10. California Condor Pulls Back from Brink
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| California Condor Pulls Back from Brink |
Some of the best animal news in recent years has been about recovery from the brink of extinction.
On Oct. 31, 2009, conservationists had every right to celebrate. A
survey of California condors determined that 351 of the critically
endangered birds were alive and well, with 180 living in the wild.
Those might seem like small numbers, but the California condor “has made an astonishing comeback,” San Diego Zoo spokesperson Yadira Galindo told Discovery News.
The bird came about as close to extinction as a species can get. In
1982, just 23 of the large black-and-white vultures were left in the
wild. All were captured and brought to the San Diego Wild Animal Park
and the Los Angeles Zoo for protection and breeding in captivity.
The plan worked.
In fact, Galindo said more zoos are now being added to the breeding program, in order to accommodate the rising captive California condor population.
9. Giant Pandas Successfully Bred in Captivity
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| Giant Pandas Successfully Bred in Captivity |
Giant pandas remain an endangered species, with only around 1,500 living in the wild. But captive breeding programs for these rare mammals experienced tremendous success over the past decade.
Most noteworthy outside of China is the program at the San Diego Zoo, where five cubs have been born at the zoo since 1999.
Zoo Atlanta also celebrated two giant panda births during this time,
while the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. welcomed bouncing baby boy Tai Shan into the world during the summer of 2005.
Yadira Galindo at the San Diego Zoo told Discovery News she thinks the future looks bright for breeding captive giant pandas because researchers learn more each year about the process.
A promising sign is that at least one of the female giant pandas born at the San Diego Zoo has since given birth to seven cubs.
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| Dolphins Name Themselves |
In 2006, researchers studying bottlenose dolphins at Sarasota Bay, Fla., determined that dolphins created signature whistles for themselves that are like human names.
Project leader Laela Sayigh of the University of North Carolina Wilmington speculated that other information, such as the age, sex and feelings of the dolphin, may be encoded into each unique whistle.
Experts who spend time with dolphins suspect that they converse with each other, and now wonder what other things they might name.
Naming is just one indicator that dolphins and other animals have acute self-awareness. Also in 2006,
7. Non-Human Primates Invent New, Improved Tools
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| Non-Human Primates Invent New, Improved Tools Non-human primates aren’t just inventing tools. They are crafting new and improved versions of them. Earlier research determined that chimpanzees use long sticks to probe termite nests. In March 2009, a chimp population was found in the Republic of Congo that takes the basic design a step further. After selecting just the right stem and de-leafing it, the Congo chimpanzees modify “the end into a 'paint brush' tip by pulling the stem through their teeth,” project leader Josep Call told Discovery News. The chimps then use the tools like forks to retrieve even more insects. In another example, a population of wild spider monkeys in northeastern Costa Rica has invented a medicated body scratcher. 6. First Pet Cloned  In 2001, the world's first pet was cloned, a female kitten named “CC,” short for “Carbon Copy.” The brown tabby appears to be doing well. In 2006, she gave birth to three kittens that were fathered naturally. Cloning dogs proved to be more complex and controversial. After much trial and error, including 123 surrogate dog mothers, in 2005 a team of researchers at Seoul National University’s College of Veterinary Medicine produced "Snuppy," the world’s first cloned canine. The team behind Snuppy continues to churn out dog clones -- most recently the world’s first cloned detection dogs, used to sniff out explosives, drugs and other materials. While Snuppy lives on, and the quest for other cloned pets and animals continues, the idea lost some of its sheen in 2003, when Dolly the cloned sheep died at the age of six. Finn Dorset sheep like Dolly have a life expectancy of about 12 years, but scientists claim the lung disease and arthritis that spelled Dolly’s doom were not connected to cloning. 5. World’s Fastest Evolving Animal Found  One of the world’s most laid-back animals, the tuatara, is the fastest-known evolving creature on Earth. The lizard-like reptile's DNA changes naturally at a rate faster than in any other animal: 1.56 changes per nucleotide (DNA subunit) every million years. The 2008 finding is surprising, since the tuatara hasn't changed much physically since its ancestors hung out with dinosaurs 225 million years ago. Almost everything about the foot-long reptile, a New Zealand native, is slow and easy, according to co-author David Lambert of the Allan Wilson Center for Molecular Ecology and Evolution. He told Discovery News that "they grow slowly, reproduce slowly and have a very slow metabolism" when "in fact, at the DNA level, they evolve extremely quickly." Lambert now believes the rate of an organism's molecular evolution and the way it changes, or doesn't, over time are not necessarily connected. 4. Common Ancestor for All Animals a Sperm-Like Critter  In early 2009, every animal on Earth, including all humans, received a new addition to their family tree. This sperm-looking creature, called monosiga, is the closest living representative of the ancestor for all animals. Monosiga is a one-celled organism that belongs to a group called the choanoflagellates. Rob DeSalle, an American Museum of Natural History curator, and his colleagues compiled data from multiple gene sequences from many sources to find many thousands of shared traits that help biologists draw lines between species on the tree of life. "It is clear that the choanoflagellates -- living representative is monosiga -- are the best candidate for the nearest relative of animals," DeSalle told Discovery News. "So a choanoflagellate-like organism could be looked at as a probable common ancestor for animals." 3. Earliest Evidence for Animal Life Discovered  In February 2009, the oldest evidence for life in the fossil record was found: sponges that likely lived over 600 million years ago. “Our findings suggest that the evolution of multicellular animals began earlier than has been thought,” said study co-author Gordon Love from MIT, when the discovery was announced. “Moreover, sponges live on the seafloor, growing initially in shallow waters and spreading, over time, into deeper waters, implying the existence of oceanic environments which contained dissolved oxygen near the shallow seafloor around 635 million years ago." He and his colleagues believe that glacial activity during the Neoproterozoic era (1000-542 million years ago) probably caused a major reorganization of marine ecosystems, perhaps by altering ocean chemistry. This restructuring, in turn, “paved the way for the evolution of animal feeders living on the seafloor,” Love said. It was some 100 million years after the sponges’ existence when the fossil record exploded with animal life, resulting in a period known as the Cambrian explosion. 2. 'Lost World' of New Animals Found  A number of countries offered up new species this decade. In 2007, Bruce Beehler of Conservation International hit the animal jackpot in Indonesia with at least 20 new species of frogs, a new bird called the wattled smoky honeyeater, and at least two new mammals. The mammals could have made headlines in their own right, as they included one of the world’s smallest marsupials, a Cercartetus pygmy possum, and a Mallomys giant rat. "The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat," said Kristofer Helgen, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “With no fear of humans, it apparently came into the camp several times during the trip.” Beehler and his team expect to find more frogs and mammals, along with new butterflies and plants, in Indonesia over the years to come. 1. All Fish Species Predicted to 'Collapse' by 2048  Dire predictions about the fate of many animals were made in the past 10 years and continue to challenge conservationists. One headline, which ran in 2006, garnered particular attention: “By 2048, all current fish, seafood species projected to collapse.” Boris Worm of Dalhousie University and his team came to that conclusion after compiling global fisheries catch data from 64 large marine ecosystems. "At this point," Worm said, "29 percent of fish and seafood species have collapsed -- that is their catch has declined by 90 percent. It is a very clear trend, and it is accelerating. We don't have to use models to understand this trend; it is based on all the available data." "The good news is that it is not too late to turn things around," Worm added. Studies of 48 protected areas worldwide reveal improved marine biodiversity. "We see that diversity of species recovered dramatically, and with it the ecosystem's productivity and stability." source: http://news.discovery.com |
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