Xiang Xiang, the first panda bred in captivity to be released into the wild, has died. He was chased by angry wild pandas and fell from a tree.
He survived less than a year in the wild after nearly three years of training in survival techniques and defense tactics.
“Xiang Xiang died of serious internal injuries in the left side of his chest and stomach by falling from a high place,” Heng Yi, an official from the Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in Sichuan, said in a telephone interview.
“The scratches and other minor injuries caused by other wild pandas were found on his body,” he said. “So Xiang Xiang may have fallen from trees when being chased by those pandas.”
. . . “We are all sad about Xiang Xiang, but it doesn’t mean the project has failed,” Zhang Hemin, the center’s head, was quoted as saying by Xinhua. “The lessons we have learnt from what happened to Xiang Xiang will help us adapt and improve the project.”
What a shocker. 2,241 kilograms of CO2 for a 150 kg fish. There are about 10,000 pieces of sushi in a fish that size, so each is about 15 grams. The carbon footprint of each piece of that sushi is 224 grams, or almost 15 times its own weight in Carbon Dioxide.
Stumbled across the online portfolio of this artist via titereblog, and I like it! Well, not so much a fan of his pixel works, but love the illustrations of animals.
The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.
Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.
Oh, the horror of having to check the food you produce for disease or poison before you sell it far and wide…!
And the administration doesn’t want to infringe on the “rights” of meatpackers and the like by instituting regulation, but will also work to make sure they don’t volunteer to regulate themselves? Please.
Via Pharyngula, I just came across a post consisting of terrifying frog videos. Including one that was taken from one of my new favorite movies of all time, Cane Toads: An Unnatural History.
I definitely recommend watching the whole thing. I mean, just take a look at the cover:
From Treehugger, the TreeHouse Workshop builds beautiful, one of a kind treehouses out of wood reclaimed from old houses, and other recycled materials. Many of them are full-fledged houses, with bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and fireplaces.
This is so sad. The Army wants to use one of North America’s largest dinosaur fossil sites as a testing ground for bombs.
This secluded valley is home to one of North America’s richest dinosaurs finds - more than 1,300 individual tracks; 35 sites have yielded bones.
“The great thing about this site is that it’s here to see, and it’s free for the public,” said U.S. Forest Service paleontologist Bruce Schumacher, leaning against a rock after wading across the Purgatoire River - the River of Lost Souls, as French explorers first called it.
Schumacher planted his bare feet near the beachball-sized tracks of a brontosaurus left 150 million years ago.
“The history here is just layered on itself,” he said…
The Canyonlands’ rock walls have 1,000 drawings and carvings left by prehistoric hunters and gatherers: Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Apache and others who lived or hunted here.
I would love to visit before it’s obliterated. Oh, well…
