Wolves, Birds, and Other Animal News

It has been a busy week for animals so lets get to it.

• The gray wolf (Canis lupus) is not making it easy on hunters in Idaho. This year, the state of Idaho sanctioned a wolf hunt and issued 14,000 wolf hunting permits. This large number of permits is despite the fact that the population of the wolves is only estimated at less than 900. In the first 11 days of the hunt, only three wolves have been tagged (legal kills). Montana is due to start their wolf hunting season (population is only 500 there) this week. There are talks occurring as to whether or not the gray wolf should be on the endangered species list again.

• A missing bird was found flying at sea. This is not the booby I mentioned last time. This time it is the Fiji petrel. The bird is incredibly rare and only through a very thorough bird "hunt" were researchers finally able to see them. The only known specimen was an immature one from Gau, Fiji in1855. It wasn't until 1984 that the bird had a confirmed sighting again. You can read more about this elusive bird here.
  

• Honeybees are telling ants to "buzz off" quite effectively. For the first time on tape, a bee has been caught using its wings to blow away ants that are attacking them and their nests. The bees actually change their wing beat pattern to one far more powerful and aggressive to blow the ants away.

• A few new species have been found inside a crater in Papua New Guinea. Among them were various species of amphibians, plants, and one of the world's largest rats. Mount Bosavi crater was the subject of a recent expedition set up by the BBC. Most of these new species are believed to not exist anywhere else on Earth!
  

• This last snippet is a bit of local news. Recently, I wrote about turtle nesting in the VI. Well, as luck would have it, Brewers Bay (the location of my opening credits for many Potspoon! videos) has a turtle nest! Not just any turtle nest either. I have lost of luck spotting green turtles at this beach, but the nest is a leatherback nest! Leatherbacks are the fourth largest reptilian species behind three crocodilians. They are endangered worldwide. The picture above is said nest. I am so excited!
  

That's it for your animal news snippets.

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The Honeybee Dilemma

Honeybee on opening yellow flowers
Originally uploaded by Martin LaBar

Since so many of you seem very into bees (i.e. they backyard beekeeper here, the actual beekeeper here, and the bee lovers here, here, and here to name a few) I figured I would post the latest discoveries pertaining to CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder. This is what is causing the bees to disappear. We didn't know what was going on with the bees because there were no bodies to study.

At Penn State, the head apiarist (fancy science talk for bee genius) started doing research on these bees in greenhouses. Many theories had been tossed around as to what may have caused this. What it seemed to be, however, was something that not many people thought of as an option: A virus known as IAPV was to blame.

News of this spread quickly in the scientific community. Researchers stated that not enough work had been done to say for sure and then we forgot about those findings.

Then earlier this year a scientists finds that there are highly toxic levels of chemicals inside some of these bee bodies. In fact, they were able to find traces of pesticides in the wax and honey of these bees as well. Bees will go as far as they have to in order to reach food and if the food is covered in pesticides this can be transferred to the rest of the hive and product. Because of this, many beekeepers are asking farmers what, if any, pesticides they use before they rent out their bees.

What does this mean??? We have to protect the few bee colonies we have.

Photo: Honeybee on opening yellow flowers
Originally uploaded by Martin LaBar

Source article: here.

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