This video of a leopard seal taking care of a photographer is just awesome. Watch it and be amazed by nature at its finest. We just couldn't resist the big grin of the seal.
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Showing posts with label predators. Show all posts
Showing posts with label predators. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Pew Brings Survivors to Congress to Seek Protections for Sharks that Attacked Them
/PRNewswire/ -- Today, nine shark "attack" victims from around the nation joined advocates in pushing for the Shark Conservation Act of 2009 (S. 850/H.R. 81), which would strengthen the ban on shark finning in U.S. waters and encourage shark conservation programs around the world.
"Sharks have evolved over 400 million years to become an 'apex predator' in the marine ecosystem, yet our fears help paint a grave picture for their future. It's time to replace fear with understanding and action, just as we have for lions and other apex predators," said Debbie Salamone, an Orlando, Florida resident and communications manager at the Pew Environment Group who was bitten by a shark at the Cape Canaveral National Seashore in east Central Florida in 2004.
The market for shark fins, highly valued for use in the Asian delicacy shark fin soup, is a major driving force in the overfishing of sharks. Shark meat is usually much less valuable, leading too often to shark "finning": slicing off a shark's fin and dumping the rest of the body back into the ocean. This wasteful practice is banned in the U.S., but loopholes in the law hamper its effectiveness, and many other countries still allow finning.
"You are more likely to be killed by lightning than a shark," said George Burgess, whose work at the Florida Museum of Natural History has highlighted the paucity of shark attacks in the world. "If only the sharks were so lucky. Up to 73 million sharks are killed around the world annually. In contrast, only a handful of people die every year from the 50-70 shark attacks worldwide."
A recent report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classified 35 out of 64 known pelagic (open ocean) shark and related ray species around the world as Threatened or Near Threatened with extinction. According to the report, overfishing is the primary reason for the threatened status of a number of shark species in U.S. waters, including great whites, three species of thresher sharks, makos, porbeagles, oceanic whitetips, and three species of hammerheads.
In advocating for the Shark Conservation Act, introduced by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) in April and passed by the House of Representatives by unanimous consent in March, the survivors hope that their unique voices will make a difference.
"The media makes sharks out to be monsters, some people make them out to be huggable little creatures, but neither is completely true," said Al Brenneka, of Raleigh, North Carolina, who lost his arm after being bitten while surfing in Del Ray Beach, Florida, in 1976. Brenneka now runs a shark attack survivors network and also tags and releases sharks for research. "Sharks are wild animals that deserve our respect, not our retribution."
"The repercussions from overfishing sharks are severe; it is critical to look at the big picture," said Robyne Knutson of Santa Cruz, California, an artist who was bitten in the leg off the Maui shore in 1999.
"They're at the top of the food chain and everything else depends on them," said Mike Coots, who lost a leg to a shark while surfing off the Hawaiian island of Kuai in 1997. Coots, who still lives in Kuai, now surfs with a prosthesis.
"I don't want to swim around and play with them, but just because you don't like them doesn't mean you want to see them exterminated," said Charles Anderson of Summerdale, Alabama, who was bitten in the arm at Gulf Shores, Alabama, in 2000 while training for a triathlon. After losing his arm, Anderson has gone on to finish 17 triathlons.
Other survivors came from New York, Rhode Island, Florida and California. All of them highlighted the need for Senator Kerry's legislation, which would prohibit the removal of shark fins at sea, eliminate loopholes, strengthen enforcement in the current U.S. shark finning ban and promote the conservation of sharks internationally.
"We need Congressional action to further shark conservation and strengthen the U.S. shark finning ban," said Matt Rand, director of the Pew Environment Group's Global Shark Conservation Campaign. "If we don't act now, too many shark species will face extinction."
The Pew Environment Group is the conservation arm of The Pew Charitable Trusts, a non-governmental organization that applies a rigorous, analytical approach to improving public policy, informing the public and stimulating civic life. www.pewsharks.org .
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"Sharks have evolved over 400 million years to become an 'apex predator' in the marine ecosystem, yet our fears help paint a grave picture for their future. It's time to replace fear with understanding and action, just as we have for lions and other apex predators," said Debbie Salamone, an Orlando, Florida resident and communications manager at the Pew Environment Group who was bitten by a shark at the Cape Canaveral National Seashore in east Central Florida in 2004.
The market for shark fins, highly valued for use in the Asian delicacy shark fin soup, is a major driving force in the overfishing of sharks. Shark meat is usually much less valuable, leading too often to shark "finning": slicing off a shark's fin and dumping the rest of the body back into the ocean. This wasteful practice is banned in the U.S., but loopholes in the law hamper its effectiveness, and many other countries still allow finning.
"You are more likely to be killed by lightning than a shark," said George Burgess, whose work at the Florida Museum of Natural History has highlighted the paucity of shark attacks in the world. "If only the sharks were so lucky. Up to 73 million sharks are killed around the world annually. In contrast, only a handful of people die every year from the 50-70 shark attacks worldwide."
A recent report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classified 35 out of 64 known pelagic (open ocean) shark and related ray species around the world as Threatened or Near Threatened with extinction. According to the report, overfishing is the primary reason for the threatened status of a number of shark species in U.S. waters, including great whites, three species of thresher sharks, makos, porbeagles, oceanic whitetips, and three species of hammerheads.
In advocating for the Shark Conservation Act, introduced by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) in April and passed by the House of Representatives by unanimous consent in March, the survivors hope that their unique voices will make a difference.
"The media makes sharks out to be monsters, some people make them out to be huggable little creatures, but neither is completely true," said Al Brenneka, of Raleigh, North Carolina, who lost his arm after being bitten while surfing in Del Ray Beach, Florida, in 1976. Brenneka now runs a shark attack survivors network and also tags and releases sharks for research. "Sharks are wild animals that deserve our respect, not our retribution."
"The repercussions from overfishing sharks are severe; it is critical to look at the big picture," said Robyne Knutson of Santa Cruz, California, an artist who was bitten in the leg off the Maui shore in 1999.
"They're at the top of the food chain and everything else depends on them," said Mike Coots, who lost a leg to a shark while surfing off the Hawaiian island of Kuai in 1997. Coots, who still lives in Kuai, now surfs with a prosthesis.
"I don't want to swim around and play with them, but just because you don't like them doesn't mean you want to see them exterminated," said Charles Anderson of Summerdale, Alabama, who was bitten in the arm at Gulf Shores, Alabama, in 2000 while training for a triathlon. After losing his arm, Anderson has gone on to finish 17 triathlons.
Other survivors came from New York, Rhode Island, Florida and California. All of them highlighted the need for Senator Kerry's legislation, which would prohibit the removal of shark fins at sea, eliminate loopholes, strengthen enforcement in the current U.S. shark finning ban and promote the conservation of sharks internationally.
"We need Congressional action to further shark conservation and strengthen the U.S. shark finning ban," said Matt Rand, director of the Pew Environment Group's Global Shark Conservation Campaign. "If we don't act now, too many shark species will face extinction."
The Pew Environment Group is the conservation arm of The Pew Charitable Trusts, a non-governmental organization that applies a rigorous, analytical approach to improving public policy, informing the public and stimulating civic life. www.pewsharks.org .
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Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The Most Important Jurassic Discovery Ever Made in the Arctic!
/PRNewswire/ -- On the remote archipelago of Svalbard, just 800 miles from the North Pole, a team of paleontologists has made a remarkable discovery. Led by Jorn Hurum from the University of Oslo Natural History Museum they have unearthed the fossilized remains of a huge sea creature from the distant past - which they believe is the most important Jurassic discovery ever made in the Arctic. PREDATOR X is the story of this major Arctic discovery of an entirely new species, 150 million years old. It is a new species of pliosaur, a massive and powerful marine predator estimated to be at least 50 feet long... weighing 45 tons - six times the weight of a Tyrannosaurus Rex - and with powerful jaws that killed with an amazing 33,000-pound bite - four times as powerful as a T Rex.
The two-hour special PREDATOR X premieres on HISTORY(TM) on Sunday, March 29 at 8pm ET/PT.
PREDATOR X follows Jorn Hurum and his team of paleontologists every step of the way, from field work through cutting edge research of this amazing dinosaur-age reptile - one of the most incredible Jurassic ocean discoveries in modern history.
Hurum and team member Patrick Druckenmiller, an Alaskan paleontologist and extreme adventurer, must excavate the find from the ice, transport it back to the lab and bring it back to life using advanced scientific techniques. They travel the globe breaking new ground to scientifically understand and recreate Predator X. Their results are astounding and only now can they fully understand the beast they unearthed. Analysis usually reserved for precision engineering of modern machines, reveals the secrets of Predator X. Their quest takes them from wind tunnels to CT scanners to bio-mechanic and robotic laboratories. In analyzing its body, delving into its brain and witnessing its hunting strategy, the team conclude that they have found a perfectly designed killing machine - the most terrifying beast to patrol the planet's oceans.
As a child, Dr. Hurum had visited the Oslo Natural History Museum, well known for its treasure trove of fossils, and gazed in awe at the fossilized flipper of a prehistoric sea predator. A quarter of a century later, Dr. Hurum was in Svalbard, one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, leading a team of paleontologists committed to finding what they all believed was there. Because of its extreme polar conditions, few paleontologists have ever explored Svalbard's fertile fossil hunting ground; and Dr. Hurum's group along with Dr. Druckenmiller are the first to document this diverse assembly of marine reptiles.
With modern forensic technology, Dr. Hurum and team work to unlock the secrets of the monster. CGI will help bring Predator X to life, in an environment like the one all those years ago. Its anatomy, physiology and hunting technique all point to it being the ultimate predator - the ferocious pliosaur they are calling Predator X. Pliosaurs were a short-necked form of plesiosaur, a group of extinct reptiles that inhabited the world's oceans in the age of dinosaurs. The team is able to determine that their find, Predator X, is indeed a new species based on its incredible size and bone morphology - specifically: the flipper bones, the breast plate, and the neck vertebrae.
Predator X is produced for History(TM) by Atlantic Productions. Executive Producer for Atlantic Productions is Anthony Geffen. Executive Producer for History is Dirk Hoogstra.
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The two-hour special PREDATOR X premieres on HISTORY(TM) on Sunday, March 29 at 8pm ET/PT.
PREDATOR X follows Jorn Hurum and his team of paleontologists every step of the way, from field work through cutting edge research of this amazing dinosaur-age reptile - one of the most incredible Jurassic ocean discoveries in modern history.
Hurum and team member Patrick Druckenmiller, an Alaskan paleontologist and extreme adventurer, must excavate the find from the ice, transport it back to the lab and bring it back to life using advanced scientific techniques. They travel the globe breaking new ground to scientifically understand and recreate Predator X. Their results are astounding and only now can they fully understand the beast they unearthed. Analysis usually reserved for precision engineering of modern machines, reveals the secrets of Predator X. Their quest takes them from wind tunnels to CT scanners to bio-mechanic and robotic laboratories. In analyzing its body, delving into its brain and witnessing its hunting strategy, the team conclude that they have found a perfectly designed killing machine - the most terrifying beast to patrol the planet's oceans.
As a child, Dr. Hurum had visited the Oslo Natural History Museum, well known for its treasure trove of fossils, and gazed in awe at the fossilized flipper of a prehistoric sea predator. A quarter of a century later, Dr. Hurum was in Svalbard, one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, leading a team of paleontologists committed to finding what they all believed was there. Because of its extreme polar conditions, few paleontologists have ever explored Svalbard's fertile fossil hunting ground; and Dr. Hurum's group along with Dr. Druckenmiller are the first to document this diverse assembly of marine reptiles.
With modern forensic technology, Dr. Hurum and team work to unlock the secrets of the monster. CGI will help bring Predator X to life, in an environment like the one all those years ago. Its anatomy, physiology and hunting technique all point to it being the ultimate predator - the ferocious pliosaur they are calling Predator X. Pliosaurs were a short-necked form of plesiosaur, a group of extinct reptiles that inhabited the world's oceans in the age of dinosaurs. The team is able to determine that their find, Predator X, is indeed a new species based on its incredible size and bone morphology - specifically: the flipper bones, the breast plate, and the neck vertebrae.
Predator X is produced for History(TM) by Atlantic Productions. Executive Producer for Atlantic Productions is Anthony Geffen. Executive Producer for History is Dirk Hoogstra.
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Thursday, December 4, 2008
Dogs Chase Efficiently, but Cats Skulk Counterintuitively
A Duke University study suggests that evolution can behave as differently as dogs and cats. While the dogs depend on an energy-efficient style of four-footed running over long distances to catch their prey, cats seem to have evolved a profoundly inefficient gait, tailor-made to creep up on a mouse or bird in slow motion.
"It is usually assumed that efficiency is what matters in evolution," said Daniel Schmitt, a Duke associate professor of evolutionary anthropology. "We've found that's too simple a way of looking at evolution, because there are some animals that need to operate at high energy cost and low efficiency."
Namely cats.
In a report published online Nov. 26 in the research journal Public Library of Science (PLoS), Schmitt and two former Duke co-researchers followed up on a scientific hunch by measuring and videotaping how six housecats moved along a 6 yard-long runway in pursuit of food treats or feline toys.
Long-distance chase predators like dogs can reduce their muscular work needed to move forward by as much as 70 percent by allowing their body to rise and fall and exchanging potential and kinetic energy with each step. In contrast, the maximum for cats is about 37 percent and much lower than that in a stalking posture, the report found.
"An important implication of these results is the possibility of a tradeoff between stealthy walking and economy of locomotion," the three researchers wrote in PLoS. "These data show a previously unrecognized mechanical relationship in which crouched postures are associated with changes in footfall pattern, which are in turn related to reduced mechanical energy recovery."
In other words, they found that when cats slink close to the ground they walk in a way that "the movements of their front and back ends cancel each other out," Schmitt said. While that's not good for energy efficiency "the total movement of their bodies is going to be even and they'll be flowing along," he added
"If they're creeping, they're going to put this foot down, and then that foot down and then that one in an even fashion. We think it has to do with stability and caution, Schmitt said."
Walking humans recover as much energy as dogs, said Schmitt, who studies gaits of various mammals. "Our centers of mass rise and fall when we walk. And when we do that, humans and other animals exchange potential and kinetic energy. It's an evolutionary miracle in my view.
"But cats need to creep up on their prey. Most scientists think that energetic efficiency is the currency of natural selection. Here we've shown that some animals make compromises when they have to choose between competing demands."
The study was supported by the National Science Foundation. Kristin Bishop, a former postdoctoral researcher at Duke, was the lead researcher and first author. Another author was Anita Pai, a former Duke undergraduate who is now a medical student at Vanderbilt University.
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"It is usually assumed that efficiency is what matters in evolution," said Daniel Schmitt, a Duke associate professor of evolutionary anthropology. "We've found that's too simple a way of looking at evolution, because there are some animals that need to operate at high energy cost and low efficiency."
Namely cats.
In a report published online Nov. 26 in the research journal Public Library of Science (PLoS), Schmitt and two former Duke co-researchers followed up on a scientific hunch by measuring and videotaping how six housecats moved along a 6 yard-long runway in pursuit of food treats or feline toys.
Long-distance chase predators like dogs can reduce their muscular work needed to move forward by as much as 70 percent by allowing their body to rise and fall and exchanging potential and kinetic energy with each step. In contrast, the maximum for cats is about 37 percent and much lower than that in a stalking posture, the report found.
"An important implication of these results is the possibility of a tradeoff between stealthy walking and economy of locomotion," the three researchers wrote in PLoS. "These data show a previously unrecognized mechanical relationship in which crouched postures are associated with changes in footfall pattern, which are in turn related to reduced mechanical energy recovery."
In other words, they found that when cats slink close to the ground they walk in a way that "the movements of their front and back ends cancel each other out," Schmitt said. While that's not good for energy efficiency "the total movement of their bodies is going to be even and they'll be flowing along," he added
"If they're creeping, they're going to put this foot down, and then that foot down and then that one in an even fashion. We think it has to do with stability and caution, Schmitt said."
Walking humans recover as much energy as dogs, said Schmitt, who studies gaits of various mammals. "Our centers of mass rise and fall when we walk. And when we do that, humans and other animals exchange potential and kinetic energy. It's an evolutionary miracle in my view.
"But cats need to creep up on their prey. Most scientists think that energetic efficiency is the currency of natural selection. Here we've shown that some animals make compromises when they have to choose between competing demands."
The study was supported by the National Science Foundation. Kristin Bishop, a former postdoctoral researcher at Duke, was the lead researcher and first author. Another author was Anita Pai, a former Duke undergraduate who is now a medical student at Vanderbilt University.
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