End in sight for painful branding of semi-wild moorland ponies

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Exmoor ponies on the Stiperstones Hill in Shropshire. Photograph: David Bagnall/Rex Features
For decades the semi-wild ponies found roaming across some of Britain's most beautiful moorland have been identified by the branding on their flanks made with red-hot irons. The practice involves the application of very hot metal to the skin for several seconds until the hide turns a light tan colour.
But now the use of irons is on the way out, following a sustained campaign by animal welfare organisations that claim the practice harms the horses. The British Veterinary Association, which supports a ban, has noted that "hot branding is generally carried out without analgesia and is undoubtedly a painful process".
Moorland pony societies have agreed a code of practice on hot branding and have agreed to use the method of identification only when strictly necessary. The move follows a decision to ban the use of branding in Scotland and is seen as the beginning of the end for hot branding of moorland ponies.
An independent report in 2010 commissioned by the RSPCA concluded that the practice was "likely to cause significant pain and suffering". It recommended that horse-owners use microchips to identify their animals. Alternatively, they should consider freeze-marking – the use of a cold branding iron held on the skin to destroy the hair follicles and make a bald mark.

Lions Increase Kills After a Full Moon

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Moon phases influence the behavior of all living things, including humans. Lunar power is due to two primary forces: gravity and light changes.
Lions and other predators attack more during the week after a full moon. “The first hours of the night are darkest during the week following a full moon, and the lions are hungriest at that time because of the low predation success during full moon nights,” according to Noga Kronfeld-Schor, who led a study on moonlight’s affect on various species. The paper is published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Sea Lampreys Have Hot Sex

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Male sea lampreys need to be pretty hot to attract females — thermally hot, that is.

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DCL Biologists from Michigan State University have discovered a ridge of fat cells near the anterior dorsal fins of sexually mature male lampreys that heats up when females approach. Until now, scientists had thought this "fat bump" was just ornamental.

In addition, this is the first such thermogenic, or heat-producing, tissue identified in a cold-blooded species, the team reported last week in The Journal of Experimental Biology. (See Video of Lampreys' Hot Sex)

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"In bears, when they come out of hibernation, this type of brown fat helps them become active again," said Yu-Wen Chung-Davidson, a biologist at Michigan State University and a co-author of the paper. "This fish also has this fat cell that generates heat. It's beyond my imagination."

Producing heat is energy-intensive and burns a lot of calories, especially in cold-blooded animals. But sea lampreys die once they spawn, so it's in their best interest to use up whatever energy they have to secure a mate, Chung-Davidson told LiveScience.Undo editsAlpha

Nuclear Fallout May Help Track Illegal Ivory

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Nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s may at last have a silver lining, because researchers can now measure radiocarbon levels to tell when animals (including humans) were born and when they died, critical information in helping to track poachers of elephants, hippos, rhinos and other wildlife. 

The technique, outlined in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, measures radiocarbon-14 deposited in tissue, such as horns, hooves, nails, tusks, hair and teeth. It then uses that information to determine the animal’s birth and death data.

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The testing method could help curb the illegal ivory trade, which is wiping African elephants off the planet.

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“Ivory seizures and illegal trade of animals is on the scale of many billions of dollars each year,” senior author Thure Cerling, a University of Utah geochemist, told Discovery News. “Where did this material come from? Is it from recently poached animals? Is it from some government stockpile? These are important questions that can serve as a starting point for further investigative work.”