Latest news with #elephants
BBC News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Mermaid tails and elephants auctioned by charities after trails
Dozens of giant elephants and mermaid tail sculptures are to go under the hammer at two separate auctions to raise money for two hospice and Julia's House each hosted their own fundraising art trails in Dorset featuring the individually decorated elephants displayed in Bridport, West Bay and Lyme Regis for Weldmar's Stampede by the Sea event are going under the hammer in Dorchester on Thursday Great Tail Trail sculptures, which were displayed in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, will be auctioned for Julia's House in Poole on Friday. Julia's House fundraising manager Laura Maidment said: "We'd love it if every single sculpture could find a new home - they are all beautiful and unique pieces of art that deserve to be pride of place somewhere special."More than 50 elephants were on display in west Dorset from 28 March to 26 May, before being gathered together for a farewell exhibition at Dorchester's Corn Exchange ahead of the will open at £3,000, with proceeds going to Weldmar House said more than 2,000 people came to see 88 mermaid tails at its farewell exhibition at Bournemouth International Centre, which raised about £8,000 for the Ross, of BBC's Bargain Hunt, will lead the auction of tails at Compton Acres' Italian Villa in Poole on Friday evening, with bids opening at £1, in both auctions must register before the events, with bidding taking place in-person and online. You can follow BBC Dorset on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
BBC News
4 days ago
- Science
- BBC News
Baby elephant takes a muddy tumble
The moment a baby elephant is born, it is essential for it to learn how to walk and use its trunk. Elephant mum Cyclone has her hands full showing her baby the ropes and protecting it from its big brother. Produced by the BBC Natural History Unit
CTV News
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- CTV News
‘They started singing along': Vancouver musician plays the melodica for elephants in Vietnam
Vancouver concert pianist and composer Martin Mayer has plenty of fans around the world, especially in China, where he's known as 'Canada's Prince of Piano.' He's performed for sold-out crowds on several multi-city tours of the country and says he's been mobbed for autographs, followed by paparazzi, and was even woken up at 3 a.m. by a fan knocking on his hotel room door. And now Mayer has two new devotees in Vietnam—who happen to be elephants. The musician visited Vinpearl Safari in Phu Quoc on a recent vacation, and because you can't fit a grand piano in your pocket, he brought a melodica—a handheld keyboard you play by blowing into a mouthpiece. While feeding the elephants at the zoo, Mayer's partner suggested playing them a song. He went with the recognizable 'Perfect' by Ed Sheeran. 'These two elephants basically stopped what they were doing, stopped taking food from the other people, walked up and started listening,' he told CTV News. They flapped their ears, put their trunks together, and 'started singing along.' 'I've played for thousands of people in concert and millions of people on TV and the whole notion of playing for two elephants in the sanctuary—I can't think of any way to top that,' he said. Mayer was at a loss for words after the encounter and later ran back to see the elephants again. He whistled at them and the animals turned around to give him a final look. 'I remember feeling this innate sense this is beyond human-to-human, this is human-to-animal, and I'm able to communicate with these two in a way that is beyond language or anything like that,' he said. 'It's the best feeling to be able to provide joy and possibly the first music that they've ever heard.' Mayer is now considering continuing his new gig as an animal entertainer, floating the idea of performing at the Greater Vancouver Zoo, Vancouver Aquarium, or even bringing the melodica on a boat to play for the harbour seals and orcas. 'Human beings shouldn't be the only ones that get a chance to experience music,' he said. With files from CTV News Vancouver's Spencer Harwood
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
This gene stops elephants from getting cancer – can it help human cancer research?
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, BGR may receive an affiliate commission. For decades, scientists have puzzled over a curious phenomenon called Peto's Paradox. In theory, large animals with long lifespans should develop cancer more often because they have more cells and more time for mutations to occur. Yet elephants, whales, and other giants of the animal world tend to get cancer far less often than humans do. Now, researchers are learning why. In a 2015 study, scientists discovered that elephants carry 19 extra copies of a powerful cancer-stopping gene called TP53. This gene acts as a genetic safeguard, detecting DNA damage and triggering cell death in potentially cancerous cells. For elephants, this enhanced genetic armor likely explains why they enjoy such low rates of cancer despite their size. Today's Top Deals Best deals: Tech, laptops, TVs, and more sales Best Ring Video Doorbell deals Memorial Day security camera deals: Reolink's unbeatable sale has prices from $29.98 However, a new study has broadened this investigation to nearly 300 animal species. The researchers analyzed over 16,000 necropsy records and found that elephants are not alone. Many other species have evolved their own cancer resistance strategies. Some birds, bats, and even lizards showed remarkably low levels of cancer, while animals like ferrets and opossums had much higher rates. The study also shed light on how various traits influence cancer risk, and it isn't always related to how many copies of the cancer-stopping gene an animal has. Larger body mass was linked to a slightly higher chance of developing cancer, though not as strongly as expected. Longer gestation periods appeared to lower cancer risk, possibly because of enhanced cellular safeguards developed during extended fetal growth. However, the researchers found that animals in captivity did not show artificially high cancer rates due to living longer than they would in the wild. But what does this mean for human cancer research? Well, TP53 is already a key player in human cancer prevention and assessing cancer risks, but humans only have two copies of the gene. Learning how elephants and other species enhance their cancer defenses could lead to new cancer treatments that make human cells more resilient. The hope researchers have is that mimicking or boosting the effects of this cancer-stopping gene could help doctors develop therapies to reduce cancer incidence or slow its progression. Comparative oncology, the field that studies cancer across different species, is only just beginning to unlock these secrets. The next steps will involve exploring how other animals resist cancer and finding ways to translate those discoveries into medical advances for humans. More Top Deals Amazon gift card deals, offers & coupons 2025: Get $2,000+ free See the
Irish Times
10-06-2025
- Science
- Irish Times
Dead elephants and feral sea lions: how poisonous algal blooms harm the planet
Before the elephants collapsed, they walked in aimless circles. Some fell head first, dying where they stood moments earlier; their carcasses scattered near watering holes across the Okavango delta in Botswana. The unexplained deaths in May 2020 alarmed conservationists. By July at least 350 elephants had died and nobody knew why. 'The animals all had their tusks, so poaching was unlikely. A lot of them had obviously died relatively suddenly: they had dropped on to their sternums, which was indicating a sudden loss of muscle function or neural capacity,' says Niall McCann, director of the conservation group National Park Rescue. Nearly five years later, in November 2024, scientists finally published a paper indicating what they believe to be the reason behind the deaths: toxic water caused by an algal bloom. READ MORE A sudden shift between dry and wet conditions in 2019 and 2020 created perfect conditions for cyanobacteria that release toxins lethal to the elephants, although the researchers could not make definitive conclusions as samples were not taken quickly enough in 2020 due to the pandemic. 'Blooms' are a rapid increase in the amount of algae, often occurring in shallow, slow-moving warm water. They can transform a sea, lake or river into a mass of green, yellow, brown or even red, sometimes for several weeks. Not all blooms are harmful – many sustain important fisheries. But sometimes algae forms such a thick layer that it blocks out sunlight in critical habitats; others can release harmful toxins. When the algae die, they rapidly deplete oxygen in water – often creating 'dead zones' where few fish can survive. As the Earth warms, harmful algal blooms are on the rise – even creeping into polar waters. They are driven by a mixture of pollution from agriculture, runoff from human waste and, increasingly, global heating – sometimes with dramatic consequences for wildlife and humans. As they spread, they are changing the colour of the world's lakes, rivers and oceans. [ UN Ocean Conference 3: will it lead to protecting the high seas from all extraction, forever? Opens in new window ] Nearly two-thirds of all lakes have changed colour in the past 40 years, a recent study shows. A third are blue – but as temperatures warm, they are likely to turn a murky green or brown, other research has found. The planet's oceans are turning green as they warm, a result of absorbing more than 90 per cent of excess heat from global warming. At sea, the size and frequency of blooms in coastal areas has risen by 13.2 per cent and 59.2 per cent respectively in 2003-2020, a 2024 study revealed. In freshwater systems blooms became 44 per cent more frequent globally in the 2010s, according to a 2022 global assessment of 248,000 lakes. The rise was largely driven by places in Asia and Africa that remain reliant on agricultural fertiliser. While progress has been made in North America, Europe and Oceania to stabilise blooms, the climate crisis has driven their resurgence in some freshwater systems. The fertilisers that people use to grow plants – including reactive nitrogen and phosphates – also supercharge algal growth. As they are washed off fields and pour into water bodies around the world, they significantly alter how ecosystems function. 'Humans are today loading more reactive nitrogen into the biosphere than the natural cycle [is],' said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He was co-author of a 2023 assessment that found that humanity had now gone far beyond the planet's natural limits for nitrogen and phosphorus. [ Commitment to climate action hard to find in Government Opens in new window ] 'We need to reduce the supply of reactive human nitrogen by over 75 per cent. It's a dramatic change and there's a lot of scientific debate about this,' he says. 'Most agricultural scientists say that it is not possible because we cannot feed humanity. We have a contradiction here: is our first objective to keep the planet's freshwater systems, coastal zones, ecosystems and climate stable – or is it to feed humanity?' Others warn that it is not a simple choice between food and the environment. In northern Norway repeated algal blooms have wiped out millions of farmed salmon and cod in recent years. A single bloom killed more than seven million salmon in 2019. This year another has wiped out up to a million more fish. As has just happened in South Australia, where it spanned 8,800 sq km, scores of fish and dead sea life wash up on beaches once a huge algal bloom spreads. Deepwater sharks, crabs, lobsters and prawns are among those found dead as a result of the toxic blanket created by Karenia mikimotoi algae, with the ocean 2.5 degrees hotter than usual for the season. In March a teenager was attacked by a 'feral' sea lion off the coast of southern California, where there has been an increase in aggressive behaviour from the animals linked to a large algal bloom, which can poison and induce seizures in the mammals due to the domoic acid neurotoxin it produces. While there are signs that the bloom is waning, it was the fourth consecutive year that California had experienced a significant outbreak. However, not everything dies in a dead zone. Once the putrid expanse of algae has dispersed and those that can swim away have left, aquatic species better adapted to low levels of oxygen, or hypoxia, move in. This has led to a boom in jellyfish numbers in many parts of the world. Denise Breitburg, of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, has studied Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the US to experience algal blooms, for decades, says: 'The jellyfish we have here are way more tolerant of low oxygen in the water than species they would be competing with for food. They become more efficient predators and can utilise habitat that fin fish are excluded from.' As the world heats, the disruptions that algal blooms cause to ecosystems will be hard to stop, experts warn. Prof Donald Boesch, who helped first identify the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which last year reached 17,000 sq km, the 12th largest in 38 years of records, says the process will get worse if the world does not prevent rising temperatures. 'As the liquid heats up, its ability to dissolve gases is reduced, so it holds less oxygen. Warmer surface waters can increase the stratification of layers in the ocean. It means that the warmer waters at the surface are less dense than the bottom waters, so they don't get mixed up. 'It's going to get worse,' says Boesch.
