Photographer Eric Minugh
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Eric is an amazing photographer specializing in surfing and ocean photography! Below is a current photo called “Honu”
photograph by eric minugh
more of Eric’s Flickr Photos click here!
Archive for the 'animals' Category
Gecko loves honeydew from plant hopper insect
Monday, February 18th, 2008there is an excellent short video on the BBC website documenting this bizarre relationship! see the link at the end of the article.
Nora
Gecko ‘begs’ insect for honeydew
Image courtesy of BBC One’s Life in Cold Blood
Saturday, 16 February 2008, 07:28 GMT
Gecko and bug’s bizarre relationship revealed
A bizarre relationship between a gecko and a sap-sucking insect has been caught on camera for the first time.
The day gecko, which lives in the forests of Madagascar, has been recorded begging a bug for its dinner.
The lizard repeatedly nods its head at the insect, called a plant hopper, until it flicks over small balls of honeydew for the gecko to dine upon.
It is not yet understood why the insect so willingly offers up honeydew at the lizard’s behest.
Some believe that the presence of the hungry geckos may keep other predators away from the insect.
The footage was recorded for the BBC One series Life In Cold Blood.
It took the crew several attempts to capture this strange behaviour on camera as plant hoppers are very well camouflaged.
Life In Cold Blood is on BBC One on Monday, 18 February at 2100 GMT and is repeated on BBC One on Sunday, 23 February.
SOURCE:
Soldier Bear
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008This is a very interesting story about a bear from Iran!
Honour sought for ‘Soldier Bear’
A campaign has been launched to build a permanent memorial to a bear which spent much of its life in Scotland - after fighting in World War II.
The bear - named Voytek - was adopted in the Middle East by Polish troops in 1943, becoming much more than a mascot.
The large animal even helped their armed forces to carry ammunition at the Battle of Monte Cassino.
Voytek - known as the Soldier Bear - later lived near Hutton in the Borders and ended his days at Edinburgh Zoo.
He was found wandering in the hills of Iran by Polish soldiers in 1943.
| He liked a cigarette, he liked a bottle of beer - he drank a bottle of beer like any man Augustyn Karolewski |
They adopted him and as he grew he was trained to carry heavy mortar rounds.When Polish forces were deployed to Europe the only way to take the bear with them was to “enlist” him.So he was given a name, rank and number and took part in the Italian campaign.He saw action at Monte Cassino before being billeted - along with about 3,000 other Polish troops - at the army camp in the Scottish Borders.The soldiers who were stationed with him say that he was easy to get along with.
“He was just like a dog - nobody was scared of him,” said Polish veteran Augustyn Karolewski, who still lives near the site of the camp.
“He liked a cigarette, he liked a bottle of beer - he drank a bottle of beer like any man.”When the troops were demobilised, Voytek spent his last days at Edinburgh Zoo.Mr Karolewski went back to see him on a couple of occasions and found he still responded to the Polish language.”I went to Edinburgh Zoo once or twice when Voytek was there,” he said.”And as soon as I mentioned his name he would sit on his backside and shake his head wanting a cigarette.
“It wasn’t easy to throw a cigarette to him - all the attempts I made until he eventually got one.”
Voytek was a major attraction at the zoo until his death in 1963.
Eyemouth High School teacher Garry Paulin is now writing a new book, telling the bear’s remarkable story.
‘Totally amazing’
Local campaigner Aileen Orr would like to see a memorial created at Holyrood to the bear she says was part of both the community and the area’s history.
She first heard about Voytek as a child from her grandfather, who served with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.
“I thought he had made it up to be quite honest but it was only when I got married and came here that I knew in fact he was here, Voytek was here,” she said.
“When I heard from the community that so few people knew about him I began to actually research the facts.
“It is just amazing, the story is totally amazing.”
SOURCE:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/7208505.stm
Your Inner Fish
Monday, January 21st, 2008
The Sunday Times
January 20, 2008
Scientists find missing link - and it’s a fish finger
HUMANS could be closer to pond life than had been realised. Researchers have linked a raft of our anatomical and genetic features with fishy ancestors that lived hundreds of millions of years ago.
They have found that the origin of human hands and fingers could lie in the emergence of a finned fish 365m years ago. Similarly, the sophisticated joints that give us the ability to run, grip and turn may owe their existence to a sea creature known as the tiktaalik that lived in the Arctic 375m years ago.
Even our acute vision may be a legacy of an even earlier ancestor, similar to a jellyfish, whose genes have been adapted to play a crucial role in the human eye.
“An entire tree of life, from microbe to worm, to fish and mammal, is embedded inside of us. We can uncover our past by studying fossils and understanding our DNA,” said Neil Shubin, professor of anatomy at Chicago University.
Shubin is about to publish his findings in a book, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 billion-year History of the Human Body, which explores the links between humans and their most ancient forebears.
Shubin’s findings suggest that every bone in the human body first evolved from simple marine ancestors. Our wrists, the unique dexterity of the thumb, even the shape of our skulls, can be traced to origins in primitive sea creatures.
One part of the research involved close examination of a fossilised fish known as a tiktaalik, which was discovered in the Arctic four years ago.
Shubin found that its skeleton displayed rudimentary versions of the human shoulder, elbow, forearm and wrist.
“When we study the structure of these joints to assess how one bone moves against another, we see that tiktaalik was specialised for a rather extraordinary function - it was capable of doing push-ups,” writes Shubin.
Separately, Shubin has found that modern-day fish carry genes allowing for the growth of wrists, hands and fingers. These are now “switched off” so the digits never develop in the fish.
Such findings cast doubt on the assumption that hands are a more recent evolutionary step than fins. Instead, fins may have developed as an improvement on hands.
The research also supports the argument that the majority of the human genome developed 500m years ago and is shared with most living creatures.
One of the factors that makes living forms different is the ability to switch off certain genes while retaining them in the genome.
An alternative approach is to adapt similar genes to different purposes. Some of the genes involved in the evolution of human vision and hearing play an active but very different role in the metabolism of jellyfish.
“The genome has changed a bit, but the similarities greatly outweigh the differences,” said Shubin last week.
Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University, said the research was a new blow to the Bible’s version of how humankind was created.
“The tiktaalik is an extremely important and exciting find in terms of bridging a gap in our ancestral history between when we lived in water and when we lived on land,” said Dawkins.
“This evidence is what we would expect as evolutionists, but it would be extremely embarrassing for a creationist.”
Shubin said: “Looking back through billions of years, everything innovative or apparently unique in the history of life is really just old stuff that has been recycled, recombined, repurposed or otherwise modified for new uses. This is the story of every part of us.”
SOURCE: www.timesonline.co.uk
The tiger who adopted a litter of piglets
Friday, December 7th, 2007
Last updated 30th November 2007
On the heartwarming scale this rates as a positive scorcher.
A forlorn tigress, heartbroken because her own cubs have died, is fooled into adopting a litter of piglets when zoo officials in California wrap them in tiger skins.
Such a thing had never been tried before, according to the email which accompanied these pictures as they were sent around the world.
Unfortunately, there was a twist in the tiger’s tale.
Though the pictures have not been faked, an animal welfare pressure group investigated and discovered they were actually taken at a zoo in Thailand.
The Sriracha Tiger Zoo, an hour’s drive from Bangkok, has been accused of causing its exhibits unnecessary suffering, and of using stunts to gain publicity.
These pictures must have been part of such a set-up, say experts, because it was unnecessary to wrap the piglets in their cute little tiger-skin coats.
It is apparently common practice in Thailand for tigers to suckle pigs, and for pigs to adopt orphaned cubs.
The tigress in these pictures was herself brought up by a sow, and sees pigs as family.
Though she had been given these babies to bring up, it is unclear whether she had lost a litter of her own, as the story claimed.
In another twist, the zoo has been investigated for allegedly breeding tigers for export to China - where tiger parts command high prices for use in traditional medicines.
Sommai Temsiripong, one of the zoo’s owners, was charged with breeding tigers without a licence. On another occasion 23 tigers died of bird flu after being fed infected raw chickens.
Critics say that behind the scenes tigers are bred in poor conditions and the the London Zoological Society has been critical of Sriracha’s animal husbandry.
Adam Roberts, an investigator with Animal Welfare International, the respected American pressure group which investigated the pictures, wrote in its quarterly magazine that the zoo - with more than 400 tigers, a handful of Asian elephants, of crocodiles, camels, snakes and other exotic animals - had many troubling exhibits.
It also houses a circus, he said, where he saw tigers leaping through rings of fire, walking across a double tightrope, parading around the ring on hind legs, and riding on the back of a horse.
“Up close, however, one could clearly see the animals’ debilitation and fear,” he added.
“All of the animals awaited their turn to perform in a gated tunnel, keepers constantly poking them with a steel pole through the iron mesh.”
Behind the scenes, bored elephants swayed at the end of 2ftlong chains anchored to the ground.
One had a long, deep scar across his ear - another was scarred across her trunk.
“After the show, the elephants stood in frot of the seats taking money from people with their trunks and passing it to the trainers astride their backs,” Mr Roberts reported.
The zoo denies any wrongdoing.
SOURCE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?
in_article_id=498789&in_page_id=1811&ito=1595Don’t
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Monday, December 3rd, 2007
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Nora