Australia bushfires: Authorities plan to kill 10,000 water-starved camels

The government will send helicopters to kill up to 10,000 camels in a five-day campaign starting Wednesday, according to a report.

Authorities here will begin five-day campaign to kill thousands of camels in Australia as they drink too much water amid the wildfires.

The government will send helicopters to kill up to 10,000 camels in a five-day campaign starting Wednesday, The Hill reported citing The Australian.

Marita Baker, an Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) (large, sparsely-populated local government area for Aboriginal Australians) executive board member, said that the camels were causing problems in her community of Kanypi.

"We have been stuck in stinking hot and uncomfortable conditions, feeling unwell, because the camels are coming in and knocking down fences, getting in around the houses and trying to get to water through air conditioners,'' she said.

The planned killing of the camels comes at a time the country is ravaged by wildfires since November.

The disaster has killed more than a dozen people and caused the displacement or deaths of 480 million animals, according to University of Sydney researchers.

Study says the ancestral whale was four legged that straddled land and sea

One particular fossilised 'missing link' found in India suggests that the last whale precursors took to the water in times of danger but came onto land to give birth and eat.

Business Standard : Whales belong in the ocean, right? That may be true today, but cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises) actually descended from four legged mammals that once lived on land. New research published in Current Biology reports the discovery in Peru of an entirely new species of ancestral whale that straddled land and sea, providing insight into the weird evolutionary journey of our mammalian friends.

We might think of them as smooth, two-flippered ocean swimmers that struggle to even survive the Thames, but whales originated more than 50m years ago from artiodactyls – land-dwelling, hooved mammals.

Initially, whales’ ancestors resembled small deer, with four toes, each one ending in a small hoof. One particular fossilised “missing link” found in India suggests that the last whale precursors took to the water in times of danger but came onto land to give birth and eat. They would spend considerable time wading in shallow water, foraging for aquatic vegetation and invertebrates, and eventually small fish and amphibians.

The oldest prehistoric whale fossils date from 53m years ago, and were found at sites in the northern Indian Himalayas, and present day Pakistan. The fossil record tells the story of a gradual transition from wading to living most of the time in deeper water, like otters or beavers, while retaining the ability to walk on land.

An ocean journey

Around 42 million years ago, and still land-worthy, the newly discovered Peregocetus pacificus set off on an epic journey to the other side of the world. In the Middle Eocene era (roughly 48 to 38m years ago), Africa and South America were half as far apart, but that is still an impressive swim? for an animal less than three metres long that was not completely adapted to marine life.

The hind limbs of 42.6m-year-old P. pacificus were not much shorter than its front legs, and it had tiny hooves on each toe and finger, suggesting that it was still quite capable of hoisting itself out of the water and trotting about on land. However, other features of the skeleton suggest that it was well adapted to an aquatic life. For example, its hind feet bones had ridges to which ligaments and tendons would attach, suggesting it had webbed feet. Its beaver-like tail bones bear signs that it was used as a powerful aid to swimming, though there is no evidence as to whether or not it had a tail fluke like today’s whales.

P. pacificus was carnivorous, as its sharp, scissor-like teeth demonstrate.

It likely ate large bony fish, as many whales do today. P. pacificus, however, has teeth that resemble those of modern carnivores, with canines, pre-molars and molars that have complex cusps. Today’s exclusively aquatic cetaceans all have a row of many, simple, peg like teeth, and they don’t chew their prey, instead just grabbing and swallowing it whole.

Humans putting 1,700 animal species at greater extinction risk: Study

The study shows that under a middle-of-the-road scenario of moderate changes in human land-use about 1,700 species will likely experience marked increases in their extinction risk over the next 50 yrs.

Increased human land-use may put 1,700 species of amphibians, birds, and mammals at greater extinction risk over the next 50 years, by shrinking their natural habitats, a study has found.

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, combined information on the current geographic distributions of about 19,400 species worldwide with changes to the land cover projected under four different trajectories for the world scientists have agreed on as likely.

These potential paths represent reasonable expectations about future developments in global society, demographics, and economics.

"Our findings link these plausible futures with their implications for biodiversity," said Walter Jetz, a professor at Yale University in the US.

"Our analyses allow us to track how political and economic decisions -- through their associated changes to the global land cover -- are expected to cause habitat range declines in species worldwide," Jetz said in a statement.

The study shows that under a middle-of-the-road scenario of moderate changes in human land-use about 1,700 species will likely experience marked increases in their extinction risk over the next 50 years.

(Business Standard)

They will lose roughly 30-50 per cent of their present habitat ranges by 2070, the researchers said.

These species of concern include 886 species of amphibians, 436 species of birds, and 376 species of mammals -- all of which are predicted to have a high increase in their risk of extinction.

Among them are species whose fates will be particularly dire, such as the Lombok cross frog (Indonesia), the Nile lechwe (South Sudan), the pale-browed treehunter (Brazil) and the curve-billed reedhaunter (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay) which are all predicted to lose around half of their present day geographic range in the next five decades.

Species living in Central and East Africa, Mesoamerica, South America, and Southeast Asia will suffer the greatest habitat loss and increased extinction risk, researchers.

However, they cautioned the global public against assuming that the losses are only the problem of the countries within whose borders they occur.