FSP-Microcosm News-Global Community Report: Scientific Research

Showing posts with label Scientific Research. Show all posts

Friday, July 19, 2013

Chimpanzees and orangutans were able to remember past events when presented with sensory reminders, a new study shows.

It is time that humanity understand once and for all that we are all creatures of this Earth and as such are ALL deserving of respect and concern.

The results of this study are not really news to those of us who have known all along that Mankind is not superior to other creatures on this planet. It is however, a wake up call to all those who have for so long believed and lived their lives behaving as if they are God's gift to this planet.

Young chimpanzee male, Pan troglodytes verus

A study has shown for the first time that chimps and orangutans remembered events from three years earlier

With the revelations made here can anyone honestly say that animal testing is humane or even ethical?

To those who have always based their acquiescence to vivisection and the like with the off the cuff statement....."They are just dumb animals".

It appears that the only dumb animals involved are the two legged variety that believe themselves above reproach and entitled to mistreat and torture other creatures under the guise of superiority........

~Desert Rose~
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WIRED

Chimps, Orangutans Have Human-Like Memories

By Virginia Morell, ScienceNOW
07.19.13

An orangutan at the Leipzig Zoo uses a tool to explore a puzzle. In a different test, this ape as well as three other orangutans and eight chimpanzees remembered the details of a similar task for three years. Image: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

A single cue—the taste of a madeleine, a small cake, dipped in lime tea—was all Marcel Proust needed to be transported down memory lane. He had what scientists term an autobiographical memory of the events, a type of memory that many researchers consider unique to humans. Now, a new study argues that at least two species of great apes — chimpanzees and orangutans — have a similar ability; in zoo experiments, the animals drew on 3-year-old memories to solve a problem. Their findings are the first report of such a long-lasting memory in nonhuman animals. The work supports the idea that autobiographical memory may have evolved as a problem-solving aid, but researchers caution that the type of memory system the apes used remains an open question.
Elephants can remember, they say, but many scientists think that animals have a very different kind of memory than our own. Many can recall details about their environment and routes they’ve traveled. But having explicit autobiographical memories of things “I” did, or remembering events that occurred in the past, or imagining those in the future—so-called mental time travel—are considered by many psychologists to be uniquely human skills.
Until recently, scientists argued that animals are stuck in time, meaning that they have no sense of the past or future and that they aren’t able to recall specific events from their lives—that is, they don’t have episodic memories, the what-where-when of an event that happened.

Yet, several studies have shown that even jays have something like episodic memory, remembering when and where they’ve hidden food, and that rats recall their journeys through mazes, and use these to imagine future maze-travels. “There is good evidence challenging the idea that nonhuman animals are stuck in time,” says Gema Martin-Ordas, a comparative psychologist at Aarhus University in Denmark and the lead author of the new study. But trying to show that apes also have a conscious recollection of autobiographical events is “the tricky part,” Martin-Ordas admits.
To see if chimpanzees and orangutans have autobiographical memories that can later be triggered with a cue (as were Proust’s by eating the pastry), Martin-Ordas and two other researchers devised a memorable event for the apes at the Leipzig Zoo. In 2009, eight chimps and four orangutans individually watched Martin-Ordas place a piece of a banana on a platform attached to the outside of a caged testing room. The apes could get the treat only by reaching through a slot with a long stick. The researcher then hid two sticks, only one of which was long enough to reach the banana. The animals watched as she hid each tool in a box in two different rooms. The chimp or orangutan observing her actions was then released into the area with the hidden tools. They had to find the correct tool, return to the room with the tempting banana, and use the tool to retrieve the treat.
Each ape took the test four times. “We set it up to see if cues—like Proust’s madeleine—would trigger a memory event for them,” Martin-Ordas says. But instead of using a single cue like a scent or a taste, the researchers offered the apes “a constellation of cues: me, the room, and the specific problem,” Martin-Ordas says. They hoped that this combination would act as a trigger—that whenever the chimpanzees encountered this specific task with Martin-Ordas again, they would remember that they needed to search for the correct tool.

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Russia with support from Ukraine blocked the initiative of the Commission of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to establish Marine Protected Areas (MPA) in the Ross Sea region and in East Antarctica

Russia blocks creation of two huge Marine Protected Areas in Antarctica

An extraordinary meeting of the Commission of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to establish Marine Protected Areas (MPA) in the Ross Sea region and in East Antarctica wrapped up on Tuesday without an agreement after Russia with support from Ukraine blocked the initiative.

The MPAs initiative will be again discussed at the CCAMLR regular meeting in Hobart, Australia

The nyet squad

“The outcome is not what we expected or hoped for ... We did not reach a consensus,” Terje Lobach, the Commission's chairperson, said on Tuesday at the end of the meeting in the northern German town of Bremerhaven.
Delegates at the conference in Bremerhaven looked at two proposals to create huge ocean sanctuaries off Antarctica.
The first, which was proposed by the United States and New Zealand, would have covered an area of 1.6 million square kilometers (640,000 square miles) of the Ross Sea, a deep bay on the Pacific side of the continent.
The other, supported by the European Union, France, and Australia, would have protected 1.9 million square kilometers on the Indian Ocean side of Antarctica.
However, the Russian delegation supported by neighboring Ukraine, raised questions about the CCAMLR legal power to implement any such proposal, according to environmental groups.
“The actions of the Russian delegation have put international cooperation and goodwill at risk, the two key ingredients needed for global marine conservation”, said Andrea Kavanagh, in charge of the Southern Ocean Sanctuaries campaign at the US green group Pew Environment.

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Friday, July 12, 2013

Return of the pack: Wolves are moving West

Dutch scientists this week announced that a mysterious creature found dead at the roadside is almost certainly the country’s first wolf in 150 years. Tony Paterson on the killer that’s making a comeback across Europe

Tony Paterson

Rietschen, Germany
Friday 12 July 2013

For sheep farmer Frank Neumann, the grisly spectacle was not merely shocking: it was like a surreal re-enactment of a scene from Jack London’s White Fang, the famous early 20th-century novel about predatory Alaskan wolves during the Klondike gold rush. One overcast April morning, the 63-year-old shepherd went out, as usual, to tend to his flock, which he had carefully fenced in the night before in a field in the remote east German village of Schleife. He was devastated by the bloodbath that confronted him.
The mauled and blood-soaked corpses of 27 of his carefully nurtured livestock were scattered across his sheep enclosure. A few displayed gaping, bright-red flesh wounds, but most of the dead animals had had their skins punctured by deadly incisors, which had caused them to perish from massive subcutaneous haemorrhaging.
The next night the predators struck again, killing six more of Mr Neumann’s flock. “After this bloodbath, I was ready to chuck in sheep farming for good,” he told The Independent. Mr Neumann has been a shepherd all his life, but never expected to have his livelihood threatened by wolves.
Germany’s “last wolf” was shot dead in 1904. The few that strayed into German territory from eastern Europe after the Second World War met a similar fate. Mr Neumann’s flock was attacked in a remote corner of north-east Saxony in 2002. But now the predator has returned with a vengeance, not only to vast tracts of Germany but also to much of western Europe. Just last week an animal, which biologists believe was almost certainly a wolf, was run over and killed by a car near the Dutch hamlet of Luttelgeest, a mere 30 miles from densely populated Holland’s North Sea coast. Naturalists say the animal probably came from a German pack and was likely to have been hunting for a suitable location to start a new one. Biologists are still carrying out tests. If their claims are confirmed, the animal will be first wolf found in the Netherlands since 1869.
The wolf’s return to western Europe can attributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. After Germany’s subsequent reunification in 1990, the wolf became a protected species across the entire country. It was a radical policy switch which holds out the near-certain and for many still alarming prospect of the wolf’s return to parts of the European Union which have lived without the predator for well over a century. Luttelgeest’s wolf is evidence enough. Holland’s natural heritage organisation, Natuurmonument, says it may not be long before the animals are again roaming the Dutch countryside.
“Most European countries have signed the 1979 Berne convention which prohibits the killing of wolves,” said Vanessa Ludwig, a biologist who monitors the growing wolf population in Germany’s Lausitz region, close to the border with Poland . In her office in the so-called “wolf village” of Rietschen, the walls are covered with maps marked out with blue circles denoting the areas where wolf packs have settled only recently. “In Europe, the wolf is at the top of the predatory chain. It has no enemies except humans. We have not reached the legal limit in wolf numbers which would allow for culling, so the species is, by its nature, destined to spread across the continent,” she explained.
Wolves started entering Lausitz from Poland in the 1990s. The detritus of the Cold War has turned the area into ideal wolf country. It is covered with military exercise areas once used to train the occupying Soviet Army. Nowadays, they are used much less frequently by German troops.
For most of the time they make up a vast, uninhabited and largely road and path-less wilderness, covered with half-grown pine and birch trees. The public is warned not to enter. Europe has nine wolf population zones including Scandinavia, the Baltic states. Poland, Romania, south-eastern France, Italy and the Iberian peninsula. In Lausitz, a dramatic and significant shift in the wolves’ behaviour was observed in 2000, forcing a rethink about the animals’ future. A night-vision video camera filmed a pair with a cub as they meandered across one of the deserted military areas. It proved that wolves were not just visiting Germany, but had resettled the country for the first time in more than a century. Today, there are an estimated 40 wolves in the region and their numbers are growing.
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Monday, July 8, 2013

Insecticide causes changes in honeybee genes

by Staff Writers

Nottingham, UK (SPX) Jul 03, 2013

File image.

New research by academics at The University of Nottingham has shown that exposure to a neonicotinoid insecticide causes changes to the genes of the honeybee.
The study, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, supports the recent decision taken by the European Commission to temporarily ban three neonicotinoids amid concerns that they could be linked to bee deaths.
There is growing evidence connecting the decline in the honeybee population that pollinates one-third of the food that we eat, and insecticides, but this is the first comprehensive study to look at changes in the activity of honeybee genes linked to one of the recently banned neonicotinoids, imidacloprid.
The study, led by Dr Reinhard Stoger, Associate Professor in Epigenetics in the University's School of Biosciences, was conducted under field realistic conditions and showed that a very low exposure of just two parts per billion has an impact on the activity of some of the honeybee genes.
The researchers identified that cells of honeybee larvae had to work harder and increase the activity of genes involved in breaking down toxins, most likely to cope with the insecticide. Genes involved in regulating energy to run cells were also affected. Such changes are known to reduce the lifespan of the most widely studied insect, the common fruit fly, and lower a larva's probability of surviving to adulthood.

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Thursday, July 4, 2013

Military Sonar Can Alter Blue Whale Behavior: Human-Made Noises Cause Ocean Giants to Move Away from Feeding Spots

July 3, 2013 — Some blue whales off the coast of California change their behavior when exposed to the sort of underwater sounds used during U.S. military exercises. The whales may alter diving behavior or temporarily avoid important feeding areas, according to new research.

Science Daily

Duke researcher Ari Friedlaender attaching a suction-cup tag to the back of a blue whale off the coast of southern California. (Credit: Courtesy of Ari Friedlaender; NMFS Permit 14534)

The Southern California Behavioral Response Study exposed tagged blue whales in the California Bight to simulated mid-frequency (3.5-4 kHz) sonar sounds significantly less intense than the military uses.
"Whales clearly respond in some conditions by modifying diving behavior and temporarily avoiding areas where sounds were produced,â€ said lead author Jeremy Goldbogen of Cascadia Research. "But overall the responses are complex and depend on a number of interacting factors," including whether the whales were feeding deep, shallow or not at all.
The study, funded by the U.S. Navy Chief of Naval Operations Environmental Readiness Division and the U.S. Office of Naval Research, appears July 3 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The scientists tagged the whales with non-invasive suction cups, which recorded acoustic data and high-resolution movements as the animals were exposed to the controlled sounds.
"The tag technology we use offers a unique glimpse into the underwater behavior of whales that otherwise would not be possible," said Ari Friedlaender, a research scientist at the Duke Marine Laboratory.a
The scientists found that some of the whales engaged in deep feeding stopped eating and either sped up or moved away from the source of the noise. Not all of the whales responded to the noise, and not all in the same way.
"Blue whales are the largest animals that have ever lived. Populations globally remain at a fraction of their former numbers prior to whaling, and they appear regularly off the southern California coast, where they feed," said John Calambokidis, one of the projectâ€™s lead investigators of Cascadia Research.
That area of the ocean is also the site of military training and testing exercises that involve loud mid-frequency sonar signals. Such sonar exercises have been associated with several unusual strandings of other marine mammal species (typically beaked whales) in the past. Until this study, almost no information was available about whether and how blue whales respond to sonar.
"These are the first direct measurements of individual responses for any baleen whale species to these kinds of mid-frequency sonar signals," said Brandon Southall, SOCAL-BRS chief scientist from SEA, Inc., and an adjunct researcher at both Duke and the University of California Santa Cruz. "These findings help us understand risks to these animals from human sound and inform timely conservation and management decisions."
A related paper published July 3 by the same research team in Biology Letters has shown clear and even stronger responses of Cuvierâ€™s beaked whales to simulated mid-frequency sonar exposures. Beaked whales showed a variety of responses to both real, military sonar in the distance and nearby simulated sonar. What the beaked whales were doing at the time appeared to be a key factor affecting their reactions.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Duke University.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

J. A. Goldbogen, B. L. Southall, S. L. DeRuiter, J. Calambokidis, A. S. Friedlaender, E. L. Hazen, E. A. Falcone, G. S. Schorr, A. Douglas, D. J. Moretti, C. Kyburg, M. F. McKenna, P. L. Tyack. Blue whales respond to simulated mid-frequency military sonar. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2013; 280 (1765): 20130657 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2013.0657

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Whales flee from military sonar leading to mass strandings, research shows

Studies are missing link in puzzle that has connected naval exercises to unusual mass strandings of whales and dolphins

Damian Carrington
The Guardian, Tuesday 2 July 2013

Whales flee from the loud military sonar used by navies to hunt submarines, research shows. Photograph: Bluegreen Pictures/Doug Perrine

Whales flee from the loud military sonar used by navies to hunt submarines, new research has proven for the first time. The studies provide a missing link in the puzzle that has connected naval exercises around the world to unusual mass strandings of whales and dolphins.
Beaked whales, the most common casualty of the strandings, were shown to be highly sensitive to sonar. But the research also revealed unexpectedly that blue whales, the largest animals on Earth and whose population has plummeted by 95% in the last century, also abandoned feeding and swam rapidly away from sonar noise.
The strong response observed in the beaked whales occurred at noise levels well below those allowed for US navy exercises. "This result has to be taken into consideration by regulators and those planning naval exercises," said Stacy DeRuiter, at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, who led one of the teams.
"For whales and dolphins, listening is as important as seeing is for humans – they communicate, locate food, and navigate using sound," said Sarah Dolman, at charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation. "Noise pollution threatens vulnerable populations, driving them away from areas important to their survival, and at worst injuring or even causing the deaths of some whales and dolphins." Dolman said there were no accepted international standards regarding noise pollution and there was an urgent need to re-evaluate the environmental impacts of military activities.
The US Navy part-funded the new studies but said the findings only showed behavioural responses to sonar, not actual harm. Nonetheless, Kenneth Hess, a US Navy spokesman, said permit conditions for naval exercises were reviewed annually and added: "We will evaluate the effectiveness of our marine mammal protective measures in light of new research findings."
Unusual mass strandings, where multiple species of whale and dolphin beach at several locations at once, have soared since the introduction of military sonar in the 1950s and can be fatal. The strandings occur every year and major recent events saw up to 15 animals beached in the Canary Islands, the Bahamas and Greece. In May, the naval activity was found to be the most probable cause of the deaths of at least 26 short-beaked common dolphins in Falmouth Bay, Cornwall in June 2008.
Beaked whales are the most common species affected by unusual mass strandings, perhaps because their shy nature makes them more easily scared by noises that they may interpret as killer whale sounds. Researchers used suction cups to attach digital devices to Cuvier's beaked whales off the coast of Southern California to measure the noise they were exposed to and their response.

Read More Here

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