American arrested for stealing 299 stuffed birds

by Sean McLachlan on

Here’s a new low in the annals of crime. An American man has been arrested in England for stealing 299 stuffed birds from the Natural History Museum in Tring, Hertfordshire, England.

The unnamed 22 year-old has been arrested in connection with a break in at the museum back in June. The birds that were stolen were all rare and would have fetched a fair amount on the black market, showing that the unnamed suspect knew what he was doing. Most of the stuffed birds have now been recovered.

The Natural History Museum at Tring is famous for its collection of more than 750,000 preserved birds, 95% of all the world’s species. If you’re not in the neighborhood, you can still check out their species of the day, a feature running throughout 2010 in celebration of the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity. Today’s species is the Welwitschia mirabilis, a plant that can live for up to 1,500 years despite living in the harsh Namib Desert.

This seems to be a mixed year for museums. Hundreds of historic treasures have gone missing in Pennsylvania and the Met had to fork over some stolen Egyptian artifacts.

On the bright side, museum attendance is up as people try to save money by visiting sights close to home. Hopefully none of these folks are stuffing dead critters into their coats.

[Photo courtesy Sarah Hartwell]

One in five vertebrates face extinction

by Sean McLachlan on


The bad news: One in five vertebrates could go extinct within our lifetime, and the number may rise even higher than that.

The good news: It would be a lot worse if it weren’t for conservation efforts.

That’s the verdict of a global study of 25,000 threatened vertebrate species presented to the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, in Nagoya, Japan. It found mammals, amphibians, and birds are especially hard hit, with fifty species a day sliding closer to extinction. The main culprits are logging, agriculture, hunting, and alien species.

Yet conservation efforts are saving some animals. The white rhino, like the ones pictured above, was almost extinct a hundred years ago but is now the most common rhino in Africa and its status has been upped to Near Threatened, meaning that while it still needs to be watched, it’s not in any immediate danger. Here’s where ecotourism comes in handy. For example, Niger is hoping to cash in on safari tours by helping a unique subspecies of giraffe, bringing the population from fifty to two hundred in just a decade. Countries where the white rhinos roam are also pushing ecotourism and safaris.

Another success story is the giant marine reserve created in the South Pacific a few years back. This 73,800 square-mile reserve is one of the world’s largest and was created by Kiribati, one of the world’s smallest countries. If tiny island nations and poverty-ridden countries can help out their animals, one has to wonder why any species in the First World are threatened at all. Major food sources like tuna face extinction and even mythical beasts like the Loch Ness Monster may be extinct. When even our legends are dying out, you know we’re in trouble.

[Photo courtesy Joachim Huber]

Using slime mould to improve transportation

by Sean McLachlan on

“What idiot designed this highway?”

I’ve asked myself this question on more than one road trip. Sometimes the most straightforward journey can be slowed down thanks to bad highway planning. Now it turns out that slime mould may be an efficient designer of transportation routes. Slime mould resembles a giant amoeba that sends out networks of tubes to grab food from distant locations. Scientists have long known that slime moulds always pick the best route, so they wondered if this fact could be applied to human transportation.

In a recent experiment, Andy Adamatsky of the University of the West of England put a map of Mexico in a Petrie dish. He put a bit of slime mould where Mexico City is, and marked out Mexico’s other cities with oat flakes, a tasty treat loved by slime moulds everywhere. In this amazing timelapse video you can see how the slime mould grows its tubes and basically recreates Mexico’s transport network. He’s also done this with England’s road network and a different team tried it out on Tokyo’s subway system. Adamatsky hopes that in the future, transportation officials will use slime mould to help them in their planning. Feel free to make jokes about politicians and slime mould in the comments section.

[Photo courtesy Dr. Jonatha Gott and the Center for RNA Molecular Biology, Case Western Reserve University]

New World Heritage Site for Malaysia?

by Sean McLachlan on

A cave that sheltered early humans in Malaysia more than 40,000 years ago is being proposed as a new World Heritage Site.

Niah Caves are several large limestone caves that have attracted archaeological interest since the 1950s. Excavations have turned up the earliest human remains in eastern Malaysia, as well as artifacts from various periods from early prehistory down through the Iron Age. One cave has paintings of mysterious “coffin ships” dating back 1,200 years. This long period of habitation makes the caves especially interesting to archaeologists because they can see how lifestyles and culture changed over time. The caves are part of Niah National Park.

Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud plans to propose the caves to UNESCO for their World Heritage List. The caves and park are already a popular tourist attraction, and getting the caves listed as a World Heritage Site would add to their appeal as well as attract conservation funding.

Mulu Caves on Borneo are already a UNESCO World Heritage Site and are famous for having the largest cave chamber in the world, measuring 600m (1,969ft) by 415m (1,362ft) and 80m (262ft) high.

The minister also wants to bring the remains found in the caves by foreign expeditions back into the country and wants to build special facilities at Sarawak Museum to take care of them. Malaysia was able to get some artifacts from another site back from Cambridge University in 2008, part of a growing trend of developing nations demanding their heritage back from Western institutions.

[Photo courtesy Dave Bunnell via Wikimedia Commons]

Archaeologists solve mystery of Silbury Hill (maybe)

by Sean McLachlan on


It is one of England’s most mysterious monuments. Just a short walk from the massive stone circle complex of Avebury, Silbury Hill is a giant, flat-topped mound rising 120 feet above the surrounding countryside. Researchers have proposed dozens of theories over the years to explain its purpose, suggesting everything from a giant burial mound to a platform for religious music.

Now new research by English Heritage has revealed that Silbury Hill was constructed relatively quickly–in about hundred years–and finished around 2300 B.C. Previous researchers thought the mound took centuries to build. Archaeologists Jim Leary and David Field dug a cross-section tunnel into it in 2007 and found it was made up of 15 layers. The monument started as a circular ditch and embankment but soon grew into a giant hill. The researchers suggest that there was no final plan, no purpose. It was the building of it that mattered, the bringing together of various groups for the common purpose of a “continuous storytelling ritual”.

“Our Neolithic ancestors display an almost obsessive desire to constantly change the monument – to rearrange, tweak and adjust it. It’s as if the final form of the Hill did not matter – it was the construction process that was important,” Leary said.

“The most intriguing discovery is the repeated occurrence of antler picks, gravel, chalk and stones in different kinds of layering, in ways that suggest that these materials and their different combinations had symbolic meanings. We don’t know what myths they were representing but they must have meant something quite compelling and personal,” he said.

Leary and Field’s new book, The Story of Silbury Hill, explains their findings.

Of course archaeology isn’t a hard science, and this theory will be debated for years to come. Future excavations may refine or even overturn what Leary and Field have found. Silbury HIll hasn’t given up all its mysteries.

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