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New River Otter for Denver Zoo

The Denver Zoo in Colorado has a new addition: a two-year-old North American river otter named Ahanu; a new friend for the zoo’s long-time otter named Otto.  The pair are now part of the Northern Shores exhibit and they’re getting along “swimmingly,” the zoo said in a media release.
Ahanu was born at California’s Oakland Zoo in February 2011 and arrived in Denver last month.  North American river otters in zoos live on average to the age of 20, the zoo said.  Ahanu’s arrival has put some spring in Otto’s steps. Otto, 15, lost his long-time mate Ariel in October 2012 when the 19-year-old otter died.

Otters tend to be playful, the release said, as a way to strengthen social bonds, practice hunting techniques and scent mark territories.  River otters are the most amphibious members of the weasel family and are physically well adapted for life in the water, the zoo said. They can swim at an average speed of seven miles per hour and stay underwater for up to eight minutes.

 

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_23258755/new-river-otter-lands-at-denver-zoo

 

Happy Ottersday :-)

Geladas Show Striking Similarities with Human Speech

Friendly lip-smacking, made by a large African monkey called a gelada show striking similarities with human speech, say scientists from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, US, published today in the journal Current Biology.

Geladas, close cousins of the baboon that only live in the remote mountains of Ethiopia, produce ‘unnerving’ sounds that can easily be mistaken for human voices.

The gelada is also known as the "bleeding heart baboon"

They believe the evidence points to lip-smacking- a friendly behavior displayed by many primates- being an evolutionary step towards speech.

“Our finding provides support for the lip-smacking origins of speech because it shows that this evolutionary pathway is plausible,” said lead scientist Prof Thore Bergman, “it demonstrates that non-human primates can vocalize while lip-smacking to produce speech-like sounds.”

Prof Bergman became fascinated by the geladas’ sounds while observing the monkeys in 2006.

“I would find myself frequently looking over my shoulder to see who was talking to me, but it was just the geladas.  It was unnerving to have primate vocalizations sound so much like human voices,” he said.

The new research showed that the rhythm of gelada lip-smacking closely mirrored the gaps between syllables in many human languages.  Some other primates such as apes and monkeys produce complex sounds, but Bergman says they don’t have the speech-like rhythm that geladas have.

I had never even heard of a gelada until today.  How fascinating.

First Otter Spotted in Boulder in 100 Years

A motion-activated wildlife surveillance camera has captured the first documented sighting of a North American river otter in Boulder, Colorado, in about a hundred years.

“I was extremely surprised,” said Christian Nunes, a wildlife ecology technician for Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks. “It’s a species that is quite rare in Colorado.”

 

The North American river otter  is classified as “endangered” by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, but that could soon change in the otters’ favor.   They’re planning the first state survey of river otters since 2002 on the Western Slope later this year.  Depending on the results, Odell said, the state could further upgrade the animals’ status to only “threatened”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nunes said the camera was set up Feb. 1 along Boulder Creek, east of the city’s developed core, near a beaver lodge.  The camera was equipped with an infrared flash, which emits a blinking red light, rather than a conventional flash effect.

“It actually sat in front of the camera for several more minutes, sitting there munching on the fishtail,” Nunes said. “Kinda cute.”

 

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_22928891/boulder-confirms-first-northern-river-otter-sighting-century

 

 

 

Happy Ottersday ^_^

Meet the Peruvian Night Monkey

The Peruvian night monkey (Aotus miconax) is one of the world’s least known primates, having never been studied in the wild; until now. Found only in the cloud forests of northern Peru, a group of scientists with Neotropical Primate Conservation and the National University of Mayor San Marcos have spent 12 months following a single group of this enigmatic monkey species in a small forest patch. The results of their research, published in mongabay.com’s open access journal, Tropical Conservation Science, shows that protecting forests, even small forest fragments, is vital to the species’ survival.

The researchers found that the species is capable of surviving in highly-fragmented forests, which is helpful to the monkeys living in agricultural and populated regions of Peru.  A studied family of six occupied a single forest fragment only three-and-a-half acres large.  There are currently eleven night monkey species known in South America, which make up the Aotus genus.  They are the world’s only truly nocturnal monkeys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Monkday :-)

Fantastic News for Asian Sharks

Three types of critically endangered sharks have been given added protection at the Cites (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) meeting in Bangkok, Thailand yesterday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The convention body voted by a two-thirds majority to upgrade these sharks’ status: the oceanic whitetip, three varieties of hammerheads and the porbeagle; species all said to be seriously threatened by overfishing in the waters surrounding East Asia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shark supporters have been attempting to get Cites to protect these species since 1994, but there had long been strong opposition to the move from China and Japan.  Experts say the critical factor has been a shift in South American nations, who’ve come to understand that sharks are more valuable alive than dead, in terms of ecological balance and tourism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Campaigners hailed the move as historic and said the vote represented a major breakthrough for marine conservation.  As the votes went on there were smatterings of applause in the hall and some high-fives among campaigners.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21741648

Hero Rabbit Chases Away Burglar

A petrified burglar fled a family home in England in the middle of the night after coming face-to-face with their giant pet rabbit.

Kimberley May, her fiancée Martin, and their three-year-old daughter Olivia were all sound asleep when the thief broke into their house.  As the raider rifled through cupboards, the noise woke up Toby, the family’s British Giant bunny in his kitchen cage.  The 4.5 kg, two-foot long pet began stomping so loudly on the floor that the intruder was caught on the hop and left.

Kimberley said, “We went to bed on Wednesday at about 10pm. In the early hours of the morning Toby our rabbit did five loud thumps.  I sort of half woke up then realized he’d stopped and went back to sleep. When I went downstairs every single cupboard and drawer were open, there were bits out everywhere, then we started noticing things were missing and we phoned the police.  We think that when the rabbit thumped it scared the burglar off and they left all the stuff they were going to take.  The rabbit was just traumatized in his cage, shaking. He’s usually really friendly but he tried to go for the policeman.”

The couple got their prized pet from an animal adoption center who took him in an unwanted pet.  According to the family, he’s playful, really friendly, and he doesn’t mind the three-year-old crawling all over him.  He’s like a small dog.  He has the run of the house and at night he goes in a dog’s crate: a Labrador-sized one at that.  When he thumps on the floor, it’s incredibly loud, you can hear it echoing around the house.

On the night of the burglary Toby stomped his five-inch long feet so loudly on the plastic floor of his crate that he managed to scare away the burglar.

“Toby has done the job of a guard dog,” said Kimberley, “we’re so proud of him we’ve rewarded him with a new tunnel to play with.  It’s a cat’s tunnel obviously because he needs a big one.”

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9873002/Giant-rabbit-scares-burglar-out-of-family-home.html

 

Happy Bunday ^-^

The Great Whale Count

An estimated 1,126 humpback whales were observed in the waters surrounding Maui during the Great Whale Count held over the weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The survey, conducted by the Pacific Whale Foundation, utilized more than one hundred volunteers who gathered data on the wintering whales from twelve locations across Maui.

Pacific Whale Foundation’s founder and Executive Director Greg Kaufman said, “Typically, at the peak of the season, we see mothers and calves inshore, and competition pods beginning to move inshore as well. I think the whales are still arriving to Maui from the south, from the direction of the Big Island, and predict we’ll be seeing greater amounts of nearshore activity in the weeks to come.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More important, authorities say, is the overall upward trend in the number of whales sighted since 1995. Officials estimate that anywhere between 12,000 to 14,000 humpbacks make the trek to Hawaii each year.

“Some sites experienced gusty trade winds, which kicked up the sea and made it challenging to locate whales. Nonetheless, the count was a success,” reported Dr. Emmanuelle Martinez, senior researcher at Pacific Whale Foundation.

Happy Humpday :-)

 

http://mauinow.com/2013/02/25/maui-whale-count-tallies-1126-humpbacks/