A herd of 15 elephants have caused destruction in south-west China, including eating fields of corn and smashing up barns, after escaping from Xishuangbanna nature reserve in Yunnan province. On Tuesday, Yunnan authorities said the herd was 12 miles from the provincial capital of Kunming, home to millions of people
Continue reading...Category Archives: Animals
Hundreds of fishing fleets that go ‘dark’ suspected of illegal hunting, study finds
Vessels primarily from China switch off their tracking beacons to evade detection while they engage in possible illegal fishing
Giant distant-water fishing fleets, primarily from China, are switching off their tracking beacons to evade detection while they engage in a possibly illegal hunt for squid and other lucrative species on the very edge of Argentina’s extensive fishing grounds, according to a new study by Oceana, an international NGO dedicated to ocean conservation.
Every year, vessels crowd together along the limits of Argentina’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to take advantage of the lucrative fishing grounds.
Related: Cat and mouse on the high seas: on the trail of China's vast squid fleet
Continue reading...Escaped elephants leave 500km trail of destruction in China
Wild herd has wrecked barns and munched its way through fields of crops after absconding from nature reserve in April
A herd of 15 elephants have caused destruction in south-western China, including eating whole fields of corn and smashing up barns, after escaping from a nature reserve in April.
Measures taken to keep migrating #elephants away from residential zones in #Yunnan.
#云南 #野象“旅行团”近日一路北迁，有关部门采取措施全力防范象群迁徙带来的公共安全隐患，确保人象安全。
by 吴歌 via CGTN pic.twitter.com/DDfH26nY2b
‘A kind of rat with thorns’: the comic book busting myths about the Madras hedgehog
The elusive nocturnal creature is rarely seen in Tamil Nadu. One ecologist has made it his mission to spread the word through colourful adventures
The brightly coloured panels of Brawin Kumar’s comic book tell the story of how two children rescue a hedgehog from an unlicensed medicine man. The mother hedgehog is delighted to be reunited with her little one, as she has lost most of her offspring to road traffic.
Kumar, an Indian researcher and ecologist, came up with the idea of writing the book in Tamil to create awareness among children who live in and around the Madras hedgehog’s habitat. Many of those children will never have seen the nocturnal creature, which, unlike the British hedgehog, aestivates (lies in a state of torpor or dormancy) in the summer instead of hibernating in the winter.
Continue reading...Five thoroughbred horses die in truck crash in NSW upper Hunter
Two men were taken to hospital after the truck crashed into a tree south of Muswellbrook
Five thoroughbred horses have died in a truck crash in the New South Wales Hunter region.
It is understood the broodmares were recently purchased by a large racehorse stud at a major national auction.
Continue reading...Australian scientist discovers ‘chocolate frog’ in New Guinea swamps
Litoria mira has been declared a new species, despite looking very similar to the Australian green tree frog
An Australian scientist has discovered a new species of frog, the “chocolate frog”, in rainforest swamps of New Guinea.
Steve Richards, a frog specialist at the South Australian Museum, first found the spotted the cocoa-coloured creature in 2016 in incredibly challenging habitat.
Continue reading...‘Accidental meat’: should carnivores embrace eating roadkill?
My parents have been eating pheasants killed on the roads for years and encouraging me to try them. Is this the most ethical approach to meat-eating?
Motorists shoot me funny looks as I sheepishly cross a scrubby verge, trying my best to conceal the dead pheasant under my arm. I am in a part of Saddleworth Moor called the Isle of Skye by locals, and have just collected a free meal from the middle of the road.
Nobody can agree on how this area of moorland, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, earned its nickname. Some think it comes from a Victorian navvy, who exclaimed in a broad Irish brogue: “Look, there’s an ’ole in the sky,” as he considered a parting in the thick mist above him. Others think it was named after an inn of the same name. But either way, the area should be immediately renamed Pheasant Cemetery. Because, before I picked up my own bird, I counted 46 pheasant carcasses in various stages of decomposition, scattered and splattered on the road over several miles as I drove to Holmfirth for a day out.
Continue reading...Sex-mad and spectacular: 17 incredible facts about cicadas
Once every 17 years, trillions of cicadas emerge from beneath the ground in the US. They taste like tinned asparagus, are sometimes attracted to power tools – and can number 1.3m an acre
Brood X is upon us. Across the US billions, if not trillions of cicadas have emerged from below the ground, a biblical plague that occurs every 17 years. Gene Kritsky wouldn’t miss it. “This is special,” he says. An entomologist at Mount St Joseph University in Cincinnati, Kritsky has studied periodical cicadas for nearly 40 years. Brood X, the subject of three of his books, holds a particular place in his heart. In the middle of back-to-back interviews during his busiest professional period since 2004 (“It happens, every 17 years”), he found time to share his favourite facts with us.
Continue reading...‘You care for birds, and they heal you’: film profiles world of a Black falconer
A new documentary, The Falconer, follows Rodney Stotts, who found fulfillment in working with raptors and inner-city kids
Falconry is a profession with roots in the ancient Middle East and medieval Europe but one of its practitioners is making some history of his own.
Related: I'm a falconer - and there's nothing like watching a bird you trained in action
Continue reading...‘A huge surprise’ as giant river otter feared extinct in Argentina pops up
Conservationists thrilled at the sighting of the wild predator, last seen in the country in the 1980s
“It was a huge surprise,” said Sebastián Di Martino, director of conservation at Fundación Rewilding Argentina. “I was incredulous. An incredible feeling of so much happiness. I didn’t know if I should try to follow it or rush back to our station to tell the others.”
The cause of the excitement was the sighting, last week, of a wild giant river otter – an animal feared extinct in the country due to habitat loss and hunting – on the Bermejo River in Impenetrable national park, in north-east Argentina’s Chaco province. The last sighting of a giant otter in the wild in Argentina was in the 1980s. On the Bermejo, none have been seen for more than a century.
Continue reading...Startup’s bug idea – to put cricket tortillas and chips on the menu
Company founded by three Spanish friends hopes to tap into demand for new sources of protein
There are no gargantuan mastiffs or shepherds on quad bikes watching over the hundreds of thousands of newborn animals that tumble and crawl around an unlikely farm among the wind turbines, motorways and patchwork fields of this corner of Castilla-La Mancha, in central Spain.
Nor are there any fences to pen them in. Plastic tubs, shelves and the insulated walls of a unit on a windswept industrial estate do the job perfectly well. But whatever Origen Farms lacks in land, tradition and rural romance, it aims to make up for in innovation, enthusiasm and resilience.
Continue reading...Big cats seized by US authorities from Tiger King zoo in Oklahoma
Animal park that featured in 2020 Netflix series investigated in possible violation of Endangered Species Act
US authorities have seized 68 big cats from an Oklahoma animal park that featured in the 2020 Netflix series Tiger King, the Department of Justice has said.
In an affidavit of more than 50 pages, prosecutors said they believed a jaguar, seven lions, 46 tigers and 15 lion-tiger hybrids owned by Jeffrey Lowe and his wife, Lauren Lowe, had been sold, purchased or transported, which would be a violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Continue reading...Climate crisis behind drastic drop in Arctic wildlife populations – report
Native shorebirds and caribou among species at risk as survival strategies are upended
A drastic drop in caribou and shorebird populations is a reflection of the dire changes unfolding on the Arctic tundra, according to a new report from the Arctic Council.
The terrestrial Arctic spans approximately 2.7m sq miles (7m sq km), marked by extreme cold, drought, strong winds and seasonal darkness. Species living in this environment have adapted to thrive in the harsh conditions. But the climate crisis has upended such survival strategies, according to the State of the Arctic Terrestrial Biodiversity report, published by the council’s Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (Caff) working group.
Continue reading...Snoring, slugs and sarcoptic mange: is it safe for cats and dogs to sleep on our beds?
Dogs can carry bacteria and parasites, while cats smuggle in gory ‘presents’. So is it best to lock them out of the bedroom?
Vomiting on the bed. Snoring. The shedding of hair. The stealing of sheets. The passing of wind. Night-time face-licking. A higher-than-average chance of catching sarcoptic mange …
If I could sit my dog down and quietly explain the risks associated with him sharing the bed with us, this is the list I would read to him. But I know he wouldn’t listen. Oz, our young lurcher, would only warmly reimagine that scene he recently saw. When, on my birthday, the family let him come upstairs and on to the bed to wake me up. When he saw, for the first time, Upstairs Land. And then widdled with joy.
Continue reading...Securing a swift return: how a simple brick can help migratory birds
Many swifts flying back to Britain will find their summer nests lost to building renovations. But bird bricks are offering them an alternative home
Eagerly anticipated by many, it is a thrilling moment when you first hear the distinctive screech or catch sight of the long, tapered wings of the first swifts arriving for the summer. For thousands of years they have looped to the British Isles from Africa to raise the next generation, taking advantage of the long daylight hours in the north and the opportunity to scour the skies for insects from dawn to dusk.
Since they left Britain’s shores in August last year, these remarkable birds will have flown some 14,000 miles without stopping; feeding, sleeping, drinking and preening themselves on the wing. The birds returning now are likely to be at least four years old – the breeders. They head straight back to their nesting holes under eaves or gaps in stone and brickwork that they claimed and defended last summer. Within a few days their mate will arrive and, having spent nine months living independently, they will start to preen each other’s feathers within the nesting hole, crooning softly and bonding once again.
Continue reading...World is home to 50bn birds, ‘breakthrough’ citizen science research estimates
University of New South Wales led study suggests six times as many individual birds as humans but that many species are very rare
There are about 50 billion individual birds in the world, according to new research that uses citizen science observations to try to estimate population numbers for almost 10,000 species.
The paper, led by scientists at the University of New South Wales, suggests there are about six times as many birds on the planet as humans – but that many individual species are very rare.
Continue reading...‘He grabbed the lead and said: give me the dog’: can pet detectives stop the rise in animal theft?
Dogs are more valuable than ever – which is why so many are being snatched. But some owners and pet detectives are fighting back
The village of Partridge Green in West Sussex on a gorgeous spring morning. The early mist has burnt off; a wood pigeon coos; a flurry of pink snow falls from a showy cherry tree; outside the butcher’s, an orderly, socially distanced queue has formed; a chap out for a morning spin motors along the high street in his vintage MG. It is, as my companion, Colin Butcher, says, a scene straight out of Midsomer Murders.
There are no murders today in Partridge Green, but it is a crime scene, and the crime is one that appears to be sweeping the nation. Butcher – ex-police (you can tell), then private investigator, now company director and chief investigator of The UK Pet Detectives – is on the case. He steps from his Range Rover wearing a fleece with an official-looking badge and “UKPD” emblazoned across the back; a twist on NYPD, except PD stands for Pet Detective. “I know the impact of seeing that UKPD – it’s such an international sign,” he says later, putting the jacket on before knocking at an address linked to his main suspect.
Continue reading...Dingo fence to be built on Fraser Island after attacks on children
The Queensland government will spend $2m on a fence around Orchid Beach to protect visitors from the native dingo population
A new fence is to be built around a township on Queensland’s Fraser Island after several dingo attacks on children.
The state government will spend $2m on the fence around Orchid Beach on the north-east of Fraser Island, which is also known as K’gari.
Continue reading...Wild boar corner Italian woman and steal her food shopping – video
A group of wild boar surrounded a woman who had just come out of a supermarket near Rome and stole her shopping, rekindling a debate about the animal's presence in Italian towns and cities. A video posted on social media shows the boar pursuing the woman in a supermarket car park in the village of Le Rughe before raiding the shopping bag she is forced to drop. Italian farmers have protested in recent years about wild boar wreaking havoc on their land and causing fatal road accidents
Continue reading...‘Beavers are just being beavers’: friction grows between Canadians and animals
Beavers cause internet outages, steal posts and even put 30 sq km of a town underwater – but experts say the animals have a profound effect on ecosystems
At first, the theft of wooden fence posts seemed like a crime of opportunity – amid soaring lumber costs, stacks of wood have gone missing from construction sites across North America.
But officers in the Canadian prairie community of Porcupine Plain, Saskatchewan, soon identified the culprit: local beavers had stolen the posts to build their dam.
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