Hong Kong pink dolphins enjoy comeback as pandemic slows marine traffic

HONG KONG - Rare pink dolphins are returning to the waters between Hong Kong and Macau after the coronavirus pandemic halted ferries, but scientists remain deeply concerned about their long-term survival in one of the world's busiest sea lanes.

The tell-tale flash of pink leaping from the waters alerts Naomi Brennan to the presence of a local Chinese white dolphin and she jots the animal's location into a GPS device.

Conservationists like Brennan regularly board boats in the Pearl River Delta to document how the mammals, known for their eye-catching pink coloring, are faring.

"Today we encountered 3 different groups of dolphins -- six adults and two sub-adults," she explained.

"They were engaging in a range of behavior, from feeding to traveling and socializing."

For years keeping tabs on the dolphins has been a disheartening task.

The population has fallen by 70-80 percent in the past 15 years in what is one of the world's most industrialized estuaries.

But this year their numbers have bounced back -- and they have the pandemic to thank.

Ferries between Hong Kong and Macau have been suspended since February, providing local marine scientists an opportunity to study how the mammals have adapted to the "unprecedented quiet." 

"We're seeing much larger group sizes as well as much more socializing, mating behavior, which we hadn't really been seeing for the last 5 years or so," said Dr. Lindsay Porter, a Hong Kong-based marine scientist.

According to Porter's research team, the number of pink dolphins has increased by roughly a third in those waters since March.

"These areas seem to be important for feeding and socializing. So it's great that there's this refuge for them," added Brennan, a member of Porter's team.

MEGACITIES AND SHIPPING

The Pearl River Delta is one of the most industrialized coastal areas on Earth. As well as Hong Kong and Macao, it includes Chinese mainland megacities like Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Dongguan, and is home to some 22 million people.

And aside from heavy shipping traffic, the dolphins' key habitat has been subjected to a host of large-scale developments, including the construction of Hong Kong's airport on reclaimed land and the world's longest sea bridge connecting the financial hub to Macau and Zhuhai.

A huge new reclamation project is also underway to build a third runway for the city's airport.

According to the WWF, there are only an estimated 2,000 pink dolphins left in the Pearl River Delta -- the minimum number that conservationists believe are needed to sustain the species. 

There is a palpable fear the delta's dolphins could go extinct under the population's current trajectory.

"Dolphins, and especially these estuarine dolphins, have a slow birth rate, a slow growth rate, a slow reproductive rate," said Laurence McCook, head of oceans conservation at WWF-Hong Kong. 

"So they need very careful management."

CANTONESE HERITAGE

The lack of ferries is a welcome, but potentially brief respite for the dolphins.

Noise from vessels disturbs mammals that rely on underwater sound for navigation and communication. 

The ships also pose the physical threat of striking the creatures, injuring and even killing them. 

The rugged southern coastline of Hong Kong's outlying Lantau island provides shelter from typhoons and predators for the dolphins.

But it is also where the ferries between Macau and the financial hub travel. 

Conservationists are campaigning to expand an existing marine park to better protect the vulnerable species.

"We've now identified a habitat that could then be reclaimed by them and could really be used to support their population," said Brennan, who believes recent findings could provide an opportunity for conservationists to "turn the tide" for the vulnerable dolphin population. 

"The fact that we've seen such a dramatic change, though still early days, from just one of those impacts going away is a really positive shift." 

But WWF's McCook warns time is running out for the dolphins.

"They're an icon of the area," he said. "They're a part of Cantonese heritage. They've been around here for millennia."

"It would be a global tragedy to lose this iconic creature from the future of the Greater Bay Area."

Agence France-Presse

Switzerland continues to ease lockdown measures

People watch elephants at the re-opened Zoo Zurich, as Switzerland continues to ease the lockdown measures during the COVID-19 outbreak on Saturday. The Swiss government on Friday said it plans to lift travel and border restrictions from countries in the European Union, the European Free Trade Association, and the United Kingdom on June 15. 

-reuters-

Standard poodle crowned top dog in finale of Westminster Kennel Club show

NEW YORK -- A standard poodle named Siba was crowned "Best in Show" at the annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York on Tuesday, taking home the grand prize in the most prestigious competition for pure-bred canines in the United States.

Siba, the finalist representing all breeds classified as non-sporting dogs, emerged victorious from the 3-day event at Madison Square Garden after going head to head with the winners in 6 other groups -- hounds, toy dogs, herding dogs, working dogs, sporting dogs and terriers.

The triumph of Siba, a black-furred female nearly 4 years of age from Northampton, Pennsylvania, marked the fifth best-in-show title for a standard poodle in the 144-year history of the contest.

The Westminster dog show bills itself as the second-oldest US sporting event, behind only the Kentucky Derby thoroughbred horse race. This year's competition drew a field of contenders consisting of more than 2,600 dogs representing 205 breeds from 20 countries, including the United States.

Rounding out the roster of finalists in Tuesday's best-in-show contest were: Daniel, a male golden retriever; Bourbon, a female whippet; Bono, a male Havanese; Conrad, a male Shetland sheepdog; Wilma, a female boxer; and Vinny, a male wire fox terrier.

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Bat meat still popular in parts of Indonesia despite coronavirus fears

MANADO, Indonesia - Bat meat is still popular in some parts of Indonesia, despite research suggesting the coronavirus spreading from China might have originated in bats before being passed on to humans.

Bats are traditionally eaten by the Minahasan people from North Sulawesi in the form of a curry-like dish called Paniki. Whole bats are used in Paniki, including the head and wings.

"It (the coronavirus) has not affected sales," said bat seller Stenly Timbuleng at his stall in Tomohon, a city in North Sulawesi, south of the provincial capital of Manado.

"In fact... sales continue. It is always sold out."

On an average day, Timbuleng sells 50 to 60 bats and during festive periods, he can sell up to 600.

"Bats are the favorite indigenous protein, particularly in North Sulawesi," Indonesian culinary expert and author of half a dozen of cookbooks, William W. Wongso, told Reuters.

"My favorite part is the wings," Wongso added.

Glands from the armpits and the neck of the bat are first removed to get rid of the bad smell.

It is then grilled or torched to get rid of the bat's hairs before being chopped and cooked in a stew of herbs, spices and coconut milk.


The coronavirus is believed to have originated in a food market in the Chinese city of Wuhan that was illegally selling wildlife. Health experts think it may have originated in bats and then passed to humans, possibly via another species.

In China, the virus has killed more than 1,000 and infected more than 42,700.

There are 319 coronavirus cases in 24 countries and territories outside of China, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and Chinese health officials.

None has been reported in Indonesia, but the outbreak has prompted many Manadonese restaurants in the capital, Jakarta, to take bats off the menu.


For Manadonese Jufry Mantak, the links between the coronavirus and his favorite dish have not put him off.

"We have not found any (coronavirus) cases in Manado. Up till now, there are still many people eating these bats. Because bats are good, especially when cooked with coconut milk."

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30 out of 3,000 Taal horses rescued from volcano island

MANILA – Only 30 out of the estimated 3,000 horses on Taal Volcano island have so far been rescued, an animal welfare group said Tuesday night. 

In a Facebook post, the Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) said the owners of the horses took action upon learning that "the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO) will no longer evacuate the horses and that animal rescuers were not being allowed to go to the island."


"Wala namang maasahan so kami na lang (We were not expecting any rescue, so we did it ourselves)," one of them was quoted as saying by the animal welfare group. 

According to PAWS, the owners of the stranded horses "took turns using three to four wooden boats and rowed over 50 kms" to transport them to Balete, Batangas.

"PAWS found the group after doing its feeding rounds for the affected dogs, cats and cattle in Talisay," added the group, which called for donations and financial assistance for the animals.


Meanwhile, three members of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) rescue team have been stranded on the volcano island since Wednesday morning. 

"I think they were trying to rescue the animals pero naiwan po sila, kung sino man po iyong nagdala sa kanila doon (but they were left behind by the people who brought them there)," Anna Cabrera, executive director of PAWS, said in a radio interview. 

Cabrera also urged the Philippine Coast Guard to save the three-man rescue team.

Veterinarians have been reminding the public to bring animals in areas affected by ashfall indoors as these can bring health risks such as eye damage and respiratory problems. 

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Why dogs can’t help falling in love with you

TEMPE, Arizona — Xephos is not the author of “Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You,” one of the latest books to plumb the nature of dogs, but she helped inspire it. And as I scratched behind her ears, it was easy to see why.

First, she fixed on me with imploring doggy eyes, asking for my attention. Then, every time I stopped scratching she nudged her nose under my hand and flipped it up. I speak a little dog, but the message would have been clear even if I didn’t: Don’t stop.

We were in the home office of Clive Wynne, a psychologist at Arizona State University who specializes in dog behavior. He belongs to Xephos, a mixed breed that the Wynne family found in a shelter in 2012.

Wynne’s book is an extended argument about what makes dogs special — not how smart they are, but how friendly they are. Xephos’ shameless and undiscriminating affection affected both his heart and his thinking.

As Xephos nose-nudged me again, Wynne was describing genetic changes that occurred at some point in dog evolution that he says explain why dogs are so sociable with members of other species.

“Hey,” Wynne said to her as she tilted her head to get the maximum payoff from my efforts, “how long have you had these genes?”

No one disputes the sociability of dogs. But Wynne doesn’t agree with the scientific point of view that dogs have a unique ability to understand and communicate with humans. He thinks they have a unique capacity for interspecies love, a word that he has decided to use, throwing aside decades of immersion in scientific jargon.

“Dog Is Love” is one of several new books on dogs out this year, and one of a flood of such books over the last decade or so. Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist and researcher of dog behavior at Duke University, who founded the Duke Canine Cognition Center, recently wrote that there are 70,000 dog books listed on Amazon.

Since 2000, around the time dog research had a resurgence, a small but significant number of those books are written by scientists for a general audience. Like Hare’s “The Genius of Dogs,” published in 2013, the books address what is going on in a dog’s heart and mind. Most emphasize the mind.

Wynne’s book runs counter to Hare’s when it comes to the importance of dog’s thinking ability, which Hare sees as central to their bond with humans. By using the L word, Wynne may well appeal to the many besotted dog owners. But he may also disappoint. The reason dogs are such “an amazing success story” is because of their ability to bond with other species, he said. Not just humans.

Raise a dog with sheep and it will love sheep. Raise a dog with goats and it will love goats. Raise a dog with people ... you know the rest.

Some now extinct wolves attached themselves to humans 15,000 years ago or longer because we had good leftovers, or so the dominant theory goes, although what actually happened is lost to time. Apparently, humans liked the renegade wolves quite a bit and eventually started controlling their breeding and letting them sleep on down coverlets.

Now, as Wynne said in a talk at the International Canine Science conference in Phoenix in October, dogs are an astonishing evolutionary success. Wolves, not so much. “For every one surviving wolf on this planet, there are at least 3,000 dogs.” On the other hand, nobody puts a silly Halloween costume on a wolf.

In the early 2000s, when Wynne began research on dogs, one of his experiments was a follow-up on the work of Hare who had concluded that dogs were better than wolves or other animals at following human directions. In particular, dogs followed human pointing better than other animals. Wynne and Monique Udell, an animal behaviorist at Oregon State University, expected to confirm Hare’s findings.

The wolves they chose to work with were hand-raised and socialized at Wolf Park, in Lafayette, Indiana. Wynne said he found the wolves were as good at following human pointing as the best pet dogs.

Hare and his colleagues responded by questioning whether the experiments were really comparable, maintaining that dogs have an innate ability to follow human pointing without the special attention the wolves were given. The debate continues.

The second part of Wynne’s argument has to do with how social dogs are. There is no question that they bond with people in a way that other canines do not. Wynne recounted an experiment showing that as long as puppies spend 90 minutes a day, for one week, with a human any time before they are 14 weeks old, they will become socialized and comfortable with humans.

Interestingly, the experiment found no genetic absolutism about the connection between dogs and humans. Without contact with humans when they are young, dogs can become as wary of humans as wild animals. Wolves are not so easily socialized. They require 24-hour-a-day involvement with humans for many weeks when they are puppies to become more tolerant of human beings. They never turn into Xephos.

Admittedly, Xephos is at the tail-wagging, face-licking, cozy-cuddling end of dog friendliness. Anyone who knows dogs can call to mind some that are not friendly at all, or are friendly to only one person. But in general there is no comparison in friendliness between dogs and wolves.

“OK, she’s not every dog, but she’s not radically atypical,” Wynne said of Xephos as she snuggled up to me. “Are you sweetie — you’re not completely untypical of your kind?”

The evidence of dog affection for humans goes beyond the observable actions of Xephos and those like her. Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University, who himself was drawn into animal study by wanting to understand what his own dog, Callie, was thinking, used MRI machines to watch what was going on in their brains.

Among his findings is that the part of dogs’ brains that light up when they hear their owners’ voices is the same part of the human brain that lights up when we are fond of someone or something. His first book was “How Dogs Love Us.”

By looking at the lemon-sized dog brain, he has shown, for instance, that, based on how the reward center lights up, a dog likes praise as much as it likes hot dogs. In testing outside of the MRI, Berns has also found that, given a choice, some dogs prefer their owners to food.

He agreed that the hypersociality of dogs is what makes them special rather than particular cognitive abilities. “It’s hard to demonstrate any cognitive task that dogs are superior in,” he said. But he pointed out that “ultimately the difficulty is in saying what is a cognitive function and an emotional function.”

Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College in New York, and a prolific writer on dogs, also addressed the question of love briefly in her new book, “Our Dogs, Ourselves.”

Without doubt, dogs have feelings, she wrote, but she cautioned that just as certainly, those feelings were not the same as human feelings. Nor, she argued, should we assume that dogs are in between robot and homo sapiens on an emotional spectrum. She wrote in her book, “For all we know, dogs’ emotional experience is far more elaborate than ours.”

Central to that experience, although unknown in its complexity, is the pleasure a dog experiences in the presence of humans. The intensity of that pleasure and the ease of triggering it, Wynne said, is built into the dog genome.

He found this in his research with Bridgett vonHoldt, a molecular biologist at Princeton University. She and a team of researchers identified genes in dogs that in humans are associated with Williams-Beuren syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. One of the many symptoms of the syndrome is indiscriminate friendliness. Wynne and Udell worked with vonHoldt on a subsequent study of wolves and dogs that tied behavior and genetics together. They concluded that the genes associated with Williams-Beuren syndrome in humans underlie the friendless of dogs compared to wolves.

Humans, they suggested, may have selected friendly dogs over thousands of years of domestication and the Williams-Beuren genes may be one of the results. Other scientists have been cautious about the results, seeing the work as presenting an intriguing hypothesis that requires more research.

Whether these are the genes involved, humans appear to have molded dogs to be friendly to other species beyond humans. Apparently, puppies introduced to any other species when they are young enough, form a strong bond with that species.

This hasn’t been tested with all species, of course. But consider the sheep and goats. Ray Coppinger of Hampshire College in Massachusetts, who died in 2017, had documented that puppies of certain breeds kept with sheep bond to the sheep. They stay with the flock and guard it. The same thing happens when puppies are kept with goats and other less likely creatures, like penguins.

Dogs have “an abnormal willingness to form strong emotional bonds with almost anything that crosses their path,” Wynne said. “And they maintain this throughout life. Above and beyond that they have a willingness and an interest to interact with strangers.”

How and when this free love, or hypersociality, evolved in dogs is up for debate. Wynne is betting that after some ancient wolves began to associate with humans 15,000 or more years ago and became dogs, and humans began to live in settlements and farming took off about 8,000 years ago, humans began to breed dogs for friendliness, causing the genetic differences that vonHoldt found. With luck, future research on modern and ancient dog DNA will show if he is right.

For now, we humans can at least enjoy the amiability of dogs. Looking at Xephos as we wrapped up our conversation, he said, “It’s not strange that she wants to interact with me. What’s strange is that she wants to be friends with you. Right?”

Well, I don’t know about that. I’m a pretty good ear scratcher. “Right, Xephos?”


2019 The New York Times Company

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Online fundraiser for bushfire-hit koalas tops Aus$1 million

SYDNEY, Australia—An online fundraiser for koalas injured in devastating bushfires topped Aus$1 million ($680,000) on Thursday, making it Australia's biggest campaign on the GoFundMe platform this year.

Deadly bushfires have ravaged vast swathes of eastern Australia, and wildlife carers estimate the blazes have killed hundreds of koalas this month in New South Wales state alone.

A crowdfunding page set up by the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital to provide automatic water drinking stations for wild koalas soared past Aus$1 million, with donations from more than 20,000 people from countries including the United States, France and England.

The wildlife charity's "Help Thirsty Koalas Devastated by Recent Fires" drive, which had an initial goal of just Aus$25,000, got more donations than any other campaign in Australia this year, GoFundMe said, and is the second-biggest since the platform launched Down Under in 2016.

It is one of 700 bushfire-related fundraisers launched on the platform in the past 10 days, which to date have raised a combined total of Aus$2 million.

The next-biggest has raised Aus$60,000 to support firefighters and people impacted by the blazes, which have killed 6 people, razed hundreds of homes and scorched about 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of land since October.

The koala hospital, some 4 hours north of Sydney, has rescued 31 koalas from the scorched bush in recent weeks, and said it had been "overwhelmed by the kindness, good wishes and support from the Australian and international community."

It plans to use the excess funds to deliver koala drinking stations to other parts of the state, purchase a water-carrying vehicle to replenish the stations, and to establish a koala breeding program.

With more than 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) of land scorched in the state, the fires have also destroyed large tracts of the tree-dwelling marsupial's habitat.

A so-called "Koala Ark" would be built for recovering koalas, the hospital said, hoping they will eventually breed and be returned to the wild.

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Lost pup turns out to be a rare purebred dingo

SYDNEY, Australia—He's furry, playful and has puppy eyes. It's little wonder Wandi was mistaken for a dog when he was found in an Australian backyard—but DNA testing has confirmed he's a rare 100 percent dingo.

The pup was discovered whimpering and alone in a country town in Victoria in August with talon marks on his back, leading to speculation it could have been dropped by a large bird of prey.

Rescuers at first thought Wandi was either a dog or a fox, but months later DNA samples have revealed that he is in fact a purebred dingo.

Most of the creatures seen in the wild are usually, to some degree, dingo-dog hybrids.

Australian Dingo Foundation director Lyn Watson said that when Wandi "fell out of the sky" it was an "answer to a prayer"—he can now join 40 other dingoes in a breeding program at the charity's sanctuary.

"When we sent his DNA off we were hoping that he would be of high content, but we were pleasantly surprised to find he was as much dingo as you could get," she told AFP.

Watson hopes Wandi—whose unusual origins story and endearing looks have attracted global attention—will help recast the narrative surrounding dingoes and change government policies toward the much-maligned animal.

There is currently much debate in the scientific community over the classification of dingoes, believed to have come to Australia from Asia about 4,000 years ago. 

While some consider the dingo to be a wild dog, many researchers now believe it is a separate species with a range of characteristics that differentiate it from domestic and feral canines.

Often thought of as a threat to domestic animals and livestock, some also argue the apex predator is helpful in controlling pests such feral cats and foxes, as well as numbers of native herbivores such as kangaroos.

This uncertainty has major consequences for the conservation of dingoes. 

The species is protected in areas where it is considered a threatened species vulnerable to extinction, but elsewhere listed as a pest that can be controlled through measures such as shooting and baiting.

Though rare, there have also been a number of recorded attacks on humans—mostly at the popular tourist destination of Fraser Island.

Wandi, who was named after the town of Wandiligong where he was rescued, is now settling in to his new home at the Dingo Discovery Sanctuary near Melbourne.

"He’s very bright and he seems to be very friendly with all of our volunteers—of course they all dote on him," Watson said.

But with legal restrictions on releasing dingoes into the wild, the pup may have to live out his days in captivity—though Watson is optimistic that attitudes will eventually shift to allow him to roam free.

"We know the day will come when we come to our senses and fully understand the situation in the wild and that there should be dingoes there," she said.

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More than 100 elephants die in Botswana in suspected anthrax outbreak

GABORONE, Botswana—More than 100 elephants have died in Botswana in the past 2 months partly because of a suspected anthrax outbreak, the government said Tuesday.

"Preliminary investigations suggest the elephants are dying from anthrax while some died from drought effects," the Department of Wildlife and National Parks said in a statement.

"Due to the severe drought, elephants end up ingesting soil while grazing and get exposed to the anthrax bacteria spore," it said.

Elephants Without Borders said an aerial survey showed fresh elephant carcasses increased by 593 percent between 2014 to 2018, mostly from poaching and illegal hunting, with drought also a contributing factor.

The wildlife authority said the latest deaths were in the Chobe River front and Nantanga areas in northern Botswana, where 14 dead elephants were found this week. It said it would be burning the carcasses to prevent the anthrax infection from spreading to other animals.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, anthrax is a bacteria found naturally in soil and commonly affects domestic and wild animals when they breathe in or ingest spores in contaminated soil, plants, or water. 

Anthrax is not contagious and humans can only get infected by ingesting the bacteria. It can be prevented in animals via regular vaccination.

Botswana is home to almost a third of Africa's elephants, around 130,000. Botswana has lifted a ban on big-game hunting to combat a growing conflict between humans and wildlife.

Botswana and its neighbors in southern Africa are experiencing a severe drought because of below-average rainfall since an El Niño weather system struck in 2015.

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More than 2 million animals perish in Bolivia wildfires

LA PAZ, Bolivia - More than two million wild animals, including jaguars, pumas and llamas, have perished in weeks of wildfires that devastated huge swaths of Bolivian forest and grassland, environmental experts said Wednesday.

The fires devastated the Chiquitania tropical savanna in the east of the country.

"We have consulted the biologists of Chiquitania and we have exceeded the estimate of more than 2.3 million missing animals in many protected areas," Professor Sandra Quiroga of Santa Cruz University told AFP.

Latin American ocelots, and other wild cats like pumas and jaguars, as well as deer, llamas -- and smaller forest animals like anteaters, badgers, lizards, tapirs and rodents -- were victims of the fires, according to biologists investigating the scale of the damage.

Local media showed images of charred animal carcasses in the smoldering forests and birds fleeing to zones spared by the flames.

The fires, which have devastated more than four million hectares (10 million acres) since August, has completely destroyed the "primary forest" extending over 100 hectares in the Tucavaca reserve in the eastern Santa Cruz department.

"The forest is totally charred and the damage is irreversible. It will never get back to normal," said Quiroga.

The eastern department of Santa Cruz has been the hardest hit of Bolivia's nine departments since the fires began in May and intensified in late August

Bolivia in August enlisted special firefighting planes, a Supertanker Boeing 747 and a Russian Ilyushin, as well as helicopters, 5,000 firefighters, soldiers and police but the fires have still not been extinguished.

Environmentalists blame laws enacted under leftist President Evo Morales, who has encouraged burning of forest and pasture land to expand agricultural production. 

The government attributes the blazes to dry weather and flame-fanning winds.

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Let's talk about gay penguins: Munich zoo joins Pride week

MUNICH, Germany - Organizers of this year's Gay Pride week in Munich have a group of rather wild partners -- penguins, giraffes and lions at the city zoo where tours are being run about same-sex love in the animal kingdom. 

The Munich zoo has joined Pride week with an unusual look into the intimate lives of all creatures great and small, seeking to boost tolerance among humans.

"It is important for us to talk about" homosexuality in the animal kingdom and show that same-sex love has its place in nature, said Munich zoo spokesman Dennis Spaeth.

"Because unfortunately in Germany we see more and more people from the reactionary right attacking LGBTQI rights."

While even mostly Catholic Bavaria has grown more accepting and lawmakers legalized gay marriage in 2017, non-heterosexuals are sometimes still a target for violence.

Police recorded 91 attacks based on the victim's sexual orientation last year.

In the safe confines of the zoo, the first stop on the Pride tour is the giraffes. The blotchy animals spare visitors only occasional curious glances from behind their long eyelashes as they enjoy a meal of hay.

"Giraffes are bisexual. In some groups, 90 percent of the acts observed are in fact homosexual in nature," explained biologist Guenter Strauss.

A few enclosures down, there is little to distinguish a male-male couple of black-faced Humboldt penguins squatting together from other, mixed pairs.

That is until the guide points out that with no egg to care for, the pair has taken to brooding a rock instead.

This is no one-off fling, as "penguins conduct homosexual relationships that can last a whole lifetime, something very rare in the animal kingdom," said Strauss.

SCIENTIFIC TABOO

In fact, hundreds of animal species, from elephants to snakes and birds, display homosexual behavior.

But unlike most humans, the sexual preference of our four-legged or feathered friends is often quite fluid.

"Among people, we grow up with a specific sexual orientation. That's often not true for animals," said Strauss.

"They are in fact bisexual. They adopt certain sexual behavior at specific moments."

One case in point are lions, and the zoo's male big cat greets the group with a loud roar.

"Servus!" responded Strauss in a regional greeting redolent of traditional, conservative Bavarian culture.

"Eight percent of sex acts among lions are homosexual. As for lionesses, they only show lesbian behavior when they're kept in captivity," he explained.

While same-sex love among animals is commonplace, the topic was long a taboo for scientists of more hidebound eras.

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Fox crosses Arctic to reach Canada from Norway in record time

OSLO, Norway—Covering some 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) over the polar ice sheets in only 76 days, an arctic fox has reached Canada after setting off from Norway in an unprecedented feat of endurance. 

The journey is not only a testament to the fox's stamina but also highlights the important role ice sheets serve for the migration of Arctic wildlife and the threat global warming poses to the ecological balance.

Arnaud Tarroux, one of the researchers behind the study recording the fox's trek published by the Norwegian Polar Institute, warned that "less ice... will mean less opportunities for this type of migration." 

The arctic fox was equipped with a satellite tracker in July 2017 and set off from the island of Spitsbergen in the Norwegian Svalbard archipelago, about 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole, on March 26 2018.

On June 10, 76 days after leaving Norway, the fox reached Ellesmere Island, one of Canada's northernmost communities, completing a journey of 3,506 kilometers.

"This species is even more enduring and faster than what has been observed in the past," Arnaud Tarroux told AFP Wednesday.

"It's a young female, less than a year old, therefore relatively inexperienced, literally going out to discover the world and surviving an Arctic crossing on her first attempt," he continued.

Adding to the impressive feat is that the young vixen covered the first 1,512 kilometers to reach Greenland in just 21 days.

"This is the first observation that shows in detail that an arctic fox has migrated between different continents and ecosystems in the Arctic, and one of the longest migrations ever recorded for an arctic fox in such a short period of time," the Norwegian Polar Institute noted in a statement. 

The fox withstood the arid polar environments and moved at an average daily rate of 46.3 kilometers, with a daily record of 155 recorded while crossing Greenland.

Why the fox opted to leave for Canada is unclear.

"It is quite possible that it is simply a series of coincidences that led her to find herself in an area of the Canadian arctic at the right time to find enough resources to be able to settle there," Tarroux said.

The fox's current whereabouts are unknown since the tracking system stopped working in Feb. 2019.

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Who's a Good Boy? Wolves, not dogs, apparently

WASHINGTON, United States - If you're looking for a word to describe your adorable pet pup, "selfish" might not top the list.

But a new study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE suggests Fido's reputation for being caring is all a ruse -- at least if you're a fellow dog.

A series of touchscreen experiments carried out by the Wolf Science Center in Vienna, Austria found that wolves make for more selfless pack mates than dogs who were also raised in groups.

The study's authors say the findings suggest domestic dogs inherited their cooperative tendencies from their fierce wolf ancestors, rather than through their contact with human beings, a competing hypothesis.

Researchers trained the animals to use their snouts to press a "giving" symbol on a screen that delivered food to an adjacent enclosure, where a fellow animal may or may not be present.

Over multiple trials, wolves opted to deliver food to members of their own pack, knowing they would not get anything in return -- but lost interest if they were shown an unfamiliar wolf.

Dogs, on the other hand, showed no particular inclination to feed other dogs when no personal payoff was involved, regardless of whether they knew them or not.

"This study shows that domestication did not necessarily make dogs more prosocial," said lead author Rachel Dale.

"Rather, it seems that tolerance and generosity towards group members help to produce high levels of cooperation, as seen in wolves."

But don't write off your pooch just yet. The authors cautioned against applying the results of an experiment carried out on pack dogs to pet dogs, who have been found to have prosocial tendencies in past studies. 

The researchers believe those behaviors could be the result of training or encouragement, and say more research is needed to determine what accounts for the differences.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Stray cows add to Modi's farmer woes as Indian election looms

KAKRIPUR/MAHABAN -- As night fell on the bucolic northern Indian hamlet of Mahaban, Gopi Chand Yadav gathered blankets and a flashlight to spend the night sitting on a wooden platform in his field. His task: to use bamboo sticks to ward off stray cattle from intruding and eating a maturing mustard crop.

Like Yadav, many thousands of farmers stay awake to guard their farms over a cold winter or face losing their crops to the cattle - a double whammy for growers already reeling from a plunge in Indian crop prices.

While stray cows ambling around towns and villages have always been a feature of life in rural India, farmers say their number has increased sharply in recent years to the extent that they have become a menace, and blame the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government.

Protecting cows - considered sacred to Hindus - was one of the measures meant to shore up support in the heavily populated, Hindi-speaking belt across northern India that has been a heartland of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP). Instead, it is creating a backlash, even among Hindu farmers.

"We already had enough problems and now the government has created one more," said octogenarian farmer Baburao Saini from Kakripur village, about 85 kilometers from New Delhi. "For the first time, we've been forced to stay in the fields to protect our crops."

More than 50 farmers Reuters spoke to in Mahaban and 9 other villages in Uttar Pradesh state said they would think twice before voting for Modi's BJP in the next general election, due by May. The cattle issue and low farm prices are major reasons behind their disillusionment with a party that most say they voted for in the last election in 2014.

Modi swept Uttar Pradesh at that poll, winning 73 of 80 seats in India's most populous state, with rural voters swayed by a promise of higher crop prices, and as Hindu farmers supported the BJP amid tensions with the minority Muslim community.

COW PROTECTION

Modi is trying hard to claw back support among India's 263 million farmers and their many millions of dependents after the BJP lost power in December to the opposition Congress in 3 big northern states where agriculture is a mainstay.

Indian farmers keep cows to produce milk, cheese and butter, but to harm or kill a cow, especially for food, is considered taboo by most Hindus.

Most states in India have long outlawed cow slaughter, but after coming to power in 2014 the BJP ratcheted up its distaste for trade in cattle, launching a crackdown on unlicensed abattoirs in Uttar Pradesh and on cattle smuggling nationwide.

At the same time, a wave of attacks on trucks carrying cattle by Hindu vigilante groups has scared away traders, most of whom are Muslims, bringing to a halt the trade even in bullocks, which are not considered sacred. Rising sales of tractors and increasing mechanization mean that more animals are redundant for use in farming.

The farmers Reuters spoke to said they revered cows as most devout Hindus would, but a sudden halt in the trade of cattle had hit the rural economy. In their view, the government should come up with more cow shelters and let cattle traders deal in other animals without fear of attack.

"The government has only enforced the laws by closing down unlicensed abattoirs and cracking down on cattle smuggling," said BJP spokesman Gopal Krishna Agarwal, who added that he runs a cow shelter of 1,300 cattle. "We're not trying to hurt either any community or the rural economy."

CROP TRAMPLED

Fodder prices have gone up by more than a third in the past year and most farmers cannot afford to keep cows after they stop producing milk, said farmer Rajesh Pahalwan as he smoked a hookah pipe in the village of Manoharpur. Six farmers sitting with him mainly nodded in agreement.

In India, the world's biggest milk producer, about 3 million cattle become unproductive every year. In the past, Hindu farmers would sell unproductive cows to Muslim traders and about 2 million of these would end up smuggled to Bangladesh for meat and leather. But that trade has now been throttled by the government crackdown, trade and industry officials say.

That has led to many unproductive cattle being abandoned, farmers said, but governments - both state and federal - have failed to construct new shelters, leaving rising numbers of stray cattle that are feeding on crops, or even garbage.

"The government clearly did not think of alternatives before putting these curbs in place," said farmer Deepak Chaudhary, who grows wheat on the outskirts of Mathura, considered to be the birthplace of the Hindu God Krishna. "As Hindus, we treat cows as sacred but these unwarranted measures have upended the economics of farming."

The government did provide some relief in its interim budget last week as it announced a cow welfare program costing 7.5 billion rupees ($104.6 million) in the year beginning April.

But there are hardly any "adequate measures to rehabilitate" cattle, said Fauzan Alvi, vice-president of the All India Meat and Livestock Exporters Association.

"Forget about cows, we cannot sell even a single animal to even our relatives thanks to cow vigilante groups which are aided and abetted by the BJP," said the wheat farmer Chaudhary.

Modi has in the past condemned violence by cow vigilantes, but critics and opposition politicians say some of the right-wing Hindu groups involved have links to his party, a charge the BJP denies.

Nearly 85 percent of India's farmers own less than 2 hectaresof land, so even a relatively small area damaged has a big impact on their livelihood.

Only 2 weeks ago, some cattle ravaged an acre of wheat grown by farmer Chandra Pal in the Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh.

"My investment went down the drain after some stray cattle trampled and ate up the crop," he said.

Many farmers in Uttar Pradesh are now using barbed wire to stop animals from entering their farms, but that is expensive.

"We have been at the receiving end of anti-farmer policies of the government and the problem of stray cattle is just another blow to us," said farmer Amar Chand, from Maholi village who voted for Modi in 2014. "Unlike the previous general election, farmers are not solidly behind Modi, who's on shaky ground this time round."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

China's swine fever outbreak may spread in Asia: FAO

BEIJING - An outbreak of African swine fever in China may spread to other parts of Asia, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization warned Tuesday, as the world's largest pork producer scrambled to contain the disease.

China has culled more than 24,000 pigs in 4 provinces to stop the disease from proliferating, the FAO said in a statement. The first outbreak was reported in early August.

The FAO said the cases have been detected in areas more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) apart, meaning it could cross national borders.

"The deadly pig virus may spread to other Asian countries anytime," the FAO said.

The "diverse geographical spread of the outbreaks in China have raised fears that the disease will move across borders to neighboring countries of Southeast Asia or the Korean Peninsula where trade and consumption of pork products is also high," it added.

China reported its first case of the disease in northeast Liaoning province earlier this month.

Last week, the eastern city of Lianyungang announced it had culled 14,500 pigs in an attempt to check the disease's spread.

"The movement of pig products can spread diseases quickly and, as in this case of African swine fever, it's likely that the movement of such products, rather than live pigs, has caused the spread of the virus to other parts of China," explained Juan Lubroth, FAO's chief veterinarian.

African swine fever is not harmful to humans but causes hemorrhagic fever in domesticated pigs and wild boar that almost always ends in death within a few days.

There is no antidote or vaccine, and the only known method to prevent the disease from spreading is a mass cull of the infected livestock.

In a report to the World Organisation for Animal Health, Beijing said an emergency plan had been launched and control measures taken to halt the spread of the disease.

The FAO warned in May of the risk of the spread of African swine fever from Russia.

Around half of the world's pigs are raised in China, and the Chinese are the biggest consumers of pork per capita, according to the FAO.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Give love to animals

Mascots parade along the Makati business district, as part of a campaign organized by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) on Monday. PETA shared different ways to show love to animals, from supporting animal-cruelty-free products to a vegetarian diet, in celebrating Valentine’s Day.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Bullfighter and runner die, 2 others gored in Spanish bull festivals

A bullfighter and a man participating in a village bull-run were killed in Spain on Saturday, while another two men were gored by the animals at the world-famous festival in the town of Pamplona.

Victor Barrio, a 29-year-old professional bullfighter, was killed when a bull's horn pierced his chest in front of spectators as he competed in a fight in the town of Teruel in the eastern region of Aragon.

His death, shown live on television, was confirmed on the website of Madrid's Las Ventas bullring, where Barrio began as an apprentice bullfighter in 2010. He is the first Spanish bullfighter to die in a ring since the turn of the century.

In the southeastern village of Pedreguer near Valencia, a 28-year-old Spaniard was killed during a bull-run, in which people risk life and limb by racing alongside specially-bred fighting bulls through narrow streets.

A bull's horn pierced his lung and heart as he was trying to help another runner during the event, in which a man was killed last year, a spokesman for the regional government said.

Many of Spain's towns hold summer festivals involving bulls, and several people die each year.

The San Fermin festival, in which bulls chase red-scarved runners through Pamplona's cobbled streets during nine days of events, attracts thousands of revellers from Spain and overseas.

In Saturday's run there, a 33-year-old Japanese man was gored in the chest and a 24-year-old Spanish man in the arm, while 12 others suffered minor injuries, the local government said on its website.

The Japanese man was in a stable condition in hospital, a spokesman for the festival said.

The four-minute run in Pamplona featured six bulls from the Jose Escolar ranch, one of which separated from the rest and caused panic among the runners.

The daily bull-run along an 825-metre stretch of narrow streets in Pamplona's old town starts at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) and usually lasts between three and five minutes. There are eight runs in total during the festival.

Over the past century 15 people have died in Pamplona's event, which dates back hundreds of years, according to a count on the unofficial San Fermin website. The last death was recorded in 2009.

(Reporting by Eloy Alonso in PAMPLONA and Maria Vega Paul in MADRID; Writing by Angus Berwick; Editing by Andrew Roche)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

'Rat on a plane' forces Air India flight to turn back

A "suspected rat sighting" in the cabin forced an Air India plane carrying more than 200 passengers to return to Mumbai almost three hours into a flight to London, the airline said Thursday.

Air India said it had decided to turn back the flight "keeping passenger safety in mind," even though the rodent's presence was not confirmed.

Rats pose a serious threat to the safety of flights as they can chew through wires and damage internal controls.

"Air India gives utmost importance to safety. Our engineering team is investigating the incident," an airline statement said.

"A standby aircraft was made available to fly the passengers to London. The aircraft with the suspected rodent will be fumigated as per procedure in such cases of rodent sighting."

An airline official who did not want to be named put the number of passengers at over 200.

It is not the first time an Air India flight has been grounded over rodents.

In July, a plane en route to Milan had to return to Delhi after a suspected rat sighting.

India's state carrier has not made a profit since 2007.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Georgia hunts down another tiger from flooded zoo

TBILISI, Georgia - Georgian police on Friday were hunting down a tiger who escaped from the capital's flood-ravaged zoo after another tiger mauled a man to death before being killed.

"A large feline has been spotted by at least 15 local residents" on the outskirts of Tbilisi, Giorgi Metreveli, a professional hunter involved in the citywide police operation to locate the tiger, said in televised comments.

"The search for the animal is underway," he said.

The Rustavi 2 television channel broadcast a few photos of the tiger that local residents had taken with their mobile phones.

"Professional hunters equipped with tranquilliser darts have joined the police operation to hunt down escaped animals," Giorgi Gibradze, spokesman of Georgia's Crisis Management Council, told journalists.

He said an emergency call centre had so far received 47 reports about animals apparently spotted by people in neighbourhoods across Tbilisi, "but all of them turned out to be false alarms."

On Wednesday, a white tiger that escaped from the Tbilisi Zoo mauled a man to death in the city centre before being shot dead by police.

The zoo said on Thursday that several animals may still be at large.

"But we need to complete a thorough inventory of dead and survived animals to know for sure," a spokeswoman told AFP.

The flash flood at the weekend tore through central Tbilisi, wrecking the zoo and killing 19 people including three zoo workers.

Lions, tigers, bears and a hippo were seen roaming the flooded streets after the disaster and were either shot dead or recaptured and returned to their enclosures.

More than half of the zoo's 600 animals perished in the flood.

Animal rights activists have demanded an investigation into the handling of the disaster, insisting that some of the animals shot dead by police did not need to be killed.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Why Japanese zoos will stop acquiring dolphins

TOKYO - The Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums said Wednesday it will stop acquiring dolphins caught in drive hunts off the town of Taiji in western Japan after facing the risk of expulsion from a global zoo body.

In a vote, JAZA asked domestic zoos and aquariums whether it should remain part of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which has urged the Japanese association not to take dolphins caught in the drive hunts amid an international outcry that the practice is cruel.

Among the 89 zoos and 63 aquariums that belong to JAZA, a majority voted to remain part of the global body, a decision that leaves them with no choice but to stop acquiring dolphins from the small fishery town in Wakayama Prefecture.

The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums suspended JAZA's membership last month over the issue, citing violation of the global body's "Code of Ethics and Animal Welfare." It also said the Japanese body would be expelled unless the situation is improved by Thursday.

If expelled, zoos and aquariums in Japan could face difficulty in seeking overseas cooperation for breeding rare animals and other issues.

But remaining in the global body and halting the acceptance of Taiji dolphins is also an issue of vital importance for aquariums that cannot breed dolphins on their own.

The aquariums could eventually face difficulty operating as they may not be able to find an alternative source of dolphins for their shows.

The world association, with a membership comprising over 50 countries and territories, requires all members to "adhere to policies that prohibit participating in cruel and non-selective methods of taking animals from the wild."

At the center of the controversy is the nature of the dolphin drive hunting off Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, which is also known for its whaling culture.

In drive hunting, fishermen capture dolphins by herding them into coves as they bang metal poles against their fishing boats. The practice, however, has spurred international controversy, especially after the Oscar-winning 2009 U.S. documentary film "The Cove" showed the actual slaughter of dolphins during a drive hunt.

Taiji officials have said the method employed has changed since the film was released so as not to cause excessive suffering to dolphins. Local fishermen have also taken steps to address the situation, such as by separately capturing dolphins for edible use and those for aquarium use so that the latter will be caught without being hurt.

But concerns remain. In January last year, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy said on Twitter that she was "deeply concerned by inhumaneness of drive hunt dolphin killing" and that the U.S. government opposes such activities.

On the world body's suspension of JAZA's membership, a whale museum in Taiji, which rears many dolphins acquired from the local drive hunting, has criticized the global body for acting "emotionally."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com