Though the scenery has changed, pigeons’ nesting habits have not. In cities, even though we see pigeons hopping around the sidewalk, they tend to lay their eggs in nests built against the trusses of huge bridges and the sides of tall buildings. That’s where the baby pigeons are.

The birds tend to spoil their young. They feed them almost to maturity. By the time fledging pigeons, at about six weeks old, take flight and join the flock in city parks and plazas, they’re almost adult-sized and largely indistinguishable from the rest of their kind.

To spot a young pigeon, look for strands of down poking through feathers. Look for narrower heads. Lastly, look for shy birds. It takes time for pigeons to develop their boldness around humans. Younger birds will be more reticent.

source

A crime in a zoo’s koala cage would probably confound the efforts of even the best detectives. Why? Because koalas, doll-sized marsupials that climb trees with babies on their backs, have fingerprints that are almost identical to human ones. Not even careful analysis under a microscope can easily distinguish the loopy, whirling ridges on koalas’ fingers from our own.
What is Quantum Jumping?www.QuantumJumping.com
Discover Why Thousands of People are “Jumping” to Change Their Life
10 Stocks to Hold Foreverwww.StreetAuthority.com
Buy them, forget about them, and never sell them.
Gold Confiscation RiskGoldline.com/Confiscation
Learn why the US confiscated gold in 1933 & how to protect yourself
Ads by Google

Koalas aren’t the only non-humans with fingerprints: Close human relatives such as chimps and gorillas have them as well. The remarkable thing about koala prints is that they seem to have evolved independently. On the evolutionary tree of life, primates and modern koalas’ marsupial ancestors branched apart 70 million years ago. Scientists think the koala’s fingertip features developed much more recently in its evolutionary history, because most of its close relatives (such as wombats and kangaroos) lack them.

[Top row: Standard ink fingerprints of an adult male koala (left) and adult male human (right). Bottom row: Scanning electron microscope images of epidermis covering fingertips of the same koala (left) and the same human (right). Credit: Macie Hennenberg, et al. and naturalSCIENCE.]

Top row: Standard ink fingerprints of an adult male koala (left) and adult male human (right). Bottom row: Scanning electron microscope images of epidermis covering fingertips of the same koala (left) and the same human (right). Credit: Macie Hennenberg, et al. and naturalSCIENCE.

For centuries, anatomists have intensely debated the purpose of fingerprints. According to the team of anatomists at the University of Adelaide in Australia who discovered koala fingerprints in 1996, koala prints may help explain the features’ purpose. The clue lies in our shared way of grasping.

“Koalas … feed by climbing vertically onto the smaller branches of eucalyptus trees, reaching out, grasping handfuls of leaves and bringing them to the mouth,” the researchers wrote in their landmark paper. “Therefore the origin of dermatoglyphes [fingerprints] is best explained as the biomechanical adaptation to grasping, which produces multidirectional mechanical influences on the skin. These forces must be precisely felt for fine control of movement and static pressures and hence require orderly organization of the skin surface.”

Humans and chimps grasp; koalas grasp — to do so, it helps to have fingerprints.

source

Lloyd Skinner was pulled under the surf and dragged out to sea by the shark, believed to be a great white, off Fish Hoek beach in Cape Town. His diving goggles and a dark patch of blood were all that remained in the water.

“Holy shit. We just saw a gigantic shark eat what looked like a person in front of our house,” witness Gregg Coppen posted on Twitter. “That shark was huge. Like dinosaur huge.”

The shocking attack yesterday afternoon came after an increase in recent shark sightings and led to calls for an electronic warning system to alert swimmers.

Skinner, 37, a Zimbabwean who lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was standing chest-deep 100 metres from the shore and adjusting his goggles when the shark struck. It was seen approaching him twice before he disappeared in a flurry of thrashing. Cape Town’s disaster management services had issued a warning hours earlier that sharks had been spotted in the water, but the shark flag was not flying.

Witnesses described the terrifying scene. The shark was “longer than a minibus”, Coppen told the Cape Times newspaper.

He said: “It was this giant shadow heading to something colourful. Then it sort of came out the water and took this colourful lump and went off with it. You could see its whole jaw wrap around the thing which turned out to be a person.”

British visitor Phyllis McCartain told the same paper: “We saw the shark come back twice. It had the man’s body in its mouth, and his arm was in the air. Then the sea was full of blood.”

Kyle Johnston said: “We were swimming only about 15 metres away from the guy. We were at about chest depth and he was a little deeper. We looked at the walkway and saw people waving towels at us, then we looked further out to sea and saw what looked like blood, and a man’s leg come up.”

His friend Dane Leo added: “I was floating and I thought the people waving at us were joking, but then I looked back and saw a fin and blood.”

Kathy Geldenhuys was sitting on a nearby bench. She recalled: “My husband had just pointed out how far the man was swimming from the other people. He asked what would happen if he was attacked by a shark, because he was so far away. The words were hardly cold when the shark attacked that man. The shark attacked twice; it turned and attacked the man again; I just saw the blood on the water.”

Geldenhuys added: “Only when it was attacking did I see the fin, but then I could see the whole body under the water. It was a very big shark … It came from below and grabbed the man. Part of his body was gone.”

Skinner was reportedly on holiday in Cape Town for the month to attend the wedding of his partner’s daughter. His partner was at the beach with him.

Four rescue boats and a helicopter searched in vain for Skinner yesterday and resumed the hunt today. Ian Klopper, a spokesman for the National Sea Rescue Institute, said: “You can rule out any chance of finding him alive. Whether we find body parts, it’s very unlikely. We think the shark took everything.”

Shark scientist Alison Kock said it was probably a great white, the most commonly spotted shark in the area. “More than 70% of recorded great white attacks on humans result in just the shark biting and then leaving,” she said. “There is that 30% where the shark behaves like it did in this case, where it came back and killed the person.” Kock added there had been an increase in shark sightings in recent weeks.

After a deadly attack at Fish Hoek six years ago, shark spotters were posted on mountain slopes to look for sharks close to popular swimming spots. The spotters use radios to order that a loud alarm be sounded so people can move to safety.

This attack has reportedly prompted discussions about introducing an electronic detection system. Klopper said he was unaware of details, but past speculation has included sonar buoys able to identify sharks and transmit a warning signal. Critics say this would be impractical.

Beaches along Cape Town’s False Bay coastline were closed today, but several bathers ignored the warning flags and ventured into shallow waters. Lifeguards asked them to get out and the shark alarm sounded several times.

(June 18) – A volunteer at a Florida swamp sanctuary got an incredibly lucky shot on Tuesday: he filmed the first clear video of a Florida panther in the wild. Dick Brewer, a retired school teacher, began his day at the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary walking the boardwalk with a friend and fellow volunteer.
Brewer spotted what he first thought was a deer on the boardwalk, but soon realized there was a rare Florida panther standing 20 yards from him. He took out his camera and immediately began filming, the St. Petersburg Times reported.

Brewer, 64, has volunteered at the Naples, Fla., sanctuary for 11 years and has caught everything from a black bear and her cubs to some amorous otters on his ever-present video camera. But according to the Times, the odds of seeing a Florida panther are on par with winning the lottery.
Only about 100 Florida panthers survive today, making them one of the rarest animals on Earth. Mark Lotz, a panther specialist with the Florida Wildlife Commission, believes the panther is an adult 100-pound female, Brewer wrote in an e-mail to AOL News.
Brewer and his friend watched and filmed the panther for 44 seconds before it left the boardwalk and headed off into the forest. Brewer also captured a photo of the animal on his digital camera, which he had purchased just the day before.

For more on the story, read the St. Petersburg Times.

But it reaches its zenith with “I Love You, Man,” starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel as completely different guys who form an unlikely friendship.

Rudd’s Peter Klaven, a sensitive Los Angeles real estate agent who’s about to get married, realizes he has no male pals when it’s time to choose a best man. He’d rather make root beer floats for his fiancee Zooey (the lovely Rashida Jones) and her girlfriends or cuddle with her on the couch for Sunday-night HBO viewing.

Segel’s Sydney Fife enters his life as the most charming force of nature, inspiring Peter to jam along to Rush tunes and tap into his inner rage. He lives in a ramshackle Venice bungalow and functions by his own set of rules, which includes wooing divorcees at open houses and refusing to pick up after his puggle because he thinks dog feces are a healthy part of the environment. Segel gives the character a well-intentioned puppy-doggishness of his own, though, which makes him unexpectedly likable.

The biologist also said the chimp’s owner violated state law, and ended her note with the prophetic warning: “I would like to express the urgency of addressing this issue. It is an accident waiting to happen.”

The two-page document was written on Oct. 28, 2008 by an unnamed Department of Environmental Protection biologist and given to senior staff at the agency’s Bureau of Natural Resources.

It was discovered in an ongoing internal agency review prompted by the mauling incident.

“The animal has reached adult maturity, is very large, and tremendously strong,” the memo says. “I am concerned that if he feels threatened or if someone enters his territory, he could seriously hurt someone.”

The biologist said it was unclear whether the chimp’s enclosure was strong enough to secure the animal named Travis, owned by Sandra Herold of Stamford and kept at her home.

Neither Herold nor her attorney immediately returned telephone messages seeking comment Friday evening.

Charla Nash was critically injured Feb. 16 when she was attacked by the 200-pound chimp. Nash’s attorneys say the 55-year-old woman lost her hands, nose, lips and eyelids and may be blind and suffering brain damage after the attack. She is being treated at the Cleveland Clinic.

Earlier this week, Nash’s family filed a lawsuit against Herold accusing her of negligence. The suit seeks $50 million in damages.

Dennis Schain, a DEP spokesman, said officials reviewed the memo, but decided it did not present any new, specific information about any violent incidents involving the chimp.

The memo does, however, mention how the chimpanzee had escaped from Herold’s car and led police on a chase for hours in downtown Stamford in 2003.

“In hindsight, we certainly wish we acted more aggressively,” Schain said Friday. “We just felt hamstrung by the ambiguity in the law and the difficulty of pursuing various options.”

A bill before the General Assembly, which would ban the possession of potentially dangerous animals including chimpanzees and other primates, cleared the Environment Committee on a 28-2 vote on Friday. It awaits further action in the House of Representatives.

The biologist’s memo was included in a packet of information sent to legislative leaders, urging them to pass the bill.

In the memo, the biologist said Herold’s possession of the chimpanzee clearly violated an existing law that prohibits someone from owning a primate that weighs more than 50 pounds at maturity.

The biologist suggested sending a letter to Herold and informing her of the violation and giving her options on how to comply with state law.

The biologist also raised the possibilities of allowing Herold to keep the animal, but in a stronger enclosure; issuing Herold a permit, which the biologist admitted would be “irresponsible”; giving Herold the choice to relocate Travis; and contacting local police to see if a chimp is permitted by local zoning laws.

The memo also suggested having Travis tranquilized and removed from the home, but the biologist said, “This would be extremely traumatic for everyone involved and riddled with problems.”

Ultimately, officials “chose not to enter into what we believed would be a battle to take custody of a local celebrity,” DEP Commissioner Gina McCarthy said in a letter to legislators.

McCarthy said the memo underscores the need for a clear, new law that would forbid ownership of potentially dangerous animals as pets and impose stiff penalties for those possessing them.