A tapir carcass found recently in Argentina's Forest Reserve San Jorge has
helped wildlife officials track down an elusive jaguar that disappeared
last October. The name of the "great male" is Aratirí, and the team is
elated to report he's still thriving in the park.
The carcass was initially discovered by officials from Arauco,
who work with the local Ministry of Tourism to manage sustainable
forestation. A closer look at the remains revealed obvious signs of
predation – and whatever had killed this large pig-like herbivore was big.
With signs pointing to a top predator, an alert went out to the team at Proyecto Yaguarte (Project Jaguar), an organisation working to maintain viable jaguar populations in the Atlantic Forest. One of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, the forest spans parts of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.
The Project Jaguar team wasted no time before rushing to
the scene to set up their camera traps. "A few hours after the team
entered to place the high-resolution cameras, we noticed that [Aratirí]
had returned to eat the tapir," Forestry Management official Esteban
Carabelli told Misiones." [translated from Spanish]
Aratirí is one of the largest jaguars known to inhabit the area, and
this isn't the first time one of his tapir feasts has been caught on
camera. He was last seen in October of 2015, devouring a similar meal
in Iguazú National Park.
"He's surprised us again with his powerful ability to hunt," says a statement from Proyecto Yaguarte, who have been keeping as close an eye as possible on Aratirí since he was first spotted in 2010. "These
exciting images show [his] important role as a major predator. Not
every day can you see jaguars feeding in their natural environment!"
The jaguars that roam this region make up the southernmost population
of the species, whose range historically extended many kilometres south
into Patagonia. Much like wolves and other top predators, the big cats are considered a keystone in the local ecosystem, keeping it healthy and balanced.
"About 15 years ago we knew very little about what really was going on with the last jaguars in Argentina," writes the team. "The scarce information came mostly from passionate naturalists who warned of the difficult situation this species was in."
Today, jaguars occupy less than half of their
historical range, and it's estimated that fewer than 200 adults survive
in Argentina – just five percent of their original numbers.
"Humans have hunted these animals either out of fear, or because they
are considered valuable trophies, or due to conflicts for domestic
livestock predation," adds Proyecto Yaguarte. "This situation, together
with the ... transformation of natural environments ... was leading
large predators, and the jaguar in particular, to a sharp reduction in
their distribution."
Argentinan jaguars are a sub-population that's considered critically
endangered – a grim situation that Proyecto Yaguarte believes can be
reversed through a big-picture approach to conservation. This means
placing as much emphasis on habitat restoration and protection as on the
cats themselves.
"How do jaguars use the environment? How much area do these animals
need to survive? We have been answering these questions one by one and
trying to transform responses into conservation measures for both the
jaguar and the Atlantic Forest."
For the team, every glimpse into the lives of jaguars provides
valuable information on this path to recovery – and that makes Aratirí's
recent kill a sighting worthy of celebration.
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Top header image: Andrew Whalley, Flickr
Cats prance from room to room, expressing their whims and fears
spontaneously. They scratch, they bellow, and they quietly watch the
world go by from a fur-covered windowsill. They’re certainly more
intrinsically motivated than their canine counterparts — you won’t find a
cat that puts its owner’s social needs above its own.
All of which is to say, cats and artists have a lot in common.
So it comes as no surprise
that lions and tiny tigresses have served as the subjects of art dating
back to ancient Egypt, through Gustave Courbet’s soft-whirling oil
paintings, and contemporary woodblock prints.
An upcoming exhibit at the Worcester Art Museum,
dubbed “Meow,” will provide a historical survey of these feline
portraits, including a woodcut created in 1912 depicting a gardener and
her curious cat onlooker, and a 1975 lithograph of a mysteriously winged
Siamese. The museum’s director of audience engagement, Adam Rozan,
wrote in a press release, “Cats have given rise to a plethora of
creative online projects, videos, and memes that mix humor and artistry.
While the Internet has allowed for viral consumption of this content,
this phenomenon isn’t new.”
While humor doesn’t factor into most of the images on display, many
artists did choose to portray cats’ expressiveness in their work. A
20th-century lithograph called “Girl with Cat and Tiles” depicts a
dainty blonde holding a squirming, ready-to-pounce tabby. For this and
other crazy cat pics, see below.
“Meow: A Cat-Inspired Exhibition“
— including an interactive installation featuring live cats, a
community art show and special art classes — will be on view at
Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts from May 21 to Sept. 4, 2016.
Helen Hyde
A Mexican Coquette, 1912 woodcut on cream Japan paper Anonymous Gift 1988.78
For her experiment, Schötz is recruiting cats and their humans from
Lund, in far southern Sweden, and from Stockholm, 310 miles (500
kilometers) north.
People from both regions have discernible dialects, so her goal is to discover if their cats do, too.
She also hopes to discover whether the cats' meows mean different
things, and if they respond differently based on how we talk to them.
National Geographic caught up with Schötz to learn more about her, well, pet project.
So why do cats meow anyway?
Cats use both visual and vocal signals to communicate with humans,
but they need to vocalize to get our attention. With other cats, they
tend to rely on visual and olfactory signals. When a cat says “meow,”
it’s normally addressed to a human being, not another cat. (See "What Do Cats Think About Us? You May Be Surprised.")
A woman practicing a downward-facing dog yoga pose meets an upward-facing cat. Photograph by Cory Richards, National Geographic
Many cats and their human companions seem to develop a pidgin
language in order to communicate better. We don’t know whether there are
similarities in the languages or whether they're specific to a
cat/human pair.
How do people talk to cats or their pets differently from other humans?
People seem to use a similar speaking style when they talk to cats
and when they talk to small children. They use a higher-than-average
pitch, they have a larger pitch range, and the melody of their speech
tends to have specific patterns, such as what’s described as
“sing-song.” (Watch a video on why cats are so secretive.)
What types of information are you gathering in this study?
We are recording people and cats in two different regions of Sweden.
In one study, we want to analyze the melody in the cat vocalizations, to
see if we can find these patterns in different emotions or in different
breeds. In the second study, we want to expose cats to different kinds
of human speech and see how they respond. Do they prefer to be spoken to
like small children, or do they prefer to be spoken to as an adult? And
can they recognize a familiar voice based on intonation and speaking
style? We don’t know that yet.
How can you measure what type of voice a cat would prefer? What type of information are you looking for?
We will record different speaking styles from a number of humans.
Then, we will go to the cat’s home and place loudspeakers behind a
screen. We will play back different melodies and human speaking voices
and videotape the cats to see their responses. We will look at ear
movements, head movements, body posture, and things like that. (See National Geographic readers' pictures of cats.)
What do you hope to gain from this study?
If most cats use similar melodies to say, “I’m slightly hungry, I
would like a snack now,” and they also use similar melodies to say, “I’m
really hungry, I’m starving,” we can begin to try to understand what
they’re saying.
Maybe certain breeds will use certain melodies, or cats living in
countries where human speech has certain melodic patterns will vocalize
differently. If we can find that cats adopt these melodies, we may be
able to help cat owners interpret these signals better.
Iberian lynxes are smaller than European lynxes and are not dangerous to humans Reuters/Victor Fraile
Lynxes may be reintroduced to the UK after breeding
programmes elsewhere in Europe have succeeded in saving the big cats
from extinction.
The numbers of Iberian lynx, which historically lived in Portugal and
Spain, have tripled over just 15 years following programmes which
sought to reverse the effects of forest destruction in those countries.
From fewer than 100 cats and only 25 breeding females in early 2002,
numbers had increased to some 400 cats, mostly in southern Spain, by the
end of last year, according to the BBC.
There were also smaller new populations of the cats in the hills near Toledo in south western Spain and in southern Portugal.
Now the Lynx UK Trust
is hoping to return the Iberian lynx, which is smaller and has darker
spots than the European lynx, for the first time in more than 1,000
years.
The organisation is applying for licences to release cats brought
over from Romania at unfenced sites in Cumbria, Norfolk, Northumberland,
Argyll and Aberdeenshire for a five year trial period.
An Iberian lynx runs after being released in Villafranca de Cordoba in Spain (Reuters/Marcelo Del Pozo)
Dr Paul O'Donoghue, adviser to the International Union for
Conservation of Nature cat specialist group, said the plans were
"incredibly exciting."
"The Iberian lynx project has been incredibly successful and we hope to emulate that in the UK," he told the BBC.
But farmers have expressed concern in the past at the threat the lynx could pose to livestock and grouse.
A spokesman for the National Farmers' Union told the International Business Times: "We believe budgets are better focused on developing existing biodiversity."
Yet supporters of the project have said that lynxes will aid other
conservation projects by keeping rabbit and deer numbers under control.
The Iberian lynx mostly eats rabbits, unlike the European lynx.
Although they are as big as a large dog and have sharp claws and teeth,
they are not a threat to humans.
Its
numbers in southern Europe steadily dropped over the last two
centuries when rabbits became diseased and cork forests, the cat's
traditional habitat, began to be cut down.
Hunting and intensive agriculture in Britain during the medieval
period, meanwhile, saw the European lynx disappear far sooner from the
UK at about 1,000 years ago.
There is nothing quite like watching an African serval stalk its prey
across the grasslands. The cats are sleek, supple and sexy, and they’re
also important hunters of rodents and ground birds in many habitats
across sub-Saharan Africa.
But the two serval brothers who arrived at the Free Me Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre late
in 2015 were nothing like those impressive predators. Nervous, hissing
and barely weighing a kilogram, the small fluffy bundles had been
orphaned at just five weeks. The centre's manager, Roz Marais, knew
these badass little cats had a long road ahead of them before they could
prowl the grasslands.
By the time I travelled to visit the brothers in October, in the
small town of Howick in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal, they had grown
larger and healthier, and were enjoying a diet of day-old chicks.
Fascinated by the story, I knew their journey from rescue to release
would make a great documentary pitch. But as a scientist with a
background of working with big cats (particularly leopards), I also knew
that returning such animals into the wild generally doesn't end well –
both for the cats and sometimes for the people living nearby.
Releases often fail because the rescued cats have been hand-reared,
and have imprinted on people. Once reintroduced into the wild, the
animals go on to attack livestock, and are also frequently killed by
other big cats living in the area. But there are exceptions to these
scenarios, and something told me Free Me's servals might be among them.
Dr
Tharmalingam Ramesh, one of the world's leading serval experts, has
collared and released a number of these cats in the past. Image:
Esmaella R. Bourret
I drew some of my optimism from a local research and collaring project spearheaded by Dr Tharmalingam Ramesh from the nearby University of KwaZulu-Natal. The
study had seen other orphaned servals released into the wild over the
previous two years, and Dr Ramesh had obtained three months' of tracking
data before the cats dispersed out of range.
His findings showed the servals moved around a lot during their first
months of freedom, suggesting they might at least be hunting for
themselves – but also pointing to the possibility that other servals in
the area were pushing the new arrivals out of their territory. The
yardstick for any successful wildlife release is whether the animals
find a place to call home, and if they manage to breed – and Dr Ramesh’s
data pointed to some uncertainty on both counts.
Scuffles with rivals aside, wild servals face a number of other
serious threats, including snaring by poachers for the fur and
traditional medicine trades, as well as the risk of collisions with
vehicles on the roads. And yet despite all of these hazards, it seemed
to me that these young cats deserved a chance at life beyond captivity.
When I filmed the brothers in their enclosure just two weeks before
the release, they seemed more than ready to pounce at the challenge.
With their incredible physical adaptations, the agile animals
look almost like a cross between a cheetah and a giraffe (thanks to
those long necks, they’re sometimes called "giraffe cats"!). As the
brothers played, we also got to see their vertical jumps in action – not
only are they the world's second-fastest cats (topping 45mph!), but
servals can also jump about ten feet into the air (which comes in pretty
handy when hunting birds like guinea fowl).
Unfortunately, by the morning of the January release, limited funds
meant only one tracking collar was available (at US$800 each, they're a
pricey purchase), so a decision was made to release just one of the
brothers for the time being.
The
serval with his tracking collar fitted. The lightweight device is
designed to fall off after about a year. Image: Matt Myhill
Veterinarian
Dr Dave Gibbs administers a tranquilliser antidote as the team prepares
to release one of the serval brothers. Image: Matt Myhill
Once immobilised with a tranquiliser dart, the chosen cat was fitted
with the lightweight tracking device (which is programmed to drop off at
the end of its battery life), and bundled into a carrier for his
one-way trip into the wilderness. The week before, Dr Ramesh had been
hard at work locating the perfect site for the release, one with plenty
of grassland and wetland cover.
Just a short drive later, the crate's doors were opened ... and, at
first, the groggy passenger wasn’t too keen on leaving the comfort of
his straw-filled shelter. But it took only a bit of coaxing before he
bolted out towards the safety of a big acacia bush – so quickly that we
could barely capture the moment (even with a high-speed camera)!
Seeing the serval dart for freedom was incredibly rewarding, and
although his journey in the next few weeks will be a tough one – he’ll
have to hunt his own food and deal with any rivals in the area – he’ll
be monitored closely. The fact that Free Me's other releases survived
their first three months in the wild bodes well for this new cat on the
block. And whatever happens, this serval's second chance was well
deserved.
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Top header image: Alex Braczkowski
Alexander Braczkowski
Alexander Braczkowski is a doctoral
researcher at the University of Queensland, Australia. He is presently
examining financial mechanisms for the conservation of large carnivores
in Africa.
The park celebrated Hector, Harley and Hope’s landmark occasion with the release of adorable video showing how much they’ve grown over the past 12 months:
The footage shows their transformation from helpless
newborns entirely dependent on their mom, Tschuna, into fearsome, big
cats, who prowl and play fight as if they’re going in for the kill.
The park posted the video to YouTube and Facebook
on Tuesday with the message, “Happy 1st birthday to our very special
(not so little anymore) tiger cubs, Harley, Hector and Hope!”
The tigers have since been a great hit with visitors since their March 2015 birth, as “they are always up to mischief,” the park said on its website.
The cubs live at the park with their mom and dad, Vladimir, and another tiger called Sayan.
It’s believed there are only around 540 of the endangered big cats, also known as Siberian tigers, living in the wild in their native forests of the Russian Far East.
They are at risk from poachers,
the illegal wildlife trade and loss of habitat from illegal logging,
according to the conservation nonprofit World Wildlife Fund for Nature.
Lioness on alert at dawn (Panthera leo), Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya
In late December last year, the African lion received a
special gift from the U.S. government. Over the past few years,
non-profit groups, the national and international public, and the U.S.
Fish & Wildlife Service itself, have been rallying the government to
protect lions under the Endangered Species Act. And just in time for
Christmas last year, the king of cats got its name on the Act. But what
does the listing really mean for lion conservation? In this blog we
explore what an endangered listing on a U.S. document really means for
an African species.
By Deirdre Leowinata
In the Chinese zodiac, 2015 was the year of the sheep. However, the
illegal hunting of Cecil the lion, the Kenyan Marsh pride poisonings,
and other highly publicized lion poaching incidents of 2015 made last
year the year of the lion in the media. And as if by magic, a present
came at the end of the year in the form of a “Threatened” listing for the African lion on the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA).
The Endangered Species Act of 1973, under the leadership of Richard
Nixon, was a defining point in U.S. and global environmental protection.
It made incredible leaps over the Endangered Species Conservation Act
of 1969 and the original Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966. It
not only recognized the value of species for education, research, and
recreation, but also included species’ habitats under its umbrella of
protection. In the original act, hunting and trading were not regulated
at all. In less than 50 years, we have come a very long way in our
policies for protecting wildlife. But we also live in an age where
endangered species are disappearing faster than we can save them —
scientists are calling it the sixth mass extinction. Conservation
projects like our Northern Tanzania Big Cats Conservation Initiative
have been working tirelessly to make sure that lions have a fighting
chance as human and environmental changes put pressure on the remaining
populations. However, lion numbers have declined by about 50% in the
past 30 years, and the majority of the remaining populations are spread
over only 10 regions in South and East Africa.
In 2011, five groups — the International Fund for Animal Welfare
(IFAW), Born Free, Defenders of Wildlife, the Humane Society of the
United States, and the Humane Society International petitioned the U.S.
government for a listing for lions in the ESA. The petition prompted a
formal review of the subspecies. In 2014, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service officially proposed
ESA protection for lions after announcing that African lions were under
threat of extinction by 2050. In December 2015, the landmark
announcement was made: The African lion was under the protection of the
ESA.
Internationally, the lion is already listed as “Vulnerable” under the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN 2015) Red
List of Threatened Species.
So what does an American listing mean for lions? Wild lions don’t
roam the United States, so how does a listing for a species in another
country help?
Hunting Permits
The largest win for the ESA listing is arguably the effects of a
section of the act that affects sport hunting imports. Regulations for
importing trophies ensure they come from countries with sound management
plans and sustainable lion populations, with penalties for those who do
not follow the rules. This not only ensures that U.S. trophy seekers
hunt from viable populations, but also incentivizes countries that rely
on sport hunting to maintain population management standards. It is also
up to the hunter to demonstrate that all of these standards have been
met, and that requirement alone might slow down the number of permits
processed.
International Trade
The U.S. is currently the world’s largest lion trophy importer, with
24 countries in Africa participating in the lion trade. Closely related
to the hunting permit provisions, controlling what can be imported will
have a strong impact on the number of lion products (including trophies)
that are crossing the border and the integrity of their source
countries. Because of the ESA provisions for sustainable management as
mentioned above, the listing will ensure that American importers or
international exporters are doing so in a way that will not impair lion
populations.
Provision of Assistance for Conservation Efforts
Under ESA protection, lions and the programs that protect them will
gain access to more financial assistance, as well as more help on the
ground. This part of the Act is vague, but because of the ESA mandate to
protect critical habitat of listed species, conservation groups may be
able to levy this for government funding. In the very least, it
increases the funding potential for environmental non-profits, which
often struggle to make small budgets stretch across programs.
Symbolism
Like a handshake shared between two leaders, a gesture can send a
very powerful message. By shielding lions under the proverbial wing, the
U.S. is sending a message of solidarity to lion conservation groups and
the rest of the world. Aside from the ways in which this document will
aid in conservation funding and other assistance, a vote of support from
the government can do a world of good in other ways.
At the African People & Wildlife Fund, we have committed to help
conserve Tanzania’s lion populations through community-based projects,
educating local people about the importance of the species, and
continuing to work on projects like our Living Walls
to prevent retaliatory lion killings, which the IUCN suggests is an
even greater threat to lions than sport hunting. With your help, we are
expanding our initiatives across rural communities in Northern Tanzania
where most of these killings take place. Tanzania may be one of the last
lion strongholds on Earth right now. Together with you and the new
support of the ESA, we are extremely hopeful that we can help protect
the lion populations of Tanzania so they can grow and thrive in Africa
once more.
Echoing the words of hope from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
director Dan Ashe, this is an opportunity for change, and it is up to
all of us to help save these big cats.
If you would like to contribute to our growing efforts to protect big
cats on the ground in Tanzania, please visit our donation page here.
Neko Atsume's latest update is a treat for cat collecting lovers. Neko Atsume
Thu, 03/24/2016
By Zulai Serrano
Neko Atsume
lovers will be obsessed with the game’s latest update. The kitty
collecting game has given us four new cats, two normal and two rare, a
bunch of adorable new items and a sweet remodel.
First, let’s
discuss the new cats. If you purchase the Fairy Tail Parasol, you’ll
likely get a visit from Jeeves and Sapphire. Jeeves is a butler cat with
a bowtie and a monocle. Sapphire is a classy southern belle. WE
LITERALLY CAN’T EVEN. Then there’s Ganache, a chocolate-colored kitty
that fits in perfectly with the new “Sugary Style” remodel. We haven’t
spotted the second “normal” cat, but let us know in the comments section
below if you have.
If new cats wasn’t exciting enough, you can
now purchase phone wallpapers for just 20 goldfish each. You unlock the
wallpapers once a cat visits you. Not that you need the wallpaper to
prove your obsession with Neko Atsume; your friends are
probably annoyed with how much you bring up the app. Check out the list
below for all the new cat toys and how much they’ll cost.
UPDATE: THE FOURTH CAT'S NAME IS APRICOT! He's an orange and tan tabby.
While many big cats like tigers and mountain lions live in
protected reserves and refuges, important wildlife corridors still exist
in human-dominated areas. And if humans want to keep those wild cat
populations intact, they’ll need to find more effective ways to share
the landscape — particularly as cities and other human developments
relentlessly expand.
A recent study looking at how tigers use landscapes that are also
used by humans suggests that we could make use of the natural activity
patterns of the big cats as a key conservation tool.
A
camera trap reveals that a tiger and a woman collecting wood used the
same forest in northern India, but at different times of day. Visual: Pranav Chanchani
In an analysis published
in the journal Conservation Biology, researchers at Colorado State
University found that tigers, most active during dusk and dawn, take
shifts with the people living nearby. In the Central Terai region of
India, near the country’s northern border with Nepal, land managers
maintain tall grasses and wetlands for tigers to shelter in during the
day, freeing up forests for human use.
When night falls, human access to
the forest is restricted, allowing the tigers to roam freely.
Using camera traps to monitor trails and carrying out surveys on
foot, the researchers found that forests used for logging support
tiger populations that are similar in size to those living in protected
areas set aside for large mammal conservation. Close to 3.3 million
people live in villages just three miles from the tigers’ primary
ranges. “Their habitats are embedded in some of the most densely populated
areas on earth,” says Pranav Chanchani, the lead author of the study.
The authors were critical of an earlier study published
in 2012, which received wide media coverage, for “conflating
‘co-occurrence’ with ‘coexistence.'” They argued that the sites that
study surveyed in Nepal’s Chitwan National Forest do not represent an
area of high human disturbance, and that in any case, the fact that
tigers and humans were sharing a landscape at different times of day
does not imply the tigers are altering their behavior, as the earlier
study suggested.
Rather, Chanchani and his colleagues argue that keeping tiger
behavior and activity patterns in mind when managing mixed-use areas —
many of which contain or connect to natural wildlife corridors —provides
a more comprehensive conservation strategy for big cats, even when
humans are heavily present. “Our data reveal that tigers and humans can and do share landscapes.
[However], there appear to be sharp thresholds of human use, beyond
which tigers are precluded from an area,” he says.
Chanchani notes that the area where the study was conducted wasn’t
conflict free. A single male tiger killed over 10 people from 2009 to
2010. Still, the findings suggest that humans and big cats can share habitats successfully — albeit within limits. According to the World Wildlife Fund,
the global population of wild tigers has decreased by 97 percent over
the last century. The organization estimates that as few as 3,200 of the
animals exist today.
Even so, Chanchani says tolerance for tigers in India is higher than
tolerance for mountain lions (also known as cougars, or pumas) in North
America — even though, in the U.S. the species “do not pose a credible
threat to humans.”
Seth Riley, a wildlife ecologist for the U.S. National Park Service,
says his experience suggests that mountain lions and humans can coexist
here, too. Near Los Angeles, millions of people live near mountain
lions, he noted. And in over 16 years of working in the area, Riley says
most people seemed to have positive attitudes about living near
wildlife.
One mountain lion in particular has become famous for living in Griffith Park, in the middle of LA. The adult male cat, named P22, has his own Twitter and Facebook
pages. He’s lived there for four years, hunting the park’s deer for
food. However, most mountain lions in the region depend on protected
areas.
Luke Hunter, president and chief conservation officer of Panthera,
a nonprofit that is the only organization to focus exclusively on
global big cat conservation, says that while we shouldn’t ignore
multi-use areas, “the absolute backbone of any conservation plan for the
tiger has to include these very well-protected national parks and
wildlife reserves and refuges.”
Hunter was intrigued by the study’s finding that tigers had higher
occupancy in multi-use areas than some protected areas. But occupancy — a
broad measure of habitat use — is not the same as estimating the true
number of big cats in a landscape. He says it’s possible that occupancy
was lower in some protected areas because these tiger refuges act as
obvious targets for poachers. In contrast, the presence of people in
multi-use areas could have deterred poaching.
In that light, which habitat really supported higher numbers in the Central Terai landscape would seem to be unclear.
Still, Hunter said the study provided some interesting insights.
“I think it raises a really important issue that would be worth looking
at much more closely,” he said.
Dr Paul O'Donoghue, adviser to the International Union for
Conservation of Nature cat specialist group, said the plans were
"incredibly exciting."
