

Adapting a system used for the evaluation of neuromuscular disease progression in humans, the scientists tested black bears from Middle Park, Colorado, both early and late in the hibernation cycle. After sampling, bears were placed back in their den, and the entrance was covered with pine boughs and snow.

The scientists observed that after 110 days of anorexia and confinement in the den, bears lost about 29% of their muscle strength. In comparison, humans on a balanced diet but confined to bed for 90 days have been reported to lose 54% of their strength. Other studies have shown that human astronauts in a weightless environment lose 9%11% of their strength during a 17-day spaceflight......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

April 23, 2007, 10:02 PM CT

Mosquito genes and climate change

University of Oregon scientists studying mosquitoes have produced the first chromosomal map that shows regions of chromosomes that activate and are apparently evolving in animals in response to climate change.

The map will allow scientists to narrow their focus to identify specific genes that control the seasonal development of animals. Such information will help predict which animals may survive in changing climates and identify which disease-carrying vectors may move northward, allowing for the production of appropriate vaccines, said William E. Bradshaw and Christina M. Holzapfel, scientists in the department of biology and members of the UO Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

"For the first time, we are moving down the track to identify genes that animals use to control their seasonal development," Bradshaw said. "Response to day length is often the primary cue that organisms use for going dormant, and eventhough human beings are not as strongly seasonal as other animals, there are nonetheless seasonal components to our health and welfare just as there are in plants and animals".

The chromosomal map for the mosquito Wyeomyia smithii, which develop within the carnivorous leaves of pitcher plants, appears online ahead of publication in the recent issue of the journal Genetics. The UO scientists identified regions on three chromosomes that respond to length of day, which researchers call photoperiodism. Two of the chromosomes also have overlapping gene expression that tells the species to go dormant, which they must do to survive......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

April 23, 2007, 9:59 PM CT

World's most endangered cat: Amur leopard

Following the April 18 announcement that only 25 to 34 of the Amur or Far Eastern leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) remain in the wild, World Wildlife Fund says the number must now be revised because a female Amur leopard was killed.

Anonymous tips led officers of two leopard anti-poaching squads to the body of the leopardess on April 20 about two miles from Bamburovo village within the watershed of Alimovka River on the territory of Barsovy National Wildlife Refuge.

The next day veterinarians from the Zoological Society of London observed that the 77 pound mature female leopard was shot in the back side. The bullet came through tail bone, crushed the hip bones and lodged in the belly. She was then beaten to death with a heavy object.

The killing of even one female is a huge loss for a cat on the brink of extinction, said Darron Collins, managing director of the Amur-Heilong Program, World Wildlife Fund. This years census showed a desperate situation, with just seven female Amur leopards left in the wild and four rearing cubs. Now weve lost a mature, reproductive leopardess and her potential cubs in a senseless killing. This is the third leopard killed within this area over the last five years and underscores the desperate need for a unified protected area with national park status if the leopard is to survive in the wild......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

April 23, 2007, 5:32 PM CT

Residual Oil is Still Affecting Wildlife

Nearly four decades after a fuel oil spill polluted the beaches of Cape Cod, scientists have found the first compelling evidence for lingering, chronic biological effects on a marsh that otherwise appears to have recovered.

Through a series of field observations and laboratory experiments with salt marsh fiddler crabs (Uca pugnax), doctoral student Jennifer Culbertson and his colleagues observed that burrowing behavior, escape response, feeding rate, and population abundance are significantly altered when the crabs are exposed to leftover oil compounds from a 1969 spill.

The study builds on prior work by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), which showed that oil compounds from the 1969 wreck of the barge Florida are still lingering in the sediments 8 to 20 centimeters below the surface of Wild Harbor in Falmouth, Mass. Burrowing fiddler crabs in the marsh still won't dig more than a few centimeters into the sediments in the areas most affected by the spill.

Culbertson a graduate student from the Boston University Marine Program (BUMP) and a guest student at WHOI, conducted the research in collaboration with WHOI marine chemist Chris Reddy, ecologist Ivan Valiela of the Marine Biological Laboratory, and several student colleagues from WHOI and BUMP. The findings were reported in the online version of Marine Pollution Bulletin on April 19, 2007 and it will appear later this spring in a printed edition......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

April 21, 2007, 8:40 AM CT

Monkeys' ability to reflect on their thoughts

New research from Columbia's Primate Cognition Laboratory has demonstrated for the first time that monkeys could acquire meta-cognitive skills: the ability to reflect about their thoughts and to assess their performance.

The study was a collaborative effort between Herbert Terrace, Columbia professor of psychology & psychiatry, and director of its Primate Cognition Laboratory, and two graduate students, Lisa Son now professor of psychology at Barnard College and UCLA postdoctoral researcher Nate Kornell.

The study, which appears in the recent issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, was designed to show that a monkey could express its confidence in its answers to multiple-choice questions about its memory based on the amount of imaginary currency it was willing to wager. Their experiment was derived from the observation that children often make pretend bets to assert that they know the answer to some question. According to Son, "the ability to reflect on one's knowledge has always been thought of as exclusively human. We designed a task to determine if a non-human primate could similarly learn to express its confidence about its knowledge by making large or small wagers".

In the experiment, two monkeys were trained to play a video game that would test their ability to remember a particular photograph while also allowing them to make a large or a small bet. Ultimately, this wager would reflect the monkey's perception of their memory accuracy......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source