WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Two female giraffes at a zoo in central Poland died after vandals broke into the facility, and officials are trying to find a companion for their last remaining giraffe — a male.

The break-in at the zoo in Lodz city occurred Saturday night, and the unidentified hooligans overturned signs and threw benches and garbage cans into animal runs, including one near where the three giraffes were.

One of the female giraffes — 3-year-old Suri — was found dead early Sunday, and tests indicated it died of stress and a heart attack, zoo Director Ryszard Topola said Tuesday. The other female giraffe, 6-year-old Hana, was found dead early Monday, and Topola said the sudden stress worsened its ongoing treatment for parasites.

"These are wild animals and very skittish," said Topola, so there is little doubt that the fear contributed to their deaths. The two females and the surviving 6-year-old male — Tofik — are from the endangered Rothschild giraffe subspecies, and the zoo's goal had been for them to be companions for years and hopefully mate and produce other giraffes.

"This is a very sad occurrence to us, a great loss," Topola said. The head of the zoo's breeding section, Wlodzimierz Stanislawski, said management is checking with other European zoos to see they can provide a companion for Tofik.

"It is a tough task because there are not many available female Rothschild giraffes in zoos, but we will try to fill in this sudden gap," Stanislawski said. Meanwhile, city authorities and the national Animal Guard watchdog organization have offered a 5,000 zlotys ($1,500; euro 1,100) reward for any clues that help find the hooligans.

Investigators also are trying to find out why the zoo's security guards didn't call police until hours after the hooligans had left the facility, which is not equipped with CCTV cameras.

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The zoo's management said the vandals broke in overnight Saturday to Sunday, destroying benches, signs and sculptures and hurling pieces of the debris at the animals. One of the giraffes died within hours of the incident and the second was found dead yesterday morning.

"The autopsy of the first giraffe, three-year-old female, found a ruptured heart valve and bruising, a sign of a severe stress reaction," the zoo's deputy director Wlodzimierz Stanislawski said. "The second, a six-year-old female, was slightly ill before the incident. The stress likely aggravated the illness and finished her off.

"Giraffes are extremely timid. Stress causes a flight response in them. They react the same way to every unusual noise," Mr Stanislawski said. The zoo is not equipped with surveillance cameras and night security guards did not notice anything unusual.

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The 8-year-old twins love their iPad. They draw, play games and expand their vocabulary. Their family's teenagers also like the hand-held computer tablets, too, but the clan's elders show no interest. The orangutans at Miami's Jungle Island apparently are just like people when it comes to technology. The park is one of several zoos experimenting with computers and apes, letting its six orangutans use an iPad to communicate and as part of a mental stimulus program. Linda Jacobs, who oversees the program, hopes the devices will eventually help bridge the gap between humans and the endangered apes.

"Our young ones pick up on it. They understand it. It's like, `Oh I get this,'" Jacobs said. "Our two older ones, they just are not interested. I think they just figure, `I've gotten along just fine in this world without this communication-skill here and the iPad, and I don't need a computer.'"

Jacobs said she began letting the orangutans use iPads last summer, based on the suggestion of someone who had used the devices with dolphins. The software was originally designed for humans with autism and the screen displays pictures of various objects. A trainer then names one of the objects, and the ape presses the corresponding button.

The devices have been a great addition to the enrichment programs Jungle Island already does with the orangutans, Jacobs said. Keepers have long used sign language to communicate with them. Using their hands, the orangutans can respond to simple questions, identify objects and express their wants or needs. The apes can also identify body parts, helping the trainers care for them and even give them shots.

"We're able to really monitor their health on a daily basis," Jacobs said of the need for communication with the orangutans. "We can do daily checks. If somebody's not feeling well, we know it immediately."
While Jacobs and other trainers have developed strong relationships with the orangutans, the iPad and other touchscreen computers offer an opportunity for them to communicate with people not trained in their sign language. "It would just be such a wonderful bridge to have," Jacobs said. "So that other people could really appreciate them."

Orangutans are extremely intelligent but limited by their physical inability to talk, she said.
"They are sort of trapped in those bodies," Jacobs said. "They have the intelligence that they need to communicate, but they don't have the right equipment, because they don't have voice boxes or vocal cords. So this gives them a way to let us know what they know, what they are capable of, what they would like to have."Other zoos and nature parks are doing similar work.

Richard Zimmerman, executive director of Orangutan Outreach, said he's building an "Apps For Apes" program with old, donated iPads at facilities throughout North America, though Jungle Island isn't part of that group. Orangutan Outreach started working with the Milwaukee County Zoo and then expanded to zoos in Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Toronto, Houston and elsewhere. They're hoping to use a video-conferencing program to reconnect orangutans with friends and family members who have been transferred to other zoos, he said.

"We're putting together what we're calling primate playdates or red ape rendezvous, which is to say connecting the orangutans in different facilities," Zimmerman said. "We're looking at a larger picture."
When it comes to orangutans, the iPad itself has limitations. First, the relatively small screen causes orangutans to hit the wrong buttons sometimes. Also, the touchscreen won't register if they try to use their fingernails. Most importantly, the devices are just too fragile to actually hand over to the apes _ the trainers must hold them.

"If I gave them the iPad, I could just basically hand them $600 and say, `Go have fun,'" Jacobs said. "So until we come up with a better screen or a better case, I'm going to hold onto the iPad."If Jacobs gets her way, a more secure interface might not be far off. The long-term plan is to set up a larger, orangutan-proof screen in the holding area, along with another screen outside for guests. They would ask the orangutans questions and the apes could respond.

"It's really just a matter of getting the technology and equipment here," Jacobs said. "There's not a doubt in my mind that they could do it and would be marvelous at it, and I think the public would absolutely love it."

It's important to note that training the orangutans isn't done to entertain Jungle Island workers or guests. Because the animals are so intelligent, Jacobs said their minds must be kept active to prevent them from getting bored or depressed. The challenge is making the enrichment activities enjoyable.
"They need a lot of stimulation," Jacobs said. "Training isn't mandatory, but they love it."

Scientist and conservationist Birute Mary Galdikas, founder of Orangutan Foundation International, said orangutans are among the most intelligent animals. Orangutans in the wild, where Galdikas has studied the apes for more than four decades, routinely use tools to scratch themselves, swat insects and create simple shelters. In captivity, Galdikas said orangutans have demonstrated remarkable creative-thinking skills, specifically in their ability to escape enclosures.

"Anything that Jungle Island can do to help their orangutans while away the day is to be commended," Galdikas said. "IPads seem to work for humans. It's not surprising that orangutans, who share 97 percent of their genetic material with humans, like them, too."

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They draw, play games and expand their vocabulary. Their family's teenagers also like the hand-held computer tablets, too, but the clan's elders show no interest.

The orangutans at Miami's Jungle Island apparently are just like people when it comes to technology. The park is one of several zoos experimenting with computers and apes, letting its six orangutans use an iPad to communicate and as part of a mental stimulus program. Linda Jacobs, who oversees the program, hopes the devices will eventually help bridge the gap between humans and the endangered apes. "Our young ones pick up on it. They understand it. It's like, 'Oh, I get this,"' Jacobs said. "Our two older ones, they just are not interested. I think they just figure, 'I've gotten along just fine in this world without this communication-skill here and the iPad, and I don't need a computer."'

Jacobs said she began letting the orangutans use iPads last summer, based on the suggestion of someone who had used the devices with dolphins. The software was originally designed for humans with autism and the screen displays pictures of various objects. A trainer then names one of the objects, and the ape presses the corresponding button.

The devices have been a great addition to the enrichment programs Jungle Island already does with the orangutans, Jacobs said. Keepers have long used sign language to communicate with them. Using their hands, the orangutans can respond to simple questions, identify objects and express their wants or needs. The apes can also identify body parts, helping the trainers care for them and even give them shots. "We're able to really monitor their health on a daily basis," Jacobs said of the need for communication with the orangutans. "We can do daily checks. If somebody's not feeling well, we know it immediately."

While Jacobs and other trainers have developed strong relationships with the orangutans, the iPad and other touchscreen computers offer an opportunity for them to communicate with people not trained in their sign language. "It would just be such a wonderful bridge to have," Jacobs said. "So that other people could really appreciate them."

Orangutans are extremely intelligent but limited by their physical inability to talk, she said.
"They are sort of trapped in those bodies," Jacobs said. "They have the intelligence that they need to communicate, but they don't have the right equipment, because they don't have voice boxes or vocal chords. So this gives them a way to let us know what they know, what they are capable of, what they would like to have."

Other zoos and nature parks are doing similar work. Richard Zimmerman, executive director of Orangutan Outreach, said he's building an "Apps For Apes" program with old, donated iPads at facilities throughout North America, though Jungle Island isn't part of that group. Orangutan Outreach started working with the Milwaukee County Zoo and then expanded to zoos in Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Toronto, Houston and elsewhere. They're hoping to use a video-conferencing program to reconnect orangutans with friends and family members who have been transferred to other zoos, he said.

"We're putting together what we're calling primate playdates or red ape rendezvous, which is to say connecting the orangutans in different facilities," Zimmerman said. "We're looking at a larger picture."
When it comes to orangutans, the iPad itself has limitations. First, the relatively small screen causes orangutans to hit the wrong buttons sometimes. Also, the touchscreen won't register if they try to use their fingernails. Most importantly, the devices are just too fragile to actually hand over to the apes -- the trainers must hold them.

"If I gave them the iPad, I could just basically hand them $600 and say, `Go have fun,"' Jacobs said. "So until we come up with a better screen or a better case, I'm going to hold onto the iPad."If Jacobs gets her way, a more secure interface might not be far off. The long-term plan is to set up a larger, orangutan-proof screen in the holding area, along with another screen outside for guests. They would ask the orangutans questions and the apes could respond.

"It's really just a matter of getting the technology and equipment here," Jacobs said. "There's not a doubt in my mind that they could do it and would be marvelous at it, and I think the public would absolutely love it."

It's important to note that training the orangutans isn't done to entertain Jungle Island workers or guests. Because the animals are so intelligent, Jacobs said their minds must be kept active to prevent them from getting bored or depressed. The challenge is making the enrichment activities enjoyable.
"They need a lot of stimulation," Jacobs said. "Training isn't mandatory, but they love it."

Scientist and conservationist Birute Mary Galdikas, founder of Orangutan Foundation International, said orangutans are among the most intelligent animals. Orangutans in the wild, where Galdikas has studied the apes for more than four decades, routinely use tools to scratch themselves, swat insects and create simple shelters. In captivity, Galdikas said, orangutans have demonstrated remarkable creative-thinking skills, specifically in their ability to escape enclosures.

"Anything that Jungle Island can do to help their orangutans while away the day is to be commended," Galdikas said. "IPads seem to work for humans. It's not surprising that orangutans, who share 97 percent of their genetic material with humans, like them, too."

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OMAHA - It was a bit of a zoo at the Nebraska Medical Center over the weekend, when a special patient came in for jaw surgery. Motuba, a 27-year-old silverback gorilla, needed a CT scan after a scuffle Thursday night with another gorilla, said Mr Doug Armstrong, director of animal health at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo. The zoo cannot perform the scan, so it contacted the hospital, whose staff has been consulted on animal cases in the past.

"It wasn't life threatening but we knew we had to address it," Mr Armstrong said. Motuba is among four silverbacks that socialise at the zoo. Mr Armstrong said Motuba and one of the younger gorillas apparently got into a fight that left the older gorilla with a fractured jaw that pushed three of his teeth outward. No one saw the fight, so it is unclear exactly what happened.

"It's just the nature of male gorillas that you have conflicts," Mr Armstrong said, noting that the group dynamics have been in a state of flux for a few weeks, with the younger ones trying to secure a more prominent role.

After surveying Motuba's injuries, doctors removed a piece of the gorilla's jaw and the askew teeth. While a human could have had his or her jaw repaired and wired shut to heal or could have had teeth replaced with dentures, those treatments do not work for gorillas, Mr Armstrong said.

Motuba will be on a special soft diet for the next week and kept off display until zoo staff can assess how his peers will react to his return, he said.

Hospital spokesman Paul Baltes said the gorilla was kept separate from human patients, and the medical centre's infection-control department was involved in the procedure to ensure there was no contamination. Areas of the hospital that the gorilla was in will be thoroughly cleaned. AP

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Maximum running speed practically determines mammalian eye size other than body size, says a new study.
Species with larger eyes usually have higher visual acuity, says Chris Kirk, associate professor of anthropology at University of Texas, Austin. But what are the ecological factors that cause some mammals to develop larger eyes than others?

“If you can think of mammals that are fast like a cheetah or horse, you can almost guarantee they have got really big eyes,” says Kirk. “This gives them better vision to avoid colliding with obstacles in their environment when they are moving very quickly.”

Kirk and physical anthropology doctoral student Amber Heard-Booth are the first to apply Leuckart’s Law – a hypothesis that was developed specifically for birds and speed of flight – to 50 species of mammals, the journal Anatomical Record reports. Previously it was thought that the time of day that an animal is active (nocturnal or diurnal) would be the main factor driving the evolution of mammalian eye size, according to a Texas statement.

However, comparative research on the anatomy of the eye has shown that although nocturnal and diurnal species differ in eye shape, they often have similar eye sizes. Although nocturnal species may appear to have bigger eyes because more of the cornea is exposed to let in more light, activity pattern only has a modest effect on eye size. By comparison, body mass plus maximum running speed together can explain 89 percent of the variation in eye size among mammals.

The researchers found that eye diametre and maximum running speed is stronger than the link between body mass and running speed. Heard-Booth presented the findings at the 2011 American Association of Physical Anthropology Meeting.

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HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — Wildlife experts are trying to return a healthy dolphin to the ocean after it became stranded by swimming into a narrow wetlands channel along the southern California coast.  Rescuers are hoping that by Saturday morning the animal will have found its own way to open waters.

If not, they said they might try to simply shoo it away because any attempt to capture it could be dangerous to the animal and rescuers. The 7-foot-long, black-and-white common dolphin was spotted in a channel of the Bolsa Chica wetlands Friday, circling in shallow waters as crowds grew along the banks and TV helicopters flew overhead.

A swimmer and two lifeguards on paddleboards entered the water to test the dolphin's reaction, and a decision was made to let the healthy, strong and fast dolphin try to find its own way out, said Dean Gomersall, animal care supervisor at the nonprofit Pacific Marine Mammal Center. Peter Wallerstein of Marine Animal Rescue said the dolphin doesn't need a high tide to escape.

The wetlands is separated from the ocean by a wide beach and Pacific Coast Highway. Sea water flows in from Huntington Harbour on one end and an inlet cut through the beach on the opposite end. The dolphin, part of a small pod seen in the harbor earlier in the week, entered the channel through a hole in a tidal gate that separates the harbor from the marsh, Gomersall said. The other five dolphins remained in the harbor and may have to be coaxed back out to sea, Gomersall said.

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MONTREAL – Arctic marine mammals and fish populations are on the rise, according to a report released on Monday by the Arctic Council's biodiversity working group at a Montreal conference. In fact fish populations have risen dramatically, according to the findings of the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Programme, the Zoological Society of London, and the World Wildlife Fund.

The three organisations collaborated on the analysis, looking at 890 populations of 323 species of Arctic vertebrates. The Arctic wildlife population changes, they said in a statement, are linked to "Arctic climate oscillations and changes in commercial harvest" in neighbouring waters. The report identified that fish living close to the surface of the water ass opposed to near the ocean bottom were most susceptible to climate change, including such commercially important species as Pacific herring, ocean perch and Arctic cisco.

Some mammals were found to be recovering from exploitation, but rising populations of gray whales, bowhead whales and Greenlandic walruses have not returned to historical levels. Sea ice species ringed seal, beluga whale, and thick-billed guillemot, meanwhile, have declined. As well, marine birds continued a slow and steady decline that started in the late 20th century. The report said this "may be related to changes in climate, sea ice and food availability" and may be the beginning of a longer-term decline.

The effects of Arctic warming also were not restricted to the far north. The Atlantic Ocean is experiencing a decline in vertebrates thought to be driven by Arctic climate shifts, as well as commercial fishing. In contrast, the Pacific Ocean has experienced a dramatic increase in vertebrates, amid warmer sea temperatures. AFP

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An advanced set of molars helped a major group of prehistoric mammals survive the extinction event that ended the reign of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, according to a new study.

In research published in Nature, evolutionary biologists from the University of Washington, the University of Helsinki and Monash University in Melbourne, showed that the rodent-like multituberculate family of mammals possessed an almost unmatched ability to grow and prosper while co-existing with dinosaurs.

Their unusual teeth allowed multituberculates to diversify their diet more than other mammals, giving them a major advantage over their contemporaries.

Led by Dr Gregory Wilson of the University of Washington, the researchers used imaging software to create high-resolution 3D images of the teeth of 41 multituberculate species held in fossil collections around the globe.

They analysed the shape and surface texture of teeth, determining their complexity using software designed for working with topography of land surfaces.

Dr Alistair Evans of Monash's school of biological sciences said many multituberculates greatly increased the number of bumps or tubercles on their teeth meaning they could, unlike other mammals, eat flowering plants that were beginning to become common 90 million years ago.

"It is generally accepted that for millions of years, mammals were unable to develop much due to competition from the dinosaurs. This study shows how multituberculates bucked this trend – they increased from the size of a mouse to the size of a beaver and were able to take on new roles in the ecosystem," Evans said.

"Unusually, they did this prior to the extinction event which killed off the large dinosaurs – generally considered a turning point in mammalian evolution. Compared to other mammals of the time, they were really ahead of the game. Multituberculates also did rather well out of that extinction event, in fact increasing in size and tooth complexity immediately after it."

At the height of multituberculate evolution, the animals had teeth as complex as many modern plant-eating mammals – an attribute that certainly contributed to their evolutionary success, Evans continued.

Following the dinosaurs' extinction, multituberculates continued to prosper for another 30 million years until other mammals closed the evolutionary gap. When primates and rodents gained the upper hand in competition for food, multituberculates themselves died out.

Scientists differ about the exact cause of the mass extinctions of dinosaurs and other creatures nearly 66 million years ago but they agree that one or more catastrophic events occurred, including at least one asteroid impact and possibly increased volcanic activity.

Both would have released massive amounts of dust and ash into the atmosphere, reducing surface sunlight, hindering photosynthesis and severely disrupting Earth's biosphere.

“The Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction is conventionally thought to have been a turning point in mammalian evolution,” the researchers write in the Nature paper.

“Prior to that event and for the first two-thirds of their evolutionary history, mammals were mostly confined to roles as generalised, small-bodied, nocturnal insectivores, presumably under selection pressures from dinosaurs. Release from these pressures, by extinction of non-avian dinosaurs at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, triggered ecological diversification of mammals.

“Although recent individual fossil discoveries have shown that some mammalian lineages diversified ecologically during the Mesozoic era, comprehensive ecological analyses of mammalian groups crossing the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary are lacking. Such analyses are needed because diversification analyses of living taxa allow only indirect inferences of past ecosystems,” the Nature article continues.

“Here we show that in arguably the most evolutionarily successful clade of Mesozoic mammals, the multituberculata, an adaptive radiation began at least 20 million years before the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and continued across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.

“Disparity in dental complexity, which relates to the range of diets, rose sharply in step with generic richness and disparity in body size. Moreover, maximum dental complexity and body size demonstrate an adaptive shift towards increased herbivory.

“Taken together, our results indicate that mammals were able to take advantage of new ecological opportunities in the Mesozoic and that at least some of these opportunities persisted through the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction,” the researcher conclude.

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The feeding habits of mammals haven't always been what they are today, particularly for omnivores.  Washington, D.C. - infoZine - Some groups of mammals almost exclusively eat meat--take lions and tigers and other big cats as examples. Other mammals such as deer, cows and antelope are predominantly plant-eaters, living on a diet of leaves, shoots, fruits and bark.

But particularly for omnivores that live on plant foods in addition to meat, the situation wasn't always that way, finds a new study by researchers working at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina. The results appear today in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The research links dietary strategy, a basic aspect of animal ecology, with macroevolutionary diversification of mammals," said George Gilchrist, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

"It's impressive that ecology has such a strong and clear influence on lineages stretching back millions of years. Darwin would be delighted with this paper."Past research shows that animals with similar diets tend to share certain characteristics.

But this study is the first of its kind to look across all mammal groups, including omnivores, to reconstruct how evolutionary time changed mammal diets. To do that, the researchers compiled previously published diet data for more than 1,500 species representing more than one third of mammals alive today, including primates, ungulates, bats, rabbits and rodents.

By mapping that data onto the mammal family tree, the researchers were able to trace backward in time and infer what the ancestors of each species most likely ate.

They found that while some groups of mammals maintained steady diets, others changed their feeding strategies over time. Today's omnivores in particular--a group that includes primates, bears, dogs and foxes--came from ancestors that primarily ate plants, or animals, but not both, said paper co-author Samantha Price of the University of California Davis.

While omnivorous mammals weren't always that way, plant-eaters and meat-eaters have diversified within a more well-worn path. Radical shifts were unlikely for these animals. Mammals that eat meat for a living, for example, didn't give up their taste for flesh without transitioning through an omnivorous stage first.

"Direct transitions from carnivory to herbivory were essentially nonexistent," said co-author Louise Roth of Duke University. "It's an intuitive result because it takes very different kinds of equipment to have those kinds of diets."

"Plant- and animal-based foods require different digestive chemistries and different processing mechanisms in the mouth and stomach," said co-author Samantha Hopkins of the University of Oregon.

The kinds of teeth adapted for tearing and slicing meat are different than the large, flat-topped molars adapted for grinding nuts and roots. "It makes sense that you couldn't easily transition from one to the other in one step," Price said.

The researchers also found that diet is linked to how fast mammals spawn new species. As new species arise and others go extinct, the plant-eaters proliferate faster than their meat-eating counterparts, with omnivores lagging behind both groups.

"If there was an evolutionary race to evolve 100 species, it would take three times longer for omnivores compared to herbivores, and carnivores would be in the middle," Price said.

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