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Sea otters: Saving kelp forests and our climatethe kelp forests fringing the North Pacific coast are one of the richest marine ecosystems On earth.

One of the kelp forest's most endearing denizens, the sea otter, is an important key to its survival.

Dr M Sanjayan, reveal how sea otters eat sea urchins which would otherwise devour the kelp and disrupt the rich web of life that relies on it.

So the otters are helping the forests to store as much carbon as they can. We tend to think that we can deal with the challenge of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by planting more vegetation,

but it turns out that animals like sea otters are providing another solution by helping to keep forests growing.

Why animals also seek teenage kicksif you are an otter who wants to play a game of"chicken Â,

this treacherous bit of sea is known as the triangle of death for good reason oe the considerable threat of great white sharks is increased by the conspicuous absence of kelp that otters normally use to hide.

and a shark has the perfect recipe for a sea otter snack. Oh, and the waters are teeming with the dangerous parasite Toxoplasmosa gondii.

Doting otter parents do their best to keep juveniles from venturing into the triangle of death,

The only otters foolish enough to attempt an incursion into the triangle are adolescent males oe it turns out that human teenagers aren't the only animals that make bad decisions during the awkward transition between childhood and maturity.

Â Not to be outdone by sea otters young Thomson's gazelles (Gazella thomsoni) make their own kinds of risky decisions.

Human teenagers don't die at the hands (or jaws) of predators, like adolescent otters or young gazelle,

Like otters, males are more likely to die than females for every year between the age of 12 and 19,

If sea otter parents could, you can be sure they too would punish their offspring for breaking curfew

Anyone who thinks it would be easy to get rich selling marijuana in a state where its legal should spend an hour with Ravi Respeto, manager of the Farmacy, an upscale dispensary here that offers Strawberry Haze, Hawaiian Skunk and other strains

Bubble gum, Sour Kush, Gods Gift, Grand Daddy Purp and Blue Skunk. oethis will throw you for a loop,

It is also the reason that a bull named Badger-Bluff Fanny Freddie has sired thousands of the dairy cattle in the United states. 9 Grinding/milling Grinding is the process of grinding grain or other materials in a mill.

I hope the Badgers won (edit: they didn t? Did that dude from work ever email me back?

and adjacent areas by a Twin Otter airplane that collects ecological measurements with state-of-the-art remote-sensing instruments.

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.

But old forests also provide habitat for iconic animals such as the California spotted owl and the American marten.

Psychology of the Curse There are countless superstitions involving everything from spilled salt to black cats to nailing horseshoes over doors

#H7n9 Bird flu Virus Capable of Airborne Transmission One strain of the H7n9 bird flu virus appears to spread easily through the air between ferrets which are a good model for how the virus may spread in humans a new study from China says.

Researchers tested transmission of five strains of H7n9 all taken from people who got sick with the virus. Some ferrets were infected directly with the virus

However one strain was able to spread very well it infected 100 percent of the ferrets who were exposed to it through the air.

Researchers know that a flu virus that transmits well between humans will transmit well between ferrets Webby said.

But ferrets aren't a perfect model. For example they don't take into account preexisting immunity in the human population Webby said.

The researchers called the one H7n9 strain that spread in their study highly transmissible between ferrets.

However Webby disagreed pointing out that a highly transmissible virus would spread between ferrets within a short period

Â Â In the new study researchers infected six ferrets with the H7n9 virus all of whom developed flu symptoms.

Ferrets are considered a good model to study human flu transmission because efficient spread of the flu in ferrets tends to predict efficient spread in people.

Several of the infected ferrets were placed in the same cage as uninfected ferrets. In addition several uninfected ferrets were placed in cages a short distance away from uninfected ferrets to see

if the virus could spread through the air. All of the uninfected ferrets who were in the same cage as the infected ferrets caught the virus suggesting the virus can spread through direct contact.

The flu virus also spread through the air but less efficiently. Just one of three ferrets caged a short distance from infected ferrets caught the virus. The findings mostly mirror

what health officials have seen in people Webby said. For sustained person-to-person transmission to occur the virus would likely have to transmit efficiently by both the airborne and direct contact routes Webby said.

Because H7n9 doesn't transmit very well through the air it doesn't look like it has the capacity to cause a pandemic

When researchers infect ferrets with H5n1 they usually do not see transmission through airborne or direct contact Webby said.

And of course black cats need not have any association with witchcraft to be considered evil simply crossing their path is considered bad luck any time of year.

In laboratory tests this H7n7 virus infected ferrets which are used often a model for human flu transmission.

#Invasive Mink Threatens South america's Largest Woodpecker Invasive American minks may threaten the largest woodpecker species in South america according to new research.

and the University of Santiago in Chile report they have now found the first evidence of Magellanic predation on Navarino Island a 955-square-mile (2473 square kilometers) island off the coast of Southern Chile by the American mink

Minks that escaped these farms have multiplied since and have become an invasive species without any natural predators in the region.

The Peskiest Alien Mammals Though the team did not make direct observations of a mink attacking a woodpecker they collected several pieces of evidence to argue their case which they detailed earlier this month in the journal Biological Invasions.

For instance the team found an adult Magellanic woodpecker which they had outfitted with a radio-tag for an unrelated study dead within a mink den.

While it's possible a mink had found the bird already dead and scavenged it in the den this type of behavior would be atypical of carnivores that tend to hunt live prey said Jaime Jimenez a researcher at the University of North Texas

On a separate occasion the team observed a mink creep up on a woodpecker looking ready to pounce at about 1 foot away (30 centimeters) until a student scared it off to prevent the attack.

And finally the team stationed cameras around the island revealing footage of minks and woodpeckers feeding in the same areas of the forest floor on separate occasions

if the minks had this intent. The team thinks the woodpeckers have adapted to feed on the forest floor rather than holing up more cautiously in trees

and understand the ecological consequences of their potential decline in an effort to develop management plans in response to the invasive mink population.

Rare predator species such as spotted owls and fisher cats eat the poisoned mice and die. The marijuana cultivators make trail systems to go in

Fisher cats nibble on everything from acorns to deer carcasses. The scientists found rat poison in 85 percent of fisher cat carcasses collected on public and tribal lands according to a study published in June in the journal Conservation Letters.

The animals are also passing the poison on to their kits when the babies nurse Gabriel said.

which rely more heavily on rodents for food than fisher cats do. Spotted owls have tested positive for rodenticides in Oregon

Humans bears badgers and other animals have long been raiding the winter stores of their winged friends to harvest honey.

#Facts About Wolverines Wolverines look something like a mixture of a dog a skunk and a bear with short legs long hair and elongated snouts.

Though wolverines are the biggest of the weasel family according to the Integrated Taxonomic Information system (ITIS) they are still very small.

which means glutton. M56 is a wolverine that was fitted with a tracking device near Grand teton national park in Wyoming.

Wolverines are called also skunk bear quickhatch (of Native american origin) carcajou (French for wolverine) glutton and stink-bear.

of which 10000 were made up of carnivores ranging from the large ones such as lion leopard spotted hyaena brown hyaena wild dog to the medium-sized such as honey badger jackal civet serval caracal

Of these more than 330 were killed unintentionally including wolves foxes skunks opossums raccoons bobcats and black bears.

and more than 850 in neck snares including mountain lions river otters pronghorn antelope deer badgers beavers turtles turkeys ravens ducks geese great blue herons and even a golden eagle.

But what if I told you that there is a place in Brazil where cattle graze on native grasses seasonally replenished by an annual flooding cycle where ranches are dotted with lakes full of fish where rivers support giant river otters

including mice, miniature pigs, ferrets and macaques. In all but the pig, the virus yields an infection in the lungs that is more severe than would be expected from an average seasonal flu, according to Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues,

and produces more severe disease in ferrets than seasonal flu (see Swine flu reaches into the lungs and gut).

found that just five mutations allowed avian H5n1 to spread easily among ferrets, which are a good proxy for how flu behaves in other mammals,

Badgers have been blamed for spreading btb between farms, and after a fraught debate the UK government last year announced a badger cull in England.

The Welsh government backed out of the trial last month. David Williams, chairman of the UK charity, the Badger Trust, believes the decision to cull should be reassessed in light of the new research."

"The unreliability allows disease to remain undetected, and badgers are blamed when infected cows are found later,

he says.""We have queried frequently the accuracy of testing, only to be told it is acceptable by EU standards

who has become frustrated by the badger-centric debate.""If this can make people look more at epidemiology than politics,

and his colleagues have isolated a new strain of H1n2 influenza from Korean pigs that kills infected ferrets the model animal of choice for influenza work

Most of these viruses did not cause any signs of serious disease in ferrets. Sw/1204 was the exception.

It replicated in the airways and lungs of three infected ferrets killing one and causing such severe disease in the others that they had to be euthanized.

The virus also spread through the air to infect three healthy ferrets that were housed in cages next to infected ones.

Badger cull stalled The british government on 23 Â October delayed a controversial cull of badgers (Meles meles) that has provoked years of heated debate among researchers, farmers and politicians.

which badgers can transmit to cattle (see Nature 490,317-318; 2012) but it will now take place no sooner than next summer.

Badger battle erupts in Englandengland s West country is a bucolic landscape of winding country lanes and gently rolling pastures.

At issue is the badger (Meles meles), one of the largest predators left in The british Isles after millennia of human occupation.

As early as this week, government-sanctioned hunters will begin a pilot effort to cull the badgers.

But the badger question stands out in one distinctive way: it has been studied systematically for more than a decade by scientists at some of England s top universities.

Badgers do carry TB and can infect cows through direct and indirect contact, and years of research and tens of millions of pounds have gone into studying

collecting road kill and performing autopsies on more than a thousand badgers to check for TB. The results are discussed at length in a 287-page UK government study and in numerous scientific papers

The schism reveals an uneasy truth about the badger issue: science doesn t give a clear answer about what to do.

And, uncomfortable as it is for animal-lovers, killing large numbers of badgers does help to reduce levels of bovine TB.

DEFRATHE trial backed by Krebs (officially known as the Randomised Badger Culling Trial, or RBCT) showed a 23%reduction in bovine TB in the area of the cull,

although the areas immediately outside the trial area saw an increase of roughly 25%a consequence of badgers extending their normal range.

scientists decided in 2011 that culling about 70%of the badgers in larger areas would lead to an overall reduction in bovine TB of up to 16%.

me, says Jack Reedy, spokesman for the Badger Trust, a nonprofit organization based in East Grinstead, UK,

that opposes the killing of badgers. He adds that controlling cattle movements and increasing TB screening on farms would have a greater impact.

as well as what the government described as a"science-led policy of killing badgers in areas of high bovine TB.

to prevent infected badgers from roaming in or out of the cull zone. For many scientists,

as it is virtually impossible to determine badger populations in advance of actually killing them. On 14 october 31 academics warned in a letter to The Observer newspaper that

because infected badgers will begin to roam more widely.""They say that their policy will be based science

and the easiest something to do is to shoot badgers. Other parts of The british Isles have taken already action.

The irish have used targeted snare-trapping to all but eliminate badgers from selected areas. That system would be more affordable

In Wales, officials have begun an expensive campaign to immunize badgers against TB. Both techniques depend on the peculiarities of local geography and badger populations,

but they reflect the range of approaches that can be supported by the scientific evidence. Policy-makers

and conservationists concede that badgers are a major reservoir for the disease.""They may not be singing from the same hymn sheet,

UK official defends badger cullengland s badgers are once again in the firing line, as pilot culls to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis begin.

And in our case the wildlife reservoir is badgers. Defraian Boydthe problem is tuberculosis not badgers.

Badgers happen to be in the middle of this, and unfortunately the methods for dealing with that problem mean we need to reduce the densities of badgers.

We don t have an alternative to that at the moment. I would say, and I have said to them,

that it is based evidence policy. The first line of evidence is the RBCT the large-scale Randomised Badger Culling Trials run in the 1990s

and 2000s that we carried out, which were very extensive and showed the effect that sustained removal of badgers can have on reducing bovine tuberculosis in cattle.

The second main line of evidence is the comparison with other countries that have had similar problems.

And the only difference between Ireland and ourselves is that Ireland is reducing its badger densities.

Some of the people who have been opposed publicly to badger culling were at the meeting. A significant part of that meeting was supportive of the approach that is being taken.

or badgers and the susceptibles are cattle or badgers doesn t matter. It s the badger-cattle interface we need to understand.

And if we understand that well, then we can start to manage it. I would also point to vaccines as well.

Vaccines, at the end of the day, are going to be what allows us to actually eradicate TB. Clearly reducing wildlife populations and killing cattle is not going to actually produce the elimination that we re really striving for.

We probably have to also move to vaccination of badgers. There s an injectable vaccine available at the moment,

. So we need to get an oral vaccine for badgers, and we re still some way from doing that.

This isn t just about badgers and cattle. It s about badgers cattle and farmers. And other members of the public as well they have choices to make.

We have to understand those social dynamics as much as we have to understand the epidemiological dynamics of the disease.

But Guan and his team found that ferrets could become infected with the virus suggesting that a spread to humans is possible.

While they are not reservoirs in the same way that bats skunks or raccoons are in areas around the country they can certainly present a hazard to human (and other mammalian) health if infected.

Tet the sable and pour yourself a glass of turkey Step 19: Bless the saying pass

#A History Of Daring Red panda Escapesthe red panda looks like a fluffy raccoon-cat frolics in the snow like an arctic otter

Any feline any canid any mustelid (weasel) any procyonid (raccoon) any non-bonkers primate (baboons which are completely terrifying are exempt.

mink have been domesticated in Denmark and some have proposed domestication of certain rare but cuddly animals like red pandas as a means to save the species. The Soviet

Then there are breeders like Tiny Tracks Exotic Animals located outside of Fort wayne Indiana specializing in several varieties of fox (red fox gray fox and arctic fox) as well as supposedly tame raccoons skunks and coatis

That's cheaper than a skunk ($450) and waaaay cheaper than something more exotic like a kinkajou which runs anywhere from $1200 to $3000.

Class 2 includes foxes beavers skunks raccoons coyotes and weasels. Class 3 includes venomous reptiles and all species of bear big cat and wolf.

or be killed by weasels and hawks says Varner. Few herbivores consume moss because it's so nutritionally deficient.

The evaluation of eight ibex populations in the Grison Alps showed that the North Atlantic Oscillation

since the revival of the ibex hunt in Grison where professional gamekeepers consequently measure and digitize each specimen.

Further analyses are necessary to fully understand the complete potential of the ibex dataset in Grison.

Rohani and colleagues say that such a phenomenon has recently been observed in controlled badger culls in the United kingdom where disruption of badger social dynamics and subsequent dispersal led to increased tuberculosis transmission in cattle at neighboring sites.

Sea otters protect kelp forests by eating sea urchins. These are what ecologists call keystone species: critters that control an ecosystem and have a disproportionate impact on other species. And in the forests of New england

#Illinois river otters exposed to chemicals banned decades agoresearchers report that river otters in Central Illinois are being exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBS)

The Illinois Department of Natural resources collected 23 river otters between 2009 and 2011 after the animals were killed incidentally (hit by cars

(and byproduct of the pesticide aldrin) that was used across the Midwest before it was banned in 1987--exceeded those measured in eight river otters collected in Illinois from 1984 to 1989.

And male river otters had significantly higher concentrations of PCBS compared to females. PCBS were used once as insulators

Concentrations of contaminants in river otters ranged widely. One male had a concentration of PCBS in its liver of 3450 parts per billion (ppb)

Since the otters were collected from counties all over Central Illinois the findings could indicate that some watersheds have a worse contamination problem than others Carpenter said.

More research is needed to understand the factors that contribute to the river otters'exposure to these chemicals Mateus-Pinilla said.

The researchers do not know why the male otters in the study carried a heavier burden of PCBS than the females Carpenter said.

because they're eating the same kinds of fish that the otters might be. Studies have shown that PCBS

#Badgers ultimately responsible for around half of TB in cattlebadgers are ultimately responsible for roughly half of tuberculosis (TB) in cattle in areas with high TB prevalence according to new estimates based on data from a previous badger culling trial.

However only around six per cent of infected cattle catch TB from badgers with onward transmission between cattle herds accounting for the remainder the study suggests.

The role of badgers in spreading bovine TB has been debated intensely as part of discussions about whether badgers should be culled to control the disease.

The Randomised Badger Culling Trial which ran from 1998 to 2005 found evidence that culling could reduce TB in herds inside culled areas while increasing TB in areas nearby.

Mathematical models based on data from the trial were used previously to calculate an estimate of the proportion of TB in cattle that could ultimately be attributed to transmission from badgers.

The new paper by scientists at Imperial College London provides a more detailed analysis. It estimates that badgers ultimately account for 52 per cent of cattle TB in areas where prevalence in cattle is high.

There is considerable uncertainty around this estimate but the authors say that 38 per cent is a robust minimum value for the estimate.

These findings confirm that badgers do play a large role in the spread of bovine TB.

The mathematical model suggested that 5. 7 per cent*of transmission to cattle herds is from badgers to cattle with the rest of the contribution from badgers resulting from onward transmission between cattle herds.*

The role of infected wild badgers in spreading bovine TB remains controversial. This work will help to clarify the role that badgers may have in spreading the disease

and continue to build a sound scientific evidence base on which control measures can be built.

and local persistence of the pathogen in cattle has a distinct spatial signature--we believe that explaining this signature is the key to quantifying the role that badgers play in the persistence of bovine TB in Britain and Ireland.

and badgers we are optimistic that this approach will help accumulating the right scientific evidence over the coming years to tackle this important problem.

A previous study published last summer by the research team documented that rodenticides were being found in the tissues of the cat-sized weasel-like critters

This new threat may also impact other species already facing declining populations including the wolverine marten great gray owl California spotted owl and Sierra nevada red fox

A previous study published last summer by the research team documented that rodenticides were being found in the tissues of the cat-sized weasel-like critters

This new threat may also impact other species already facing declining populations including the wolverine marten great gray owl California spotted owl and Sierra nevada red fox

Understanding how ecosystems respond to climate variability is a priority in a fast changing globe says Marten Scheffer who leads the research program on tipping points.

and be transmitted between ferrets. Ferrets are used often as a mammalian model in influenza research and efficient transmission of influenza virus between ferrets can provide clues as to how well the same process might occur in people.

The researchers dropped H7n9 virus into the noses of six ferrets. A day later three uninfected ferrets were placed inside cages with the infected animals

and another three uninfected ferrets were placed in cages nearby. All the uninfected ferrets inside the cages became infected

while only one of three placed in nearby cages became infected. The team concluded that the virus can infect ferrets

and be transmitted between ferrets both by direct contact and less efficiently by air. The scientists detected viral material in the nasal secretions of the ferrets at least one day before clinical signs of disease became apparent.

The potential public health implication of this observation is that a person infected by H7n9 avian influenza virus who does not show symptoms could

nevertheless spread the virus to others. The researchers also infected pigs with the human-derived H7n9 virus. In natural settings pigs can act as a virtual mixing bowl to combine avian-and mammalian-specific influenza strains potentially allowing avian strains to better adapt to humans.

New strains arising from such mixing have the potential to infect humans and spark a pandemic so information about swine susceptibility to H7n9 could help scientists gauge the pandemic potential of the avian virus. Unlike the ferrets infected pigs in this small study did not transmit virus to uninfected pigs

either through direct contact or by air. All the infected ferrets and pigs showed mild signs of illness such as sneezing nasal discharge

and lethargy but none of the infected animals became seriously ill. The research was supported in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases part of the National institutes of health.

Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases.