#Elusive Pandas Caught on Camera in China Habitat New hidden camera footage from the giant panda's home offers a peek into the secret lives of China's wild creatures.
The newly released images and videos from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) show the famously endangered bears as well as some of their neighbors red pandas leopard cats
and macaques among them exploring their natural habitat. The footage comes from more than 100 automated infrared camera traps set up in nature reserves in the Sichuan region.
The images were obtained where there was little external disturbance and therefore they truly reflect the conditions of those species in the wild Jiang Zeyin species program officer at WWF-China said in a statement.
Wild Panda Caught on Camera But the camera traps may not have caught all of the animals unawares.
In one video clip of a group of Tibetan stump-tailed macaques one of the monkeys curiously sticks its face in front of the camera
and looks as if it's inspecting the lens. Footage of wild giant pandas is of particular interest
because there are thought to be just 1600 of the lumbering black-and-white bears left in China.
The cameras also captured other threatened species including tree-loving Asiatic black bears which are hunted for their skins paws
and even gall bladders for use in certain Asian medical traditions. Brilliantly colored birds like golden pheasants and temminck's tragopans posed for pictures too as did haired yellow-throated martens golden takins and wild boars.
Conservationists contend that efforts to protect so-called umbrella species or flagship species like giant pandas can give a boost to other species that share its habitat.
WWF officials said the diversity of animals in the footage is an encouraging sign that current efforts are working.
The images demonstrate that through the conservation of the giant panda a flagship umbrella species we can also protect other threatened wildlife from the same habitat
and preserve biological diversity Fan Zhiyong director of the WWF species program in China said in a statement.
China has more than 10 flagship species including Amur tigers musk deer and the Yangtze finless porpoise according to WWF.
All told China is considered one of the mega-biodiversity countries with more than 6500 species of vertebrates.
and butterfly wings make use of some unique surface characteristics that promote self-cleaning. The researchers believe that incorporating some of these features into man-made products might be key to tackling problems associated with biofouling.
while a ship gets bogged down by barnacles as it crosses the ocean a shark swimming in the same ocean remains clean as a whistle.
and butterfly wings combine the low drag of shark skin with the superhydrophobicity of the lotus leaf putting these surfaces at the top of the list of nature-made self-cleaners.
and butterfly wings came to the investigators from observing these structures in their natural habitats.
and butterfly wings roll off effortlessly and that each remains clean in their respective environment says Bhushan.
and lotus leaves rice leaves and butterfly wings have special properties that make them particularly resistant to fouling.
Like shark skin rice leaves and butterfly wings exhibited low drag and self-cleaning properties.
Both rice leaves and butterfly wings contain micro -and nano-sized features that repel and direct water in one direction says Bixler.
and butterfly wings combine antifouling properties of some of nature's best self-cleaners Bhushan and Bixler have identified new surfaces that can be used as engineering inspiration for a wide range of industries plagued by biofouling.
and butterfly wing-inspired films for applications requiring low drag self-cleaning and antifouling say Bhushan.
Bushan's study on rice leaves and butterfly wings was titled Bioinspired rice leaf and butterfly wing surface structures combining shark skin
and lotus effects and was published online in the journal Soft Matter on September 11 2012. DOI:
#Environmental law Fuels Black market Trade in Cat Skins Fluffy hold on to your fur: Some scoundrels may want a piece of you.
A lucrative trade in cat fur is booming in Switzerland and as a result many domestic cats are disappearing animal advocates say.
Animal rights activists say a law allowing citizens to shoot housecats that are more than 656 feet (200 meters) from their houses is to blame.
The law was designed to protect wildlife from free-roaming cats. Past studies have shown that cats kill billions of birds and other wildlife a year.
But activists say the law is being used as a cover to pick off innocent pets and skin them for their fur The Verge reported.
The cat fur trade was outlawed in Switzerland in 2008 but aâ cat-fur blanket can fetch more than $1700 according to The Verge article.
An advocacy group called SOS Chats has used hidden cameras to uncover a booming black market trade in cat skins as well as 21 cat-skin tanneries across the country.
Some farmers even admitted to the group that they were raising cats for the explicit purpose of selling them to tanneries.
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#Environmental Lessons Found in 19th-century Cemeteries NEW YORK Society needs to reframe its approach to environmental problems and the past offers potentially valuable inspiration on how to do this according to a historian and author.
The birds that fly through Central park you still have to call them wild the trees that grow in Central park you still have to call them wild he said.
and called for backup but even a half dozen NYPD officers were unable to wrangle the animal.
Panicked the goat ran through the neighborhood banging his head against doors in an effort to evade the cops scrambling after it according to the Daily mail. The police chased the goat into a parking lot across from Interfaith Medical center where the animal encountered Seydou Ndiaye a parking lot attendant and as luck would have it a former goat herder
Video of Escaped Goat Running from Officers I told them'Do not harm the animal it's an easy animal.
which took the goat to a local animal shelter reports WABC. Though goat meat doesn't appear commonly on North american menus it's very popular in many immigrant neighborhoods especially throughout Latino Middle Eastern Caribbean and Asian communities according to the Washington post.
Known as mutton or chevron when the meat comes from an adult animal (and cabrito or kid when the goat is young) the delicacy is rapidly gaining favor among chefs and foodies The New york times reports.
Not only do the animals pick up accents from one another demonstrating an advanced degree of vocal learning
and rather than face his end in a slaughterhouse the animal will be sent to an animal sanctuary in upstate New york WABC reports.
They will now only be allowed for use on plants that aren't attractive to pollinators like bees the BBC reported.
Pollinators like bees fertilize about one-third of crops worldwide scientists estimate. In the United states the number of colonies has been reduced by about 50 percent in the last year alone according to news reports.
Monkeys Eat What Others are Eating Just as human travelers often adopt the local cuisine wild monkeys learn to eat
what those around them are eating new research finds. A study of wild vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops) in South africa provides proof that primates other than humans adopt
and conform to cultural behaviors. Given a choice between two foods infant monkeys ate only the foods that their mothers ate.
And young males that ventured to other groups soon switched to the local diet researchers report online today (April 25) in the journal Science.
Some of the ways of learning that we have thought were distinctly human are shared more broadly across nonhuman primates said study co-author Andrew Whiten a cognitive biologist at the University of St andrews in the United kingdom. Image Gallery:
Adorable Vervet monkeys Conform to Peers Cultural learning and conformity play central roles in human life. Whereas many studies have documented cultural transmission in lab animals few have shown this phenomenon occurs in the wild.
A team of researchers studied four groups of wild vervet monkeys each containing 24 to 44 individuals (109 animals in total.
The team gave each group a supply of maize corn dyed pink and another dyed blue.
In two groups the blue corn tasted bad so the animals learned to eat only the pink corn.
so the animals favored the blue corn. After four to six months the researchers replaced the bad-tasting corn with normal-tasting stuff
but the monkeys continued to eat only the color to which they had become accustomed.
When baby monkeys that had tasted never either color corn were allowed to feed with their mothers the little ones ate only the color of corn their mothers ate
when young-adult males from each group migrated to another group during the mating season a common practice that ensures genetic diversity in vervet populations.
Frans de Waal a primatologist at Emory University's Yerkes Primate Center who was involved not in the study called the finding striking.
Primates aren't the only animals to learn from their peers. For example another new study shows that whales pick up feeding techniques from their friends.
Collectively these studies suggest that culture is more widespread in the animal kingdom than once thought.
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Most researchers believe the domestication of animals and grains allowed small bands of hunter-gatherers to rapidly expand their populations settle down build the first cities in Mesopotamia
But old forests also provide habitat for iconic animals such as the California spotted owl and the American marten.
The virus is not zoonotic meaning it has jumped not yet species to infect humans or other animals according to a statement from the National Pork Board.
#Farm bill Amendment Tramples States Rights to Protect Animals (Op-Ed) Wayne Pacelle is the president and chief executive officer of The Humane Society of the United states (HSUS.
For the animal welfare movement to put a fine point on its impact King's measure could easily repeal all the state laws against shark finning puppy mills extreme confinement of farm animals and the slaughter and sale of meat from horses dogs
and cats. Written by a man I believe to be one of the most radical members of Congress
and a man who has opposed also federal measures to crack down on animal fighting and horse slaughter opposed federal animal welfare standards for laying hens
and was even against a federal policy to help pets in disasters the amendment is an attack on states'rights to impose reasonable standards on agriculture to protect animals workers the environment and consumers.
In King we have a person who for all practical purposes opposes all laws for animal welfare.
since you want to speak with your lawmaker about the threats posed to animals by the King amendment.
Pacelle's most recent Op-Ed was Advocates Creating Safety Net for Dogs in Need.
#Fenced in, Animal Migrations Cannot Survive (Op-Ed) Bradnee Chambers Executive secretary of the United nations Environment Program Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices:
and railways with their associated embankments and cuttings form impassable barriers to animals such as the saiga antelope for
Only 20 years ago a million saigas roamed the steppes before undergoing a spectacular collapse of more than 90 percent in the 1990s leaving only about 50000 animals.
thousands of animals predominantly females and calves died. There are international efforts under way to ensure that the saiga survives it is protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
and Flora (CITES) the convention that regulates international trade in wildlife and the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) under
and khulans (wild asses) that are confronted with fences that they cannot pass; many die in the attempt.
The animals also do not know how to negotiate railways so tired and malnourished and unable to reach the best feeding grounds
or avoid harsh weather conditions the animals become vulnerable to predators and disease and their reproduction rates fall.
The solution could be minor changes to the construction of border fences the main purpose of which is to keep vehicles out rather than animals in by raising the height of the lowest fence wire.
and incorporating crossing points along railways with cattle guards to stop animals erring onto the tracks would allow animals to migrate unimpeded.
We know why animals migrate to look for the best conditions to breed and feed. We are only just beginning to understand how some of them do it
and turtles find the river or beach where they hatched after years at sea. The distances covered by some species run into thousands of kilometres.
Only the fittest overcome natural barriers such as mountains oceans and deserts but few animals can adapt fast enough to surmount modern hazards placed in their way by humans.
The author's most recent Op-Ed was Snow leopard's Fate Hinges on Historic Talks.
Lore of the Wild Child The feral child a child raised by wild animals is common in myth and folklore.
A boy or girl raised by wolves or bears or apes is the original wild child often having little or no language ability or manners.
Because feral children lack socialization they are considered sometimes to represent a pure natural human state.
and Remus the twin brothers of Roman mythology rescued from certain death and raised by a wolf.
Rudyard Kipling made a hero of the feral child Mowgli an Indian boy raised by wolves in his classic
and wildly popular 1894 collection of stories The Jungle book. Writer Edgar Rice burroughs created Tarzan a boy raised by African apes in the early 1900s
years old) in Bengal India who were raised by wolves. Singh claimed that the girls whom he named Amala
and would howl at the moon like a wolf. He tried with limited success to get them to speak
In the strange case of the Indian girls Amala and Kamala for example later research concluded that though the girls did exist they had not been raised by wolves
More recently there was a 1997 memoir of ayoung Jewish girl who escaped the German Holocaust by fleeing into the forest where she was raised by a pack of wolves.
and somehow completely disappear into the wild to be raised by animals. Even if a family lived in the remote jungle
(or be eaten by wild animals instead of being nurtured into adolescence by them). Yet the stories remain with us.
Part of the reason feral children have captured long the public's imagination is that they symbolize humanity's ambiguous relationship with other animals.
 By all accounts the animals are quite intelligent. They also sport razor-sharp tusks and can be aggressive toward people and pets.
They have a remarkable knack for causing trouble ranging from eating threatened species like dune lizards
and spreading invasive weeds to carrying and transmitting more than 30 different kinds of diseases to humans livestock
and kill the animals. The plan is to hit the animals in a single coordinated effort
because the pigs are so smart that they can learn from failed efforts to trap them
and avoid the snares in the future. They're much brighter than I am Ray Powell a veterinarian
despite the $7 million per year that Texans spends to keep the animals'numbers down the AP reports.
The animals may start reproducing when they re just 6 months old and their litters average about six sows reports Mississippi State university.
and all those other animal-rights freaks out there Nugent said according to Mlive. com. He allegedly donated the meat to the homeless.
#Fighting to Save an Endangered Bird With Vomit A psychological warfare program centered on vomit could help save the marbled murrelet an endangered seabird that nests in California's old-growth redwood forests.
The robin-sized murrelet lives at sea but lays one pointy blue-green egg each year on the flat mossy branch of a redwood.
While breeding its back feathers morph from black to mottled brown to better match the forest.
while evading peregrine falcon and hawk attacks. After the chick hatches it pecks off its redwood-colored down and flying solo launches straight for the ocean.
Penguins have nothing on the murrelet. They're a seabird like a puffin and they have this crazy lifestyle that's like a living link between the old-growth redwood forests
and the Pacific ocean said Keith Bensen a biologist at Redwood National park. It's strange to have an animal with webbed feet in the forest he said.
Despite its amazing skills the marbled-murrelet population is down by more than 90 percent from its 19th-century numbers in California thanks to logging fishing and pollution.
the egg-sucking chick-eating Steller's jay. About 4000 murrelets remain in California with about 300 to 600 in central California's Santa cruz Mountains.
Squirrels ravens and owls also swipe murrelet eggs but jays are the biggest thieves in California gobbling up 80 percent of each year's brood.
Unless more eggs survive the central California population will go extinct within a century according to a 2010 study published in the journal Biological Conservation.
To boost California's murrelet numbers biologists in California's Redwood national and state parks are fighting back against Steller's jays and their human enablers.
The art of avian war With cash earmarked for murrelets from offshore-oil-spill restoration funds the parks have the rare ability to fund research studies
The two-pronged approach will teach the black-crested jays to avoid murrelet eggs on pain of puking.
More importantly it will shrink the jay population by thwarting access to their primary food source human trash and food.
Saving the Rare Marbled Murrelet Every time folks throw out crumbs to bring out jays and squirrels it's having a real impact on a very rare bird nesting overhead in an old-growth redwood tree Bensen told Ouramazingplanet.
A Western bird the blue and black Steller's jays like to frequent cleared forest edges which are filled with bugs
and berry bushes and campgrounds littered with tasty trash and crumbs. As humans spend more time in the forest the jay's numbers are booming.
Their density in campgrounds is nine times higher than in other forest areas said Portia Halbert an environmental scientist with the California State Parks.
We see this crazy overlap of jays in campgrounds because of the density of food Halbert told Ouramazingplanet.
The overpopulation also menaces federally protected species such as snowy plovers desert tortoises and California least terns the jays eat their eggs too.
Steller's jays don't seek out murrelet eggs. But when the birds circle picnic areas near murrelet nests some discover the chicken-size eggs make a fine treat.
The smart savvy birds will return to the same spot over and over searching for food. Murrelets to their misfortune nest in the same tree every year.
Masters of disguise the first marbled murrelet nest wasn't discovered by scientists until 1974 in Big Basin Redwoods State Park.
The seabird doesn't actually build a nest instead choosing a flat branch covered in cozy moss and needles with cover to hide from airborne predators.
At dawn and dusk parents switch roles flying offshore to dive for fish and invertebrates.
Watch the mysterious marbled murrelet For an animal that lives for some 20 years losing an egg is a terrible terrible loss Bensen said.
They're investing an enormous amount of energy into that one baby. Killing Steller's jays won't help the murrelets;
even more of the marauding birds will invade campgrounds to compete for vacant territory biologists have concluded.
Plus jays are part of the natural ecosystem said Richard Golightly a biologist at Humboldt State university in California.
Instead researchers think aversion training is the cheapest most effective way to stop Steller's jays from snacking on murrelets.
It freaks everybody out to train wild animals to do what you want but it surprised the heck out of all of us how much more feasible it was thought than we Bensen said.
World's worst Easter egg hunt The plan the brainchild of Humboldt State graduate student Pia Gabriel centers on carbachol an odorless tasteless chemical that provokes vomiting with just a small swallow.
Researchers fine-tuned the correct dose with lab tests at Humboldt State in 2009. Small chicken eggs dyed blue-green and speckled with brown paint were offered as meals to jays with carbachol hidden inside.
Wild Steller's jays in this first treatment group usually tried just one taste of the carbachol-filled fake eggs.
All of a sudden their wings will droop and they throw up. That's exactly what you want a rapid response
The quick action helps the jays link the eggs with the illness. Some jays wouldn't even touch the eggs evidence that murrelet egg-nabbing is learned a behavior Golightly said.
In spring 2010 and spring 2011 a team zip-tied hundreds of the copycat eggs to redwood-tree branches in several parks.
whether wild jays learned to avoid tossing their lunch. The mimic eggs reduced egg-snatching by anywhere from 37 percent to more than 70 percent depending on where the eggs were deployed.
For instance one spot lost eggs to bears so not as many jays got to sample the carbachol.
The bogus eggs were set low on branches to avoid drawing jays toward real murrelet eggs.
A retched success The tests were so successful that Halbert applied for oil-spill restoration funds to start training Steller's jays in the state parks.
We've found a significant decrease in predations by jays the number of times eggs get broken she said.
The effects were monitored with camera traps and a second wave of mimic eggs. Reducing predation on murrelet nests by 40 percent to 70 percent would stabilize the Santa cruz Mountains murrelet population according to the 2010 study published in the journal Biological Conservation.
That 40 percent minimum would drop the extinction risk from about 96 percent to about 5 percent over 100 years
In 2012 the smallest cutback in egg attacks by Steller's jays and other predators was 44 percent
When the enemy is full starve them Here's why taste aversion works so well for Steller's jays.
Their fiercely territorial social structure keeps out untrained birds. Long-lived with excellent memories the jays will recognize
and avoid those rare blue-green eggs that made them retch. Nothing else in the forest looks like a murrelet egg.
If taste-aversion training were to spread through the murrelet's range it would not be the first time a bird would require human babysitters to survive think of condors who need devoted monitoring and care..
if the parks can't shrink the jay population by getting rid of their campground crumb food source.
At Redwood National park the staff reconfigured the outdoor sinks so jays and squirrels can't steal leftovers from dishes.
With Steller's jays just a couple Cheetos is enough. They'll keep coming and coming and then eat the marbled murrelets.
and feed the animals you're contributing too. It is coming at the expense of the murrelet.
and regenerate an important marine plant depends on animals to eat its seeds and poop them out around the ocean according to recent research.
and germinate after being eaten by three types of fish one turtle and one type of bird said Sarah Sumoski a researcher at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science
and co-author of a study published recently in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. It's hard to understate the importance of eelgrass
and crabs and serve as food for animals as diverse as manatees and ducks Sumoski told Ouramazingplanet.
By hitching a ride in these animals'digestive tracts the grasses'seeds can travel long distances establishing far-flung seagrass meadows.
Sumoski's study found that a type of diving duck called the lesser scaup can transport seeds more than 12 miles (19.5 kilometers;
after this journey the seeds can still sprout Sumoski said. This is the first study to show how these seeds fare
when eaten by multiple types of animals said Sumoski. The ability of some of the seeds to sprout after being eaten surprised Sumoski she said especially in the case of one fish species which commonly feed on the grasses
Scientists hope that the animals will continue to spread the meadows in the future. Animals consuming seeds in one location and then excreting them in another location where they can germinate is said not new Matt Harwell a seagrass ecologist who was involved not in the study.
However it is a new finding for a seagrass species that is found across much of the world.
and hot temperatures and tree roots trap sediments slowing the lapping of water and allowing other life to flourish.
#Flying foxes (Actually Bats) on Remote Island Studied for First time Flying foxes? Not really foxes. They're actually bats (and one of those animals with a pretty misleading name.
But though their moniker may not be accurate they are fascinating creatures that scientists know fairly little about.
Now a new study reveals some limited details about one isolated species found on islands in the western Pacific ocean.
Flying foxes are the largest bats On earth and consist of more than 60 species that live throughout remote islands of the Indian
They are reddish-brown ever so-slightly resembling the color of true foxes. The largest species has a wingspan of up to 4. 5 feet (1. 4 meters)
 Pteropus pelagicus a relatively small species of flying fox with a wingspan of about 2 feet (61 centimeters) inhabits the western Pacific Mortlock Islands within the Federated States of Micronesia.
A German naturalist first described the animal in 1836 but little research has been conducted on the animal
since then due to the logistical challenge of traveling to these remote islands. 7 Most Misleading Animal Names A team of naturalists based at the College of Micronesia has conducted now the first-ever field study of the Mortlock Islands
flying fox population in an effort to catalog more details about how this enigmatic creature lives.
 The team identified eight plant species that the animals eat finding that they seem to prefer fruit particularly from the breadfruit tree.
The team also found that the bats breed year-round on the islands which separates them from most other flying fox species
Most flying foxes are seasonal in breeding patterns and maybe give birth to young over a couple month period Wiles said.
The researchers believe that the islands support between 900 and 1200 bats that have no apparent native predators on the islands
but may be preyed upon by feral cats and monitor lizards that humans have introduced. Some cultures hunt flying foxes and consider them a delicacy
but residents of the Mortlock Islands do not generally hunt the animals the researchers say.
A potentially more serious threat to the animals than predators is future sea level rise associated with climate change.
The small atolls or low-lying islands that the animals inhabit only reach between about 3 feet to 10 feet (1 to 3 m) above sea level
and could therefore become inundated if average global sea level rises by as much as 3. 2 feet (0. 98 m) by 2100 as projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
P. pelagicus populations could potentially island hop in the event that some islands disappear before others though this seems unlikely Wiles said.
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