"Like their fellow trophic, top-down carnivores(Wolves, Black Bears and Pumas) which were totally extirpated from Illinois by the late 1800's, River Otters once ranged widely and prolifically across the State prior to European pioneer days"............."Poor water quality, habitat loss, and trapping all contributed to the Otters decline as the 19th century came to a close".........."In an effort to bring the species back, beginning in 1994, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources began implementing a plan to reintroduce the species(Other states, including Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee, enacted similar programs in the 1980s and 1990s)"............."Over a three year period, 346 otters trapped in Louisiana were released in waterways in southeastern and central Illinois"............."That initial reintroduction has mushroomed into one of the great wildlife restoration stories with an estimated 30,000 Otters found liveing across the state".............."This proliferation of the species seems to be generating benefits for us human animals as the Otters appear to be eating invasive, destructive and non-native Asian carp".............."Otters are also known to dine on birds, turtles, insects, crayfish and clams"

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.earth.com/news/otters-chicago-illinois-comeback/&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoUMTYxOTA3ODM4ODgzNjcxMzM0NDIyGmRhOTdjZjk0NzgwNDY5OWE6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNE1UQByKhOOdLBbAc2UXZFTTb6NCQ

Otters in Chicago? The story behind their Illinois comeback

By: Richard Pallardy on 07.28.2018

For all of its beautiful natural areas, Illinois isn’t a prime place for seeing large wildlife. White-tailed deer are abundant, for sure. And coyotes have adapted surprisingly well to urban areas and farmland alike. But black bears, mountain lions, and gray wolves have been extinct at a state level since the 1800s. The area’s apex predators, with the exception of coyotes, tend to be on the small side: foxes, hawks, the odd bobcat. In the past several decades, though, a sizable addition to this cohort has been slowly gaining ground.

The North American river otter (Lontra canadensis), a member of the mustelid or weasel family that can reach up to 30 pounds and 53 inches in length, has become increasingly common in Illinois ponds and rivers. Once widespread—an 1832 report remarks on their ubiquity—otters were nearly extirpated from the state by the late 1800s.

Perhaps two relict populations remained, one in southern Illinois, and another on the Mississippi River in the northwest. Poor water quality, habitat loss, and trapping all contributed to the species’ decline on the state level. By 1929, the otter trapping season was curtailed. These lolloping semi-aquatic teddy bears were declared a threatened species in 1977 and endangered in 1989. By that time, the number of otters in Illinois was thought to be fewer than 100.

Otter with mouthful of fish

In an effort to reverse the deteriorating fortunes of the otter, beginning in 1994, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources began implementing a plan to reintroduce the species to the state. (Other states, including Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee, enacted similar programs in the 1980s and 1990s as well.) Over a three year period, 346 otters trapped in Louisiana were released in waterways in southeastern and central Illinois. The state’s rivers and lakes were in fact primed for an otter resurgence.

Due to restoration efforts and increased attention to conservation motivated by legislation like the 1972 Clean Water Act, conditions had improved in many bodies of water, creating better habitat for their primary prey, fish. Beavers had rebounded as well, an important factor in creating otter habitat. Otters sometimes use abandoned beaver dens as their own and even occasionally prey on them. Perhaps more importantly, the ecological effects of beaver dams, which slow down running water and create ponds and wetlands, are appealing to otters.

The program was a resounding success. Despite fatalities in some of the introduced otters due to trapping, automobile accidents, and encounters with dogs, the species began to reproduce and spread. In 1999, they were moved from the state endangered list and onto the threatened list. By 2004, they had been delisted. By 2009, population levels were thought to have risen to 11,000 and by 2014, they were thought to have reached 30,000. The population rebounded to such an extent that a trapping season was allowed in 2012 for the first time in close to a century.

young Otters playing "tug-of-war" with fish

Otters are now found in every county in Illinois —including Cook County, which encompasses Chicago and its surrounding suburbs.

In November 2015, a male otter was captured in the southwestern part of Cook County by biologists with the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. It is worth noting that the sites where otters were reintroduced in the 1990s are 150 miles south of Chicago. Otters are known for having extensive ranges—especially males, which may have territories that extend along over 50 miles of river and may roam over 90 miles in search of hospitable waters.

The trapped otter was taken to Brookfield Zoo, where a transmitter was implanted, allowing biologists to track its movements. Several other otters were trapped and equipped with transmitters in 2016. That year, an otter sighting was reported in downtown Chicago, which is bisected by the Chicago River. Though it was not verified, biologists noted that it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. The Chicago River, once a filthy runnel, has seen massive improvements in recent years. Some 60 species of fish are now present, providing ample prey for the piscivorous mammals.

Otter feeding on Crayfish

A number of studies have demonstrated that otters may even be eating invasive Asian carp—actually several species of carp referred to colloquially by that name. Otters prefer surface-dwelling fish and Asian carp fit the bill. A 2015 study from Southern Illinois University noted that silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix), one of the species referred to as Asian carp, was present in some fecal samples. This is an encouraging sign. While otter numbers aren’t so high that they are likely to stem the invasion of the carp, any predator of this determined fish is a good thing.

And it’s good for the otters too…because the silver carp feeds on plankton, it is less likely to accumulate toxins than other species at higher trophic levels. It is thought that accumulated toxins from other predatory fish may have contributed to the otters’ decline. The urban otters of Cook County have been observed feeding on other unusual items as well. Long thought to avoid carrion, they have been seen eating roadkill. Though they do love their fish, they also eat birds and turtles as well as invertebrates such as insects, crayfish, and clams.

Much of this activity happens during the early daylight and evening hours—so don’t get your hopes up if you’re out for an afternoon boat ride in Chicago. As large and charismatic as they are, otters are secretive and difficult to detect. One of the main signs of their presence is the appearance of public “latrines”—areas where they deposit feces, urine, and scent secretions. These are thought to be territory markers. So, unless you get your kicks from searching for otter toilets—no judgement—you’re not terribly likely to see signs of their presence. Even so, the knowledge that they’re there is a heartening sign of ecological resilience.


Evidence of non-nativeEvidenc Asian Carp being preyed on by River Otters
in Illinois

“Wolverines are like ghosts in the lower 48 states"............."Needing terrain that has low human density and long lasting Springtime snowfall cover, there are only 249-626 of our "toughest pound-for-pround" carnivore roaming the northern Rocky Mountain States, northern California, Oregon and Washington State................."Wolverines will scavenge on carrion, but also eat plants and berries, and hunt small prey like rabbits and rodents".........................."They have been known to go after larger animals, even the size of caribou, especially if they’re weak or injured"............"Sometimes referred to by the nickname of "Skunk Bears", Wolverines are the largest member of the Mustelidae family, which includes weasels and badgers"............"They are tenacious searching out a meal",,,,,,,,,,,,"They will climb straight up an ice face, and go over the top of a mountain in a storm"..............In short , "they will leap tall buildings in a single bound" to get what they need to survive................Click on the link below to watch the video of the first spotting of a Wolverine on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Central Wyoming , the location of the ongoing Shoshone/Arapaho USFW joint study on Wolverines

Read the full story

CLICK ON THIS LINK BELOW TO VIEW THE VIDEO OF THE FIRST
RECORDED WOLVERINE ON THE WIND RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION
IN WYOMING

Read the full story

Elusive Wolverine Snacks on Deer in rare video--by KITSON JAZYNKA

---

PUBLISHED JULY 26, 2018

On a bitter cold morning, a bushy-coated
 wolverine bounds through hard-packed snow.
 Its nose has led it to a tree, high on a windy
 ridge in the Wind River Indian Reservation 
in Wyoming.

  Last spring, at this wild spot
 in the Northern Rockies, where the Absaroka 
and Owl Creek 
Mountains meet, a camera caught the whole
 affair.

The vast 
reservation is 
home to big 
horn sheep,
 moose, and 
wintering elk, besides a host of other 
creatures large and small. 
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists,
 on a mission to
 determine if wolverines also live there, placed
 a deer carcass 
in a tree as bait, which, as it turned out,
 worked wonders.

Wolverines will scavenge on such carrion, 
but also eat plants
 and berries, and hunt small prey like 
rabbits and rodents. 
They have been known to go after larger 
animals, even the 
size of caribou, especially if they’re weak 
or injured.

After tearing into the deer, the wolverine 
descends to
 investigate the camera, which it sniffs and 
snuffles. 
Then, with a seeming air of confidence, 
rotates it ever
 so slightly to the right.

Curious Creature

“It’s hard not to anthropomorphize,” says acting
 project lead and USFWS biologist Pat Hnilicka,
 who says the animal was likely a breeding-age
 male. “As a biologist, you try not to do that. But
 when you watch the video of him adjusting the
 camera, it’s like ‘holy cow’ what is this guy 
doing?’ It was so striking."

The moment caught on video is “as unique 
and rare” as the wolverine itself, says Hnilicka. 
It’s the first time a wolverine has been captured
 on camera on the reservation. And such
 moments aren’t exactly common anywhere in
 the continental U.S., where there are only
 about 300 wolverines left, according to
 the most recent estimate. (The estimate
 includes a range, however, so the true number 
could be anwhere from 249 to 626 animals.)

It’s not an endangered species, but lives in
 very low densities in remote, desolate areas.

“Wolverines
 are like ghosts out there,” 
Hnilicka says. “To catch one on camera—
even just a still photo, would have been
 very, very exciting. To capture that
 behavior on video was really spectacular.”

The sighting has inspired the addition
 of more cameras in support of the study, 
which is part of a larger, ongoing
 collaboration to help the Eastern
 Shoshone and Northern Arapaho
 tribes manage the area’s fish and wildlife.

The same curiosity and drive that led
 the wolverine to investigate the camera
 likely also helps it survive its harsh
 environment, says National Geographic
 Explorer Gregg Treinish, who tracked
wolverines across the northern Rockies
and in Mongolia while working as a field
 biologist. He says, “it’s kind of like
curiosity by necessity.”

Always Exploring

Wolverines, also known as skunk bears,
 are the largest member of the Mustelidae
 family, which includes weasels and
 badgers. They’re known to be strong,
 tenacious and tough, live in a brutal
environment and will do anything to get
to food, says Treinish, founder of the
conservation group Adventure Scientists.

“They are the consummate explorer.
 They’ll climb straight up an ice face,
go over the top of a mountain in a storm
 or traverse any wild and rugged
landscape in order to eat.”

“When it was investigating the camera,
” he adds, “it was probably looking for
 a food source, using one of the
evolutionary traits that it was gifted,
which is curiosity.”

This wolverine was also gifted with a
 bit of stage presence. The final clip
shows him returning to the carcass
 later in the day for another meal.

He tears through the deer’s frozen hide
 with ease then drops to the ground toeat.
 He makes a few trips back up and down
 with help from his impressive
 semi-retractile claws. After glancing up 
at the frozen feast one last time, he rolls
 like a snowball and exits stage left

“Perhaps,” Hnilicka says, “he was just 
feeling good because he had a belly full 
of meat.”

So Manifest Destiny has become a reality for Coyotes..............Long Island, New York was the last locale in the lower 48 states for Coyotes to colonize and that day has now come with the confirmed sighting of a male and female coyote wandering the streets of Searingtown, NY on July 10............."From sea to shining Sea",,,,,,,,,,,,,From Alaska down through Central America, the Coyote exemplifies the same "never-say-die" spirit, persitence, vitality and problem-solving traits that we humans exhibited in forging our great USA nation...............As Coyotes only mate once annually in February, all of us "Songdog boosters" will be rooting for these two "prospectors" to "live long and prosper", siring many healthy pups...............Let them multiply and spread across Nassau and Suffolk Counties(Long Island), doing their rodent, goose, small mammal and deer fawn ecosystems services function of bringing some "top-down" meso-carnivore balance to this region of New York, long without a trophic presence

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/coyote-sightings-searingtown-1.20073700&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoTNTI1NzMyNTcxOTE3NDAyNjY0MTIaZjUwOWE2YjQ0ZTNkYzY4OTpjb206ZW46VVM&usg=AFQjCNH6FlNMJp7rFVFPGP4zc4JP78PKCg

LONG ISLANDNASSAU

Coyote sightings confirmed in Searingtown, Nassau SPCA says

Coyotes are rare on Long Island, one of the few areas of the country without a breeding population.

Eastern Coyote in Searingtown, NY

The Nassau County SPCA has confirmed sightings of coyotes in Searingtown earlier this month, officials said Tuesday.

Just as we humans felt it was our "destiny" to populate
what we today call the USA, so has the Coyote
exhibited this same accomplishment

A pair of coyotes was seen on camera near Green Drive and Reed Drive on July 10, said Gary Rogers, the county Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals president. The SPCA was called last week, he said, and it confirmed the sightings.

Frank Vincenti of Mineola, founder of the Wild Dog Foundation, said the images of the coyotes appear to be "credible."

Vincenti, whose organization raises awareness about coyotes, foxes and wolves, said he suspects the animals may have traveled from the Bronx via the Long Island Sound, a bridge or a rarely used railroad spur. 

July 10 picture of Eastern Coyote in Searingtown, NY

"Residents should not be concerned," Vincenti said. "I don't really believe this will be a major issue." 

"A study published earlier this year shows that American alligators have started to reclaim saltwater ecosystems in a move that ecologist Brian Silliman describes as "the old norm"..................."It's "the way it used to be before we pushed these species onto their last legs in hard-to-reach refuges"............."However without lingual glands to secrete salt though, alligators and caimans have a somewhat limited tolerance for full-strength seawater."..............."When they are spotted in the surf, it's usually for short periods of time and American alligators often don't stray further than the brackish waters of estuaries and mangrove swamps"..............."Here, they are able to have a good go at whatever is on the menu: mullet, blue crabs, yellowtail perch, horseshoe crabs, stingrays and event the occasional shark or sea turtle"................"And Last week, South Carolina-resident Kristen Poillon filmed an alligator cruising through the saltwater of Skull Creek – a part of the Intracoastal Waterway – with what looks like a small bonnethead shark clamped in its jaws"............."Although gators are not as well-equipped for a dip in the ocean as their reptilian relatives, the crocodiles, it's not unheard of for alligators to brave brackish waters in search of a meal"

Click on this link to watch Alligator swimming with a shark in its mouth
https://www.earthtouchnews.com/natural-world/predator-vs-prey/caught-on-camera-alligator-chomps-shark-off-the-south-carolina-coast

Caught on camera: Alligator chomps shark off the South Carolina coast

Caught on camera: Alligator chomps shark off the South Carolina coast

BY EARTH TOUCH NEWS JULY 17 2018

"Gator vs Shark" may sound like the kind of juicy showdown that only plays out in low-budget horror flicks, but it turns out these predatory giants do sometimes clash in the briny shallows. The results, though, are perhaps not quite as dramatic as you might hope.

Last week, South Carolina-resident Kristen Poillon filmed an alligator cruising through the saltwater of Skull Creek – a part of the Intracoastal Waterway – with what looks like a small bonnethead shark clamped in its jaws. Although gators are not as well-equipped for a dip in the ocean as their reptilian relatives, the crocodiles, it's not unheard of for alligators to brave brackish waters in search of a meal. In fact, this shark-muncher is well-known by the locals who have affectionately dubbed it "Charlie". 

“He doesn’t seem aggressive,”Poillion told the Hilton Head Island Packet when asked about the alligator. “He mostly shows up when the fishing charter boats start back to their season because the eating is good for him off the dock when they clean the fish.”

A study published earlier this year shows that American alligators have started to reclaim saltwater ecosystems in a move that ecologist Brian Silliman describes as "the old norm". It's "the way it used to be before we pushed these species onto their last legs in hard-to-reach refuges. Now, they are returning," he writes in the study. Indeed, there have been a number of alligator sightings off the US coast that help prove Silliman's case. In 2014, an impressive 10-footer strolled ashore at South Carolina's Folly Beach and two years ago another turned up dead in Texas. And then there was the six- to seven-foot gator that that swam a lap around an oil platform some 40 miles off the Louisiana mainland back in 2005

Without lingual glands to secrete salt though, alligators and caimans have a somewhat limited tolerance for full-strength seawater. When they are spotted in the surf, it's usually for short periods of time and American alligators often don't stray further than the brackish waters of estuaries and mangrove swamps. Here, they are able to have a good go at whatever is on the menu: mullet, blue crabs, yellowtail perch, horseshoe crabs, stingrays and event the occasional shark or sea turtle.

Of course, when crocodilians do take on sharks, the results are hardly worthy of making into a movie script: big sharks eat little crocs (and maybe even gators) and big crocs and gators eat little sharks. The bonnethead shark – a small relative of the hammerhead – lives in estuaries and shallow bays so it's not entirely surprising for one to end up on the toothy end of a seafaring gator. According to Science News Magazine, this isn't the first time its happened in Hilton Head waters.

Sadly, Charlie's forays into salty water are likely driven mostly by a desire to get his jaws around some of the scraps thrown off of fishing boats. This increased reliance on human handouts could result in a dangerously habituated alligator in the long-run. Let's hope Charlie sticks to his natural prey and the locals keep their distance.

"Elephants,mole rats, gray squirrels, horses, whales and bats rarely get cancer"..........."Each of these creatures have some form of internal deterrent that either kills cancer cells or prevents them from developing in the first place"............Does this not make you realize that our great 20th century ecologist, Aldo Leopold was spot on when he said: "To keep every cog & wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering"..........And our great living Nobel winning Ecologist E.O. Wilson so eloquently expands upon Leopold by stating: "We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means for humanity"............"By studying and tapping into the internal workings of our fellow creatures and plant life, we may be able to develop new ways to fight and prevent human cancer".............."Eventually, it may be possible to use gene therapy, genetic engineering or pharmacology to apply animal and plant cancer preventive strategies to humans"............. “We are at the tip of the iceberg in our understanding of what exists in nature to help us"........... "Nature has come up with so many solutions to the problems that we face over hundreds of millions of years of evolution"............."Now we need to preserve our remaining open spaces, wildife and native flora, analyze all of their great life generating mysteries and apply their wonders to us human animals"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/rarity-of-cancer-in-elephants-may-help-explain-cancer-in-humans/2018/07/20/7b4979c4-699f-11e8-9e38-24e693b38637_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e1883ef9cb05

Rarity of cancer in elephants may help explain cancer in humans

David Kohn;7/21/18; Washington Post

Elephants have 100 times as many cells as humans. But they seldom get cancer. This is surprising, because cancer is a result of cell division gone wrong, and the more cells an organism has, the higher the chances that some will mutate into tumors. Also, because elephants live so long — between 60 and 70 years — their cells have more opportunities to mutate.

 The counterintuitive observation that cancer risk does not always correlate with a species’ size or longevity is known as Peto’s Paradox, named after British epidemiologist Richard Peto, who first noted the phenomenon in 1977. It turns out that cancer does not strike all species equally: Some animals have evolved powerful strategies to keep the disease at bay, while others are particularly vulnerable.

Scientists are increasingly exploring this interspecies variation in cancer rates, hoping to learn more about how cancer works in humans and to identify better ways of treating or preventing it.

“Elephants should be getting cancer all the time,” said University of Utah cancer researcher Joshua Schiffman, who has been studying the topic for the past decade. “But they don’t. They’ve evolved some really effective anti-cancer strategies.”

Schiffman — a pediatric oncologist who also treats humans with cancer — and colleagues have found that elephants have 40 copies of the TP53 gene, which suppresses tumor cells before they can grow and spread. By comparison, humans and most other animals have only two copies. Schiffman and research partner Carlo Maley of Arizona State University say they suspect that the extra copies may give elephants a powerful ability to keep mutant cells at bay. Scientists have long known that TP53 helps the body kill rogue cells before they can transform into tumors. But until Schiffman and Maley’s work, no one realized that any animal had 40 copies of the gene. The elephants’ approach appears to be a unique evolutionary strategy for fighting cancer.

Schiffman and colleagues found that elephants also have other anti-cancer mechanisms. Elephant cells respond differently when exposed to substances that damage DNA. Instead of trying to repair the damage, they tend to simply die. With cancer, this is a much safer approach: Cells that try to heal themselves are more likely to mutate and then transform into cancer cells. In a paper published in March, Schiffman and University of Utah scientist Christopher Gregg identified three genes that prevent mutations by fostering DNA repair.

Together, these genetic adjustments may give elephants multiple weapons against the disease.

Elephants are not the only animal with unusually low rates of cancer. Using data from zoos and veterinarians as well as anecdotal reports from the wild and lab research, scientists know or suspect that other creatures, including elephants, 

Over decades, scientists have studied thousands of naked mole rats in labs and zoos around the world; in that time, they have documented only six cases of cancer. For the past 13 years, University of Rochester scientists Vera Gorbunova and her husband, Andrei Seluanov, have been trying to unravel how the animals accomplish this.

One key may be a viscous liquid known as hyaluronic acid. Gorbunova and Seluanov have foundthat the animals produce large amounts of this substance, which seems to prevent tumors from growing out of control. The mechanism may involve contact inhibition, the tendency of cells to stop dividing when squeezed tightly by other cells. Cancer starts when mutated cells grow uncontrollably; by increasing contact inhibition, hyaluronic acid, which Gorbunova describes as “basically a gooey sugar,” probably keeps these tumor cells from replicating.

Naked mole rats also have other mechanisms to squelch cancer. The animals have an unusually powerful version of a gene called p16, which prevents runaway growth of tumor cells, and have also evolved a further strategy: If cancerous cells somehow get past hyaluronic acid and p16, mole rat cells have a fail-safe switch that causes tumors to essentially deactivate themselves, a state known as senescence.

Gorbunova and Seluanov also study blind mole rats, another rodent species with extremely low rates of cancer. Over decades of research on hundreds of these animals, scientists have never found a naturally occurring tumor. These creatures, which live underground and have no eyes, have evolved an anti-cancer strategy known as concerted cell death. Their cells are programmed to replicate far fewer times than those of most other species, a feature that greatly lowers the risk that mutations will run amok.

Other researchers examining certain bat species have located several tumor-suppressing genes. A recent study of the bowhead whale, which weighs up to 100 tons and can live for more than 200 years, identified several genes that probably improve the creature’s ability to repair DNA mutations. The slower metabolism of large animals such as elephants and whales may also play a role in their lower cancer rates: More-intense energy production leads to more cell division, and thus a higher risk of mutations.

Just as some creatures are more adept at fending off tumors, others are particularly vulnerable. Certain breeds of dog fall into this category: More than half of all golden retrievers die of cancer; Scottish terriers are 18 times as likely as the average dog to get bladder cancer, and Irish wolfhounds are 100 times as likely to get bone cancer.

This predisposition is due largely to the narrow level of genetic variation within most breeds, a phenomenon known as the founder effect. As inbreeding has increased over many generations, genetic abnormalities in the original population have been magnified.

This predisposition makes the animals a valuable model. “With dogs, it’s much easier to find genetic aberrations that lead to cancer,” said North Carolina State University molecular biologist Matthew Breen, who has studied canine cancer for more than two decades. “We can accelerate the discovery process.”

He has found that some kinds of cancer develop along very similar pathways in dogs and humans, and has identified several genetic mutations in dog cancers that also appear to exist in the human versions of this cancer. One of these mutations, which plays a role in 85 percent of canine bladder cancers, also exists in humans. Scientists had known about the human mutation, but Breen’s research offers a key clue about its potential significance.

This work is especially useful for cancers that are rare in humans. Take bone cancer: In the United States, about 1,000 people a year, mostly children, get the disease. By comparison, more than 50,000 dogs are diagnosed annually. Breen and his colleagues have started to identify what drives the disease in dogs and have shown that the same mutations are present in the human version. “Working with dogs, we have access to 50 times the number of patients,” he said. “This gives us a much better chance of figuring out the mechanisms of this.”

Breen is overseeing a nationwide study that is monitoring several million dogs. He travels constantly, connecting with veterinarians, dog owners and breeders, asking them to share canine cancer data. The potential pool is enormous: Every year, more than 4 million dogs in the United States are diagnosed with cancer. Eventually, he said, the database will allow scientists to delve more deeply into how, why and where dogs get cancer.

The ultimate goal is to develop new ways to fight human cancer. Eventually, it may be possible to use gene therapy, genetic engineering or pharmacology to apply animals’ cancer strategies to humans. This work has already begun: Gorbunova and Seluanov are now testing whether hyaluronic acid can prevent the disease in mice. Other anti-cancer strategies of animals have not reached the testing stage, but Schiffman said the potential is clearly there.

“This is a whole new field,” he said. “We are at the tip of the iceberg. Nature has come up with these solutions over hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Now we need to analyze that and apply it to humans.”