#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.
but still slower than the myths of them outrunning horses would suggest. Over longer distances they average about 7 mph (11 kph.
Horses This Behind the Scenes article was provided to Live Science in partnership with the National Science Foundation. 2014 is the year of Year of the Horse in China.
Because livestock particularly horses have been identified as a significant threat to panda survival. The reason: Horses have been beating pandas to the bamboo buffet.
Michigan State university (MSU) panda habitat experts revealed the oft-hidden yet significant conservation conflict between pandas and horses in a recent article in the Journal for Nature Conservation.
Across the world people are struggling to survive in the same areas as endangered animals
In this case something as innocuous as a horse can be a big problem. Pandas have specific habitat needs they live in gently sloping areas far from human populations.
and they were eating like horses#literally. It didn't take particular panda expertise to know that something was amiss
when we'd come upon horse-affected bamboo patches. They were in the middle of nowhere and it looked like someone had been in there with a lawn mower Hull said.
Alarmed by the increasing devastation Hull learned that keeping a horses in this region serves a similar function as maintaining a bank account.
Because horses are prohibited from grazing in designated grazing areas to prevent them from competing for food with cattle some farmers have been letting horses graze unattended in forests.
When these horse-keeping farmers need cash they track down their horses in the forest and sell them.
Eventually some Wolong farmers though not traditionally horse-keepers learned from horse-keeping friends who lived outside of the reserve that they too could cash in by keeping horses
In 1998 only 25 horses lived in Wolong. By 2008 350 horses lived there in 20 to 30 herds.
To understand the scope of the problem Hull and her colleagues put the same type of GPS collars they were using to track pandas on one horse in each of four herds they studied.
Then over a year they compared the activity of the horses with that of three collared adult pandas in some of the same areas and combined resulting data with habitat data.
The researchers discovered that the galloping gourmets are indeed big on bamboo and are drawn to the same sunny gently sloped spots as pandas.
Pandas and horses eat about the same amount of bamboo but a herd of more than 20 horses created veritable feeding frenzies destroying areas that the reserve was established to protect.
The researchers presented their findings to Wolong's managers who have banned since horses from the reserve.
But Hull and Liu note that this work has shed light on how competitive livestock can be in sensitive habitat an issue that is duplicated across the globe.
and microbes Quentin Wheeler the president of the college said in a statement. Each year a small dedicated community of taxonomists and curators substantively improves our understanding of the diversity of life and the wondrous ways in
During a recent trip to Utah I came across an iconic gnarly tree clinging to the top of the canyon wall at Dead Horse Point State Park and
He whipped his horse and broke through to Liang among ten thousand men of his army.
or less healthy similar to when donkeys and horses breed Allen said. Guenons can interbreed in zoos
Horses? The 1600 pandas left living in the wild face a new threat: Horses. Seeking a safe investment farmers in China's Sichuan Province have been increasingly buying up horses
and allowing them to graze in the protected panda habitat of Wolong National Nature Reserve new research finds.
These horses clean out the bamboo groves that pandas rely on for food. It didn't take particular panda expertise to know that something was amiss
when we'd come upon horse-affected bamboo patches Vanessa Hull a doctoral student at the Center for Systems Integration
and found that they'd heard from farmers in other areas that horses were to mix livestock metaphors veritable cash-cows.
Horses are banned from grazing in cattle areas so farmers would set them free in the Wolong preserve
Between 1998 and 2008 the number of horses in Wolong rose from 25 to 350.
Overlapping needs These 350 horses live in perhaps 30 herds. Hull and her colleagues approached four herds
and fitted one horse in each with a GPS collar. They found that the horses'range overlaps with the pandas
and that both animals are drawn to the same sunny slopes and bamboo patches. But while a single horse and a single panda eat about the same amount of bamboo each 20 horses descending on a patch at once cleans out the buffet leaving little for solitary pandas that come later.
Livestock affect most of the world's biodiversity hotspots Jianguo Jack Liu a human-environment scientist at Michigan State said in a statement.
When Liu Hull and their colleagues presented the results to Wolong Nature Reserve officials they banned horses from the reserve.
This included diverse small animals such as hares fish turtles hedgehogs and partridges as well as larger prey such as deer boars horse goats sheep extinct wild
oxen known as aurochs and the onager also known as the Asian wild ass. However by 8200 B c. the meat in the diet shifted overwhelmingly to sheep and goats.
Two horses. That s our kids future.##He said he has been writing to both the Navajo
They describe winters where the snow was#chest high on horses. The snowfall snows a significant decline over the 20th century
and given the opportunity will hunt domestic animals such as sheep pigs horses and other livestock.
and ankle tied to a rope that was attached then to a horse or ox#s the animals were driven away the victim's body was ripped slowly into four quarters.
Evidence for ancient horse ranch uncovered: Nature Newshumans rode and milked horses as early as 3500 BC,
say an international group of researchers. The findings come from ancient settlements in Kazakhstan, where horse jawbones showed signs of bridling
and ceramic cooking vessels contained traces of horse milk. Researchers also found that the horses'leg bones resembled those of domestic rather than wild horses.
The discovery of horse milk is just amazing, says David Anthony, an archaeologist at Hartwick College in Oneonta,
New york. Combined with previous findings that people discarded horse manure at those sites, he says,
it is pretty unequivocal evidence for domestication. Scientists have debated long when humans first domesticated horses.
Indirect clues such as horse bones buried with other domesticated animals in human graves, go as far back as 4500 BC.
Horses also show shifts in body size range from around 2500 BC, but the changes are not as dramatic as those in other domesticated animals.
More definitive evidence emerges at roughly 2000 BC, when horses were buried with chariots. Settlements of the Botai culture in northern Kazakhstan, dated around 3500 BC,
have attracted attention because they contain masses of discarded horse bones that far outnumber remains from other animals,
as well as tools that may have been used for processing hides. But some scientists have argued that the mix of ages among the killed horses suggests the Botai were hunting wild herds rather than raising
and slaughtering their own horses. Alan Outram, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter, UK,
and his colleagues took a three-pronged approach to investigate the possibility of Botai horse domestication.
First, they looked at the lower leg bones of Botai horses, and found that they were more slender than the bones of Palaeolithic Siberian wild horses.
Instead, the bones resembled those of Bronze age domestic horses and modern domestic Mongolian horses. Studying the teeth and jawbones of the horses,
they also detected tooth wear and extra jawbone growth, suggesting the animals'mouths had been damaged by bridling.
Finally the team analysed the hydrogen isotope ratios of fat residue in pottery shards and found two distinct signatures that seemed to correspond to horse carcass fat and mare's milk.
We've not just got domestic horses we've got domestic horses that seem to have been ridden
and milked, says Outram. The findings appear in Science1. The study suggests the Botai culture was a distinct centre of domestication, separate from the'Fertile Crescent'area, between the Mediterranean sea and the Gulf, where cattle,
sheep and goats were domesticated first, says Outram. The findings are unusual he says, because animal domestication typically occurs in cultures that have adopted agriculture,
Horses naturally vary in size across different regions, he says, so the leg differences may not necessarily be due to domestication.
It is possible that horses were domesticated even earlier than 3500 BC, says Carles Vil Â,
the horses were modified already, he says. Outram's team plans to perform further excavations on Botai sites to look for features related to corrals.
They may also investigate sites in Russia to look for earlier evidence of horse domestication.
Plants genes get fine tailoring: Nature Newsafter decades of searching, plant biologists have found a way to selectively snip out one gene
The team reports its findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 1 Lions normally dine on grazing animals such as zebra and wildebeest
or early 2012 at a total cost of under $0. 53 per litre roughly on a par with that of'corn'ethanol produced from sugar-rich maize cobs.
agrees behavioural neuroscientist Juli Wade at Michigan State university in East Lansing who works on sexual differentiation in the songs of zebra finches2.
but that has become a political nonstarter. Last year, the commission attempted to force France, Greece,
The CVI said that starting this year they will also monitor the incidence of the disease in pets and horses.
But I don't ride horses any more, she says. She also spends her days organizing her life's papers and memorabilia in the three-story family home,
says Tim Wheeler of the University of Reading, UK, who studies the impact of climate change on agriculture
Wheeler says that, in general, the new numbers seem reasonable if on the high side. He adds that the costs of dealing with the environmental and human problems already facing the world could swamp the additional costs of future climate change the cost of achieving the United nations Millennium Development Goals,
"Sheep, horses, hay bales, rocks, cows with unsatisfactory resolution, cows near a track, settlement or feeder, were taken not in the analysis. SÃ nke Johnsen, who studies magneto-reception at Duke university in Durham,
woolly rhinos, wild horses, reindeer, steppe bison and musk ox. The researchers created a series of snapshots of the European,
Wild horses, on the other hand, lived across Europe and Asia until very recently, and two-thirds of European and Siberian archaeological sites contain their bones,
which are deadly to both horses and humans. Her research requires the highest level of biological security containment BSL-4
but no BSL-4 labs in the United states can accommodate horses, so she collaborates with researchers in Australia."
two that encode the haemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N) proteins that stud the surface of the virus,
Landsat, NASA s Earth-observation workhorse, for example, has a resolution of 15-100 Â metres depending on the spectral frequency, with 30 Â metres in the visible-light range.
Worobey and his colleagues analysed more than 80,000 gene sequences from flu viruses isolated from humans, birds, horses,
but there is evidence that the influenza virus evolves at different rates in different hosts faster in birds than in horses, for example.
The analysis also reveals a shared ancestor for almost all avian flu strains and an H7n7 virus that struck down horses and mules throughout North america in 1872.
"Transmission between horses and humans seems to have been key to some epidemics when horses were an intimate part of our lives,
says Richard Lenski, an evolutionary biologist at Michigan State university in East Lansing.""We now have this idea that the source for a lot of influenza virus we see now worldwide is potentially equine,
whereas the dogma has been for so long that its avian, says Pybus.""It s a fascinating study,
which he published (with a mildly NSFW video) in a hyper-readable study in PLOS ONE Spontaneous ejaculation has thus far been recorded in drowsy rats guinea pigs domestic cats warthogs horses and chimpanzees according to the study.
The attack came from Chrysler the smallest of Detroit's Big Three automakers in the form of a television commercial for the new Dodge Charger.
In the ad the Charger is traveling through a long gloomy tunnel the camera tracking with it.
They drove teams of horses herds of goats drifts of sheep. Animals Smith argues are autonomous.
Thus in the eyes of the law an autonomous vehicle is arguably similar to a horse-drawn buggy.
This is the natural running style of dogs cats and some ungulates like deer and elk but different than that of horses
After the Pronghorn antelope the Blue Wildebeest Lion Springbok Grant's Gazelle Tohomson's Gazelle and even the Quarter horse have all been clocked faster than 43 mph...
hence why we don't have all molars like horses do or all incisors like dogs.
Out of sight the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) an oceanographic workhorse called a Remus begins gliding through the lagoon in a pattern that resembles the long linear passes of a mowed lawn.
The unique hilarity of men's genital pain has become somewhat of a fixture in certain corners of pop culture from MTV's Jackass to America's Funniest Home Videos.
I think that's part of the reason the Jackass guys getting hurt is so funny Mcgraw says.
The first time someone calls you a horse you punch him on the nose the second time someone calls you a horse you call him a jerk
but the third time someone calls you a horse well then perhaps it's time to go shopping for a saddle.
I can't wait to get hit on by aspiring pick-up artists wearing Camelbaks filled with Yoplait under their zebra-print dusters mainly
because they have no way to survive naturally-horses are different-THERE ARE wild horses and they do some what ok with out human intervention...
or tame variety truely wild horses dont exist theyre all tame ones that escaped and bred unless you count zebras cows can breed WITH BUFFALO
and produce fertile offspringsure sounds like wild cows to me nomunclature not withstanding steak from a tube might taste ok it depends
and you barely care as your practiced jaw scrapes the pure taste of the season from the cob.
Beating the dead horse again Pinatubo's eruption ejected enough particulates to cool the globe for a couple years.
In the future you might be able to eat the whole thing cob and all. This weird possibility is courtesy of some scientists at Virginia Tech who have transformed cellulose a mostly indigestible polymer into helpful indispensable starch.
They worked with a series of synthetic enzymes to break down the hydrogen bonds in some plant material that would not otherwise be used for food like corn cobs and leaves.
It's bad enough that the corn is modified mostly genetically into another unknown poison now they want us to eat the cob too
This would be more useful for ethanol production than eating the cob
#You Can Hear When Trees Are Thirstyimagine you're just polishing off a glass of soda.
What about having sex with your hand the door a chicken a cow or horse?
just as eager as individual farmers to open their gates to the 18-wheelers from Newark.
That way they could just bring the 18-wheelers in and not have to turn them around after they dumped the drums.
I think this has been tried with zebras several times but for whatever reason never works. Far Out Man my comment was as much about the writing style as the repetitiveness.
#DNA Test Finds Horse Meat In UK Hamburgersthe Irish version of the FDA called the FSAI has found distinctly non-beef animal protein in ground meat labeled beef in some supermarkets.
Meat from two Irish processing plants has been found to contain substantial portions of pig and curiously horse DNA.
neither pig nor horse is kosher and pig is not halal. The second is that
i'm pretty sure that horse meat is supposed to be leaner and more nutritious for you than beef and pork. it'd make sense
Today it's horse. Tomorrow it could be altered genetically tree fungus. I wonder what exactly were they looking for in the meet to need DNA tests for...
Nothing wrong with eating horse meat though as long as you know what your eating and you aren't squeamish about it.
or pig but not eat something that looks healthy and beautiful as a horse???get outta heere!!!
not to mention how dirty cows and pigs are compared to horses@solarflaredont be an animal racist. ---Type 0. 72)= We are still just cleaver monkeys!
You know the horse d'oeuvres. Are you in favour of Horsemeat in your burgers?
I'm feeling a little horse Those Aldi horse burgers were nice but I prefer My Lidl Pony.
I really hope they launch a steward's inquiry into the Tesco horsemeat scandal. We must find out hoof to blame.
Good thing about these horse puns is it's stopped all the sick Jimmy Saddle jokes. vt007
In the great ordering of taste and texture I put European horse ABOVE European beef.
Could the yeast hacks and subsequent processing that Real Vegan Cheese proposes really work? Responding to our questions via blog post Dr. Ricky the pseudonymous writer behind Science Based Cuisine stated that the campaign makes some scientifically dubious promises
corn on the cob; livestock feedcottontrait: Tolerates herbicides; resists insects Total U s. crop by acreage:
A horse contains more than 200000 calories and a bear three times that much. And that s just from their most appetizing parts.
Beginning in 2009 the Conservancy's scientists injected the female bison with porcine zona pellucida (PZP) a contraceptive that had been used for fertility control in zoos wild horses and white tail deer.
#New species of horse, 4. 4 million years oldtwo teams of researchers including a scientist from Case Western Reserve University have announced the discovery of a new species of fossil horse
About the size of a small zebra Eurygnathohippus woldegabrieli--named for geologist Giday Woldegabriel who earned his Phd at Case Western Reserve in 1987--had toed three hooves
The horse fills a gap in the evolutionary history of horses but is also important for documenting how old a fossil locality is
This horse is one piece of a very complex puzzle that has many many pieces.
The long slender bone indicates this ancient species was an adept runner similar to modern zebras
The horse had longer legs than ancestral horses that lived and fed in forests about 6 million to 10 million years ago Simpson said.
The change helped the more recent horses cover long distances as they grazed and flee lions sabre-tooth cats
'and with crowns worn flatter--more signs the horses had adapted to a grazing life. Analyses of the isotopic composition of the enamel confirmed that E. woldegabrieli subsisted on grass.
Horse expert Raymond L. Bernor from the Laboratory of Evolutionary Biology at the Howard University college of Medicine in Washington D c. led the fossil analysis. The bones
which remain at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis ababa Ethiopia showed this was a significantly different animal than the horses more than 5 million years old and those 3 5 million years old and younger.
but zebras antelopes and other animals may also pass through villages on their way to elsewhere.
#Combating key viral livestock diseases in Ethiopiagelagay Ayelet Melesse's doctoral research reveals that there are several serotypes of the virus causing foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and the African horse sickness virus (AHSV
Typical diseases in this respect are foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) African horse sickness (AHS) lumpy skin disease (LSD) and camel pox.
This was where the zebra fish entered the equation. The zebrafish and the jellyfish The zebrafish is as a model organism the darling of researchers
Although varieties of sweet corn (corn on the cob) have existed since the late 1990s relatively few acres have been planted.
and other food crops and toward corn cobs stalks and other non-food plant material.
Brown pointed out that corn stalks corn cobs and other plant material not used for food production would be better sources of ethanol.
In particular lights that doubled as cellphone chargers helped small businesses in two ways: The lights kept an owner's store illuminated at night driving more traffic to it
and the owner could rent the light as a charger for customers'cellphones. Interestingly the researchers found that in all cases microentrepreneurs tended to prefer products that were not necessarily the cheapest available:
NASA satellites used to predict zebra migrationsone of the world's longest migrations of zebras occurs in the African nation of Botswana
and where zebras will move has not been possible until now. Using NASA rain and vegetation data researchers can track
if zebras will make the trek or if the animals find poor conditions en route understand why they will turn back.
Covering an area of approximately 8500 square miles (22000 square kilometers) Botswana's Okavango Delta is one end of the second-longest zebra migration On earth a 360-mile (580-kilometer) round trip
Zebras walk an unmarked route that takes them to the next best place for grazing while overhead thundering cloudbursts of late October rains drive new plant growth filling pockmarks across this largest inland delta in the world.
High above Earth-orbiting satellites capture images of the zebras'movements on this epic trek as well as the daily change in environmental conditions.
Zebras don't need data to know when it's time to find better forage: The surge of rain-coaxed grasses greening is their prompt to depart.
and predict when the zebras will move. Pieter Beck research associate with the Woods Hole Research center in Falmouth Mass
Zebra mind: A band of scientists earn their stripesthe Zebra Migration Research Project began in 2008 after Hattie Bartlam-Brooks
and her team discovered the migration during field work for Okavango Herbivore Research. Anecdotal evidence--unverified stories--prior to the 1970s described a zebra migration from the Okavango Delta to the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans at the start of the rainy season in September
and continuing through April but from 1968 to 2004 veterinary fences prevented zebras from making the migration.
The veterinary fences--which had been built to keep wild buffalo from transferring diseases to cattle--were taken down in 2004.
Within three years of the removal of the veterinary fences zebra began making movements on the migration path toward the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans.
These movements were recorded by GPS collars that were fitted to zebra mares allowing researchers to accurately record their movements.
Zebras in the wild live for about 12 years so the migration path could not have been learned from previous generations said Bartlam-Brooks.
She and her team in the field observed that the zebras began their migration at the onset of the rains so she joined forces with Beck to see how extensive the environment's influence is on the timing of the zebras'journey.
Beck and his team learned that zebras do not follow an internal clock nor do they migrate at a steady pace.
when zebras started migrating and how fast they migrated. By comparing the results of the models it was possible to determine which environmental variables are the most effective in predicting zebra movement
and then use this knowledge to try and infer as to how the zebra make their decisions said Gil Bohrer assistant professor in the Department of Civil Environmental and Geodetic Engineering at The Ohio State university who collaborated on the project.
It shows we can figure out very closely what'makes the zebra move.''Bill Fagan professor of biology at the University of Maryland finds hope in the team's discoveries.
Their discussion he said was particularly intriguing as a demonstration of how important the consistency
The models provided the team with the means to think like a zebra which has practical applications in management issues that concern humans.
whether it's zebras or other migratory animals. Understanding the mechanisms that drive migratory behavior is increasingly important Beck said in terms of climate change as migrating animals rely on multiple habitats.
Helping zebras continue a journey--newly discovered by the animals and their observers--may allow them to cope with changes in their environment an outcome that is not so black-and-white.
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