Their explanations have ranged from grass-killing seeps of hydrocarbons to carnivorous ants to termite feeding patterns.
the animal is locked inside a gestation crate and impregnated. For the four months she is gestating the sow lingers in the cage essentially immobilized day and night.
The cycle repeats for nearly four years after which the animal is sent to slaughter. This announcement from Cargill is the latest in a series of triumphs for animal protection advocates veterinarians food companies
and other pork-production stakeholders who oppose enclosing animals to such an extreme degree. We believe it is the right thing to do for the long term future of pork production in the U s
Putting aside for a moment the animal-welfare implications of locking animals in cages and lining them up like parked cars the industry's trajectory is clear
Temple Grandin a well-known and highly regarded pork-industry animal welfare expert believes the crates have got to Go in Improving Animal Welfare:
Confining an animal for most of its life in a box in which it is not able to turn around does not provide a decent life.
As the report found Research comparing group housed sows to those in crates found that the animals unable to exercise due to stall confinement have lower bone strength muscle mass and decreased physical fitness and cardiovascular health.#
And last January Tyson foods announced it had advised the farmers in its system that future sow housing should allow animals to turn around
So our animals can t turn around for the 2. 5 years that they are in the stalls producing piglets Dave Warner spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council once remarked in a National Journal interview.
Warner's and the Pork Council's callous statements about how animals should be treated are out of step with both what mainstream Americans want for animals and
what 21st-century science tells us animals need. Cargill's announcement is one more blow to the pork industry s most extreme form of routine abuse.
Those of us in a civil society who value a healthy sustainable food system one that treats animals as more than factory widgets believe that this move toward a more humane way of farming
Instead it was branching with the animals'strains of TB Bos told Live Science. The new study also suggests that the common ancestor of the M. tuberculosis complex is just 6000 years old
Three-toed sloths descend from the trees once a week to defecate providing a breeding ground for moths that live in the animals'fur
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 because plant matter contains few digestible nutrients. Sloths known in Spanish as los perezosos (the lazies) have evolved adaptations to the constraints of life in the trees.
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.
but avoided red meat had a lower risk of being overweight or obese than their more carnivorous counterparts.
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).
Redding was puzzled also that many cattle hind bones yet few forelimbs were found. For some reason the people of the house avoided eating the forelimbs of the cattle.
Again Redding turned to ancient drawings. There he found numerous examples of scenes where people presented forelimbs as offerings to deities
but almost no examples of hind limbs being offered. As such the people of this house were likely eating the remains of offerings.
Clues to a priestly complex This discovery may help the archaeologists identify offering places and dwellings of ancient priests.
Since the elite house is full of hind limbs (the remains of offerings) Redding suspects that bone deposits that contain mainly forelimbs would be located in places where the offerings were being made.
My analysis of the bones from the small excavations at (the building complex) in 2012 showed a strong bias towards forelimb elements as to be expected in priestly garbage Redding wrote in an email to Livescience.
Black mambas hunt small animals by biting them and holding on until the prey becomes paralyzed.
If hunting a larger animal black mambas strike their prey and then release it. They then follow it until it becomes paralyzed
and actively and speedily pursues its small animal prey during the day. It can grow up to 8 feet long (2. 4 m) and lives in West and Central africa.
but that population descends from a group of animals brought there by conservationists in 1975.
and disease-transmitting animals like domestic sheep. 6 Extinct Animals That Could Be brought Back to Life The fossilized poop was found in a cave in the Sierra Kunkaak mountain range of the eastern side of the island
and extinct herbivores matching it with the feces of modern desert bighorn sheep. The size and shape of the poop pellets apparently also matched.
when or why the animals became locally extinct during the past 1500 years they have a few suspicions.
while they feast on the leaves that other animals can't reach. Unfortunately for the sloth their long claws 3 to 4 inches (8 to 10 centimeters) make walking on the ground difficult so they spend most of their time in the tall trees they call home.
Thousands of years ago sloths were much bigger according to the San diego Zoo. Ancient sloths could grow to be as large as an elephant.
since it is the world's slowest animal. It is so slow in fact that algae grows on its fur according to National geographic. The algae works to the sloth's advantage though.
San diego Zoo-Two-toed sloth National geographic-Two-toed sloth National geographic-Three-toed sloth BBC Nature-Three-toed sloth Smithsonian National Zoological Park-Slot l
and animals that once thrived in the river's outlet. When the pulse flow was unleashed on March 23 from the Morales Dam scientists didn't know
and the animals were hunted nearly to extinction by 1900 About that time Argentina Bolivia Chile
With short forelimbs and long muscular hind legs chinchillas resemble rabbits but their ears are much shorter and rounder.
Breathing can cause an animal to lose a lot of water. A smaller heart and liver need less oxygen so the animal can breathe less
and lose less water. The Edmi gazelle also known as the Cuvier's gazelleis the only gazelle that lives in the mountains.
These animals are highly social. Some gazelle herds have as many as 700 members though some herds are segregated small
Gazelles are herbivores. This means they only eat vegetation typically grasses leaves and shoots of plants.
and his colleagues collected data on the environmental costs per calorie of dairy poultry pork eggs and beef foods that account for 96 percent of the calories Americans get from animals.
Compared to plants nonbeef animals require an average of six times as much land half as much irrigation water two times as much greenhouse-gas emissions and three times as much fertilizer use.
and fertilizer needed to grow food for the animals. For instance the researchers based greenhouse-gas emissions on methane associated with the animals'flatulence
and manure and pollutants associated with the tractors and fertilizer production. Other studies have identified beef as a major drain on environmental resources
and cheetahs true carnivores that also don't have a taste for sweets#they found these species still have a nonfunctional pseudogene (a nonfunctional gene that's lost its protein-coding powers) for the sweet-taste receptor.
despite their lack of the sweet-taste receptor Baldwin and colleagues cloned the genes for the T1r1-T1r3 taste receptors from omnivorous chickens insectivorous swifts and nectivorous hummingbirds.
Birds are the descendants of carnivorous dinosaurs so maybe this gene was lost early on because of the diet of their ancestors Baldwin said.
Climate, Animals & Plants The Devonian period occurred from 416 million to 358 million years ago.
#although significant events also happened in the evolution of plants the first insects and other animals.
Lobe-finned fishes are accepted the ancestors of all tetrapods. Plants which had begun colonizing the land during the Silurian period continued to make evolutionary progress during the Devonian.
which was important for development of terrestrial animals. At the same time carbon dioxide (CO2) a greenhouse gas was depleted from earlier levels.
Early tetrapods probably evolved from Lobe-finned fishes able to use their muscular fins to take advantage of the predator-free and food-rich environment of the new wetland ecosystems.
The earliest known tetrapod is Tiktaalik rosae. Dated from the mid-Devonian this fossil creature is considered to be the link between the lobe-finned fishes and early amphibians.
but its hind limbs were larger and stronger than those in front suggesting it was able to propel itself outside of an aquatic environment.
and animals were unaffected largely by these extinction events. Related v
#Belly Up to the Bamboo Buffet: Pandas vs. 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.
Across the world people are struggling to survive in the same areas as endangered animals
Top 10 New Species Revealed A fuzzy-faced tree-living carnivore a transparent snail and ice-clinging anemones are among the top new species discovered in the last year.
The top 10 is designed to bring attention to the unsung heroes who are addressing the biodiversity crisis by working to complete an inventory of Earth's plants animals
See Photos of the Top 10 New Species Beautiful beasties The species honored with a place on the top 10 list range from plant to animal to fungus.
Perhaps the cuddliest is the olinguito (Bassaricyon neblina) a mini-carnivore that lives in the trees of Andean cloud forests.
The animal had been known for decades and even shown in zoos but it wasn't until researchers did a thorough examination of the skulls of this creature
and its relatives that the scientists noticed they had a new species on their hands.
The low-pressure system that looks to be aiming for the region this week is really a different animal#Mcmanus said
and trace the origins of seized ivory providing the means to tackle enforcement problems in the country where the animal was killed rather than just the point where the attempt was made to smuggle it out of the continent.
and Fauna (CITES) set up as part of the worldwide ban in 1989 reported that 22000 African elephants were killed illegally by poachers in 2012 based on data from 27 countries across Africa.
#Zoos, Aquariums and Their Visitors Are Critical Advocates for Conservation (Op-Ed) John Calvelli is executive vice president for public affairs at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and director of the 96 Elephants campaign.
If you've visited a zoo or aquarium in recent years there's a good chance that you've noticed something new.
Indeed if you were to ask the staff of almost any zoo or aquarium about their primary mission they would underscore the education of guests regarding the conservation status of the animals they are observing
and the threats those species face in the wild. Zoos and aquariums are living museums where children
and adults alike are witness to the wonders of the natural world. Encounters with species both exotic and familiar fill guests with awe
and excite them to learn more about park animals'wild habitats many of which are in serious decline.
This was foremost on my mind as WCS executive vice president and Bronx Zoo director Jim Breheny vice president for species conservation Liz Bennett and
I attended the Winter Meeting of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) recently. We attended to provide senior zoo representatives from across the nation with an update on the forest-elephant poaching
and trafficking crisis in Central africa along with a programmatic overview of WCS's field work. We also led a discussion of our 96 Elephants public campaign.
So far 115 different zoos and aquariums have signed on as 96 Elephants partners. All have the ability to spread the message of elephant conservation to their park-going audiences
and zoos and aquariums are making a difference. Each in their own way is helping to focus attention educate their visitors
For example last fall the Indianapolis Zoo gathered 96 school children for a group picture to promote greater awareness of the elephant-poaching crisis. The Houston Zoo is incorporating campaign messaging into its promotion of the birth
A bill to ban the commercial sale of ivory in New york originated over conversations at The bronx Zoo.
And over the next month three Chicago institutions the Chicago Zoological Society's Brookfield Zoo the Lincoln Park Zoo and Shedd Aquarium will likewise be working with local and state lawmakers to raise awareness
and the important role of zoos and aquariums and their visitors when working together to achieve public-policy goals.
So the next time you are visiting a zoo or aquarium you may want to listen a bit closer to zoo professionals
or read the exhibit material a bit more carefully. Chances are pretty good that you will be learning about the latest crisis befalling our wildlife partners on this planet
This Op-Ed was adapted from the article Zoos & Aquariums and Their Visitors Can Be Critical Advocates for Conservation Action that appeared on Huffington Post.
Sullivan doesn't expect a major die off from cold for a tough smart animal like the rat.
Ibex are herbivores; they only eat vegetation such as shrubs bushes and grasses. Grazing accounts for a significant part of their eating habits.
but scientists are hopeful that this cloned ibex will pave the way for the successful cloning of extinct animals.
About 8000 to 10000 years ago in Southwest asia and the Middle east humans began domesticating wild goats according to the San diego Zoo.
but also don't consume anything derived from animals including eggs dairy honey and marshmallows which contain gelatin a protein obtained from animal byproducts.
and cleaning solutions that were tested on animals or have related animal ingredients such as lard beeswax and lanolin (a waxy substance in sheep's wool).
Nonhuman primates and other wild animals rarely get dental diseases Warinner said which raises the question What is it about humans that allows these pathogens to grow?
A Zookeeper's Life (Op-Ed) Christopher Scoufaras is a zookeeper at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)' s Queens Zoo.
Growing up I regularly visited the WCS's Bronx Zoo and New york Aquarium and knew from a young age that I was interested in working with animals.
I would sit in front of the primate exhibits for hours and watch their behavior it was exciting to see up close
During my teen years I was involved in the agricultural program at the school working with chickens goats lizards and other animals.
I began my career as a zookeeper interning at the Queens Zoo while in college and was hired full time after graduating.
Our zoo is small enough that keepers get to work with a wide range of animals from bison and mountain lions to tropical birds Andean bears and Roosevelt elk.
At the Queens Zoo we're always outside no matter the weather. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012 we came
and checked in on the animals. While many people were snowed in earlier this year I would shovel my car out
and make it to work only to shovel some more to ensure the animals were fed and cared for.
Sometimes the potential dangers are not environmental but from the animals themselves. Part of my job is transporting alligators on and off exhibit during the changing of the seasons.
me but at the same time was conscious of not harming the animal. I soon made my way to the door leaving the hissing puffed-up kicking rhea behind.
what an animal under your care is going to do. Editor's Note: This article is the second in a series from WCS on Live Science celebrating the contributions of zookeepers for the American Association of Zookeepers'National Zookeeper Week (July 21-27.
That loss has diminished the rich deep relationship that existed before the extermination of these animals.
However previous studies on people and animals have shown that Garcinia cambogia may indeed increase serotonin levels.
The abuse of antibiotics in the livestock industry where animals that aren't sick are fed low doses of antibiotics day after day to try to compensate for unsanitary conditions risks impairing the effectiveness of those essential medicines
Some studies in the past few years have suggested also that Neanderthals weren't just red-meat-gnawing carnivores;
All poop samples indicated that Neanderthals ate animals; evidence came in the form of coprostanol a lipid created
when the body metabolizes cholesterol a molecule made by all animals. But two samples also had a dash of 5b-stigmastanol a chemical produced
He added that scientists need a much better reference database for the profile of chemicals they should expect to see in the fossilized feces of different animals such as bears and humans.
#Facts About Elephants African elephants & Asian Elephants Elephants are the largest land animals On earth. They have characteristic long noses or trunks;
The largest elephant ever recorded was an African elephant according to the San diego Zoo. It was 24000 lbs.
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).<
</p><p>Three-toed sloths descend from the trees once a week to defecate providing a breeding ground for moths that live in the animals'fur
They see color like no other animal on the planet.</</p><p>In fact the 400-million-year-old visual system of the mantis shrimp works more like a satellite sensor than any other animal eye said study researcher Justin Marshall a neurobiologist at the University of Queensland
in Australia. Instead of processing ratios of stimulation from just a few color receptors the mantis shrimp has 12
Onkelinx made the announcement March 3 at an event celebrating Belgium's involvement in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
and Flora (CITES) which is an international treaty to protect endangered plants and animals. In Images:
It s highly unlikely that they will ever evolve to cause diseases for humans or animals.
A close study of more than 20 guenon monkey species reveals these sociable animals may rely on their distinctive patterns to prevent interbreeding.
Animals use coloration and patterning for a whole host of different reasons and we think guenons are using their patterns to recognize different species said study lead author William Allen of the University of Hull in the United kingdom. Guenon monkeys live in the forests of Central
Guenons can interbreed in zoos but rarely do so in the wild. For decades many researchers have thought that guenons'unusual fur
He photographed more than 150 guenons both wild monkeys living in Africa and individuals in zoos and preserves.
what happens to the animals that supply us with meat you should care about ractopamine.
Three years later the FDA sent ractopamine's sponsor a 14-page letter accusing the company of withholding information about the drug's adverse animal drug experiences and safety and effectiveness.
and become downers that is animals too sick or injured to walk and then often dragged into the slaughterhouse.
So our animals can't turn around for the 2. 5 years that they are in the stalls producing piglets.
Wild Animals Suffer on'Junk Food'Diets Cape Wildlife Center our wildlife rehabilitation center based in Barnstable Mass
. and operated by The Fund for Animals (an affiliate of The Humane Society of the United states) treats about 2000 animals per year including a significant number of geese swans
and even dancing in a pot one of the stars of the film Guardians of the Galaxy bizarrely blends the plant and animal kingdoms.
Plants that can smell and animals that regenerate show that animal and vegetable kingdoms may not be as far apart as they first appear.
The strong scientific evidence is that plants have every sense familiar in animals except hearing.
-and-key mechanisms that resemble how animals smell. Plants have specific photoreceptors which are proteins that respond to different wavelengths of light.
But senses serve the same function in plants as they do in animals: Plants take in information
Animals That Mimic Plants The familiar phenomenon of houseplants growing toward the window for example shows how plants sense
Animals have squishy cells that can move past one another making muscles feasible Gilroy said. But a hard wall encloses each plant cell
which is why animals eat plants and other animals. To move around like Groot does on screen such a tree creature would have to eat other things too Gilroy said.
Clearly the movie speeds up such vegetable growth but real-life plants can indeed keep growing in ways animals can't Ed Rayburn an extension specialist
Animals by contrast grow to a predetermined size and shape and much of that happens in the womb Gilroy said.
Animals by contrast lack meristems and stem cells are much harder to come by as shown by the difficulties faced by cloning efforts Rayburn said.
Some animals do approach plantlike regenerative growth but usually those with simple body plans like the planarian worm Gilroy said.
Animals developed thought because of their searching strategy for finding food he told Forbes. Alien tree-thinkers would have to incorporate movement perhaps with some type of root system that can push itself out of the ground take three steps forward
#For cows he said it means we re not keeping these animals in an environment that allows them to be
These individually raised cows don t seem to know how to regulate their behavior around other animals at all.#
which humans and animals interact with their environments. Where we see the world primarily through sight
and fruits but they will also munch on eggs small insects caterpillars small animals and even young snakes.
and sharing DNA and performance measures for the animals in an effort to identify unique genes with the goal of connecting performance traits with DNA from various breeds.
The resulting connections will help farmers breed their animals more efficiently yielding healthier more productive goats that will adapt well to their respective environments
Forest overexploited for timber is likely to lose many species of animals its ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere deteriorates
In ancient Egypt hippos were considered nuisances as the animals ate crops at night. The young troops go out
Despite being extraordinary simple it possessed the necessary qualities for supporting the economic expansion of ruminant animal herding into Eastern Eurasia the authors write in the paper
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.
Entire groups of 30-50 animals have died during spring floods storm surges and lake ice break up.
#Animals Could Become Human Organ donors Some Day, Researchers Say Advances in transplant technologycould pave the way for the use of animal organs in people some day
Transplanting organs from animals known as xenotransplantation could replace human organs completely or provide a stopgap until a human organ becomes available.
Besides the heart other tissues could also potentially be transplanted from animals to humans including the liver kidneys pancreas
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
These animals once made up less than half of all skeletal remains at the site but gradually increased to 85 to 90 percent of these bones with sheep bones outnumbering goat remains by a factor of three or more.
Moreover analysis of dung in the mound revealed that plant-eating animals were held captive inside the settlement probably in between buildings.
Eventually people will have to travel farther afield to get large animals. The alternative is to raise animals yourself.
In future studies the researchers would like to examine the consequences of holding animals captive in the settlement for people.
What advantages and problems did that bring? Stiner said. Did their nutrition and health improve?
How did the people reorganize their labor to make sure the animals were fed? What kinds of structural modifications were made within the site to protect
and constrain these animals? Stiner Ãbaå aran and their colleagues detailed their findings online today (April 28) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
but conservationists are taking small steps to bring the animals back into the wild. Seven female bison raised in captivity in The british Isles will be reintroduced to a forest in Romania officials with the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) announced.
This is an excellent example of how zoos within the European Zoo Association's coordinated breeding programs are helping save species from extinction.
European Bison bison bonasus) are the largest herbivores in Europe. The animals went extinct in the wild in 1927
but small populations were maintained in zoos. The first captive-bred bison was released into its natural habitat in 1952.
Because of continued conservation and reintroduction efforts the total wild population reached over 3000 by 2012.
Bison had a similar trajectory in the United states. Tens of millions of the animals once roamed the Great plains
Today there are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of the animals across the nation. Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+.
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