Pere David's Deer is Now a Critically Endangered Species

This piece was flashed by the National Geographic News team on October 6, 2008. Its all about the extinction crisis that continues to affect adversely the flora and fauna of the planet, according to the new Red List of Threatened Species. the threat level is on a continuous and wanton rise and has sparked a sparked a Dow Jones-like index of endangered species, that has been skilfully designed to spot out the some threatened species before it's too late. Despite the inevitable comparisons to the U.S. economic crisis, there's still no full proved plan in sight for threatened animals, said the naturalists and experts. The Pere David's deer, which is a native to China, has been named for a French missionary and has fallen in the list species listed as "extinct in the wild" on 2008 International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN's) Red List of Threatened Species. The author of the report said that amongst almost 45,000 species evaluated for the new list, 38% are almost in the verge of extinction. Unfortunately the Pere David's deer has been included in that 38%! The study showed that at least 76 mammals have already went extinct since 1500, while the good news about Pere David's deer is that the effort on the conservation and captive breeding program of this variety of deer have done a bit well in the recent year! This has raised the light of hopes for recovery of the species from being absolute extinction. Now the question is, what this Red List actually is? IUCN director general, Julia Marton-Lefèvre said that the Red List is an annual "health check of the planet". The endangered species that comprise the list has been categorized into eight groups: starting from "least concern" (which are low risk of extinction) to "critically endangered species" (which are in extremely high risk of extinction in the wild in near future). For the first time in 2008, the health assessment was done for every single known amphibian, mammal, and even birds.

"If you look ahead a hundred years to our grandchildren and great grandchildren, how are they going to measure whether we were successful in our conservation efforts?" Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International, asked a briefing at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona.

Here's a bit about the Pere David's deer - some facts:

The original habitat is of the Pere David's deer is swampy, reed-covered marshlands of northeastern and east-central China. Unlike the other varieties of deers the Pere David's deer are very much find of water and are also good swimmers, along side a good grazer! It thrives chiefly on grass, and supplements it with water plants during summer. A fully matured Pere David's deer (reaches maturity at about 14 months) gathers weight about 150 - 200 kg (330 - 440 lb). Since the last 1000 years it seems to be in a gradual process of extinction in the wild, although captive breeding program have helped regaining the population level a bit.

April - May is the birth season, the birth rate is 2 fawns maximum at a time. The gestation period is 9 months long! Life expectancy in captivity is 23 years.

Current status as revealed by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN):

• 1960's: Rare
• 1994: Endangered
• 1996: Critically Endangered; (Criteria: D1)
• 2000 - 2004: Critically Endangered (Criteria: D) (IUCN 2004)

Jasmine The Greyhound Becomes Surrogate Dog Mother For 50th Time

With the fall off 2009, another animal news has created a sensational impact on animal lovers around the world. Dog lovers, especially, have to celebrate their love for dogs by getting the news of the Greyhound, who has become surrogate surrogate dog mother to 50 animals! Jasmine is her name. When she arrived in the sanctuary, she was scared, hungry and devoid of love; dirt could be pinched out of her coat. She required a lot of love, good food and immense care to regain back her health. Just with a flap of skin on some bones, Jasmine - the greyhound was rescued from the dreary phase of her life. Now she is paying off her debt! She is a known rescuer of many abandoned animal babies. The seven-year-old Jasmine has taken up the charge as a rescuer or has been playing a surrogate dog mother to many newborn animals with whole hearted love and attention to aid their growth.

Most interestingly, Jasmine - the surrogate dog mother, has played surrogate mother to other puppies, chicks, guinea pigs, rabbits and even fox and badger cubs. Jasmine is presently busy in caring for her 50th ward - 11-week-old roe deer fawn Bramble. Sanctuary boss Geoff Grewcock said: "She dotes on the animals as if they were her own, it's incredible. She takes all the stress out of them and helps them settle. As soon as an animal is brought in, she walks over, takes a sniff or two and then licks and cuddles them. She even lets birds perch on her nose. Her maternal instincts take over. It is amazing, particularly as she is a greyhound and they are quite aggressive".

Biography of Jasmine: Jasmine's biography was best defined by Mr Grewcock. Grewcock said, "Jasmine was abused when she was younger. The police brought her to us after discovering her whimpering in a garden shed. She was nervous around us, caked in mud and dust and very thin. It took a while, but she got used to us". Jasmine's latest charge Bramble arrived just a couple of months ago. She will be looking after this newborn abandoned animal until it is released back into the wild. Grewcock went on: "They are inseparable, Bramble walks between her legs and they keep kissing each other. Having been neglected herself, it's a surprise to see her show so much affection to other creatures. It's not just animals, she's great with children too." Grewcock added, "they walk together round the sanctuary. It's absolutely marvelous. It's a real treat to see them. But she is like that with all of our animals, even the rabbits which greyhounds usually chase down the track". She had been taken to the Nuneaton and Warwickshire Wildlife sanctuary in the year 2003, after being found dumped. So far Jasmine has taken nurtured and looked after 5 fox cubs; 4 badger cubs; 15 chicks; 8 guinea pigs; 15 rabbits; 2 pups 1 fawn. Jasmine, who exemplifies a perfect surrogate animal mother has become a surrogate dog mother again for the 50th time, by shouldering the responsibility of nurturing the Bramble on herself.

Animal News: Huani, The Surrogate Dog Mother

Image Courtesy: credit: Lu Chaunguan/Xinhua/AP
A very interesting story - rather a fact - had created a buzz across the web as it was flashed on the media on May 2007. A female dog (mongrel) became the center of focus of animals lovers around the world by being the surrogate mother of three tiger cubs, born at a zoo in the country's eastern Shandong province. The god mother named "Huani" is suckling three little tiger cubs, who had been named imaginatively as ONE, TWO and THREE by staff at Jinan Paomaling Wild Animal World. The trio ill-fated babies were rejected by their mother shortly after their birth and the responsibility of nurturing them was shouldered by "Huani", who continued to suckle the three little tiger cubs until their appetites outpaced her supply of milk. The zoo manager, Chen Yucai, said that it wasn't surprisingly uncommon for Chinese zoos to use female dogs as surrogate mothers for abandoned tiger cubs. It's almost a dog's life for the three newborn tiger triplets in Eastern China.

The art of introducing the tiger cubs to dogs for nursing had always been quite unique. The zoo staff used to rubbed the urine of surrogate mother - the female dog on the coat of the tiger babies, and gradually brought them close to her. This made the surrogate mother think that she was nursing her own pups. But this time, it wasn't that much of hardship for the zoo staff, because Huani had already nursed tiger babes before. She did not mind caring for ONE, TWO and THREE. Huani proved her angelic magnanimity that every mother should have. We humans have a lot to learn from this mongrel!

A spokeswoman at London Zoo said that staff usually try to match the abandoned animal babies with a mother of the same species. In the 1990s, an Asiatic lion at the London Zoo had abandoned her cub, when the staff had to place the little creature with another lioness that had given birth to her own two cubs. According to many, the abandoned animal babies are placed in the surrogate mother's litter of the same species, because it would acquire her smell and be accepted by her too. So there's a chance of re-abandonment of the cubs or killing of the foreign cubs by the surrogate mothers. If a surrogate of the same species can't be found, London Zoo staff would try try to find a companion animal for abandoned babies. But Chinese dogs like Huani have made things easier for the zoo staff.

Discovery of Pink Iguana Abuzz The Web

Have you ever seen a pink iguana? I never did! It was just by chance I dropped by an article while scrambling around the web late this morning, looking for some rare species of animals. The very phrase "Pink Iguana" enticed me and I couldn't get out of the page until I finished it entirely. Yes, pink iguana, one of the rarest species was overlooked by the English naturalist Charles Darwin during his visit to Galapagos Islands. The documentation spanned back to 1800s when many researchers and naturalists explored Galapagos Islands and Charles Darwin was one of them to overlook a hefty pink iguana.

Referred to as "rosada", which means "pink" in Spanish, this extremely rare reptile - the pink iguana with distinct black stripes had been discovered at Volcan Wolf, Isabela Island's northernmost volcano. This was accidentally missed out by Darwin in 1835, during his five-week stay at the archipelago. Although the Galapagos National Park rangers first discovered the rare pink iguana a few decades ago, but it wasn't documented officially until the first week of 2009. A study during the first phase of January 2009, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has been the first to document the pink iguana officially. 1986 was the year of first sighting of pink iguana.

Gentile, a researcher in the Department of Biology, Tor Vergata University, Rome and his co-researchers collected the samples of blood from several varieties of iguanas at Galapagos, including the yellow varieties. They extracted the DNA from the blood samples to study how the different species are co-related and how and when each of them had emerged. The researchers concluded that the pink iguana has been around for quite a very long span of time. Gentile and his colleagues concluded that around 10.5 million years ago, a common ancestor to both land and marine iguanas from Central or South America colonized the Galapagos Islands and they probably started to diverge at that time. Although many other researchers thought that almost all major species of iguanas differentiated much later during the Pleistocene Epoch - 1.8 million to 10,000 years ago, but Gentile choose to differ from the idea.

Gentile says, "the pink iguana alters the current thinking about the origin of land iguanas from the Galapagos. It is the only remnant of an evolutionary lineage that originated from the land iguana lineage much earlier, about 5.7 million years ago, than the Pleistocene, which is when the rest of the present land iguanas started differentiating throughout the archipelago." As the study of Gentile and his team, this rare species - pink iguana has been placed at the bottom of the iguana family tree of archipelago land. According to them this striking reptile had emerged even before the formation of some islands in Galapagos.

Behavior and Characteristics of Pink Iguana

The unique head scales with a prominent crest, give the reptile an entirely distinctive look. Alike other iguanas, it bobs it head to mark it's own territory and courtship, though in a style a bit different from other iguanas. Gentile said, "the pink iguana shows a particular and distinguished display characterized by multiple series of very rapid ups and downs of the head". He thinks that the pink iguana should be enlisted under "critically endangered" species, by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List due to habitat loss and introduction of non-native animals.

After discovering a new species of Galapagos giant tortoise at a place not far from the islands' Charles Darwin Station, Gisela Caccone, a senior research scientist in ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University, told Discovery News that "the thing that continues to surprise me is the fact that even in the Galapagos, a place that is the 'Mecca' for evolutionary biologists, we still have undiscovered biodiversity not only amongst small organisms, but even for large vertebrates, as these iguanas are".

Fast Facts About Liger - The New Animal

Ligers are truly the king of the beasts! Here are some fast facts about ligers - the news animal:

• The Liger is a hybrid cross between a male lion and a female tiger... (Not a female lion and a male tiger).
• Although Siberian Tiger is the largest pure bred Taxon, Ligers are the largest cat on the Earth.
• Ligers resemble more of a tiger with diffused stripes.
• Researches have shown that Ligers are fond of Chocolates more than cherrypie
• Ligers got laser eyes, because thay have sharigan .
• Nature of ligers are unique. It recieved some characteristics from tigers, and some from lions. unlike lions, but like tigers, ligers enjoy swimming.
• A few sources said that ligers' favorite colors are green and blue, although there are tonnes of disputes about this conclussions.
• Ligers are water resistant up to 6".
• According to a report laid down in the 1989, ligers are 104% more exciting than dogs.
• A liger's ton boots have steel toe caps, which enable them to shank lesser creatures (e.g. lions and tigers). The boots can only be removed by another liger standing on their heels.
• On clamping their jaws onto victims Ligers can exert up to 71,238N of force, which is more than any other known animal ever existed on the Earth till date.
• Records of the iorigin of Ligers shows that the animsl actually originated in Ligeria, now know as Liberia.
• Ligers are hardly found in the wild because the lions and tigers usually do not share the common geographical area, although rare reports have been found of tigresses mating with lions in wild.
• In fact, tigers were forced into the ranges inhabited by the Asiatic Lion, which is a subspecies of lion.
• In the year1935, four ligers from two different litters were reared in the Zoological Gardens of BloemfonteinBloemfontein, South Africa. Amongst them, one male and two females, were still living in 1953. The male liger weighed 750 lb. and stood 1 ft. 6 inches taller at the shoulder than a adult male lion.
• Shasta, a ligress (female liger) was born at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City on May 14, 1948. She died in 1972, when she was 24 years old.
• Evidence of an 18-years-old male liger, weighing 798-kg living at Bloemfontein zoological gardens, South Africa, in 1888, wre found in the 1973 Guinness world records.
• Valley of the Kings animal sanctuary in Wisconsin reared "Nook" was a male liger, who weighed around 550 kg. Nook passed away in 2007, at 21 years old.
• Association of Zoos and Aquariums has always frowned on mixing genes of two different species. They have never bred ligers.
• Jane Ballentine, a spokesperson for the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, based in Silver Spring, Maryland, said: "Keeping the two species separate has always been standard procedure..."
• There's no official scientific name for Ligers, because ligers are hybrid creatures.
• Despite its huge size and incredibly heavy body weight, Ligers can run at a speed of 50 miles per hour.
• A full grown adult Liger can eat around 50-100 pounds of meat at one meal.
• The huge size of the ligers are the result of imprinted genes.