#Animal protection

[wachinyeya]

Tiny Indian Ocean Island Shows How Quickly Seabirds Recover When Invasive Predators Are Removed https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/tiny-indian-ocean-island-shows-how-quickly-seabirds-recover-when-invasive-predators-are-removed/

18 years after rats were eradicated, Tromelin Island off the coast of Madagascar is a thriving colony of seabirds once again.

The same story happened over and over during the age of exploration: Europeans brought rats or rabbits on board their ships and dumped them on delicate, pristine island ecosystems.

Hundreds of islands became desolate wastelands this way, damage that has for the most part been reversed, as GNN has reported, in one of the greatest conservation stories ever told.

Now, this small teardrop of sand, rock, and palm trees in the southern Indian Ocean, is the most recent example of conservationists being able to completely rewild a landscape back to a period before European contact.

Spanning just 1 square kilometer, Tromelin Island is now home to thousands of breeding pairs of 7 seabird species like the masked and red-footed boobies.

By 2013, these two species had doubled in number from the precarious, rat oppressed lows of just a handful in 2004. In the subsequent 9 years, white terns, brown noddies, sooty terns, wedge-tailed shearwaters, and lesser noddies all came back on their own initiative.

Matthieu Le Corre, an ecologist at the University of Reunion Island, told Hakkai Magazine how, in some cases, restoring seabird populations can be a tricky thing based on the particular species’ nesting habits.

On other islands where Le Corre has worked, they’ve had to install robotic bird calls and life-size replicas to convince the birds the island is a safe place to nest again. But Tromelin Island needed no such help, since these terns, noddies, and boobies are much more dispersed in their nesting patterns.

“In terms of conservation, it’s a wonderful success,” Le Corre says.

[thestoneaxe]

Hello I’m new here and know very little about hello street cat, please tell me this little one scared of food dropping on their head is alive and safe, their last sighting and their name please

I’m begging you

[maywillows]

Summer Tigers

[pangeen]

“ Nap Attack “ // © Martin Gregus 

Music:  Kristian Sonderlund - World of Water

[blackoutunit]

I don’t normally make posts like this but I wanna spread awareness to this topic

Cats in China are being brutally tortured and killed maliciously by various groups of people around - young people, ones who should know better.

They adopt cats and then murder them, often putting them through hell beforehand. Doing things such as chopping off all their limbs and hanging them up as “cat bugs”, skinning them alive, putting them in blenders, and many, many other cruel things.

It’s due to the lack of animal protection rights in China is why these people can get away with these things so easily.

They use live footage of cats eating from local feeders in order to capture them, and they’ve already gotten over millions of innocent felines - one of which was a kitten known as Mr. Wink, who was found frozen solid after one of them had drowned him.

These people also go about live streaming footage of themselves torturing and killing kitties that’ve done NOTHING WRONG for views, money and fun. And they gain more and more followers and views everyday.

This shit is not okay at all. They are still out there targeting these creatures, and even had set up a bounty to both find and kill Mr. Fresh (orange cat shown from a live feeder famous for his “side eye”), the money ranging from about $500-600.

Although Mr. Fresh is thankfully safe and in the care of a vet/new guardian. However, there are still many other animals, not just cats themselves, being tortured in China.

I highly recommend visiting and following @feline_guardians on Instagram and to sign their petition for animals to gain more rights in China.

Thank you for listening.

Plus I’m adding a picture of my cat that I redrew cuz he’s silly (and all kitties deserve both love and respect)

Save cats yall!! Every sign counts.

[creepyolddude1973]

[makotochancute]

🐾 little paws

[planetsviews]

10 Lesser-Known Animals and Their Unique Eating Habits 🦜🌿

Aye-Aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis)

Habitat: Madagascar 🌴

Diet: Insects, particularly wood-boring grubs 🪲

Feeding Habits: The aye-aye uses its long, thin middle finger to tap on trees to locate hollow chambers where grubs reside. Once a grub is located, it gnaws a hole in the wood with its forward-slanting incisors and uses its elongated finger to extract the grub. 🦷👆

Blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus)

Habitat: Deep sea, off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand 🌊

Diet: Crustaceans, sea urchins, and other deep-sea creatures 🦀

Feeding Habits: The blobfish lacks muscles, so it doesn't actively hunt. Instead, it floats along the sea floor, opening its mouth to suck in any edible matter that drifts by. 🍽️

Pangolin (Pholidota)

Habitat: Various habitats across Asia and Africa 🌍

Diet: Ants and termites 🐜

Feeding Habits: Pangolins have long, sticky tongues that they use to probe ant and termite nests. They have strong claws to break into the nests and a sticky tongue to lap up the insects. 👅

Gharial (Gavialis gangeticus)

Habitat: Rivers in the Indian subcontinent 🌊

Diet: Fish 🐟

Feeding Habits: The gharial has a long, narrow snout filled with sharp teeth, perfect for catching fish. It uses a swift side-to-side snapping motion to catch fish swimming by. 🐊

Star-Nosed Mole (Condylura cristata)

Habitat: Wet lowland areas in North America 🦔

Diet: Small invertebrates, aquatic insects, worms 🪱

Feeding Habits: This mole uses its star-shaped nose, covered in sensory receptors, to detect prey. It can identify and consume small prey in a fraction of a second. 🌟

Hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin)

Habitat: Swamps, river forests of the Amazon Basin 🌳

Diet: Leaves and vegetation 🍃

Feeding Habits: The hoatzin has a specialized digestive system that ferments vegetation similar to a cow’s stomach. It spends hours digesting leaves in its crop, a part of its digestive tract. 🐦

Numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus)

Habitat: Eucalyptus forests in Australia 🌏

Diet: Termites 🐜

Feeding Habits: Numbats use their long, sticky tongues to probe into narrow crevices and galleries within termite mounds. They can eat up to 20,000 termites a day. 👅

Leafcutter Ant (Atta spp.)

Habitat: Tropical rainforests in Central and South America 🌲

Diet: Fungi that they cultivate 🧫

Feeding Habits: Leafcutter ants cut leaves and carry them back to their nests, where they use the leaves to grow a special fungus, which serves as their primary food source. 🍄

Purple Frog (Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis)

Habitat: Western Ghats of India 🌄

Diet: Termites 🐜

Feeding Habits: Spending most of its life underground, the purple frog comes out only during the monsoon season to breed. It uses its specialized tongue to feed on termites in underground colonies. 🐸

Vampire Finch (Geospiza difficilis septentrionalis)

Habitat: Galápagos Islands 🌴

Diet: Blood of other birds, insects 🌿

Feeding Habits: The vampire finch pecks at the skin of larger birds like boobies to drink their blood. This behavior likely evolved due to scarce food resources. 🦜

These lesser-known animals each have unique and fascinating feeding habits that highlight the incredible diversity of the natural world. 🌍✨

[sarahbrandner-fans]

SARAH BRANDNER | Tierhilfe Fünfseenland Christmas event.

[wachinyeya]

‘Ferrari in a junkyard’: Mules sold at auction are rare, endangered horses

https://washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/09/przewalskis-horses-rescued-dna-shrek-fiona/

Hannah Huckabay regularly combs livestock auctions online for horses she can rehabilitate and train at her Colorado ranch. But when she saw a video in February of a mule for sale in Kansas, she could hardly believe what she was seeing.

The stocky animal’s short black mane shot straight up like a mohawk, and its white belly stood out against its tan coat. As it nervously paced in its corral, Huckabay said it bore a striking resemblance to Przewalski’s horse, a critically endangered species she’d learned about while studying equine science.

“I was like, ‘There is no way. That is not a mule,’” Huckabay recalled thinking. “That’s a purebred Przewalski.”

Such a find would be incredibly rare. Once extinct in the wild, around 2,500 Przewalski’s horses remained worldwide as of 2022. They’re native to Mongolia and in June, seven were reintroduced to nearby Kazakhstan as part of an effort to return them to their natural habitats. They are the only truly wild horse remaining (mustangs are feral horses).

But scientists say Huckabay’s hunch appears to be correct. Hair samples from the animal Huckabay purchased - along with a second horse recently surrendered at a Utah sanctuary - were sent to Texas A&M University’s animal genetics lab. Both appear to be Przewalski’s horses, said Rytis Juras, the genetics lab’s director who tested both samples.

The hair test looks for genetic markers associated with different horse breeds to determine an animal’s likely ancestry. Unequivocally confirming that the horses are purebred Przewalski’s and not hybrids would require advanced blood tests that are expensive and would mean sedating the equines.

The blood tests look at the number of chromosomes in a horse’s cells - 66 in a purebred Przewalski, versus 64 in a common horse or 62 in a donkey. An even more advanced version could sequence the horse’s entire genome.

But Juras and two other scientists who reviewed the findings said the hair-test results are reliable.

“If I would have gotten it from a zoo … that would be one thing,” Juras said of receiving the samples. But two random tests with Przewalski’s results were “surprising and a little bit disturbing,” he said. “This is weird.”

How the horse Huckabay found - and the second in Utah - ended up in livestock auctions is a mystery, said Christopher Faulk, a professor of animal science at the University of Minnesota who has studied Przewalski’s horse genetics and also reviewed the DNA results.

“Someone had to have known what they were, they don’t just appear out of anywhere,” Faulk told The Post. “Especially to have been disposed of in that way is even weirder,” he said, since livestock that aren’t purchased at auction can end up in slaughterhouses.

“That’s like finding a Ferrari in a junkyard,” he added.

Huckabay bought the animal for $1,375 in February and, after three weeks in quarantine, the ragged and underweight animal sold as a mule arrived at her ranch outside Denver.

Seeing its features in-person left her even more convinced it was a Przewalski’s horse, she said. With a large clunky head and stiff black mane, her daughter said the horse was so ugly, he was cute, Huckabay recalled. They named him Shrek, after DreamWorks’s beloved ogre.

After almost two months of helping Shrek acclimate, Huckabay’s daughter stumbled upon a video posted on June 9 from a sanctuary in Utah.

“Did we just have a Przewalski mare surrendered?!” the caption read.

Kelsey and Gunnar Bjorklund - who own the Lazy B Equine Rescue and Sanctuary in Utah - suspected their mare was also a Przewalski. But they had no idea there was a second possible Przewalski, saved from another auction.

The Bjorklunds’ horse was brought to their facility after being purchased for $35 in January at an auction in Utah, where she was advertised as a mule.

“It takes more money to get your nails done,” Kelsey said, adding that her previous owner decided to surrender the mare after she flunked out of a professional training program.

When the horse arrived and was unloaded from the trailer, “we were just in shock,” Gunnar said. It was clear the animal wasn’t a mule or a mustang, he said.

“Anyone getting possible Przewalski vibes!?” the Bjorklunds posted. “A true wild, endangered species of equine‼️ How cool would that be!”

In response to seeing the Bjorklunds’ viral video, Huckabay’s daughter posted her own videos of Shrek two days later. One got over 11 million views.

After coming across Shrek’s video, it was easy for the Bjorklunds to settle on a name for their mystery horse - Fiona, the princess-heroine from the Shrek movies.

The rescuers were stunned that two possible Przewalski’s horses could have surfaced almost simultaneously. The Endangered Species Act allows private ownership of endangered animals, but only with a permit, and under strict stipulations. The law prohibits the possession of illegally obtained endangered animals or their transport across state lines without permits.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to comment on whether officials are investigating the horses’ chain of custody.

Some livestock auctions have occasionally served as hubs for illicit trade in exotic animal species.

Because most Przewalski’s horses descend from only about a dozen surviving individuals, scientists closely manage breeding genetics for diversity. Compared to the feral mustang, Przewalski’s are more resilient, said Dolores Reed, a biologist who helps oversee a small herd of the endangered horses at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. Przewalski’s horses are built for the Mongolian steppe’s harsh climate, she said, adding, “they’re very tough,” and can be unpredictable.

There are about 100 Przewalski’s horses in U.S. zoos, Reed said.

Shrek and Fiona are adjusting to their new environments, their owners said. After keeping his distance from people and trotting in circles in his pen while stressed, Shrek has relaxed and moved to a larger field. He has bonded with two gentle mares and while he won’t accept treats from people’s hands, he loves when apples and carrots are left in his feed bucket, Huckabay said.

“He’s very piggy,” she said.

In Utah, Fiona has put on weight and made friends with a miniature mule and a quarter horse filly at the Bjorklunds’ sanctuary.

The rescuers wonder what would’ve happened if Shrek and Fiona hadn’t been saved. The endangered animals might’ve been sent to slaughter “and nobody would have known about it,” Gunnar said.

Huckabay and the Bjorklunds plan to care for the horses as long as needed, but said they’d prefer to see their rescued Przewalski’s move to a professional conservation program.

Shrek is happy on the ranch, but Huckabay said she’d rather see him with “a herd of his own.”

“That would be the best-case scenario,” she said.

[agentfascinateur]

SAVE THE SUDAN ANIMAL SANCTUARY

Terrorists have already killed one camel calf and two gazelles, to eat them. Please donate to save the other animals.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Victory! 🐘

Canada has officially banned the elephant ivory and rhino horn trade, which includes the import of hunting trophies containing these parts!

@HSI_Canada has been at the forefront of the battle to protect these endangered species, working with Environment and Climate Change Canada to ensure these measures pass.

We also want to thank YOU and the tens of thousands of supporters who signed our action alerts to help make this happen.

🩶🎉🩶

[milkdongcomics]

Wishing my little Princess Eva a Happy Birthday at the rainbow bridge! Eva in "HEY HUMAN, SEE WHAT YOU DO!?" BUY 👈🏻 Instagram 👈🏻 Facebook 👈🏻

[jacks-weird-world]

Jack just became co-chair of power climate’s too hot to handle campaign: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/climate-change-voter-campaign-rosario-dawson-sophia-bush-bill-nye-climate-power-1236000203/