Some people are apparently welcoming climate change. Grape growers in Austria (note: that’s a little country in Europe, not a huge mass of land keeping the Indian and Pacific oceans separate) have found the warmer conditions to be quite beneficial.
A striped mammal has been photographed by a camera trap set in a remote forest. Is this the sole surviving thylacine? Unfortunately not, as this Edge of Existence blog post shows.
Search engine giant Google has today introduced StreetView into its online mapping system. While users have long been able to view maps and satellite imagery for specific locations, StreetView now allows users to go on a virtual tour of many streets by providing images taken from car-mounted cameras.
Have a look at this example. Click on the little man and pan around the image.
Google have addressed privacy issues by automatically blurring faces and preventing people from reading the text on car number plates. Google have, however, specifically stated that “Honk if you’re horny” bumper stickers will remain legible.
In the Galapagos Islands, there lives a lonely boy. Well, he’s at least 60, so we can’t really call him a boy. He’s lonely not for want of trying on the part of his neighbours. Many girls have been offered to him, but he’s refused all of them. That is, until now. Possibly.
Lonesome George, believed to be the world’s last Pinta Island tortoise, may be a father yet. Recently, two of his female companions laid some eggs. The eggs may turn out to be infertile, but hopefully the world will hear the pitter-patter of little tortoise feet in about four months’ time.
Below is a video of some Aldabran tortoises getting frisky. These are about the same size as Lonesome George, but are a different species from a different island in a different ocean.
Australia’s Environment Minister Peter Garrett has today banned savannah cats from Australia, saying they pose an extreme risk to native animals and the environment.
“On all the evidence that I have seen, the risks associated with allowing this cross-bred cat into the country, when we already have up to 12 million feral cats wreaking havoc on native fauna, are simply too great,” Mr Garrett said. “That is why I have banned the import of these cats immediately.”
Various petitions and submissions have been doing the rounds since this issue came to the public’s attention several months ago. I don’t know what these people are going to do.
More info is available on the ABC’s news site.
No, it’s not a new B-grade horror movie. It’s a series of images taken in Africa’s Kruger National Park. See the images at the Telegraph.
On the way from Cape Range to Karijini we drove though a lot of spinifex country and saw a number of dragons dashing off the road as we went by. We stopped and tracked one down to find it was a ring-tailed dragon (Ctenophorus caudicinctus).
Ring-tailed dragon (Ctenophorus caudicinctus).
The musings of Stewart Macdonald, an Australian herpetologist