The Biocentric Kama Sutra: Oral Sex According to Indian Flying Foxes

by Russ McSpadden / Earth First! News

[The text of this work is free to share and distribute under the following Creative Commons License CC-BY-ND 3.0]

Indian flying fox (Pteropus giganteus)

Outside of the village of Nallachampatti in southern India, a colony of Indian flying foxes roost in a fig tree, tasting of the delicate figs, lighting off over forests and swamps in the night to hunt mangoes, bananas and to sup on the nectar of flowers. They are sensual bats with a taste for the sweetness of life, which, as new research reveals, includes the flavors of sex, of vagina, especially in the morning.

In a study conducted over the course of a year, a team of scientists, wielding binoculars and a rather voyeuristic appetite, witnessed male bats perform oral sex on females over and over. The kinky Ph.D’s say these fruit eating bats do it to make the sex last longer, a hypothesis that seems to say Pteropus giganteus knows a little something about the artful ways of love.

“Apart from humans, bats also exhibit oral sex as a courtship behavior,” said Ganapathy Marimuthu, a bat researcher at Madurai Kamaraj University in India.

[Cue sultry mood music and Barry White voice-narration]

Saving Predators May Help Save Climate

The three-spined stickelback is a lean, mean green-house gas preventing machine

by the Center for Biological Diversity

Sure, predators regulate prey — simply by eating them. But a new study shows that, at least in freshwater ecosystems, these food-chain top dogs are also key characters in curbing carbon pollution. In a project published in Nature Geoscience, when researchers removed all of two prime predators from certain streams and ponds, they found these ecosystems emit a lot more carbon dioxide than normal aquatic networks: 93 percent more.

Obama Administration Finalizes Polar Bear Extinction Plan

by the Center for Biological Diversity

WASHINGTON— After months of high-profile statements about climate change, the Obama administration today finalized a special rule that fails to protect polar bears from greenhouse gas pollution under the Endangered Species Act. The new regulation is modeled on a previous Bush-administration measure excluding activities occurring outside the polar bear’s habitat — such as carbon emissions from coal plants — from regulations that could slow Arctic warming to prevent the bear’s extinction.  

On The Fringe of Life: A Tour of Appalachia’s Biodiverse Frontier

By Molly Moore / the Appalachian Voice

These mushrooms from West Virginia’s New River Gorge are one of countless varieties in Appalachia, a world hub for fungi species. Photo by Jessica Elaine Ulm Anderson.

Crouch Knob in Randolph County, W. Va., might be home to the largest remaining cluster of running buffalo clover in the world. As its name suggests, this particular clover once flourished alongside buffalo, sending “runners” of floral clones across the bison-trodden earth of eastern North America.

In 1825, the last eastern wood bison was killed near the source of West Virginia’s Tygart River. Running buffalo clover also seemed to disappear from the Central Appalachians until a population was rediscovered in the New River Gorge in 1983. Since then, small numbers of the federally endangered flower have been found in several states, typically along trails or in mowed areas where human disturbances echo the buffaloes’ impact on the land. Yet while running buffalo clover might be adjusting to the modern world, its eastern namesake doesn’t have a chance.

New Study: Florida Is Global Hotspot for Reptiles at Risk of Extinction

 One-fifth of Reptiles Across Globe Face Extinction

by the Center for Biological Diversity

Florida Keys Mole Skink (Photo courtesy of USFWS)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.— A recent study finds that Florida has one of the highest numbers of threatened reptiles in the world. The new report highlights the need to address the global reptile extinction crisis: One in five reptiles is facing extinction from threats like habitat loss, overharvest and climate change.

“Florida is blessed with a rich diversity of lizards, turtles and snakes,” said Collette Adkins Giese, reptile-and-amphibian specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Unfortunately, threats like habitat loss from rapid development are continuing to push many of these rare reptiles to the brink of extinction.”

NASA: Alarming water loss in Middle East

By MICHAEL CASEY, AP Environmental Writer

One of the biggest challenges to improving water conservation is often competing demands which has worsened the problem in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins.Turkey controls the Tigris and Euphrates headwaters, as well as the reservoirs and infrastructure of Turkey’s Greater Anatolia Project, which dictates how much water flows downstream into Syria and Iraq, the researchers said. With no coordinated water management between the three countries, tensions have intensified since the 2007 drought because Turkey continues to divert water to irrigate farmland.

“That decline in stream flow put a lot of pressure on northern Iraq,” Kate Voss, lead author of the study and a water policy fellow with the University of California‘s Center for Hydrological Modeling in Irvine, said. “Both the UN and anecdotal reports from area residents note that once stream flow declined, this northern region of Iraq had to switch to groundwater. In an already fragile social, economic and political environment, this did not help the situation.”

Snowbowl Protests Affect Flagstaff Shops, Keep It Up

FLAGSTAFF –(AP) Continuing opposition to the use of reclaimed wastewater by a ski area near Flagstaff to make snow is rubbing off on some local businesses.

Protesters have held signs and passed out leaflets outside businesses that held events for Arizona Snowbowl this week to celebrate the ski area’s 75 years of existence, the Arizona Daily Sun reports.

“There’s a large portion of the community that feels alienated because of Snowbowl’s actions,” said protester Grayson Lookner.

Altitudes Bar and Grill owner Lynda Fleischer said it was unfair to target her business when its celebratory event was for the ski area, not for the snowmaking.

“It affected my staff. It was very negative to their evening,” she said of the protest outside her business.

Seeking to boost business when Mother Nature didn’t provide enough snow for skiing, Snowbowl in December began using treated wastewater from Flagstaff to make snow.

The effort was years in the making.

From the start, American Indian tribes that consider the mountain area sacred were against the plan.

62 Year Old Wild Albatross Hatches 35th Chick, Travels 3 Million Miles

by George Dvorsky / IO9

Tracked by scientists since 1956, a Laysan albatross dubbed “Widsom” has hatched a healthy chick at the tender age of 62. The (apparently) elderly bird has now successfully given birth for the sixth consecutive year and is assumed to have parented at least 35 chicks over the course of her preternaturally long lifetime. And what might be even more impressive is the fact that Wisdom has flown an awe inspiring three million miles (4.8 million kilometers) since she was first branded.

The hatching was documented by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Pete Leary who is working at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. Over the course of her life, Wisdom has worn out five bird bands since being tagged by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Chandler Robbins in 1956.

First New Mexican Gray Wolf Released into the Wild in 4 Years is Recaptured 3 Weeks Later

Photo by Robin Silver

by the Center for Biological Diversity

SILVER CITY, N.M.— A four-year stalemate in federal efforts to reintroduce Mexican gray wolves to the Southwest took another step backward last week when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recaptured a male wolf only three weeks after his release into the wild.

Love and Revenge: Sperm Whales Adopt Disabled Dolphin

by Russ McSpadden / Earth First! News

[The text of this work is free to share and distribute under the following Creative Commons License CC-BY-ND 3.0]

It was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day. Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. –Captain Ahab– from Moby Dick

illustration by becka rankin

Spoiler alert, Moby Dick, the human devouring sperm whale of Herman Melville’s epic whaling novel of the same name, kills Captain Ahab—that ole son-of-a-barnacle’s-taint—and to the great relief of many a hunted sea beast. As a character, Ahab truly was a fine example of a dastardly whaler and neither Greenpeace nor Sea Shephard could be written to have given him his just deserts as well as our cetacean comrade.  In the text, Moby Dick is both hero and antagonist and a truly enigmatic literary metaphor for the savagery of both nature and civilization, for revenge, madness, greed, god, the soul and justice, but never love.

But what shall ye make of the knowledge, Mr. Mellville, of sperm whales as loving adoptive parents who were recently sighted crossing the species boundary to care for a disabled dolphin?