Angelqiue Todd and Bai Hokou on ABC news

From ABCnews.com
In the Jungle With the Gorilla Whisperer
Angelique Todd Has Spent 10 Years Habituating Rare Western Lowland Gorillas
By DAN HARRIS, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC, May 4, 2009

TO WATCH THE VIDEO CLICK HERE

When sneaking up on a silverback gorilla, you want to be quiet and careful.

That's a lesson I learned here in the jungle of the Central African Republic from Angelique Todd, who spends nearly every day of her life with a family of gorillas.

On one particular morning, we were just a few feet from a roughly 500-pound, six-foot-long wild animal, who was alternately daydreaming and nodding off.

"He's sleeping," said Todd. "[The silverback] is the dominant male. So the male gorillas develop this huge size. They're almost double the size of the females."

The silverback in question, named Mikumba, is the head of a family of 11 gorillas.

"So this is one of the infants that we haven't seen yet," said Todd, pointing to a baby gorilla. "He's 2-and-a-half. He spends nearly all his time with his dad."

Todd is something of a modern day Dian Fossey, the American scientist who studied gorillas in Africa and was the inspiration for the movie "Gorillas in the Mist."

But the family of gorillas Todd follows aren't mountain gorillas, the type Fossey studied. They're western lowland gorillas, an animal very few people have ever gotten very close to. Adult males are called silverbacks because their hair turns grey with age.

"For years, all I ever saw was them running away," said Todd. "I didn't see anything at all. Three years. So, whenever I come see them, I'm just so grateful to them for accepting us."

Over many years, Todd -- a researcher with the World Wildlife Fund -- and a team of local Pygmie guides in the Central African Republic have "habituated" the gorillas to human contact.

There is no other place on Earth where you can see the silverback gorilla up close in the wild. It was a difficult, dangerous job, which Todd says involved daily rejection by the gorillas.

"Yes, every day being screamed at," she recalled. "Or being charged and just having to take it and then just moving on. It can be really scary... they can kill you, basically. If you make one charge, for example, if you look too frightened, you never know if he's actually gonna grab you, but you just have to stand there, even though you're really, really scared."

When Mikumba finally roused himself, it became clear why it would be so terrifying to be charged by a silverback gorilla.

"Nightline" spent a day following as the family of gorillas made its way through the jungle, eating as they went.

"So, silverbacks do a lot of stopping and listening so the females go out ahead... and he stays waiting behind, just listening," explained Todd.

While the family moved forward, the silverback loomed in the back, watching over everyone and listening intently for any signs of danger.

Todd and the Pygmies were constantly cooing and clucking, sounds they've used for years to let the gorillas know they're there and harmless.

While filming, something happened that surprised even Todd. Normally the gorillas can only be seen in heavily wooded areas, but suddenly they entered a clearing, where they could be seen in all their glory.

"Oh, Mubenge!" Todd explained excitedly, recognizing one of the gorillas. Even after nine years of following this family, she says it's thrilling each time the gorilla emerges, especially when the silverback Mikumba arrives.

"Here he comes!" she exclaimed. With a rare clear view, there really was a sense of what a majestic beast he is, with a chest that looks armor-plated and forearms that seem the size of car doors.

Even while enjoying a lazy lunch, Mubenge looked like King Kong.

"I worked with captive gorillas for a long time but I would never imagine that I'd be walking around and that we'd have successfully habituated a group of gorillas just to the point that they have no problem with us," said Todd. "I think it's hard for you to imagine how aggressive they can be. If that male wants to go for us now, he's got huge teeth and he's extremely strong and he could just kill you."

Todd knows that firsthand, as she has had to pay a price for her dedication to animals.

"I was attacked by a chimpanzee, eaten by a chimpanzee, 15 years ago in a zoo," she recalled. "There was a hole in the cage, the chimpanzee managed to ... grab my arm out and bring it into [the] cage and bit my thumb and finger off, nearly half of my arm. I'm actually really lucky I kept my arm. And the annoying thing was even though he ate my finger and my thumb he kind of spat them out. I brought them to the hospital and they couldn't put them back on."

Her personal life has also suffered from spending the better part of 10 years in the forest.

"You don't [have a personal life]," she said. "You make huge sacrifices in your life to be in the forest with the gorillas. Once you go down that direction it's tough to turn back and you just hope that someone will turn up. Who knows what will happen. Well, certainly while Mikumba's around, I'll still be here."

While Todd feels safe with the gorillas, she does always have to be on guard for elephants -- possibly the craftiest, most aggressive animal of the jungle. Adult elephants, ever protective of their babies, have attacked Todd and the gorillas before.

An even bigger danger to the gorillas, however, is man.

"If they get the chance, yes, they will eat the gorillas," Todd said of the locals. "And apparently, it's very tasty meat, but I couldn't possibly try it. For people's attitudes here, they're just animals. They don't see that they're sentient beings. They're just meat."

One of the benefits of habituating gorillas is that local people get to spend more time with them and see how near-human they are. Todd's program employs 60 people in the impoverished nation.

However, habituation is controversial because it can make gorillas too trusting and, therefore, more vulnerable to poachers. Bringing tourists in, as Todd sometimes does, can also expose the animals to human diseases.

"I think it's worth the risk," she said. "I really do."

Worth the risk because it gives researchers a chance to study a species that many fear will no longer be with us in 50 years, a species to which Angelique Todd has dedicated her life.

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

HOME

From the HOME project's youtube channel:
HOME is a feature film directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand and co-produced by EuropaCorp (Luc Besson's studio) and Elzévir Films and supported by PPR.

HOME is composed of aerial images embracing the major ecological issues while saying that a solution exists.

HOME will be released on June 5th 2009 all over the globe on every format. The aim is to reach the widest audience and to convince us all of our individual and collective responsibility towards the planet.

On June 5th we all have a date with the planet !

Website: http://www.home-2009.com

English trailer:


French trailer:

Moscow's stray dogs well adapted to Russian metropolitain life

In Moscow's Metro, a Stray Dog's Life Is Pretty Cushy, and Zoologists Notice
By MARK SCHOOFS
From The Wall street Journal online

MOSCOW -- Like human commuters, this city's stray dogs can often be spotted traveling on the subway, waiting patiently for a train to pull in and its doors to slide open.

In Soviet times, dogs were barred from Moscow's metro. Today, however, they are so common there -- curling up on empty seats, nuzzling their neighbors, lounging in stations -- that there is even a Web site devoted to them: www.metrodog.ru.

A tiny group of zoologists study Moscow's stray dogs and how they're adapting to a rapidly changing city. Among them is Alexei Vereshchagin. He set out to study wolves -- "such a romantic creature," he says -- but as science funding crumbled with the Soviet government, he couldn't.

WSJ's Mark Schoofs on why stray dogs are everywhere in Moscow, having adapted to the construction boom and learning to share space with humans. Also, zoologist Alexei Vereshchagin on these dogs' behaviors.

So the 31-year-old, rust-bearded Mr. Vereshchagin started studying strays instead, and loved it. "The behavior of stray dogs is like theater," he says.

As the number of cars in Moscow has exploded, and their speed increased from the days of Soviet clunkers, strays have learned to cross the street with pedestrians. They can also be seen occasionally waiting for a green light. (Dogs are colorblind, so researchers theorize they recognize the shape or position of the walking-man signal.)

Back in the lean Soviet era, restaurants and the now-ubiquitous fast-food kiosks were scarce, so dogs were less likely to beg and more likely to forage through garbage, the zoologists say. Foraging dogs prospered best in the vast industrial zones of Moscow, where they lived a semiferal existence. Because they mainly relied on people to throw out food, and less on handouts, they kept their distance from humans.

Now, old factories are being transformed into shopping centers and apartment blocks, so strays have become more avid and skillful beggars. They have developed innovative strategies, zoologists say, such as a come-from-behind ambush technique: A big dog pads up silently behind a man eating on the street and barks. The startled man drops his food. The dog eats it.

Key is the ability to determine which humans are most likely to be startled enough to drop their food. Strays have become master psychologists, says Andrei Poyarkov, 54, the dean of Moscow's stray-dog researchers. "The dogs know Muscovites better than Muscovites know the dogs."
Comfort in Crowds

Perhaps the biggest change, according to Mr. Vereshchagin, a protégé of Mr. Poyarkov, is that strays today hardly need to do anything to get food. One of their chief tactics, made possible by their increasing comfort in crowds, is simply to lie in a busy subway passage, where thousands of people pass by, and wait for someone to toss them something. The dogs get fed without even having to go to the trouble of nuzzling a leg.

Moscow today provides an environment of "unlimited resources," says Mr. Vereshchagin.

Mr. Vereshchagin strolls through a market area near a metro station, pointing out that even though there are now more strays than ever in Moscow, the dogs don't have a lean and hungry look. The leader of this area's dog pack, whose coat is dirty-white with black patches, rises from a nap, stretches lazily, and lopes off to a butcher shop. He stands outside for just a few seconds before a meaty bone is tossed at his feet. He carries it off, but just nibbles at it.

In fact, many dogs ignore discarded morsels, because the animals are so sated they can afford to be finicky, says Mr. Vereshchagin.

Unlike the strays he studies, Mr. Vereshchagin can't be so picky. The city has provided funding only for sporadic dog censuses, the last one in 2006, which estimated the population of stray dogs at about 26,000. So Mr. Vereshchagin, who has yet to finish his thesis, makes ends meet by training people's pets and working as a part-time paramedic.

Adaptations by individual dogs have added up to a dramatic shift in canine culture. Begging is a submissive activity, so today there are fewer all-out interpack wars, which sometimes used to last for months, according to Mr. Poyarkov. Within packs there are more stable social hierarchies that allow the whole group to prosper.

Still, there are occasional attacks on human beings, like one in April in which a 55-year-old man was killed by a pack of strays living in a rambling and overgrown park. Mr. Vereshchagin says he doesn't have firsthand information about this attack, but says that dogs living in forested areas aren't as familiar with people and are more likely to aggressively defend their territory.
Reignited Controversy

The death has reignited a controversy. Even while the city has allocated the equivalent of $63 million mainly to build animal shelters and carry out related programs, some people are calling for a return to the Soviet practice of culling strays.

Still, many Muscovites appear to enjoy, or at least tolerate, the dog population. The vast majority of homeless dogs go out of their way to avoid antagonizing people, says Mr. Vereshchagin. Even pooping in the metro is rare, he says.

Many Muscovites feed the strays and build simple winter shelters for them. Older people particularly seek companionship in Russia's new capitalist economy, which can be ruthlessly dog-eat-dog.

And strays form part of the city's character. When a disturbed fashion model several years ago stabbed to death a gentle stray that lived at the Mendeleyevskaya metro station, horrified celebrities and ordinary city residents raised money and erected a bronze statue of the dog, Malchik. One of novelist Mikhail Bulgakov's most beloved stories, "Heart of a Dog," features a stray named Sharik who takes human form as a slovenly proletarian.

Moscow has done almost as much adapting to the new culture of dogs as the dogs have done. A strong animal-rights lobby is part of that. Ilya Bluvstein, leader of Fauna, an animal-defense organization affiliated with Russia's Green Party, warns of potential corruption in the city's proposed shelter program. Groups that win the contracts, he fears, will take money to house dogs but actually kill them to cut expenses and fatten profits.

Meanwhile, in a metro station, three dogs nap. One of them rises, wanders a few steps to some discarded potatoes, sniffs, nibbles, then goes back to sleep. There will be more and better food later.

Write to Mark Schoofs at mark.schoofs@wsj.com
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1

Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno Season 2

Watch all of seasons 1 & 2 here!

Nerd music: GTCA video

MEAT FOR SEX

FROM Geekologie via BBC:

"In a move that proves that chimps have created a much awesomer society than we have, researchers have discovered that males will trade meat to females in return for regular sexy times. And apparently the NOMs for PEWs exchange program is completely legit in their advanced legal system!

This is a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are.

"What's amazing is that if a male shares with a particular female, he doubles the number of times he copulates with her, which is likely to increase the probability of fertilising that female."

Yow yow! Is all this Animal Planet talk making anyone else in here steamy? I swear, meat for sex, that's even better than a handful of $20's! Now, where can I rent a monkey suit this far from Halloween? Also, hot wings. I'm gonna need hot wings."

Original Paper from Cristina Gomes and Christophe Boesch from the MPI-EVA published in PLoS ONE:Gomes CM, Boesch C (2009) Wild Chimpanzees Exchange Meat for Sex on a Long-Term Basis. PLoS ONE 4(4): e5116. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005116

Update from Northern DRC

Check out Cleve Hicks' report on his work with the chimpanzees from Bili, Aketi and surrounding areas in Northern DRC on the Wasmoeth Wildlife website. There are three e-books (around 50 pages each) of amazing images and heart wrenching details about the bushmeat crisis and mining activities in Northern DRC. Cleve has included information about the chimp surveys he has been conducting and the orphan chimpanzees that he has been confiscating (when he can), as well as many other aspects of his work in the area.
Despite the seemingly large number of chimps in Norther DRC, Wasmoeth Wildlife is the only NGO working there, so I encourage you to support them and Cleve by visiting their site.

Part 2 can be found here
Part 3 can be found here