Tag: Science

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Platinum Rhino, the worlds largest captive rhino breeding operation sold to africaparksnetwork! (update, instagram embed did not work)

Hearing this news, one might think “great, another 10-20 rhino”? Think again.

Platinum rhino holds as much as 15% of the current wild population in its operation -2000 individuals. Here is an instagram on the news!

This could be great! Current rhino numbers are estimated to be in the low 2000, down 79% since 2011. Releasing the whole herd back into the Kruger could allow numbers a sizable boost, and rapidly move the kruger back towards its former stronghold of the white rhino. However, in the first half of 2023 over 200 rhino were poached from the Kruger, suggesting that this is not going to be easy.

Unfortunately, the Kruger is already one of the best preserved large reserves in the world. Thankfully, rhino horn has dropped in value from its peak in 2012 of $65,000 per kg, down to a current $8000 per kg. It would be good to depress this further, however the risks for the poacher are very high: not only are many poachers killed by the rhino, they are also often killed by other wildlife such as lions – and the Kruger has a sizable number of man-eating specialists.

I suspect the organization will spread the rhino around, across many of their reserves. Hopefully the recognition that farms like this make no sense, will allow them to thrive back in the wild.

Education is still needed in China, Vietnam and elsewhere. Rhino horn is the same substance as your finger-nails, Keratin. Consuming it will make no difference to any medical condition, science has tried to show any positive health benefit, and can see nothing scientific – at best a placebo effect.

Below, is a video about this farm, 6 years ago back in its heyday. Hopefully, all these rhino can recover white rhino populations far and wide.

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Reversing extinction: Marwell zoo and the scimitar-horned oryx

Declared extinct in the wild back in 2000, this species is now not only re-established in the wild, but has a big enough population to now only be listed as endangered (down from critically endangered).

Apart from supplying individuals for the reintroduction, Marwell zoo also helped with strategy.

The video below is just 2 minutes long. While it talks about Marwells other work as well, it shows a number of these animals living wild back in Africa.

This has got to become the reason for zoos. What ever else they do, there are many species at risk of extinction in the wild, these need to have enough captive individuals to re-establish wild populations, should the current conservation fail.

Of course, zoos have many other roles, from education, to fostering a love of wildlife in the next generation.

One thing that they should not be, is a curio house- many zoos are far to worried about displaying albino or melanistic individuals. Now while these individuals are fascinating and can be used as ambassadors for the species, their genetic health should be looked after (all white tigers are descended from one female, and closely related individuals are regularly bred togerther to ensure this trait is passed down. Indeed, as a result of this, white tigers are often not of good health.

The majority of zoos are now like Marwell – while like many, it started as the private zoo of wealthy owners it has turned into an important place of conservation and science. Another of their successes, is the cooperative breeding that occurs as standard in current times, across Europe. Regular loaning of animals is essential, so that we can treat all of the zoo animals in Europe as one single population, thereby  making sure that all animals in the system are healthy.

There are many hundreds of zoos across Europe (some claim as many as 2000, though around 1500 is the estimated worldwide number suggesting that this is a rather large exaggeration. It is likely that around half of the worlds zoos are in Europe, and by cooperative breeding, we can make sure that healthy populations remain in captivity, so that should a population be lost from the wild, it can be returned, when the wild situation improves.

Almost all predictions about human population are expected to peak in the coming decades, and then decline after that. If this pattern is followed, it should be expected that we will need to re-establish wilderness in the future. 

Scimitar-horned oryx have been returned to the wild in Tunisia, and Chad and there are plans to return them to the wild in Niger, in the near future.

Extinction was caused by a variety of features, but the primary one was over-hunting. This has virtually been eliminated, after a ban on hunting of this species was put into effect in 2013. Should this species be allowed to fully recover. In 1985, there was a population of at least 500 of this species living in the wild, so it took only 15 years for it to disappear, as such what is clearly essential is a regular assessment on how this species is faring, allowing earlier interventions.

Saving the natural world, may require this kind of success to be a regular feature.

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Is the COP conferences a waste of time, if climate change deniers are able to lead it?

At the current time, countries in the region in which the COP is held will chose a president. In theory, that is fine, however, in practice if this is going to continue then the middle east should be banned from hosting the conference.

So, what precisely did Sultan Al Jaber say, which was so troubling?

Firstly, he claimed that a ‘phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves'”.

He then claimed that there is ‘no science’ to suggest phasing out fossil fuels is the only way to achieve 1.5C.

After being laughed at, over this utterly insane statment, he suggested that the comment had been misinterpreted. It should be noted, that this was in response to a question from a woman, which he was relatively rude about.

Do you think this woman misunderstood?

He even had the gall to suggest that the misrepresentation was undermining his desire to reduce carbon emissions (perhaps if this is true, it can start with his huge fossil fuel company can show this?). More than 100 countries are already supportive of this.

The worlds uptake of electric cars must accelerate. This is partly underway – last year around 67 million cars were sold, but 14% of these were electric, up from just 9% the previous year. The uptake is accelerating.

It should also be noted that apart from extreme heat in the UAE, continued global warming will also damage the UAE in extreme ways. The UAE economy is 0.5% of the global economy, in the end, places like this may refuse to accept the end of oil, and will have to be bankrupted, as cars move to 100% and many other industries clean up their act.

 

Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises family tree

Cetaceans -Whales, porpoise and dolphins

Few people can avoid stopping to watch, if they spot cetaceans from a cliff. While the family is wide and varied, they are all pretty interesting. From some of the largest and most intelligent hunters such as killer whales to the largest animal on earth the blue whale.

Whale and dolphin watching tourism is worth a lot of money – this can be essential, as in many places the extra money helps a community survive. 

I hope, overtime, to make this section of the website as large a list of places to view cetaceans and people who will help you in that quest.

As might perhaps be suspected, all of the mammal species which have returned permanently to the sea, and developed breathing holes located on their back (and therefore perfectly placed for taking quick breaths) are  related.

So what is the most closely related living land mammal? Perhaps obviously, it is a species which spends much time in the water – the hippopotamus.

As with all of these pages, as we create pages for each individual species, they will be linked to the photo below.

So the baleen whales are split into three families, these are not large as there are only 16 species of baleen whales in the world. At the current time, there are roughly 1.1 million baleen whales in the worlds oceans

Below is a family tree of the group

 

Baleen Whales

Baleenideae – the rhight whales

 

The first  living split is Baleenidae, this family is not huge. The north atlantic and north pacific are closest related, these species are closely related to the Southern pacific right whales. Their name is unfortunate – it is called right whale for 3 reasons, it swims slowly, floats when dead and carries a large amount of oil. This lead to all these species being hunted close to extinction.

North Atlantic right whale
North pacific right whale
Southern right whale
Bowhead whale

The other family is called Balaenopteroidea. Here species peel off slowly. I will list them in the order that they split.

The first split is the minke whale – of which there are 2 species, the common and southern minke whale, with the grey whale being the next most similar.

Brydes whale
Antarctic (Southern) Minke Whale
Grey whale and calf by NOAA Fisheries West Coast
Common minke whale
Sei whale mother and calf Christin Khan NOAA

The next are the humpback whale and the fin whale followed by the Blue whale.

Underwater humpback whale jd forester
fin whale by Amila Tennakoon
Blue whale, taken by Australian Antarctic program

The last group of whales are from a group called the Brydes whales complex

Brydes whale
Edens whale
Omuras whale
Rice whale
Sei whale mother and calf Christin Khan NOAA

This completes the list of baleen whales. The other branch of the Cetaceans is known as the toothed whales

Toothed Whale

.I am going to look at them in 3 groups, though the third is not particularly closely related to each other

  • Delphinoidea: This includes
    • Monodontidaes – Belugas and narwhals
    • Phocoenidae – The family of Porpoises (7 species) such as harbour porpoises and Vanquita

 

bermeister porpoises
dalls porpoise Susan E Adams
Harbour Porpoise
Indo pacific (or east Asian) finless porpoise
Spectacled porpoise
Vaquita (Paula Olson NOAA)
Narrow Ridged finless porpoise (Yangtze finless porpoise by huangdan2060)
    • Delphininidae – these are the oceanic dolphins – 37 species split into several subfamilies which we will deal with one by one.
Subfamily Delphininae – 15 species

Subfamily  Globcephalinae 11 species

Australian snubfin dolphin
False killerwhale by Adam U
Long-finned pilot whale nu Gailhampshire
Rough toothed dolphin
Melon-headed Dolphin by Cyril di Bisceglie
Pygmy killer whales (Feresa attenuata) off of Guam
Irrawaddy Dophin
Short-finned pilot whale by Martina Nolte
Risso's dolphin by Citron

Subfamily incerta sedis (latin for “of uncertain placement” )6 species

Atlantic White-sided Dolphin
Dusky dolphin by AllenMoC
Hourglass dolphin by Lomvi2
Pacific white sided dolphin by NMFS southwest fisheries science center
Peales dolphin by fDrummondH
White beaked dolphin by Kees Camphuysen

Subfamily Lissodelphininae 6 sppecies

Black dolphins by Bobbyandck
Commerson's dolphin by Tonina1
Haviside dolphin by Joachim Huber
Hector dolphin by Avenue
Northern right whale dolphin credit NOAA NMFS
Southern right whale dolphin

Subfamily Orcininae

Orca by Robert Pittman NOAA
  • Inioidea : This includes 3 groups
    • Iniidae (only 1 of 5 genus remains -Inea (4 species: Araguaian river dolphin, Bolivian river dolphin  and Orinoco dolphin)
Amazon river dolphin by Oceancetaceen sometimes known as the Orinoco
Araguaian river dolphin by Rio Cicica
Bolivian river dolphin by Ramon and Suzanne Vargas
    • Lipotidae: which contains only one species: the Baiji or Chinese river dolphin
  • Pontoporiidae: which contains one species 
La plata dolpin

The next family is the beaked whales. There are 24 species, of which only 3-4 have been well studied. This is because they spend much of their time deep in the sea, it appears that each species does not have many members and they are incredibly reclusive in their habits.

One might ask how an air breathing animal can spend so much of its time deep in the ocean? Well the Curved beaked whale has had a dive timed at 138 minutes. More incredible, they only need around 2 minutes to catch their breathe before sinking back into the depths. This means that if required, they can spend just 20 minutes out of 24 hours at the surface – an incredible stunt.

There appear to be a great number of species that are extinct – these we will not list, but will mention each subfamily in passing.

Incertae sedis contains 5 extinct genus, Basal forms include 13 extinct genus

Subfamily Berardiinae contains 3 genus, 2 of which are extinct, but the third contains 3 living species (and one dead) .  

Genus Beradius

 

Arnoux's beaked whale
Baird beaked whale
Sato beaked whale

Next we cover the Bottlenose whales

Northern                                                                                                                     Southern and                                                        Tropical

northern bottlenose whale
Southern bottlenose whale
Tropical bottlenose whale

Subfamily Ziphiinae  contains 5 genus, 3 are extinct, but two have just one species in each

Genus Tasmacetus: Shepherds beaked whale Genus Ziphius: Cuviers beaked whale

Click on the image to see it in full

Shepherds beaked whale
Cuvier's beaked whale

The most populous genus Mesoplodon – mesoplodont whales

As you can see, many of the pictures are of dead whales, or skulls or diagrams, or even just text. This is because sightings of many species are so rare that they have never had a photo taken

Andrews' beaked whale
Blainville's beaked whale
deraniyagala beaked whlae
Gervais's beaked whale
Ginkgo-toothed beaked whale
grey beaked whale
Hector's beaked whale
Hubbs' beaked whale
Perrin's beaked whale
Pygmy beaked whale
Ramari's beaked whale
Sowerby's beaked whale
Spade-toothed whale
Strap-toothed whale
True's beaked whale
Stejners beaked whales

As you can see from the whale family tree, the sperm whales are separate from the rest. However, they are toothed whales so belong in this section of the page.

pygmy sperm whale
Sperm-whale-by-Gabriel-Barathieu

African wolf

African Wolf : Although only formerly identified by mondern science in 2017, Aristotle recognized the African wolf in his time
African Wolf : Although only formerly identified by mondern science in 2017, Aristotle recognized the African wolf in his time

African Wolf

Perhaps one of the more interesting announcements from wildlife study in the last decade was the discovery of a wolf living under everyones nose in Africa. It is a little understandable, as it does look quite like a jackal, and certainly different to a European wolf. Having said this, it is still a significant oversight. 

It was initially described as the African Wolf back in 1832. Indeed, Aristotle talked of wolves living in Egypt in his time, however, it was not until 2017 when a second modern study was done on it, and it was definitively recognized as a species. The problem is that, despite this huge range there is no idea how many African wolves there are in the wild. Obviously with this huge range, it is not unreasonable to suggest that they are locally extinct in areas – there are a number of subspecies that have been tentatively suggested, however until true assessments are made, this seems more than we need.

It should be noted, that it is not surprising that the African wolf was overlooked for so long, as it has got smaller over its time in Africa, to the extent that it is very hard to tell the difference between tha African golden wolf, and the golden jackal.

There has been little study of this species, and it is unclear exactly how much range that it has. Hopefully, this will happen in time, but it is clear that the big problem is telling the difference between golden jackals and golden wolves. 

African wolf range

There are a number of subspecies of the African wolf (quite quick, given it was not redeclared as a species 6 years ago. They are classed as a least concern. While not all sub-species have a clear estimate of the current population, genetic analysis suggests that the historic population was not smaller than 80,000 females.

  • Algerian wolf – range Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia -A dark-coloured subspecies, with a tail marked with three dusky rings. It is similar in size to the red fox
  • Senegalese wolf – Senegal – Similar to the Egyptian wolf, but smaller and more lightly built, with paler fur and a sharper muzzle.
  • Serengeti wolf – Kenya, northern Tanzania – Smaller and lighter-coloured than the northern forms. The wild population is 1500-2000
  • Egyptian wolf – Egypt, Algeria, Mali, Ethiopian Highlands, and Senegal – A large, stoutly built subspecies with proportionately short ears and presenting a very gray wolf-like phenotype, standing 40.6 cm in shoulder height and 127 cm in body length. The upper parts are yellowish-gray tinged with black, while the muzzle, the ears and the outer surfaces of the limbs are reddish-yellow. The fur around the mouth is white.
  • Somali wolf – Somalia and the coast of Ethiopia and Eritrea – A dwarf subspecies measuring only 12 inches in shoulder height, it is generally of a grayish-yellow color, mingled with only a small proportion of black. The muzzle and legs are more decidedly yellow, and the underparts are white.
  • Variegated wolf – Sudan and Somalia – A small subspecies standing 38 cm (15 in) at the shoulder, and measuring 102 cm (40 in) in length. The fur is generally pale stone-buff, with blotches of black.

We are incredibly eager to work with any guides who encounter the African wolf in their work, and list your services here. Please get in touch through the list your wild place option at the top of the page.

Lynx (Iberian)

Lynx (Iberian)

Iberian lynx ( Lynx pardinus ) lying down on a rock in Spain

Iberian Lynx: Once found throughout the Iberian Peninsular as well as much of France: The Iberian lynx population fell to just 94 cats in two populations (23 years ago). Through intensive work the population has returned to 1668 as of May in 2023. This is currently restricted to just the south and west of the Iberian peninsular, but is likely to slowly expand its range North and East.

It is fantastic to see the Iberian Lynx returning to places that it was found in the past, however, what is clear is that as the human race, our current understanding of science allows a great deal of power, and it is scary to think that the introduction of an illness to kill rabbits could come so close to exterminating all Iberian Lynx.

 

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