Just right for the garden: a mini-cow

Dexter cattle are an ancient dual-purpose Irish breed, the smallest of the British breeds:

They originated as a hardy breed of small mountain cattle run on small family holdings. At the turn of the 20th century, Dexters became the show cattle of the English gentry.

As the 20th century progressed, Dexter numbers declined. In the 1970s, they were designated as rare and endangered. More recently, their attractiveness to small landholders has seen a significant increase in their numbers globally.

Now the Times says they're just right for the garden:

Registrations of the most popular breed, the Dexter, have doubled since the millennium and websites are sprouting up offering “the world’s most efficient, cutest and tastiest cows”.

For between £200 and £2,000, people can buy a cow that stands no taller than a large German shepherd dog, gives 16 pints of milk a day that can be drunk unpasteurised, keeps the grass “mown” and will be a family pet for years before ending up in the freezer.

(Hat tip to Al Fin.)

Cattle shown to align north-south

Only after thousands of years has anyone noticed that cattle align north-south:

The researchers surveyed Google Earth images of 8,510 grazing and resting cattle in 308 pasture plains across the globe.

"Sometimes it took hours and hours to find some pictures with good resolution," said Dr Begall.

The scientists were unable to distinguish between the head and rear of the cattle, but could tell that the animals tended to face either north or south.

Their study ruled out the possibility that the Sun position or wind direction were major influences on the orientation of the cattle.

Dr Begall said: "In Africa and South America, the cattle (were) shifted slightly to a more north-eastern-south-western direction.

"But it is known that the Earth's magnetic field is much weaker there," she explained.

The researchers also recorded the body positions of 2,974 wild deer in 277 locations across the Czech Republic.

Their fieldwork revealed that the majority of grazing and resting deer face northward. About one-third of the deer faced southward.

"That might be some kind of anti-predatory behaviour," speculated Dr Begall.

I'm guessing the accompanying image was taken in Scotland? Because the cattle seem to be facing directly into the sun, which wouldn't be almost directly north or south in most cattle country.

Newest attraction for the Berlin Zoo

The newest attraction for the Berlin Zoo is a Siberian tiger cub named Antares. He's pretty cute — for now:



Perhaps this is more like it:

Leopard savaging a crocodile caught on camera

Crocodiles have been known to catch and eat leopards from time to time, but now a leopard has been caught on camera "savaging" a crocodile — which is a pretty big risk to take for not much meat:

















(Hat tip to Tyler Cowen.)

Acting Squirrelly

Cringely believes that SAP is acting squirrelly — which gives him an excuse to examine squirrel behavior in a bit too much depth:

You are driving down a street in your car and up ahead there is a squirrel at the side of the road eating a nut. You aren't on an intercept course, there is no way you are going to hit that squirrel. So what does the squirrel do? At the very last possible moment, rather than watching you drive by, THE SQUIRREL DARTS STRAIGHT FOR YOUR CAR, passing inches in front of or behind the front tires.

Why does he do that?

Obviously I'm a guy with too much time on my hands because I've given this quite a bit of thought.

From a purely metabolic perspective, whatever its motivation the physical advantage clearly lies with the squirrel. Sure, my car is bigger and faster, but the squirrel is smaller and quicker, with a heart that beats up to 700 times per minute. To the squirrel I seem to be driving by in slow motion, and whether he goes in front of the tires or behind or in front of one and behind another is strictly a matter of style: once the squirrel has my vector, Victor, he's in command.

But judging by the number of squirrels squished on the road, there must be some risk to this game, so why does he do it?

The answer has nothing to do with cars because squirrel psychology predates both cars and men. For the squirrel, in fact, there may be no difference between my car and an ice age saber-toothed tiger.

The squirrel doesn't trust me. Sure, it looks like I'm not even chasing him, but he's a tasty squirrel and I'm a saber-toothed tiger. By waiting until the last possible moment then running TOWARD me, the squirrel is rushing the net, moving the confrontation effectively forward in time in such a way that the squirrel is pushing his tactical advantage.

As a predator, I'm simply not supposed to expect this squirrel to be running toward me, rather than away. He's using the element of surprise to confuse me. And it works, because I've never hit a squirrel with my car.

So, what does this have to do with ERP giant SAP?

SAP and companies like it do something similar by making powerful software that is quite deliberately difficult to use. They could make it easier. Heck, the capability to make it easier is shipped right with the software, though never pointed out to the customer.
[...]
Unlike standardized financial statements, the most powerful ERP screens and reports will vary dramatically from company to company, so the ability to customize SAP is vital to obtaining the maximum possible benefit from the software.

That's why there are so many SAP consultants. And that's why SAP, itself, makes 40 percent of its revenue from providing consulting services -- revenue that would be significantly less if the software was easier to customize and easier to use.

If SAP software was easier to customize and use, SAP the company might get a few more customers but would have significantly less revenue. Or that's the fear.

There is a product called GuiXT that is an interface builder shipped for free with every copy of SAP R/3. Pronounced "gooey-x-t," this client-server application sits on top of R/3 and can be used with almost no programming to customize and integrate R/3 screens as well as add certain overlay functions that aren't readily available in R/3, itself. The point with GuiXT is to not mess with the underlying R/3 code, which means an SAP installation can be less customized on the back end, installed cheaper, and be up and running quicker.

So when you, as an SAP customer, call up your SAP consultant to ask for customization, that consultant will often show you the next day a GuiXT implementation that does exactly what you asked for but is presented as a mock-up. Once you've signed-off on the look and feel then the SAP consultants can dig into R/3 itself and spend a few weeks implementing what you asked for. OR they could simply run the GuiXT app that took them an hour to build.

Are you starting to see the picture?
[...]
The squirrel dives for your front tires because by ice age rules that's the thing to do, though at an obvious cost today in squished squirrels. Similarly, SAP deliberately hides the power of GuiXT thinking it could hurt consulting revenue when, in fact, it could INCREASE sales revenue by broadening the market and making R/3 less scary for companies to install and run.

Both the squirrel and SAP do what they do because it appears to work, though a safer and easier course was there all along.

Virtual fencing

Virtual fencing has existed for dogs for decades. Now the "Ear-a-round" is bringing a higher-tech version to ranching:

The Ear-a-round consists of a small, light box that sits on top of a cow’s head, and a pair of earpieces made of fabric and plastic. The box contains a computer chip, a GPS tracking device and a transceiver that enables it to be programmed remotely. The earpieces serve both to keep the box upright and to supply command signals — either sonic or electric — to the animal wearing the device. For maximum working lifetime, the whole thing is powered by lithium-ion batteries that are topped up by solar cells.

One question for Ear-a-round is whether it can be made cheaper than fencing. At $600 a cow, that is not obviously yet so. Dr Rus, however, is working on getting the price of the hardware down to the $100 that farmers will pay. Meanwhile Dr Anderson is about to start working out how many cows actually need to be fitted with Ear-a-rounds to control an entire herd. He hopes that, by identifying a herd’s leaders and fitting out them alone, this number can be reduced to a handful.

The range that an animal is allowed to occupy is recorded by the chip as a set of GPS co-ordinates. The animal’s activity is also recorded. The GPS system gives its location, while an accelerometer and a magnetic compass housed inside the box track its rate and direction of travel. If an animal roams beyond the range specified in the chip, the device responds in a way determined by its wearer’s recent behaviour. The algorithms devised by Dr Rus are able to work out, based on past experience, how strong the message to turn back needs to be. Minor transgressions lead to whispers or tingles. Major ones to shouts or shocks. In both cases the cue is delivered to the ear opposite the direction that the animal is being nudged towards. Four years of research at a ranch in New Mexico have shown that cattle quickly cotton on to what they need to do.

Spain awards apes legal rights

Spain awards apes legal rights:

The Spanish parliament's environment committee last week approved resolutions for chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans to gain some statutory rights currently applicable only to humans. It is thought to be the first time a national legislature has taken such action.

The resolutions, which passed with cross-party support and are expected to be approved as laws by the full parliament within a year, are based on the Great Ape Project, a framework designed by scientists and philosophers who believe that humans' closest biological relatives deserve the right to life, liberty and protection from torture.

The laws will ban potentially harmful research, ape trading, profiting from apes, and using apes in performances. Zoos could still legally hold apes, but living conditions must be “optimal”.

Will this appease Grodd?

Golden Cow-Nose Ray Migration

Amateur photographer Sandra Critelli has taken some breathtaking photos of thousands of poisonous golden cow-nose rays migrating along the clockwise current from Mexico's Yucatan peninsula to western Florida.

Fossil fills out water-land leap

Fossil fills out water-land leap:

About one hundred million years before dinosaurs began to roam the Earth, Ventastega [curonica] was to be found in the shallow waters and tidal estuaries of modern day Latvia.

According to lead author, Professor Per Ahlberg, from Uppsala University, Sweden, this creature had the head of a tetrapod, an animal adapted to live on land. The body, though, was fish-like but with four primitive flippers.

"From a distance, it would have looked like an alligator. But closer up, you would have noticed a real tail fin at the back end, a gill flap at the side of the head; also lines of pores snaking across head and body.

"In terms of construction, it had already undergone most of the changes from fish towards land animal, but in terms of lifestyle you are still looking at an animal that is habitually aquatic."

Experts believe that Ventastega was an important staging post in the evolutionary journey that led creatures from the sea to the land.

Scientists find monkeys who know how to fish

Scientists find monkeys who know how to fish:

Groups of long-tailed macaques were observed four times over the past eight years scooping up small fish with their hands and eating them along rivers in East Kalimantan and North Sumatra provinces, according to researchers from The Nature Conservancy and the Great Ape Trust.

Italian Unicorn

This Italian unicorn needs one more mutation — albinism — to really "work":

This undated photo provided by the Center of Natural Sciences in Prato, Italy, Wednesday, June 11, 2008, shows a deer with a single horn in the center of its head. The one-year-old Roe Deer — nicknamed "Unicorn" — was born in captivity in the research center's park in the Tuscan town of Prato, near Florence, Gilberto Tozzi, director of the Center of Natural Sciences, said. He is believed to have been born with a genetic flaw; his twin has two horns.

The Spice must flow

I'm not a particularly big fan of either Dune or of lolcats, but this hit me just right:

Man mauled by grizzly kills bear, lives to tell tale

What does a real man do when mauled by a grizzly? He kills it — then snaps his shoulder back into place:

John Shorter, 38, was hiking near Dease Lake in Northern B.C. Tuesday when he said he smelled a bear in the area.

"I heard a woofing sound, turned, seen a grizz coming at me. I managed to get my rifle up and get one round into the chest.… At that point he got on top of me, obviously, and took me down," Shorter said. "He proceeded to try to maul me in the back of the scalp and on the neck, and I protected my neck with my hands. They got fairly chewed up."

The bear was biting at his hands, which were covering his neck, so he dropped his rifle. He scrambled to get it back, eventually putting some distance between himself and the bear.

He shot the animal a second time, this time killing it.

"You just put yourself in overdrive and try and not get yourself killed," Shorter said. "It's an amazing amount of adrenaline going through yourself.… You get lots of thoughts going through your mind but you think about, obviously, your family and it's worth living, so fight."

After killing the bear, Shorter picked up his rifle and staggered back to his vehicle.

"I got back in my pickup, grabbed a drink of water, got my thoughts straight. I noticed my shoulder was dislocated. I managed to pop it in myself and thought I'd better go and get some help," Shorter said.

He drove to the nearby community of Iskut for medical treatment.

Shorter escaped the attack with what he called minor injuries. He received 40 stitches, and suffered a broken hand and multiple puncture wounds.

Birdbrain

Birdbrain looks back at Alex — the gray parrot subject of the Avian Learning Experiment — and what Irene Pepperberg was able to teach him:

As everyone knows, parrots are remarkably good at mimicking human speech, but they tend to repeat randomly picked-up phrases: obscenities, election slogans, “Hey, sailor.” Many parrots kept as pets also imitate familiar sounds, like the family dog barking or an alarm clock beeping. But Pepperberg taught Alex referential speech — labels for objects, and phrases like “Wanna go back.” By the end, he knew about fifty words for objects. Pepperberg was never particularly interested in teaching Alex language for its own sake; rather, she was interested in what language could reveal about the workings of his mind. In learning to speak, Alex showed Pepperberg that he understood categories like same and different, bigger and smaller. He could count and recognize Arabic numerals up to six. He could identify objects by their color, shape (“three-corner,” “four-corner,” and so on, up to “six-corner”), and material: when Pepperberg held up, say, a pompom or a wooden block, he could answer “Wool” or “Wood,” correctly, about eighty per cent of the time. Holding up a yellow key and a green key of the same size, Pepperberg might ask Alex to identify a difference between them, and he’d say, “Color.” When she held up two keys and asked, “Which is bigger?,” he could identify the larger one by naming its color. Looking at a collection of objects that he hadn’t seen before, Alex could reliably answer a two-tiered question like “How many blue blocks?” — a tricky task for toddlers. He even seemed to develop an understanding of absence, something akin to the concept of zero. If asked what the difference was between two identical blue keys, Alex learned to reply, “None.” (He pronounced it “nuh.”)

Pepperberg also reported that, outside training sessions, Alex sometimes played with the sounds he had learned, venturing new words. After he learned “gray,” he came up with “grain” on his own, and after learning “talk” he tried out “chalk.” His trainers then gave him the item that he had inadvertently named, and it eventually entered his vocabulary. (When Alex devised nonsense words — like “cheenut” — Pepperberg and his other trainers did not respond, and he quickly stopped saying them.) In linguistic terms, Alex was recombining phonemes, the building blocks of speech. Stephen Anderson, a Yale linguist who has written about animal communication, considers this behavior “apparent evidence that Alex did actually regard at least some of his words as made up of individual recombinable pieces, though it’s hard to say without more evidence. This is something that seems well beyond any ape-language experiments, or anything we see in nature.”

Pepperberg told me that Alex also made spontaneous remarks that were oddly appropriate. Once, when she rushed in the lab door, obviously harried, Alex said, “Calm down” — a phrase she had sometimes used with him. “What’s your problem?” he sometimes demanded of a flustered trainer. When training sessions dragged on, Alex would say, “Wanna go back” — to his cage. More creatively, he’d sometimes announce, “I’m gonna go away now,” and either turn his back to the person working with him or sidle as far away as he could get on his perch. “Say better,” he chided the younger parrots that Pepperberg began training along with him. “You be good, see you tomorrow, I love you,” he’d say when she left the lab each evening. This was endearing — and the Times’ obituary made much of the fact that these were the bird’s last words — although, as Anderson points out, it was during such moments that Alex was, most likely, merely “parroting.” It helped Alex’s charisma quotient that he made all his remarks in an intonation that was part two-year-old, part Rain Man, part pull-string toy. His voice, at once tinny and sweet, was easy to understand. Pepperberg tended to speak to Alex in the singsong “motherese” that doting parents use with young children, and he replied in a voice that seemed to convey a toddlerish pride.

Irene Pepperberg got an unusual start as an animal-language researcher in the early 1970s, since she was already in a chemistry grad program:

When Irene Pepperberg went to New York for the Clever Hans conference, she was thirty-one, and had owned Alex for three years. She had arrived in the world of animal communication from “out of left field,” as Diana Reiss puts it. Pepperberg has a Ph.D. from Harvard in theoretical chemistry, not psychology or zoology. But in the midst of her thesis work, which involved modelling chemical-reaction rates, it suddenly hit her, she recalls, that “(a) we don’t know enough at this point to do this exactly right and (b) in the future, what it’s taking me seven years to do with a mathematical model is going to take a computer hours, or seconds.” She decided to pursue something different. In any case, the prospects for women in her field hadn’t been encouraging. Speaking of her class at Harvard, she recalled, “My year was the first year that graduate-school draft deferrals for men were cut way back. So they let in a lot of women for a change. But the women were asked in their job interviews things like ‘What kind of birth control are you using?’”
[...]
Despite her graduate-school epiphany at Harvard, she continued with her Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry, receiving her degree in 1976; but she also started attending courses in departments relevant to the bird research she now hoped to do. “I was spending forty hours a week learning psychology and biology and forty hours finishing my doctorate,” she recalls.

The key to teaching parrots was eschewing Behaviorist methods — you don't put a toddler in a Skinner Box, after all — and playing to the gray parrot's social nature:

Pepperberg needed a method for teaching a parrot that played to its particular strengths. She came across something called the model/rival technique, which a German ethologist named Dietmar Todt had tried in a 1975 study of parrots. Todt had reasoned that, since parrots learn to squawk by watching each other vocalize, they might be able to learn German by observing people talk. So he developed a system in which one person was the trainer and one was the model for the bird — and its rival for the trainer’s attention. Pepperberg tweaked the protocol: in her version, the model/rival and the trainer periodically exchanged roles, so the bird could see that one person wasn’t always in charge. Parrots started the process by learning referential labels for things they wanted, rather than dialogues of the “Hello, how are you? I am fine” variety, which, Pepperberg figured, didn’t mean much to a parrot. There were no extrinsic rewards. If the parrot named an object, he’d get to play with that object, and, if he didn’t want it, he got the right to ask for something else. Pepperberg explained, “Let’s say you’re the model/rival and I’m the trainer. I have this object that the bird wants, and I show it to you and I say” — she adopted a singsong voice — “ ‘What’s this?,’ and you say, ‘Cork.’ I say, ‘That’s right,’ and you say, ‘Cork, cork, cork,’ while you’re holding it and the bird is practically falling off the perch because he wants it. And he hears that this weird noise is what mediated the transfer of this object. So we change roles, and then, instead of saying ‘Cork,’ I go, ‘Raaaawkk,’” — an uncannily accurate screech — “and you go, ‘No, no, you’re wrong,’ so the bird sees that not just any weird noise transfers the cork.”

The system worked. At first, a parrot might make a sound more like “erk” than “cork.” He’d need practice. Certain sounds are nearly impossible to produce without lips — Alex was never able to say “purple,” for instance, even after he nailed all his other colors. Still, as Reiss says, “Irene really found the appropriate method based on what we know about these birds. If you can tap into what these birds do in their own environment — in this case, the way these birds pair-bond — then you can set up a powerful learning paradigm.”

One of the odd things about watching a gray parrot talk, as this video demonstrates, is the contrast between its face — "goggle-eyed and masklike, and much less expressive than a dog’s" — and its ability to make its wishes clear:

Trichobatrachus robustus breaks its own bones to produce claws

Trichobatrachus robustus breaks its own bones to produce claws that puncture their way out of the frog's toe pads, probably when it is threatened:

David Blackburn and colleagues at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology, think the gruesome behaviour is a defence mechanism.

The researchers say there are salamanders that force their ribs through their skin to produce protective barbs on demand, but nothing quite like this mechanism has been seen before.

The feature is also found in nine of the 11 frogs belonging to the Astylosternus genus, most of which live in Cameroon.

"Some other frogs have bony spines that project from their wrist, but in those species it appears that the bones grow through the skin rather than pierce it when needed for defence," says Blackburn.

At rest, the claws of T. robustus, found on the hind feet only, are nestled inside a mass of connective tissue. A chunk of collagen forms a bond between the claw's sharp point and a small piece of bone at the tip of the frog's toe.

The other end of the claw is connected to a muscle. Blackburn and his colleagues believe that when the animal is attacked, it contracts this muscle, which pulls the claw downwards. The sharp point then breaks away from the bony tip and cuts through the toe pad, emerging on the underside.

The end result may look like a cat's claw, but the breaking and cutting mechanism is very different and unique among vertebrates. Also unique is the fact that the claw is just bone and does not have an outer coating of keratin like other claws do.

Because Blackburn has only studied dead specimens, he says he does not know what happens when the claw retracts – or even how it retracts. It does not appear to have a muscle to pull it back inside so the team think it may passively slide back into the toe pad when its muscle relaxes.

"Being amphibians, it would not be surprising if some parts of the wound heal and the tissue is regenerated," says Blackburn.

Males of the species, which grows to about 11 centimetres, also produce long hair-like strands of skin and arteries when they breed (see image). It is thought that the "hairs" allow them to take in more oxygen through their skin while they take care of their brood.

In Cameroon, they are roasted and eaten. Hunters use long spears and machetes to kill the frogs, apparently to avoid being hurt by their claws.

Can we assume its claws go snikt! when deployed?

Rarest rhinoceros wrecks camera

Rarest rhinoceros wrecks camera:

The world's rarest rhinoceros has been captured on film by a specially installed camera in the jungles of Java, Indonesia.

But the female rhino, which was accompanied by a calf, promptly charged the camera, sending it flying.

The animals are at severe risk of extinction, with only 60-70 animals left in the wild.

A spokesperson for WWF said the footage provided an unusual glimpse of the rare beasts in their natural habitat.

Rachmat Hariyadi, who leads WWF-Indonesia's project in Java's Ujung Kulon National Park, said the motion-triggered camera "traps" were a useful way to observe the ways in which animals used their habitats, aiding conservation efforts.

But Stephen Hogg, also from WWF, who designed the hidden cameras, said he was puzzled by the rhino's attack.

"The assault on the camera still has us baffled because we specifically use infrared lights as the source of illumination when we designed and built these units so as to not scare animals away when the camera activates," he said.

Javan rhinos are found only in two locations; Ujung Kulong National Park is home to 90% of the total population.

Efforts are underway to create additional Javan rhino breeding groups by translocating a few individuals from Ujung Kulon to another suitable site.

This could help prevent an extinction caused by disease or a natural disaster, conservationists say.

Australian pokes shark in eye during attack

Australian pokes shark in eye during attack:

Jason Cull was swimming off a beach on Australia's southwest coast on Sunday when the four meter (12 feet) shark attacked.

"Initially I thought it was a dolphin," Cull told The Australian newspaper on Monday. "I just remember being dragged along backwards. I was trying to feel its gills but I found its eye and I stuck my finger in and that's when it let go."

The shark tore two chunks from Cull's left leg, ripping off half his calf and leaving him with deep lacerations to his knee and thigh. A local surf lifesaver heard Cull, 37, screaming and raced into the surf to rescue him.

Anteaters in Sweaters

I don't know what to say about these (lesser) anteaters in sweaters.

Scientists map the genome of the platypus

Everyone's favorite monotreme has been sequenced. Scientists map the genome of the platypus — and it is an odd duck:

The research showed the animal's multifaceted features are reflected in its DNA with a mix of genes that crosses different classifications of animals, said Jenny Graves, an Australian National University genomics expert who co-wrote the paper.

"What we found was the genome, just like the animal, is an amazing amalgam of reptilian and mammal characteristics with quite a few unique platypus characteristics as well," she told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Scientists believe all mammals evolved from reptiles, and the animals that became platypuses and those that became humans shared an evolutionary path until about 165 million years ago when the platypus branched off. Unlike other evolving mammals, the platypus retained characteristics of snakes and lizards, including the pain-causing poison that males can use to ward off mating rivals, Graves said.

More than 100 scientists from the United States, Australia, Japan and other nations took part in the research, using DNA collected from a female platypus named Glennie.

Sled Dogs' Secret to Peak Soldier Performance

In Sled Dogs' Secret to Peak Soldier Performance, Noah Shachtman looks at Oklahoma State veterinarian Michael Davis's "absurd idea" — shared by the folks at Darpa, who have been funding all kinds of research into maximizing human performance — to study how the Iditarod sled dogs of Alaska manage to run for more than a thousand miles straight. in order to get our own troops running around war zones at peak efficiency for "days on end without stopping." The New York Times explains:

When humans engage in highly strenuous exercise day after day, they start to metabolize the body’s reserves, depleting glycogen and fat stores. When cells run out of energy, a result is fatigue, and exercise grinds to a halt until those sources are replenished.

Dogs are different, in particular the sled dogs that run the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska. This is a grueling 1,100-mile race, and studies show that the dogs somehow change their metabolism during the race.

Dr. Michael S. Davis, an associate professor of veterinary physiology at Oklahoma State University and an animal exercise researcher, said: “Before the race, the dogs’ metabolic makeup is similar to humans. Then suddenly they throw a switch — we don’t know what it is yet — that reverses all of that. In a 24-hour period, they go back to the same type of metabolic baseline you see in resting subjects. But it’s while they are running 100 miles a day.”
[...]
In fact, sled dogs in long-distance racing typically burn 240 calories a pound per day for one to two weeks nonstop. The average Tour de France cyclist burns 100 calories a pound of weight daily, researchers say.

How the dogs maintain such a high level of caloric burn for an extended period without tapping into their reserves of fat and glycogen (and thus grinding to a halt like the rest of us) is what makes them “magical,” Davis says.

The energy comes from somewhere, so they're burning carbs, protein, and/or fat; the question is how much of each? Human endurance athletes typically eat a high-carb diet — although that may be changing — and "carb load" before a race. They then "hit the wall" when they run out of glycogen, a carbohydrate stored in the muscles and liver. The body can store only so much glycogen.

We need carbs for anaerobic respiration, which we use for sprinting, but we can also use carbs aerobically for long, slow, endurance challenges. Fat makes a better aerobic fuel though, because (a) it's more calorie-dense, and (b) we can store a lot of it. At roughly 100 calories per mile, a 175-pound runner can theoretically go 35 miles on one pound of fat.

Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn’t Better

Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn’t Better:

“Why are humans so smart?” is a question that fascinates scientists. Tadeusz Kawecki, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Fribourg, likes to turn around the question.

“If it’s so great to be smart,” Dr. Kawecki asks, “why have most animals remained dumb?”

Dr. Kawecki and like-minded scientists are trying to figure out why animals learn and why some have evolved to be better at learning than others. One reason for the difference, their research finds, is that being smart can be bad for an animal’s health.

For instance, scientists bred smarter flies:

It takes just 15 generations under these conditions for the flies to become genetically programmed to learn better. At the beginning of the experiment, the flies take many hours to learn the difference between the normal and quinine-spiked jellies. The fast-learning strain of flies needs less than an hour.

But the flies pay a price for fast learning. Dr. Kawecki and his colleagues pitted smart fly larvae against a different strain of flies, mixing the insects and giving them a meager supply of yeast to see who would survive. The scientists then ran the same experiment, but with the ordinary relatives of the smart flies competing against the new strain. About half the smart flies survived; 80 percent of the ordinary flies did.

Reversing the experiment showed that being smart does not ensure survival. “We took some population of flies and kept them over 30 generations on really poor food so they adapted so they could develop better on it,” Dr. Kawecki said. “And then we asked what happened to the learning ability. It went down.”

It's not clear why though.

Giant Stingrays Found Near Thai City

Giant Stingrays Found Near Thai City — in the river:

Recreational fishers and biologist Zeb Hogan (wearing cap) hold a live, 14-foot-long (4.3-meter-long) giant freshwater stingray the fishers caught in the Bang Pakong River in Chachoengsao, Thailand, on March 31, 2008.

Orangutan attempts to hunt fish with spear

Orangutan attempts to hunt fish with spear:

The extraordinary image, a world exclusive, was taken in Borneo on the island of Kaja, where apes are rehabilitated into the wild after being rescued from zoos, private homes or even butchers' shops.

"Orang hutan" means "forest man" in one of Indonesia's many languages and our long-armed cousins do indeed show a remarkable ability to mimic our behaviour.

This individual had seen locals fishing with spears on the Gohong River.

Although the method required too much skill for him to master, he was later able to improvise by using the pole to catch fish already trapped in the locals' fishing lines.

The image is part of a series taken for a new book, Thinkers of the Jungle, which also includes the first photograph of an orangutan swimming.

Lizards Undergo Rapid Evolution after Introduction to a New Home

Lizards Undergo Rapid Evolution after Introduction to a New Home — but they don't seem to grow to skyscraper height or breath atomic fire:

In 1971, biologists moved five adult pairs of Italian wall lizards from their home island of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, to the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru. Now, an international team of researchers has shown that introducing these small, green-backed lizards, Podarcis sicula, to a new environment caused them to undergo rapid and large-scale evolutionary changes.

“Striking differences in head size and shape, increased bite strength and the development of new structures in the lizard’s digestive tracts were noted after only 36 years, which is an extremely short time scale,” says Duncan Irschick, a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “These physical changes have occurred side-by-side with dramatic changes in population density and social structure.” Results of the study were published March 25 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Bats Perish, and No One Knows Why

Bats Perish, and No One Knows Why:

Mr. Hicks, a mammal specialist with the state’s Environmental Conservation Department, said: “Bats don’t fly in the daytime, and bats don’t fly in the winter. Every bat you see out here is a ‘dead bat flying,’ so to speak.”

They have plenty of company. In what is one of the worst calamities to hit bat populations in the United States, on average 90 percent of the hibernating bats in four caves and mines in New York have died since last winter.

Wildlife biologists fear a significant die-off in about 15 caves and mines in New York, as well as at sites in Massachusetts and Vermont. Whatever is killing the bats leaves them unusually thin and, in some cases, dotted with a white fungus. Bat experts fear that what they call White Nose Syndrome may spell doom for several species that keep insect pests under control.

Researchers have yet to determine whether the bats are being killed by a virus, bacteria, toxin, environmental hazard, metabolic disorder or fungus. Some have been found with pneumonia, but that and the fungus are believed to be secondary symptoms.

On the Trail of the Cat, Scientists Find Surprises

On the Trail of the Cat, Scientists Find Surprises:

Today cats can be divided genetically into four broad groups: those from Europe, the Mediterranean, East Africa and Asia.

But Lyons and her colleagues also made surprising discoveries about individual breeds. "We wanted to see whether breeds actually came from what was thought to be their geographical origins," Lyons said.

The Japanese bobtail, for example, does not seem genetically similar to cats from Japan, indicating the breed may have originated elsewhere. "Either it didn't originate in Japan or there's been so much Western influence that they have lost their initial genetic signal," Lyons said.

Despite its name, the Persian, the oldest recognized breed, looks as though it actually arose in Western Europe and not Persia, which today is Iran.

Some breeds differ by only a gene or two — too little to distinguish them, really — and many breeds are severely inbred — although many are not.

Engineered for Cuteness

If I didn't know better, I'd say Flocke the polar-bear cub was Engineered for Cuteness:

Flocke

Today's second dose of cute comes from Flocke, the polar bear cub at the Tiergarten Nuernberg Zoo.

Kibongo

Today's dose of cute comes from Kibongo, a baby crowned lemur (Propithecus verreauxi coronatus) making its first official appearance at a zoo in Vincennes, near Paris, February 21, 2008. Kibongo was born December 24, 2007.

Bats could fly before they had 'radar'

Bats could fly before they had 'radar':

A fossil found in Wyoming has apparently resolved a long-standing question about when bats gained their radar-like ability to navigate and locate airborne insects at night. The answer: after they started flying.

The discovery revealed the most primitive bat known, from a previously unrecognized species that lived some 25.5 million years ago.

Its skeleton shows it could fly, but that it lacked a series of bony features associated with "echolocation," the ability to emit high-pitched sounds and then hear them bounce back from objects and prey, researchers said.

Six-Gill Shark

This rare sighting of a six-gill shark includes some amazing footage:

This six-gill shark (Hexanchus) was filmed during a submersible dive off the northeast coast of Molokai at a depth of 1000m (3280ft). The 2 red laser dots are 6 inches apart, resulting in a length of about 18 ft for the shark.

Great ecstatic live commentary by University of Hawaii Oceanography Professor Jeff Drazen!

Many thanks to Dr. Craig Smith (University of Hawaii) and Dr. Eric Vetter for permitting release of this footage which was obtained as part of their research data set.

Giraffe Baby

It's hard not to love this newborn giraffe, named Margaret, who was born at the Chester Zoo, in the UK.

Orca Attack Wave

An Orca pod attacks a lone seal — with waves:



Why were five killer whales spending so much effort on one seal?

In January 2006 while visiting Antarctica, we witnessed a most unusual method for orca to dislodge a crabeater seal from an ice floe — they made large waves to wash the seal off the relative safety of the ice. Later the orca put the seal back on the ice and dislodged the seal a second time which suggested strongly they were training their young.

Gorilla Sanctuary Is Congo War Front

Gorilla Sanctuary Is Congo War Front:

The gorillas have the potential to draw tourist revenue to a desperately poor region and bring in vital funding through conservation groups. Over the last 12 months, though, rangers have watched helplessly as the gorillas have been massacred.

2007 was the apes' bloodiest year on record since famed American researcher Dian Fossey first began working in Congo in the mid-1960s to save them. The toll: 10 shot and killed, two others missing. The rangers don't know for sure who killed the gorillas, but they believe illegal charcoal traders are trying to sabotage the park for easier access to its trees.

Now armed groups have seized the habitat. With park staff unable to set foot inside the reserve for the last four months, the gorillas' fate is unknown.

A New Knut?

After the Knut phenomenon, you had to know that more polar-bear cubs would "need" TLC:

A handout picture shows a polar bear cub born by polar bear Vera at the zoo in Nuremberg January 11, 2008. The new baby bear was separated from her mother after officials at the Nuremberg zoo became concerned she might harm the cub. Now four keepers at the zoo are taking care of the 2 kg fur ball, who needs milk every three hours.

Addendum: Rumor has it that the cub is going by Flocke, German for [snow] flake. More importantly, our Eisbaer-Baby — Eisbaer is pronounced ice bear, by the way — has her own web page. You don't have to sprech Deutsch to enjoy it.

Glowing pig passes genes to piglets

Glowing pig passes genes to piglets:

The piglets' mother was one of three pigs born with the trait in December 2006 after pig embryos were injected with fluorescent green protein. Two of the 11 piglets glow fluorescent green from their snout, trotters, and tongue under ultraviolet light, the university said.

As I mentioned back in December 2006, the end goal is not glowing pigs; it's organ transplants from transgenic pigs.

Monkeys 'pay' for sex by grooming

Monkeys 'pay' for sex by grooming:

Gumert found after a male grooms a female, the likelihood that she will engage in sexual activity with the male was about three times more than if the grooming had not occurred.

And as with other commodities, the value of sex is affected by supply and demand factors: A male would spend more time grooming a female if there were fewer females in the vicinity.

Tiger kills one at San Francisco zoo

A certain part of me thinks, if I were a tiger, I'd totally eat people. Tiger kills one at San Francisco zoo:

This undated file photo provided by the San Francisco Zoo shows Tatiana, a female Siberian tiger. Tatiana, the tiger that mauled a zookeeper last year escaped from its pen at the San Francisco Zoo on Tuesday Dec. 25, 2007, killing one man and injuring two others before police shot it dead, authorities said.

Addendum: I'm beginning to think I'd totally eat a teenager who was (allegedly) taunting me:

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, police found a shoe and blood in an area between the gate and the edge of the animal's 25- to 30-foot-wide moat, prompting the possibility that one of the victims dangled a leg or other body part over the edge of the moat.

Chinese police dog may teach pandas to fight

Your Chinese panda style is no match for my German dog-fu! Chinese police dog may teach pandas to fight:

Scientists in China may use a police dog to teach pandas to fight after the first artificially bred panda released into the wild was apparently killed after a battle with other animals, local media reported on Saturday.

That sounds hardcore, until you get to this part:

The pandas would learn how to protect themselves by observing the dog, increasing their chances of survival when they were eventually released into the mountainous wilds of the far western province of Sichuan.

You can't learn to fight just by watching...

The Daily Mammal

Illustrator Jennifer Rae Atkins has started The Daily Mammal:

In 14 years, I will have drawn every mammal there is! Or something! So to get started, I'm going to be filling some years-old requests from my friend Leigh, beginning with the Rocky Mountain goat. Both sexes have the horns. This guy here has his summer coat.

(Hat tip to Drawn!)

Lost world wildlife

Scientists found all kinds of lost world wildlife in Indonesia:

The trip was the second time that CI had visited the Foja Mountains, part of the Mamberamo Basin, the largest pristine tropical forest in the Asia Pacific region.

In 2005, the area was dubbed a "lost world" after scientists discovered dozens of new plants and animals in the dense jungle.

During the most recent trip, in June of this year, scientists accompanied by a film crew managed to capture courtship displays of the golden-fronted bowerbird (Amblyornis flavifrons) and of the black sicklebill bird of paradise (Epimachus fastuosus).

They also recorded the wattled smoky honeyeater (Melipotes carolae), documented for the first time on the 2005 expedition and known only from the Foja Mountains.

The bird, with a bright orange patch on its face, was then the first new bird species to be sighted on the island of New Guinea in more than 60 years.

The team also captured an old friend on film - the "lost" Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise (Parotia berlepschi).

The iridescent gold-breasted bird was "rediscovered" in 2005 by CI experts after 20 years without a confirmed sighting by a western scientist.

However, the most surprising finds of the trip were the two new species of mammal — the Cercarteus pygmy possum and Mallomys giant rat.

"The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat," said Kristofer Helgen, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

"With no fear of humans, it apparently came into the camp several times during the trip."

Mouse Bred Not To Fear Cats

I'm glad the photographer managed to catch a shot of this mouse bred not to fear cats before its inevitable demise:

In this undated photo released by Tokyo University's Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry Graduate School of Science, a genetically modified mouse approaches a cat in Tokyo. Using genetic engineering, scientists at Tokyo University say they have successfully switched off the rodents' instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats, showing that fear is genetically hardwired and not leaned through experience, as commonly believed.

Kitten Clones

Sometimes I wonder if scientists, deep down, want to creep out normal folks. These Korean kitten clones glow in the dark — in the name of science!

This handout photo released in Seoul by the Ministry of Science and Technology shows a combo of cloned cats that have a fluorescence protein gene and glowing under ultraviolet beams. The technology could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, the developers said.

Knut's First Birthday

It was Knut's first birthday today — and he's not the cute, little cub he used to be:

The Berlin Zoo's famous polar bear Knut, who was rejected by his mother but went on to win the hearts of millions around the world, celebrated his first birthday Wednesday with more than 2,000 well-wishers.

But Knut — no longer a tiny cub, thanks partly to his penchant for croissants — probably didn't get a taste of his own giant birthday cake, made with 300 eggs and 22 pounds of marzipan. He now tips the scales at more than 240 pounds and has been on a diet since July.

His special treat, instead, was a healthier concoction of fresh fruit, vegetables and rice — topped with a toy wooden candle.

I hope he doesn't end up like other child stars.

Elephant vs. Minibus

On of the Reuters Pictures of the Year for 2007 is this shot of an elephant demolishing a minibus:

An elephant destroys a minibus after throwing its rider and going on a rampage during Sri Lanka's sixth annual elephant polo tournament in Galle February 15, 2007. Abey, a four-tonne eighteen-year-old elephant, threw off his mahout and American rider and went on a rampage destroying a vehicle before being subdued.

The Monster Hunter's Handbook

The Monster Hunter's Handbook presents itself as the compiled wisdom of the Heraclean Club, a renowned league of monster hunters.

It is divided into two sections, one on legendary monsters to hunt, and another on legendary weapons with which to hunt them.

I enjoyed the terms the author apparently coined for these two sections.

You may have heard of cryptozoology, the study of legendary creatures, like Big Foot and Nessie.

Thus, monster hunting is aggressive cryptozoology.

Unless you're a war nerd, like me, you probably have not heard of hoplology though, the study of weapons and their use. (Hoplon was the ancient Greek term for shield, and hoplite the term for an arm