and producing the sugary treat from these animals is an ancient one (called meliponiculture) practiced for example by the Maya to this day t
The marks look identical to those found on the bones of animals consumed as food.
what s found in bigger animals. A horse contains more than 200000 calories and a bear three times that much.
And that s just from their most appetizing parts. It s also worth considering that about half the calories in human meat come from adipose tissue.
These birds find baldness a virtue not a curse because the adaptation allows the south-of-the-equator poultry to throw off additional body heat
mapping the birds gene sequences in order to determine the best approach for getting those good heat-resistant genes into American chickens without taking along all the genetic baggage as Schmidt calls it that s unnecessary to duplicate in the hybrid chickens.
and South american poultry they hope American producers will crossbreed them to North american birds. It could take around 10 generations of chickens carefully bred to arrive at new heat-resistant breeds that can successfully reproduce on their own.
In the announcement President Obama said he will also set aside $8 million for new honeybee habitats.
The initiative doesn't only focus on bees but also addresses other pollinators like butterflies. The Federal government will also work to restore the Monarch butterfly migration using research
and habitat improvements that will benefit Monarchs as well as other native pollinators and honey bees the statement said.
What's going on with bees? As the White house noted the decline is blamed on various factors from a lack of good habitat to exposure to certain pesticides to mite infestations and viruses.
Part of the total $50 million is slated to enhance research as to a cause for the bee deaths.
and use of these toxic pesticides until determined safe Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica told the AP P
#Using DNA Forensics To Track Elephant Poachersthe shocking news that Satao the much-loved African elephant who lived in Kenya s Tsavo East National park has been killed
and butchered for his tusks highlights once again the terrible and unsustainable toll of poaching elephants for their ivory.
and trace the origins of seized ivory providing the means to tackle enforcement problems in the country where the animal was killed rather than just the point where the attempt was made to smuggle it out of the continent.
Satao s death is just one among the many thousands of elephants killed each year. The Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants programme part of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) set up as part of the worldwide ban in 1989 reported that 22000 African elephants
were killed illegally by poachers in 2012 based on data from 27 countries across Africa. The figures for 2013 reported this month show a toll of over 20000 African elephants the vast majority of seizures by customs
or border officials being made in Tanzania Kenya and Uganda. The CITES report reveals that while the numbers of elephants poached appears to have stabilised among large seizures of more than 500kg the number of tusks found in each seizure is rising.
This suggests two things: that there are fewer elephants to poach and that the trade is organised well and not the work of individual poachers or small groups.
This level of slaughter far exceeds the reproductive potential of the remaining elephants and will by any account lead to the extinction of the African elephant in many parts of the continent.
The international community is only now responding to this crisis for the African elephant with action.
Knowing which populations the poachers are targeting can play an important part. Work pioneered by Professor Sam Wasser at the University of Washington uses DNA profiling from seized ivory to trace it back to the geographical location within Africa from which the ivory was taken once roamed.
There are two species of elephant in Africa the savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis.
Within these two species are many subpopulations such as extended family groups where there is a greater sharing of DNA types due to inheritance from common ancestors.
Under CITES there is a total ban on the trade in elephant ivory although not from all other species that have ivory nor from tusks removed from mammoths being extinct they cannot be provided any legal protection.
The cost of mammoth ivory is approximately US$350 per kilogramme significantly cheaper than elephant ivory but often looks very similar.
Again DNA typing can distinguish between African and Asian elephants and mammoths. This aspect of wildlife forensic science is supported by the United nations Office for Drugs
and Crime and has already proved highly successful in tracking seizures and locating their source.
For example when a 6. 5 tonne shipment was seized in Singapore DNA testing revealed it had come from elephant populations in Zambia.
If nations wish to save the African elephant then action to provide and fund the tools necessary is required.
And as ivory becomes rare due to the alarming decrease in elephant numbers the concurrent increase in value will put ever more pressure on the dwindling elephant populations.
There are no genetically engineered animals sold for human consumption right now. The only candidate that's anywhere close Aquabounty's fast-growing GM salmon seems to have stalled in its approval process
It's because of politics M foods are deeply unpopular and GM food animals especially so.
There are many labs around the world working on making animals that are engineered to grow faster resist disease
For example they're now able to change just one base pair in an animal's DNA code ne pair of letters in an animal that has billions of such pairs.
With these new tools some are hoping they can engineer animals that are more appealing to the public.
They're making animals whose genes are similar to those found in closely related unmodified animals.
So instead of giving pigs mouse genes scientists could make domestic pigs with genes normally found in wild pigs.
The end result would be engineered pigs that farmers could have made through generations of careful breeding geneticists argue.
I don't think those who don't wish to eat GM foods will find GM pigs-with-pig-genes any better than pigs with mouse genes.
#What I Learned Hunting Decoy-Weaving Spiders In The Amazontambopata PERU--In a remote area of the Peruvian Amazon lives a type of spider with a peculiar habit:
It builds a spider-shaped decoy in its web out of dead insects and other detritus and
which resembles an arachnid much bigger than itself. The idea is that these spider-shaped web additions scare away predators
but nobody knows for sure. Only discovered less than two years ago scientists know little about these marvelously strange web-weavers
so when I got an opportunity to go to Peru and learn more about them--amongst other bizarre animals that reside here
--I booked a flight from New york without a second thought. The spiders live near the Tambopata Research center in Peru's wild Madre de dios region.
To get here you have to fly through Lima to Puerto Maldonado a rambling mining town through
Once you pass the Malinowski ranger station where visitors must sign in civilization drops away for good with caimans
and capybara (the world's largest rodent) taking up stations on the banks. Along the way you enter the Tambopata National Reserve
and is one of the most biodiverse places On earth with for example more than 1200 butterfly species alone.
I meet Lary Reeves a University of Florida entomologist and graduate student I've come to follow around.
and a head lamp--275 lumens strong enough to spot an Amazon bamboo rat from a football field away easy--who's just returned from a walk to find spiders.
With him is Aaron Pomerantz a graduate student from Florida who has come for 10 days to help gather data on spiders who is friendly and inclusive.
Welcome to the jungle Reeves says. We all share a Cusquena a ubiquitous Peruvian beer that
nevertheless tastes delicious before going to see a fist-sized tarantula that lives in a nearby hole.
A five minute walk away we find the first decoy a relatively well-made one that looks like spider albeit with six legs.
and makes the spider-like decoy appear to waggle in a kind of dance. The spider is a puppeteer.
During the eight days that I am here Reeves and Pomerantz locate and photograph scores of these spiders
and I helped find a few too. To spot one you walk slowly through the jungle with your headlamp beam on even at high noon;
the canopy darkens the forest more than you'd expect and the light helps pick out the delicate white webs
The decoy-building spider is thought to be a species in the genus Cyclosa and Reeves and colleagues plan to formally describe the species
though it remains nameless. This Peruvian Cyclosa species was found in September 2012 by entomologist Phil Torres.
Six months earlier while researching butterfly diversity Reeves discovered a similar spider in the jungles of the Philippines that likewise makes spider-shaped decoys in its web albeit of a slightly different shape.
and now Reeves has shifted his research to the Peruvian Cyclosa since among other reasons it is easier to get to--all things being relative.
although these blobs are not as convincing or impressive as those of the newfound spiders.
and hasn't been reported until recently--I have no idea how people have not done this before says Reeves who is also a graduate fellow with the National Science Foundation.
Why do the spiders build these decoys in the first place? The working hypothesis is that these spider shapes fool
and scare away damselflies which feed on small spiders but avoid larger ones. These insects in the family Pseudostigmatidae are the largest damselflies in the world.
To the untrained eye they resemble dragonflies. Our working hypothesis which we plan on testing is that the Cyclosa makes a decoy spider that is larger than the size of spiders Pseudostigmatids will take thereby gaining some protection from being eaten by these spider specialists says Ola Fincke a collaborating researcher at the University of Oklahoma
and the world expert on helicopter damselflies as Reeves puts it. Over the course of my trip and Reeves's month in the jungle he goes about laying the groundwork to test this hypothesis
and makes several interesting discoveries. First Reeves devised a method to collect the webs (which he doesn't want to share in detail for proprietary concerns) that he will use in the future to collect the animals and their silken firmaments and expose them to damselflies.
The idea is to see if the winged creatures pluck more spiders from webs where the decoys have been removed--that would provide evidence that the decoys are meant indeed to scare off the insects.
A big part of the trip has involved also the seemingly mundane task of photographing the spiders and their webs.
But it is in the painstaking work that discoveries emerge --and hanging out with Reeves
and Pomerantz who are mad for understanding the intracices of animal life here especially the infinite strangeness of small beasts like spiders--nothing seems banal.
There are also a seemingly endless variety of animals to spot and identify and distractions provided by visitors like macaws.
At one point an ornery curious scarlet macaw flies onto Reeves's shoulder and begins gnawing at the tooth of a Spinosaurus aegyptiacus (a type of dinosaur) on his necklace.
I can't help but be reminded that these birds are in fact dino descendants and to hear their depraved calls--hauntingly doleful
or just as often angrily strident--one could mistake them for Jurrasic Park velociraptors. One afternoon Reeves and Pomerantz are photographing the spiders this time back in the lab
which isn't really a laboratory but a messy room full of equipment used by researchers with the Macaw Project who have been studying the habits and health of the area's macaws and parrots here at the research center for decades.
The lab's recesses house such treasures as a sloth preserved in a vat of formaldehyde.
Pomerantz empties the contents of a vial containing a Cylcosa and its decoy onto a white Plexiglass sheet placed between two large wooden seats.
Beneath it a flash is positioned perfectly sitting atop a tarnished metal dish to ensure optimal distance from the sheet for best photo quality.
Reeves takes aim with his Canon 7d which boasts a powerful macro lens. From time to time Pomerantz gently corrals the spider with the tip of a small paintbrush to prevent it from running off this white plane
so Reeves can get a good shot. Wait a second Reeves says as he snaps a photo of a spider and zooms in on the camera's screen.
That's a male! This is a surprise. Before Reeves and colleagues had only found females making these decoys.
In other members of the family Araneidae (the taxonomic family that includes orb-weavers) once males are sexually mature they pretty much hang out in the webs of the females
and steal food rather than making complex webs of their own he adds. And sometimes they become the females food.
They are also usually much smaller than females. These male Cyclosa which can be spotted by their hairy punching bags
or pedipalps are not much smaller than females. The largest females are just under 1 centimeter in length.
There's another discovery when the pair photographs what they'd thought were spider eggs laying within the decoy.
Those aren't eggs Reeves says as he zooms in on the photo he's just taken.
They're spiderlings. I was going to say--that looks oddly like a spider for an egg Pomerantz says.
While it's not unusual for spiders in this family to lay eggs in their stabilimenta the technical name for these web decorations the spiderlings usually make a break for it shortly after hatching.
These appear to have hung around for a while longer. To learn more about the web-building activities of this species Reeves
and Pomerantz place a couple in two newly-devised observation boxes that force the spiders to build webs parallel to the clear plastic sides perfect for viewing by humans.
Much to their surprise one of the Cyclosa spiders builds a spiral P shape when the decoy is removed from its web that looks shockingly like the Peruvian P that adorns much of the country's tourist paraphernalia
(and also resembles the tail of this monkey geoglyph found amongst the Nazca Lines). Why they do this remains unknown.
Perhaps the spiders are just patriotic. Reeves has also found out that the spiders don't tolerate artificial stuff in their webs.
Just to see what would happen he puts glitter (colored blue and orange representing the University of Florida) into the animals silken home
--but the crafty spinster cut out all of that garbage. When it was reported first in late 2012 the story received a fair amount of attention
and Reeves thinks that's because of the romanticized idea behind it that people are thinking these spiders are so clever that they're building these structures that look like larger spiders.
But it's not like the spiders are looking at another spider and designing it based on that--this design is just
what has been selected for--in that way it's ingrained into their DNA and which translates into their behavior he says.
Spiders that have these more spider-like-looking decoys are more successful than those who don't.
It's not the spider itself it's evolution--that's the amazing thing. The spiders are dummies Reeves continues using term he often applies to his beloved arachnids with bemused affection
but at the same time they are smart enough to make the decision to know what should and shouldn't go into that structure.
Like when we offered them glitter he adds. Soon my time in the jungle is drawing to a close.
On the last night that we are both there Reeves is still up photographing insects after the electricity in the center has turned off.
I'm going to take a photo alright? I say as to not freak him out by approaching in the dark.
He consents and laughs his attention trained on his insect photo subject. Earlier he'd been photographing a brightly-colored fungus beetle for project called Meet Your Neighbors that's dedicated to reconnecting people with the wildlife on their own doorsteps
--and enriching their lives in the process according to the group's mission statement. It will be awhile before Reeves
and co. will be able to sort through all of the data and photographs they have collected. When he returns to the jungle before long he will explore the eating habits of damselflies to see
if and how much Cyclosa's decoys protect them. There is always the possibility that the decoys have another function for example to lure parasites/predators of larger spiders all the better to eat.
But Reeves thinks that's unlikely. Only the future will tell. As is often the case with fieldwork obstacles are an everyday occurrence (for example time
and circumstance didn't allow for studying silk-henge small webby towers built by an as yet-unknown type of spider perhaps to defend eggs against wasps).
The team doesn't yet have a permit to collect the spiders but is working to get one.
If we had a lab specimen it would go a long way Reeves says. Until then the jungle is an open book
albeit not one that provides easy reading. Reeves--and Pomerantz--will be back. t
#Last Straw: How The Fortunes Of Las vegas Will Rise Or Fall With Lake Meadthe bathtub ring can be seen for miles.
The 120-foot-high band of rock bleached nearly white by mineral-rich water circles the shoreline of Lake Mead.
Water levels have dropped by almost 100 feet in the past decade and the ring has emerged as a stark reminder of the drought enveloping the American Southwest.
Since tunneling for Intake No. 3 began in 2012 the borer has averaged just 35 feet per day in atmospheric mode.
#Giant Beetle Threatens Palm trees Of Hawaiino one knows exactly how the coconut rhinoceros beetle made its way to Hawaii
but state and federal officials are working hard to eradicate the giant pest before it inflicts significant damage.
In 2007 the beetles destroyed an estimated 50 percent of the palm trees on the island of Guam.
The beetles could have come from a variety of places including areas where they are deemed invasive
They were detected first just before Christmas in traps specifically designed to catch invasive insects around Joint Base Pearl harbor-Hickam on the island of Oahu Hawaii.
The traps run on solar power and are equipped with UV light and a pheromone lure that's attractive to nocturnal beetles.
Since the beginning of the year coconut rhinoceros beetles have been caught in over a dozen traps. Officials initially identified a particularly productive breeding site in a mulch pile on the base's golf course
but no additional breeding sites have been detected according to Rosenthal. Officials are now in a race against time to quell the spread of the beetle
which can destroy palm tree date palm sugarcane and banana tree populations. A potential method for detecting the beetles involves the use of acoustic monitoring devices to determine which trees are infested.
Richard Mankin an entomologist with USDA previously employed sound and vibration detection devices to locate the beetle in Guam.
There's a number of insects like the coconut rhinoceros beetle that you can't see when they get into tree trunks.
For a long time we've been using sounds to detect these hidden insects particularly to detect large species said Mankin.
For example adults can communicate to attract mates and larvae can be communicating inside a dead log about
but not enough was done to eradicate the insects after detection. As a result the beetles spread to most areas of the island and now the invasive population is controlled through community efforts.
For example Guam residents are educated to chip up and burn dead trees an ideal breeding ground for the beetle's larvae.
In Hawaii trapped coconut rhinoceros beetles are destroyed in compost bins heated to temperatures between 140-180 degrees Fahrenheit.
The heated decomposition process produces ammonia which kills the beetles. HDOA and APHIS are also working to develop a long-term federally funded eradication effort
which may include the controlled introduction of biological predators like a fungus that's known to attack the beetle.
Whatever the final plan the lesson from Guam is clear. Officials must implement a comprehensive detection
and eradication effort quickly to avoid devastation of a sensitive island ecosystem and a culture so tied to the palm tree e
This is not just about disappearing polar bears or melting ice caps. This is about protecting our health and our homes.
I like polar bears and I know about melting ice caps. Taking aim at critics of regulating carbon emissions Mccarthy dismissed charges that the plan's mandated cuts will cause power prices to skyrocket
Time after time when science pointed to health risks special interests cried wolf said Mccarthy. And time after time we followed the science protected the American people
T heir claims that the science-driven action that s protected families for generations would somehow harm us flies in the face of history and shows a lack of faith in American ingenuity and entrepreneurship.
and face paint on actors than it is to fabricate (or animate) menageries of wildly inhuman characters.
That means a skull which rules out whole taxonomies of worms slugs and other potential invertebrates.
And because exoskeletons would become untenable as they scale up in size collapsing under their weight in all but the lowest gravities insects can be ruled reasonably out.
They could have more arms for manipulating tools ground-hugging postures to better hide from predators
New orleans in Mid-july is no place for a chimp. The sweltering mosquito-assaulted set of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a minor marvel of engineering a three-story habitat with interlacing tree trunks recessed rooms
and passages and a flowing aqueduct that s turned the ground level into a swamp of pooling water and sucking mud.
The filmmakers call it Ape Village and it really does look like something hyperintelligent domineering apes might construct.
Until that is you notice the dozens of motion-capture cameras dotting the structure and the guys in gray full-body suits broiling in the merciless sun and steamy humidity.
They re the sweatiest most miserable make-believe chimps imaginable. And then they start to move.
While Rise of the Planet of the Apes (released in 2011) relied on stunt people the sequel to the sci-fi reboot has cast Cirque du Soleil performers.
what it would be like for a chimpanzee to fly from limb to limb now we have guys that can actually jump the 20 feet says producer Dylan Clark.
From a VFX standpoint Dawn of the Planet of the Apes isn t a single leap of faith but a series of them.
what was possible with performance capture turning Caesar a chimp played by Andy Serkis into a believable full-computer-generated (CG) character.
Dawn features a much larger cast of apes and their expanded screen time makes for a much bigger challenge.
With more data at their disposal animators can imbue the entire supporting cast of 3-D odeled primates with the same uncanny flicker of intelligence that made Caesar an instant CG star.
Because unlike the monsters mutants and other VFX-enhanced flights of fancy populating sci-fi flicks apes (even smart ones) aren t imaginary.
We want the chimpanzees to act and look and be photorealistic Clark says. We want this movie to feel real.
In reality human-animal hybrids have never been people with animal traits but rather animals tweaked to host
or benefit from human biology. The first documented example occurred in 2004 when the Mayo Clinic injected human stem cells into fetal pigs creating swine with human blood
in order to study how viruses jump between species. Last year neuroscientists at Stanford university boosted the intelligence of mice with human brain cells.
or borrowing a newt s ability to regrow amputated limbs. But even if blithely injecting human fetuses with feline
It s one thing to flip a single protein as he did to create transgenic goats that produce spider-silk protein in their milk.
The universe is filled with human-animal hybrids and ruled by an intergalactic monarchy (news to Earthlings.
and referred to as hatchlings and they exhibit the kind of physical and behavioral diversity that implies something closer to biological reproduction than mass assembly.
Sometimes it s the work of external forces as with the atomic testing that gave rise to Godzilla in the original 1954 film and the glowing ooze that turned garden-variety turtles into man-size martial artists.
and claws erupting from X-men. Bruce Demple a biochemist at Stony Brook University cites more dramatic examples of single mutations the kind of things that screenwriters might think about he says.
With targeted chemical mutagens geneticists have pulled off feats both impressive such as increasing the circumference of macaque monkeys thigh muscles by 15 percent and flat out disturbing like making legs sprout from the heads
of fruit flies. Researchers have used also radiation to increase random mutations. But the difference between these lab-grown mutants and their Hollywood counterparts comes down to luck.
In reality the road to monstrous success would be paved with the corpses of almost-Godzillas and near inja Turtles.
If the common cold can repel Martian occupiers in The War of the Worlds why not hurl even more virulent weapon ized bugs at the enemy?
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