Los animales ayudan a los niños con autismo: consiguen fomentar sus conductas sociales
http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/1744175/0/animales-fomentan/conducta-social/nino-autismo/
Interactuar con animales beneficia nuestra salud mental. En el caso de las personas con autismo ya se había observado y un nuevo estudio lo confirma. La presencia de un animal puede aumentar significativamente las conductas sociales positivas en los niños con trastornos del espectro autista (TEA).
Los autores –Marguerite E O'Haire y sus colegas de la Universidad de Queensland, (Australia)– compararon cómo niños de 5 a 13 años de edad con TEA interactuaban con los adultos y, por lo general, sus compañeros en la presencia de dos conejillos de indias frente a los juguetes.
Ocurrió que en presencia de los animales, estos menores mostraban más ganas de hablar, miraban a la cara de otros y tenían más contacto físico. Estos niños con TEA también eran más receptivos a los avances sociales de sus pares en presencia de los animales de lo que eran cuando jugaron con juguetes.
La presencia de animales aumentaba además los casos en los que estos menores sonreían y reían, reducía su gesto de ceño fruncido, gemidos y lloros, comportamientos en los niños con autismo que se producían más cuando estaban con juguetes.
Estudios previos han demostrado que las personas tienen más probabilidades de recibir propuestas de amistad de desconocidos cuando caminan con un perro que cuando pasean solas y efectos similares se han observado en personas que poseen pequeños animales como conejos o tortugas.
Los autores, cuyo estudio publica la revista Plos One, sugieren que este efecto de "lubricante social" de los animales en las interacciones sociales humanas puede ser particularmente importante para aquellas con discapacidad socioemocional.
Según los investigadores, la capacidad de un animal para ayudar a los niños con TEA a conectar a los adultos puede ayudar a fomentar interacciones con terapeutas, profesores u otros adultos.
- Creo que en esto sí que es importante el uso de animales cerca de ellos para estimular a estos menores, que realmente no lo pasan mal, por eso no lo podemos considerar una enfermedad, sino que han nacido con estas características y tendrán que aprender a convivir con ellas... Con los animales se les ayuda a que puedan mejorar esta problemática relacional más que nada porque son muy sensibles y los animales pues les gustan mucho.
- A los autistas, a las personas con cualquier trastorno, retraso, o con cualquier otra enfermedad, y también a todas las personas sin ningún tipo de enfermedad.
Los animales demuestran ser mucho mejor que las personas, y por ello se merecen nuestro respeto, cariño y amor.
Animales con prótesis, una lección a los humanos
http://contenido.com.mx/2013/02/animales-con-protesis-una-leccion-a-los-humanos/
Algunos abandonados por sus dueños debido a una discapacidad severa, otros son resultado de feroces encuentros con sus depredadores naturales, algunos más provocados por el maltrato al que fueron sometidos. Estos héroes se han ganado ese mote por su gallardía al enfrentar las adversidades y demostrar que la vida puede continuar no importando las carencias físicas que se han superado mediante el uso de prótesis, a continuación te mostramos algunos de los más emblemáticos de los que se ha hablado últimamente.
Elefante, pata delantera izquierda
Este elefante perdió su pata delantera izquierda al caer en una trampa, fue rescatado y adoptado por un grupo de veterinarios que desarrollaron esta prótesis para él, capaz de soportar poco más de una tonelada de peso está elaborada de varios metales.
Elefante, pata delantera izquierda
Este elefante perdió su pata delantera izquierda al caer en una trampa, fue rescatado y adoptado por un grupo de veterinarios que desarrollaron esta prótesis para él, capaz de soportar poco más de una tonelada de peso está elaborada de varios metales.
- El elefante, que apenas tiene unos meses de edad se acostumbra a su nueva pierna.
Pug, dos patas traseras
Este pug de casi un año, fue encontrado abandonado en una carretera sin sus patas traseras, un veterinario quitó las llantas de los juguetes de sus hijos con lo que desarrollo una silla de ruedas canina.
- El pug, lleva ahora una vida normal.
Delfín, sin cola
Este es uno de los más famosos, incluso hay una película con base en la vida de este pequeño que narra como este delfín fue encontrado atrapado en una red de atunes que le ocasionó perder toda su extremidad.
- Esta cola le permite al delfín nadar de manera normal.
Gato, patas traseras
Este minino circula por la red, de él sólo se sabe que perdió sus patas traseras, su actual dueño lo rescató y le desarrollaron unas prótesis elásticas que le permiten trepar paredes y más.
- El gatito ha regresado a trepar muros.
Tortuga Kobe
Los investigadores del acuario de la ciudad japonesa de Kobe están buscando una solución de alta tecnología que le permita a Yu, una tortuga de 25 años, volver a nadar normalmente después de haber perdido sus aletas delanteras en un brutal encuentro con un tiburón.
- Este es el primer prototipo, en el futuro se espera que kobe sea regresada al mar.
Puerquito, patas traseras
Este animalito, es el más reciente en la lista de los más destacados que utilizan prótesis, consiguió su fama por utilizar una silla de ruedas elaborada por su dueño que lo rescató antes de ser sacrificado.
- La prótesis es una extensión artificial que reemplaza o provee una parte del cuerpo que falta por diversas razones.
- El principal objetivo de un prótesis es sustituir una parte del cuerpo que haya sido perdida por una amputación o que no exista a causa deagenesia, cumpliendo las mismas funciones que la parte faltante, como las piernas artificiales o las prótesis dentales.En los últimos años, el desarrollo de prótesis artificiales en animales, desde aletas hasta picos o patas, han dado esperanza de vida a una gran cantidad animales heridos.
- Es fundamental que existan personas que desean ayudar a los animales que nacen con alguna discapacidad en sus extremidades, y canalizar con sus inventos esa ayuda.
Orting farmers choreograph a dance between plants, people and animals
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/02/27/2491355/their-garden-grows-organically.html
As Carrie Little walked the muddy soil of her Orting farm last week her black retriever Moose let out a series of barks for reasons only he knew. A group of nearby tom turkeys immediately gobbled back a reply.
Satisfied by the response, Moose went back to chewing a deflated ball. The toms returned to lording over the 250 chickens they room with.
For Little, the interspecies exchange was just a symbol of the ties that bind – a choreography, Little calls it, between the animals, plants and humans that occupy the land she farms with her husband, Ken.
“This is some of the most valuable topsoil in the world,” Little said as she looked around her 35 acres. She was speaking of fertility, not money.
The couple bought the acreage that they would come to call Little Eorthe Farm in 2009. It was one-third of the former Ford Farm, a dairy operation sold to three families in a transaction that permanently preserved the land for agriculture. One of the stipulations for farming the land was that it had to be certified organic.
Little’s self-taught farming knowledge comes mostly from the school of hard knocks, as she calls it. She first got dirt under her fingernails as a child by gardening with her parents in Colorado.
Little started Guadalupe Gardens in 1993 using abandoned lots in Tacoma’s Hilltop and created Puyallup’s Mother Earth Farm in 2000. The latter provides food for the Emergency Food Network. The Littles’ son, Canyon, now manages Mother Earth.
“I’m just a gardener who keeps getting bigger gardens,” she said.
The purchase of the Orting farm allowed Little to pursue her desire to farm organically and offer the produce to the public.
Carrie is the farmer. Ken, a former union carpenter, is the farm’s construction manager. “If a pig pen is falling apart, he fixes it,” Little said.
The farm has several pig pens. One near the couple’s farmhouse holds sow Peppermint Patty and her seven 2-month-old piglets. They’ll be sold as weaners.
Nearby, in his own pen, is the piglets’ sire, Big Willie. Last week the big pig ambled over for a scratch behind the ears and Little obliged him. The boar, it turns out, is one crafty pig. He recently rolled a log onto the electric fence that contains him and made a slow motion escape. He soon was making friends with a surprised construction worker.
“Where a 1,000-pound boar wants to go he goes,” Little said. They eventually coaxed him back into his pen.
Other pigs are raised to butcher age. After slaughter, the hogs are sent to a Washington State Department of Agriculture inspected cut-and-wrap facility.
The 250 chickens are housed in a 12,000-square-foot enclosure that is periodically moved. That gives the chickens fresh grass to graze on, and the former space, fertilized with their droppings, becomes a vegetable bed.
The chickens lay 12 dozen eggs a day, which are sold to PCC Natural Markets, the Tacoma Food Co-op and other stores.
The chickens roost in several mobile coops. Some are repurposed campers – giving the yard the look of a chicken trailer park. It’s a minimum security facility; dozens of escapees scratch and cluck beyond the perimeter. Little knows she has to create a higher fence soon.
“It’s not going to work so great when I have pumpkins growing,” Little said. “We’ll have to tighten down the jail.”
Near the chickens are three brightly colored beehives. Each one is named after “cool radical women” Little said. The insects are mainly used for crop pollination, but the couple harvests some of the honey. Being a bee hasn’t been easy for the past several years. Colony collapse disorder, mites and insecticides have made it difficult to keep bees alive but the Littles’ seem to be thriving.
Animal husbandry doesn’t end with domestic animals on Little Eorthe. Providing habitat for wildlife is one of the Littles’ principals. The couple keeps a hillside and creek in its natural riparian condition. But it’s an entry point for visiting elk and the occasional coyote.
The latter are not welcome visitors. Last spring coyotes killed 25 chickens and six female turkeys.
A small herd of alpacas not only provide wool, but they act as an early warning system against predators. They let out loud high-pitched screams when they spot coyotes.
Most of the fields are now fallow for winter, but a few sport kale, collard greens, beets, carrots and green onions. Soon, Little will sow peas and fava beans. “And then the pace quickens,” Little says.
Little Eorthe Farm offers a Community Supported Agriculture food service. For a fee, every member of the CSA becomes a shareholder of the harvest. They get the first and the best of the harvest every week.
“It’s a relationship with a farmer that makes it meaningful for both them and me,” Little said. But the harvest also offers a connection between the consumer and the earth itself. “You’re living and eating what’s coming on,” Little said. “Not only is it seasonal and local but it’s educational”
Little grows 45 groups of plants (onions, carrots, lettuce, beets, etc.) and each of those groups can have anywhere from two to 20 varieties.
At the height of the growing season each CSA member’s box can weigh 15 to 20 pounds, Little said.
The Littles also sell their produce – and only theirs – at the Proctor and Gig Harbor farmers markets.
The seeds for this year’s crop have yet to be sowed but Little is ready. And she doesn’t need to drop a small fortune with seed catalogs.
“I’m a seed saving junkie,” Little said as she pulled out a container of yin yang beans – a unique black and white bean that looks exactly like the Asian symbol.
The preservation of seeds, particularly what’s become known as “heirloom” varieties, is important to Little. She’s concerned that GMO (genetically modified organism) seeds are crowding out varieties that have been grown for generations.
It’s not hyperbole. Agricultural giant Monsanto developed a very successful herbicide, Roundup, and then created GMO corn, sugarbeets, soybeans and other crops to resist the chemical. And Monsanto wants farmers to purchase seeds from them every year. If farmers save “Roundup Ready” seeds from their harvest Monsanto will sue them, the company states on its website. They have not lost a case.
Small-scale organic farming is not cheap. Industrial agriculture is cost-effective because it’s done on a mass scale. Insecticides cut down on crop loss, herbicides increase yields and save labor.
“We’re not getting rich doing this. We’d be happy if we break even,” Little said as she walked by a young fruit orchard and a berry patch near her farmhouse.
Still, her ambitions remain. A new greenhouse is empty but soon, like last year, it will be growing peppers, turmeric and ginger. This year she plans to add peanuts and sweet potatoes to her heat-loving crops.
A 1,000-foot arbor stands ready for a quick refurbishing by Ken before it can once again be planted with hops. The hops will go into Ken’s newest venture: beer making. A commercial kitchen is being constructed on site to handle that and the production of other goods.
If farming seems like a lot of work, that’s because it is. When the growing season takes off two interns arrive along with part-time helpers. But that doesn’t mean Little goes on vacation.
“Every day is a work day. You’ve got to feed animals. You’ve got to sharpen a tool or maintain something. There are no days off,” Little said. “You’ve got to love what you do.”
- This notion is worthy of challenge: "Industrial agriculture is cost-effective because it’s done on a mass scale. Insecticides cut down on crop loss, herbicides increase yields and save labor."
- The crop yields actually haven't been proven to be higher, lower nutritional value offsets any such gains if they do exist, and pesticides and herbicides have negative effects that haven't been quantified and are likely to be devastating in terms of weed and pest resistance, higher cancer rates, etc.
The Owl Comes Into Its Own
The two barred, or Strix varia, owls were just rousing themselves in the outdoor enclosure, and they looked bigger and more shaggily majestic than I expected, with capes of densely layered cream-and-coffee plumage draped on their 17-inch frames and pompous, Elizabethan feather ruffs encircling their necks. Like any good royalty, they ignored me.
That is, until I pulled out my phone with the birdcall app and started playing the barred owl song. The female’s languid eyes shot wide open. The male’s head spun around in its socket by 180 of the 270 degrees an owl’s head can swivel.
With the distinctive forward-facing gaze that can make owls seem as much human as bird, the barred pair stared at me. I played the call again, the male grew bored, and I was about to put the phone away when suddenly the female — the larger of the two owls, as female birds of prey often are — pitched her body forward on her perch, lifted up her heavy, magnificent wings and belted out a full-throated retort to my recorded call.
After a brief pause, she hooted the eight-note sequence once more, at which point an astonished zoo-goer nearby burst into applause.
In the Western imagination, the owl surely vies with the penguin for the position of My Favorite Bird. “Everyone loves owls,” said David J. Bohaska, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, who discovered one of the earliest owl fossils. “Even mammalogists love owls.”
Owls are a staple of children’s books and cultural kitsch — here wooing pussycats in pea-green boats and delivering mail to the Harry Potter crew, there raising a dubiously Wise eyebrow in the service of snack food. Yet for all this apparent familiarity, only lately have scientists begun to understand the birds in any detail, and to puzzle out the subtleties of behavior, biology and sensory prowess that set them apart from all other avian tribes.
Researchers have discovered, for example, that young barn owls can be impressively generous toward one another, regularly donating portions of their food to smaller, hungrier siblings — a display of altruism that is thought to be rare among nonhuman animals, and one that many a small human sibling might envy.
The scientists also discovered that barn owls express their needs and desires to each other through a complex, rule-based series of calls, trills, barks and hoots, a language the researchers are now seeking to decipher.
“They talk all night long and make a huge noise,” said Alexandre Roulin of the University of Lausanne, who recently reported on barn owl altruism in the journal Animal Behaviourwith his colleague Charlene A. Ruppli, and Arnaud Da Silva of the University of Burgundy. “We would never put our nest boxes in front of a farmer’s bedroom, or the person wouldn’t be able to sleep.”
Other researchers are tracking the lives of some of the rarer and more outlandishly proportioned owls, like the endangered Blakiston’s fish owl of Eurasia. Nearly a yard high, weighing up to 10 pounds and with a wingspan of six feet, Blakiston’s is the world’s largest owl, a bird so hulking it’s often mistaken for other things, according to Jonathan Slaght of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Russia program. It could easily look like a bear in a tree or a man on a bridge.
Or maybe Ernest Hemingway. This powerful predator can pull from the river an adult salmon two, three or more times its own weight, sometimes grabbing onto a tree root with one talon to help make the haul.
Ferocity is essential for a bird whose frigid, spotty range extends across northeastern China, the Russian Far East and up toward the Arctic Circle, one that breeds and nests in the dead of winter, perched atop a giant cottonwood or elm tree, out in the open, in temperatures 30 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Dr. Slaght’s colleague Sergei Surmach videotaped a female sitting on her nest during a blizzard. “All you could see at the end was her tail jutting out,” Dr. Slaght said.
Aeronautical engineers are studying owls for clues to better wing designs. Many owl species are renowned for their ability to fly almost completely silently, without the flapping noises and air whooshes that might warn prey of their approach.
Researchers have traced that silent flight to several features. The bulk of the wing is broad and curved — the ideal shape for slow gliding — and is abundantly veined with velvety down plumage to help absorb sound. Moreover, the feathers at the edge of the wing are serrated to effectively break up and smooth out air turbulence as a comb disentangles knots. At a meeting of the American Physical Society last fall, researchers from Cambridge University proposed that well-placed perforations in an airplane wing could have a similar smoothing effect on turbulence, leading to quieter and more fuel efficient flights — and mealtime voles for all.
- The owl can be known as a an omen of death among American Indian culture because they are such keen hunters. Once the owl sees it's prey the prey has no chance of living. On the Opposite side the raven and crow are the birds of wisdom in American Indian culture for it high intelligence and cleverness.
- These birds are, as so much of our natural co-habitants of planet earth, majestic, amazing and sacred. Instead of spending billions to see if there might be life on Mars, I pray we take that money and invest it in the precious and incredibly fascinating life here on earth.
Insects could be the planet's next food source... even if that gives you the creeps
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/mar/02/insects-next-food-source
Crunchy, full of protein and to be found under a rock near you. Insectshave long been overlooked as food in all but a handful of places around the world – but now they are crawling closer and closer to our plates.
This spring will see a drive towards removing the yuck factor and putting insects not just on experimental gastronomic menus but also on supermarket shelves.
In April there will be a festival in London, Pestival 2013 – a Wellcome Trust-backed insect appreciation event where the consumption of creepy-crawlies comes high on the agenda. It will feature a two-day "pop-up" restaurant by the Nordic Food Lab, the Scandinavian team behind the Danish restaurant Noma, which brought ants to the table for a sellout 10-day run at Claridge's hotel in Mayfair last year.
Noma has been named the world's best restaurant by Restaurantmagazine for three years running. Its chef, René Redzepi, says that ants taste like "seared lemon rind" and a purée of fermented grasshoppers and moth larvae tastes like a strong fish sauce. Bee larvae make a sweet mayonnaise used in place of eggs and scientists are constantly coming up with new ways to use little creatures.
In March a BBC documentary will feature food writer Stefan Gates searching out and eating deep-fried locusts and barbecued tarantulas, but behind all the gimmicks and jokes about flies in the soup there is a deeply serious message. Many experts believe there is a clear environmental benefit to humans eating creepy-crawlies.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has been funding projects since 2011 aimed at promoting the eating and farming of insects in south-east Asia and Africa, where an estimated two billion people already eat insects and caterpillar larvae as a regular part of their diet. Last year the FAO published a list of 1,909 edible species of insect and, with sponsorship from the Dutch government, plans a major international conference on "this valuable food source" this year.
Insects are plentiful – globally, for every human there are 40 tonnes of insects – so there is not too much chance of them being endangered, and they are unlikely to have been dosed with chemicals.
"I know it's taboo to eat bugs in the western world, but why not?", Redzepi has said. "You go to south-east Asia and this is a common thing. You read about it from all over the world, that people are eating bugs. If you like mushrooms, you've eaten so many worms you cannot imagine. But also we eat honey, and honey is the vomit of a bee. Think of that next time you pour it into your tea."
He said that the basic premise behind Nordic Food Lab was: "Nothing is not edible."
Insects are critical to life on Earth and, with more than a million species, are the most diverse group of creatures on the planet, yet they are misunderstood, reviled and often put to death with one squish by humans just because they are there.
Over the next 30 years the planet's human population will increase to nine billion. Already one billion people do not get enough food. The increase will mean more pressure on agricultural land, water, forests, fisheries and biodiversity resources, as well as nutrients and energy supplies.
The cost of meat is rising, not just in terms of hard cash but also in terms of the amount of rainforest that is destroyed for grazing or to grow feedstuff for cattle. There is also the issue of methane excreted by cows. The livestock farming contribution in terms of greenhouse gas emissions is enormous – 35% of the planet's methane, 65% of its nitrous oxide and 9% of the carbon dioxide.
Edible insects emit fewer gases, contain high-quality protein, vitamins and amino acids, and have a high food conversion rate, needing a quarter of the food intake of sheep, and half of pigs and chickens, to produce the same amount of protein. They emit less greenhouse gases and ammonia than cows and can be grown on organic waste. China is already successfully setting up huge maggot farms. Zimbabwe has a thriving mapone caterpillar industry and Laos was given nearly $500,000 (£330,000) by the FAO to develop an insect-harvesting project. It's already big business in the UK, though not always official: last week a man was detained by Gatwick customs as he stepped off a flight from Burkina Faso with 94 kilos of mapone, worth nearly £40,000, in his luggage.
A study by FoodServiceWarehouse.com suggested that swapping pork and beef for crickets and locusts could help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 95%. But perhaps the fairest thing about eating worms and insects comes when we are dead – then they get a chance to nibble their own back.
- In a cold climate, insects are small, so we don't bother gathering and eating them. There are plenty of coastal creatures we happily eat in Spain that are just as if not more ugly than insects (whelks, eels, oysters, cockles, prawns, crabs, shrimp etc.). The difference is that these sea creatures are bigger than their land visual equivalent - our land snails are small compared to whelks, grasshoppers tiny compared to prawns.
Loss of wild pollinators serious threat to crop yields, study finds
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/28/wild-bees-pollinators-crop-yields
The decline of wild bees and other pollinators may be an even more alarming threat to crop yields than the loss of honeybees, a worldwide study suggests, revealing the irreplaceable contribution of wild insects to global food production.
Scientists studied the pollination of more than 40 crops in 600 fields across every populated continent and found wild pollinators were twice as effective as honeybees in producing seeds and fruit on crops including oilseed rape, coffee, onions, almonds, tomatoes and strawberries. Furthermore, trucking in managed honeybee hives did not replace wild pollination when that was lost, but only added to the pollination that took place.
"It was astonishing; the result was so consistent and clear," said Lucas Garibaldi, at the National University in Río Negro, Argentina, who led the 46-strong scientific team. "We know wild insects are declining so we need to start focusing on them. Without such changes, the ongoing loss is destined to compromise agricultural yields worldwide."
Pollination is needed for about three-quarters of global food crops. Thedecline of honeybee colonies due to disease and pesticides has prompted serious concern. Jason Tylianakis, at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, described them as "the species charged with protecting global food security".
The new research shows for the first time the huge contribution of wild insects and shows honeybees cannot replace the wild insects lost as their habitat is destroyed. Garibaldi said relying on honeybees was a "highly risky strategy" because disease can sweep through single species, as has been seen with the varroa mite, and single species cannot adapt to environmental changes nearly as well as a group of wild pollinators.
"The studies show conclusively that biodiversity has a direct measurable value for food production and that a few managed species cannot compensate for the biodiversity on which we depend," said Tylianakis, who was not part of the research team.
Garibaldi's team, whose work was published in the journal Science on Thursday, warn: "Global degradation of natural services can undermine the ability of agriculture to meet the demands of the growing, increasingly affluent, human population."
Garibaldi said: "Without wild pollination, you will not get the best yields and the best agricultural land already farmed, so it is very important to get the maximum yield." He added that, across the world, the yields of crops that needed pollination were rising significantly more slowly than crops that did not.
Wild pollinators perform better than honeybees because they deploy a wider range of pollinating techniques, such as "buzz" pollination. They also visit more plants, meaning much more effective cross-pollination than honeybees, which tend to carry pollen from one flower to another on the same plant.
A second new study published in Science on Thursday showed more than half the wild bee species were lost in the 20th century in the US. It made use of a remarkable record made of plants and pollinators at Carlinville, Illinois between 1888 and 1891 by entomologist Charles Robertson. Scientists combined that with data from 1971-72 and new data from 2009-10 to discover the changes in pollination seen over the century as widespread forest was reduced to the fragments that remain today.
They found that half of the 109 bee species recorded by Robertson had been lost and there had been a serious degradation of the pollination provided by the remaining wild insects, with their ability to pollinate specific plants falling by more than half. There was an increasing mismatch between when plants flowered and when bees were active, a finding consistent with climate change, according to the researchers.
Laura Burkle, at Washington University in Montana, who led the work, said: "There are two sides to this coin. These pollination systems are incredibly robust to environmental change, it is almost miraculous that they continue to pollinate given the land use changes. But the system is also incredibly compromised and further degradation will have serious impacts."
- Not much to add from my perspective, except I'd would have put a figure on the bee species count - nearly 20,000 species and more to be formally identified. The only place in the world where bees are missing is AntaRctica.
- "People need to understand that insects are far more than pests." Even the maligned wasp which causes great 'irritation' to us, does a job which far outweighs their nuisance factor. They are predators of other insects which are far more of a 'pest'. Insects are, of course, also a food source for mammals, arachnids and other insects.
African lions – the killer kings in mortal danger from man and sham medicine
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/25/lions-africa-endangered-species-medicine-habitat
In 2002, I spent 10 days in Kenya. I'll never forget lying in a tent on the Maasai Mara trying to sleep against the awful, blood-curdling roar of lions hunting on the moonlit plains. I would wake every hour, swearing a beast was at my door. Seven years later, a trip to Botswana ended without seeing (or hearing) a single lion, and while the safari was magnificent, something powerful and fearsome was notably absent. It made me wonder: what would Africa be without lions?
It's not a rhetorical question. The king of the beasts is on his deathbed. The great cats are vanishing across Africa. In fact, a study last year in Biodiversity Conservation estimated that lion populations have fallen by 68% in just 50 years: from 100,000 in 1960 to 35,000 today. Another report by the NGO LionAid, however, estimated even fewer: 15,000.
While even 15,000 may sound like a lot when compared to other threatened species, lion populations are spread over more than 20 countries, spanning a geographic area larger than south America. Today they survive in small, fragmented pockets. Looking at a map of historic versus current lion ranges is like viewing a continent submerged by rising seas: only scattered islands remain. The situation is most dire in Western and Central Africa where LionAid warns as few as 645 lions survive.
The story of the lion's decline is similar to that of many big predators. Ever-expanding human populations have gobbled up lion habitat for agriculture, livestock, and cities, while numbers lion prey – from antelope to zebra – have fallen dramatically. And like many top predators, lions face an unceasing conflict with humans: they are killed as pests, for trophies, and even for sham medicine. In order to conserve the lion, we must first stop so many dying at human hands.
Lion-human conflict is as old as our origins on the African savannah. Lions do not shy away from killing livestock when they can, and they attack people with some regularity. Both trends may be worsened by prey decline. For millennia, pastoralists have fought back and speared the lions.
But now some have turned to poisoning lions en-masse. In East Africa, a dangerous pesticide known as Furadan (banned in the EU, Canada, and US) is sprinkled over lion-killed livestock. When the pride returns to feed, they perish agonizingly. Unlike spears, the neurotoxin kills scavengers too. It's so deadly that in 2009 a 3-year-old boy died after ingesting Furadan, possibly mistaking the candy-blue pesticide for a treat
Another threat: taxidermy and trophy hunters who argue that by shelling out a lot of cash to shoot animals, they aid conservation efforts. This may be a legitimate argument for some species, but not for lions. Big-cat experts Dereck and Beverly Joubert with National Geographic told me that lion hunting often ends in a long trail of murder , as dramatic as any royal coup.
Hunters almost always target mature males—because of their manes—but by doing so, they unwittingly trigger a wholesale massacre. When a top male dies, a pride becomes vulnerable to challengers. If new males take over their first act is to kill any resisting females and all cubs. The Jouberts say that shooting one male can result in the deaths of over 24 lions.
Finally, there's a new concern: the lion bone trade. Tigers have been killed for traditional Chinese medicine for millennia, some of whose practitioners consider their bones an aphrodisiac. But with wild tigers dwindling and demand rising, traders are turning to lions. Many of the lions involved are raised, much like tiger-farming, solely to be killed for their bones. In this case, trophy-hunters get to shoot a lion and the parts are shipped to China to make someone feel potent, even though there's no medical evidence this works. But if the trade widens, conservationists fear that eventually wild lions will also face the gun.
Conservation must start with halting targeted killings. Lion hunting should be banned or at least better regulated. Working with local communities to mitigate lion conflict, compensate for livestock killed, and better protect both livestock and people should be a priority. Finally, the lion bone trade must be stopped before it gets out of control, like rhino horn and ivory.
This is not to say the lion is going extinct anytime soon. But I wouldn't be surprised if in a couple decades our king fell victim to the same fate as the tiger today: down to just a few thousand in protected areas, struggling even there to survive against the rising tide of humanity. We still have time to decide for lions: would we be satisfied with a token population, representing what once was, or do we want African ecosystems that are still ruled by kings? Where antelope bound in fear and zebra watch the horizon, where prides tussle with hyenas under a dark sky, and the king lounges in the morning light, belly full?
I say, long live the king.
- Sadly the ever increasing human population worldwise means there is no room left for the animal kingdom. We are a selfish species who only care about our own. And we fail to heed the words of a Native American chief who once said 'what is man without the beast'. We're going to be in deep trouble ourselves if we don't stop burning carbon and if we don't learn to manage our resources sensibly. Until we get on top of the problems we are inflicting on ourselves as a species.
Revista "MUY INTERESANTE" Número 168- Mayo 1995
- Los puerco espines llevan una vida tranquila. De día duermen enroscados como una bolita de púas. De noche andan lentamente entre los árboles, buscando frutos y semillas. Claro que… con tremendas espinas, Los que han podido intimar con el señor espín, se llevan una sensación inolvidable. Cuando sus espinas se acercan, el "cliente" forzosamente se las lleva puestas porque se desprenden con facilidad. Además, tienen unas estructuras microscópicas que dificultan todo intento de sacarlas.
- El puercoespín inspira nuevos materiales médicos Desarrollan púas artificiales basadas en las de este animal, pues penetran rápidamente en la piel pero son muy difíciles de extraer.
- Las ondas electromagnéticas son aquellas ondas que no necesitan un medio material para propagarse. Incluyen, entre otras, la luz visible y las ondas de radio, televisión y telefonía.
- Un planta de interior “descontaminante”. Es un buen truco para absorber la radiación de todos modos estamos tan expuestos a todos tipos de radiación en el medio ambiente como las de radio, tv, telefonía y un sin fin de fuentes que nos afectan cada día.
- Cada especie de planta se produce y se desarrolla en los lugares donde puede obtener los nutrientes del suelo, el agua, el aire y la luz que necesita.
Revista "MUY INTERESANTE" Número 166- Marzo 1995
- El enérgico Bengala no es para personas que sólo quieren un gato estampado de leopardo para la decoración.Ya sea que estén pescando en el acuario o jugando en sus cuencos de agua, recoger pelotas para sus familias, salir a caminar con una correa o subir a la cima de los más altos armarios, los Bengala están constantemente en movimiento y son perfectos para cualquier persona que quiera interactuar y jugar con su gato todos los días. El gato de Bengala, al igual que muchos otros animales domésticos, exige una buena dosis de atención y afecto, y goza de ser una parte integral de la familia.
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