ATHENS: Panagis hauls himself out of the pool at a rehabilitation center in Greece and scurries over for a delectable lunch: whole mackerel. It’s been about three months since the orphaned seal pup was found struggling in the coastal waters of Cyprus. Soon, he’ll be well enough to go home.
Panagis is one of dozens of Mediterranean monk seals, or Monachus monachus, that have been nursed back to health by Greece’s MOm, a charity dedicated to the care and protection of the rare marine mammal whose population had dwindled so dramatically that at one point it faced extinction.
Thanks to conservation efforts, the seals with the big, round eyes and prominent whiskers are now making a remarkable comeback. Nearly half of their estimated global population of 800 live in Greek waters, where the extensive coastline offers an abundance of sea caves that provide shelter for females to rear their young.
From near extinction to recovery
Sleek and remarkably fast in the water, the monk seal is a skillful hunter and can consume up to 3 kilograms (6 pounds) of fish, octopus and squid a day. But it’s not averse to a ready meal, and can rip through fishing nets to steal fish — which led fishermen to view them as pests.
For decades, they were hunted, contributing to a major population decline between the 1960s and 1980s that led the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, to list them as critically endangered.
When conservation efforts began in the 1980s, combined with outreach programs to educate the public — and fishermen — “society gradually began to change … and the population began to recover,” said Panagiotis Dendrinos.
Dendrinos, a marine biologist and coordinator of the Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal — or MOm — that has pioneered the Monachus monachus conservation program, says the monk seal is the only seal species in the Mediterranean Sea and also “one of the rarest species of seal and marine mammal in the world.”
“To protect an animal like the Mediterranean monk seal in its natural environment, you essentially have to protect the entire marine ecosystem,” he said.
Conservation efforts have paid off, and in recent years, the species climbed down a notch on the IUCN’s Red List of threatened species to “endangered.” About a year ago improved one step further, to “vulnerable.”
A unique seal rehab
Usually contacted by members of the public who find an animal in distress, MOm specialists tend to adult seals on location where possible, and transport young seals to the organization’s rehabilitation center housed in the grounds of Athens zoo, on the outskirts of the Greek capital.
There, the young mammals are looked after by veterinarians, fed a special diet to provide them with the best nutrition and hone their swimming skills in a pool.
Their carers give them names — often after the people who found them — but make sure contact with humans is kept to a minimum to prepare the animals for their return into the wild.
The young seals typically stay in the rehab center for several months, until they’ve put on enough weight and their natural hunting instinct kicks in, allowing them to fend for themselves. They are then tagged so they can be tracked, and re-introduced into the wild.
MOm, the only center of its kind in the region, has cared for about 40 seals from far and wide, both on location and in its facilities, Dendrinos said.
“This year, we had a really pleasant surprise,” he said. A female seal that had been treated and released four years ago was spotted nursing a pup.
Planes, boats and cars to the rescue
Panagis was found in Cyprus, near where the body of his mother had been found a few days earlier. Alerted by locals, the organization arranged for the seal to be flown to Athens.
“Transportation is carried out with whatever is available,” said veterinary assistant Nikitas Vogiatzis, shortly after feeding Panagis. “Either by plane, or by boat, or even by taxi. “Konstantina came in a taxi, Panagis by plane, Renos came on a boat,” he said, listing MOm’s most recent wards.
Weighing just under 15 kilograms (33 pounds) when he arrived, the now 3-month-old seal has reached over 40 kilograms (88 pounds). Panagis is nearly ready for his return trip home, which MOm experts hope will happen in May.
Back into the wild
Renos — short for Renos-Pantelis — was found in November in the small Aegean island of Anafi by a nurse and a military conscript whom he was named after.
The seal pup was shipped to MOm’s facility. He got medical treatment and was put on a special diet until he was old enough to move on to solid fish — the mackerel that Panagis is so fond of.
He recovered and on a cold, sunny February day, it was his turn to head back into the wild. MOm personnel loaded him into a crate and whisked him by speedboat to the uninhabited islet of Gyaros, the closest marine protected area to Athens.
The release location is chosen “based on there being enough food, and there being no disturbance by people, which is very important,” said Vogiatzis, the veterinary assistant.
The crate is placed near the water, he said. Then, “you open the door, you say a prayer and you say: ‘So long’.”
Renos’ crate was deposited on a beach and the door opened. The young seal sniffed the air timidly, and waited. Slowly, he inched his way out of the crate, then picked up speed as he belly-hauled his way down the beach, splashed into the sea and was gone.
The cute whiskers are back on. Rare Mediterranean monk seals cared for in a Greek rehab center
https://arab.news/4qwrn
The cute whiskers are back on. Rare Mediterranean monk seals cared for in a Greek rehab center
- Panagis, an orphaned seal pup found a few days after his dead mother’s body was located along the coast of Cyprus
- Nearly half of their estimated global population of 800 live in Greek waters
Emperor penguin populations falling ‘faster than we thought’: researchers
- Emperor penguin populations in Antarctica have shrunk by almost a quarter as global warming transforms their icy habitat
PARIS: Emperor penguin populations in Antarctica have shrunk by almost a quarter as global warming transforms their icy habitat, according to new research Tuesday that warned the losses were far worse than previously imagined.
“We’ve got this really depressing picture of climate change and falling populations even faster than we thought, but it’s not too late,” said Peter Fretwell, of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), who led the study monitoring sixteen colonies, representing nearly a third of the global emperor penguin population.
In London, the fox has its own ambulance service when it needs help
- The critters that have admirers and adversaries are well adapted to city life but living on the streets, alleys and back gardens of a dense urban environment can be rough
- When they are ill, injured or abandoned as cubs in south London and its leafy suburbs, The Fox Project is often there to help
PADDOCK WOOD: The injured fox is cornered in a cage, teeth bared and snarling at the woman trying to help it.
Nicki Townsend is unfazed. Wearing only rubber gloves and an outfit suitable for a yoga class, she approaches with soothing words. “All right, baby,” she coos as she deftly drapes a towel over his head, grabs him by the scruff of his neck, scoops up his wounded legs and moves him to a clean cage.
It’s not the way her day typically begins, but there’s nothing routine about rescuing foxes.
“You can never predict what you’re going to arrive at,” Townsend said.
While not as visible as phone boxes or double-decker buses, the red fox is a fixture in London, a city not known for its wildlife. But living on the streets, alleys and back gardens of a dense urban environment can be rough and when foxes need help, they have their own ambulance service — and Townsend may be on her way.
The foxes didn’t invade London so much as adapt and expand their range inward as the city spread to their habitat in the 1930s and suburbs grew.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em
But people and the bushy-tailed member of the canine family have not always lived in harmony, and the species has admirers and adversaries.
For everyone enchanted seeing a fox trotting nonchalantly down their street at dusk or basking in a sunny backyard, there are plenty who see them as pests. They poop where they like, tear into garbage and the vixens in heat let out terrifying shrieks in the dead of winter when attracting a mate.
“It’s like Marmite with foxes,” Townsend said, referring to the food spread that is an acquired and divisive taste. “You either love them or hate them.”
The divide between the two camps led Trevor Williams to found what became The Fox Project nearly 35 years ago.
Once a bass player in the rock group Audience that opened for Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, Williams had been active in the campaign to stop fox hunting when he redirected his protection efforts to the city, where foxes were once routinely killed.
“Because of the myths that have occurred over the years, there’s still a lot of suspicion about what foxes might be,” Williams said. “You know, they’re going to bite the baby, they’re going to eat the cat, they’re going to run away with your husband.”
The project has since grown from providing information on deterring foxes to rescuing 1,400 a year, including 400 cubs, though only about half survive to be released.
City offers cheap eats and unique hazards
There are estimated to be 15,000 foxes in London. The project covers a swath of south London and its leafy suburbs while other organizations not devoted solely to foxes handle other parts of the city.
While the omnivores survive on small animals, bugs and berries in the wild, they favor easily scavenged leftovers in the city and handouts that make them more dependent on humans.
Their main urban menaces are cars, getting snagged in soccer nets or getting stuck in tight spaces. In their effort to get free, they often get nasty abrasions that can become infected. Many also suffer from mange, a parasitic infestation that leads to all kinds of problems.
Townsend pilots her VW Caddy on city streets, highways and narrow lanes that roll through lush hills, responding to calls about injured or ill foxes or cubs that have lost their mothers.
She’s seen a bit of everything since her first humbling call 2 1/2 years ago when the supposedly injured fox bolted.
“In my inexperience, I chased after him, which is comical because you’re never going to outrun a fox,” she said. “I just remember he ran very fast and I looked silly running after him.”
Despite many challenging situations — she once managed to rescue a fox that lost its footing atop a fence and ended upside down at eye level with its paw lodged between boards — she’s only been bitten once.
Heartbreak with hard cases
Her van carries the distinctly musky scent of foxes. The odor becomes unpleasant when an anxious passenger in a litter of cubs relieves itself enroute to being delivered to a foster care pen where they will stay until being released in the wild.
“Feel free to open the window,” said Townsend, who is accustomed to the stench. “This is a stinky job.”
On a recent day, she was dispatched to meet a heartbroken couple who found a cub with a puncture wound collapsed on their back lawn.
“We thought he was asleep at first, so we went to go and have a close look because we love them,” Charlotte English said. “Then he just didn’t move, so we knew something was wrong.”
That cub had to be put to sleep, as did the adult Townsend transferred at the start of her shift.
Cubs that recover are socialized in packs of five until they mature and are then released in a rural location while the adults are freed in the neighborhoods where they were found.
The fox does not say ‘Thank you’
Given a second chance, it’s not clear how well the foxes fare, because they are rarely tracked. A 2016 study in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science found that rehabilitated foxes were more likely to behave as if they had been displaced when returned to their original territory. They were tracked wandering farther away, potentially exposing them to more traffic and greater stress.
“It is a gap in the knowledge and there’s an assumption that when you release them, they thrive and I think that that assumption needs to be challenged more,” said Bryony Tolhurst, a University of Brighton honorary research fellow and lead author of the study.
For Townsend, fox deaths are offset by the joy of seeing little ones venture into the unknown or an adult darting into a neighborhood it instantly recognizes.
“Sometimes they look back and people like to romanticize that they’re saying ‘thank you,’” she said. “They’re just making sure we’re not chasing after them.”
Chinese man defies demolition orders to build madcap rural home
- Nail houses sometimes make headlines for delaying money-spinning construction projects or forcing developers to divert roads or build around shabby older homes
XINGYI, China: Surrounded by the rubble of demolished homes, Chen Tianming’s ramshackle tower of faded plyboards and contorted beams juts into the sky in southwestern China, a teetering monument to one man’s stubbornness.
Authorities razed most of Chen’s village in Guizhou province in 2018 to build a lucrative tourist resort in a region known for its spectacular rice paddies and otherworldly mountain landscapes.
Chen, 42, refused to leave, and after the project faltered, defied a flurry of demolition notices to build his family’s humble stone bungalow higher and higher.
He now presides over a bewildering 10-storey, pyramid-shaped warren of rickety staircases, balconies and other add-ons, drawing comparisons in Chinese media to the fantastical creations of legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.
“I started building out of practicality, trying to renovate and expand our home,” Chen said on a sweltering May afternoon as he climbed ladders and ducked wooden beams in his labyrinthine construction.
“But then it became more of an interest and hobby that I enjoyed,” he said.
Chen’s obsessive tinkering and lack of building permits continue to draw ire from the local government.
The higher floors where he sleeps sway in the wind, and dozens of ropes and cables tether the house to the ground as if the whole thing might one day float away.
“When I’m up here... I get the sense of being a nomad,” Chen said, gazing out at apartment blocks, an airport and distant mountains.
“People often say it’s unsafe and should be demolished... but I’ll definitely never let anyone tear it down.”
Local authorities once had big plans to build an 800-acre tourist resort — including a theater and artificial lake — on Chen’s native soil.
They promised to compensate villagers, but Chen’s parents refused, and he vowed to help them protect the home his grandfather had built in the 1980s.
Even as neighbors moved out and their houses were bulldozed, Chen stayed put, even sleeping alone in the house for two months “in case (developers) came to knock it down in the night.”
Six months later, like many ill-considered development projects in highly indebted Guizhou, the resort was canceled.
Virtually alone among the ruined village, Chen was now master of a “nail house” — a Chinese term for those whose owners dig in and refuse to relocate despite official compensation offers.
A quirk of China’s rampant development and partial private property laws, nail houses sometimes make headlines for delaying money-spinning construction projects or forcing developers to divert roads or build around shabby older homes.
Even as Chen forged ahead, completing the fifth floor in 2019, the sixth in 2022 and the seventh in 2023, he continued to receive threats of demolition.
Last August, his home was designated an illegal construction, and he was ordered to destroy everything except the original bungalow within five days.
He says he has spent tens of thousands of yuan fighting the notices in court, despite losing several preliminary hearings.
But he continues to appeal, and the next hearing has been delayed.
“I’m not worried. Now that there’s no one developing the land, there’s no need for them to knock the place down,” he said.
In recent years, ironically, Chen’s house has begun to lure a steady trickle of tourists itself.
On Chinese social media, users describe it as China’s strangest nail house, likening it to the madcap buildings in Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli masterpieces “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “Spirited Away.”
As dusk falls, Chen illuminates his home with decorative lanterns, and people gather on the nearby dirt road to admire the scene.
“It’s beautiful,” local resident He Diezhen said as she snapped photos.
“If there are no safety issues, it could become an (official) local landmark,” she said.
Chen said the house makes many visitors remember their whimsical childhood fantasies.
“(People) dream of building a house for themselves with their own hands... but most can’t make it happen,” he said.
“I not only thought of it, I made it a reality.”
Man who let snakes bite him 200 times spurs new antivenom hope
- “I know what it feels like to die from snakebite”
PARIS: Tim Friede was feeling particularly down on the day after the September 11 attacks, so he went to his basement and let two of the world’s deadliest snakes bite him.
Four days later, he woke up from a coma.
“I know what it feels like to die from snakebite,” Friede told AFP via video call from his home in the small US town of Two Rivers, Wisconsin.
This experience might put most people off snakes entirely, but Friede simply vowed to be more careful next time.
From 2000 to 2018, he allowed himself to be bitten by snakes more than 200 times. He also injected himself with their venom over 650 times.
Friede endured this pain because he wanted to achieve total immunity to venom, a practice called mithridatism which should not be tried at home.
After a couple of years, Friede started to believe he could be the basis for a better kind of antivenom. The former truck mechanic, who does not have a university degree, long struggled to be taken seriously by scientists.
But last month, a study published in the prestigious Cell journal showed that antibodies from his blood protect against a range of snake venom.
The researchers now hope Friede’s hyper-immunity could even lead to the development of a universal antivenom.
This would fill a major need, because currently most antivenoms only cover one or a few of the world’s 600 venomous snakes.
Up to 138,000 people are killed by snakebites a year, while 400,000 suffer amputations or other disabilities, according to the World Health Organization.
These figures are believed to be vastly underestimated because snakebite victims typically live in poorer, remote areas.
Friede’s first bite was from a harmless garter snake when he was five years old.
“I was afraid, I cried, I ran away,” said Friede, now 57.
Then he started bringing snakes home and hiding them in pickle jars. His mother sought counselling, but his interest in snakes persisted.
Things escalated after Friede attended a class that taught him how to “milk” snakes for their venom.
How antivenom is made has changed little over the last 125 years.
Small doses of snake venom are injected into animals such as horses, which produce antibodies that can be extracted and used as antivenom.
However this antivenom usually only works for bites from that particular species of snake — and it includes other antibodies from horse that can cause serious side-effects including anaphylactic shock.
“I thought, well, if they make antivenom in horses, why can’t I just use myself as a primate?” Friede said.
He started working through the venom from all the deadly species he could get his hands on, such as cobras, taipans, black mambas and rattlesnakes.
“There is pain every time,” he said.
For years, the scientists he contacted to take advantage of his immunity refused to bite.
Then in 2017, immunologist Jacob Glanville, who previously worked on universal vaccines, turned his attention toward antivenom.
Glanville told AFP he had been looking for “a clumsy snake researcher who’d been bit accidentally a couple times,” when he came across a video of Friede taking brutal back-to-back snake bites.
When they first spoke, Glanville said he told Friede: “I know this is awkward, but I would love to get my hands on some of your blood.”
“I’ve been waiting for this call for a long time,” came the response, Glanville said.
The antivenom described in the Cell paper includes two antibodies from Friede’s blood, as well as a drug called varespladib.
It offered mice full protection against 13 of the 19 snake species tested, and partial protection for the remaining six.
The researchers hope a future cocktail will cover far more snakes — particularly vipers — with further trials planned on dogs in Australia.
Timothy Jackson of the Australian Venom Research Unit praised the immunological research, but questioned whether a human needed to be involved, pointing to synthetically developed antibodies.
Glanville said the ultimate goal of his US-based firm Centivax was to develop a universal antivenom administered by something like an EpiPen, potentially produced in India to keep the costs down.
Friede said he was “proud” to have made a “small difference” in medical history.
Now working for Centivax, Friede stopped self-inflicting himself with venom in 2018 to save the firm from liability issues.
But he hopes to get bitten by snakes again in the future.
“I do miss it,” he said.
Video shows dolphin calf birth and first breath at Chicago zoo. Mom’s friend helped
- Calf was born at Brookfield Zoo Chicago from 38-year-old bottlenose dolphin named Allie
- Experienced mother dolphin stayed close to Allie through her more than one hour of labor
CHICAGO: A bottlenose dolphin at a Chicago zoo gave birth to a calf early Saturday morning with the help of a fellow mom, in a successful birth recorded on video by zoo staff.
The dolphin calf was born at Brookfield Zoo Chicago early Saturday morning as a team of veterinarians monitored and cheered on the mom, a 38-year-old bottlenose dolphin named Allie.
“Push, push, push,” one observer can be heard shouting in video released by the zoo Saturday, as Allie swims around the tank, the calf’s little tail fins poking out below her own.
Then the calf wriggles free and instinctively darts to the surface of the pool for its first breath. Also in the tank was an experienced mother dolphin named Tapeko, 43, who stayed close to Allie through her more than one hour of labor. In the video, she can be seen following the calf as it heads to the surface, and staying with it as it takes that first breath.
It is natural for dolphins to look out for each other during a birth, zoo staff said.
“That’s very common both in free-ranging settings but also in aquaria,” said Brookfield Zoo Chicago Senior Veterinarian Dr. Jennifer Langan in a video statement. “It provides the mom extra protection and a little bit of extra help to help get the calf to the surface to help it breath in those couple minutes where she’s still having really strong contractions.”
In a written statement, zoo officials said early signs indicate that the calf is in good health. They estimate it weighs around 35 pounds (16 kilograms) and stretches nearly four feet in length (115-120 centimeters). That is about the weight and length of an adult golden retriever dog.
The zoo’s Seven Seas exhibit will be closed as the calf bonds with its mother and acclimates with other dolphins in its group.
As part of that bonding, the calf has already learned to slipstream, or draft alongside its mother so that it doesn’t have to work as hard to move. Veterinarians will monitor progress in nursing, swimming and other milestones particularly closely over the next 30 days.
The calf will eventually take a paternity test to see which of the male dolphins at the zoo is its father.
Zoo officials say they will name the calf later this summer.
