SPACE MONKEY PICTURES: 50-Year Anniversary

May 29, 2009--A squirrel monkey named Baker peers out from a 1950s NASA biocapsule as she's readied for her first space mission. Baker and a rhesus monkeynamed Able launched aboard a Jupiter AM-18 rocket on May 28, 1959—50 years ago this week.

The pair returned to Earth alive after a 15-minute flight, becoming the first primates to survive a trip into space. Miss Baker, as she came to be known, spent the latter part of her life at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. She died of kidney failure in 1984 at the ripe old age of 27

Worst Drought in 26 Years Threatens the Survival of the Last Desert Elephants in West Africa

The future of a rare herd of desert elephants in Mali is under threat from one of the worst droughts in living memory, which has left a key water source at its lowest level in a quarter of a century.

The 350 to 450 elephants of Gourma, the northernmost herds still alive in Africa, are being forced to trek extreme distances across the fringes of the Sahara to find scarce water. Juveniles are likely the worst affected, as (unlike the bigger bulls) their trunks are not long enough to reach deep into wells - one of the only remaining water sources.

6-Foot Lizards Invading Military Runway in Florida

Homestead Air Reserve Base near Miami, Florida, is dealing with a different sort of small ground invasion: the Nile monitor lizard.

These invasive reptiles—possibly former family pets or escapees from nearby breeding facilities—occasionally lumber onto the base's tarmac to soak up the sun's rays.

When you have an airplane coming in to land or take off, and you have a 6-foot [1.8-meter] reptile laying on the runway, it causes a substantial human health and safety problem," said Parker Hall, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services.

Agency employees patrol the runways on a regular basis to shoo away birds, capture lizards, and deal with any other pests that may show up.

But that's a tall order given the base's close proximity to both the Everglades and Biscayne National Parks, both home to diverse arrays of wildlife that regularly spill into the base's vast woodlands and wetlands.

Missing link?

Meet "Ida," the small "missing link" found in Germany that's created a big media splash and will likely continue to make waves among those who study human origins.

In a new book, documentary, and promotional Web site, paleontologist Jorn Hurum, who led the team that analyzed the 47-million-year-old fossil seen above, suggests Ida is a critical missing-link species in primate evolution (interactive guide to human evolutionfrom National Geographic magazine).

(Among the team members was University of Michigan paleontologist Philip Gingerich, a member of theCommittee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)

The fossil, he says, bridges the evolutionary split between higher primates such as monkeys, apes, and humans and their more distant relatives such as lemurs.

"This is the first link to all humans," Hurum, of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway, said in a statement. Ida represents "the closest thing we can get to a direct ancestor."

Ida, properly known as Darwinius masillae, has a unique anatomy. The lemur-like skeleton features primate-like characteristics, including grasping hands, opposable thumbs, clawless digits with nails, and relatively short limbs.

"This specimen looks like a really early fossil monkey that belongs to the group that includes us," said Brian Richmond, a biological anthropologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the study, published this week in the journal PLoS ONE.

But there's a big gap in the fossil record from this time period, Richmond noted. Researchers are unsure when and where the primate group that includes monkeys, apes, and humans split from the other group of primates that includes lemurs.

Komodo Dragons Kill With Venom, Researchers Find

An animal that escapes a Komodo's initial attack soon weakens and dies. The fierce carnivore tracks the wounded creature and dines at its leisure once the prey collapses.

Researchers have long thought that the Komodo dragon, native to Indonesia, kills via blood poisoning caused by the multiple strains of bacteria in the dragon's saliva.

But "that whole bacteria stuff has been a scientific fairy tale," said Bryan Fry, a venom researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Fry and colleagues studied the biochemistry of Komodo venom after they dissected the heads of two dragons from zoos that both had to be put down due to terminal illnesses.

The team found that the dragon's venom rapidly decreases blood pressure, expedites blood loss, and sends a victim into shock, rendering it too weak to fight.

In the venom, some compounds that reduce blood pressure are as potent as those found in the word's most venomous snake, western Australia's inland Taipan.

Komodo Combo Attack

GLOWING ANIMALS

Green fluorescent protein, introduced into DNA of egg via virus (2008)

Scientists at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta are using green fluorescent protein to study Huntington's disease, which destroys nervous tissue. 

In 2008 the researchers infected unfertilized monkey eggs with an HIV-like virus, which changed the eggs' DNA to include the defect that causes Huntington's

"Zombie" Headless Ants Controlled By Flies

May 14, 2009--In South America female phorid flies have developed a bizarre reproductive strategy: They hover over fire ants (pictured a file photo), then inject their eggs into the ants with a needle-like appendage. 

The egg grows and the resulting larva generally migrates to the ant's head. The larva lives there for weeks--slurping up the brain and turning the ant into a "zombie," in some cases compelling the ant to march 55 yards (50 meters) away from its colony to avoid attack by other fire ants.

Finally the baby fly decapitates its host and hatches, exiting through the ants head

Snake Bite on Penis

A Taiwanese man became a sitting target for a snake, which bit his penis as he sat on the toilet at his rural home, local media reported on Monday.

"As soon as he sat down, he suddenly felt a knife-like pain and reacted instinctively by standing up," the China Times said. "When he looked down, he saw the big snake."

The 51-year-old man, from Nantou County, was under medical care with minor injuries

Over 200 New Amphibians Found in Madagascar

--Highlighting a "vast underestimation" of Madagascar's natural riches, up to 221 new species of amphibianshave been found on the island country, including the frog Boophis ulftunni, pictured. The find nearly doubles the number of known amphibians in Madagascar, a new study says

Smuggler Caught With 14 Birds in Pants

May 6, 2009—Given away by bird poop on his socks, fancy pants here was charged Tuesday in California with smuggling exotic Asian songbirds from Vietnaminto the United States by strapping them onto his legs

The Eastern Grey kangaroo shot in the head with an arrow has been operated on and his prospects of a full recovery are good.

Melbourne Zoo vet Dr Michael Lynch, who performed the surgery to remove the arrow, said he will monitor the kangaroo for the next three weeks but is cautiously optimistic.

"This was a big injury, but because the arrow didn't seem to have been in there for a long time, and the injury was fresh, hopefully he'll be okay," Dr Lynch said.

"I'm cautiously optimistic about the kangaroo's prospects for a full recovery."

Wildlife Victoria has offered a $10,000 reward to catch the person responsible.

Wildlife Victoria media co-ordinator Fiona Corke said she couldn't believe anyone could be so cruel.

A jaguar recently swam onto an island located in the Panama Canal. It then triggered a hidden camera that took its picture. This is the first time a jaguar has been photographed in the 86 year history of 3,707 acre Barro Colorado Island– one of the most well-researched tropical ecosystems in the world.  The hidden camera had been set up as part of an annual effort to inventory mammals that live on Barro Colorado Island. According to the researchers who set up the cameras, the finding is exciting given that jaguars are already considered rare throughout the entire country of Panama (see photo below).

Crocodile stalks nudist Beach

A large saltwater crocodile has been stalking one of Darwin's nudist beaches.

Traps will be set this morning in an effort to catch the crocodile which was spotted by a local ranger at the northern end of Casuarina Beach yesterday, theNorthern Territory News reports.

Parks and Wildlife ranger Tom Nichols told the newspaper the predatory reptile was about 2m long.

"It was seen going out the mouth of Sandfly Creek and going out to sea," he said

"It's right at the top end of the nudist beach."

Chengdu, China, May 5, 2009--This dog, a survivor of last May's deadly Sichuan earthquake, trots with a little wheeled assistance at the Home of Love Little Animal Protection Center. 

The center organized a volunteer effort to rescue and house hundreds of animals affected by the devastating quake

The big fish that prowl the Caribbean reefs—gaping groupers, sharp-toothed barracuda, and gigantic sharks—are completely gone in some places due to overfishing, a new study says.

The problem is worst in the most densely populated Caribbean countries, where fishers have wiped entire reefs clean of large predators.In such places, smaller predators have begun to fill in niches left by the big hunters—sendingcoral reefs into a tailspin.The new research, based on a public database of fish sightings by trained volunteer scuba divers, provides one of the most comprehensive glimpses so far of the decline in large Caribbean predators.

"Healthy and intact coral reefs need large predatory fish in order to continue to provide human societies with food and with beauty," said study author Chris Stallings, a researcher at Florida State University's Coastal and Marine Laboratory.