Category Endangered Animals

Pantanal’s jaguars in peril

A lot has been said about the benefits of wildfires-from removing alien species and helping native species thrive to killing harmful insects and weak animals. But given the intensity and frequency with which they have been occurring of late, many wildfires are devastating. A case in point is the 2019-2020 wildfire season in Australia that is said to have harmed about three billion animals. Meanwhile, a recent study has discovered that around the same time, fires in another continent have had a harmful impact on an apex predator.

Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland, located in South America. Covering more than 1,80,000 sq.km., it spans Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay. The region has one of the highest concentrations of wildlife in this continent; it houses the world’s second-largest jaguar population – 1,668. But just like the Amazon, it is plagued by several threats. Among them is the increase in agricultural activity, resulting in negative human-jaguar interactions and the eventual killing of the predator.

And in 2020, these predators faced another severe form of threat – fires. That year Pantanal was particularly dry, and the situation was made worse by a “combination of rising temperatures and a drop in water draining to the Pantanal due to deforestation of the Amazon and the Cerrado uplands”. The fires “burnt 31% of Pantanal ecoregion”, and in the process. “45% of jaguars in region were displaced, injured or killed”. They “burned thousands of square kilometres of critical jaguar habitat and may threaten the big cats long-term survival”, according to the research, based on 12 years of jaguar distribution data and 16 years of maps of the burned area.

These carnivores do not migrate, which means, when their habitats shrink, they are crowded in one location, leading to disputes over sharing both territory and prey. And if they do travel afar in search of food, their energy could be sapped, affecting their reproductive capacity. In the long run, if the jaguars disappear from the region, it could throw the ecosystem into disarray since they are at the top of the food chain.

The 2020 fires “burnt 31% of Pantanal ecoregion”, and in the process, “45% of jaguars in region were displaced, injured or killed”. They “burned thousands of square kilometres of critical jaguar habitat and may threaten the big cats’ long-term survival”, according to a research, based on 12 years of jaguar distribution data and 16 years of maps of the burned area.

Picture Credit : Google 

WHAT IS A WOOLLY MAMMOTH?

Woolly mammoths were closely related to today’s Asian elephants. They looked a lot like their modern cousins, except for one major difference. They were covered in a thick coat of brown hair to keep them warm in their home on the frigid Arctic plains. They even had fur-lined ears.

Their large, curved tusks may have been used for fighting. They also may have been used as a digging tool for foraging meals of shrubs, grasses, roots and other small plants from under the snow.

Though woolly mammoths went extinct around 10,000 years ago, humans know quite a bit about them because of where they lived. The permafrost of the Arctic preserved many woolly mammoth bodies almost intact. When the ground around riverbanks and streams erodes, it often reveals the corpse of a long-dead mammoth that looks much like it did when it died.

Woolly mammoths were around 13 feet (4 meters) tall and weighed around 6 tons (5.44 metric tons), according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Some of the hairs on woolly mammoths could reach up to 3 feet (1 m) long, according to National Geographic.

Credit: Live Science

Picture credit: Google

WHAT DID EARLY ANIMALS LOOK LIKE?

By around 500 million years ago, bacteria in the oceans had evolved into the earliest fish. These strange creatures had no jaws; they had funnel-like Sucking mouths.

The first animals – including the common ancestor of all animals today – evolved in the sea over half a billion years ago. We have no direct evidence of what they were like.

But by studying animals today, we can work out features they must have shared – small size, soft bodies, and a tendency to stay very still or creep slowly across the ocean floor.

The creatures had bodies built from multiple cells with specialised roles, like organisms before them. Now, those cells could also form sheets called epithelia, allowing structures to develop. Along with increased genetic complexity, this set the scene for big changes.

Earth’s environment was in flux during the Cambrian period, and the Ediacaran period that came before it. Sea levels rose, and chemicals washed into the ocean. In the underwater world, evolution got to work. New creatures emerged that could move further than ever before – and change their environment by burrowing and building. Soon, the new species were living in every habitat across the length and breadth of the ocean.

Credit: Natural History

Picture credit: Google

What is the largest carnivorous marsupial?

The Tasmanian devil is the largest carnivorous marsupial, known for their high-pitched squeal and aggressive temperament. They have held this title for over 80 years. Specifically, these creatures weigh between 9 and 29 pounds. A Tasmanian Devil weighing 29 pounds is as heavy as three one-gallon cans of paint. These mammals range from 20 to 31 inches long. Picture two bowling pins lined up end to end and you have the length of a 31-inch Tasmanian Devil. This mammal’s tail is equal to half of its body length. These animals store fat in their tail to use for energy. So, if you see one of these animals with a thick tail, you know it’s healthy. Thanks to conservation efforts, they are being reintroduced to Australian mainland after a 3,000-year gap. Mother devils can give birth to 50 young ones at one go. However, very few survive.

A Tasmanian Devil is a small animal with short brown or black fur with a stripe of white hair across its chest. Some of these marsupials have patches of white hair near their dark tail. This marsupial’s front legs are longer than its back ones. They have dark eyes and small mouselike ears. These animals have excellent sight and hearing allowing them to track down prey at night.

They are known for their very strong jaws. In fact, this marsupial’s jaws have a bite force of 94 pounds. That strong bite force allows them to easily consume the meat, hair, bones, and organs of the dead animals they find. Some scientists refer to Tasmanian Devils as environmental vacuums because they clean up the carcasses they find in their habitat.

Credit : A-Z-Animals

Picture Credit : Google 

What are tawny crazy ants?

One of the most incredible things about Nature must be how everything is so balanced. The interdependence and co-existence of species, for one. Of course, it’s a different story altogether that humans have singularly ruined that balance. But, now and then, comes a story to remind us that Nature will win eventually.

So, these crazy ants (really. that’s their name!), spreading in the southeastern parts of the U.S., have been living up to their name very well for the last 20 years. These ants, whose full name is tawny crazy ant, are an invasive species in Texas, and unimaginably destructive. According to a news report, when these crazy ants invade any new region in Texas, they “wipe out local insects and lizards, drive away birds, and even blind baby rabbits by spewing acid in their eyes”. Native to South America, they moved up north through ships. Ants are known for their “orderly marches”, but this one got its name because there are no orderly marches here, only “erratic, jarring movements”. In addition to ecosystems, they take over electrical systems, “causing shorts in breaker boxes, AC units and sewage pumps”.

And, looks like their days may be numbered. In a recent study, scientists discovered a naturally occurring fungus-like pathogen that can be used to reverse the rampant spread of these ants. The “fungus had already driven pockets of the invaders to extinction, and would soon be tested at environmentally-sensitive sites to protect endangered species”.

Though the pathogen’s origins aren’t clear, the study has shown that over the last eight years, “every population harboring the pathogen declined, and 60 percent of the populations went completely extinct”.

This is good news in two ways because “first, a pathogen of natural origin was selectively targeting the invasive species, limiting their ability to steamroll local ecosystems. Second, scientists can accelerate the spread of the pathogen to kill the crazy ants quicker”. But the reality is also that the process is “labor intensive, not something that could eradicate the species overnight”.

Picture Credit : Google