Bald Eagles Escape Extinction

Bald eagles soaring to escape extinction

The bald eagle, America's national symbol, is to be removed from its list of endangered species, 40 years after it was on the brink of extinction, officials said yesterday.

The majestic sea bird, which was almost wiped out by hunters and insecticide poisoning, has not only survived but is now thriving.

The interior department's announcement that it is to remove the species from the protection of the Endangered Species Act signalled a major victory for tough federal conservation laws, said naturalists.

In 1963, there were only 417 mating pairs of bald eagles known to exist. Government biologists, however, have now counted nearly 10,000 mating pairs, including at least one pair in each of the 48 contiguous states.

The Continental Congress put the bird on the country's official seal in 1782, although Benjamin Franklin preferred the turkey and called the eagle a "bird of bad moral character". The eagle was long viewed as a nuisance and dangerous predator. It was hunted for its feathers, the subject of a 50-cent bounty in Alaska and poisoned in some states.

President Bush said its resurgence should be credited to cooperation between landowners and federal and state governments. "This great conservation achievement means more and more Americans across the nation will enjoy the thrill of seeing bald eagles soar," he said.

What a great success story for the Bald Eagle and, for a change, mankind. It is so cool to see one of these magnificent creatures in the wild and it's natural habitat.

Animalz Rule,

Bobby Sharpewww.myspace.com/akuasharpe BobbySharpe.blogspot.com

Shark Pregnant! Wonder How?

Shark Pregnant in Aquarium With No Males
By SONJA BARISIC,

NORFOLK, Va. (June 25) - Veterinarian Bob George sliced open the dead shark and saw the outline of a fish.

No surprise there, since sharks digest their food slowly.

Then George realized he wasn't looking at the stomach of the blacktip reef shark, but at her uterus. In it was a perfectly formed, 10-inch-long shark pup that was almost ready to be born.

George was dumbfounded.

He had been examining the shark, Tidbit, to figure out why she reacted badly to routine sedatives during a physical and died, hours after biting an aquarium curator on the shin. Now there was a bigger mystery: How did Tidbit get pregnant ?

"We must have had hanky panky" in the shark tank, he thought.

But sharks only breed with sharks of the same species, and there were no male blacktip reef sharks at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach.

Could Tidbit have defied nature, resulting in the first known shark hybrid?

The other possibility was that Tidbit had conceived without needing a male at all.

A recent study had documented the first confirmed case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks: a pup born at a Nebraska zoo came from an egg that developed in a female shark without sperm from a male.

One of the scientists who worked on that study contacted the aquarium, which sent him tissue samples from Tidbit and her pup for testing. If the pup's DNA turns out to contain no contribution from a male shark, this would be the second known case of shark parthenogenesis.

George hopes to receive a preliminary report soon, but conclusive results could take months.

Tidbit had lived at the aquarium for most of her 10 years, swimming with other sharks in a 300,000-gallon tank.

The sharks get yearly checkups. On May 24, workers guided the 5-foot, 94-pound Tidbit from the main aquarium into a smaller corral to be examined out of public view.

Blacktip reef sharks are sensitive to change, so it was standard procedure to give Tidbit a sedative. This time, Tidbit went under the sedation too deeply - maybe because of a combination of the unknown pregnancy and the stress of being handled and of having recently been bitten by another shark, George said.

George and Beth Firchau, the curator of fishes, massaged Tidbit's tail to get her blood flowing and gave her a stimulant to help her breathe.

The shark swam away, bumped into a wall, headed back toward Firchau and clamped onto her left shin. Whether Tidbit meant to attack Firchau or just collided into her and snapped reflexively is hard to know.

The pain didn't hit Firchau right away.

"Oh, you're not supposed to do that. That was weird," she thought as she felt the shark tug on her leg.

Members of the shark physicals team pulled Firchau out of the tank and began administering first aid. She credits their swift reaction with saving her life.

Firchau was taken to a hospital to get stitches while George and other team members tried to revive Tidbit. The shark rallied a couple times but died about 12 hours later.

George initially was depressed by the events. But something positive emerged out of the negative.

Since Tidbit hadn't looked pregnant - and there was no reason to think she was pregnant - the pup likely would have been born and immediately eaten by another shark, without aquarium employees ever knowing it had existed.

But Tidbit's death led to George stumbling upon a mystery of nature.

In normal reproduction, an egg is fertilized by sperm, producing an embryo that contains a set of chromosomes with half coming from the mother and half from the father.

In asexual reproduction, an egg splits in two and DNA contributed from the mother doubles, so each resulting egg has a full complement of chromosomes from the female. The eggs then fuse, producing a single embryo with no DNA from a father.

Asexual reproduction is common in some insect species, rarer in reptiles and fish, and has never been documented in mammals. Until now, sharks were not considered likely candidates.

But with sharks, "this is probably something that does happen in aquariums, more often than we realize," said Bob Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla.

He said the phenomenon is coming to light with the joint Northern Ireland-U.S. research that analyzed the DNA of a hammerhead shark born in 2001 in the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Neb. The study was published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters on the day before Firchau was bitten.

Asexual reproduction among sharks is more likely to happen in captivity, when there is no other option for reproduction, than in the wild, Hueter said.

Crossbreeding, on the other hand, is not known to happen at all among sharks, said Heather Thomas, aquarist at the John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

"It's not natural," Thomas said. "If you've got a shark that needs to swim to breathe and cross it with a shark that can lay on the bottom to breathe, what are you going to get? Are you going to get these weird mutations?"

If the pup indeed turns out to be a hybrid, DNA testing should be able to identify the species of the father. The most likely candidate would be a sandbar shark, the most similar shark to a blacktip reef in the aquarium, George said.

While parthenogenesis "is certainly kind of a spiffy, interesting thing," George hopes the tests confirm crossbreeding, since that would be a first among sharks.

Asexual reproduction, or, parthenogenesis, has been proven in a number of cases with other life forms. So, this is not to far out of the ordinary. Crossbreeding, on the other hand, would be a first, however, "I do not think that is the case"! But, "what do I know"? I am only the dj/guitarist/cabbie/writer and animal lover!

Animalz Rule,

Bobby Sharpe www.myspace.com/akuasharpe BobbySharpe.blogspot.com

Italian Albino Mountain Goat Exists

Albino Mountain Goat Spotted in Italy

MILAN, Italy (AP) - Forest rangers in the northern Italian Alps have confirmed for the first time the existence of an albino mountain goat - and named him "Snowflake."

Rangers took photos of the albino capra ibex climbing with its mother Sunday at about 10,000 feet above the Les Laures valley in the northwestern Val d'Aosta region, said Christian Chioso, a regional wildlife official.

"This is the only one ever documented, the only one ever seen," Chioso said by telephone on Monday. He said albinism is rare in any species and has not been previously documented among the capra ibex, a type of wild mountain goat with large curved horns that lives in mountainous areas.

Chioso estimated the albino animal is about a year old.

Hikers had been reporting seeing a white animal at higher elevations for months, and forest rangers have been keeping a lookout, Chioso said.

The goat was seen near the boundaries of the Big Paradise National Park, which was established to protect the species. Chiaso said about 4,000 wild mountain goats populate the park.

This is a really cool story because it points out the fact that "new" species or oddities in the animal world are being discovered all the time now. Basically saying, "we probably do not have any idea exactly what all is living with us on this planet"!

I'm telling YOU, "one of these days, GODZILLA"!

Animals Rule,

Bobby Sharpewww.myspace.com/akuasharpe BobbySharpe.blogspot.com

Super Grizzly Bear

Bear Is Second-Largest Seen in North Rockies

GREAT FALLS, Mont. (June 21) - State bear managers seeking to capture and collar female grizzly bears as part of a population count recently trapped a 7 foot, 6 inch male grizzly that weighed 750 pounds after a winter of hibernation.

Mike Madel, bear management specialist with the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said it took two scales and a hydraulic crane to weigh the 8-year-old bruin that had 3 1/2-inch claws and a neck circumference of 4 feet.

"This bear was just a beautiful bear," Madel said. Madel said the big male with the bronze head, golden back and dark chocolate legs could weigh as much as 900 pounds by the fall.

"This is really a large male," he said. In fact, it is the second-largest male grizzly ever recorded in the Northern Rockies Region, Madel said. Madel captured the bear he dubbed "Big Daddy," on May 24. He was trying to capture female grizzlies near Choteau to fit them with radio collars to track their movements and whether they have cubs. "We actually were trying to avoid males," Madel said.

But he decided to put a radio collar on the bear to track its range. Madel said he didn't know the big bear even existed. "Here's a bear that's down on the Front, and he's accustomed to moving in and around human activity, and he's never caused a conflict before," Madel said.

The average-sized male grizzly along the Rocky Mountain Front is 600 pounds, while females are around 300 to 325 pounds. Madel, who has been managing bears on the Front for 24 years, wonders if the bear he trapped this spring was sired by the largest male grizzly ever recorded in the Northern Rockies: an 8-foot, 800-plus pound bruin trapped in 2003 in the Blackleaf Wildlife Management Area northwest of Choteau.

"This bear," he said, "looked very much like that bear." Madel collected hair from the 2003 bear, but an Idaho lab lost the samples, making it impossible to know if they're related. Madel said the younger bear captured this spring hasn't reached its full size. "He's got some growing to do," Madel said.

Brown bears, or, "grizzlies", are some of the most intelligent and magnificent creatures on this planet. It totally disgusts me when I see these "great white hunter" geeks out with their super weapons trying to kill these beautiful animalz.

Animalz Rule,

Bobby Sharpe www.myspace.com/akuasharpe BobbySharpe.blogspot.com