DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 15, 2016

Islands and Highways

Linking parks and reserves will limit the impact of climate change, but it will take political will.  Do we have it?

Over the next century, as temperatures climb, precipitation patterns shift, and sea levels rise, there will be a dramatic altering of the American landscape.

Faced with these changes, some plants and animals will either have to adapt or flee to new, colder homes in order to survive. In fact, a number of species have already begun shifting their habitats, with most moving towards the poles or to the higher elevations of the mountains. Some animals might even need to move many hundreds of miles over the next half-century.

National Aquarium Making a Questionable Decision

Placing captive born dolphins into a sea based sanctuary is a very complex process.  Thinking that it is just building an underwater fence and walking away is not borne out by real life situation where this has been attempted with marine mammals.

The Atlantic bottlenose dolphins will be sent to the sanctuary by the end of 2020, the National Aquarium in Baltimore said in a statement. The sanctuary will be the “first of its kind in North America” and will allow dolphins to be cared for in a protected, seaside habitat, according to the aquarium.

And when PETA joins in the discussion, you can bet that there has not been any consideration for the dolphin's quality of life in this as yet to be determined and designed habitat.

PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman applauded the National Aquarium for the move in a statement and said stressed the aquarium's dolphin sanctuary may spur others to follow suit.

"This spells the beginning of the end for dolphin captivity and the start of an age in which SeaWorld, the Miami Seaquarium, and other marine parks reject excuses not to retire long-suffering captive dolphins—including orcas—to sanctuaries," Reiman said in a statement.

While the animals won't be released into the open sea, the National Aquarium sanctuary will have a plethora of "natural stimulus for the dolphins, such as fish and aquatic plants," according to the aquarium.

Racanelli said while the cost of seaside property may be high, costs will eventually fall because ocean waters do not need to be constantly regulated like aquariums do, AP reported.

Most of these statements have yet to be proven in the real world.

First Extinction Due to Climate Change

The planet will survive the loss of this little rodent.  Still, the distinction of being the first casualty of climate change belongs to this species.

The Bramble Cay melomys—a rodent found only on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef—has been declared extinct, according to a new study from researchers at the Queensland’s Department of Environment and Heritage Protection and the University of Queensland.

Alarmingly, this could be the first mammal species wiped out due to human-induced climate change.

Sea-level rise and weather events in the Torres Strait region, which lies between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea, was determined as the root cause of the loss. The scientists said that the events destroyed the animals’ sole habitat on Bramble Cay, a small vegetated coral cay in northern Australia. Research showed that Bramble Cay had reduced dramatically in size from approximately 2.2 ha in 2004 to only 0.065 ha, equivalent to a 97 percent loss in the span of 10 years.

“The key factor responsible for the extirpation of this population was almost certainly ocean inundation of the low-lying cay, very likely on multiple occasions, during the last decade, causing dramatic habitat loss and perhaps also direct mortality of individuals,” the study states.

A Raccoon in the City Needs Help Sometimes

 Volunteer organizations keep raccoons and other wild city animals alive. 

Raccoons are trapped for two main reasons: Either they were found on someone’s property or they were found in pretty bad shape.

Sgt. Eleanor Sadler of San Francisco Animal Care and Control says that most of the raccoons she sees are in the latter group.

“We’ll see raccoons with distemper that sort of judder, shake and wobble. In those cases, we need to impound them,” she says. She’ll catch those raccoons and bring them into the station to see the veterinarians.

Her team won’t handle healthy wildlife though — for that, they direct people to specialists in animal exclusion.

These specialists work to force an animal to leave on its own instead of trapping it. That’s because once an animal is trapped, California law limits what can happen next.

“When you trap the animal, you need to release it within a couple blocks or you have to kill it,” Sadler says. “Trappers are either lying to you or doing something illegal if they say otherwise.”

Cats Understand the Laws of Physics

But consider the cat and cucumber before we confirm them as the feline equivalent of Stephen Hawking.

Previous work conducted by the Japanese team established that cats predict the presence of invisible objects based on what they hear. In the present study, the researchers wanted to find out if cats use a causal rule to infer if a container holds an object, based on whether it is shaken along with a sound or not. The team also wanted to establish if cats expect an object to fall out or not, once the container is turned over.

Thirty domestic cats were videotaped while an experimenter shook a container. In some cases this action went along with a rattling sound. In others it did not, to simulate that the vessel was empty. After the shaking phase, the container was turned over, either with an object dropping down or not.