Connect with us

Science

How Heavy Is Frank the Meerkat? London Zoo Weighs Its 14,000 Animals.

Published

on

How Heavy Is Frank the Meerkat? London Zoo Weighs Its 14,000 Animals.

The London Zoo, which has more than 14,000 animals, conducted its annual weigh-in this week, an event that helps keep records on their health and other data up-to-date and measures the animals’ well being.

While zookeepers measure the animals throughout the year, every August they double-check all the information and invite news organizations to have a look.

“Having this data helps to ensure that every animal we care for is healthy, eating well, and growing at the rate they should,” Angela Ryan, the London Zoo’s head of zoological operations, said in a statement. “We record the vital statistics of every animal at the zoo — from the tallest giraffe to the tiniest tadpole.”

The zoo’s heaviest animal is Maggie, a giraffe, who comes in around 750 kilograms (about 1,653 pounds). Maggie lives with her sister, Molly, and was joined by another giraffe, Nuru, in March.

The zoo’s smallest animal is a leaf cutter ant, at about 5 milligrams. Zookeepers do not measure each ant individually, but use estimates based on the weight of an entire colony.

Advertisement

“We can tell a lot from an animal by its weight,” Ms. Ryan told a London radio station. The weigh-in can also measure how pregnant animals are doing, and can alert zookeepers to new pregnancies, which in turn helps with preparing for any births.

Zookeepers add the measurements and weights to the Zoological Information Management System, a database that is shared with other zoos around the world that includes information about threatened species. Conservationists in the wild can also use the information to determine the age of a particular endangered animal, for example.

Weighing animals can be challenging. Zookeepers use different ways to get them to step — or hop, skip or jump — onto the scale and stand up straight for measurements.

This year, for example, the zookeepers tricked Humboldt penguin chicks into walking over scales one by one by having them line up for their morning feed, the zoo said. It took the promise of tasty treats to get some Bolivian black-capped squirrel monkeys onto the scales.

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Science

LAX passenger arrested after running onto tarmac, police say

Published

on

LAX passenger arrested after running onto tarmac, police say

A Los Angeles International Airport passenger was arrested early Saturday morning after he became irate and ran out of Terminal 4 onto the tarmac, according to airport police.

The passenger appeared to be experiencing a mental health crisis, said Capt. Karla Rodriguez. “Police responded and during their attempt in taking the suspect into custody, a use of force occurred,” she said.

The man, who was not identified, was arrested on suspicion of battery against a police officer and trespassing on airport property, she said. He was taken to a nearby hospital for a mental health evaluation.

A video obtained by CBS shows a shirtless man in black shorts running on the tarmac past an American Airlines jetliner with a police officer in pursuit. The officer soon tackles the man and pushes him down on the pavement.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Science

Video: How SpaceX Is Harming Delicate Ecosystems

Published

on

Video: How SpaceX Is Harming Delicate Ecosystems

On at least 19 occasions since 2019, SpaceX’s operations have caused fires, leaks and explosions near its launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. These incidents reflect a broader debate over how to balance technological and economic progress against protections of delicate ecosystems and local communities. The New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton explains.

Continue Reading

Science

Live poultry markets may be source of bird flu virus in San Francisco wastewater

Published

on

Live poultry markets may be source of bird flu virus in San Francisco wastewater

Federal officials suspect that live bird markets in San Francisco may be the source of bird flu virus in area wastewater samples.

Days after health monitors reported the discovery of suspected avian flu viral particles in wastewater treatment plants, federal officials announced that they were looking at poultry markets near the treatment facilities.

Last month, San Francisco Public Health Department officials reported that state investigators had detected H5N1 — the avian flu subtype making its way through U.S. cattle, domestic poultry and wild birds — in two chickens at a live market in May. They also noted they had discovered the virus in city wastewater samples collected during that period.

Two new “hits” of the virus were recorded from wastewater samples collected June 18 and June 26 by WastewaterSCAN, an infectious-disease monitoring network run by researchers at Stanford, Emory University and Verily, Alphabet Inc.’s life sciences organization.

Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that although the source of the virus in those samples has not been determined, live poultry markets were a potential culprit.

Advertisement

Hits of the virus were also discovered in wastewater samples from the Bay Area cities of Palo Alto and Richmond. It is unclear if those cities host live bird markets, stores where customers can take a live bird home or have it processed on-site for food.

Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture, said live bird markets undergo regular testing for avian influenza.

He said that aside from the May 9 detection in San Francisco, there have been no “other positives in Live Bird Markets throughout the state during this present outbreak of highly-pathogenic avian flu.”

San Francisco’s health department referred all questions to the state.

Even if the state or city had missed a few infected birds, John Korslund, a retired U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarian epidemiologist, seemed incredulous that a few birds could cause a positive hit in the city’s wastewater.

Advertisement

“Unless you’ve got huge amounts of infected birds — in which case you ought to have some dead birds, too — it’d take a lot of bird poop” to become detectable in a city’s wastewater system, he said.

“But the question still remains: Has anyone done sequencing?” he said. “It makes me want to tear my hair out.”

He said genetic sequencing would help health officials determine the origin of viral particles — whether they came from dairy milk, or from wild birds. Some epidemiologists have voiced concerns about the spread of H5N1 among dairy cows, because the animals could act as a vessel in which bird and human viruses could interact.

However, Alexandria Boehm, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and principal investigator and program director for WastewaterSCAN, said her organization is not yet “able to reliably sequence H5 influenza in wastewater. We are working on it, but the methods are not good enough for prime time yet.”

A review of businesses around San Francisco’s southeast wastewater treatment facility indicates a dairy processing plant as well as a warehouse store for a “member-supported community of people that feed raw or cooked fresh food diets to their pets.”

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending