Thursday, January 24, 2013

One of the many theories speculating about how Wolves evolved into dogs suggests that those lobos that experimented with coming in close to human garbage dumps to scavenge were the animals that began to be bred by humans into dogs.........Dogs have many more genes that encode the enzymes needed to break down starch, something that would have been advantageous in an ancestor scavenging on the discarded wheat and other crop products of early farmers.......When we look at the wolf genome, we only see one copy of the gene [for the amylase enzyme] on each chromosome.......... When we look at the dog genome, we see a range from two to 15 copies.... On average a dog carries seven copies more than the wolf.....................As far as the brain development genes are concerned, these probably reflect some of the behavioural differences we now see in the two canids. The dog is a much more docile creature, the likely consequence of early humans preferentially working with animals they found easier to tame.....................And to contradict and to add to the how dogs evolved from Wolves, other researchers point out that there is evidence that some dogs evolved long before the advent of agriculture...........Perhaps there were multiple ways that some Wolves became domesticated.............Fascinating it is to ponder!

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Dog evolved 'on the waste dump' By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News.com Wolves that coped best with cereals in t...
Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The U. of Alberta's APPLIED CONSERVATION ECOLOGY LAB team has just published their 4 year research study documenting that Mother Grizzlies are directly responsible for teaching their female cubs which are the best lands to create a territory in.............Knowing that habitat selection is part of a learned behaviour, conservationists tasked with relocating bears far from the animals' known environments should pay close attention to the habitats into which they are released.

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Mama bear knows best, University of Alberta study shows  u. OF aLBERTA Mama bear appears to know what's best when it comes to selec...

I have to say that the "invite challenge" by the OIL SANDS LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE seeking ideas on how to protect Caribou from bears, wolves and coyotes disgusts me in its overt disregard for what is really the source problem for the Caribou--roads, pipelines and the destruction of tens of thousands of acres of prime caribou land in and around the tar sands in Alberta and other locales both in Canada and the USA................These folks figure that the average person is stupid and uniformed and therefore they can get away with blaming the declining caribou population on carnivores...............Pass the word,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,OIL SANDS LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE(ConocoPhillips Canada,, Nexen Inc., Statoil Canada, Suncor Energy Inc.and Total E&P Canada Ltd). IS B.S.!!!!

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Reduction of Predation  on Woodland Caribou Challenge Overview The protection of Woodland Caribou  ( Rangifer tar...
Tuesday, January 22, 2013

7 Mexican Wolves are the source of the 60 that remain in the wild in Arizona and New Mexico..............While one additional male captive wolf was released into the region over the past two weeks, it hardly seems enough to preserve their genetic diversity............ Overzealous management and a lack of political will have kept the numbers low................ Now, nearly 15 years after the first wolves were released, the Mexican gray wolf is facing a genetic emergency that could keep them from ever recovering................ Already, it seems that a lack of genetic diversity is causing lower litter sizes.................. If the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service doesn't act soon to release more wolves, this and other effects of a small gene pool could doom the species, no matter how hard we try in the future to recover them.

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Defenders of Wildlife Mexican gray wolf blog:A Drop in the Genetic Bucket By Eva Sargent, Southwest Program Director Defend...
Monday, January 21, 2013

If wolves were the dominant species on the planet(instead of humans), what would their management plan be for us???? .....................Have a fun read below

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How Would Wolves Manage The Human Population? Chris Genovali huffingtonpost.com In British Columbia, which provid...
Sunday, January 20, 2013

U. of Mass evolutionary biologist Kathryn Lord has published her research describing why dogs can be tamed,,,,,,,,,but not wolves..............Her conclusions are that dogs first experience socialization at 4 weeks old when all of their sensory motor skills are developed(hearing, sight and smell)..........Conversely, Wolf pups enter their socialization phase at 2 weeks when they are still blind and deaf,,,,,,,,,,,,,,they explore their environment at this stage through their outstanding sense of smell..........Lords research suggests that the dog puppies developed senses coinciding with socialization enables them to bond with humans........whereas wolf pups are more skittish because fear kicks in as each stage of sensory perception kicks in,,,,,,,,,,well after socialization has occurred.................Not sure that I completely buy into Dr Lord's premise as the reason for dogs being able to bond with us......................but interesting to speculate about nonetheless...............I would love to learn what caused dogs(which have identical genes as wolves) to morph into a totally different type creature from the wolf

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Why Wolves Are Forever Wild, but Dogs Can Be Tamed   — Dogs and wolves are genetically so similar, it's been difficult for biologist...

In many parts of our Country today(both urban and rural), it can be hard to determine what the native flora of the region was prior to industrial farming and urban builiding................When you go to plant nurseries to seek out landscaping plants, trees and flowers, 90% of the time you learn that your choices involve plantings from China, Japan, Norway and the Mid-East........A person almost has to have a degree in botany,,,,,,,,,,,,and be highly motivated to use a combination of specialty nursery and/or mail order nurseries to secure even a modicum of indigenous trees, shrubs and flowers to plant on their property................Many nurserymen will even go so far as to tout the exotic bird- and butterfly loving plants as being superior to those that are growing up the street in the sliver of natural woodland still standing.................But as ecologist Amanda Rodewald of Ohio State tells us in her "spot on" National Wildlife Federation article---- when we plant those non-natives on our property, we are furthering the downward spiral of biodiversity in the world,,,,,,,,,,,,,,and putting many species of native birds, insects,mammals, trees and shrubs in dire straits...............Tree seedling survival was reduced up to 70 percent, and herb growth and reproduction rates plunged by up to 80 percent, primarily because of the shade cast by non-native honeysuckle.........................concluding that “honeysuckle is good for birds is like going to a highway rest stop, seeing starlings at a dumpster and saying that rest stops are good for birds...............research shows that birds also may be harmed indirectly because nonnative plants affect insects........... The number and diversity of plant-eating insects, especially caterpillars, drops dramatically when exotic plants invade.......................honeysuckle leafs out sooner in spring than most plants causing the fittest cardinals to rush to mate and nest in those shrubs’ dense foliage.............. But instead of a gain in reproductive success, these birds pay a price............ The early nesters in honeysuckle rear 20 percent fewer young than those that nest in native plants.............This is so because the Cardinal nests stick out(no other birds have nested this early), raccoons, hawks and crows spot them easily and swoop in and kill the newly hatched Cardinals................And those bright red berries that you see the Cardinals dining on freely, well the exotic honeysuckle berries seem to contain abundant pigments, but are lacking in the good proteins that make male birds more robust and long lived............So while the males attract females with their bright red color, nature had in mind that female Cardinals would benefit not from the male coloring, but from their vitality and fitness............The color and the vitality historically are linked............Now there are male Cardinals with bright red color but low vitality,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,this, with dire consequence for the long term survival of the species,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,As an ad I once saw in in a nature magazine once yelled out: GO NATIVE OR DO NOT GARDEN AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

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Nonnative Plants: Ecological Traps Offering alluring habitat for songbirds, exotic plants may actually decrease the animals' ...
Friday, January 18, 2013

West Virginia Black Bears have made a robust population climb over the past 60 years..........Bears that have been killed by hunters starting in ten-year periods: 2010 (2,392); 2000 (1,317); 1990 (235); 1980 (47); 1970 (38); 1960 (72); 1950 (32)..................The State has a December hunting season which allows the earliest hibernating bears to get out of harms way----helping offset hunter kill rates which this December 2011 hit a new high of 2683................There are an estimated 10,000 bears in West Virginia so Game Officials are right about at the tipping point(27% of the population) of how many more bears can be killed annually before a population slide would commence

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Record number of black bears killed in WV statejournal.com CHARLESTON (AP) — West Virginia hunters killed a record number of blac...