A study in mice published last year in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that chlorogenic acid in green coffee bean extract didn't help prevent weight gain in mice fed a high-fat diet
#Poachers Killed More than 100,000 Elephants in 3 Years This story was updated at 10:32 am ET on Aug 19.
The insatiable demand for ivory is causing a dramatic decline in the number of African elephants.
Poachers are hunting the animal faster than it can reproduce with deaths affecting more than half of elephant families in the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya a new study finds.
In 2011 the worst African elephant poaching year on record since 1998 poachers killed an estimated 40000 elephants or about 8 percent of the elephant population in Africa.
In the absence of poaching African elephant populations grow about 4. 2 percent each year the researchers found based on detailed records from Samburu.
African elephants are an intelligent species; individuals cooperate with one another and console one another in times of distress
but people unfortunately like their ivory tusks said the study's lead researcher George Wittemyer an assistant professor of fish wildlife and conservation biology at Colorado State university.
Wittemyer has studied African elephants in Kenya for the past 17 years monitoring their complex social lives.
In 2009 a drought led to the deaths of about 12 percent of elephants in Kenya.
Elephant Images: The Biggest Beasts On land Sadly in 2009 we had a terrible drought and we started seeing a lot of illegal killing of elephants as well as natural deaths Wittemyer told Live Science.
We've been struggling to respond. We've been trying to find solutions to dampen the illegal killing.
His team used data on natural deaths versus poaching deaths in the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya and then applied these numbers to a continent-wide database called MIKE or Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants.
Started in 2002 MIKE is maintained by communities across Africa that report when where and how elephants die.
and a second that examined all 306 sites even those with less information about elephant deaths.
which is home to about 2 percent of the African elephant population because data there are sparse Wittemyer said.
In the past 10 years elephant numbers at the 12 sites have decreased by 7 percent which takes into account that elephant numbers were mostly increasing until 2009.
Elephants in Central africa decreased by more than 60 percent in the past 10 years according to an analysis of three locations in the 12-site model.
Poaching is so widespread that 75 percent of elephant populations across the continent have been declining
since 2009 with only 25 percent showing stable or increasing numbers Wittemyer said. Alarming increases in illegal killing for ivory are driving African elephants rapidly into extinction said Peter Leimgruber a conservation biologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute who was involved not in the study.
Poaching rates for ivory are exceed unsustainable and the natural growth rate of wild elephants Leimgruber said.
This means that elephant populations currently decline by nearly 60 to 70 percent every 10 years making it likely for the species to go extinct in the near future
if poaching and the illegal ivory trade are stopped not he said. Much of the ivory demand comes from China and Southeast asia.
Poachers killed an average of 33630 elephants every year from 2010 to 2012 resulting in more than 100000 deaths across the continent the study found.
As more elephants are poached the number of governmental seizures of illegal ivory increase and the black market price of ivory goes up.
This article has been updated to correct the number of elephants that have decreased. Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter@Laurageggel and Google+.
and cat bites to slippery banana peels and ugly paintings. Here's a look at the Ig Nobel winners of 2014.
In one of their studies the team found that cat bites are associated with depression in humans particularly women.
As for why the researchers speculated on various reasons including the idea that depressed individuals may take in a cat for companionship.
Dogs are known to practice some odd behaviors like sniffing each other's butts but a discovery out this year takes the prize for bizarre-yet-amazing doggie behaviors:
When pooping dogs prefer to align their bodies along the north-south axis of Earth's magnetic field.
The finding detailed in the journal Frontiers in Zoology earned a team of international scientists the Ig Nobel in Biology.
Bear masks: Humans dressed as polar bears played roles in garnering the Ig Nobel's Arctic Science Prize.
Due to interactions between Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus) and polar bears (Ursus maritimus) during field work on Edgeã¸ya Svalbard we measured response distances for reindeer from a stalking polar bear and improvised five
approaches from a person disguised as a polar bear for comparison with human encounters the team wrote in 2012 in their study published in the journal Arctic Antarctica and Alpine Research.
Result? The flight response and escape suggests a predator-prey relationship between the two beasts the researchers said.
when the oil is drizzled on other foods new research in mice suggests. Olive oil's unsaturated fat reacts with certain compounds in vegetables to form a third compound that can reduce blood pressure the researchers found.
which have been shown to keep blood pressure in check in animals according to the researchers. 7 Foods Your Heart Will Hate The scientists used mice to investigate how nitro fatty acids may lead to reduced blood pressure looking specifically at
The results showed that the diet increased the level of nitro fatty acids in mice and lowered their blood pressure.
The evidence was strengthened by the fact that a subgroup of mice that were modified genetically and were resistant to the inhibitory effects on the enzyme were found to maintain their high blood pressure
#Jaguar Facts: Biggest Cat in Americas Jaguars are large cats that can be found in North Central and South america.
They are identified by their yellow or orange coats dark spots and short legs. The dark spots on their coats are unlike any other cat spots.
Each spot looks like a rose and are called rosettes. Jaguars are the biggest cats in The americas and the third largest cats in the world.
From head to flank these cats range in length from 4 to 6 feet (1. 2 to 1. 95 meters.
The tail can add another 2 feet (60 cm) in length though their tails are quite short
when compared to other large cats. Lions'tails by comparison can grow up to 3. 5 feet (105 cm.
Males are heavier than females. Males can weigh from 126 to 250 pounds (57-113 kilograms)
In August and September jaguars mate. After mating the female will carry her young for around 100 days
Baby jaguars are called cubs. They are born with their eyelids sealed shut. After about two weeks the cubs are able to see for the first time.
Jaguars are carnivores which means they eat only meat. In the wild jaguars will use their speed
and stealth to take down deer peccary monkeys birds frogs fish alligators and small rodents. If wild food is scarce these large cats will also hunt domestic livestock.
Their jaws are stronger than any other species of cat. With these strong jaws jaguars will crunch down on bones
and eat them. In fact in the zoo bones are part of a jaguars'regular diet. Jaguars typically live in forests
or woods but they are also found in desert areas such as Arizona. They tend to stay close to water
and they like to fish. Jaguars will dip their tails into the water to lure fish much like a fishing line.
Jaguars are loners that only spend time with others of their kind when they are mating or taking care of cubs.
To keep other jaguars at bay they mark their territory with urine or by marking trees with their claws.
Their territories can be up to 50 miles wide according to the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.
They also don't like to share their food. Jaguars will only eat their prey after dragging into the trees
even if the trees are quite a distance away. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural resources'Red List the jaguar is threatened near due to poaching and the destruction of the rainforest.
Theworld Wildlife Federation states that there are only 15000 jaguars left in the wild. Their name comes from the Native American word yajuar.
Yajuar means he who kills with one leap. During a hunt jaguars take advantage of their strong jaws and sharp teeth.
They catch their prey by the head and chop down to make the kill. Other cats go for the neck when killing prey.
Melanistic or all black jaguars occur due to a genetic mutation. This mutation causes the skin
and fur to contain larger amounts of a dark pigment. These types of jaguars are found in rainforests
because it is easier for them to blend into the dark shadows of the trees.
Jaguars can see six times better than humans at night or during darker conditions due to a layer of tissue in the back of the eye that reflects light The jaguar is a top-level predator.
It doesn't have any natural predators other than humans who hunt them for their fur or sport.
Other resources p
#Ancient Parasite Uncovered in Mesopotamian Tomb Some of the earliest evidence of a human parasite infection has been unearthed in an ancient burial site in Syria.
When Climbing Trees Some snakes seem to be little scaredy-cats as new research finds
For example numerous mammals use their claws to cling to trees while some lizards and tree frogs simply adhere to surfaces using specialized toe pads
#These Adorable Fur Balls Survived a Raging Forest fire SACRAMENTO Calif. Johanna Varner thought a devastating forest fire meant the end of her pika research on Oregon's Mount Hood.
Instead she discovered that the pint-size pikas survived the fire providing new insight into their resiliency to environmental change.
Varner is studying pikas in Oregon's Columbia river Gorge where this rabbit relative munches on moss instead of grass and flowers.
She compares these unusual low-elevation pikas with a more typical group living at high elevation on Mount Hood.
Consider a spherical mammal Pikas live in crevices on relatively bare rocky slopes called talus and gather piles of plants to eat during the long alpine winters.
The mammal's body is shaped like a ball to help conserve heat. Furry Bundles: The World's 5 Smallest Mammals Because of their temperature sensitivity pikas are bellwethers of climate change.
Studies have documented that pikas in Nevada and eastern Oregon have moved already to higher-elevation homes as temperatures warm.
Other mountain populations have vanished frozen out because less winter snow means colder winter temperatures snow insulates the pika's homes.
The trees and shrubs surrounding the Pinnacle Ridge talus slope were burned 100 percent meaning a high-temperature fire
She assumed all of the pikas were dead. However the year before Varner had cached temperature sensors in the talus boulders.
but inside the crevices where pikas live the heat never exceeded temperatures recorded in the summer days before the fire she reported Thursday (Aug 14) here at the Ecological Society of America's annual meeting.
These data suggest the pika could have survived the fire Varner said. If I ever get stuck in a wildfire
Small mammals like pikas can't flee a forest fire like deer and Varner's research is the first evidence that sheltering in place helps the species endure a fire.
Even if some pikas perish enough survive that they can recolonize areas wiped out by the flames.
Pikas'future Forest fires are predicted to grow more frequent in the West in the next 50 years especially in areas where pikas live.
While the Mount Hood pikas were a healthy bunch Varner wonders whether a pika population already stressed by climate change would bounce back as quickly.
The take-home message is that pikas may be more flexible in their habitat than we thought Varner told Live Science.
They make the most of whatever is there. But in places where they are stressed they might not respond the same way.
and she has watched as pikas repopulate the research sites. Varner is also overseeing citizen science projects to keep a close eye on the Oregon pika population.
The most severely burned sites still have fewer pikas than lightly burned talus does. There are early hints that a vegetation threshold may exist Varner said meaning that pikas need a certain number of plants to maintain a population.
I thought my thesis had gone up in flames but it has yielded new insights Varner said.
Email Becky Oskin or follow her@beckyoskin. Follow us@livescience Facebook & Google+.+Original article on Live Science e
I attended a grizzly bear conference at a ranch just outside of Yellowstone national park. And the first and only other time I visited the state was 35 years ago when
At that 2004 conference I learned that global warming is making it harder to keep a key item in the grizzly bear pantry in stock.
The bears like to feast on high-protein seeds from whitebark pine cones in the fall to fatten up before hibernation time
The fate of the Yellowstone region's grizzlies meanwhile has teetered back and forth in recent years. In 2007 the FWS concluded that they had recovered sufficiently
Regardless the FWS is again considering delisting the roughly 700 bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem contending they are supplementing their diet with more meat.
Wild boars and mongooses are known to steal cobra eggs. The mongoose is the best-known enemy of the cobra.
Mongooses have thick fur to protect against cobra fangs and often defeat cobras in fights using their speed and agility.
They can bite the cobra s back before the snake can defend itself. Cobras are threatened also from other snakes and humans.
Often they eat birds small mammals lizards eggs carrion and other snakes They slither through the wilderness silently following their prey until they are ready to attack.
Their warning hiss sounds similar to a growling dog. Like other cobras they rear up the front third of their body
Though there are other snakes with more potent venom the amount of neurotoxin that a king cobra can emit in one bite is enough to kill 20 people or one elephant.
Bekoff's latest book is Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed (New world Library 2013).
For example can a dog running here and there with reckless abandon injure herself? Can a happy wolf enjoying fits of happiness overstep bounds of play
and put himself at risk by violating the rules of the game say by biting too hard with an individual who can harm him?
Can a marmot or a mouse who is playing fail to detect the presence of a predator?
Can a chimpanzee too full of himself put himself at risk by ignoring social cues from others who are not as taken with him?
Can a young animal spend too much energy playing rather than putting energy into growth and maintenance?
Based on a field study of Golden Marmots in Pakistan's Khunjerab National park UCLA biologist Daniel Blumsteinsuggested that play might expose individuals to predation.
In his book Play Playfulness Creativity and Innovation (Cambridge 2013) Cambridge university's Patrick Batesonmentions Macquarie University's Rob Harcourt's data showing that Southern fur seals are more likely to be killed by Southern sea lions
Eighty-five percent of the sea lions Harcourt observed being killed were killed while playing in shallow water.
when young cheetahs play it reduces the hunting success of mothers. Despite these observations the comparative database is scant.
In fact these strains may have been brought to The americas by seals and sea lions researchers say. A new analysis of three ancient Peruvian human skeletons that date to between A d. 1028 and 1280 well before Europeans landed on American shores shows evidence of tuberculosis including skeletal lesions
and curved spines. 8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries It looked as though tuberculosis was present in the New world before European contact based on these skeletons said Kirsten Bos the study's lead researcher and a postdoctoral fellow
Seals of the World TB is known to jump across species and there have been cases of people who have caught bovine TB Brown told Live Science in an email.
The reason why there are fewer reports of humans catching TB from seals is because we don't come into contact with seals so much Brown said.
There have been previous speculations among archaeologists that this might have been a source of TB infections in coastal areas of South america where seals were hunted
and possibly even farmed. But with only three human skeletons it's unclear whether the seal strains of tuberculosis infected many people or just an isolated few.
whether the strains transmitted from seals and sea lions were widespread in the early Americas experts agreed.
What's more the 6000-year-old birth date of tuberculosis needs further scrutiny researchers said.
#Why Sloths Leave the Trees to Poop Sloths are the quintessential couch potatoes of the rainforest
Three-toed sloths descend from the trees once a week to defecate providing a breeding ground for moths that live in the animals'fur
and nourishing gardens of algae that supplement the sloths'diet new research finds. Leaving the trees burns energy
and makes sloths easy prey for predators but the benefits of a richer diet appear to be worth the perils.
Important interspecific interactions between sloths their moths and algae-#seem to be reinforcing or even dictating important aspects of sloth behavior especially their ritualized behavior of descending the tree to defecate wildlife ecologist Jonathan Pauli of the University of Wisconsin-Madison leader of the study published today (Jan 21) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society
B told Livescience in an email. Daring Duos: Photos of Unlikely Animal Friends Very few mammals are based tree herbivores.
Such animals must be small and light enough to perch in trees but large enough to digest a lot of plants
Sloths known in Spanish as los perezosos (the lazies) have evolved adaptations to the constraints of life in the trees.
Two-toed sloths have relatively large home ranges and consume a varied diet of animal matter fruit and leaves.
By contrast three-toed sloths have limited much more ranges and eat only leaves. They have the slowest digestion rates of any mammal
and expend very little energy at rest. Pauli and his colleagues thought they knew why these tree-dwellers come down from the canopy to relieve themselves.
We hypothesized that this behavior sustains an ecosystem in the fur of sloths which confers cryptic nutritional benefits to sloths the researchers wrote in their journal article.
Pauli and colleagues captured two-toed and three-toed sloths near San Josã Costa rica and counted the number of moths as well as the amount of nitrogen phosphorus and algae in each animal's fur.
The team also collected digested material from the sloths'forestomachs where food collects right after it's swallowed to see
whether it matched algae in the fur which would indicate the sloths were consuming it.
The researchers found more moths in the fur of three-toed sloths than in that of their two-toed relatives.
In addition the team found larger amounts of inorganic nitrogen and algae in the fur of the three-toed sloths.
The algae in the sloths'forestomachs also matched that found in their fur. When the sloths relieve themselves their insect tenants lay eggs in the dung
which later hatch and fly up to recolonize the sloths. Fungi in the sloths'environment may be decomposing dead moths fostering the growth of algae.
Or the moths may be directly transferring nutrients from the sloth dung to their fur where algae can grow.
The sloths consume the algae which is rich in fatty compounds and gives them energy. In addition to being a tasty nutritional supplement the algae may serve as camouflage against predators from above such as the Harpy eagle.
The symbiotic relationship among sloths moths and algae could explain why it's hard to keep three-toed sloths well nourished in the highly sanitized environments in captivity.
Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+.+Follow us@livescience Facebook & Google+.+Original article on Livescience L
#Marijuana vs. Alcohol: Which Is Really Worse for Your Health? The question of whether alcohol or marijuana is worse for health is being debated once again this time sparked by comments that President Barack Obama made in a recent interview with The New yorker magazine.
As has been documented well I smoked pot as a kid and I view it as a bad habit
The ruminants Americans eat mainly cows pose the biggest threat to the climate according to an article in this month's edition of the journal Nature Climate Change.
As you may remember from your high school biology class ruminants have chambered a multi stomach. They swallow their food regurgitate it as cud chew it again
or anthropogenic sources of methane rice production landfills and burning fossil fuels for example domesticated ruminants are the largest source worldwide.
Reducing the emissions from ruminants which are associated mostly with beef production could make a big contribution to preventing the worst impacts of global warming said Doug Boucher director of climate research
Globally ruminants contribute 12 percent of all anthropogenic carbon emissions and 80 percent of those emissions are from cattle.
and debated mass extinction of large mammals such as ground sloths in North america. But the effects of this so-called Big Freeze weren't limited to North america:
Researchers have suggested these centuries of cold helped wipe out most of the large mammals in North america as well as the so-called Clovis people
#Straw Could Power Jets Straw is thought often of as a fuel for horses but if a French research project pans out passenger jets could soon fuel up with biofuels derived from this agricultural byproduct.
Leopard Teeth, Calf bones Found in Ruins Near Pyramids TORONTO The remains of a mansion that likely held high-ranking officials some 4500 years ago have been discovered near Egypt's Giza Pyramids.
Bones from young cattle and teeth from leopards suggest its residents ate and dressed like royalty.
and nearby mound containing the hind limbs of young cattle the seals of high-ranking officials which were inscribed with titles like the scribe of the royal box and the scribe of the royal school and leopard teeth (but no leopard).
The house containing at least 21 rooms is part of a city that dates mainly to the time
Leopard teeth Besides cattle bones the archaeologists found two leopard teeth in the house and another two in the nearby mound.
They however found no leopard bones leaving them with a puzzle. Redding consulted ancient drawings that date to the Old Kingdom (the age
when pyramid building was at its height) between 2649 and 2150 B c. He found that some high-ranking individuals including members of the royal family wore leopard skin that still had attached the head.
while the wearer was passing by but no leopard bones. High-ranking clergy known as sem priests were allowed to wear these leopard skins
and they could be members of the royal house noted Mark Lehner the director of Ancient Egypt Research Associates in an email to Livescience.
#Elephant Mystery at Ancient Syrian Battle Solved Editor's Note: This story was updated at 11:40 a m. E t. on Jan 24.
The mystery of an ancient battle between two warring troops of elephants has been solved thanks to a modern genetic analysis of the lumbering beasts.
Researchers have now found that Eritrean elephants which live in the northeastern portion of Africa are savanna elephants
and are not related to the more diminutive forest elephants that live in the jungles of Central africa.
That in turn discounts an Ancient greek account of how a battle between two warring empires played out with one side's elephants refusing to fight
The matchup included tens of thousands of troops thousands of cavalry and dozens of war elephants on each side.
The elephants were the ace in the hole able to trample the enemy and sow terror with their massive size.
Elephants were considered the tanks of the time until eventually the Romans figured out how to defeat war elephants in later times said study co-author Alfred Roca an animal scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Antiochus had easy access to Asian elephants from India but Ptolemy didn't. Instead he set up outposts in
what is now modern-day Eritrea to get African elephants. Unfortunately that strategy didn't work out so well:
According to Polybius'account the African elephants turned tail and ran when they saw how gigantic the Asian elephants were.
Ptolemy however was able to recover due to missteps by Antiochus and eventually won the battle.
African elephants In reality Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants so some historians speculated that perhaps the Ptolemies were using African forest elephants
So Roca and his colleagues conducted a thorough genetic analysis of the elephants found in Eritrea the descendants of the losers in the ancient battle.
We showed using pretty much every genetic marker that they were savanna elephants Roca told Livescience.
This was contrary to some speculation that there may be forest elephants present in that part of the world.
The team also found that there were just 100 to 200 African elephants left in isolated pockets in Eritrea
and the African elephants got spooked for some other reason than the overpowering size of the Asian elephants.
and they claimed that India had the biggest elephants in the world Roca said. Polybius who wasn't actually at the battle likely read those accounts
and surmised the Asian elephants'bigger size caused their opponents to panic. In fact until about the 1700s when scientists actually measured the two most people still thought Asian elephants were the larger species Roca said.
And even now games such as Age of empires that recreate the Battle of Raphia depict the Ptolemaic elephants as smaller.
Editor's Note: This article was corrected to note that there are 100 to 200 African not Asian elephants in Eritrea.
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