#Condors Drive Cougars to Kill More Cougar biologist Mark Elbroch spent more than a year in South america's Patagonia region tracking down pumas and recording
which was published earlier this month in the journal PLOS One the cougars abandon their kills due to harassment from Andean condors a near-threatened scavenging bird Elbroch told Ouramazingplanet.
however since the condors are physically much smaller than these mountain lions and don't directly threaten the big cats he said.
 Mountain lions under the pressure of condors act like squirrels do under the pressure of owls acting more skittish Elbroch said.
Condors cannot land in the forest however since they travel awkwardly on land and can't negotiate wooded areas.
Although condors don't chase the cats away apparently their presence is irritating enough to drive away the cats.
Condors rarely land alone arriving with a coterie of sharp-beaked kin. Elbroch said the cats'skittishness may also owe something to the presence of humans primarily sheep herders in the Patagonian grasslands.
Brent a 37-year-old male chimpanzee paints only with his tongue. His piece a cluster of smudges and speckles garnered the most votes in a chimpanzee art contest the Humane Society of the United states (HSUS) announced Thursday (Aug 29.</
or Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event often known as K-T. The only survivors among the dinosaurs are the birds.</
></p><p>The oldest known wild bird in the United states has hatched a chick for the sixth year in a row.</
</p><p>The Laysan albatross named Wisdom thought to be at least 62 years old hatched a healthy-looking chick on Sunday (Feb 3) according to a statement from the U s. Department of the interior.
which is famous for its Laysan albatross population.</</p><p>Full Story:<<a href=http://www. livescience. com/26868-oldest-bird-hatches-chick. html target=blank>Oldest Known Wild Bird Hatches Healthy Chick
</a p i
#Coolest Science Stories of the Week<p></p><p>Answers to old questions a clue to ancient Viking lore and the upside of being a psychopath all made our top stories this week.</
#Coolest Science Stories of the Week<p></p><p>Mini black holes images of early birds and talking plants topped our favorite stories this week.</
><p>More than 100 million years ago birds living in what is sported now China wings on their legs a new study of fossils suggests.</
</p><p>Researchers found evidence of large leg feathers in 11 bird specimens from China's Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature.
The feathers suggest that early birds had four wings which may have played a role in the evolution of flight scientists report in a study published today (March 14) in the journal Science.</
<a href=http://www. livescience. com/27898-early-birds-sported-4-wings. html target=blank>Early Birds Sported 4 Wings</a p><p></p
Cretaceous period animals During the Cretaceous period birds replaced the Pterosaurs in the air. The origin of flight is debated by many experts.
Confuciusornis (125 to 140 million years) was sized a crow bird with a modern beak but enormous claws at the tips of the wings.
Iberomesornis a contemporary only the size of a sparrow was capable of flight and was probably an insectivore.
Avian Ancestors: Dinosaurs That Learned To fly By the end of the Jurassic the giant Sauropods such as Apatosaurus were becoming extinct.
and vultures ate most of the bodies with maggots and blowflies helping to reduce the elk herd to an eerie scattered sea of skeletons in the desert.
Take a gander at the cherry blossoms at the NPS's webcam. Follow Andrea Thompson@Andreatoap Pinterest and Google+.
which have devastated large bird populations in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. With these birds which include colorful toucans
and cotingas locally extinct or barely hanging on the palm trees have no way to disperse their largest seeds.
As a result seed sizes are smaller in parts of the rain forest where large birds are missing finds a new study detailed in the May 31 issue of the journal Science.
Combined with climate change the result could be devastating for palms said study leader Mauro Galetti an ecologist at Paulista State university in Brazil.
Palm trees and Lost Birds of Brazil Shrinking seeds The Atlantic Forest runs along the coast of Brazil starting at the easternmost tip of South america and continuing approximately to the country's southern border.
As a result large fruit-eating birds have vanished or nearly vanished from much of the forest.
These birds swallow fruit seeds and spread them through their droppings over many miles making the animals crucial to the forest ecosystem.
Galetti and his colleagues studied seed sizes in 22 populations of palm trees some in fragments where hardly any large birds survive
and others where bird populations are relatively robust. Â They found that seeds are consistently smaller in sites without large birds.
Seed sizes vary but in areas with few or no large birds common sizes range from about 0. 3 to 0. 4 inches (8 to 10 millimeters) in diameter with almost no seeds a half-inch (12 mm
) in diameter. In areas with robust large-bird populations half-inch (seeds are common with some seeds reaching 0. 55 inches (14 mm.
In sites without large birds the researchers found that seeds with a diameter of a half-inch
or larger had nearly no chance of being dispersed away from their parent tree. Other factors such as soil fertility forest cover and climate could not explain the change in seed size the researchers reported.
and his colleagues created computer models to figure out how long it would have taken trees to evolve smaller seeds in bird-free zones.
In the eyes of the United states Federal Animal Welfare Act animals such as mice and other rodents birds fish and invertebrates receive little
The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 amended the definition of animal to specifically exclude birds rats of the Genus rattus
and birds and many other creatures including octopuses also possess these neurological substrates. And we need to keep the door open to the possibility that other vertebrates
So any dog that chased hares was a harrier any lapdog was a spaniel and any large intimidating dog was a mastiff.
In comparison a white mangrove tree at the same so-called terminal age (123 years for mangroves) is less than half as likely to die than the average adult of its species. The Southern fulmar (Fulmarus glacialoides) a seabird becomes more likely to die with age.
And many animals other than humans have life spans that continue past their reproductive years including killer whales (Orcinus orca) mynah birds (Leucopsar rothschildi) and nematode worms (Caenorhabditis elegans.
The collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis) a migratory black-and-white bird lives only about five years maximum at that age 95 percent of collared flycatchers are dead.
But the flycatcher's mortality is fairly constant throughout adulthood not rising with age. Challenging theory The findings challenge the assumptions of classical theory suggesting the old ideas need a tweak Jones said.
or Nutcracker Man were becoming more specialized narrowing their diets and focusing on C4 foods.
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.
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.
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 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.
But old forests also provide habitat for iconic animals such as the California spotted owl and the American marten.
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.
#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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 one type of bird said Sarah Sumoski a researcher at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science
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;
and rings of fire in circuses and who are trained or broken to perform stupid and unnatural acts solely for people's entertainment.
In Wyoming's Medicine Bow National Forest botanist Brent Ewers of the University of Wyoming examined
Cheetahs prey on warthogs gazelles antelopes rabbits porcupines and even ostriches and they catch their prey by chasing it down.
They make a unique bird-like sound called a chirrup when they're excited or calling their cubs.
Tasmanian devils eat meat from snakes birds fish and insects. Their prey can reach up to the size of small kangaroos.
but smaller individuals may fall prey to eagles owls and spotted tail quolls. The ornery critters release a nasty odor
and trained to pull carts for the circus. Zebras in a herd might all look alike
Agelenidae spiders also called funnel weavers live throughout the world including North america. They build funnel-shaped webs between two braces such as branches or grass blades.
Behavior Like most species of spiders funnel weavers are nocturnal. They are known to flee from light.
The olinguitos occasionally also eat birds mice and other small animals. Cloud forests are tropical moist forests with persistent fog or cloud cover.
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.
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.
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.
The turkey a bird that matures for slaughter in the fall would have made an appearance as would chicken pork beef and goose.
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.
We are more familiar with traditional reproduction as practiced by the birds and the bees. Code of Life:
#How Birds Lost Their Penises How did the chicken lose its penis? By killing off the growing appendage in the egg.
That's the finding of a new study which reveals how most birds evolved to lose their external genitalia.
and most other birds nips penis development in the bud according to the new research published today (June 6) in the journal Current Biology.
Missing penises About 97 percent of birds lack penises entirely. The exceptions are real odd ducks literally.
Some waterfowl have coiling penises that can exceed the length of the rest of their bodies.
Whoa! The 9 Weirdest Animal Penises The most primitive group of birds paleognaths which include emus kiwis
and ostriches have developed well phalluses as well. Along the evolutionary line two newer groups diverged: anseriformes which include penis-wielding ducks swans and geese and galliformes
which make up most land-loving birds and lack penises. To understand how this genital gap diverges in development Cohn
along with research assistant Ana Herrera and their colleagues grew embryos from chickens (galliformes) and ducks (anseriformes) and tracked their penis growth.
It's pretty surprising actually Cohn said. Chickens and ducks start to develop their genitalia in such a similar manner that they're almost indistinguishable.
A few days after a primitive penile swelling appears on chick embryos however development abruptly halts and then regresses.
By the time they're born chickens and their galliforme relatives are left with only an opening called the cloaca rather than an external penis. In duck embryos the penis continues to grow.
in ducks it's only seen at the base of the genitals. To make sure Bmp4 was really doing the penis-stifling deed the researchers applied the protein to duck penises. Sure enough development halted.
Likewise when they blocked Bmp4's expression in chick penises the embryonic birds'phalluses continued to grow.
There are many paths to reach the same morphological end Cohn said The new study reveals how birds lost their penises but not why.
It seems odd that birds would evolve to lose an organ so critical to reproduction Cohn said.
Evolutionary biologists have theorized that perhaps bird penises vanished because female birds preferred mates with smaller penises. In ducks and other species with phalluses males frequently force females to copulate.
By picking mates with small penises female birds could have gained more control over the reproductive process.
Alternatively penis loss could have been a side effect of other changes in the birds'body. Bmp proteins are responsible for the origin of feathers in birds and their loss of teeth.
Bmp4 in particular is responsible for variations in beak size and shape Cohn said. It's interesting that so many of these little details of the bird body plan are associated with changes in Bmp activity he said.
Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitterâ and Google+.+Follow us@livescience Facebookâ & Google+.+Original article on Livescience. com i
#How Bomb Tests Could Date Elephant Ivory Bomb tests generations ago could indirectly help fight illegal poaching of African elephants new research shows.
#How Deadly H7n9 Flu Could Jump from Birds to Mammals Chinese researchers have found new clues to the origins of the deadly H7n9 flu virus
and also found a new flu virus lurking in birds that could potentially infect mammals.
The new research shows that the deadly H7n9 flu virus which emerged in China in March likely originated in migratory birds was passed to domestic ducks
China has about 65 percent of the world's domestic ducks and many live poultry markets where contact between people
To track the origins of H7n9 the researchers collected thousands of samples from sixkinds of domestic birds in southeastern China:
chickens ducks quail geese pigeons and partridges. They sequenced the virus's genomes and the results are published Thursday (Aug 22) in the journal Nature.
as H7n9 made its way from migratory to domestic birds it exchanged genes with other types of flu.
Many varieties of flu live in the birds'intestines but they aren't spread through the air.
It's also important to keep sending research teams out to watch the birds. Surveillance in birds is essential to let us know what is happening to viruses in the field and
what threats may be said emerging Guan. Follow Livescience on Twitter Facebook and Google+.+Original article on Livescience S
In January a different team of scientists found Google street view could also find potential nesting sites in northern Spain for the globally endangered Egyptian vulture.
To prepare a fresh turkey Test Kitchen chefs recommend brining the bird overnight which involves soaking the turkey in a container of salty water for at least 12 hours.
You'll end up with a better-seasoned and juicier bird. Still Bishop cautions that more is not necessarily better
Before placing the turkey in the oven Bishop suggests brushing the raw bird with butter.
The most important tip for using frozen turkeys is to let the birds thaw in the refrigerator before cooking them he added. 5 Myth-Busting Facts for a Safe Turkey Turkey temperature This year alone the Test Kitchen chefs experimented with more than 100 turkeys
For one the shape of the bird complete with a huge cavity in the center means it heats unevenly in the oven.
The Test Kitchen chefs found that basting the bird does not actually improve the juiciness of the turkey.
and flip the bird by hand so it's breast-side-up. We've found that really helps get juicier breast meat
and rather than basting the bird this is one thing worth doing. Finally before carving and serving the turkey Bishop recommends letting the finished product rest for 30 to 40 minutes.
But in order to get up to that temperature you end up overcooking the bird Bishop said. You don't want to be waiting for the stuffing
however Bishop recommends warming it up before the stuffing goes inside the bird. Â Warming stuffing in the microwave so it's not ice cold will at least give it a head start he said.
These forest islands were thought typically of as natural in origin for instance as landforms cut away by shifting rivers or long-term termite mounds or bird rookeries.
and birds and an overlying layer composed of organic refuse containing pottery bone tools and human bones.
Dozens of species disappeared altogether including 17 giant lemurs three pygmy hippopotamuses two aardvarklike mammals a giant fossa (a catlike carnivore) eight elephant birds a giant crocodile and two giant tortoises.
The passenger pigeon the dodo and the woolly mammoth are just a few of the species wiped off the Earth by changing environments and human activities.
Reviving the passenger pigeon The passenger pigeon filled the skies of North america in flocks of millions during the 19th century.
But hunting and habitat destruction steered the birds to extinction. The world's last passenger pigeon Martha died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio.
But what if scientists could bring them back? Writer and environmentalist Stewart Brand founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and his wife Ryan Phelan founder of the genetics company DNA Direct wondered
Working with Harvard biologist George Church they figured out a possible way to revive passenger pigeons.
You can't simply clone a passenger pigeon museum specimen because they no longer have fully intact genomes.
Using fragments of the passenger pigeon DNA scientists could synthesize the genes for certain traits and splice the genes together into the genome of a rock pigeon.
The cells containing the passenger pigeon DNA could be transformed into cells that produce eggs and sperm
which could be injected into rock pigeon eggs. The pigeons that hatched would be rock pigeons but their offspring would resemble passenger pigeons.
Scientists could then breed these birds and select for specific traits as a dog breeder might.
Eventually the resulting offspring would appear very much like the passenger pigeon. But that's not the only extinct animal scientists have their sights on reviving.
Woolly mammoths next? Other scientists dream of bringing back a beast that roamed the Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago:
the woolly mammoth. Well-preserved mammoths have been dug out of the Siberian tundra containing bone marrow skin hair and fat.
Even if researchers succeed in creating a mammoth passenger pigeon or other extinct creature it has to survive in the wild.
For example the passenger pigeon was a very social bird known to form flocks of millions. When their numbers dwindled to a few thousand the birds stopped breeding Ehrenfeld told Livescience.
De-extinction methods would produce just a handful of birds so who's to say they would reproduce?
he said. What's more the pigeons that raised them would be a different species with differing mothering techniques.
The environment is different in every respect Ehrenfeld said. Temple took a more moderate view.
Resurrecting a creature like the passenger pigeon or woolly mammoth has a strong appeal to the public's imagination Temple said.
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