And in Africa where he was working to set up national parks in the 1950s Savory thought elephants were also to blame for the land's deterioration.
Savory said his research led to the shooting of 40000 elephants but the damage only got worse.
Loving elephants as I do that was the saddest and greatest blunder of life and
It also explains how smaller animals such as the mammals and other animalsâ with more modest energy requirements managed to survive
and live only in the foothills of the Brahmaputra valley where their home is covered in 6. 5-foot-tall (2 meter) elephant grass.
One explanation in vogue in the early 1980s was that the mysterious circle patterns were produced accidentally by the especially vigorous sexual activity of horny hedgehogs.
The U s. Fish and Wildlife Service has taken the unprecedented step of pulverizing nearly six tons of elephant ivory stored at the National Wildlife Property Repository in Colorado.
and operating on the ground through organized rebel groups has been responsible for the loss of some three-quarters of all African forest elephants in the past decade.
Across Central africa elephant range-states are calling for a moratorium on the sale and purchase of ivory.
The Heavy Cost of Elephant Poaching (Op-Ed) African elephants alone are being lost at an unprecedented rate
Approximately 35000 elephants were killed by poachers last year some 96 elephants each day. On September 26 WCS joined with 15 other conservation non-governmental organizations the leaders of seven African nations
and the Clinton Global Initiative in announcing an $80 million three-year commitment to halt the killing of elephants
WCS simultaneously launched its 96 Elephants campaign to raise awareness on this critical issue. In the fight to end the elephant poaching crisis nations must take a three-pronged approach:
stop the killing stop the trafficking and stop the demand. Those efforts took a giant step forward with the U s. Fish
in order to stop the slaughter of the planet's elephant population. I encourage all to visit 96elephants. org to help end the elephant crisis. The views expressed are those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was published originally on Livescience
insects and fish and people and dogs all have bilateral symmetry. It now appears that the closest relative of Bilaterians are jellyfish
#Culprit in Mysterious Elk Deaths Found A hunter stumbled upon a bizarre sight on a 75000-acre ranch north of Las vegas N m. on Aug 27:
the remains of more than 100 dead elk. Livestock deaths are not unusual but so many animals dying off
Officials with the New mexico Department of Game and Fish investigated the mysterious elk deaths and ruled out several possible causes for the elk deaths including poachers anthrax lightning strikes epizootic hemorrhagic disease (an often-fatal virus known to affect deer and other ruminants) botulism poisonous plants
malicious poisoning and even some sort of industrial or agricultural accident. The investigation was hampered by the state of the elk:
Scavengers including bears 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.
Spooky! Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena We couldn't find anything toxic in their stomachs and no toxic plants on the landscape said Kerry Mower a wildlife disease specialist with New mexico Department of Game
and Fish as quoted by the Santa fe New Mexican newspaper. As news spread some conspiracy-minded folk soon speculated about links to animal mutilations UFOS or even the dreaded Hispanic vampire el chupacabra.
Pond scum of death Through science and further testing of elk tissue samples and water samples the real killer has finally been found:
In other words the elk herd suffocated to death unable to breathe. And the fast-acting toxin explains the animals'strange sudden deaths.
but in three fiberglass livestock watering tanks not far from where the elk died. The elk also showed signs they had struggled on the ground further supporting neurotoxin poisoning.
Based on circumstantial evidence the most logical explanation for the elk deaths is that on their way back to the forest after feeding in the grassland the elk drank water from a trough containing toxins created by blue-green algae
or cyanobacteria Mower said in a statement from the Department of Game and Fish. The algae-produced neurotoxin is similar to curare the famous toxin found in poison-tipped arrows used by South american indian tribes.
Though anatoxin-A can be deadly to other animals including dogs and cattle reports of human deaths are rare.
#Daring to Trap Grizzlies, Researchers Tackle Population Puzzle It takes a trained team a healthy dose of caution
and about an hour of work to restrain a grizzly bear and get the samples needed for research on the iconic western species. This research that could help scientists solve a puzzling trend in the bear's population numbers.
Here's how it works: Researchers scout out an area where grizzlies are known to wander.
There scientists leave roadkill bait in a metal box-trap masked so the bears can't detect it.
Once the trap catches a grizzly scientists use a sedative to immobilize the animal. Then they have only an hour to take blood
and hair samples do some measurements and fit a radio collar on the animal before it wakes up.
Despite the inherent danger the research is a critical means of gleaning information about the local grizzly population's health.
Obviously there's always a risk of something happening that we haven't seen before so vigilance is incredibly important here. 7 Iconic American Animals Researchers have conducted grizzly bear monitoring in various forms since 1973.
At that time Yellowstone was completing the closures of garbage dumps that had attracted bears. Because of these dumps the grizzlies started roaming for food in areas too close to the park's tourists leading to policies of euthanization and removal.
Surveys showed a decline in the grizzly population until the early 1980s. Then between 1983 and the early 2000s the overall population increased by somewhere between 4 percent and 7 percent a year.
Grizzlies are slow reproducers; they have two cubs once every three years and only become fertile at age four or five.)
That growth has leveled off however in the past decade. Current growth is estimated to be only as high as 2 percent a year.
Figuring out why is one of the reasons grizzly scientists are trapping and studying the bears.
Photos: Trapping Grizzly bears We estimate 600 to 700 bears in this population. Is it possible that we now have reached a density where the population is being affected by
what we call density dependent effect? van Manen said naming one question the scientists are asking.
In the specific case of the grizzlies he added this would mean that the older males are killing the young cubs.
One of the explanations focuses on whitebark pine an important food as grizzlies bulk up for hibernation in the fall.
Grizzlies eat caches of whitebark pine seeds embedded in the tree. Van Manen's team completed surveys of the whitebark pine population finding a marked decrease (74 percent) in the number of trees in the past few years.
It's unclear how greatly this is affecting the grizzly bears though. In response to lost pine trees the animals could switch to eating more meat
and fat content of grizzlies over time taken from the samples obtained when the scientists trap the grizzlies.
While van Manen declined to give specifics about the results until they are published he said there are no major indications that body fat as a percentage of bear weight is declining This could with further study suggest that the food source isn't the explanation.
Other participants in the ongoing bear research study include the U s. Forest Service the U s. Fish and Wildlife Service the Wind River tribe and the wildlife agencies for Idaho Montana Wyoming.
Follow Elizabeth Howell@howellspace or Livescience on Twitter@livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+l
Scientist Risked Execution for Fox Study (Op-Ed) Brian Hare is an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke university
and the founder of Dognition a website that helps you find the genius in your dog.
This post was an adaptation from his book The Genius of Dogs co-authored with Vanessa Woods (Dutton 2013.
and finally solved the puzzle of how the wolf turned into the dog. Â For almost a century Darwin's biggest idea had a hole in it.
To illustrate natural selection Darwin did not directly suggest that humans shared a common ancestor with apes.
Everyone knew that you could selectively breed dogs for certain physical characteristics like size or coat color.
while the firstâ wolf  changed into a dog or a wild boar into a pig.
 Belyaev began his experiment with the silver fox because he could disguise his work as a commercial endeavor.
Silver foxes were prized in Russia for their fur and Belyaev's official research objective was trying to breed foxes for better fur.
Adopt a Pet Fox for Science's Sake Instead of trying to create a domesticated species by selecting for each physical trait Belyaev selected for one simple behavioral trait
whether the foxes would approach a human hand. Â After only 45 generations the experimental foxes began to change in ways that might take thousands if not millions of years in the wild.
By the time I arrived years later to see the ongoing work Belyaev's experimental foxes were radically different from their control population.
They had smaller skulls and canine teeth. Their coats were splotchy and their tails were curled.
They also had floppy ears and barked. Â When I met the bred foxes for the first time one jumped in my arms
and licked my face. The difference between the experimental and the control foxes were remarkably like the differences betweenâ wolves  and dogs.
 Belyaev had done it. He had taken a population of wild animals and essentially domesticated them.
I tested the foxes in 2004. My team's previous research had shown that dogs are remarkable at reading human communicative gestures.
Dogs were better than wolves and better than even humans'closest living relativesâ chimpanzees. The question was
whether Belyaev's foxes would share this talent for reading human gestures. Â They did.
This had huge implications to how scientists think about the domestication of dogs. The most common assumption is that some hunter-gatherer with a soft spot for cuteness found some wolf puppies
and adopted them. Â Instead the foxes raise the real possibility that natural selection may have shaped wolves into the first proto-dogs in a very similar way without intentional human intervention or control.
Ray Coppinger of Hampshire College and others have speculated that as humans began forming more permanent settlements over the last 15000 years a new canine food source appeared that led directly to the evolution of the dogs we know
and love garbage. Â Only those wolves who were least fearful and nonaggressive toward humans would be able to take advantage of that new source of food.
It would not have taken many generations for those friendlier wolves to undergo physical changes like coat color.
Soon the wolves stopped looking like wolves. Many would have splotchy coats and some would have had even floppy ears or a curly tail.
Like the foxes they too accidentally became more skilled at responding to the behavior of humans
and a new relationship began. Â It's not always easy being an evolutionary biologist in this day and age.
But whenever I start feeling sorry for myself I think of Belyaev working undercover with death never far from his door.
 Hare's most recent Op-Ed was Dogs Show IQ TESTS Aren't So Smart.
Along with seahorses the frogs are thought to be known the only living vertebrates in which dads take on baby-carrying duties with special sacs that make them look pregnant.
#Do'Smarter'Dogs Really Suffer More than'Dumber'Mice?(Op-Ed) Marc Bekoff emeritus professor at the University of Colorado Boulder is one of the pioneering cognitive ethologists in the United states a Guggenheim Fellow and cofounder with Jane Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical
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 mice of the Genus mus bred for use in research (Vol. 69 no. 108 4 june 2004).
Are dogs more intelligent than mice and do they suffer more? To begin in the past twenty years
So asking if a dog is smarter than a cat or a cat is smarter than a mouse doesn't result in answers that are very meaningful.
Likewise asking if dogs suffer more than mice ignores who those animals are and what they have to do to survive
and thrive in their own worlds not in ours or those of other animals. Furthermore with respect to the original abstract and what I wrote in the essay itself a great deal of subsequent comparative research has shown that
For example we share with other mammals and vertebrates the same areas of the brain that are important for consciousness and processing emotions.
Humans need to abandon the anthropocentric view that only big-brained animals such as ourselves nonhuman great apes elephants
and cetaceans (dolphins and whales) have sufficient mental capacities for complex forms of consciousness and for enduring deep suffering.
Nonhuman animals including all mammals and birds and many other creatures including octopuses also possess these neurological substrates.
and the dog who does not get to go for one more run by the river are both having desires thwarted to the same degree totally.
Thus I might know that my canid companion Jethro's pain might end in five seconds
For a complete list of references to research that informed this article see the original essay Do Smarter Dogs Really Suffer More than Dumber Mice?
More of the author's essays are available in Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed (New world Library 2013).
#Does a Dog's Breed Really Dictate Its Behavior?(Op-Ed) Vanessa Woods is a research scientist at Duke university
and the cofounder of Dognition a website that helps owners find the genius in their dogs.
She is also the co-author of the New york times bestseller The Genius of Dogs. She contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices:
           The smartest dog breed is the border collie.
A beagle will always find its way home. Golden retrievers are attached lovingly to their owners. There are many breed stereotypes
but are they based on more than intuition? With the Dognition citizen-science project it may soon be on the verge of finding out.
Dogs and wolves split from each other between 15000 and 40000 years ago and their DNA only differs by 0. 04 percent.
what a dog could do not what a dog looked like. So any dog that chased hares was a harrier any lapdog was a spaniel
and any large intimidating dog was a mastiff. Over time this could cause certain dogs to have a certain appearance.
For instance a barbaric practice in 18th-century England was bullbaiting in which butchers tied a bull to the stake
and unleashed dogs to kill it since this supposedly made the meat tender. Any dog who killed bulls was called a bulldog
but in general it helped for the dog to be low to the ground with strong jaws to lock onto the bull.
Wide flared nostrils and a protruding mandible helped the dog breathe. All these traits shaped the bulldog into
what we know today. But the upwardly mobile middle classes who were insecure about lineage and social standing did not just want any mutt on the end of their leash.
They wanted people to know at a glance that they had a first-rate dog that had cost a lot of money
and had impeccable bloodlines. The easiest way to broadcast this was by the dog's appearance.
A breed by any other name Today the emphasis on appearance is still stronger than how a dog thinks
or behaves and there are often more differences within a breed than between breeds. So a dog that doesn't retrieve is still a retriever
and a dog that doesn't herd sheep is still a shepherd. All this makes finding breed differences in qualities like intelligence and behavior all the more difficult.
That does not mean there are no breed differences or that researchers are not trying to find out what they are.
In fact as part of the Dognition citizen-science project we have begun chipping away at the iceberg.
Already thousands of people who have signed up are contributing to an ever-growing database that dog owners can use to compare their dogs to other breed groups.
Is their dog more logical than a herding dog? More bonded than a toy breed?
More impulsive than a sporting dog? Even if you have not done the tests you can explore the data to see
if such expectations are correct. is breed your stereotype correct? Explore the Dognition database here. Of dogs and data In an initial study of 433 dogs we found that purebreds were better at communication than mixed breeds
and mixed breeds had better memories than purebreds. To test a dog's communicative abilities owners pointed to food
and recorded if their dogs followed their pointing. The ability to follow a human point to find food
or retrieve is something owners usually take for granted but it is remarkable in the animal kingdom. Even humans'closest relatives chimpanzees do not follow human gestures as well as dogs do.
Both purebreds and mixed breeds followed their owners'gestures but purebreds were consistently more reliant on their owner's gestures.
To test memory dogs were given a series of games that tested working memory which is the ability to hold information in mind
and mentally manipulate that information. An example of working memory is remembering a phone number long enough to dial it.
In one game dogs saw their owners hide food under a cup but then point to the opposite cup.
In a slightly different version of the game dogs saw their owner hide the food
while the dog's eyes were covered. Again all dogs tended to rely on their memory but mixed breeds were significantly more likely than purebreds to use their memory to locate the food.
This does not mean that purebreds have bad memories. In fact when we tested only their memories they were just as successful as the mixed breeds.
when the emphasis was still on function over form many purebreds were bred to be depended working dogs that on reading human gestures.
Does Your Dog Love You? Yawn and Find out (Op-Ed) For example Labrador retrievers were bred originally to be hunting dogs
and German shepherds were bred originally to herd and guard sheep. Although all dogs are good at reading human gestures purebreds might have an extra edge because of their original jobs.
Conversely mixed breeds can read human gestures but perhaps hybrid vigor has given them more flexibility
so they can also rely on other cognitive strategies like their memories. As more people sign up to participate in Dognition we will soon be able to parse these differences down to the breed level.
Perhaps Chihuahuas will be the most empathic and puggles will have the best reasoning skills. With enough people we may soon have breed profiling down to a science
so they drew from across the tree of life comparing aging patterns in 11 mammals 12 other vertebrates (animals with backbones) 10 invertebrates 12 plants and a green alga.
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.
#Dog Treat Made from Bull Penis May Pose Health Risks When dog owners toss their canine companions a bully stick to chew on they might not be aware that the popular treat could be packed with calories
and contaminated with bacteria researchers say. And pet owners might not even know that the stick is made from an uncooked dried bull penis. In a small study researchers examined a sample of 26 bully sticks also known as pizzle sticks manufactured in the United states and Canada.
That means the average 6-inch bully stick potentially represents 9 percent of the recommended daily calorie count for a larger 50-pound (22-kilogram) dog
and 30 percent of the requirements for a smaller 10-pound (4. 5-kg) dog a significant source of calories pet owners might not be aware of.
With obesity in pets on the rise it is important for pet owners to factor in not only their dog's food
A 20-question online poll completed by 852 dog owners from 44 states and six countries showed that 44 percent of respondents could correctly identify the source of bully sticks as bull penises. Twenty-three percent said they fed their dogs the treats.)
And there was even some confusion among veterinarians an unimpressive majority of vets (62 percent) polled by the researchers knew where bully sticks came from.
And this list runs the gamut with the usual suspects primates chewing on medicinal herbs as well as some more surprising drug-takers such as fruit flies ants
Previously scientists thought such behavior was unique to primates and more intelligent animals where self-medication could be learned
But according to the study scientists who examined recent research in the field animals from insects to chimpanzees may self-medicate as an innate response to parasites and perhaps for other reasons as well.
Another plant eaten as a medicine by primates is now being used as an antiemetic (to treat nausea
#Dwarf Lemurs Hibernate Like Bears The western fat-tailed dwarf lemur was the only primate thought to be a hibernator.
Now scientists have discovered that two other lemurs in Madagascar can put their lives on pause too by entering seven-month snoozefests.
as if the animals are dead researcher Anne Yoder director of the Duke Lemur Center said of the two species Crossley's dwarf lemur and Sibree's dwarf lemur.
Yoder and colleagues captured several of the lemurs and outfitted them with temperature-sensitive radio collars before they were released.
The team found that the lemurs take different sleep strategies depending on which part of Madagascar they live.
Meanwhile western dwarf lemurs hide out in drafty tree holes where their body temperature fluctuates with the chancing temperature of the outside air the scientists found.
The researchers suspect these clawless lemurs might make do with trees because they simply can't bury themselves safely in western Madagascar's hard and dry soils;
what triggers hibernation in these lemurs. The burrowing behavior is especially weird to see in a tropical forest;
most mammals that spend their winters curled up underground live in the arctic or temperate areas where winters are frigid and forbidding.
But winters in the eastern forests of Madagascar present their own energetic challenges for lemurs.
And high-quality fruits a crucial part of dwarf lemur diets are scarce during this time. Beyond finding surprising similarities with other mammals that spend their winters snoozing it's exciting to think about lemur hibernation
since the animals are closely related to humans. Studying how the lemurs'pause button works may help scientists investigate the possibility of inducing human hibernation (think 2001:
A Space Odyssey. The research was detailed May 2 in the journal Scientific Reports. Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+.
because their primary predators such as lions and hyenas will consume them entirely leaving nothing behind.)
Scavengers like hyenas will consume all the rest of the carcass but they'll leave the heads behind
Hyenas at the Kill The team hypothesized that ancient human ancestors found the discarded heads in their landscape
Until about 4 million years ago our early hominin ancestors had diets that were isotopically at least very similar to chimpanzees'said Matt Sponheimer a paleoanthropologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
and through the rats inadvertently brought to the island that ate palm nuts before they could sprout into new trees.
#Elephants Vanish in Congo Reserve The Okapi Faunal Reserve was thought to be a safe haven for forest elephants in the otherwise conflict-stricken eastern region of the Democratic Republic of congo.
Just 1700 elephants are left inside the reserve and that number could be zero within 10 years conservationists warn.
A lucrative black-market trade in ivory drives the hunt for elephants in the region. In the last 15 years 75 percent of the Okapi population or 5100 animals have been killed
and in the last five years the population has declined 37 percent according to a Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) survey.
because the Okapi Faunal Reserve a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering more than 5000 square miles (14000 square km) is considered the best protected conservation area in the Democratic Republic of congo.
Before a civil war broke out in the region in the late 1990s the WCS counted about 6800 forest elephants in the reserve.
In 2007 after the war officially ended the WCS's elephant count was down to 2700.
Since then park rangers have reduced the number of elephants killed in the reserve each year from 400 to 170
Elephant Images: The Biggest Beasts On land The WCS says it's working with the country's wildlife department (the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature
and will continue to work in their country to protect elephants and the landscapes where they live.
We urge the international community to support the DRC in the fight against the threat of extinction of the forest elephant.
The forest elephant is a subspecies of the African elephant which is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
In addition to poaching the massive mammals are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation. Follow Livescience on Twitter@livescience. We're also on Facebookâ & Google+.
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