IN BRIEF: MASSIVE DIE-OFF OF OLIVE RIDLEY TURTLES

In the Gahirmatha marine sanctuary, in Orissa, India, over 1000 Olive Ridley sea turtles have died, days ahead of the 'arribada'or mass egg laying. The the lined a kilometre-long stretch of the sandy beach and more bodies piled up with each passing day.

Official sources said around 1900 bodies were counted till but the total count may be over 5000. There were deep marks of injury on some of the bodies. It isunclear if these wounds were the cause of death, or if scavenging dogs had made them. Last year too, hundreds of turtles were found dead on the same spot - victims of illegal poaching by mechanised fishing trawlers.

Thousands of Olive Ridleys get killed along the Orissa coast every year by getting entangled in the nets of the trawlers that operate illegally in the prohibited zones when these endangered species congregate for mating.

The Olive Ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea), also known as the Pacific Ridley, is one of the smallest species of sea turtle. It is named for the olive-green color of its heart-shaped shell. It is usually found in the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

GUEST BLOGGER HEATHER MIKHAIL: Überoxen

Heather is our new rep for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and was introduced to the folks of the bloggo brigade by Corinna last week. Here is her first outing as guest blogger...

It seems like not a month goes by without the media reporting that some extinct animal, maybe, could be, cloned at some point in the near future. Generally these stories are just fluff, but very few people know about the attempts in the 1920s and 30s to bring back the Aurochs*, a prehistoric Ox that most domestic cattle are derived from. This being the period between the wars the motivation was not so much conservation, but driven by a desire for something pure and strong, a kind of livestock equivalent of the Eugenics movement which was highly influential at the time, not only in Germany, but also the rest of Europe and America.

The man in charge of this experiment was Lutz Heck, director of the Berlin Zoo from 1932 to 1945. His memoirs 'Animals my Adventure' are an interesting read, in them he recounts his trips to Africa to collect animals, his attitudes to the Africans would make a modern reader uncomfortable, as he had none of the skill of Gerald Durrell in portraying natives as just as human as 'the rest of us'. His coverage of the war era and his involvement with the Nazi party are not really touched upon, but he does give us a vivid account of the Zoo suffering from an Allied air raid.

Heck's main interest, as a Zoologist was the Aurochs, he decided that by breeding together varieties of domestic cattle that had characteristics of this ancient beast he could recreate it. This project was begun in the 1920s, and carried on into the 30s with the approval of Hitler and Goering, who hoped that he would be able to create an Aryan theme park in eastern Prussia, where Germans could go and experience the life of the Aryans.

Ron Jonson goes into detail on this in his radio programme 'The Quest for the Aryan Cow' which has interviews with Heck's grand-daughter and includes a visit to the park in Munich where the descendants of Heck's cattle live on a island.

Despite their fearsome reputation and the awe in which they were held back in the 1930s, Jon Ronson is not that impressed by them. After all they are really just domestic cattle that are a facsimile for Aurochsen and not the genuine article. Maybe one day we will be able to clone one, but DNA extracting technology would have to be far better than today as the last aurochs died nearly four hundred years ago.

Were we to clone a thylacine or an Aurochs, we would just be recreating the genetic bottleneck that in part led to their extinction and we must think very carefully about how we go about cloning such things should it ever become scientifically viable.

*Pendantic Linguist’s Note. As Aurochs is derived from the German I have used the more germanic plural Aurochsen which aligns it with the English words Ox and Oxen.

Jon Ronson and the Quest for the Aryan Cow

Animals; My Adventure- Lutz Heck

More information on the effects of Nazism at the Zoo, during and after the Nazi Era

JUST A SLIGHT HEADS-UP

This is going to be a monumentally stressful week for us all. We are in London (twice), Enfield (once) and Yeovil (once) and will be tootling up and down the motorway like there is no tomorrow. The daily bloggo postings will continue at approximately noon and 6 p.m, but it is very likely that the notification posts to Usenet and Facebook, and possibly even the changes to the CFZ website front page, may go by the board some days (most likely friday and sunday).

Please forgive us for this, but as you will find out when we tell you all about it, there is a lot at stake this week.....

THE CFZ HELP YOUNG FILM-MAKER

At the CFZ we believe in helping those who help themselves, and so we have dug into the coffers and bought some new film editing software for Jordan Warner the director of Cryptid-Hunt an entirely self funded, and jolly smashing webTV show. He now has the same software that we use ourselves.

This is part of a new initiative to try and help people who are doing something groovy within the cryptozoological community. We will hopefully be sending a laptop to Ireland for our old friend Tony "Doc" Shiels in the next week or so as well. All this got me thinking. If there is anyone out there in bloggoland who is reading this who has software or equipment that they don't want let us know. We can quite possibly find a useful new home for it.

We are also stockpiling cryptobooks for those who either can not afford their own libraries, or live in parts of the world where such things are not as widely available as they are to us. So if you have any going to waste, or - indeed - if you are in a charity shop and you see copies of such things going cheaply, buy them, send them to us, and we will distribute them where they are most needed.....

NEW CFZ INITIATIVE: Friends with Fins

The Centre for Fortean Zoology is taking a new initiative to foster interest in the natural world among young people. The Centre, which keeps a number of exotic animals, is giving away tropical fish and equipment to disadvantaged families.

Swordtails and Guppies from Mexico and Trinidad are beautiful and make ideal starter pets for kids interested in tropical fish. Colourful and relatively easy to keep and breed, they are being given to good homes with a pamphlet on their care and natural history.

In Britain, politically correct legislation created by non scientists is making it harder for exotic animals to be kept as pets. In contrast, the CFZ hopes to be a catalyst in terms of getting younger people interested in the world around them and this is part of our Outreach project.There is more to childhood than video games, vacuous music and Reality TV. Children are the nation’s future decision-makers and we need to harbour a love of animals in them today.

A booklet on the project is available and can be downloaded at http://www.cfz.org.uk/fins.pdf

SITUATIONS VACANT: Indexer for the Archiving Project

As regular readers will know the CFZ Archiving Project is well under way, and Oll Lewis is doing a sterling job scanning and uploading the voluminous CFZ collection of Press Cuttings. However in order for the archive to be a truly useful resource, it needs to be properly catalogued, and so we are looking for someone to do it for us.

Ideally, I think, we can once again utilise Blogspot, and start up a new blog which can function as an index to the Archiving Project. However, if anyone has better ideas please do get in touch with them.

It is time, once again, for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party, so please Mr, Mrs, or Miss Volunteer ---- Come on down!!!

Another bunch of goodies from the CFZ Archiving Project

Why is Oll wearing a hat indoors? Possibly because of his obsession with Indiana Jones, but possibly just for effect. Never mind. He has been jolly busy and the latest set of scanned news clippings and other stuff from the Archiving Project is ready for you to download should you want to..


http://www.cfz.org.uk//Archiving/Aquatic%203/


There's over thirty news items there with lots and lots more to follow. Have fun :)