An 11-year study of a population of wild sheep located on a remote island off the coast of Scotland that gauged the animals susceptibility to infection may give new insight into why some people get sicker than others when exposed to the same illness.
The answer to this medical puzzle may lie in deep-rooted differences in how animals survive and reproduce in the wild,
The scientists tested the animals for levels of antibodies, natural molecules produced by the sheeps immune systems to fend off infections such as influenza
or those caused by parasitic worms. The sheep whose blood contained the most antibodies lived the longest, the researchers found.
These animals also were most likely to survive harsh winters. However they failed to produce as many offspring each spring as other sheep.
Graham said. oeto find evidence for such tradeoff may clarify why animals vary so much in the strength of their immune responses,
the field of immunology has been based on studies of domesticated animals in clean lab environments where animals are given all the food they want,
A home computer that could switch back and forth between touch mode and keyboard-and-mouse mode oeimagnet:
#Mystery of the Honeybees Solved Members of a joint United states army-University of Montana research team that located a virus that is possibly collapsing honeybee colonies.
what is killing off the honeybees? Since 2006,20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United states alone have suffered oecolony collapse.
suggesting that insect nutrition is compromised somehow. Liaisons between the military and academia are nothing new, of course.
a way to use honeybees in detecting land mines. But researchers on both sides say that colony collapse may be the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department
One perverse twist of colony collapse that has compounded the difficulty of solving it is that the bees do not just die they fly off in every direction from the hive,
Still unsolved is what makes the bees fly off into the wild yonder at the point of death.
is a kind of insect insanity. In any event, the universitys bee operation itself proved vulnerable just last year,
the entire dashboard features a touchscreen interface and an exterior clearly reminiscent of Apples signature computer mouse.
oea sample of 9-to 10-year-olds could identify the Budweiser frogs nearly as frequently as they could Bugs bunny. They also say advertisements for prescription medicines like the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra are far too common on television compared to ads for condoms,
#Why Elephants Are Afraid of Ants and Not Mice Elephants are terrified more of ants than mice.
Mice are supposed to strike terror into the hearts of elephants-at least if Disney cartoons are to be believed.
But Dumbos tormentors are actually even smaller, scientists claim. Researchers have discovered that ants are the bane of elephants lives,
with the giants of the African savannah steering clear of trees infested with them just in case they crawl up their sensitive trunks.
The experts who made the discovery believe ants act as bodyguards for some plants to keep trampling elephants at bay.
where these little ants are up against these huge herbivores, protecting trees and having a major impact on the properties of the ecosystems in
Swarming groups of ants that weigh about 5mg each can and do protect trees from animals that are about a billion times more massive,
Dr Palmer said. Its yet another example of how the little things run the world.
The idea that elephants fear mice has long been a staple of cartoons, and features in the 1941 Disney classic Dumbo.
animal behaviourists say there is no evidence of rodent-phobia among any mammal. The discovery that elephants dislike ants came
when Dr Palmer and colleague Dr Jacob Goheen noticed elephants avoiding a species of acacia tree in the Kenyan plains.
The trees are found across the African savanna and are devoured normally and trampledby hungry elephants.
However, they stayed away from acacia drepanolobium trees if they were home to guardian ants.
The elephants avoided those trees like a kid avoids broccoli, Dr Palmer said. It seems that elephants simply do not like ants swarming up the insides of their trunks
and I cant say I blame them. An elephants trunk is a truly remarkable organ,
but also appears to be their Achilles heel when it comes to squaring off with an angry ant colony.
The scientists believe that adding ant colonies to vulnerable plants in Africa could prevent deforestation
Elephants have such large appetites they can soon convert woody areas into open grassland. A big issue in east Africa is elephants damaging crops,
which is one reason elephants have been harassed and sometimes killed, he added. Via Daily mail Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati n
#Tips on How to Germ-Proof Your Kitchen From Scary Foodborne Illnesses Most people cant help
Science Daily reports that despite their numbers and status as an important pollinator sweat bees are tough to study
including a cuckoo bee, which will invade another sweat bees next and lay its eggs on the pollen
#Finance Site Lists Most Expensive Invasive Species A Canadian goose Asian carp arent the only invasive species causing trouble in the United states
When animals get in the way of people sometimes the first reaction is to remove the animals from the equation, even with native species like the double-crested cormorant.
The cormorant didnt make this Top Ten list, from Daily Finance, an AOL site. The site based its list on animals
and insects that were introduced by humans to correct an imbalance, and species that were endangered once
but grew oeout of control due to the efforts of concerned scientists and environmentalists to protect them.
The list, and why the animal or insect is considered costly: 1. Canada Geese for endangering public health by soiling parks and lakes,
stripping farmers fields and getting in the way of airplanes; 2. Cownose ray (below) for gobbling up the thousands of farmed oysters that wildlife officials have farmed throughout Chesapeake bay;(
image Tim Sackton) 3. Asian Carp for depleting plankton and pushing out other species; 4. Coyotes for eating cows, sheep and other livestock,
and preying on household pets in suburban areas; 5. Pythons which are capable of eating goats
and crocodiles and could eventually pose a major threat to children, pets and livestock. Rounding out the bottom five are killer bees, starlings, mountain pine beetles, brown tree snakes and Asian mongooses.
Some of these are examples of nuisance species, as in ones that are getting in the way of humans.
Kind of like the Vaquita porpoise in Mexico. Who should win out when humans and animals collide?
You can say that human life is more important than animal life. Youd shoot a bear that was attacking your child.
But many of these 10 threaten more human livelihood than human life. A 2004 study pegged the total environmental damages and losses from invasive species in the U s. at $120 billion per year, and rising.
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#Scientists Crack the Genetic Code of Wheat Wheat is the worlds oldest and most important crops.
British scientists have decoded the genetic sequence of wheat one of the worlds oldest and most important crops a development they hope could help breed better strains of the global food staple.
#New Study Suggests Exposure to Pesticides Prime Cause of ADHD Organophosphate pesticides are used widely in the United states to control insects on food crops.
because the pesticides are designed to attack the nervous systems of insects. It is not surprising, then,
which are used widely in the United states to control insects on food crops. Epidemiologist Brenda Eskenazi of UC Berkeley and her colleagues have been studying more than 300 Mexican American children living in the heavily agricultural Salinas Valley.
#Mysterious Bearded Antelope Discovered in Kenya oebearded Antelope Photo by Paola Torchio Veteran wildlife photographer Paolo Torchio made a bizarre discovery while visiting Kenyas Masai Mara
While one expert suggests the animal might only be suffering from hypertrichosis, a condition once known as werewolf syndrome,
Torchios experience is known the only encounter with such an animal. Torchio has lived and worked in Kenya for the past two decades
He initially thought the animal was a dog and oewas wondering, what is this dog doing?
he said. oeand when it came out from the grass, that was a surprise. The animal has all the markings of a Thomsons gazelle. oei would say its a younger female,
based on the body and the horn size, says Lanny Brown, a zookeeper at the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona,
and the man in charge of maintaining Thomsons gazelle populations for all of North america. Except this oebearded antelope is covered with a strange, thick coat of hair.
Torchio noted that the animal was spooked not easily by other gazelles and visa-versa. However, it was spooked by Torchio himself.
Gazelles are one of the fastest animals on earth, running at speeds up to 55 and 60 mph.
the bees in the citys 400 and counting hives produce an average of 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of honey each year,
The number of B. napus plants in each sample plot was counted and one plant was collected
The team found B. napus at nearly half of the 288 sites tested. Of these, 80%had at least one herbicide-resistant transgene (41%were resistant to Roundup and 40%resistant to Liberty.
#The Childhood Goat Trauma Foundation The Childhood Goat Trauma Foundation was created in 1982 by a small group that originally came together as a an informal support group for problems that were the result of traumatic experiences at petting zoos
#Insects Sense Danger on Mammals Breath When plant-eating mammals such as goats chomp on a sprig of alfalfa,
they could easily gobble up some extra protein in the form of insects that happen to get in their way.
When plant-eating mammals such as goats chomp on a sprig of alfalfa, they could easily gobble up some extra protein in the form of insects that happen to get in their way.
But a new report in the August 10th issue of Current Biology, shows that plant-dwelling pea aphids have designed a strategy to help them avoid that dismal fate:
The insects sense mammalian breath and simply drop to the ground. oetiny insects like aphids are not helpless
when facing large animals that rapidly consume the plants they live on, said Moshe Inbar of the University of Haifa in Israel. oethey reliably detect the danger and escape on time.
Inbar said he had wondered always about accidental predation of small plant-dwellers based on his observations of insects that dont really move around. oeas soon as we started to work on this problem,
we suspected that the aphids responded to our own breath, he said. The researchers later used snorkels to keep their own breath from mucking up their experiments.
The researchers allowed a goat to feed on potted alfalfa plants infested with aphids. oestrikingly, 65 percent of the aphids in the colonies dropped to the ground right before they would have been eaten along with the plant,
the researchers write. That mass dropping might have been triggered by many cues: plant shaking, sudden shadowing,
or the plant-eaters breath. While a quarter of the aphids dropped when plants were shaken,
more than half fell to the ground in response to a lambs breath, the researchers report.
Shadows had no effect on the aphids dropping behavior. Ladybugs, an insect enemy of aphids, didnt inspire that kind of synchronous response either.
Further studies with an artificial breath apparatus allowed the researchers to test what it was about the breath that tipped the aphids off.
It turned out it wasnt carbon dioxide or other known chemical ingredients found on mammalian breath. Only when the controlled airstream was both warm and humid did it lead to impressive dropping rates of 87 percent in a room with otherwise low humidity Inbar said that the aphids oeelegant solution to the problem of incidental
predation is practiced likely by other species as well. oethis remarkable response to mammalian-specific cues, in spite of the inherent cost of an aphids dropping off the plant, points to the significance of mammalian herbivory to plant-dwelling insects,
the researchers concluded. oewe predict that this sort of escape behavior in response to mammalian breath may be found among other invertebrates that live on plants
and face the same threat. The authors include Moshe Gish, Amots Dafni, Moshe Inbar, at University of Haifa
like the charger and the earphones. The only difference is the price about $100, with a little bargaining.
when he saw the strange animal. He said it was impossible for a pig to mate with a cow. oethe whole body
These may look like a bulldog but its all due to deformities, just like in human beings, he explained. via Arbroath Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati n
#Saving the Planet by Eating Insects and Other Creepy Crawlies A Chinese woman selling scorpions on stick in Beijing,
where the delicacy is fried in cooking oil. Saving the planet one plateful at a time does not mean cutting back on meat, according to new research:
the trick may be to switch our diet to insects and other creepy-crawlies. The raising of livestock such as cows, pigs and sheep occupies two-thirds of the worlds farmland
A policy paper on the eating of insects is being considered formally by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.
an entomologist at Wageningen University in The netherlands and the author of the UN paper, says eating insects has advantages. oethere is a meat crisis,
Van Huis is an enthusiast for eating insects but given his role as a consultant to the FAO,
he cant be dismissed as a crank. oemost of the world already eats insects, he points out. oeit is only in the western world that we dont.
Grasshoppers The advantages of this diet include insects high levels of protein, vitamin and mineral content.
shows that farming insects produces far less greenhouse gas than livestock. Breeding commonly eaten insects such as locusts,
crickets and meal worms, emits 10 times less methane than livestock. The insects also produce 300 times less nitrous oxide, also a warming gas
and much less ammonia, a pollutant produced by pig and poultry farming. Being cold-blooded, insects convert plant matter into protein extremely efficiently,
Van Huis says. In addition, he argues, the health risks are lower. He acknowledges that in the west eating insects is a hard sell:
oeit is very important how you prepare them, you have to do it very nicely, to overcome the yuk factor.
More than 1, 000 insects are known to be eaten by choice around the world, in 80%of nations.
They are most popular in the tropics, where they grow to large sizes and are easy to harvest.
Durst helped set up an insect farming project FAO project in Laos which began in April.
whose favourite is fried wasp oevery crispy and a nice light snack. oebut this is crazy when most Asians are lactose intolerant.
Locusts and crickets are calcium-rich and 90%of people in Laos have eaten insects at some point,
Durst says the FAOS priority will be to boost the eating of insects where this is already accepted
and protect forests where many wild insects are collected. oei can see a step-by-step process to wider implementation.
insects could be used to feed farmed animals such as chicken and fish which eat them naturally.
One of the few suppliers of insects for human consumption in the UK is Paul Cook,
LOCAL TREATS Thailand Dishes include fried giant red ants, crickets and June beetles Colombia oefat-bottomed ants are a popular snack,
fried and salted Papua new guinea Sago grubs in banana leaves are a local delicacy Ghana Winged termites are collected and fried, roasted,
or made into bread Japan Dishes include aquatic fly larvae in sugar and candied grasshoppers Mexico The agave worm is eaten on tortillas,
and grasshoppers are toasted Cambodia Deep-fried tarantulas are popular with locals and tourists South africa Locusts lend interest to the staple dish of cornmeal porridge Australia Witchetty grubs are a traditional part of the Aboriginal diet Via Guardian Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati
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#Milk from the Offspring of a Cloned Cow Being sold in British Stores A British dairy farmer said he was using milk from a cow bred from a clone Milk from the offspring of a cloned cow is being sold in British shops,
Under European law, foodstuffs produced from cloned animals must pass a safety evaluation and get approval before they are marketed.
Research has identified concerns for the health of animals produced as a result of cloning. There is some evidence of premature births and deformities.
Under Mathiles direction, Iams became a world leader in premium dog and cat nutrition. In 1999, the Mathile family sold Iams to Procter & gamble for $2. 3 billion.
can play the songs of more than 900 bird species. Using microphones, it can also capture the chirps
and warbles of wild birds and match them against a database of bird sounds to help the oereader identify the species
Fans voted for Jessica to go stag and thats how Reinbold-Gee wrote it. Textnovel, which is funded by contributions from its own members,
On Scribd. com, writers and digital packrats are building a huge swap meet for written works of every length, many
The risk is that we become mindless ants following endless crumbs of digital data. oepeople tend to ask
Their research project originally aimed to figure out how animals make eggshells because its an extraordinarily strong yet lightweight material that no human has been able to replicate,
and the researchers hoped to learn how to develop a manmade equivalent by learning about the way animals make eggshells.
Despite this, the Conservatives have decided to axe the watchdog that was set up a decade ago to regulate the junk-food companies.
Steve Hundley dumped his Jaguar convertible. He stopped taking Baltic cruises. And he stopped buying his wife pricey jewelry.
500 for an outdoor artisan pizza oven. oewe dont need the Jaguar or cruises to the Baltic,
A tree that may in Summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Experts there gave it an official seal as the worlds sweetest. Honeydew melons like this have a sugar content of 20. 2g per 100g of fruit.
said Kathie Starkweather of the Lyon, Neb. -based Center for Rural affairs. oeif you start to lose something key like a grocery store,
Neb.,, a town of 132 where the grocery store closed 10 years ago, community leaders got a $75,
said Kathie Starkweather of the Lyon, Neb. -based Center for Rural affairs. oeif you start to lose something key like a grocery store,
Neb.,, a town of 132 where the grocery store closed 10 years ago, community leaders got a $75,
Anyone who thinks it would be easy to get rich selling marijuana in a state where its legal should spend an hour with Ravi Respeto, manager of the Farmacy, an upscale dispensary here that offers Strawberry Haze, Hawaiian Skunk and other strains
Bubble gum, Sour Kush, Gods Gift, Grand Daddy Purp and Blue Skunk. oethis will throw you for a loop,
since a restaurant moved off the premises. oethis used to be a hot dog place called Whats Up Dog
says Pierre Werner, Dr. Reefer himself. oewhen Whats Up Dog closed, I moved in the very next day,
#Genetically-Modified Salmon Will be First GM Animal Available for Human Consumption Genetically modified salmon could be on supermarket shelves within a year.
A salmon that grows at twice the normal rate is set to be the first genetically modified (GM) animal available for human consumption.
US watchdog the Food and Drug Administration is currently considering whether the GM Atlantic salmon, called Aquadvantage, is safe to eat.
But despite the creation of a GM mouse as early as the 1980s, the idea of eating modified animals does not appeal to the public.
policy director at the Soil Association, said the new technology is not worth the risk. oeonce you have bombarded an animal with other genes,
if a GM animal becomes available for human consumption. But in the UK the public remains suspicious of Frankenfoods.
#10 Unbelievable Animal Friendships This macaque was rescued from Neilingding Island in China after his mother abandoned him
His recovery was dragging until he made friends with this pigeon, and now the two are rarely apart.
Take this baby macaque, abandoned by its mother and close to death until it became best friends with a pigeon.
The macaque is thriving and the pair are inseparable. But they arent the only tear-jerking, unbelievable friendships youll find in the animal world:
From a sheep that brought a baby elephant out of a deep depression to natural enemies that snuggle down together for every nap,
these 10 heartwarming interspecies relationships are incredible and unforgettable. Pics) Friends and enemies in the animal world tend to be pretty clear-cut there are some species that just werent born to get along.
Who says that orangutans and tigers, dogs and deer, cats and birds cant all be friends somehow?
From a sheep that brought a baby elephant out of a deep depression to natural enemies that snuggle down together for every nap,
these 10 heart-wrenching relationships are incredible and unforgettable. The first time Albert the sheep met Themba the elephant at the Shamwari Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in South africa,
he didnt exactly roll out the welcome mat: The baby elephant, orphaned at six months old when his mother fell down a cliff,
chased his new friend Albert until the sheep took refuge in a shelter for 12 hours.
But since then, the animals have been oeinseparable, say observers, napping together, walking together, and even picking up each others habits:
Cats and birds are known not for their peaceful relations (just ask Tweety and Sylvester), but Snowy and Gladys are the exception to the rule.
when she became the only hen to survive a fox attack on her farm in Suffolk, England,
she found an unlikely ally in Snowy the cat. The owners saw the cat washing the chick and keeping her clean
and when it was time to let her back outside, Gladys refused to go without Snowy.
Pigs and tigers seem like theyd be natural enemies, but in captivity thats not always the case:
These photos from the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Thailand show a tiger nursing a litter of piglets
(and this tiger herself was raised by a pig). But while the process isnt unheard of, this set of images brings up bigger issues:
(and the animals were harmed to get the shots) for publicity. Mi-Lu and his sibling are believed to be the first two Pere David deer born in captivity
which was a good thing for the rare species, but a bad thing for Mi-Lu,
to raise her other fawn (it sounds harsh, but scientists think the rarity of deer twins meant that the mother didnt know hot to take care of a second baby).
The two resident dogs at Knowsley Safari Park where Mi-Lu was born Geoffrey and Kipper stepped in to help raise him,
going for walks and snuggling as a group, until the deer was introduced back into the herd. Even a 130 year age difference cant come between these BFFS:
Owen the baby hippopotamus and Mzee the giant tortoise have been friends since Owen was rescued from a reef where he was stranded during the 2004 tsunami in the Indian ocean
and brought to Lafarge Ecosystems sanctuary in Kenya. The frightened hippo ran right over to the surprised tortoise
and hid behind him just as he would have hidden behind his mother and, since then, the two have been walking
When this baby chihuahua lost his mother right after she gave birth the staff at Arizonas Halo Animal Rescue had the impossible job of trying to find another nursing dog to take over and with no dogs available,
they turned to the next best thing: a cat. The feline was already nursing four kittens that were about the same size as the puppy,
so rescue workers introduced the chihuahua into the litter. A week later, the dog was doing well,
gaining weight, and nearly ready to be adopted. This mama cat had an even more unusual nursing applicant:
a baby red panda. After its mother left, the panda joined a group of kittens being raised by a housecoat at the Artis Zoo in Amsterdam,
says MSNBC. While the endangered animal would have lived for about three months on a liquid diet before switching to bamboo and fruit,
the panda tragically died after choking on milk a few weeks after the cat adopted it.
Youre not likely to find a wild Sumatran tiger thats friends with a wild orangutan,
but at the Taman Safari animal hospital in Indonesia, abandoned primates Nia and Irma have no problem snuggling with Dema and Manis month-old tigers.
Both species are endangered but in the sanctuary they enjoy the same activities as their wild brothers and sisters:
cat naps for the tigers and rope swinging for the orangutans. Christian the lion wasnt found in the wild:
He was bought at Harrods in the 1960s by John Rendell and Ace Bourke, who raised him in their flat until he outgrew the tiny living space
and was released into the wild. But nine months after Christian took over a pride of his own,
his former owners traveled to Kora for one last goodbye and found a lion that was as gentle and kind to them as hed been as a cub.
Find out more about the trio on Animal Planet. Via Treehugger Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati o
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