“The Tiger” by John Vaillant

“The Tiger” by John Vaillant

I heard about this on NPR this morning. “The Tiger” tells the story of a Russian Hunter who shoots and wounds a Amur (or Siberian) Tiger then steals part of it’s kill.

The interesting part is that the tiger tracks down the hunter, waits outside his cabin, and kills him in a seeming act of revenge. It also tells the tale of the game warden/hunter who then had to hunt down the tiger to keep it from killing more humans. Experts of the book and a brief interview with the author can be found on NPR’s website.

Wooly Mammoth went extinct about 1700 BC

Wooly Mammoth went extinct about 1700 BC

Using Radio Carbon Dating (which is interesting in itself) scientists have determined that the last Wooly Mammoths died about 1700 B.C.

They were a dwarfed species that lived on Wrangel Island which is in the Artic Sea in North Eastern Russia. Dwarfism is fairly typical for animals that get trapped on islands, so their size is nothing unexpected and does not make them a separate species. The island is now home to the largest population of Polar Bears in the world, and Arctic Wolves have started living there.

It’s generally thought that the bulk of the species died off 10,000 years ago during the Pleistocene era. The exact cause is unknown, but ironically over hunting by humans tends to be the number one theory, although warming after the last Ice Age certainly played a huge part.

What is really interesting is the range of these animals. Remains have been found in Siberia (given), Alaska (on St. Paul Island where they lived up until 3,750 BC), Spain and as far south in North America as present day Kentucky, where William Clark, of Lewis and Clark,collected some fossils in 1806.

But despite the known extinction dates, rumors of live Woolly Mammoths have persisted up until fairly recent times. There are several stories of lone hunters in Siberia, or Native American tribes in the far North having seen such animals in recent memory. Based on the number of intact carcasses found over the years, 34 in 1929 and now doubled since then, plus rumors of soft tissue being used as an emergency food source by small villages in the winter time, it’s very possible that the 1700 BC date is still incorrect.

As the DNA sequence for a Mammoth is the most complete of any extinct animal, it’s generally thought that it’ll be a trivial task to use that information to clone one. Due to it’s large size and the (relatively) easier task of getting intact DNA samples from Mammoth corpses, it’s believed that if some intact sperm cells can be recovered, an Indian elephant can be impregnated, bringing the Mammoth back to life.

Giant Palouse earthworm

Giant Palouse earthworm

Originally posted at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090711/ap_on_sc/us_giant_palouse_earthworm

The part I’m most interested is the last paragraph. Most worms we see today in the United States were brought over from Europe. This worm is one of the few natives left.

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MOSCOW, Idaho – The giant Palouse earthworm has taken on mythic qualities in this vast agricultural region that stretches from eastern Washington into the Idaho panhandle — its very name evoking the fictional sandworms from “Dune” or those vicious creatures from the movie “Tremors.”
The worm is said to secrete a lily-like smell when handled, spit at predators, and live in burrows 15 feet deep. There have been only a handful of sightings.
But scientists hope to change that this summer with researchers scouring the Palouse region in hopes of finding more of the giant earthworms. Conservationists also want the Obama administration to protect the worm as an endangered species, even though little research has been done on it.
The worm may be elusive, but there’s no doubt it exists, said Jodi Johnson-Maynard, a University of Idaho professor who is leading the search for the worm. To prove it, she pulled out a glass tube containing the preserved remains of a fat, milky-white worm. One of Johnson-Maynard’s graduate students found this specimen in 2005, and it is the only confirmed example of the species.
The worm in the tube is about 6 inches long, well short of the 3 feet that early observers of the worms in the late 1890s described. Documented collections of the species, known locally as GPE, have occurred only in 1978, 1988, 1990 and 2005.
The farmers who work the rich soil of the Palouse — 2 million acres of rolling wheat fields near the Idaho-Washington border south of Spokane — also have had little experience with the worm.
Gary Budd, who manages a grain elevator in Uniontown, said no farmer he knows has talked about seeing the worm. He compared the creature to Elvis.
“He gets spotted once in awhile too,” Budd joked.
Johnson-Maynard and her team of worm hunters are working this summer at a university research farm and using three different methods to try and find a living worm.
One involves just digging a hole and sifting the soil through a strainer, looking for any worms that can be studied.
The second involves old-fashioned chemical warfare, pouring a liquid solution of vinegar and mustard onto the ground, irritating worms until they come to the surface.
The third method is new to this search, using electricity to shock worms to the surface.
“The electro shocker is pretty cool,” said Joanna Blaszczak, a student at Cornell who is spending her summer working to find the worm alongside Shan Xu, a graduate student from Chengdu, China, and support scientist Karl Umiker.
The shocker can deliver up to 480 volts. That makes it dangerous to touch, and it could potentially fry a specimen.
On a recent day, Umiker drove eight 3-foot-long metal rods into the ground in a small circle and connected them to batteries. Then he flipped the switches. The only sound for several minutes was the hum of a cooling fan.
“I’m kind of bummed we haven’t seen anything yet,” Umiker said.
Eventually, a small rust-colored worm dug its way to the surface. It was not a GPE, but it was collected for study anyway.
The search for the giant worm is reminiscent of efforts in Louisiana, Florida and the swamps of eastern Arkansas to find the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker. The large, black-and-white bird was believed to be extinct until a reported sighting five years ago stirred national experts and federal funding to launch a full-blown campaign to verify its existence. Search efforts later dwindled after biologists and volunteers were unable to find the evidence they were looking for.
The GPE was described as common in the Palouse in the 1890s, according to an 1897 article in The American Naturalist by Frank Smith. Smith’s work was based on four samples sent to him by R.W. Doane of Washington State University in nearby Pullman.
Massive agricultural development soon consumed nearly all of the unique Palouse Prairie — a seemingly endless ocean of steep, silty dunes — and appeared to deal a fatal blow to the worm.
They were considered extinct when Idaho graduate student Yaniria Sanchez-de Leon in 2005 stuck a shovel into the ground to collect a soil sample and found the worm that now is in the tube in Johnson-Maynard’s office.
Conservation groups quickly petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the worm as an endangered species, citing as proof the lack of sightings. But the agency said there simply was not enough scientific information to merit a listing.
Conservationists recently filed a second request, saying they had more information. They are also hoping the Obama administration will be more friendly than the Bush administration. The GPE would be the only worm protected as an endangered species.
Doug Zimmer of the Fish and Wildlife Service in Seattle said the agency isn’t ready to comment on the petition.
“It’s always good to see new information and good science on any species,” Zimmer said.
Farmers are keeping a wary eye on the process.
“The concern is whether a listing is going to end up curtailing farming activities,” said Dan Wood of the Washington State Farm Bureau. “I don’t know if people plan to stop all farming for the possibility of a worm being somewhere.”
Most earthworms found in the Northwest originated in Europe, arriving on plants or in soil shipped to the New World. The giant Palouse earthworm is one of the few native species, and has become quite popular with the public.
While it’s tough to come by a live GPE, visitors seem happy to take a picture with a dead one. Johnson-Maynard said she has received calls from tourists who want to come to her office and be photographed with the specimen.
“A lot of people are curious about it,” she said.

Glass Frog

Glass Frog

Why didn’t we have these in high school during anatomy classes? The frogs, are SEE THROUGH!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyalinobatrachium_pellucidum