Urban Coyotes Could Set Stage for Larger Predators

Urban Coyotes Could Set Stage for Larger Predators - Many urbanites in Chicago and other big cities have gotten used to the presence of coyotes, what with the wily animal popping up in everyday locations like a Quiznos sandwich shop, as happened in 2007. But the animal's presence in urban areas sets the stage for larger predators like wolves, mountain lions and bears, which might be harder to live with, according to one coyote researcher.

About 5 miles (8 kilometers) from Chicago O'Hare International Airport is the smallest coyote territory ever found, which takes up all of a third of a square mile (0.8 square km).

 

Stan Gehrt, a wildlife ecologist at Ohio State University, inspects a coyote captured in the greater Chicago area as part of a long-running study on this increasingly common urban resident.

That coyotes can survive in such a small area means they have plenty of food on which to survive. "They're finding everything they need right there, in the suburbs of Chicago," Stan Gehrt, an Ohio State University researcher, said in a statement. "It amazes me."

Coyotes are the largest mammalian predators to have made their way into and thrive in urban settings. But still larger animals could follow the same path.

The test case

"The coyote is the test case for other animals," Gehrt said. "Raccoons, skunks, foxes —they've already been able to penetrate the urban landscape pretty well. The coyote is the most recent and largest. The jury's out with what's going to happen with the bigger ones."

Gehrt has been tracking coyotes in the Windy City since 2000, and has put tags on about 680 of the animals, tracking 50-60 of them at a time. His research has revealed some surprises: For example, unlike their rural kin, urban coyotes are monogamous, sticking with one mate for life. That's pretty rare in the animal kingdom, he said.

Mountain lions and bears have been seen in increasing numbers in some areas. One mountain lion was recently shot in the Wrigleyville neighborhood of Chicago, for example. But unlike coyotes, mountain lions and bears are more likely to move into urban areas to find food, before returning to the countryside to reside, said Stewart Breck, a wildlife specialist at the National Wildlife Research Center, in Fort Collins, Colo.

Still, bears occasionally take up residence in urban areas, and this is a trend that could increase, Breck told OurAmazingPlanet. Breck recently started a study of human-coyote interactions in the Denver metropolitan area, where he guessed there may be approximately 500 coyotes.

Challenge of coexistence

The movement of these wild animals into urban areas could present challenges for both humans and animals trying to coexist.

"It used to be rural areas where we would have this challenge of coexistence versus conflict with carnivores," Gehrt said. "In the future, and I would say currently, it's cities where we're going to have this intersection between people and carnivores," he said.

That said, there has been little conflict between the 2,000 coyotes that live in the Chicago metro area, and its 9 million human residents.

In fact, many Chicagoans have come to appreciate coyotes. A Chicago Fire Department boat recently rescued a coyote dubbed Holly who was stranded on an ice flow in Lake Michigan.

Coyotes are usually docile around people, and there is only one known case of the animals killing a human adult — a lone hiker was reportedly attacked by two coyotes in Nova Scotia in 2009.

"We used to think only little carnivores could live in cities, and even then we thought they couldn't really achieve large numbers," Gehrt said. "But we're finding that these animals are much more flexible than we gave them credit for and they're adjusting to our cities."

Gehrt will describe his research today (Oct. 5) in a talk at EcoSummit 2012, an international conference focused on ecological sustainability being held in Columbus, Ohio, this year.

While there are more people than ever before, there are also more carnivores moving into cities, Gehrt said.

In comparing his findings about coyote survival in cities to research by another group on those living in rural areas, Gehrt has found that the urban coyote pup survival rate is five times higher than the rate for rural pups. In both environments, humans are the coyotes' primary predator, either through intentional removal or accidental death from automobiles. ( LiveScience.com )

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Dramatic decline of bees caused by modern pesticides damaging their ability to home in on their hives, say researchers

Dramatic decline of bees caused by modern pesticides damaging their ability to home in on their hives, say researchers - Finding comes after 650 honeybees were 'tagged' - Pesticides introduced in the 1990s are to blame - Bees are in dramatic decline, and scientists believe the answer may be in their homing instinct.

They have found the latest generation of pesticides is stopping the foragers finding their way back to the hive.

French researchers tagged 650 honeybees with tiny microchips attached to their necks which tracked all their movements.

Homing in on the answer: Researchers say pesticides are preventing bees from finding their way back to the hive

Half the bees were exposed to low doses of insecticide similar to what they would find in the wild, and when released, these ones were found to be two or three times more likely to die away from their hive.

Meanwhile British researchers, who have been working on bumblebees at Stirling University in Scotland found that when growing colonies were exposed to these chemicals, they were smaller than those not treated.

After six weeks the bumblebees - exposed to the same type of pesticide called a neo-nicotinoid - were up to 12 per cent smaller as it appeared less food was coming back to the nest.

Of even more concern to the Scottish scientists was that the number of new Queens – which go out and find new nests after winter – decreased by 85 per cent, which suggests a huge decrease in the number of new nests.

Neo-nicotoinoids, based on the chemical nicotine, were introduced as an insecticide in the 1990s, and have become the most popular for crops and gardens in the world.

Although bumblebees were already in decline, their numbers have fallen faster and honeybee populations are thought to have halved since the 1980s in Britain.

Both types of bees live in colonies where some of the inhabitants are foragers who travel up to a mile a day looking for new plants and bringing food back. Their lifespan can be just a week.

Mikael Henry of the National Institute of Agricultural Research in Avignon, France, said the chemicals seem to be attacking the bees’ navigation abilities, and if it continues at this rate, many colonies will not recover.

While pesticides are tested to make sure they do not kill bees - he believes they may be wiping them out indirectly.

He said: ‘Our study raises important issues regarding pesticide authorisation procedures.

Common practice: Farmers routinely use insecticides to protect their crops from pests

‘So far, they mostly require manufacturers to ensure that doses encountered on the field do not kill bees, but they basically ignore the consequences of doses that do not kill them but may cause behavioural difficulties.’

Dr Dave Goulson, who worked on the Scottish study, also published in the journal Science, said: ‘We have seen big changes in the bees’ size and in particular in the number of queens, which is remarkable.

‘Putting these studies together, it suggests the answer may be the navigation abilities are being affected by base levels of neonicotinoid pesticides and this is having a substantial population impact.

‘Bumblebees pollinate many of our crops and wild flowers. The use of these pesticides on flowering crops poses a threat to their health and urgently needs to be re-evaluated.’

Neonicotinoids are applied to the seeds of plants rather than the plant itself which was thought to be more environmentally friendly.

They contain compounds which are thought to interfere with the bees central nervous system, and is having an impact on their memory and learning including finding their way back home - even from a short distance away.

The British Beekeepers Association advocates trying to improve rather than ban these pesticides, as new ones may prove to be even worse for bees. ( dailymail.co.uk )

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Invasive pythons wiping out native Everglades animals

Invasive pythons wiping out native Everglades animals - A slithering, surging population of Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades, many of them escaped or abandoned pets, appears to be eating its way through many animals native to the sensitive wetlands, according to a new study.

Researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found what they characterized as "severe declines" in the population of small and mid-sized native mammals in the 1.5 million-acre national park and linked it to the growing presence of Burmese pythons.

The study, the first to document the ecological effects of the invasive species on the Everglades, was released on Monday.

The giant constrictors, which commonly grow to be more than 16-feet long, are not native to the Everglades, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States and home to a number of rare and endangered species.

In this 2009 photo provided by the National Park Service, a Burmese python is wrapped around an American alligator in Everglades National Park, Fla. The National Academy of Science report released Monday, Jan. 30, 2012, indicates that the proliferation of pythons coincides with a sharp decrease of mammals in the park. (AP Photo/National Park Service, Lori Oberhofer)

But they are popular and legal pets in the United States. Some escape. Some are released by owners who panic as their baby

snakes quickly mature into giant, dangerous adults.

The pythons have been what scientists call "an established invasive species" in the Everglades, apex predators that occasionally prey on the American alligator and the Florida panther.

The python's impact has been dramatic on the population of smaller mammals, including raccoons, opossums, marsh and cottontail rabbits, foxes and bobcats, which have dropped precipitously in recent years, researchers said.

The researchers collected their information by conducting nearly a decade of night-time road surveys inside the park and in similar habitats outside it, where they counted both live animals sightings as well as road kill.

They also looked at records of road-killed mammals from previous surveys done by National Park Service rangers in the 1990s, before the pythons were common in the Everglades.

In all, the researchers drove nearly 40,000 miles between 2003 and 2011 and conducted more than 300 nights of observations.

Their findings: In areas outside the Everglades, where the pythons have not established themselves, small, furry creatures abound. Inside the park, not so much.

In fact, in southern end of the Everglades, where the pythons have been established the longest, researchers said raccoon sightings have dropped 99.3 percent, while sightings of opossum have dropped 98.9 percent and bobcat sightings have fallen 87.5 percent.

Researchers did not detect a single rabbit -- dead or alive -- once inside the park during the nine-year study. Nuisance calls involving raccoons used to light up the park service's switchboard, researchers said. Since 2005, not a single park visitor has called to report a nuisance raccoon, according to the study.

A number of water birds -- grebes, herons and the federally endangered wood stork -- also appear to be falling to python predation, the researchers said.

Because the animals that have disappeared over the past decade come from such different taxonomic and trophic groups, the researchers said it was unlikely a disease outbreak accounted for the decline.

"The magnitudes of these declines," the researchers wrote, "underscores the apparent incredible density of pythons in the (Everglades) and justifies intensive investigation into how the addition of a novel apex predators affects overall ecosystem processes."

The study did not focus on ways of reversing the python's impact on the Everglades. Experts at the U.S. Geological Survey, which helped pay for the study, said the odds of eradicating the pythons now that they have established themselves in the park are "very low."

Support for the research was also provided by Davidson College, Duke Energy, the J.E. and Marjorie B. Pittman Foundation, the Center for Forest Sustainability at Auburn University, and the National Park Service. ( Reuters )

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Malaysia saves endangered pygmy elephant on Borneo

Malaysia saves endangered pygmy elephant on Borneo - Malaysian wildlife authorities said they had rescued a pygmy elephant calf on Borneo island and expressed hope a planned sanctuary would provide protection for the endangered animals.

The male calf, which is less than a month old, was pulled out of a deep moat surrounding a palm oil plantation in remote Sabah state on Friday, said Sen Nathan, a senior official with the Sabah Wildlife Department.

It is the fifth calf rescued by wildlife officials since 2009. Three of those previously saved have died but a female has recovered and is now at a wildlife park.

There are fewer than 2,000 Borneo pygmy elephants left in the wild, according to authorities. A sub-species of the Asian elephant, the creatures have a rounded appearance and are smaller than mainland elephants.

A pygmy elephant calf on Borneo island, in Malaysia's Sabah state. Malaysian wildlife authorities said they had rescued a pygmy elephant calf on Borneo island and expressed hope a planned sanctuary would provide protection for the endangered animals


Wildlife officials take care of a pygmy elephant calf on Borneo island, in Malaysia's Sabah state. The male calf, which is less than a month old, was pulled out of a deep moat surrounding a palm oil plantation in remote Sabah state

The latest rescued calf, which weighed about 50 kilograms (110 pounds), was in a serious condition, Nathan told AFP.

"He suffered severe dehydration and cuts and abrasions, probably while trying to get out of the moat," he said.

The elephant's mother was probably forced to leave it behind after the pair fell into the moat, and the calf likely spent more than a day there before being spotted by plantation workers, he said.

Nathan said a planned elephant sanctuary on 1,200 hectares (3,000 acres) of land within the 26,000-hectare Kinabatangan wildlife sanctuary in Sabah would help protect the animals.

The sanctuary would be able to house up to 60 injured elephants, as well as those found when they were too young to be reintroduced into the wild.

Authorities announced plans for the sanctuary earlier this month and want it open by the end of the year. "We really need this sanctuary," Nathan said.

The sanctuary will be funded with 5.3 million ringgit ($1.7 million) from industry body the Malaysian Palm Oil Council and 1.5 million ringgit from NGO the Borneo Conservation Trust.

Wildlife activists warn that pygmy elephants are fast losing their natural habitat to deforestation and human encroachment on Borneo, a vast island shared by Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. ( AFP )

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Are Pigeons as Smart as Monkeys?

Are Pigeons as Smart as Monkeys? - Pigeons may not be so bird-brained after all, as scientists have found the birds' ability to understand numbers is on par with that of primates.

Previous studies have shown that various animals, from honeybees to chimpanzees, can learn to count when trained with food rewards. In 1998, researchers discovered that rhesus monkeys can not only learn to count to four, but can also pick up on numerical rules and apply them to numbers they haven't seen before, allowing them to count up to nine without further training.

With this finding in mind, psychologists at the University of Otago, in New Zealand, sought to find out if pigeons — another animal shown to count — have a numerical competence similar to rhesus monkeys.

"Pigeons are the perfect subjects for visual tasks, because their vision is really good and they're really easy to train," said psychologist Damian Scarf, first author of the new study. "It appears that you can train them on almost any task you can train monkeys on."

Scarf and his colleagues first trained three pigeons to count up to three. On a touchscreen, they presented the pigeons with a set of images that had objects of various sizes, shapes and colors. For example, one set presented images with one yellow block, two red cylinders or three yellow rectangles. To receive a treat, the pigeons had to select the images in the correct object-number order, from lowest to highest.

Once the birds learned to count to three, the researchers began showing the pigeons images with up to nine objects. On average, without higher-number training or food rewards, the pigeons were able to correctly order the image sets over 70 percent of the time. The pigeons had an easier time discriminating between lower numbers and numbers that were further apart.

"Once you start getting up towards seven, eight and nine, it was very difficult for [the pigeons] to tell the difference between the images," Scarf told LiveScience. Overall, the results of the study echoed those of the rhesus monkey research, though Scarf noted it took longer to train the pigeons than other researchers took training monkeys.

William Roberts, a University of Western Ontario psychologist who was not involved in the research, was surprised by the study's results. "I didn't anticipate that pigeons could have done that," said Roberts, who has previously researched animal cognition, including pigeon intelligence.

Roberts is curious to see how widespread this ability is in the animal kingdom. "Can we find evidence for this type of counting in insects, particularly bees?" he said. Finding the same level of numerical competence as the pigeons (and rhesus monkeys) in other species would help scientists understand if the ability evolved across species separately, or if a common ancestor shared the ability.
"We now have another piece of [the] puzzle," said Scarf, who is interested in performing similar experiments in parrots and other intelligent birds. "What's the origin of the ability? ( LiveScience.com )

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Scientists Make Supersoldier Ants

Scientists Make Supersoldier Ants - When eight bizarrely big-headed soldier ants turned up in a wild colony collected from Long Island, N.Y., scientists knew they had found something interesting.

This discovery of these oversized versions of soldier ants, whose job is to defend the nest, led researchers to create their own supersoldier ants in the lab with the help of a hormone, and, by doing so, offer an explanation for how ants, and possibly other social insects, take on specific forms with dedicated jobs within their colonies.

It turns out these abnormal soldier ants were throwbacks to an ancestral state, one that no longer shows up within their species except, apparently, by accident. This phenomenon occasionally pops up elsewhere, in the form of whales bearing limbs their ancestors lost, chickens with teeth or humans with tails.

"It's been known for a long time that these kinds of slips occur, and they are viewed as the Barnum and Bailey of evolution," said the study's senior researcher Ehad Abouheif, Canada research chair in evolutionary developmental biology at McGill University. "What we are showing for the first time is there is this ancestral potential sitting there, and when poked by the environment it can really unleash this potential that can power evolution."

Meet the supersoldiers

The species collected in New York, Pheidole morrisi, normally has two types of worker ants, according to Abouheif: minor workers, which are responsible for foraging, nursing, feeding eggs and larvae, and taking care of the queen; and soldier ants, which defend the nest and use their big mandibles to crack seeds harvested by the minor workers.

This species doesn't have supersoldiers, but the big-headed critters resembled the supersoldier ants occurring among eight species of ants found in the American Southwest and northern Mexico. All nine species belong to the genus Pheidole, which contains about 1,100 species.

So it made sense that the out-of-place supersoldiers could reveal something about the origin of supersoldiers among the eight other species.

Making a supersoldier

To find out, the researchers, led by Rajendhran Rajakumar, a doctoral student in Abouheif's lab, watched the development of supersoldier larvae from two of the eight species that normally produce them. (The researchers wanted to study the behavior of the P. morrisi they had collected, but they were killed in the lab by other ants.)

An ant's caste, or role in the colony, is determined by environmental switches, or periods during its larval development when it is receptive to certain environmental cues. Adult ants in the colony can manipulate these switches by, for instance, applying certain hormones called pheromones to the larvae.

In the first period of development, this switch determines whether the egg will become a queen or a worker and then another switch second determines whether the larva will become a soldier or a minor worker.

Just before the second switch, they applied a chemical that acts like juvenile hormone to the larvae of three species that do not produce supersoldiers. Juvenile hormone is involved in translating environmental cues, such as nutrition, into the identity of the larvae. By applying it artificially, the researchers not only pushed the larvae past the threshold at which they would normally become regular soldiers, but past a second threshold, one that is normally hidden, creating supersoldiers.

But these lab-created supersoldiers weren't perfect matches to the natural ones. As adults they retained little vestigial wings buds, something normal supersoldiers lose when they mature.

"The potential [to be supersoldiers] is there, but it is a little raw," Abouheif said.

The researchers also looked at the expression of a gene involved in the control of wing development, and found similarity between the lab-induced supersoldiers and the natural ones. They also found similar changes occurred in two different species of naturally occurring supersoldiers, this indicated both relied on the same developmental mechanism.

So why have supersoldiers?

The naturally occurring supersoldiers appear to have a defense function. These species live in the same areas as army ants, which attack their colonies. During a raid, the supersoldiers use their large heads to block the tunnels to their nests to keep the attackers out.

However, other species of Pheidole ants, those without supersoldiers, also live alongside army ants. One of the species in which the researchers induced the supersoldiers, P. hyatti, grabs its brood and climbs up stalks of grass to escape army ant raids.

Moreau suggests another reason the giant heads of the supersoldiers might come in handy: grinding seeds. Supersoldiers could grind larger seeds than regular soldiers, she said.

A mystery from the family tree

The findings could help to solve a mystery of the origin of such supersoldier ants. Past work by Corrie Moreau, an evolutionary biologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, who was not involved with this study, revealed that one of the supersoldier species is located near the base of the Pheidole family tree, closely related to the ancestral ant, while other supersoldier species were scattered within the tree.

There are two possible explanations for this arrangement: Either each of the species evolved different ways of creating supersoldiers, or the mechanism evolved with the earliest common ancestor about 35 million to 60 million years ago, according to Moreau.

The work of Abouheif's team points to the latter — that supersoldiers date back to the root of the family tree — and it reveals how supersoldiers are created.

The implications extend beyond ants, according to Moreau.

"The question becomes, 'Do all insects use a similar pathway as was found in the big-headed ants or is this something special to this group,'" she wrote in an email to LiveScience. "Regardless, it suggests that we should look for evolutionary conserved pathways across the tree of life." ( LiveScience.com )

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A Busy Love Life, Built With a Mother’s Help

A Busy Love Life, Built With a Mother’s Help - The muriqui monkeys of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, a highly endangered species numbering only about 1,000, live in an egalitarian society.

Females are as muscular as males, so there is no threat of physical subjugation. Males, eschewing any kind of pecking order, do not compete to be alpha monkey. Even when it comes to mating, males tend to simply wait their turn instead of fighting.

Karen Strier, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin who has been observing muriquis for 29 years, says she has always thought that in the absence of a social hierarchy, no individual male should be much more successful at reproducing than any other. To test this idea, she and a team recently used DNA analysis to determine who fathered each of 22 muriqui babies.

A muriqui monkey and her two sons in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil.

Their research, which appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that while there were no superdads, some males did have a slight edge.

But it had nothing to do with physical attributes. A male enjoys greater reproductive success if he shares an unusual physical closeness with his mother, or if he happens to be lucky enough to live with a sister or two.

Dr. Strier’s team thinks these females may help their male kin learn how to behave appropriately around potential mates, or perhaps give them special access to prime mating opportunities. “Like you’re out with your mom,” she said, “and you run into her friend who has a really gorgeous daughter.” (To a muriqui male, “gorgeous” means ovulating.)

In addition, Dr. Strier says muriqui mating patterns could lend credence to the “grandmother hypothesis” in humans: the idea that women evolved to live past their reproductive years so they could focus on their children’s children. ( nytimes.com )

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Mystery Behind Virgin Births Explained

Mystery Behind Virgin Births Explained - An eastern diamond rattlesnake recently gave successful birth five years after mating, according to a new paper that describes this longest known instance of sperm storage, outside of insects, in the animal kingdom.

The study, published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, also presents the first documented virgin birth by a copperhead snake. In this case, the female never mated, proving that snakes and certain other animals can either give true virgin -- dadless -- birth, or may store sperm for long periods.

Actual mate-less virgin birthing, known as parthenogenesis, "has now been observed to occur naturally within all lineages of jawed vertebrates, with the exception of mammals," co-author Warren Booth told Discovery News. "We have recently seen genetic confirmation in species such as boa constrictors, rainbow boas, various shark species, Komodo dragons, and domestic turkeys, to name a few.

An eastern diamond rattlesnake, like the one shown here, recently gave birth five years after mating.

Booth, an integrative molecular ecologist at North Carolina State University, analyzed DNA from the female copperhead that had been on exhibit -- without a mate -- for years at the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher. Molecular DNA fingerprinting excluded the contribution of a male in her giving birth, which produced a litter of four normal-looking offspring.

The eastern diamond-backed rattlesnake's birthing moment was even more dramatic, as she suddenly produced 19 very healthy offspring consisting of 10 females and nine males. DNA analysis confirmed that the 19 babies have a dad.

"This snake was caught when it was around one year old, and therefore would be considered sexually immature," said Booth, who co-authored the paper with Gordon Schuett of Georgia State University. "It was housed in isolation from males up to the time that it gave birth. Therefore, this snake was mated in the wild as a sexually immature juvenile."

He and Schuett said internal sperm storage tubules or an ability to twist a portion of the uterus might explain how the rattlesnake stored sperm for five years. To manage the second trick, Booth said "a region of the uterus becomes convoluted and contracted, which may act as a plug sequestering the sperm until ovulation."

Fish, birds, amphibians, insects and other reptiles can also store sperm for long periods.

Mammals are less successful, but a recent study on the Greater Asiatic Yellow House Bat found that females of this species could store sperm for several months. In contrast, women can store it for just hours or days.

Women are incapable of giving true virgin birth since certain genes must come from the man as well as the woman. Schuett explained that, in laboratory settings, scientists have gotten around this requirement for mammals by creating parthenogenic mice.

Both types of unusual birthing, true virginal and long-term sperm storage, have drawbacks and benefits. Storing sperm allows females to overcome climate challenges and other obstacles. Giving virgin birth may hurt genetic diversity and yield only all-female or all-male progeny. On the other hand, it could also weed out mutations that can make individuals less fit.

William Holt, a professor of reproductive biology at the Zoological Society of London's Institute of Zoology, told Discovery News that "this analysis is highly significant because it shows that some previous reports on long term sperm storage in snakes (interpreted as such in good faith by the original authors) were, in fact, caused by parthenogenesis."

Holt believes the implications are that "some species have developed reproductive mechanisms that appear to promote inbreeding, much like cloning technology, and are therefore counter-intuitive in the context of maintaining genetic diversity as a way of promoting fitness."

Paolo Prodohl, a professor of population and evolutionary genetics at Queen's University Belfast, said the next step in this line of research is "robust genetic analysis" to tease apart true virgin births from those due to long-term sperm storage. Schuett added that such studies could directly benefit humans, through possible health breakthroughs and improving our ability to store sperm. ( foxnews.com )

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Nuclear plant downplayed tsunami risk

Nuclear plant downplayed tsunami risk – In planning their defense against a killer tsunami, the people running Japan's now-hobbled nuclear power plant dismissed important scientific evidence and all but disregarded 3,000 years of geological history, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The misplaced confidence displayed by Tokyo Electric Power Co. was prompted by a series of overly optimistic assumptions that concluded the Earth couldn't possibly release the level of fury it did two weeks ago, pushing the six-reactor Fukushima Dai-ichi complex to the brink of multiple meltdowns.

Instead of the reactors staying dry, as contemplated under the power company's worst-case scenario, the plant was overrun by a torrent of water much higher and stronger than the utility argued could occur, according to an AP analysis of records, documents and statements from researchers, the utility and the Japan's national nuclear safety agency.

And while TEPCO and government officials have said no one could have anticipated such a massive tsunami, there is ample evidence that such waves have struck the northeast coast of Japan before — and that it could happen again along the culprit fault line, which runs roughly north to south, offshore, about 220 miles (350 kilometers) east of the plant.

A protester wears a mask during an antinuclear rally in Tokyo Sunday, March 27, 2011. Leaked water in Unit 2 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant measured 10 million times higher than usual radioactivity levels when the reactor is operating normally, Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita told reporters in Tokyo

TEPCO officials say they had a good system for projecting tsunamis. They declined to provide more detailed explanations, saying they were focused on the ongoing nuclear crisis.

What is clear: TEPCO officials discounted important readings from a network of GPS units that showed that the two tectonic plates that create the fault were strongly "coupled," or stuck together, thus storing up extra stress along a line hundreds of miles long. The greater the distance and stickiness of such coupling, experts say, the higher the stress buildup — pressure that can be violently released in an earthquake.

That evidence, published in scientific journals starting a decade ago, represented the kind of telltale characteristics of a fault being able to produce the truly overwhelming quake — and therefore tsunami — that it did.

On top of that, TEPCO modeled the worst-case tsunami using its own computer program instead of an internationally accepted prediction method.

It matters how Japanese calculate risk. In short, they rely heavily on what has happened to figure out what might happen, even if the probability is extremely low. If the view of what has happened isn't accurate, the risk assessment can be faulty.

That approach led to TEPCO's disregard of much of Japan's tsunami history.

In postulating the maximum-sized earthquake and tsunami that the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex might face, TEPCO's engineers decided not to factor in quakes earlier than 1896. That meant the experts excluded a major quake that occurred more than 1,000 years ago — a tremor followed by a powerful tsunami that hit many of the same locations as the recent disaster.

A TEPCO reassessment presented only four months ago concluded that tsunami-driven water would push no higher than 18 feet (5.7 meters) once it hit the shore at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. The reactors sit up a small bluff, between 14 and 23 feet (4.3 and 6.3 meters) above TEPCO's projected high-water mark, according to a presentation at a November seismic safety conference in Japan by TEPCO civil engineer Makoto Takao.

"We assessed and confirmed the safety of the nuclear plants," Takao asserted.

However, the wall of water that thundered ashore two weeks ago reached about 27 feet (8.2 meters) above TEPCO's prediction. The flooding disabled backup power generators, located in basements or on first floors, imperiling the nuclear reactors and their nearby spent fuel pools.

___

The story leading up to the Tsunami of 2011 goes back many, many years — several millennia, in fact.

The Jogan tsunami of 869 displayed striking similarities to the events in and around the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors. The importance of that disaster, experts told the AP, is that the most accurate planning for worst-case scenarios is to study the largest events over the longest period of time. In other words, use the most data possible.

The evidence shows that plant operators should have known of the dangers — or, if they did know, disregarded them.

As early as 2001, a group of scientists published a paper documenting the Jogan tsunami. They estimated waves of nearly 26 feet (8 meters) at Soma, about 25 miles north of the plant. North of there, they concluded that a surge from the sea swept sand more than 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) inland across the Sendai plain. The latest tsunami pushed water at least about 1 1/2 miles (2 kilometers) inland.

The scientists also found two additional layers of sand and concluded that two additional "gigantic tsunamis" had hit the region during the past 3,000 years, both presumably comparable to Jogan. Carbon dating couldn't pinpoint exactly when the other two hit, but the study's authors put the range of those layers of sand at between 140 B.C. and A.D. 150, and between 670 B.C. and 910 B.C.

In a 2007 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Pure and Applied Geophysics, two TEPCO employees and three outside researchers explained their approach to assessing the tsunami threat to Japan's nuclear reactors, all 54 of which sit near the sea or ocean.

To ensure the safety of Japan's coastal power plants, they recommended that facilities be designed to withstand the highest tsunami "at the site among all historical and possible future tsunamis that can be estimated," based on local seismic characteristics.

But the authors went on to write that tsunami records before 1896 could be less reliable because of "misreading, misrecording and the low technology available for the measurement itself." The TEPCO employees and their colleagues concluded, "Records that appear unreliable should be excluded."

Two years later, in 2009, another set of researchers concluded that the Jogan tsunami had reached 1 mile (1.5 kilometers) inland at Namie, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) north of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

The warning from the 2001 report about the 3,000-year history would prove to be most telling: "The recurrence interval for a large-scale tsunami is 800 to 1,100 years. More than 1,100 years have passed since the Jogan tsunami, and, given the reoccurrence interval, the possibility of a large tsunami striking the Sendai plain is high."

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The fault involved in the Fukushima Dai-ichi tsunami is part of what is known as a subduction zone. In subduction zones, one tectonic plate dives under another. When the fault ruptures, the sea floor snaps upward, pushing up the water above it and potentially creating a tsunami. Subduction zones are common around Japan and throughout the Pacific Ocean region.

TEPCO's latest calculations were started after a magnitude-8.8 subduction zone earthquake off the coast of Chile in February 2010.

In such zones over the past 50 years, earthquakes of magnitude 9.0 or greater have occurred in Alaska, Chile and Indonesia. All produced large tsunamis.

When two plates are locked across a large area of a subduction zone, the potential for a giant earthquake increases. And those are the exact characteristics of where the most recent quake occurred.

TEPCO "absolutely should have known better," said Dr. Costas Synolakis, a leading American expert on tsunami modeling and an engineering professor at the University of Southern California. "Common sense," he said, should have produced a larger predicted maximum water level at the plant.

TEPCO's tsunami modelers did not judge that, in a worst-case scenario, the strong subduction and coupling conditions present off the coast of Fukushima Dai-ichi could produce the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that occurred. Instead, it figured the maximum at 8.6 magnitude, meaning the March 11 quake was four times as powerful as the presumed maximum.

Shogo Fukuda, a TEPCO spokesman, said that 8.6 was the maximum magnitude entered into the TEPCO internal computer modeling for Fukushima Dai-ichi.

Another TEPCO spokesman, Motoyasu Tamaki, used a new buzzword, "sotegai," or "outside our imagination," to describe what actually occurred.

U.S. tsunami experts said that one reason the estimates for Fukushima Dai-ichi were so low was the way Japan calculates risk. Because of the island nation's long history of killer waves, Japanese experts often will look at what has happened — then project forward what is likely to happen again.

Under longstanding U.S. standards that are gaining popularity around the world, risk assessments typically scheme up a worst-case scenario based on what could happen, then design a facility like a nuclear power plant to withstand such a collection of conditions — factoring in just about everything short of an extremely unlikely cataclysm, like a large meteor hitting the ocean and creating a massive wave that kills hundreds of thousands.

In the early 1990s, Harry Yeh, now a tsunami expert and engineering professor at Oregon State University, was helping assess potential threats to the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on the central California coast in the United States. During that exercise, he said, researchers considered a worst-case scenario involving a significantly larger earthquake than had ever been recorded there.

And then a tsunami was added. And in that Diablo Canyon model, the quake hit during a monster storm that was already pushing onto the shore higher waves than had ever been measured at the site.

In contrast, when TEPCO calculated its high-water mark at 18 feet (5.7 meters), the anticipated maximum earthquake was in the same range as others recorded off the coast of Fukushima Dai-ichi — and the only assumption about the water level was that the tsunami arrived at high tide.

Which, as is abundantly clear now, could not have been more wrong. ( Associated Press. )

READ MORE - Nuclear plant downplayed tsunami risk

Why Do Animals Sleep?

Why Do Animals Sleep? - That feeling when you wake up fully rested, crisp and fresh, is nirvana. Sleep is essential part of our daily lives. Stop sleeping and your body starts losing function, mental clarity evaporates, and you eventually die. Sleep seems to be essential for all animals, given that every animal studied has been found to sleep. Insects, fish, birds, and I all participate in this daily phenomenon. But why do we sleep? What purpose does it serve? The truth is, we don’t really know. We know loads about the neuronal pathways that define the various stages of sleep. We also know what happens when we are sleep-deprived (think of staying up all night for a final exam). But the true purpose of this curious state that we enter nightly remains mysterious.

Many researchers are working on solving this enigma through various clinical, experimental and observational studies on humans and animals. For years, researchers have recorded sleep in animals ranging from mice to elephants. But these animals have always been captive, caged or otherwise restrained. Our lab at the Max Planck Institute is the only group studying sleep in wild, unrestrained animals. There is enormous variation in the natural world, with some animals sleeping only two hours a day, while others require 20 hours. To properly understand this variation we have to study them in their natural habitat. It’s not that surprising that the behavior of captive animals is significantly different from that of their wild counterparts. Imagine if I studied sleep only in people on airplanes, and used that to infer that this is their “normal” sleeping pattern.

We are hardly the first people to suspect there are differences in the sleep patterns of wild and captive animals. We are just the first to have the technology to effectively study it in the wild. The key component to recording sleep is the electroencephalogram, or EEG. Typically an EEG is recorded with a computer, various wires and tiny voltage sensors that detect and record the minute electrical charges of brain waves. Strapping a Y2K-era laptop to a wild animal to record sleep is impractical. However, recent advances in miniaturized circuitry have yielded EEG loggers that are 1.5 grams. That’s about half the weight of a penny, and can be attached to an animal with minimal effect on its behavior. But even with these elegantly tiny loggers, there is one last hurdle to pass. We have to recatch our wild study animal and retrieve the logger with its onboard data module. Therefore, we have to be clever about which species we try to work with. My first animal of choice: the fierce three-toed sloth.

Ryan Tisdale A male sloth relaxing with me after a low-stress catch.

I began my scientific career as an undergraduate radio-tracking two- and three-toed sloths in Panama, so they were the natural animal to start with. It’s also amusing to casually mention to someone that I study sleep in sloths (the jokes are endless). As far as a research animal, sloths are a good choice. They are large and docile, can be caught by hand (no trapping or netting, as long as you can climb 100 feet into the canopy), and are certifiably the world’s slowest mammal. They were also assumed to sleep an inordinate amount of time, which is scientifically intriguing. Why have these animals decided to become so lethargic and lazy, spending all day in the treetops lounging, sleeping and relaxing?

Bryson Voirin Sloth or termite nest? This one is a sloth, which is obvious only by the presence of hair. I have identified plenty of “sloths” from the ground, only to climb up 80 feet to discover it was a stinging insect nest.

Armed with these advanced new micro loggers, I’ve been studying sleep in Panamanian sloths for the past three years. My first finding was that despite their being the world’s slowest mammal, the notion that they are “slow and therefore easy to catch” is false. Simply finding a sloth is an accomplishment. Sloths have an extremely cryptic lifestyle. Their evolutionary strategy is to never be seen or noticed. They typically masquerade in the canopy as a termite nest or clump of leaves, refusing to react to any movement or noise on the ground. The rain forest is full of stationary termite nests and clumps of leaves quietly minding their own business in the trees. They’re everywhere. The key to identifying one as a sloth is to painfully examine every single clump with binoculars and look for the presence of hair. Leaves and nests are traditionally absent of hair, so hairy nests are probably sloths. But even then, seeing one requires luck. It’s like looking for the one sloth that left its “A” game at home that day.

Ryan Tisdale Catching a sloth almost always requires me to climb up a tree. In this case, the tree was hollow and would wiggle like a rubber band in the wind. I was glad to be out of that tree as quickly as possible.

After tirelessly searching and finally locating the camouflaged little Zen master, physically catching it is the next feat. The sloths I find seem to always be at the top of the tallest tree, out on the thinnest of limbs. To climb up into the canopy, I shoot a line around a strong branch using an eight-foot slingshot that would make Dennis the Menace quite jealous. Then, after hauling up a climbing rope, I rig up my mechanical ascenders and inch my way skyward. Once I am at a similar altitude as the sloth, I swing, crawl and otherwise traverse my way through the canopy and grab hold of the sloth, and in a dramatic display of aerial acrobatics I rappel down the tree with the sloth and attach the sleep logger and radio collar. I release the sloth back at its home tree, where it is free to carry on being a sloth. Ten days later, using the radio collar’s signal to find the sloth, I repeat this aerial display again, this time to remove all the hardware from the sloth.

Sloth catching is not without its risks. I once ended up in the hospital after being bitten by a sloth (it actually happened very fast!). When hospital staffers were finally able to control their laughter, the only question the doctor had for me was whether I was sleeping when it bit me (this reignited the howls from the entire emergency room). I’ve fallen out of trees, broken bones, been stung by every insect imaginable, gotten seriously lost in the forest, and experienced numerous other mini-disasters that come with being a field scientist. More often, there are amazing experiences. Seeing harpy eagles, ocelots and stunning landscapes, and being up close and personal with wildlife is what I dreamed about as a kid. I wouldn’t trade the experiences or job for anything, both the good and bad.

The results I am getting from the sloth studies not only are new and exciting, but are also creating a new approach to the understanding of sleep in animals. Wild sloths sleep only 9.5 hours a day, while laboratory sloths sleep more than 16 hours. Why? We have also found that some sloths have selective diets that influence the strength of their brain waves and alter their sleep intensity. Are they intentionally altering their sleep patterns through their diet? Some sloth populations are early risers, yet others are up late at night. Could the risk of predation affect the hours they are awake? Working on sleep in wild animals on their home turf, we are just beginning to address a whole new world of questions.

For two months this dry season, I am leaving the sloths on the mainland behind and trying to record sleep in magnificent frigate birds on Isla Iguana. The colony out here is resident through the middle of May, so I have until then to complete the study. As is the case with “slothing,” the hardest part of the study is actually getting the animal. The colony here has around 5,000 birds, so finding them isn’t the issue. It’s catching and recatching them that poses the true challenge ( nytimes.com )

READ MORE - Why Do Animals Sleep?