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All in Conservation
A giant African land snail has been spotted in the New Port Richey area of Pasco County in Florida. The snail (Lissachatina fulica) will feed on more than 500 types of plants but nothing will feed on it, nothing in Florida anyway. The invader was first spotted here in 1969 and has since been “eradicated” twice – in 1975 and again last year – but life finds a way.
Paleontologists have discovered the oldest known belly button. Using high-tech imaging to examine the remains of a bipedal horned dinosaur of the genus Psittacosaurus, the scientists noticed the thin trace of an umbilical scar in the 125-million-year-old fossilized skin.
Life is hard for a turtle in Rhode Island these days. "We see a lot of mortality in turtles this time of year and sadly, it's all female turtles carrying the next generation and now sadly we have a poaching crisis,” Lou Perrotti, director of conservation programs at Roger Williams Park Zoo, told NBC affiliate WJAR.
For more than a century we thought the “fantastic giant tortoise” (Chelonoidis phantasticus) of the Galápagos was extinct, but a 50-year-old female of the species has been found. She’s been named “Fernanda,” after the Fernandina Island in the western Galápagos Archipelago where she was living.
We’ve known for a few years that the larvae of certain beetle species can eat plastic, giving hope to the idea that the world’s waste problem might have a (quasi) natural solution. Now researchers in Australia believe they have identified the garbage-eating gut bacteria that makes this gastronomic feat possible. Their research appears in Microbial Genomics.
Zoo Miami is about to open its Sea Turtle Hospital, but it already has taken in a patient – a 50-year-old, 388 pound loggerhead turtle. On May 22, the zoo got a call from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: a large female loggerhead was just rescued near the Port St. Lucie Power Plant. She had a severe wound on her left front flipper, probably from a shark attack.
West Sacramento, California has a novel answer to wildfires: 400 goats. The city has enlisted the services of the animals to eat their way through vegetation that would otherwise become fuel for the fires that have scorched the state in recent years.
It is hard to imagine that 33 souped up racing cars that zoom 500 miles around an oval for three hours can possibly be considered environmentally friendly, but the annual Indianapolis 500 is trying.
The government of Cambodia has issued a stern warning to its denizens who enjoy the great outdoors: Stop playing with the phallic-shaped plants.
The Nashville Zoo has just announced a new arrival: a bouncing baby fanaloka. The male cub is the first spotted fanaloka born in the United States, according to the Associations of Zoos and Aquariums database. In fact the baby boy and his parents are the only known group of fanalokas in the US.
