A study in the American Journal of Physiology showed that female rats ate more rat chow
In animals having high levels of estrogen is associated with eating more sweets. This theory has yet to be proven in humans
At the time when Christopher Columbus landed in The americas it's said that squirrels could travel from tree to tree from the Northeast to the Mississippi without ever having to touch the ground Chris Roddick chief arborist at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New york told Livescience in 2009.
but unable to find a horse? No it is a response to a supposed Billy goat curse that dates back to 1945
Psychology of the Curse There are countless superstitions involving everything from spilled salt to black cats to nailing horseshoes over doors
We are descendants of the primates who most successfully employed patternicity. So is the Billy goat curse real?
Tyrone Hayes a biologist at the University of California Berkeley demonstrated a decade ago that atrazine could turn male frogs female publishing his results in prestigious journals such as Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy
#Grizzlies Should Stay on Endangered Species List, Scientists Say Yellowstone national park grizzly bears could be removed from the Endangered Species list after a new federal report revealed that the bears are threatened not by the loss of one of their main foods whitebark pine nuts.
But outside scientists are criticizing the report calling it incomplete politically motivated and flawed. It does not take into account the situation the realities of the conditions on the ground in whitebark pine forests said Jesse Logan the retired head of the U s. Forest Service's bark beetle research unit.
Whitebark pines are increasingly falling victim to mountain pine beetles which kill trees in the process of laying their eggs under the bark.
Climate change has made the high-elevation whitebark pines more accessible to the destructive beetles. Bear battle The fight over the delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly population is a years-long saga.
The bears were removed temporarily from the Endangered Species list in 2007 after the U s. Fish
and Wildlife Service (USFWS) declared that the animals'numbers had recovered sufficiently not to need federal protection.
In 2009 a federal district court in Montana overturned the delisting bumping the grizzlies back to protected status. The judge cited concerns that the USFWS had failed to consider the decline in whitebark pine in its decision.
Images: Trapping Yellowstone's Grizzlies In recent years the growth of Yellowstone's grizzly population has slowed
or possibly declined. Part of the challenge of tracking the population's health is figuring out
because bears are crowded so in their habitat that older bears are killing cubs or if the slow down is related to food scarcity.
 Bears rely on four major food sources in the Yellowstone region said David Mattson a visiting senior research scientist
and lecturer at Yale university who studied the grizzlies for more than a decade as a U s. Geological Survey scientist.
One is calorie-rich whitebark pine nuts. Yellowstone bears also eat cutthroat trout meat from elk
and bison and a fatty high-elevation insect called the army cutworm moth. Pine nuts in particular are linked to birth
and death rates Mattson said in a press conference organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists an advocacy group for science in public politicy.
When female bears in particular eat more pine seeds they give birth to more cubs and they die at a lesser rate Mattson said.
The new recommendations to delist come to the USFWS from the Yellowstone Ecosystem Subcommittee of the Interagency Grizzly bear Committee.
According to a new federal report presented to the committee this week bear health is linked not to the availability of whitebark pine nuts.
The report downplays a published decline in grizzly bear fat composition dating to about 2006
When the agency first delisted the grizzly bear from the Endangered Species list in 2007 it estimated that 16 percent of the whitebark pine in the habitat had been affected by beetles.
We were able to launch a study in the summer of 2009 to measure the impact of mountain pine beetles in whitebark pine he said.
The central habitat of the grizzlies is among the hardest-hit in the beetle epidemic he said.
Habitat trouble Mattson and Logan further criticized the bear report for downplaying the links between pine nuts and grizzly health.
Evidence suggests that bears especially females are eating more meat to compensate for the loss of whitebark pine nuts.
Cubs and yearlings at a kill site are more likely to be killed by wolves or older bears than are cubs
and yearlings snuffling for pine nuts. And meat-eating puts adult bears into closer contact with human hunters and ranchers should they go after livestock. 8 Ways Global Warming is Already Changing the World The result has been an increase both in total number
of bear deaths and in the proportion of bears killed by humans Mattson said. Meanwhile cutthroat trout are in decline because of predation by a nonnative fish.
There is not a single positive trend afoot in Yellowstone's grizzly bear habitat Mattson said. Compounding the problem Mattson said is the fact that many of the studies in the federal report recommending delisting have not undergone review by outside scientists
or have not been published in scientific journals a crucial step in validating scientific research. What's next for grizzlies Keeping the grizzly bear on the endangered species list would provide one ray of hope in a bad situation Mattson said:
It would keep states from opening up hunting season on the bear. One of the first things the states are going to do is in fact institute a sports hunt Mattson said.
They've said so. Delisting grizzlies would also allow states more freely to kill bears that became a nuisance to livestock a real concern in a time
when bears and ranchers are clashing more frequently. Federal protection makes it more likely that bears can continue to spread out into areas we know are suitable for bears Mattson said.
A wider range could bring the Yellowstone population in contact with other grizzly populations making all of the populations less vulnerable in the long haul.
The USFWS is mandated not to follow the committee recommendations but it is likely to do so said Kristin Carden an attorney with Earthjustice an environmental advocacy group.
The next step in the process is for the agency to draft a delisting plan with input from the Department of the interior and the Department of justice.
Next the plan would be open to public comment. Review of the studies used in the report
or public outcry could alter the trajectory toward delisting Carden told reporters. The final option is for organizations such as Earthjustice to file a lawsuit against the USFWS to prevent the delisting.
Whatever happens Yellowstone grizzlies face extraordinary challenges as climate change drives the loss of habitat and food sources.
He went on to co-found the Patrã n Spirits Company John paul Pet & JP Selects.
The Dejoria family is committed to contributing to a sustainable planet through investing in people protecting animals and conserving the environment.
#H7n9 Bird flu Virus Capable of Airborne Transmission One strain of the H7n9 bird flu virus appears to spread easily through the air between ferrets which are a good model for how the virus may spread in humans a new study from China says.
Researchers tested transmission of five strains of H7n9 all taken from people who got sick with the virus. Some ferrets were infected directly with the virus
 All five strains of H7n9 were able to spread through the air between ferrets
However one strain was able to spread very well it infected 100 percent of the ferrets who were exposed to it through the air.
Researchers know that a flu virus that transmits well between humans will transmit well between ferrets Webby said.
But ferrets aren't a perfect model. For example they don't take into account preexisting immunity in the human population Webby said.
The researchers called the one H7n9 strain that spread in their study highly transmissible between ferrets.
However Webby disagreed pointing out that a highly transmissible virus would spread between ferrets within a short period
H7n9 is thought to transmit from birds (in particular chickens) to people. Because the virus does not cause symptoms in chickens it can be harder to spot infected poultry.
and the opportunities of the virus to adapt to humans is to reduce the exposure of people to infected birds.
You have to know where your infected birds are said Webby. If you have a virus that s running around that doesn t kill the chickens you have to be actively out there swabbing chickens Webby said.
#H7n9 Flu Study Hints at How It May Spread in People It's likely that the new H7n9 bird flu virus can spread through the air on a limited basis according to a new study that looked at how the virus spreads in animals.
whether a person falls ill with flu including their overall health researchers like to study flu viruses in animals under controlled conditions to better understand how they spread said study researcher Dr. Richard Webby a bird-flu expert at St jude
  In the new study researchers infected six ferrets with the H7n9 virus all of whom developed flu symptoms.
Ferrets are considered a good model to study human flu transmission because efficient spread of the flu in ferrets tends to predict efficient spread in people.
Several of the infected ferrets were placed in the same cage as uninfected ferrets. In addition several uninfected ferrets were placed in cages a short distance away from uninfected ferrets to see
if the virus could spread through the air. All of the uninfected ferrets who were in the same cage as the infected ferrets caught the virus suggesting the virus can spread through direct contact.
The flu virus also spread through the air but less efficiently. Just one of three ferrets caged a short distance from infected ferrets caught the virus. The findings mostly mirror
what health officials have seen in people Webby said. For sustained person-to-person transmission to occur the virus would likely have to transmit efficiently by both the airborne and direct contact routes Webby said.
Because H7n9 doesn't transmit very well through the air it doesn't look like it has the capacity to cause a pandemic
When researchers infect ferrets with H5n1 they usually do not see transmission through airborne or direct contact Webby said.
#Harnessing The Power Of Peacocks To Make Colorful Images (ISNS)--The gloriously colored iridescent feathers of the male peacock aren't
because the feathers contain nanometer-scale protein structures that break up incoming light waves recombine and reflect them as rich vibrant colors.
As a peacock moves around its tail colors appear to change. That's because its iridescent feathers reflect different colors or wavelengths of light at different angles.
 But while peacocks use feathers Guo's team uses metals which interact with light in more complicated ways.
They create metal structures with nanoscale grooves that produce iridescent colors but also trap the light so that viewers can see the intended colors from all angles.
The trick Guo said was to get light to enter grooves much smaller than the wavelengths of light.
To simulate the peacock effect the Michigan researchers combined the techniques. They etched nanoscale grooves on a piece of glass with the same technology used to etch computer chips.
all goodly fragrant woods of God s-land heaps of myrrh-resin with fresh myrrh trees with ebony and pure ivory with green gold of Emu.
#Have killed People Really Pests Too Rarely?(Op-Ed) Marc Bekoff emeritus professor at the University of Colorado Boulder is one of the world's pioneering cognitive ethologists a Guggenheim Fellow and cofounder with Jane Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals. Bekoff's latest book is Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed (New world Library 2013).
This essay is adapted from one that appeared in Bekoff's column Animal Emotions in Psychology Today.
He contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Recently my email inbox overflowed with messages about an anthropocentrically driven essay by David Von Drehle in the current issue of Time magazine titled America's Pest Problem:
It's Time to Cull the Herd. While I strongly disagree with the tone and take of this essay
We move into the homes of other animals and redecorate them because we like to see the animals
or know they're around because it's cool to do so. Or we move in and alter their homes to the extent that they need to find new places in which to live
And then when we decide they've become pests we kill them. Yes technically we cull them
But a subtitle like It's Time to Kill the Herd would likely offend many people who find it difficult to grasp that that's what people do we kill other animals with little hesitation absent any data that the process really works.
We are the pests According to a statement made by Time David Von Drehle makes the case that the only solution for this resurgent overpopulation is more hunting.'
because animals have become pests. As I've previously noted in an essay I wrote for Psychology Today Stray Animals and Trash Animals:
Don't Kill the Messengers: Our anthropocentric arrogance shines when we use such pejorative and derogatory terms
'Von Drehle notes in his article that people are a cause of other animals'successes
He slides far too fast between the problems deer and other animals supposedly pose with the problems predators purportedly present.
For example he writes The return of alpha predators is sure to remind us of the reasons these beasts were hunted so relentlessly by our forefathers.
Wolves lions and bears are known to attack livestock and even pets. On rare occasions they have killed humans.
So what can keep them away from our neighborhoods? Only the pushback from the No. 1 predator of them all:
the human being. Well-planned hunting can safely reduce the wildlife populations to levels that won't invite an invasion of fangs and claws.
The phrase well-planned hunting is sort of an oxymoron. With an increase in hunters as young as 6 years old I question just how selective effective and humane hunting will really be.
Concerning the animals who Von Drehle calls alpha predators yes they are known on occasion to attack livestock
and pets but data show they are not a real factor in losses of significant numbers of livestock
and attacks on pets and humans are incredibly rare. A new documentary called EXPOSED: USDA's Secret War on Wildlife highlights the wanton and brutal killing ways of an agency called Wildlife Services
and to read the summary of this film provided by the organization Predator Defense. The secret war on wildlife refers to
and results from the U s. Department of agriculture (USDA)' s Wildlife Services'wanton assault on numerous species of animals.
Wildlife Services could easily be called Murder Inc. Their horrific intentional and secret slaughter of millions of animals in the name of coexistence is appalling.
and filmmaker Doug Peacock writes The USDA Wildlife Service is among the most unaccountable and clandestine of taxpayer-supported programs in America.
Their mission is to kill native predators as secretly as possibly with zeal unparalleled in brutality and cruelty.
By shouldering the role of careful conservation-minded predators hunters make the coexistence of humans and wildlife sustainable.
I don't see that killing supposed pests is required nor do I agree that sentimentality should be shaken-off.
Indeed the animals who are killed are sentient beings who care about what happens to them
and the black bears of New jersey and elsewhere were restored instantly to their paleo diet. Slow starvation is no happier a way for a bear to die than by a hunter's bullet or arrow.
And in the process of starving animals cut off from their human feed are likely to become increasingly desperate and brazen.
They start eating pets instead of pet food. Incidents like this one could become more common: In May a woman in Altadena Calif. a suburb of Los angeles near Pasadena entered her kitchen to find a bear already there munching on peaches she had left on the counter.
When she screamed the bear reluctantly left the kitchen ambling outside and flopping on the pool deck for a postprandial snooze.
Other nonlethal strategies tend to be either ineffective or expensive or both. Where's the data?
Hunting is failed a experiment Many of the comments in response to Von Drehle's piece highlight my deep concerns as does a short essay by Doris Lin called Hunting Isn't the Answer to Animal'Pests'.
'She concludes Hunting is failed a experiment and it's time to employ effective nonlethal methods.
stop increasing the population of deer for no reason other than to kill them. The last sentence of Von Drehle's essay says it all:
and indiscriminately killed countless millions of other animals because we've created situations in which they become pests
and we kill because we can. It's just too easy to kill other animals
and move on as if killing them is as acceptable as drinking a coke or a beer afterwards.
and the one who has the power to do anything we want to other animals and to the Earth.
and other animals are doomed. Unfortunately millions upon millions of nonhumans will pay the price before people do for our being members of an overproducing over-consuming big-brained big-footed and arrogant species
. While we indeed do many good things for other animals and the Earth we surely have done more than our share of bad and destructive things that likely will harm us in the future.
which we subject other animals. Peaceful coexistence is the only viable solution As I read through von Drehle's
I realized that the growing field of compassionate conservation could surely come to the rescue of at least some of these unwanted animal beings because of its emphasis on the well-being of individual animals.
I appreciate those who work in the area of compassionate conservation for their focus on trash animals.
and others that it's just fine to kill other animals when we decide they're a problem.
There really are no trash animals except when we decide they are and they pay the price by the billions for our uninformed and self-serving views.
The term trash animal should be viewed as an oxymoron conveniently invented because it allows us to get rid of those animals
however wherever and whenever we choose. It won't be soon enough when this term is deleted from our vocabulary once and for all
and these animals are respected for who they are allowed and to live in peace and safety. So thanks to Time for publishing Von Drehle's essay.
and if people who disagree with the tone of this piece don't do anything millions upon millions of animals will be killed.
because they see them as supposed pests) need to do something now to stop the killing.
Relationships with pest animals needs more study The study of human-animal relationships the field of anthrozoology is rapidly growing and
what with Wildlife Services'carte blanche willingness and ability to mercilessly slaughter wildlife and a recent declaration that we need to kill urban pestswe need to come to terms with how we deal with animals who we call pests.
Of course the use of the word pests is incredibly problematic and prejudicial and all too easily sets the stage for wanton and brutal killing these animals despite the lack of any evidence this heinous slaughter really works.
The unrelenting killing does work to employ people who brutally harm and slaughter other animals
but with the appearance of EXPOSED we can only hope that Wildlife Services will be put to rest once and for all.
The title of Von Drehle's essay as it appears on the cover of Time (with a picture of a lone deer) is American's Pest Problem:
and killing animals we call pests is accepted as easily as swatting flies or mosquitos when they bother you it's
because those who oppose the kill kill kill mentality remain silent and choose to practice slacktivism talking about something
At the bottom of Von Drehle's essay there's an invitation to send Time photos of animals in your backyard.
because many animals are so successful they need to be killed. Please don't send in your pictures cute as they may be as they will alert people perhaps including those who think killing is just fine that there are animals in your area to be killed.
Bekoff's most recent Op-Ed was No Animals Were harmed in that Film? Not So Reports Suggest.
This article was adapted from Redecorating Nature: Have killed We Really Pests Too Rarely? in Psychology Today.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.
There are about 1200 species of bats in the world 20 percent of all known mammal species. The largest bat is the flying fox with a wingspan of six feet the smallest is the bumblebee bat that weighs less than a penny.
Two-thirds of bat species feed on insects and other small prey. Many bats are on nighttime pest patrol.
One Mexican free-tailed bat can eat about 1000 mosquitoes per hour. The large colony of 30 million bats in Bracken Cave in Texas consumes about 250 tons of insects every night.
Just 150 big brown bats can eat 33 million root worm pests. Without bats there would be more pests
and crops would suffer from more pest damage. Other bat species feed on flowers and fruits acting act as pollinators and seed dispersers especially in deserts and rain forests.
Bats pollinate wild bananas the famous saguaro cactus and durian the world's most expensive fruit.
Without bats rain forests would recover more slowly from disturbances. There also would be no tequila the agave plant from which tequila is made depends on the Mexican long-tongued bat to pollinate it.
Bats are threatened by loss of habitat especially their roosting sites. You can help bats by protecting their roost sites
and maybe building a bat house for your yard. Bats also are vulnerable to being killed by wind turbines.
That risk can be reduced through careful siting of wind-power developments away from important bat roosts
and migration routes and by raising the cutout speed for turbines so that they aren't spinning in low wind (read low power) conditions
when bats are most active. Another nefarious threat is white-nose syndrome a disease that is wiping out many bat populations in North america.
Bat-Killing Fungus Likely Invaded from Europe For more on the challenges facing bats see a video with Hoekstra here.
Hoekstra's most recent Op-Ed was Overshoot Day Living Too large on a Finite Planet.
This article first appeared as Halloween Without Bats on Hoekstra's WWF blog Science Driven.
These rules include providing access to the outdoors including to pasture for ruminants. Marion Nestle a professor of nutrition and public health at New york University said the results came as no surprise.
and tail off as the summer progresses reaching a lower baseline level for the winter Benbrook said adding that CLA levels mirror the amount of fresh forage in the cows'diet.
Watching wildlife Cows aren't the only animals that get a short shrift in Coburn's report.
and cadaver dogs to sniff out buried bodies based on the compounds released during decomposition. The new geophysical methods are in the early stage of development.
The Mongols relied heavily on horses which would have needed lots of grass to eat. Putnam and his team think the wetting of the desert allowed grasslands to expand enabling the Mongols to spread throughout Asia. 10 Surprising Ways Weather Changed History Atop The himalayas Next Putnam
it took 25 horses and mules to carry all of the supplies from the deep jungles up to the icy peaks.
Surviving ivories from the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta depict birds male and female figures and even a oetree of life or oesacred tree.
This included running wrestling discus and javelin throwing. oethey also learned how to manage horses;
and at the Hyacinthia a festival of Apollo and Hyacinthus they raced in two-horse chariots.
and their excellent horses much exercised in recent wars quickly routed the Spartan cavalry and drove them back into the phalanx confusing its order.
And of course black cats need not have any association with witchcraft to be considered evil simply crossing their path is considered bad luck any time of year.
The turkey a bird that matures for slaughter in the fall would have made an appearance as would chicken pork beef and goose.
Even though venison (deer) is the only meat confirmed to have been present at the Pilgrims'harvest feast in 1621 turkey gradually became the centerpiece of the new holiday thanks in part to Hale Bertelsen told Livescience.
The turkeys of the 19th century weren't like today's big-breasted Butterballs said Andrew Smith a lecturer on food history at The New School in New york city.
There were six or seven varieties of wild bird that would have been consumed depending on the region of the country Smith told Livescience.
In the last few years Smith said foodies have embraced the past with heirloom turkeys that boast more dark meat than modern farmed birds.
Whole roast birds a giant meal at midday instead of a big evening dinner foods cooked from scratch.
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