National Zoo Finds 'Rusty,' Missing Red Panda

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At around 2:15 p.m., the zoo reported that the panda was back, safe and sound, after what must have been a scary experience for a little guy.

Rusty, a red panda who turns one in July, was introduced to the zoo on June 10 from the Lincoln Children’s Zoo in Nebraska. And Monday morning, just two weeks later, the zoo tweeted out that the animal was missing, having last been seen at 6 p.m. Sunday evening. The zoo requested the public’s help in tracking him down.

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After almost a day missing, Rusty is back, the zoo said, having been found in Adams Morgan, a nearby neighborhood in Northwest Washington D.C.

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"Rusty the red panda has been recovered, crated and is headed safely back to the National Zoo! Thank you to everyone who helped us look for and find him!," the zoo wrote on its Facebook page.

National Zoo spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson told the Associated Press Monday morning that Rusty couldn't have gotten very far.

"Unless he was very motivated, he would not wander far from his habitat," Baker-Masson said. "This red panda is not down on the (National) Mall."

Red pandas are arboreal, territorial animals, the zoo’s Twitter feed added, so it would be unusual for Rusty to wander far from his home range -- in his case his exhibit at the zoo.

Cats Don't Actually Ignore Us

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Cats may try to hide their true feelings, but a recent study found that cats do actually pay attention to their owners, distinguishing them from all other people.

The study, which will be published in the July issue of Animal Cognition, is one of the few to examine the cat/human social dynamic from the feline's perspective. Cats may not do what we tell them to, but they usually adore their human caretakers.

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Co-author Atsuko Saito of The University of Tokyo explained to Discovery News that dogs have evolved, and are bred, "to follow their owner's orders, but cats have not been. So sometimes cats appear aloof, but they have special relationships with their owners."

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"Previous studies suggest that cats have evolved to behave like kittens (around their owners), and humans treat cats similar to the way that they treat babies," co-author Kazutaka Shinozuka of the University of South Florida College of Medicine added. "To form such baby-parent like relationships, recognition of owners might be important for cats."

Their study, mostly conducted in the homes of cats so as not to unduly upset or worry the felines, determined just that.

The researchers played recordings of strangers, as well as of the cats' owners, to the felines. The cats could not see the speakers.

Surfing Snake Invasion Feared with New Canal

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Sea snakes could slither into bull sharks' turf in Lake Nicaragua, if a canal project recently approved by the Nicaraguan government succeeds in digging a watery connection between the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea via the lake. Along with sea snakes from the Pacific, changes in water saltiness and temperature could disrupt ecosystems and economies both in the lake and on the coasts.

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Lake Nicaragua hosts an unusual ecosystem. Bull sharks leap salmon-style over rapids in the San Juan River to enter the lake. The lake-loving sharks swim alongside endemic fish species and non-native tilapia fish farms.

Those sharks would probably not suffer from the construction of a canal, according to Frank Schwartz, a marine zoologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill who has more than 50 years experience studying sharks.

The bull sharks may not suffer, but sea snakes entering the lake could be a more serious threat, noted Schwartz. The snake could enter the lake in ocean water brought in through locks and dams built to bridge the elevation differences across the Nicaraguan countryside.

The Caribbean lacks sea snakes, but Pacific serpents could conceivably make it across Nicaragua through a new canal. Groupers and other large Caribbean fish may then suffer after trying to make a snack of the snakes.

Dolphins Choking on Fish and Fishing Gear

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Going fishing this summer? Watch your gear and don’t cut the line. Fish with hooks have been found embedded in the throats of dolphins off the coast Florida.

This is the first time choking has been identified as a significant cause of death in a dolphin population. Between 1997 and 2011, 14 out of 350 dolphins in the Indian River Lagoon died of asphyxiation, all because they choked on spiny fish they shouldn’t be eating, but in more than a third of those cases the fish also had fishing lines or hooks still attached.

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The Indian River Lagoon where the deaths are occurring covers about 40 percent of the Florida coastline and is home to a unique group of about 700 bottlenose dolphins. It is the most biodiverse estuary in the U.S. The dolphins do not leave the lagoon.

“Because they are so tied to home, when things change in the environment, they are vulnerable to the changes every time,” said Judy St. Leger, director of pathology and research at SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment and co-author of the study published in PLOS One.

The lagoon has been undergoing significant changes in the last few years, likely due to nutrient pollution from lawns and farms. In 2011, an algae superbloom killed off 60 percent of the sea grass. Since then, 111 manatees, 300 pelicans and 46 dolphins have died of unknown causes.

Dolphins choking on fish and fishing line is unrelated to the mysterious animal die-offs, though it suggests an additional human impact on the animals in the lagoon.

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The scientists also looked at 186 dolphins that died in the Atlantic Ocean over the same period and found none of them had died of asphyxiation. That suggests dolphins living in the isolated lagoon are more likely to encounter fish that pose a risk.

When scientists did a necropsy on the dead dolphins, they found fish lodged in some of their esophagus. The fish were between 19 centimeters and 40 centimeters, and had strong dorsal spines that had punctured and embedded in the walls of the esophagus. The dolphin would not have been able to swallow its prey.

Fish with strong dorsal spines include sheepshead and tilapia, both of which are common in the Indian River Lagoon.

In five of the cases, scientists found the fish were entangled in fishing line in the throats of the dolphins. In a couple of cases, fishing lures, which are baits with hooks attached, were embedded in the dolphin’s esophagus anchoring the fish.

If people start fishing even more in the Indian River Lagoon, the incidence of hooked fish might rise, posing a danger to the dolphins, the study finds. “Environmental alterations leading to changes in prey availability or increased interactions with fishing gear may change the significance of fatal choking in dolphin populations,” the authors warn.

Horses Evolved 4 Million Years Ago

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The ancestor of all living horses, donkeys and zebras lived about four million years ago, suggests a new study, pushing back the confirmed age of the horse’s progenitor by two million years.

The discovery comes from the genetic analysis of a 700,000-year old horse fossil trapped in the Canadian permafrost. That’s hundreds of thousands of years older than any genome ever sequenced before.

Among other insights, the sequence supports the often-debated view that the Przewalski’s horse, native to the Mongolian steppes, is the last living population of truly wild horses in the world.

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And while the new study offers an intriguing look into the history of horses and how they have changed over millenia, the research also opens up the possibility of getting a much longer view into the evolution of all sorts of species, including people.

“This really shows that you can go much further back in time and do genomics than people previously thought,” said Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Copenhagen. “Suddenly, that means that we can potentially go back and do the genome for precursors to Neanderthals. Maybe there’s potential for getting the genome of Homo erectus. From a scientific standpoint, this is really great.”

In 2003, Willerslev and colleagues retrieved a horse fossil from a site in Canada’s Yukon Territory, which contains some of the oldest permafrost on Earth. Based on volcanic ash preserved in the soil, the researchers estimated that the fossil was at least 700,000 years old.

When they scanned the bone for biomolecules, they were surprised to find both collagen and proteins, giving them hope that the bone might also still contain DNA, even though the oldest surviving DNA ever recovered from a fossil to date was only about 130,000 years old.

The team started with classic techniques to amplify DNA and build a genetic library, Willerslev said, but they ran into too much contamination. Most of the DNA they extracted belonged to microbes.

Loud, Red-Headed Bird Species Discovered

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A redheaded bird with a loud call would hardly seem to be hiding from the world, but researchers only recently discovered it singing away in a Cambodian jungle.

Called the Cambodian tailorbird (Orthotomus chaktomuk), it’s one of only two avian species found solely in Cambodia. The other one sounds equally distinctive. It’s called the Cambodian laughingthrush, and it is restricted to the remote Cardamom Mountains.

Aside from its red head, the Cambodian tailorbird sports a black throat. It lives in a dense, humid lowland jungle just outside of Cambodia’s urbanized capitol of Phnom Penh. It’s described in the Oriental Bird Club’s journal Forktail.

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“The modern discovery of an un-described bird species within the limits of a large populous city – not to mention 30 minutes from my home – is extraordinary,” lead author Simon Mahood of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said in a press release. “The discovery indicates that new species of birds may still be found in familiar and unexpected locations.”

The bird’s scientific name (chaktomuk) is an old Khmer word meaning four-faces. It describes where the bird is found: the area centered in Phnom Penh where the Tonle Sap, Mekong and Bassac Rivers come together.

Unfortunately this bucolic-sounding area is under threat from human encroachment. Our agriculture and urban activities keep pushing into such areas, pushing the native wildlife out.

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The WCS has already recommended that the new species be classified as Near Threatened under the IUCN’s Red List. Fortunately, the bird is found in the Baray Bengal Florican Conservation Area, where WCS is now working with local communities and the Forestry Administration to protect the Bengal florican and other threatened birds.

The last two decades have seen a sharp increase in the number of new bird species emerging from this and nearby regions, mostly due to exploration of remote areas. Newly described birds include various babbler species from isolated mountains in Vietnam, the bizarre bare-faced bulbul from Laos and the Mekong wagtail, first described in 2001 by WCS and other partners.

As Colin Poole, director of WCS Singapore and a co-author of the study on the new bird, said, “This discovery is one of several from Indochina in recent years, underscoring the region’s global importance for bird conservation.”

Co-author Jonathan C. Eames of BirdLife International’s OBE added, “Most newly discovered bird species in recent years have proved to be threatened with extinction or of conservation concern, highlighting the crisis facing the planet’s biodiversity.”

Steve Zack, WCS coordinator of bird conservation, concluded, “Asia contains a spectacular concentration of bird life, but is also under sharply increasing threats ranging from large scale development projects to illegal hunting. Further work is needed to better understand the distribution and ecology of this exciting newly described species to determine its conservation needs.”

Some 1.5 million people live in Phnom Penh, so maybe on quiet mornings people there have actually heard the bird singing, but didn’t consider the species. The bird has different songs. Here’s one that sounds a bit like a cell phone ring.

Image credit: Ashish John/WCS

Twin Giant Pandas Born in China

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A rare giant panda has given birth to twins in China, the first pair of the endangered species born in the world this year, conservation workers told state media Sunday.

They were born to a panda named Haizi at the Wolong Nature Reserve in China's southwest Sichuan province on Saturday evening, according to the Xinhua news agency.

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The first cub arrived at 4:54 pm (0954 GMT) and the second 10 minutes later, said workers at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda on the reserve.

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The mother is still holding the first cub in her arms so staff have been unable to weigh it or determine its gender. But they said it should be healthy, given its size and the sounds it has been making.

The second cub is a female and weighs 79.2 grams (just under three ounces), the staff said, according to Xinhua.

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Haizi became pregnant after mating with males Bai Yang and Yi Bao in March -- most giant pandas are not good breeders when in captivity.

Fewer than 1,600 pandas remain in the wild, mainly in Sichuan, with around 300 in captivity around the world, the majority in China.

'Bubble-Pop' Bird May Be Rarest in U.S.

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The Gunnison sage-grouse, a bird with an unusual “bubble pop” mating call and display, could be America’s rarest bird, according to avian experts.

The bird was only discovered 13 years ago, and yet it’s already nearly a goner. Today, fewer than 5,000 of these birds remain in the wild, and they are rapidly dwindling.

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“In my view, the Gunnison sage-grouse is the most biologically endangered bird species in all of continental North America,” Cornell Lab of Ornithology director John Fitzpatrick said in a statement sent to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The chicken-sized bird has an amazingly unusual mating ritual. To court females, the males strut about while wagging their spiky tails and making a popping-like noise as they inflate yellow air sacs from their white chests.

Fitzpatrick and others are paying attention to this bird now, as it’s a candidate for listing as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The Gunnison sage-grouse only lives in eastern Utah and Colorado.

“The Gunnison sage-grouse is now in imminent danger of a series of local population collapses, which — when they occur — will result in extinction of the species,” Fitzpatrick explained.

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Efforts by public agencies and private landowners to help stabilize the bird’s populations through private land easements, conservation plans and community education have not halted its decline, says Fitzpatrick.

Despite the bird’s precarious status, getting a species endangered classification can be a long, laborious process.

For example the Dakota skipper butterfly, on the candidate’s list since 1975, is now extinct in Indiana and Iowa. The Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake has been a candidate since 1982. And the Kittlitz’s murrelet, a small bird, has been on the candidate’s list for nearly 20 years.

“It is now urgent that the Gunnison sage-grouse be listed as an endangered species, and that a recovery team be assembled to fast-track recommended steps for halting the decline and imminent extinction of this remarkable bird,” said Fitzpatrick.

Bird Apps May Confuse Real Birds

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Some experts are warning that cell phone apps that mimic bird calls are too real.

Concerned that birds may misinterpret the sounds as coming from their feathered friends, rather than phones, and responding to them instead of, say, feeding their babies, experts in the United Kingdom are calling the apps “harmful.”

“Repeatedly playing a recording of birdsong or calls to encourage a bird to respond in order to see it or photograph it can divert a territorial bird from other important duties, such as feeding its young…It is selfish and shows no respect to the bird.

“People should never use playback to attract a species during its breeding season,” Tony Whitehead, public affairs officer for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, told the BBC.

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Meanwhile, developers of the apps say the sounds are educational and not a cause for concern.

“Just keep the volume low,” Dr. Hilary Wilson, a developer for the Chirp! app, told the BBC, although she admitted it is possible to misuse them. “We urge great caution — birdsong is simply a pleasant sound to human ears, but to birds it is a powerful means of communication.”

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In England, The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 made it an offense to intentionally disturb nesting birds. Brownsea Island, in the county of Dorset, has put up signs warning visitors about using the apps.

Photo: A yellow oriole sits on a branch. Some ornithologists are concerned that sounds from bird call phone apps may be confusing birds in the wild. Credit: iStockPhoto