A Tale of Two Tortoises

Well, actually it's two tales of two tortoises, but that doesn't have the same ring to it.

The first tortoise's name is Freeway:

John Formby saw him trying to cross the M25 motorway in London. At first he thought it was a bit of debris, but as he got closer he saw that it had a head & as he sped by, he noticed that it was moving! As soon as he realized that the tortoise was still alive, he pulled to the side of the road and ran back 400 yards to retrieve it. But he had to wait for a break in traffic. Mr. Formby watched anxiously as three cars sped over the helpless reptile. Luckily, none of the cars hit the tortoise and he passed under the vehicles safely.
After running out to save the stranded animal, John stopped for a lunch of lettuce and tomatoes on the way to the vet.  At the veterinarians office they checked him for injury and found that he was microchipped- in America.
They decided to call him Freeway for now because that is the American word for Motorway (I'm American and I don't think I've ever referred to any road by either of those names until this article).
Freeway is a Hermann's tortoise thought to be approx. 10 years old. He is in very good health and well cared for & with the information from the microchip there is a good chance that he will be returned to his family.

The second tortoise's name is Chelonoidis elephantopus.

After being "extinct" for 150 years, it looks like they may be making a come back. When studying the genomes of a closely related species which lives on Isobela Island (the largest of the Galapagos Islands), it was found that there are 84 hybrid offspring between the two species, 30 of those hybrids are less than 15 years old. Given that these tortoises have a 100 year lifespan, it's not a long stretch to think that some of these hybrids parents are still alive. If researchers can find this hidden population, they're optimistic that they can set up a breeding program. 

 Isobela Island lies about 200 miles (322 kilometers) from Floreana Island, where C. elephantopus was last spotted before disappearing, likely due to hunting by whalers.

Planet of the Apes

Apes can laugh. Not only that, but they're better at it than us! While humans only laugh during the exhale, then have to stop to breath- apes can laugh during both the inhale and exhale.

They don't all laugh the same either. Orangutans produce a series of short laughs (heeheeheehee), while chimps, gorillas and bonobos make longer laughing noises (haaaa haaaaa haaaaa). This happens most often when they are playing, wrestling or being tickled. Here's a video:

Martin Ross of Discovery News also commented that the apes that are genetically closer to humans have more human sounding laughs.

Here's some other ways apes act like us (or we act like apes):
*They shake their head "no" to tell their children not to play with their food, climb into dangerous situations or bother unfriendly males.
*They recognize faces. Primates have been found to be able to pick out a face in a crowd (primate faces, not human faces).
*They use tools and play with toys. Here's the interesting part about this one- they use gender specific toy. Females are more likely to choose plush, doll type toys while males are more likely to play with toys with wheels, like toy trucks.
*Injustice upsets them. When a group of capuchin monkeys was taught to trade off a small granite stone for a treat, and the monkeys were given unequal treats (the first monkey was given a grape and the second was given a cucumber), the entire group got very angry about the unfair treatment.

Rhino Rescue

Alright- It's time for me to suck it up and write about the rhinos. I've been avoiding it because it's a subject that's very near and dear to my heart & I'm afraid that I won't be able to do it justice. And I really want to influence people to care about it, even though it's not right in our back yard. But, if I keep putting it off, then I'll never write about it & I won't be influencing anyone that way... So here goes:

By now, you've probably heard that the Western Black Rhino was officially declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on Nov. 10, 2011.
Let me take a minute to clarify: when the IUCN declares a species extinct, that doesn't necessarily mean what you might be thinking it means. There ARE still some Western Black Rhinos alive in zoos and exotic animal sanctuaries.  However, there are no more wild animals of this species.

A mama and baby rhino. Aren't they cute?!

This was big news not that long ago, but most of what I saw written about it was very vague and not very informative. I found that these and other rhino species (the Northern White Rhino and the Javan Rhino are both considered "probably extinct" in the wild) were hunted to extinction by poachers, and that approximately 1/4 of all the worlds mammals are at risk of extinction (WOW- that's a lot... the Red List of endangered species contains over 62,000 species of plants and animals that are "endangered"!!) While both of those facts suck, neither was very surprising to me (most of us already know that the rhinos biggest threat are poachers and that there are a LOT of endangered species). I had two questions in particular that I had to do quite a bit more digging to find answers to. #1, what makes rhino horns so valuable & #2, what's being done to prevent other rhinoceros species from meeting the same fate?

The answer to my first question: What makes rhino horns so valuable? was pretty straight forward- people are greedy. Although it is true that in some places of the world simply owning a rhino horn is a coveted status symbol, this is not the main demand for them. The poaching of rhinos spiked shortly after the Longhui Pharmaceutical Company announced that it planned to sell rhino horn as a cancer treatment in 2005. They marketed it as "natural and without side effects" (I would say the execution of an entire species is a pretty big side effect, but I know that's not the kind of side effect they're talking about). Now, this pharmaceutical company can pretty much charge whatever they want. People will pay just about any amount for something that they believe cures cancer (and they do- rhino horn sells for $57,000/kg [one kg = 2.2 pounds]). But here's the really unethical part about this- there is absolutely no reason to believe that rhino horn has any curative properties whatsoever! These horns are made of keratin (the same protein that makes up human hair & nails) and nothing else. Scientists have done round after round of tests on keratin and determined that it has no use in medicine.

My second question was not quite so straight forward. What's being done to prevent other rhinoceros species from becoming extinct as well? ... Well, a whole lot of arguing about what the best next step is, is what's being done.
There is an internet petition to deny bail to all suspected rhino poachers. Unfortunately, it requires 50,000 signatures to even be considered & the last time I checked, they hadn't even gotten to 7,000. Here's the link to sign the petition if you're interested:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/no-bail-for-rhino-poachers/
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) hopes to establish new populations on new land by moving rhinos from high density areas to lower density areas. This will encourage them to breed faster. But there are quite a few kinks in this plan. For one thing, the land owners have to agree to allow the rhinos to be moved to their land and people do not want rhinos on their land because it brings poachers, guns, illegal activity and violence. Even without the poachers, it's a hard sale because there are very few benefits to having them around. The second problem that this plan has encountered is that by spreading out the rhino population, it makes it a lot harder to guard them, which means it makes them even more vulnerable to poachers. Regardless, the WWF has moved forward with it's plan and they seem to be showing some success.

A rhino being relocated (via helicopter) to its new home.

In South Africa (home to 93% of the continents rhinos) the government is considering dehorning the animals to make them less attractive to poachers. Even though veterinarians are able to tranquilize the rhinos and remove safe amounts of their horn without harming the animal, you can just imagine what animal rights groups are saying about that idea. 

Another idea seemed simple enough, increase the amount of rangers patrolling the borders of the Kruger National Park (home to one of the largest populations of rhino in Africa with approx. 19,500 white rhino and 1,700 black rhino). In 2011, 57 new rangers were hired and the government even deployed soldiers to help patrol the border. While this solution decreased poaching in the park, it also displaced poaching activities to other areas such as private reserves and game farms. 

I had such a hard time picking this picture (there are so many good ones). Do yourself a favor and image search Kruger National Park.

And the final option being discussed (and fought over) is the legalization of the sale of those horns acquired legally (when a rhino dies of natural causes or if they do end up dehorning the wild populations). I know this sounds crazy, but right now South Africa has a stockpile of these horns that they can't (legally) do anything with. The thought is, selling these horns will flood the market, bringing the price of the horns down and "taking the criminals profit incentive out of it." Then the money made from selling the horns can be used to finance further protection of the rhinos. This plan has obvious flaws, 1. How can we tell which horns were acquired legally and which ones were acquired through poaching? 2. We do not know how big the demand is or if the stockpile will even meet the demand. And 3. If you legalize it, more people will be willing to buy it. Studies show that when elephant tusks were sold legally, there has also been a spike in elephant poaching. 

So basically, there are a lot of options, but there's no way to tell which will bring results (I know- not exactly the answer you were looking for. I was just as disappointed, but at least now we know that people ARE trying to figure out a way to save these magnificent creatures). 

I had to put in a gruesome picture- you know, to really drive my point home. But don't worry- we'll leave on a happier note. Just keep reading =)

I do have a success story to share with you today though! At the end of the 19th century, the Southern White Rhino's wild population was down to below 100 animals. Now, thanks in part to captive breeding programs, their numbers are over 20,000. So there is hope! 

Southern White Rhinoceros with calf

I tried to avoid using too many statistics, but if you're interested- here's a link:

http://www.stoprhinopoaching.com/statistics.aspx 

You Read Me Like a Book

I have a problem. I'm a reader- this is not my problem. The problem is that I'm in a rut. For, oh, about the last year, the only books I've read were some variation of magical detective books (The Dresden Files, Day of First Sun, Random Stranger, Sandman Slim, The Blue Electric Angels series (can't think of the actual name of that one)... you get the idea. Don't get me wrong- there's nothing wrong with these books, hey, if they weren't excellent I wouldn't have read them exclusively for the last year. But it's sort of like eating steak, it's great every once in awhile but if you eat it for every meal- it sort of loses it's charm.

Luckily, there is a really easy solution to that: read/cook something else. So, to motivate myself to read a different genre, I've decided to do a book review on this blog every, oh, I don't know, couple of months. Since it's a wildlife blog, the books that I review will be wildlife/animal/nature themed. Probably, mostly fiction since that's what I prefer to read but I'll mix it up with some non-fiction as well. So- If anyone has any suggestions of book that would (even vaguely) fit into that category, please oh please let me know.

Sniffing out Trouble

Strictly speaking, this isn't a wildlife story, but it is an animal story & very interesting. So I'm calling it close enough.

I recently lost a pet, and I got a lot of weird looks when I told people that I was upset because my pet rat had just died. I spend most of my time hanging out with "animal people," so it surprised me that so many people are still biased against rats. With any luck, this story will help boost their image alitttle.

My pet rat as a baby

Mozambique, Africa was caught in a bloody civil war from 1977 to 1992. A large amount of the fighting was done indirectly using land mines. Unfortunately, now that the civil war is over, Mozambique is still riddled with land mines. It's estimated that 15,000- 20,000 deaths and injuries are caused by land mines every year.
Africa's giant pouch rats (which grow to be the size of small cats) are being trained to sniff out these mines. Their training happens in three phases. The first phase includes handling the rats every day from a very young age so they are used to people. The second phase includes teaching the rats what TNT smells like and training them to scratch at the ground when they smell it. The last phase includes bringing the rats outdoors to add other smells into the mix and practice actually digging up the mines.

Rats work especially well for this project because they don't grow large enough to set off the mines, they have an extraordinary sense of smell, and they are surprisingly easy to train. They are also a lot easier to transport than dogs, which they were using before Bart Weetjens came up with the great idea to use rats instead.

This idea sounds pretty dangerous, both for the rats and the trainers. But since the program began in 1997, there has only been one human casualty (caused by a car accident, not a land mine) and a few rats died due to moldy peanuts but no rats have been harmed by mines.

Here's a video of a rat in action (the songs kinda silly):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS1gh3QtB44

Researchers are using the same idea to train rats to sniff for tuberculosis in human spit. This is a relatively new project and there isn't too much information about it right now, but early reports sound promising! A properly trained rat can test up to 150 samples in 30 minutes, while a human using a microscope can only test 20 samples in an entire day.