Hello. Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.
Today I want to share with you two links-
the first is to some angelic-looking baby pandas- courtesy of the tabloid newspapers. (In this case, an article in The Sun about how the stress of looking after panda cubs leaves their mothers too exhausted to breed).
One of the big problems with panda conservation programmes is that pandas are reluctant to breed. Koala bears are similarly difficult to persuade to reproduce, which is likewise hampering programmes to halt their decline.
The article and cute panda pictures can be found here- http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2788816/Exhausted-panda-mums-too-tired-to-have-cubs.html
The other link is to an article in the International Herald and Tribune on Tasmanian devils- one of Australia's odder creatures (although, admittedly, a lot of Australian wildlife is very weird...). The Tasmanian devil suffers from an unusual affliction- an infectious facial cancer.
Infectious cancers are rare- probably the best known other example is Kaposi's sarcoma in humans- a cancer of the cells lining blood vessels that occurs in a lot of AIDS patients. Kaposi's sarcoma is caused by Human Herpes Virus 8. This herpes virus is found in large numbers of people but usually only becomes problematic when AIDS suppresses someone's immune system to the extent that it can no longer keep on top of the virus.
(There are pictures of Kaposi's sarcoma here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaposi - WARNING!- they are fairly GORY)
The situation in the Tasmanian devil is more complicated - the infectious cancer is apparently caused not by a virus but by a mutant form of some of the animal's normal cells that have evolved to behave like a parasitic organism. You can find more information in the IHT article here-
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/science/01devil.html?ref=science
Showing posts with label Panda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Panda. Show all posts
Saturday, 2 January 2010
Friday, 30 June 2006
Finding China's Lost Pandas- Science News
A new kind of survey of Giant Pandas in China's Wanglang Nature Reserve has brought some welcome news for conservationists trying to save the endangered species. The census (a collaboration between Chinese and Welsh scientists) used molecular technology to assess panda numbers in the mountainous reserve.
Because pandas are wary of people and difficult to see in their forested habitat, surveys are forced to rely on indirect measuring methods, such as collecting dung samples. Previous surveys have differentiated between individuals by looking at the size of pieces of bamboo in the samples- pandas with bigger bite sizes, void bigger pieces of bamboo in their dung. The obvious draw back of this method is that it is hard to distinguish between 2 similarly sized pandas. The new survey, conducted by Xiangjiang Zhan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues, analysed DNA from the samples, instead and so gave a much more accurate estimate of the panda population. The last survey, conducted in 1998, estimated that there were just 27 pandas left in the 28,000 hectare (68,500 acre) nature reserve, but the new study puts the true figure much higher, at 66. Since the new figure was generated by a more accurate method, scientists think it likely that when this method is used to survey the pandas in China's other wildlife reserves, the figure for the total panda population will, be almost doubled from 1,596 to between 2,500 and 3,000.
Xiangjiang Zhan and co-workers' Panda census was published in "Current Biology" (Vol. 16, No 12).
Because pandas are wary of people and difficult to see in their forested habitat, surveys are forced to rely on indirect measuring methods, such as collecting dung samples. Previous surveys have differentiated between individuals by looking at the size of pieces of bamboo in the samples- pandas with bigger bite sizes, void bigger pieces of bamboo in their dung. The obvious draw back of this method is that it is hard to distinguish between 2 similarly sized pandas. The new survey, conducted by Xiangjiang Zhan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues, analysed DNA from the samples, instead and so gave a much more accurate estimate of the panda population. The last survey, conducted in 1998, estimated that there were just 27 pandas left in the 28,000 hectare (68,500 acre) nature reserve, but the new study puts the true figure much higher, at 66. Since the new figure was generated by a more accurate method, scientists think it likely that when this method is used to survey the pandas in China's other wildlife reserves, the figure for the total panda population will, be almost doubled from 1,596 to between 2,500 and 3,000.
Xiangjiang Zhan and co-workers' Panda census was published in "Current Biology" (Vol. 16, No 12).
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