Belgium has detected an outbreak of bird flu, leading authorities to order all poultry farmers and individual bird owners to keep the animals confined, the country’s food safety agency AFSCA said Saturday. Avian influenza has recently spread to western Europe after outbreaks in Russia and Kazakhstan this summer. “Three wild birds that stayed in a Read more about Belgium announces measures for bird flu outbreak[…]
In a draft law seen by AFP, the country’s environment ministry has drawn up a number of new measures to protect insects, ranging from partially outlawing spotlights to increased protection of natural habitats. “Insects play an important role in the ecosystem…but in Germany, their numbers and their diversity has severely declined in recent years,” reads Read more about Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects[…]
A team of researchers at the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) and Istituto Italiano di Technologia (IIT) have devised a mathematical approach for understanding intra-plant communication. In their paper, pre-published on bioRxiv, they propose a fully coupled system of non-linear, non-autonomous discontinuous and ordinary differential equations that can accurately describe the adapting behavior and growth Read more about A mathematical approach for understanding intra-plant communication[…]
For people, and many other animals, family matters. Consider how many jobs go to relatives. Or how an ant will ruthlessly attack intruder ants but rescue injured, closely related nestmates. There are good evolutionary reasons to aid relatives, after all. Now, it seems, family feelings may stir in plants as well. A Canadian biologist planted Read more about Once considered outlandish, the idea that plants help their relatives is taking root[…]
The Pando aspen grove, located in central Utah, is the largest organism on the planet by weight. From the surface, it may look like a forest that spans more than 100 U.S. football fields, but each tree shares the exact same DNA and is connected to its clonal brethren through an elaborate underground root system. Read more about Pando, One of the world’s largest organisms is shrinking[…]
Raptors are one of the most important causes of fatalities due to their collisions with aircrafts as well as being the main victims of collisions with constructions. They are difficult to deter because they are not influenced by other airspace users or ground predators. Because vision is the primary sensory mode of many diurnal raptors, Read more about Wide-eyed glare scares raptors: From laboratory evidence to applied management[…]
Plants may lack brains, but they have a nervous system, of sorts. And now, plant biologists have discovered that when a leaf gets eaten, it warns other leaves by using some of the same signals as animals. The new work is starting to unravel a long-standing mystery about how different parts of a plant communicate Read more about Plants communicate distress using their own kind of nervous system[…]
The New Zealand government has announced a “world-first” project to make the nation predator free by 2050. The prime minister, John Key, said on Monday it would undertake a radical pest extermination programme – which if successful would be a global first – aiming to wipe out the introduced species of rats, stoats and possums Read more about No more rats: New Zealand to exterminate all introduced predators[…]
“In Athens-Clarke County, we found that about 30 per cent of the sampled cats were successful in capturing and killing prey, and that those cats averaged about one kill for every 17 hours outdoors or 2.1 kills per week. “It was also surprising to learn that cats only brought 23 per cent of their kills Read more about Killer cats are killing[…]
Last month, marine biologist Luke Tipple, armed with a career in the study of sharks, accepted the request from handheld laser manufacturers, Wicked Lasers, to attach a Wicked Lasers laser beam to a shark’s fin, which he did with success. On a diving trip in the Bahamas, he fit a laser device onto a lemon Read more about Lasers on sharks!!![…]
Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident that Monsanto is Read more about Blamed for dwindeling amount of bees, Monsanto Buys Leading Bee Research Firm[…]
If you’re a birdwatcher, eBird is the site for you to go – huge maps of species and countries, you can follow the birds as they’re reported in by other eBirders. Birding News and Features — eBird.
This is bizarre – teach your cat to use your toilet bowl to take it’s shits and pisses, and never have to clean the litter again! YouTube – Litter Kwitter Cat / Kitten toilet training system amazing.
SCIENTISTS have grown meat in the laboratory for the first time. Experts in Holland used cells from a live pig to replicate growth in a petri dish. The advent of so-called “in-vitro” or cultured meat could reduce the billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted each year by farm animals — if people are willing Read more about The Future is Here! Vat-grown meat![…]
What a fantastic concept: basketball on donkeyback – 4 vs 4. Of course PETA has a problem, but then again, what do they know about animals?
Of course, the ignoramusses at PETA – who kill animals to make you pay them – are against this (and very special care indeed is being taken with the sharks) but I think it’s a totally awesome idea: Sharks under you as you dance.
Quite incredibly it seems that not only did PETA only find homes for 7 out of some 2216 animals given into it’s care over 2008, it killed the rest! Of course, in order to showcase just how inhumane people can be, they went and killed a whole load of animals to make commercials showing how Read more about PETA’s Pet Slaughterhouse[…]
I’ve been following this story for years now – tens of thousands of plastic ducks which had gone overboard during a storm in 1992 are still being tracked, and are looking likely to wash up on the UK coasts. Apparently these ducks are now being sold for $500,- a piece. Leave them alone though! Let Read more about The floating plastic ducks[…]
China is currently building the world’s largest dragon. It will be 30 feet high at the head, and the metal structure will be 13 miles long.
An interesting story of how lions and buffalo got stuck together on an island, making the lions change their hunting tactics and due to the richness of their only food source, grow to huge proportions. A strange mini-ecology.
A tiny robot which smells like a cockroach can make them gather together allowing us to annhilate loads of them in one fell swoop. Now can we get human pheremones working please?
PETA wants this crime to be stopped right NOW!
Did some enlightened pharmacologist allow six people to get instantly critically ill because they decided NOT to test on animals before? Yup, that’s why we like lab rats.
This site will teach you how to become a gray squirrel hunting machine in no time!
For the first time ever, live giant squids – sea monsters up to 18 metres large – have been caught live on camera. Our current knowledge of these animals was based on dead ones that occassionaly wash up on shore…