A Mane's a Pain, but Equals Gain for Lions

A big, black mane is hot, shaggy and attracts trophy hunters, but it makes a lion irresistibly sexy to the lionesses, researchers reported.
The bigger and darker the mane, the more mates a lion attracts, and the better his cubs survive, Peyton West and Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota wrote in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
A male with a long, dark mane intimidates other lions and for good reasons, they found. He has higher levels of testosterone and wins fights more often.
But he pays for this. He is hotter than lions with lighter manes, eats less in summer and produces more abnormal sperm, the researchers found.
"We suggest the mane's evolution is the result of sexual selection," said West, a doctoral candidate whose dissertation led to the paper.
Lions' manes vary from light blond to black and can be up to a foot long.
One big question about lions is why the males even have a mane, said West, who studied lions in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park.
Like a peacock's elegant but heavy tail, it signals biological fitness to females. Females choose mates with beautiful tails, or in the case of lions, with big, black manes, because it turns them on. Thus the trait is passed on.
West checked to see what good the mane does to a lion. Some people have suggested it protects the head and shoulders during fights or hunting, but West said their data didn't show the neck and head were a special target.
West set up pairs of model lions with short and long manes and watched to see which ones wild lions would approach. Males chose the short-maned dummy nine out of 10 times, she found, while females approached the darker-maned dummy, 13 out of 14 times.
West also found that the higher the testosterone level in the blood of male lions, the darker the mane. "Therefore, it isn't surprising that females would prefer darker manes and males would be intimidated," West said.

Activists Save Snakes on Festival Day

Indian animal rights activists said Tuesday they had rescued about 50 snakes from cruel treatment by their owners during an annual festival.
Every year the "Naag Panchami" festival draws snake charmers to cities, especially Bombay and Calcutta, hoping to make money from Hindus who believe the snakes bring good luck.But Jyoti Nadkarni from the state-run Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said the snakes were often ill-treated.
"Some are defanged in the most unprofessional way. They suffer from mouth infection and their poison gland is punctured. We have kept them under medical observation," she told reporters.
Forest officials would release the healthier snakes in the jungle, animal rights activists said.
For several years animal groups and SPCA inspectors, armed with bags and sacks, have conducted raids before and during the festival to rescue the snakes, many of them cobras.
But undeterred, the snake charmers return every year, gathering in Hindu areas, around temples or at railway stations.
Poor nomads hunt down the snakes in fields and forests during the monsoon season when they come out in the open after their holes are inundated with rain water.
Since the nomads are unable to feed them, the snakes are starved and suffer from severe infections even before being sold to snake charmers, activists say.
"A snake is considered a farmer's friend because of its carnivorous nature. It survives on rats, birds, lizards, frogs and not milk as people would like to offer," said Issac Khemkar, spokesman for the Bombay Natural History Society.
Animal rights activists say hundreds of snakes die during the festival every year, many as a result of drinking milk which causes severe dehydration and allergic reactions.
　

Dogs May Be More Intelligent Than People May Think

Dogs are probably much cleverer than most people think, according to a new study.
Scientists are convinced that dogs can count andresearchers at the University of California Davis say they try to convey different messages through the pitch and pace of their barks.
"Animal behaviorists used to think their bark was simply a way of getting attention. Now a new study suggests that individual dogs have specific barks with a range of meanings," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.
Dogs usually use high-pitched single barks when they are separated from their owners and a lower, harsher superbark when strangers approach or the doorbell rings, according to Sophia Yin, an animal behaviorist at the university.
Playful woofs are high-pitched and unevenly spaced.
Dogs also know when they are being short-changed on treats because they have a basic mathematical ability which enables them to tell when one pile of objects is bigger than another.
"But to count, an animal has to recognize that each object in a set corresponds to a single number and that the last number in a sequence represents the total number of objects," New Scientist added.

Tourist Otters Confused by Accent

Though almost twice the size of their wild Scottish relatives, the pair are disadvantaged by their foreign accents and scent.
"Dialects are common in animal communications, but because of the differences in the sounds they make it will be difficult for these Canadian otters to communicate with the native ones," Matthew Evans, an animal communications expert from Stirling University said.
"There is no doubt dropping two foreign otters into a territory of wild locals would lead to the local ones beating the living daylights out of the new ones," he added.

Are Whale Watchers Loving Whales to Death?

An estimated 10 million people or more venture into coastal waters every year to get a closer look at whales.
Killer whales may be the top of the food chain underwater, but they stand little chance against the eco-tourists who try to catch a glimpse of the majestic mammals rising above the water line.
"We now have more whale-watch boats than there are whales," said Kelley Balcomb-Bartok of the Orca Conservancy, a nonprofit organization in Washington state that works with scientists to protect Orcas.
All this activity is raising concerns about the whales' health and survival.
Some scientists say noise from all the boat traffic may impair a whale's sonar ability as much as 95 percent. The whales need sonar to find food.
Three new studies released this month suggest the interference is damaging the whales, whose population in the Puget Sound region has fallen from 98 to 80 in less than a decade.
Scientists say all the traffic also forces the Orcas to move around more, wasting energy needed for hunting food.
"I would say that at times when there are a lot of boats and there is a lot of noise, that they are irritated,"said Tom McMillen, captain of the whale-watching boat Stellar Sea, which takes out three groups a day.
Scientists say the noise from the boats leads to added stress on the animals, which are already coping with fewer salmon to eat and increasing pollution.
　

A Need to Make Animals Happier

Satellites will shortly swing into action to track sheep grazing habits as part of a project to design farms that make animals happier.
The Food Animal Initiative combines scientists from Oxford University and farmers funded by British food industry giants supermarket Tesco and burger chain McDonalds UK.
"Animals are every farmer's first priority, so it is important that they're given the best care," rural affairs television presenter John Craven said, launching the project.
Apart from tracking sheep to help redesign fields, the initial phase of the project will encourage pigs to indulge in a bit of satisfying rooting and create shady spots for cows to have their calves in natural comfort.
"Our expertise...is in using animal behavior to tell us what the animals want," said Oxford University head of Zoology, Paul Harvey.

Lion Defies Nature by Adopting Oryx - Again (2002)

A lioness who has already defied nature twice this year by adopting a baby oryx -- an antelope that Africa's top predator usually likes to eat -- has done it again, adopting a third oryx.
Game wardens at Samburu National Park said Monday they had found the lioness with a four or five-day-old oryx called Easter Saturday. She had previously adopted new born oryxes over New Year and on Valentine's Day.
On each occasion, she has given the calves affection, protection from other lions, and even allowed their natural mothers to come and feed them.
"Yesterday, two oryxes came (near the lion and calf), probably the mother and father," chief warden Simon Leirana told reporters. "The lioness left the calf and went to sleep in the shade.
"The calf went to its mother and started suckling for about three minutes, then the lioness ran toward them and the mother oryx ran away."
Leirana said the calf tried to follow its mother, but was pursued by the lioness who eventually won "her" baby back.
Wardens said the latest adoptee looked well and strong. Oryx number two was taken away from the lioness after its condition deteriorated from lack of food.
Oryx number one was not so lucky. The lioness managed to protect it for two weeks before a hungry male lion with a traditional diet seized the baby while the lioness was napping.