Fascinating research shows that when two different dolphin species meet they try to find a common language to communicate.
Bottlenose and Guyana dolphins off the coast of Costa Rica have been recorded changing the frequency of their communication. It’s still not clear exactly what happens, but it appears they modify their communications to try and find an intermediate language they both understand.
A rare pink hippo has been found in the Masai Mara in Kenya. The young hippo was seen nestling behind its mother. Despite its appearance, it’s not albino but leucitic as it has some pigmented spots and dark eyes. As they are more visible to predators they do not often survive in the wild, but as adult male hippos can grow to over 3000kg, if this youngster can survive childhood it has a fairly good chance of a normal life.
Photo : Burrard-Lucas/Barcroft
Ever thought ‘a trained monkey could do that’? The Commonwealth games organisers in Delhi have been using trained langur monkeys as guards for the games. Recent floods have attracted a host of animals into the city, including danergous cobra snakes and mischevious food-stealing monkeys. Langur monkeys are known for their intelligence and aggression and their territorial behaviour is proving useful in deterring other animals from disrupting the games.
Photo : AP
Lovely story about how Whipsnade Zoo have overcome the tricky challenge of mating cheetahs. The Northern cheetah is particularly endangered, with only a few hundred left in the wild, so their five new arrivals are very important. As solitary animals, mating in the wild happens after chance meetings between the male and female. The Zoo have tried to replicate this, creating a ‘Lovers Lane’, where during mating season, the males can meet all the females and if any sparks fly, the couple can be united.
Join the Great British elm experiment with the Conservation Society! Just £20 can buy a new elm tree then watch your tree grow!
Native British elm trees were almost wiped out by Dutch elm disease…but with cuttings taken from the surviving healthy trees, this ambitious plan hopes to repopulate Britain with these beautiful trees.
You never know, your tree might one day rival the oldest English Elm; a tree in Brighton standing more than 6 metres wide and over 400 years old!
This photo on the brilliant Guardian’s Week in Pictures struck a chord with me. Our back garden has been filled with cheeky squirrels skipping around picking up nuts for the winter. Squirrels are scatter-hoarders and are estimated to make several thousand deposits each season and use their highly-tuned spatial memory to find them again. Interestingly, they are very rare amongst mammals, being able to climb down a tree head-first. They turn their hind feet backwards so the claws can grip the tree bark.
Photo : Valdrin Xhemaj/EPA
The results are in from this year’s RSPB’s Make your Nature Count survey, and there is a spike in hedgehogs visiting our gardens. There were sightings in almost a quarter of UK gardens and they’ve even managed to bumble into a third of gardens in towns and cities.
The survey show that many animals thought to only live in the rural areas are now found in many urban environments including moles and deer as well as our spiky friends. The most frequent visitor to our gardens is still the blackbird. Take part next year and find out how many visitors you have to your garden!
Some beautiful photos of elusive harvest mice! Photographers Jean-Louis Klein and Marie-Luce Hubert spent a year capturing these images. The mice were released from captivity into the wild and they’ve managed to catch them in their most wild and natural state.
In just 9 days, a 36ft whale carcass was feasted on by sharks to just just 6ft of muscle and bone.
But instead of the feeding frenzy they were expecting, scientists discovered only energy-rich blubber was eaten, leaving the muscle and bone. Sharks were seen to take ‘test bites’, and if they didn’t like what they tasted they often spat it out. This might explain why 70% of shark attacks on people are ‘bite and release’ as the shark immediately decides it’s not something they want to eat.
A BBC film crew have captured images of tigers in the Himalayas for the first time. This could prove vital in the fight for their survival as proof that these magnificent animals can actually survive so high up. Tigers are thought to usually be jungle-dwellers so this evidence could help instigate conservation efforts in this area. It’s estimated that at the current rates, these tigers will be extinct in 15 years. The documentary is on tomorrow night on BBC One.
Photo copyright PA
