Two goldfish were found alive in their tank in a building that was badly damaged by the earthquake that struck New Zealand. The two goldfish, named Shaggy and Daphne, have become the smallest survivors of the earthquake in February. The earthquake killed 181 people in Christchurch. There were originally six goldfish in the tank when the quake struck. When the survivors were found, there was no trace of three others. A fourth was found dead. There is the question of their missing companions. Goldfish are omnivores. The fish spent four and a half months, trapped in their tank in a downtown area of the city, that was off-limits. There was no food, or electricity to power their tank filter. They were discovered by workers, and rescued. The fish survived from eating algae growing on the tank’s rocks and walls. Fish can go without food for a while because they are cold blooded, and unlike mammals don't burn up food to keep warm.
The Basenji is a breed of hunting dog that was bred from stock originating in central Africa. They are small, elegant-looking, short-haired dogs with erect ears, a tightly curled tail and a graceful neck. A basenji's forehead is wrinkled, especially when the animal is young or extremely old. Basenji eyes are typically almond-shaped, which gives the dog the appearance of squinting seriously. They typically weigh 24 pounds (11 kg) and stand 16 inches (40.6 cm) at the withers. They are a square breed, which means that they are as long as they are tall. The basenji is an athletic dog and is deceptively powerful for its size. They have a graceful, confident gait like a trotting horse, and skim the ground in a double-suspension gallop, with their characteristic curled tail straightened out for greater balance, when running flat-out at their top speed. Barking: Basenjis are an ancient breed cut off from other breeds forever and was never bred out of the pure. They have a different shaped larynx that doesn't allow them to make a true bark like other breeds. But all basenjis do a pretty good job of faking it by just cutting a yodel or baroo short. Temperament: The basenji has the unique properties of not barking (it makes a low, liquid ululation instead) and cleaning itself like a cat. Often, the Basenji is commonly referred to as the shrieking dog, or screaming child dog. Basenjis do not respond well to punishment, such as yelling and hitting, which can cause them to utter a warning growl. Lifespan: The median lifespan of 13.6 years. Which is 1–2 years longer than the median lifespan of other breeds of similar size. The oldest dog in the survey was 17.5 years. Most common causes of death were old age (30%), urologic (incontinence, Fanconi syndrome, chronic kidney failure 13%), behavior ("unspecified" and aggression 9%), and cancer. (9%). Grooming: The Basenji washes itself like a cat and has no dogie smell, so very little grooming is needed. This is a good dog for people with allergies. This breed sheds little to no hair. They are also know as: African Bush Dog, African Barkless Dog, Ango Angari, Congo Dog, Zande Dog
What do you do when your 1,400-pound (approx. 635-kilogram) bear just needs a warm hug? Well, of course you give him cuddles! Most wild animals could never be tamed—but this lovable hunk was one of a kind. Jimbo the huge Kodiak brown bear was born in captivity. He was injured, and Jim Kowalczik knew he could never be returned to the wild when he decided to take him under his wing as a cub. When Jim and Susan Kowalczik founded the Orphaned Wildlife Center in Otisville, upstate New York, in 2015, Jimbo would spend the rest of his life there with them. He kept company with another 11 bears at the sanctuary. They would all be released into the wild once they were healed of their injuries. Some had survived collisions with cars; others had become orphans when their mothers were killed. The couple treated Jimbo as part of the family, and Jim was often photographed playing with the affectionate bear, or perhaps the two would just sit relaxed together as friends sometimes do. When Jimbo began to feel out of sorts, last February, a visit from the vet did little to help him, and the cause of his discomfort was unknown, though it was later found to be cancer of the liver. To read more on this story, click here:Jimbo The 9-Foot Kodiak Bear Passes Away After 20 Years Of Family Life
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I have a recurring dream in which I am accosted by a venomous snake. I make no bones about it: snakes terrify me. Perhaps it's their weird, pin-prick black eyes, possibly it's their horribly slithering, eel-like bodies, or maybe it's the knowledge that many breeds of snake could cause me serious damage with just one bite, or several rib-crushing squeezes from their sickening serpentine frames. Either way, if there are snakes involved, I'm out. Admittedly snakes have, thus far, been conspicuous in my life only by their absence, unless you count my oft-returning nightmare. The nightmare started, by the way, when I was sleeping in the living room of a friend's house in New York. Every night, the central heating in the building would come on, issuing a loud 'hissing' noise as it did so. My poor, tortured, sleep-ravaged brain regrettably interpreted this sibilance as dozens of insipid, writhing snakes gliding irresistibly towards me, and thus my interminable nighttime affliction was borne out, never to cease, consistent in its horror. If there is one place I hope never to visit, then, it is the snake-infested island off the coast of Brazil that is so dangerous, it's actually forbidden for humans to visit. Ilha da Queimada Grande - otherwise known as Snake Island - might look idyllic from above if one did not know of the fork-tongued horrors that lurk in the rainforests beneath. Located off the coast of the state of Sao Paolo in the Atlantic Ocean, Snake Island is home to an estimated 4,000 snakes, with some reports suggesting that you would encounter one snake every six yards - concentrated almost exclusively in the island's rainforests. To read more on this story, click here:This is the Snake-Infested Island That's So Dangerous it is Forbidden for People to Visit
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Rick Fisher has been capturing life through a lens since he worked on his high school yearbook. Now, with less than a year to live, he's creating a final love letter of sorts that will help others. Fisher spends a lot of time in his wheelchair and wearing an oxygen mask. His lungs are only functioning at 50 percent. "I always thought I was going to live to be like my dad," Fisher said. "He was 88. So, when you're 69 and someone tells you-you're not going to make it to your 70th birthday...that's pretty tough." Fisher was told in March he only has 10 months to live. He has ALS, an unkind disease that robs the body of its strength and abilities. "With so little time left, I shouldn't be able to swallow and I shouldn't be able to speak," he said. But to Fisher, this is not a story of sadness, but of dedication and love. "I celebrate every day," Fisher said. "When I get up, I say to Beth Fisher's wife 'It's going to be a good day!' and she says Why? I say, Well, first, I'm breathing. The second is I'm going to work in the studio all day!'" Fisher can no longer operate a camera, but he can operate his computer. He clicks and creates. He sorts through some 50,000 photos, narrowing down each one. To read more on this story, click here:Durham Man With ALS Uses Love Of Animals, Photography To Raise Money For Animal Shelters
When people see spiders in their homes, their first reaction is often to squish the tiny arachnids. A lot of people are afraid of spiders, but immediately killing them may not be the best way to go about things since these creatures are far more important than most people know. Harmless House Spiders Part of the reason why so many people are afraid of spiders is because they assume that every "big" spider they encounter is something dangerous such as a brown recluse or a black widow, most spiders you find in your home are either cobweb spiders or cellar spiders. To read more on this story, click here:Why You Should Never Kill Spiders in Your House
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YouTube sensation the slow loris might look adorable, but it can kill humans... and we are killing them out in return. It’s was the latest YouTube sensation in 2012: a small, furry creature with huge eyes and arms raised above its head is being tickled. More than 12 million people have watched this and another film of a similar animal holding a cocktail umbrella. Many of those probably thought ‘What a lovely creature, how cute’. Professor Anna Nekaris is a Professor in Anthropology and Primate Conservation studying the unique group of evolutionary distinct primates known as the Asian lorises. You can read more about her HERE. Professor Anna Nekaris: It breaks my heart. The animal in the films is a ‘slow loris’, a nocturnal primate from Asia, a close cousin to monkeys. I’ve spent almost 20 years studying them and I know just how cruel those films are.
Sad tale: Primatologist Anna Nekaris with a slow loris which is illegally on sale in the market in Indonesia.
Misleading: The YouTube video of a loris 'being tickled' (left) has been seen by 12 million people - but it is endangering the lives of lorises in the wild (right) Yes, they are beautiful animals but they are not in this world to perform tricks on the internet - they’re not even suitable as pets. They are venomous, the only primate to be so, and are known as the ‘jungle gremlins’ because of their benign appearance coupled with a flesh-rotting poison, which can be fatal to humans. Although evolution has given the slow loris some unique attributes, like so many other species, nature alone cannot protect it from all the 21st century threats. Their natural forest habitat is disappearing at an alarming rate, the use of them in traditional Asian medicine continues to decimate the population and now, thanks to YouTube and other internet sites, exacerbates their demand as exotic pets, putting them at huge risk. I went undercover with a BBC film crew in Jakarta, Indonesia, to find out the extent of the shocking trade in these wonderful but shy animals. What I saw reduced me to tears. The loris first emerged as a distinct lineage more than 40 million years ago. Unlike similar primates it can’t leap at all – its tail is reduced to a stub but instead has an extraordinary vice-like grip by which it manouevres Ninja-like through the trees. In its natural habitat, high above the ground and shrouded by the darkness of night, it makes rapid and elegant progress from branch to branch.
Wide-eyed wonder: The slow loris is a beautiful animal, but they are not in this world to perform tricks on the internet - they're not even suitable as pets. But on the ground it feels ill at ease, and under bright daytime light is insecure, unsure of itself and vulnerable. Its movements become unsteady and, well, slow. Hence, the less than flattering name. Apart from its extraordinary grip it also has a powerful bite, able to chisel through the bark of trees and even bamboo. It sounds not unlike a woodpecker when it’s feeding, using its two tongues to extract gum, syrup and nectar from the vegetation. It also consumes insect larvae and even small bats and lizards. In turn, the slow loris can fall victim to pythons and orang-utans but the biggest threat is, of course, mankind. And that threat comes in several forms. The slow loris lives in the trees – it needs forests to survive. Yet in the parts of the Asian world that is its natural habitat the forests are disappearing at an alarming rate. On Java, the main island of Indonesia, there is only 10 per cent of the forest left and here the slow loris population is falling at a terrifying rate. In one of Java’s best-protected forests, we came across only six wild animals in a whole year. One of the great misfortunes of the slow loris is that it is much sought after in traditional Asian medicine. Known as the ‘animal that cures 100 diseases’ it’s widely used in traditional healing remedies in China, Laos, Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam. Add to that its popularity as a pet in Asia and it’s new fame in the west and you have the elements of a major onslaught on the loris population which could drive it to extinction. But that is no concern of the people who work in the live animal markets in Java.
Danger: Slow lorises are venomous - the only primate to be so - and are known as the 'jungle gremlins' because of their benign appearance coupled with a flesh-rotting poison, which can be fatal to humans.
Heart-breaking: Nekaris with a box full of slow lorises - when she was searching for the animal in the wide they only saw six of them in a whole year. They were healthy and had their teeth, they were good candidates for release back into the wild - it broke my heart to leave them there when it would have been in my power to set them free. But buying them would be wrong on so many fronts. I would never buy an animal in a market because it just promotes the sale of them. The second any foreigner buys an animal the traders think: ‘Oh, we can sell them to foreigners’ and the trade escalates. If I had bought them, he would have just got four more. The moment he sells one he just replaces it. The whole trade is just so sick. The ‘catchers’ make around 25 pence for a slow loris, the traders then sell them for £25. But international trade can see a single slow loris being sold for between £900-£1,800. Everyone who has seen the film we took in the market has cried. But this trade is made even more heartless by the fact that the slow loris is not even a suitable pet – far from it. It sleeps all day, it smells worse than a whole box of rotten eggs and on top of that it can seriously harm you. It is the only primate in the world that is poisonous thanks to a dark fluid released from a gland above its elbow which, when mixed with its own saliva, becomes toxic. We are studying the reasons why they may have this - the classic explanation is that it is predator defense - although this is now in dispute with other theories being that it makes them unpalatable and so protects themselves and their young.
In the wild: One of the primates in its natural habitat.
Not pets: The animal only has a stump of a tail but has an extremely strong grip. The effect of the poison is to cause wounds to fester – it works as an anti-coagulant. The necrotic effect means that the tissue dies and the flesh rots. Another theory suggests they may have venomous glands as a way of destroying rivals over territory - they do attack other slow lorises who then die a slow death. The danger to humans is generally an allergic reaction, in some cases their bites have triggered anaphylactic shock and death. Even if the reaction is not that severe the bite alone from the razor sharp fangs of a slow loris is excruciating, and I should know I have suffered a few bites myself – always on my fingers. That’s why the slow lorises sold as domestic pets have their teeth ripped out first. It’s cruel and unnecessary because they shouldn’t be kept as pets at all. Yet, the new interest in the animals generated by the internet and the films on YouTube produce a stream of inquiries on forums asking if people can get one as a pet. The correct answer is: you can’t. Or at least, you shouldn’t be able to, because the trade in them is illegal. The YouTube films create the impression that the slow loris is a cute domestic animal. So let’s demand YouTube take these cruel movies down from the internet and allow the slow loris to return to the darkness of the forest.
They may not be the fastest or the smartest or even the scariest, but when it comes to beating cancer, elephants are the superheroes of the living world. It's a phenomenon that has baffled scientists since the 1970s. After all, at their size, they should have a much higher rate of the disease. The larger a living thing, the more the cells, and the more the cells, the more chance one of them turns out to be cancerous -- which is why tall people are more vulnerable to the disease than short people and why Marmaduke is much more likely to get cancer than the Taco Bell Chihuahua. And yet, cancer rates among elephants is less than 5 percent, comparable to the rates in much smaller animals. The lifetime cancer mortality rate for humans is about 20 percent. So what gives? With all those cells on their body, why are more elephants not stricken by the disease? Scientists may have found an answer. In a paper published in the journal Cell Reports Tuesday, researchers from the University of Chicago announced they may have discovered one of the cancer protection mechanisms the pachyderms have evolved to deal with every time a cell may be corrupted. "What we found is that elephants have an extra copy of the gene whose job it is to kill the cell when there is the kind of stress that causes cancer," said Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Chicago in Illinois and an author of the study. The fact that this gene was even functional was extraordinary -- it was supposed to be non-functional or "dead". Yet somehow this "zombie" gene, called leukemia inhibitory factor 6 (LIF6), had evolved in elephants to come back from the dead and slay any cell that showed damage to its DNA, thus preventing it from becoming cancerous. This is the second study that has found the differences in elephant genome that may explain the animal's ability to resist the disease. In 2015, two teams of scientists -- one led by Lynch from the University of Chicago and the other from the University of Utah -- found in elephants 20 copies of a major cancer-suppressing gene called p53 that helps damaged cells repair themselves or self-destruct when exposed to cancer-causing substances. Both these discoveries could have implications for the human fight against cancer, Lynch said. "If we understand the function of this gene and all the other genes that makes elephants cancer-resistant, maybe we'll be able to develop drugs that mimic those functions and then use that to treat people with the disease," he said. And there's hope that over time, scientists will come upon more such discoveries. Other creatures, such as some types of whales, bats and mole rats, also show unusual resistance to cancer, and they have none of the extra genes found in elephants -- which means they must have evolved their very own cancer protection mechanisms. But don't cheer yet. Even if Lynch's findings in 2015 and 2018 are replicated and confirmed, there's still a long way to go. "Developing new drug treatments is a very complex process and it takes decades," Lynch said. "We always hear the news that there is some discovery and that a new treatment based on that discovery is five to 10 years away but it's never five to 10 years. So this is going to be a very long process." "Of course," he added, "I guess we've been dealing with cancer for billions of years, so you know, a couple of decades isn't that long in the grand scheme of things."
