Scientists find new penguin, extinct for 500 years

Associated Press

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Researchers studying a rare and endangered species of penguin have uncovered a previously unknown species that disappeared about 500 years ago.

The research suggests that the first humans in New Zealand hunted the newly found Waitaha penguin to extinction by 1500, about 250 years after their arrival on the islands. But the loss of the Waitaha allowed another kind of penguin to thrive — the yellow-eyed species that now also faces extinction, Philip Seddon of Otago University, a co-author of the study, said Wednesday.

The team was testing DNA from the bones of prehistoric modern yellow-eyed penguins for genetic changes associated with human settlement when it found some bones that were older — and had different DNA.
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Race to save world's rarest wolf

BBC News

Scientists in the remote Bale mountains of southern Ethiopia are in a race against time to save the world's rarest wolf.

Rabies passed from domestic dogs is threatening to kill up to two-thirds of all Ethiopian wolves.

Scientists from the UK and Ethiopia are currently vaccinating wolf packs to prevent the spread of the disease.

The population has dwindled to as few as 500, as a result of human encroachment into their habitat.

Vaccination campaign
Dr Claudio Sillero of Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Unit (WildCRU) says vaccinations are the only hope of maintaining the Ethiopian wolf population.
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Oxford University Wildlife Conservation Research Unit

Pets are good for your health...

Guardian Online

American researchers have discovered that owning a pet can significantly reduce your risk of a common cancer. And that's not all, says Emine Saner

The body of evidence supporting the notion that pet ownership is good for your health grew even fatter this month. A new study, published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, found that keeping animals can cut the risk of developing the relatively common cancer of the immune system, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, by almost one third.

"The idea that pets and good health are associated goes back 20 years or more," says Dr June McNicholas, a psychologist who has researched the relationship between people and their pets. The catalogue of health plusses can't all be attributed to regular dogwalking however. When a study suggested that people who own pets have better cardiac health, says McNicholas, "one of the significant factors in people recovering well from a heart attack was owning a pet, but it wasn't just dogs. It applied equally to cats." Here are some of the many ways in which pets have been found to strengthen our constitutions.
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First shots of tigers swimming with humans

The Telegraph

Traditionally, trainers have struggled to build an attachment with the largest of the big cats because the sheer bulk of the animals limits the potential for physical interaction.

But the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, or TIGER, near Miami, claims to have overcome the problem by encouraging both tigers and humans to swim together in a specially adapted pool.

Tigers are known as the best swimmers of all the big cats with modified webbing between their toes to make their feet more like flippers.

Although a number of wildlife parks have encouraged the animals to swim for exercise, the routine has usually consisted of little more than trainers throwing lumps of meat into the water for the tigers to collect.

Bhagavan Antle, director of the centre, said he wanted to give the 200lb, two metre long creatures an opportunity to exercise properly without giving them meat.

He also wanted the public to be able to appreciate the grace and power of the big cats in the water so he built a giant outdoor swimming pool expressly for the purpose.

...The hand-reared tigers are introduced to the water a few months after birth and the trainers then give one-on-one tuition to each of the animals while they are in the water.

"At the institute we feel that swimming with the big cats gives them a closer bond between the animal and their human companions," said Mr Antle.
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California woman “tunes into” animals

Tonawanda News

Marla Steele admits she thought it was crazy when she first heard about pet psychics. She was a skeptic.

But things started happening that changed her mind. For the past eight years, Steele, 43, has been “tuning into” animals across the country, sharing with pet owners any pain their animals might be feeling or telling them that their deceased pet is content in its next life.

“I think that there’s a bigger spiritual connection that we have with our animals,” Steele explains.
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Related Site

Marla Steele, Healing with Energy - Office site