The “alarming” rate at which species are being lost could have a severe effect on humanity, conservationists warned today. Targets set eight years ago by governments to reduce biodiversity loss by 2010 have not been met, experts confirmed at a UN meeting in Nairobi, Kenya.

The third Global Biodiversity Outlook report said loss of wildlife and habitats could harm food sources and industry, and exacerbate climate change through rising emissions.

Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said: “Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world: the truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of 6 billion [people], heading to over 9 billion by 2050. Business as usual is no longer an option if we are to avoid irreversible damage to the life-support systems of our planet.”

Read the rest in Guardian

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Satellite view

Photo of the dam

A Canadian ecologist has discovered the world’s largest beaver dam in a remote area of northern Alberta, an animal-made structure so large it is visible from space.

Researcher Jean Thie said Wednesday he used satellite imagery and Google Earth software to locate the dam, which is about 850 metres (2,800 feet) long on the southern edge of Wood Buffalo National Park.

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Lizard with double penis, Varanus Bitatawa

The secretive but brightly-coloured beast, a monitor lizard, is a close cousin of the Komodo Dragon of Indonesia. Unlike the fearsome Dragon, it is not a carnivore, nor does it feast on rotting meat. Instead, it is entirely peaceable and tucks into fruit.

Read the rest in The Telegraph

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Source: BBC

With their awkward, lumbering gait, elephants moving at high speed are not the most graceful of animals – but are they walking or running?

Now scientists believe they have an answer: new research confirms that they do both – at the same time.

By observing elephants moving across a hi-tech track, the team found the hefty creatures run with their front legs but walk with their back legs.

Read the rest on BBC News

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBj4Ny19vfQ

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Neoproterozoic Doushantuo Formation

Evidence for life on Earth stretches back billions of years, with simple single-celled organisms like bacteria dominating the record. When multi-celled animal life appeared on the planet after 3 billion years of single cell organisms, animals diversified rapidly.Conventional wisdom has it that animal evolution began in the ocean, with animal life adapting much later in Earth history to terrestrial environments.

Now a UC Riverside-led team of researchers studying ancient rock samples in South China has found that the first animal fossils in the paleontological record are preserved in ancient lake deposits, not marine sediments as commonly assumed.

…

“We know that life in the oceans is very different from life in lakes, and, at least in the modern world, the oceans are far more stable and consistent environments compared to lakes which tend to be short-lived features relative to, say, rates of evolution,” said Martin Kennedy, a professor of geology in the Department of Earth Sciences who participated in the research. “Thus it is surprising that the first evidence of animals we find is associated with lakes, a far more variable environment than the ocean.”

Read the rest on Science Daily

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Karen McComb, a researcher from the University of Sussex, was inspired by her own cat, Pepo, who continually woke her up in the mornings with an “insistent and rather annoying” purr that reliably motivated her to get up and feed him.

Unlike regular, low frequency purring, further study revealed that this “solicitation purr” contained an embedded sound with a similar frequency to a baby’s cry; a sound that humans have an inherent bias to respond to.

She and her colleagues played recordings of these purrs to human volunteers, who found them to be “more urgent and harder to ignore” than regular purring. Cats have a vocal way of manipulating their owners into doing their bidding, according to a study.

Cat's purr manipulates owners

Source: How your cat’s purr manipulates you, BBC News, July 13 2009

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The Hawaii Biological Survey compiles information on all of these species.

Endangered species capital of the world - Hawaii

Source: The Hawaii Biological Survey

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Goliath Frog, the World's Biggest

The biggest kind of frog is the Goliath frog (Conraua goliath). It can grow up to 13 inches (33 cm) in length from snout to vent, and weighs up to 8 lb (3 kg). This animal has a relatively small habitat range, mainly in West Africa (near Gabon). Its numbers are dwindling due to habitat destruction, its collection for consumption as food and its collection for the pet trade.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrXeD2aiSU4

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