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FLORA AND FAUNA
Microscopic lense captures first ever video of a jellyfish sting
by Matt Bradwell
Townsville, Australia (UPI) Aug 18, 2014


View the video here.Endangered Nicaragua turtles lay eggs under army guard
Managua (AFP) Aug 18, 2014 - Some 2,500 endangered sea turtles have made their annual descent on Nicaragua's Pacific coast to nest, protected by soldiers deployed to stop locals from stealing their eggs, the army said Monday.

The first 1,400 Olive Ridley turtles arrived to nest Thursday at the Chacocente Wildlife Refuge on the Central American country's southern coast, regional military commander Jose Larios told the Nuevo Diario newspaper.

They were followed by hundreds more on Friday and Saturday, said Larios, whose troops are guarding a 1,500-meter (one-mile) stretch of beach where the turtles lay their eggs.

Some 120,000 sea turtles of several species lay their eggs each year on the beaches of Chacocente and the nearby La Flor refuge.

The army has been deployed to protect them since 1992, fending off poachers who sell or eat the eggs.

Turtle eggs fetch $1 a dozen for local poachers, but a plate of three costs about $12 in restaurants that sell them as a prized delicacy, the government's chief environmental adviser Jaime Incer told AFP.

It only takes a light brush for one to be stung by a jellyfish, but a new viral video recorded for the first time the dozens of microscopic needles that shoot from jellyfish into their victims.

Although most people assume a jellyfish sting is an allergic reaction to an irritant on the surface of the creature's tentacles, it is actually caused by microscopic cells that work like a syringe, puncturing the surface of the skin and almost instantaneously injecting venom before retracting.

Destin Sandlin, founder and host of YouTube channel SmarterEveryDay, took his cameras to James Cook University in Australia, where Dr. James Seymour used a microscope and high-speed lens to record the first ever video of the jellyfish stingers in action.

"We've never seen that before," Seymour exclaims upon observing the delay between when the needles were deployed and the venom was injected.

"We've seen venom come out the end of these things, [but] we've never seen that delay [between deployment and injection] -- but we've never looked for it ... This is the sort of stuff I get up in the morning for ... It's the joy of actually coming in and going 'I just saw something that nobody else in the world has ever seen before.'"

Manatee dies in Paris zoo after drowning in pool
Creteil, France (AFP) Aug 18, 2014 - A manatee has died from drowning after getting trapped in his enclosure, the owners of a zoo in Paris said Monday.

Barry, who was three years old and one of only two of the sea mammals in the zoo in Vincennes, died on August 11 after getting stuck "in an underwater gallery between two parts of the pool that are usually closed by a door," said Alexis Lecu, the scientific director of the park.

The mammals, which are listed as a vulnerable species by the World Conservation Union, need to resurface for air roughly every ten minutes.

"There are certain parts of the pool where the animal can rest out of sight of the public," Lecu told AFP.

"We are trying to do our best with the information we have," he said, adding that the owners have launched an investigation into the accident. "We hope that this will serve as a lesson to other zoos."

Barry was born in a zoo in Odense in Denmark, and was one of a number of animals in a European breeding plan for the species and only returned to the zoo in July.

The park, which is situated in the east of the French capital in the leafy suburb of Vincennes, reopened in April after three years of work.

In the wild, manatees are found in shallow, slow-moving rivers and coastal areas, but are slow, near-surface swimmers, and many are killed and injured when hit by motorboats.

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FLORA AND FAUNA
Elephant killings in Africa outpace births: study
Washington (AFP) Aug 18, 2014
More elephants in Africa are being killed by poachers than are born each year, and the problem may be worse than previously understood, according to the most detailed assessment yet, released on Monday. Using a newly refined approach to estimate elephant deaths, developed at Kenya's Samburu National Reserve, researchers said Africa's elephant population is declining at a rate of about two pe ... read more


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