Fauna feed - various animal news, bad puns

They're back! Goopy stinging groups of gobs given the deceptively poetic name "blooms" are overrunning seas too numerous to name, and costing fishing and tourism industries hundreds of millions of dollars over the past few decades. Jellyfish are swarming all across the globe, a phenomenon I reported on a while ago ("Jellyfish plague punishes the humans"), but never thought was so out of hand, turning fisheries and beaches into "veritable jellytoriums" in the newly invented words of ScienceDaily.

These jellyfish jams can be deadly but usually just stick to disrupting industry, commerce, and infrastructure. "[S]uspicion is growing that population explosions of jellyfish are being generated by human activities," such as pollution and global warming.

In other freaky news, LiveScience reports that a species of Panamanian termite has the world's fastest bite, clocking in at 157 chomp and awe mph. "Because a termite soldier faces down enemies inside a narrow tunnel and has little room to parry and little time to waste, this death blow proves to be incredibly efficient, though it works only over short distances."

The New York Times runs an article about fear among conservatives that the 1972 Endangered Species Act might be used as a "'back door' means of regulating the emission of gases that accelerate climate change."



They've also got a "radical" editorial out calling for a moratorium on bluefin tuna fishing - if only they could show a bit more radicalism (or at least backbone) on topics like the decision to invade Iraq!

For some real radicalism, we turn to PETA, which is "so very excited" to bring us good animal rights news from Bernalillo County, New Mexico. After pressure from citizens, the county council voted on a bill that, among other things, requires better living conditions for farm animals, and bans the sale of cats and dogs in pet stores. (And just a few days ago I found out I have to hate zoos too!)

Lastly, I found an oldish article on the New York Times site about service dogs trained by inmates of the maximum security Bedford Hills women's prison. The majority of the dogs go to Iraq War veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. (Do not read this article if you don't want to cry, and certainly don't watch the accompanying video - I almost cried and I barely have canine emotions, let alone human ones!)

Elephants' lifespans drastically cut short by poaching

Absent from my post below ("Zoos News") was a perspective that incorporates conservation and poaching — a glaring omission.

Six suspects stand accused in the US of working with "a trans-Atlantic ring that routinely sneaked ivory, much of it elaborately carved, out of three African countries — Uganda, Ivory Coast and Cameroon — that prohibit such exports and then slipped it past customs agents at Kennedy Airport..." according to the New York Times.

"Poaching elephants for their ivory is still the primary factor in the decline of their populations in Africa, wildlife officials say."

And in National Geographic is an article on the dizzying losses of elephants to poaching in Chad, a "massacre," in the words of one observer, that could wipe out the population within three years. The army helps guards and employees protect elephants in Zakouma National Park, but clashes with poachers can prove fatal.

A serious examination of these majestic megafauna's quality of life in our zoos should of course inquire into their lives at home, and their prospects for conservation there. Questions arise like how to shift priorities in impoverished countries where ordinary people have few options but to poach or starve.

And how do we reverse environmental degradations like global warming so that our friend Knut the polar bear won't be sent home to find all his ice melted?

Jellyfish plague punishes the humans

Giant pink jellyfish are turning the Sea of Japan into an "ocean of slime," overwhelming Japanese and Korean fishermen, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The blobs, up to six feet across and 450 pounds, are called echizen kurage, or Nomura's jellyfish. "Blooms" like this had been observed only occasionally before 2002, but now have become an annual event. 500 million immature jellies drifted into the Sea of Japan each day in 2005.

Fish can suffocate in the swarms of jellyfish, or be marred by their slime, and fishing nets can be torn by their weight.

Another recent attack wiped out Northern Ireland's only salmon farm. The culprit there was the mauve stinger, noted for its purplish nighttime glow. A second pack (or "smuck" or "smack") appears to be on its way to Scotland.

Several factors appear to account for the rise of the cnidarian, and they are all man's doing.

Overfishing is slowly ridding the jellyfish of its main competitor, and its main food source, plankton, is nourished by increased pollution, leading to a "jellyfish spiral."

And of course global warming is encouraging the dispersion of jellies by warming the waters, as is the case with the mauve stinger, which formerly confined itself to the Mediterranean.

Professor Shinichi Uye, leading jellyfish researcher at Hiroshima University told the Wall Street Journal, "It's like a harmless living thing has been angered...The reason for its anger might lie with human activity."

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

We're smarter than the jellyfish: they have no brain.

We can eat them, for instance as ice cream or tofu.

"If the jellyfish are cut into three or more bits, they usually die and get eaten by other sea creatures," claims the Journal.

Attack them with barbed poles.

"Fishermen have also taken a trawl net and added a wire grill like a large potato masher at the trailing end: When the net is pulled through a swarm of jellyfish, they float through and are sliced up." (Wall Street Journal)