Team in Germany maps Neanderthal genome
Researchers in Germany have completed the first draft of the Neanderthal genome, 3 billion genetic building blocks that will shed new light on the ancient hominid as well as the origins of its closest relation — humans. The team teased enough DNA out of three 38,000-year-old bone fragments to isolate some 3 billion DNA base pairs. The Neanderthal genome contains roughly 3.2 billion pairs, but many of lead scientist Svante Paabo are repeats, meaning his draft is about 63 percent complete.
Read on…
New Alaskan Ichthyosaur Unveiled
The University of Alaska Museum of the North has unveiled what officials call one of the largest, oldest and northernmost marine reptile fossils ever found.
Officials say the fossil sat in the Brooks Range for almost 210 million years before it was discovered in 1950, eventually arriving in Fairbanks.
Read on…
Humans got crabs from gorillas!
Just as humans and gorillas share a common evolutionary ancestry, the pubic lice that infuriate some members of the two species are also related. Pubic lice–known to scientists as Pthirus pubis and to most other people as “crabs”–are thought to have evolved from Pthirus gorillae, the structurally similar species that infests gorillas. Genetic analysis by David Reed at the University of Florida indicates that the lice lineages split about 3.3 million years ago, whereas it is believed that humans diverged from gorillas at least 7 million years ago. This suggests that “early humans somehow caught pubic lice from their gorilla cousins.”
Read on…
Sunday, February 15, 2009
ON THE DHOLE
On febuary the 11th a pack of 20 dholes or Indian hunting dogs, escaped from their enclosure at Howletts Zoon near Cantabury, Kent. 12 returned to their enclosure themselves. This is quite normal as escaped zoo anima;s, most of whome were captive born, become confused and scared in the wild and head back to were they feel secure. 5 more were tranqualized by vets, one died and two more are still at large. Dholes are not generally considered dangerous to humans though captive ones may have lost their fear of people.Spokesperson Tricia Corkhill said it was unclear how they had escaped but everything was being done to catch them.She said: "The situation is under control and we have trained animal keepers and vets with tranquilliser guns looking for the missing dogs."They pose little or no danger to the public but they shouldn't be approached anymore than you would approach a fox or stray dog." They are captive-reared and used to the park so will want to get home."
Engineer Ben Towler, 27, was driving through Wingham on Wednesday morning when he almost ran over the sandy-haired one. "It looked like a big ginger wolf with a lion's mane – kind of like a fox on steroids," he said.
The wild dogs, were made famous as villains in Kipling’s timless classic The Jungle Books in the story Red Dog were they threthern Mowgli’s wolf pack. Mowgli defeats them with the aid of the giant python, Kaa. In the vacuous Disney verstion they are ommited and Kaa, a wise and noble creature in the books is turned into a nasal, whining villain.
The reasoning being that ‘The American public would not except a snake as a hero’.
NEIL ARNOLD WRITES: Jon, here are a couple of links regarding the recent escaped Dholes from Howlett's Zoo Park at Canterbury. please could you slip maybe a mention of this into the book ? And maybe use them for your daily blog, as the links provided below include a video. tragically, these animals, on the verge of extinction, in two instances, were shot by the police...bastards.
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kol08/article/default.asp?article_id=56973&commented=1
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/kent/7883629.stm
More on the Texas blue dogs
Our friend Naomi West one of our Texas representatives, writes to tell us:
Jon,
I found this tonight. It's the same footage of the "chupacabra" caught on tape by the cop but it has an excellent shot of the long snout! They slow the tape down.
Watch the video here
I just thought you might like to see it.
Indeed we do. I wish that the media would stop trying to claim that these blue dogs have anything to do with the chupacabra. We have been studying them for some years, and it is certain that they are coyotes of some description. Either coyotes with some strange skin condition, or coyotes in the very earliest stages of speciation..
Watch this space
Jon,
I found this tonight. It's the same footage of the "chupacabra" caught on tape by the cop but it has an excellent shot of the long snout! They slow the tape down.
Watch the video here
I just thought you might like to see it.
Indeed we do. I wish that the media would stop trying to claim that these blue dogs have anything to do with the chupacabra. We have been studying them for some years, and it is certain that they are coyotes of some description. Either coyotes with some strange skin condition, or coyotes in the very earliest stages of speciation..
Watch this space
The Texas blue dog debate continues..
Following on from the ongoing debate about the blue dogs of Texas, and whether they are suffering with mange, or whether they are something genuinely interesting, one of our Missouri reps, Lanette Baker writes:
This is Bello, the first picture was taken before we bathed him and the second was after we bathed him. He has generalized demodectic mange & secondary staph infection, the staph is normal with a bad mange case due to the scratching causing the secondary infection. It is often the staph which causes the thickening of the skin.
If you notice when looking at Bello his back legs seem longer than his front legs, this is just due to his build which is perfectly normal and is more pronounced in breeds that are more of a natural predator, such as coyote and wolf, then also other breeds of dogs, wolf hounds and grey hounds.
What is bad is that dog is the personal dog of someone who has a "rescue"
Publish all you want, I am working to get the lady who has the dog put out of business....
This is Bello, the first picture was taken before we bathed him and the second was after we bathed him. He has generalized demodectic mange & secondary staph infection, the staph is normal with a bad mange case due to the scratching causing the secondary infection. It is often the staph which causes the thickening of the skin.
If you notice when looking at Bello his back legs seem longer than his front legs, this is just due to his build which is perfectly normal and is more pronounced in breeds that are more of a natural predator, such as coyote and wolf, then also other breeds of dogs, wolf hounds and grey hounds.
What is bad is that dog is the personal dog of someone who has a "rescue"
Publish all you want, I am working to get the lady who has the dog put out of business....
GUEST BLOGGER NEIL ARNOLD: Mr Davy's monster
It is with great pleasure that we welcome Neil Arnold to the CFZ bloggo. I have known Neil for fifteen years now since he was a schoolboy with ambitions for adventure and I was an earnest young hippie who merely wanted to start a club for people interested in unknown animals. Nothing much has changed over the years. We are just both a tad older...Being the CFZ Representative for Greater London (as well as Kent) is a great excuse to swing by the fashion boutiques and swanky bars of the capital. Of course, it also entails seeking new information of monsters and other strange creatures that the city has harboured.
One such tale, which I’d like to share with readers, is that pertaining to Mr Davy, a London naturalist who in 1878, worked at the London Aquarium. Imagine the horror on the faces of the locals, however, when Mr Davy paraded his new ‘pet’, a strange monstrosity which emitted horrible screeching noises. The ‘animal’, which Mr Davy casually took a stroll with, attracted the attention of many who described the abomination as reaching two-feet in length, and standing two-feet at the shoulder. At the time, it claimed that no anatomist could identify the beast, for its body was covered in wiry hairs, and although its head and tail resembled that of a boar, it seemed bereft of an abdomen, its back legs seemingly situated right behind its forelegs!
Such was the appeal, through its hideous features no doubt, of this creature, that crowds flocked to view it. Mr Davy seemed completely unaware that his pet had caused such a fuss, but when the crowds buzzed about him, he made a swift exit, running, with beast in tow, into the bowels of the London Underground.
The unintentional exhibit was described as a ‘living cube’ by those two felt fortunate to see it, although many were repelled by its ghastly form. Mr Davy decided that to elude pursuers he would have to travel on the Underground, in a secret compartment to avoid passengers fleeing for their lives, whilst others in their morbid curiosity would have surely flocked to the animal, causing great consternation on the railway tracks.
According to legend, Mr Davy told an acquaintance that he’d observed the creature whilst in the south of France. Local peasants owned the beast, which Mr Davy purchased from them, but because of the language differences he learned nothing about the creature. When a friend at the Aquarium looked at the beast, he could only surmise that it had been some weird dog-boar hybrid.
Mr Davy’s pet stopped traffic, and jammed streets. His own landlord did not find such a beast as riveting as the passers by, and cowered in his room, afraid of the unimaginable creature. On October 5th 1878, Land and Water magazine editor, Mr Frank Buckland, could only describe the animal as a “demon”, a satanic manifestation with the characteristics of a gargoyle. Naturalist Thomas Wilmington, wrote, in the following issue that the beast must be some kind of deformed hyena and that the idea of a hybrid was, “…utterly untenable”.
And there the legend ends, no-one knows what became of Mr Davy’s demon, or as to why peasants in southern France had obtained such a beast, although if we go back a century to 1764 to the former province of Gevaudan, in south-central France, then we are met by a legend more savage, but resembling a hyena, which slaughtered many innocent townsfolk.
Had Mr Davy simply purchased an unknown species and paraded it about town? Maybe his pet was nothing more than a freak of nature, sold to him by locals keen to earn a crust? Or was the strange tale simply a hoax, manifested by journals eager to please and intrigue their readers with fanciful frights and eerie anomalies?
One such tale, which I’d like to share with readers, is that pertaining to Mr Davy, a London naturalist who in 1878, worked at the London Aquarium. Imagine the horror on the faces of the locals, however, when Mr Davy paraded his new ‘pet’, a strange monstrosity which emitted horrible screeching noises. The ‘animal’, which Mr Davy casually took a stroll with, attracted the attention of many who described the abomination as reaching two-feet in length, and standing two-feet at the shoulder. At the time, it claimed that no anatomist could identify the beast, for its body was covered in wiry hairs, and although its head and tail resembled that of a boar, it seemed bereft of an abdomen, its back legs seemingly situated right behind its forelegs!
Such was the appeal, through its hideous features no doubt, of this creature, that crowds flocked to view it. Mr Davy seemed completely unaware that his pet had caused such a fuss, but when the crowds buzzed about him, he made a swift exit, running, with beast in tow, into the bowels of the London Underground.
The unintentional exhibit was described as a ‘living cube’ by those two felt fortunate to see it, although many were repelled by its ghastly form. Mr Davy decided that to elude pursuers he would have to travel on the Underground, in a secret compartment to avoid passengers fleeing for their lives, whilst others in their morbid curiosity would have surely flocked to the animal, causing great consternation on the railway tracks.
According to legend, Mr Davy told an acquaintance that he’d observed the creature whilst in the south of France. Local peasants owned the beast, which Mr Davy purchased from them, but because of the language differences he learned nothing about the creature. When a friend at the Aquarium looked at the beast, he could only surmise that it had been some weird dog-boar hybrid.
Mr Davy’s pet stopped traffic, and jammed streets. His own landlord did not find such a beast as riveting as the passers by, and cowered in his room, afraid of the unimaginable creature. On October 5th 1878, Land and Water magazine editor, Mr Frank Buckland, could only describe the animal as a “demon”, a satanic manifestation with the characteristics of a gargoyle. Naturalist Thomas Wilmington, wrote, in the following issue that the beast must be some kind of deformed hyena and that the idea of a hybrid was, “…utterly untenable”.
And there the legend ends, no-one knows what became of Mr Davy’s demon, or as to why peasants in southern France had obtained such a beast, although if we go back a century to 1764 to the former province of Gevaudan, in south-central France, then we are met by a legend more savage, but resembling a hyena, which slaughtered many innocent townsfolk.
Had Mr Davy simply purchased an unknown species and paraded it about town? Maybe his pet was nothing more than a freak of nature, sold to him by locals keen to earn a crust? Or was the strange tale simply a hoax, manifested by journals eager to please and intrigue their readers with fanciful frights and eerie anomalies?
RICHARD FREEMAN: Blogging around...
It is a great privelige to be part of the Nature Blog Network and it is great fun to be able to pootle around the blogs seeing what 's new. First up (not surprisingly) is our old mate Darren Naish (who incidentally was the guy who first recommended the Nature Blog Network to us)...
In the light of the recently discovered Titaniboa it behoves us to take a look at some other monster serpents.
Stupidly large snakes - the story so far:
It has always been rumoured that some snakes grow to sizes that exceed the 10 m record which is generally accepted as the authenticated maximum; this was for a reticulated python (Python reticulatus) shot on Sulawesi in 1912. Numerous stories and anecdotes discuss reticulated pythons and anacondas (Eunectes murinus) that far exceed this, with the most famous of these stories being Major Percy Fawcett's 19 m long anaconda that he claimed to have shot in the Brazilian Rio Abuna in 1907. Despite its immense length, Fawcett reported that this snake had a width of just 30 cm (which makes the tale rather unbelievable), and he even discussed trails in the swamps that 'support the statements of Indians and rubber pickers that the anaconda sometimes reaches an incredible size, altogether dwarfing that shot by me' (Heuvelmans 1995, p. 340). Despite these many stories, no-one has yet produced a snake that exceeds 10 m in total length (though I hope that if such a specimen is ever found, it is not killed, but is restrained or captured or something.. and yes I do know that this is somewhat less easy than it sounds).
In the light of the recently discovered Titaniboa it behoves us to take a look at some other monster serpents.
Stupidly large snakes - the story so far:
It has always been rumoured that some snakes grow to sizes that exceed the 10 m record which is generally accepted as the authenticated maximum; this was for a reticulated python (Python reticulatus) shot on Sulawesi in 1912. Numerous stories and anecdotes discuss reticulated pythons and anacondas (Eunectes murinus) that far exceed this, with the most famous of these stories being Major Percy Fawcett's 19 m long anaconda that he claimed to have shot in the Brazilian Rio Abuna in 1907. Despite its immense length, Fawcett reported that this snake had a width of just 30 cm (which makes the tale rather unbelievable), and he even discussed trails in the swamps that 'support the statements of Indians and rubber pickers that the anaconda sometimes reaches an incredible size, altogether dwarfing that shot by me' (Heuvelmans 1995, p. 340). Despite these many stories, no-one has yet produced a snake that exceeds 10 m in total length (though I hope that if such a specimen is ever found, it is not killed, but is restrained or captured or something.. and yes I do know that this is somewhat less easy than it sounds).
Perhaps less well known than these accounts of modern-day giants, however, are rumours and reports of fossil snake bones that have been estimated by some workers to have belonged to truly gargantuan reptiles...
Read more
Giant Killer Lungfish? A couple of weeks ago both Jon and Karl blogged on the subject of cryptozoological lungfisheds. But here is another one. Minhocoes - the burrowing monster of South America, was it a huge lungfish? Zoologist Brian Switek investigates.
A December 1847 issue of the newspaper The Friend relayed the report of L.A. da Silva e Souza that the lake Padre Aranda in Brazil was home to creatures called minhocoes that "dwell in the deepest part of the lake, and have often drawn horses and horned cattle under the water." The creatures were also reported to inhabit Lake Feia, and the local people said they were giant worms that "cause[d] animals to disappear by seizing them by the belly."
Read on...
GUEST BLOGGER RICHARD MUIRHEAD: A couple of interesting stories
As regular readers willknow, Richard is one of my dearest friends, and furthermore someone I have known since 1970 when we were children together in Hong Kong. He is a natural polymath, and one of the best researchers I have ever met. Proof of this particular pudding comes in these two stories which he fished out of his local public library..I found the following two stories in the Macclesfield Courier and Stockport Express or Cheshire General Advertiser.(MCSE or CGA)
1."Wild Man- A wildman was lately caught in the forests of Hungary,by
a Wallachian, who first perceived him seated upon a tree, eating
leaves. He appeared to be 24 years of age,and had his back and chest
entirely overspread with a thick covering of hair: his skin was a dark
yellow. He expressed only confused cries and a sort of murmer. He
became melancholy at the sight of a forest or a garden and sought to
hide himself in such places. After having been kept 2 or 3 years in
captivity,he began to eat dressed meat,and from that moment his manners
became less savage; and his body losing a considerable portion of its
hairy covering,became less yellow. He is now quite civilized,and
performs the office of water-carrier;but never advances so far as to be
able to speak words and sentences in succession. MCSE or CGA March 23rd
1811.
2. An eagle of an immense size,was shot lately at Heaton Norris near
Stockport by Mr Geo.Bromiley of Gorton,which measured from tip to tip
of the wings 7 feet ten inches,in length 3 feet 4 inches,and weighed
nearly 18 pounds. This mighty monarch of the air was fired at when in
the very act of attacking a young pig,and being only slightly wounded
in the shoulder and back part of the head great pains were taken to
seure him alive,but from the very stout resistance he made,it became
necessary to kill him to prevent his escaping. He is now in the museum
of Mr Priestnall, surgeon, in Stockport, and is supposed to be the
largest Bird of the kind ever shot in England. MCSE or CGA March 30th
1811
1."Wild Man- A wildman was lately caught in the forests of Hungary,by
a Wallachian, who first perceived him seated upon a tree, eating
leaves. He appeared to be 24 years of age,and had his back and chest
entirely overspread with a thick covering of hair: his skin was a dark
yellow. He expressed only confused cries and a sort of murmer. He
became melancholy at the sight of a forest or a garden and sought to
hide himself in such places. After having been kept 2 or 3 years in
captivity,he began to eat dressed meat,and from that moment his manners
became less savage; and his body losing a considerable portion of its
hairy covering,became less yellow. He is now quite civilized,and
performs the office of water-carrier;but never advances so far as to be
able to speak words and sentences in succession. MCSE or CGA March 23rd
1811.
2. An eagle of an immense size,was shot lately at Heaton Norris near
Stockport by Mr Geo.Bromiley of Gorton,which measured from tip to tip
of the wings 7 feet ten inches,in length 3 feet 4 inches,and weighed
nearly 18 pounds. This mighty monarch of the air was fired at when in
the very act of attacking a young pig,and being only slightly wounded
in the shoulder and back part of the head great pains were taken to
seure him alive,but from the very stout resistance he made,it became
necessary to kill him to prevent his escaping. He is now in the museum
of Mr Priestnall, surgeon, in Stockport, and is supposed to be the
largest Bird of the kind ever shot in England. MCSE or CGA March 30th
1811
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