This forum is for the discussion of Bigfoot here in America.It was created as a way to share stories,information,make contacts,post opinions.This forum is semi moderated meaning that abuse will NOT be tolerated! No IP#s will be shown. Enjoy the fellowship of Americas Bigfoot Explorers
Glowing Genetically Altered Monkeys
by Bigfoot America
Glowing monkeys 'to aid research'
By Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News
The marmosets glow an eerie green under UV light
Genetically modified primates that glow green and pass the trait on to their offspring could aid the fight against human disease.
Though primates that make a glowing protein have been created before, these are the first to keep the change in their bloodlines.
Future modifications could lead to treatments for a range of diseases.
The "transgenic" marmosets, created by a Japanese team, have been described in the journal Nature.
The work raises a number of ethical questions about deliberately exposing a bloodline of animals to such diseases.
Scientists have managed to modify the genes of many living organisms in recent years, ranging from bacteria to mice.
Mice have been particularly useful experimental models for studying a wide range of human diseases as modified genes are passed on from parents to progeny.
However, mice are not useful for some human diseases because they are not sufficiently similar to produce effects that are meaningful to human disease. Studies of mice with Alzheimer's disease, for example, were stymied simply because their brains were too small to scan at sufficient resolution.
Jellyfish gene
Now, Erika Sasaki of the Central Institute for Experimental Animals in Japan, and her colleagues, have introduced a gene into marmoset embryos that allows them to build green fluorescent protein (GFP) in their tissues.
The protein is so-called because it glows green in a process known as fluorescence.
GFP was originally isolated from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria, which glows green when exposed to blue light.
The protein has become a standard in biology and genetic engineering, and its discovery even warranted a Nobel prize.
Glowing mice have already been created in the lab
'Glowing' jellyfish grabs Nobel
From 91 embryos, a total of five GFP-enabled transgenic marmosets were born, including twins Kei and Kou ("keikou" is Japanese for "fluorescence").
Crucially, the team was able to show that their method is maintained in the family - or germline.
They used the sperm from a member of the first generation of transgenic marmosets to fertilise an egg from a normal animal. A significant proportion of the resulting offspring also glowed under ultraviolet light.
Until now, efforts to establish transgenic lines of primates have been unsuccessful. In 2001, a team at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center, US, succeeded in creating a rhesus macaque that expressed GFP.
Last year, a team at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Atlanta, US, created rhesus macaque monkeys with Huntington's disease, but the disease killed off all but one of them. The team is now waiting to breed a second set of Huntington's macaques.
Fitting in
The new method improves on previous work using so-called "retroviruses".
These virus "vectors" were added to a soup of sugary solution and this was in turn injected into the monkey embryos.
Although the work demonstrates the principle that a gene can be introduced into a primate bloodline, study co-author Hideyuki Okano of the Keio University School of Medicine said it may not be suitable for studying all diseases.
"We can just introduce genes by virus vectors," he told BBC News, "so the limitation comes from the sizes of genes that can be carried by the retroviruses."
That limitation is about 10,000 bases, or letters, of the genetic code. That upper bound will constrain the diseases that can be studied.
Genes implicated in Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, a form of motor neurone disease) may well be suitable.
However, genetic regions implicated in Huntington's disease might not fit into a retrovirus.
Two of the first transgenic marmosets did their own genetic trick: they are twins
The work has raised a number of ethical questions about the use of primates in disease research.
Marmosets are New World monkeys and therefore more distantly related to humans than, for example, chimpanzees. But they are particularly useful for the study of disease because they reproduce often and from a young age.
Jarrod Bailey, science consultant to the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), says he is "disappointed" both ethically and scientifically with the results.
"This sort of research on animals as sentient as monkeys and apes does not have public support," he told BBC News.
Furthermore, he thinks the underlying science is flawed. Animal researchers, he said, "have failed in research to find treatments for Aids, for hepatitis, for malaria, for strokes. Many treatments for strokes work in monkeys but don't work in humans."
"Monkeys do not predict human response and do not tell us about human disease," he added.
However, scientists argue that, because primates are more similar to humans than mice, they present a more refined model of human disease. This would allow scientists to test treatments more effectively, meaning that fewer animals need be experimented on in the long run.
"This experiment is reminiscent of the exciting early days of transgenic research where it was initially difficult to fully know what the potential applications and future research directions might be," said Mark Hill, a cell biologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
"As always in this area of research, there needs to be a close linkage between the scientific work, ethical issues and regulatory guidelines."
Hit ABC Show Casting Big Foot Enthusiasts For Primetime
by
ABCs WIFE SWAP CASTING BIG FOOT ENTHUSIASTS FOR PRIMETIME
ABCs primetime series Wife Swap is currently casting its fifth season and looking for unique families with plenty of personality to take part in the show. Specifically, we're looking for dynamic families who strongly believe in the existence of Bigfoot and have had (non-violent!) sightings themselves or are actively seeking proof of some kind. I apologize in advance if you are receiving this notice for a second time. Families who participate in this documentary-style program are given a unique opportunity to share their beliefs and lifestyles with another family. It is truly a once in a lifetime experience that can be life-changing for everyone. If after reading this email, you'd like to learn more, please don't hesitate to contact me. In addition, please feel free to pass this posting along to whomever you think would be interested in taking part in this experience.
Each week on Wife Swap, the mothers from two families with different values and belief systems will exchange lives. Its an amazing family experience and opportunity to learn how others lead their lives. Half of the week, mom lives the life of the family she is staying with. After making her observations, she introduces several "rule changes," where she implements rules and activities that are important to her family. It's a positive experience for people to not only learn but teach about other families and other ways of life. Wife Swap airs on Disney owned ABC television on Fridays at 8 pm- the family hour!
If you are a two-parent family with at least one child over the age of 5 living at home, and you think your family would make terrific TV, contact us to be a part of this groundbreaking show!
To apply or get information about the show
Please contact:
Danielle Gervais (Casting Producer)
Call: 646-747-7956
Email: Casting.DanielleGervais@gmail.com or Danielle.Gervais@castingrdf.com
Has a Georgia Bigfoot been accidentally found dead with a 30-06 wound? whats the real deal? why are they waiting till Sept 1st to unveil it? Is it all a Hoax?
Loren Coleman the the owner and operator of the Maine cryptozoology museum needs donations to move to a new building and for operating costs.Donations can be sent via paypay or check or money order.Check the cryptomundo .com site for more details.
Seems theres more to the patty film then has been shown to the public.possibly Bob Gimlin has been decieving the public by witholding vital information concerning the oct 1967 film shoot at Bluff creek Calif.
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- A frog has been found in a remote part of Indonesia that has no lungs and breathes through its skin, a discovery that researchers said Thursday could provide insight into what drives evolution in certain species.
The lungless frog is said to be the first of its kind known to science.
The aquatic frog Barbourula kalimantanensis was found in a remote part of Indonesia's Kalimantan province on Borneo island during an expedition in August 2007, said David Bickford, an evolutionary biologist at the National University of Singapore. Bickford was part of the trip and co-authored a paper on the find that appeared in this week's edition of the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology.
Bickford says the species is the first frog known to science without lungs and joins a short list of amphibians with this unusual trait, including a few species of salamanders and a wormlike creature known as a caecilian.
"These are about the most ancient and bizarre frogs you can get on the planet," Bickford said of the brown amphibian with bulging eyes and a tendency to flatten itself as it glides across the water.
"They are like a squished version of Jabba the Hutt," he said, referring to the character from Star Wars. "They are flat and have eyes that float above the water. They have skin flaps coming off their arms and legs."
Bickford's Indonesian colleague Djoko Iskandar first came across the frog 30 years ago and has been searching for it ever since. He didn't know the frog was lungless until they cut eight of the specimens open in the lab.
Graeme Gillespie, director of conservation and science at Zoos Victoria in Australia, called the frog "evolutionary unique." He said the eight specimens examined in the lab showed the lunglessness was consistent with the species and not "a freak of nature." Gillespie was not a member of the expedition or the research team.
Bickford surmised that the frog had evolved to adapt to its difficult surroundings, in which it has to navigate cold, fast-moving streams that are rich in oxygen.
"It's an extreme adaptation that was probably brought about by these fast-moving streams," Bickford said, adding that it probably needed to reduce its buoyancy in order to keep from being swept down the mountainous rivers.
He said the frog could help scientists understand the environmental factors that contribute to "extreme evolutionary change" since its closest relative in the Philippines and all other frogs have lungs.
Bickford and Gillespie said the frog's discovery adds urgency to the need to protect its river habitat, which in recent years has become polluted due to widespread illegal logging and gold mining. Once pristine waters are now brown and clogged with silt, they said.
"The gold mining is completely illegal and small scale. But when there are thousands of them on the river, it really has a huge impact," Bickford said. "Pretty soon the frogs will run out of the river
SAO PAULO, Brazil — The 80 million-year-old remains of a land-bound reptile described as a possible link between prehistoric and modern-day crocodiles were displayed to the public for the first time on Thursday.
The fossil of the 5½-foot-long predator was found in 2004 near the small city of Monte Alto, 215 miles northwest of Sao Paulo, paleontologist Felipe Mesquita de Vasconcellos said by telephone, after presenting the find to a news conference at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
The long-limbed and extremely agile animal, dubbed Montealtosuchus arrudacamposi, roamed arid and hot terrain that is now Brazilian countryside, Vasconcelos said.
"As a missing link to prehistoric crocodiles, it offers us an excellent opportunity to study the evolutionary transition of these animals," Vasconcellos said. "It has a mix of morphological traits common in prehistoric crocodiles and in the ones that exist today."
Details of the discovery were published in October 2007 in Zootaxa, a peer-reviewed scientific journal based in New Zealand.
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Cretaceous Crocodile Michael J. Ryan, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, said the discovery could be of major importance.
"We have very little evidence of terrestrial crocodiles, so the example from Brazil could form a missing link of a whole evolutionary diversity," said Ryan, who was not involved in the research.
Two years ago, paleontologists from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, announced the discovery of a fossil of a prehistoric crocodile which they called Uberabasuchus Terrificus, or the "terrible crocodile of Uberaba."
Uberabasuchus lived 70 million years ago and was smaller than today's crocodiles — only about 10 feet long and weighing about 650 pounds.
'Hobbits' not a different species, say scientists
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
The long-running debate about the existence of so-called hobbits of Indonesia has taken a new turn with a study that suggests these ancient people were not an unusual species of human but modern humans with a growth disorder.
Telegraph TV: Did hobbits exist?
Scientists believe the "hobbit" had the same growth condition as Paddy Ryan
The work, if confirmed, suggests that there could be up to around 100 documented such "hobbits" in the world today, the people who have the mutation that leads to them being normally proportioned but half-sized.
Four years ago, Prof Mike Morwood, of the University of New England, in Armidale, Australia, and colleagues made headlines worldwide when they announced the discovery of 18,000-year-old remains of Homo floresiensis in the Liang Bua Cave on the Indonesian island of Flores.
The human evolutionary cousin, nicknamed the hobbit after the diminutive people in JRR Tolkein's Lord Of The Rings, stood only three foot tall and was thought to be an entirely new species of human, with a brain about the size of a chimpanzee's.
Ever since there has been debate whether or not the bones were actually from pygmies - even today there are pygmies on the island - and not a new species of human that lived between 120,000 and 10,000 years ago. One idea is that they suffered from microcephaly, a disorder that limits brain growth.
Today support for this idea comes from the discovery of a gene for a rare growth condition, MOPD II, that causes small brain and body size but near-normal intelligence, reported in the journal Science by a large international team including Dr Anita Rauch of Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Erlangen, Germany, and colleagues.
Adults with this rare inherited condition reach an average height of a metre and although their brain is comparable in size to that of a three-month-old baby, they have near unaffected intelligence. The research study was triggered by two unrelated tiny girls living in northern Bavaria.
The culprit gene is PCNT, which encodes a protein that plays an important role in anchoring the structure that pulls chromosomes apart during cell division. The precise mechanisms by which these effects at the cellular level lead to the overall effect on body size, remains to be determined, but it is intriguing that other inherited forms of microcephaly (disorders characterized by small brain size) have likewise been linked to genes involved in this aspect of cell division. "Knowing that a child has MOPD II and not any other type of short stature helps to provide the best medical management to avoid complications," says Dr Rauch.
In the conclusion of their article, Dr Rauch and her team speculate that the "hobbit" fossils from Flores, Indonesia may represent people with mutations in this gene.
An earlier paper pointed out that the wrist bones of the hobbit are are primitive and shaped differently compared to both the wrist bones of both humans and of Neanderthals, leading to them to conclude they do represent a different kind of human.
But Dr Rauch points out that people who carry this mutation do have subtle bony anomalies of the hand and wrist, "By the way, as is visible by the pictures we show of patients, the posture of the shoulder is also abnormal in MOPD II patients, like it was suggested for the hobbits," she added.
One MOPD II patient, is Paddy Ryan, 30, who lives in County Tipperary, Republic of Ireland, who "manages his life extremely well in a supportive rural Irish community," said Dr Robert Semple Addenbrooke's Hospital Cambridge.
Yesterday, Mr Ryan, who only found out he had the mutation responsib le for condition last October, said that his parents realised the day he was born that he was unusually small. But, despite his height, near 3ft 6 inches, "I am not like a dwarf. Everything is in proportion. I am just a small person."
He has diabetes and it is unclear if this is linked with the MOPD II, he says, adding that he has been told that, since it is so rare, a treatment is unlikely to be developed.
As for everyday life, "I just get on with it. I do what I have to do," says Mr Ryan, who drives a Honda Civic that has been specially adapted and does quality control testing of electronics. "Noone with MOPD II has married or had children," he adds.
Many of the MOPD II people die early due to stroke - before they even think of having their own children, " says Dr Rauch. "On the other hand it is difficult for them in our culture to find somebody to marry because of their stature. Anyhow, that does not undermine the hobbit link, because the increase of such genetic disorder comes from mating of healthy carrier people that have affected children. Once the incidence of the disorders is high in a certain population, they might also marry each other. But that's not a prerequisite to increase the disorder in the population, as it is transmitted in a recessive manner over healthy carriers."
You show up on top of the Network 54 index list when a Network 54 search is performed for "bigfoot".
Our group, http://www.network54.com/Forum/590503/ does not show up at all.
A few years ago the google search engine had special request options available for multiple listings for a website or message/blog boards.check search engine options is my best advice.good luck with the new board,And I hope it leads to firm evidence of Bigfoot creatures.
Once upon a time it was called the red circle brigade-the owner EB (Erik Beckjord)has an ongoing soap opera that now includes a WOMAN FROM hAPPY CAMP CALIFORNIA.named Tara that alleges he assaulted her while on an expedition this fall.The on going ramblings and denials by EB have become a daily headline on his often edited bigfoot.com message site.It seems now that Jeffery Teagle has taken over daily editing and postings with EB inserting is oft rages against the Bigfoot Community at large.Erik Beckjord often calls other Bigfoot message board owners dictators,theives and liars,well Mr. beckjord have any Ramblings for us here?
PARIS, Nov 14, 2007 (AFP) - Scientists said Wednesday they had created the world's first cloned embryo from a monkey, in work that could spur cloning of human cells for use in medical research.
In a paper published online by the British journal Nature, a team in the US said they had created cloned embryos of rhesus macaques, using the same method that famously led to Dolly the Sheep and other genetically duplicated animals.
It is the first time that this technique has been successfully used to create cloned primate embryos.
The group generated two lines of embryonic stemcells from the embryos, according to the research headed by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon Health and Science University in Beaverton, Oregon.
Dolly, the world's first cloned animal, was created in 1996, by using so-called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) in which the genetic core of an egg is removed and replaced with the nucleus of an adult cell.
The egg is then stimulated with chemicals or a jolt of electricity to prompt its division.
The list of other cloned creatures using SCNT includes mice, pigs, cats, cows and dogs.
Until now, though, there has been no cloned primate, for researchers encountered obstacles that caused cell development to be catastrophically flawed.
Work on primate cloning has also stirred controversy among ethicists, who say it could open the door to cloning human beings, not just cells. In an exceptional move, Nature said it moved forward the release of the paper because of "continuing speculation" about the research.
Researchers distinguish between "reproductive cloning" of humans, in which a cloned baby would be born and "therapeutic cloning" in which only cloned cells would be used for medical reasons and no baby would result.
Helen Wallace of Genewatch UK, a British group that monitors cloning and other activities in biotechnology, said the breakthrough announced on Wednesday would cause "a real worry" in some quarters that it would tempt a renegade scientist to create a cloned baby.
"The clear risk of an experiment [in human reproductive cloning] is of a deformed baby and maternal suffering," she told AFP in a phone interview.
"In Britain, we don't think that the technology is going to go that far because there are laws against reproductive cloning," she said. "However, in most countries around the world, there are no legal safeguards."
Stemcells are immature cells that develop into the specific tissues of the body.
Embryonic stemcells have the highest capability of all, because they can differentiate into any tissue. Scientists hope to be able to coax these cells into one day becoming replacement tissue for organs that are damaged or diseased.
Transplanted cells from a donor, however, run the risk of being attacked as intruders by the patient's immune system. By creating stemcells that are programmed with the patient's own DNA the risk of rejection would be skirted.
Mitalipov's team said they collected 304 eggs, also known as oocytes, from 14 female rhesus macaques.
The donor nucleus came from skin cells taken from an adult male monkey housed at the Oregon National Primate Research Center.
Thirty-five blastocysts, or early-stage embryos, resulted from the SCNT operation. They in turn led to two lines of self-dividing embryonic stemcells -- a success rate of 0.7 percent when compared to the number of eggs used.
"Our results represent successful nuclear reprogramming of adult somatic cells into pluripotent ES (embryonic stem) cells and demonstrate proof-of-concept for therapeutic cloning in primates," the paper said.
Wallace criticised what she said was the "very high failure rate" of SCNT.
The technique has always needed large numbers of eggs to be harvested in order to result in just a small number of cloned embryos. In addition, many cloned animals are born with genetic defects and die prematurely.
"We have concerns about the implications of using this technology because the failure rate raises questions as to whether the suffering in animals is justified," said Wallace.
The claim that the stemcells were an exact DNA copy of the donor monkey's genetic code was validated independently by a team led by David Cram of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
That confirmation comes on the heels of a scandal surrounding earlier claims on cloning.
In 2004, South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk announced he had created 30 cloned human embryos from which he derived stemcells, but his data turned out to be fake.
Bigfoot hunters are back in Paris, with new hidden camera film of the elusive creature and renewed hopes of selling a television reality series on the hunt.
The hunters, led by Tom Biscardi, spent a week here in late March, and activity around the Pat Mayse Reservoir area prompted the crew to leave hidden cameras in the trees.
The cameras were periodically checked and video produced from at least one of the cameras showed late night activity of man-like creatures.
“I have never been this excited before,” Biscardi said. “Out of all the sites all over the country, this area near Paris is the most exciting. There is a plethora of events happening here.”
Biscardi’s crews have been on site at Clay’s Bluff five nights this week, and on all five occasions, Biscardi said there has been activity.
“Sounds, rocks being thrown into the water and sightings of something moving back into the woods have been daily events,” he said. “We have had activity on all five nights.”
Thursday night, a CBS film crew was set up alongside the camouflaged bigfoot hunters, and Biscardi said the activity continued. CBS was expected to air the activity on newscasts today.
Darryl Scotti, in charge of business development and multi-media for the Biscardi organization, said a new radio show will be aired at 9 p.m. on Sunday nights on Clear Channel radio station KNEW.
“We are calling it a reality radio show,” Scotti said. “It will run 13 weeks, and it, along with Biscardi’s internet broadcast that now reaches 3.5 million listeners in 30 different countries, are stepping stones to more to come.”
Scotti said the organization has plans to open a museum in San Francisco on Fisherman’s Wharf.
“You could say this is a 34-year-old work which is now experiencing overnight success,” he said.
“There is a huge group of people who understand this creature exists and is nocternal, nomadic and peaceful, and the rest of the people treat it like a joke,” Scotti said.
Film also is being shot on all the bigfoot hunts in hopes of selling it as a reality television show.
“We are making a pilot in hopes of selling it as a reality television series” producer Melissa Johnson said.
Director for the pilot is Todd Calvert.
The hunt will continue in the Paris area at least through the weekend, and Biscardi said he has high hopes of catching a live bigfoot.
Research shows Neanderthals may have talked By Michael Kahn
LONDON (Reuters) - Neanderthals, often portrayed as grunting, club-carrying brutes, may have been capable of sophisticated speech, researchers said on Thursday.
A DNA analysis shows Neanderthals share with humans two key changes in the FOXP2 gene known to be involved in speech, raising the possibility the species possessed some prerequisites for language, the researchers said.
"From the point of this gene at least the Neanderthals could have had language like we do," said Johannes Krause, a biochemist at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, who led the study.
But many as yet unknown genes may also underlie the capacity for language, the researchers added.
FOXP2 produces a protein that turns other genes on and off and people who carry a non-functioning copy of the gene have speech and language problems.
Animals ranging from mice to orangutans have the gene and scientists had thought a relatively small change in FOXP2 emerged just as humans did less than 200,000 years ago.
The findings published in Current Biology suggest the genetic variation occurred long before, potentially as long as 400,000 years ago.
"We were surprised to find the same variant of the FOXP2 gene that humans have," Krause said. "This suggests that the last common ancestor Neanderthal and humans shared had this gene."
Neanderthals were a dead-end offshoot of the human line who inhabited Europe and parts of west and central Asia. Research indicates they were expert tool-makers, used animal skins to keep warm and cared for each other.
Most researchers believe Neanderthals survived in Europe until the arrival of fully modern humans about 30,000 years ago although controversial findings last year suggested they might have survived until as recently as 24,000 years ago.
Nobody knows if Neanderthals could talk but this finding shows they had at least had a key genetic change required for speech -- an evolutionary edge critical for human survival, Krause said.
"Language is a more sophisticated way to pass on knowledge to the next generation," he said. "You live like an infant if you do not learn."
In their study, the researchers extracted DNA from a collection of Neanderthal remains recently excavated from a site in Northern Spain.
Because the bones were so well preserved, the scientists were also able to retrieve nuclear DNA from Neanderthals, opening the way for a more complete understanding of human and Neanderthal evolution, Krause said.
"Nuclear DNA is the DNA in the nucleus of the cell that makes up nearly all the genetic information people carry. We can now study every Neanderthal gene we are interested in."
Court won't declare chimp a person By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer
Thu Sep 27, 4:12 PM ET
VIENNA, Austria - He's now got a human name — Matthew Hiasl Pan — but he's having trouble getting his day in court. Animal rights activists campaigning to get Pan, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, legally declared a person vowed Thursday to take their challenge to Austria's Supreme Court after a lower court threw out their latest appeal.
A provincial judge in the city of Wiener Neustadt dismissed the case earlier this week, ruling that the Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories had no legal standing to argue on the chimp's behalf.
The association, which worries the shelter caring for the chimp might close, has been pressing to get Pan declared a "person" so a guardian can be appointed to look out for his interests and provide him with a home.
Group president Martin Balluch insists that Pan is "a being with interests" and accuses the Austrian judicial system of monkeying around.
"It is astounding how all the courts try to evade the question of personhood of a chimp as much as they can," Balluch said.
A hearing date for the Supreme Court appeal was not immediately set.
The legal tussle began in February, when the animal shelter where Pan and another chimp, Rosi, have lived for 25 years filed for bankruptcy protection.
Activists want to ensure the apes don't wind up homeless if the shelter closes. Both were captured as babies in Sierra Leone in 1982 and smuggled in a crate to Austria for use in pharmaceutical experiments. Customs officers intercepted the shipment and turned the chimps over to the shelter.
Their upkeep costs about euro4,800 (US$6,800) a month. Donors have offered to help, but there's a catch: Under Austrian law, only a person can receive personal gifts.
Organizers could set up a foundation to collect cash for Pan, whose life expectancy in captivity is about 60 years. But they contend that only personhood will give him the basic rights he needs to ensure he isn't sold to someone outside Austria, where he's now protected by strict animal cruelty laws.
In April, a district court judge rejected a British woman's petition to be declared Pan's legal guardian. That court ruled that the chimp was neither mentally impaired nor in danger, the grounds required for an individual to be appointed a guardian.
In dismissing the Association Against Animal Factories' appeal this week, the provincial court said only a guardian could appeal. That doesn't apply in this case, the group contends, since Pan hasn't gained a guardian.
There is legal precedence in Austria for close friends to represent people who have no immediate family, "so he should be represented by his closest friends, as is the case," said Eberhart Theuer, the group's legal adviser.
"On these grounds we have appealed this decision to the Supreme Court in Vienna," he said.
Until this summer, the chimp was known simply as Hiasl. However, in the latest court documents, he was identified with a little more dignity — if not humanity — as Matthew Hiasl Pan, with the last name derived from "chimpanzee."
The Association Against Animal Factories points out that it's not trying to get Pan declared a human, but rather a person, which would give him some kind of legal status.
Otherwise, he is legally a thing. And with the genetic makeup of chimpanzees and humans so strikingly similar, it contends, that just can't be.
"The question is: Are chimps things without interests, or persons with interests?" Balluch said.
"A large section of the public does see chimps as beings with interests," he said. "We are looking forward to hear what the high court has to say on this fundamental question."
Sept 6, 2007
WASHINGTON - Toddlers may act up like little apes, but researchers who compared the species concluded a 2-year-old child still has the more sophisticated social learning skills.
In one test, preschoolers who wanted a toy hidden in a trick tube intently copied a scientist's movements to retrieve the prize. Chimps watched the lesson but then mostly tried to smash or bite open the tube.
When it came to simple math, however, the apes seemed to know more than the youngsters, apparently "adding" how many tasty raisins researchers had hidden.
How We Communicate: Gestures May Come From Chimps
Study Says Apes, Like Humans, Signal When Trying to Communicate
Researchers discovered chimps communicate like humans by using gestures.
Share Gesturing is one of the oldest forms of human communication, and now researchers have discovered that apes and chimps use the same motions humans do when asking for things.
The study, conducted at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, tested whether gestures are a flexible communication form by measuring the association between signals and specific behaviors.
It compared groups of the same and different ape species.
And like people, the animals used gestures to request an assortment of things.
"It's used to ask for a variety of things -- grooming, comfort, food, sex," said the study's author, Amy Pollick.
For example, researchers observed when one chimp had a coconut and another chimp wanted some, it tried to make that known with a gesture.
"The palm up gesture could be the missing link between what we observe in apes and what humans do," Pollick said. "Everything is built on an evolutionary layer, and if it all goes back to one simple gesture that hints at the seeds of symbolic communication then that I think is a very important message."
The study may have answered the question of how humans learned to communicate.
As humans evolved, so did their gesturing. Now people use gestures for almost everything, like preachers asking for divine assistance or frustrated Hollywood directors imploring their actors.
MADISON, Wis. - Authorities captured a diaper-wearing monkey who led them on a downtown search after biting a woman.
The 20-year-old woman reported being bitten on the thumb as she tried to pet the animal early Wednesday.
The woman was walking by State Street Brats, a popular nightclub, where a man had the monkey on a leash inside its beer garden. People walking by were petting the monkey, who was wearing a white diaper.
But the monkey bit the woman, who suffered four small punctures on her thumb, police said.
The bite sent the woman to the hospital, where a physician said the monkey should be found so that it could be quarantined to determine if it has a disease.
By 7:15 a.m., police found the man and the monkey. But the man lost the handle on the monkey before an animal control officer arrived and it got loose.
Police issued a warning to the public of the foot-tall monkey with a long prehensile tail: "It is now on the lam, presumably still in the State Street area."
About seven hours later, the monkey was captured and taken into custody downtown to be quarantined for 10 days, police said.
NEW YORK - A man smuggled a monkey onto an airplane Tuesday, stashing the furry fist-size primate under his hat until passengers spotted it perched on his ponytail, an airline official said.
The monkey escapade began in Lima, Peru, late Monday, when the man boarded a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said Spirit Airlines spokeswoman Alison Russell. After landing Tuesday morning, the man waited several hours before catching a connecting flight to LaGuardia Airport.
During the flight, people around the man noticed that the marmoset, which normally lives in forests and eats fruit and insects, had emerged from underneath his hat, Russell said.
"Other passengers asked the man if he knew he had a monkey on him," she said.
The monkey spent the remainder of the flight in the man's seat and behaved well, said Russell, who didn't know how it skirted customs and security.
Airport police were waiting for the man and his monkey when the plane landed about 3 p.m., and the man was taken away for questioning. It was unclear whether he would face any criminal charges.
The city's animal control agency said the monkey appeared healthy. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was planning to take it for disease testing and keep it quarantined for 31 days, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.
If the monkey is healthy, it could wind up in a zoo.
"It is kind of a spirited monkey," Russell said. "That will be the nickname of the monkey: Spirit."
TUPELO, Miss. - The Tupelo Buffalo Park and Zoo asked residents Tuesday to help in the recovery of a white-faced capuchin monkey that apparently managed to unlock his pen and escape. Oliver freed himself at about 8 a.m. and led park staff on a chase through the park's trail system before eventually eluding them.
Park employee Ann Stewart said Oliver will respond to his own name and may take bait of bananas, marshmallow or grapes. She urged people to call the park if they spot the mammal.
"He will bite. People around here have handled him, but he will bite. Just call the Buffalo Park," Stewart said.
Oliver is a nine-year-old capuchin, a species of monkey native to South and Central America.
Stewart believes Oliver could be in the Country Club or Colonial Estates areas, but said the monkey could have traveled much farther given his ability for speed.
"He could outrun the horses," she said in a http://www.djournal.com article. "You can't catch him. If he doesn't want to be caught you can't catch him."
Tickets are now on sale for the 40th Anniversary Bigfoot Symposium honoring Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin! The cost is $210 per ticket (this includes attendance to both days of the symposium) and the event will be held at Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA. With each ticket purchased, you will receive one full-color 8½ x 11 collectible program of the event, one high-quality, an official T-shirt marking the date and event, and one 18 x 24 full color, glossy commemorative poster. Your commemorative/collectible items can be picked up at the event. To purchase your tickets, visit www.sasquatchresearch.net.
Researchers may remake Neanderthal DNA By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON - Researchers studying Neanderthal DNA say it should be possible to construct a complete genome of the ancient hominid despite the degradation of the DNA over time.
There is also hope for reconstructing the genome of the mammoth and cave bear, according to a research team led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Their findings are published in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Debate has raged for years about whether there is any relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans. Some researchers believe that Neanderthals were simply replaced by early modern humans, while others argue the two groups may have interbred.
Sequencing the genome of Neanderthals, who lived in Europe until about 30,000 years ago, could shed some light on that question.
In studies of Neanderthals, cave bear and mammoth, a majority of the DNA recovered was that of microorganisms that colonized the tissues after death, the researchers said.
But they were able to identify some DNA from the original animal, and Paabo and his colleagues were able to determine how it broke down over time. They also developed procedures to prevent contamination by the DNA of humans working with the material.
"We are confident that it will be technically feasible to achieve a reliable Neanderthal genome sequence," Paabo and his researchers reported.
They said problem of damaged areas in some DNA could be overcome by using a sufficient amount of Neanderthal DNA from different individuals, so the whole genome can be determined.
"The contamination and degradation of DNA has been a serious issue for the last 10 years," observed Erik Trinkaus, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. "This is a serious attempt to deal with that issue and that's welcome."
"I'm not sure they have completely solved the problem, but they've made a big step in that direction," said Trinkaus, who was not involved in the research.
Anthropologist Richard Potts of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, called the work "a very significant technical study of DNA decay."
The researchers "have tried to answer important questions about the potential to sequence ancient DNA," said Potts, who was not part of the research.
Milford Wolpoff, a University of Michigan Anthropologist, said creating a complete Neanderthal genome is a great goal.
But it is "sample intensive," he said, and he isn't sure enough DNA is available to complete the work. Curators don't like to see their specimens ground up, he said.
The research was funded by the Max Planck Society and the National Institutes of Health.
DALLAS (Reuters) - Fear of predators is not instinctive but is a learned behavior that only develops when prey species share space with animals that eat them, according to a new study released this week.
The study's conclusion: remove the lions, and the zebras will lose their fear of them. But add wolves to a new territory and the resident elk or moose will soon learn they spell trouble.
Conducted by Dr. Joel Berger of the Wildlife Conservation Society, or WCS, the study compared the behavior of four prey species in three different settings: locations where predators still prowled; areas where top predators no longer exist; and places where carnivores had been reintroduced.
Such research is regarded as important to understanding the dynamics of reintroducing predators to ecosystems where they had been exterminated by humans.
"If you take away wolves, you take away fear. That is a critical piece of knowledge as biologists and public agencies increase efforts to re-introduce large carnivores to places where they have been exterminated," WCS said in a statement.
"When the predator-prey relationship comes back into balance, impacts ripple through the system. For example, when wolves returned to the Yellowstone region, they caused a cascade of events including a change in elk distribution, more wariness in moose, and a change in coyote densities," it said.
Wolves were re-established a decade ago in Yellowstone National Park in the western United States.
Berger tested reactions of animals living without their historic predators by playing recordings of wolves and tigers.
"As expected, in the absence of predators, the elk, moose, bison and caribou did not show the kind of vigilance, clustering behavior and flight observed in the same species living with wolves, bears or tigers," the WCS said in a statement.
"For example, elk in the mountains of Siberia -- who subsist alongside tigers, wolves and bears -- responded five times faster to the recordings than did elk in Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado) where major predators have been absent for some 90 years," it said.
The study adds to previous work such as that on the evolution of flightlessness in birds on islands without predators. Such birds were often exterminated after the arrival of humans in part because they had no fear of predators.
The study is published in the latest issue of the journal Conservation Biology.
The Human Tissue and Embryos Bill allows for hybrid embryos
Medical research using hybrid embryos that are a mixture of human and animal is "vital" in the fight against disease, scientists have said.
The Academy of Medical Sciences said it backed the draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill allowing embryos that were 99.9% human and 0.1% animal.
Under plans, it would be illegal for embryos to grow for more than 14 days.
The report says that, in the future, the "true" hybrids - containing more animal DNA - may be vital for research.
There are no substantive ethical or moral reasons not to proceed with research on human embryos containing animal material
Martin Bobrow
Academy of Medical Sciences
The government's draft Bill, published last month, represented a U-turn on previous proposals to ban the use of hybrid embryos.
It is now being scrutinised by MPs and peers.
The academy's Martin Bobrow said research on hybrid embryos should be subject to the same rules as research on human embryos.
They include the 14-day rule and a ban on re-implanting embryos into a woman or animal.
"There are no substantive ethical or moral reasons not to proceed with research on human embryos containing animal material under the same framework of regulatory control," he said.
There were currently no scientific reasons to create true hybrid embryos, Mr Bobrow added.
"However, given the speed of this field of research, the working group could not rule out the emergence of scientifically valid reasons in the future."
Animal welfare
The report also calls for a rethink of how the area is regulated.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority currently regulates human embryos.
But the Home Office regulates the creation of animals that have been genetically modified with human genes.
The Home Office's paramount concern is animal welfare - rather than ethics or human safety.
The academy has called for a more joined up approach to ensure that any potential problems can be foreseen and averted.
TAIPEI, Taiwan - An orangutan escaped from a Taiwanese zoo and terrified patrons at a nearby restaurant Wednesday, overturning picnic tables and motorbikes and forcing terrified diners to cower inside the eatery.
The orangutan, who pushed his way out of his cage before wandering into the restaurant, was subdued when an official shot him with a tranquilizer dart. He was carted off for treatment in the scoop of a small bulldozer.
Wednesday's incident occurred six weeks after a 440-pound crocodile chewed the forearm off a veterinarian at the same zoo. The vet's limb was reattached in a seven-hour surgery.
Orangutans are native to the forests of Malaysia and Indonesia. They have a shaggy, reddish-brown coat, long arms and no tail.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A 57-year-old Dutch woman who was attacked by a gorilla at a Rotterdam zoo said the ape was still her favorite even though she felt she was going to die when he bit her.
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"I go to the zoo almost every day with my husband, and we're always going to see Bokito. I even have pictures and videos from Berlin when he was only four months old," the woman told Dutch mass-circulation daily Telegraaf.
"He is and remains my darling," the paper quoted the woman as saying from her hospital bed, where she is being treated for bite wounds and a broken arm and wrist. The 11-year old male gorilla burst out of its enclosure on Friday and went on a rampage in the zoo's cafeteria before being recaptured.
"I stood by the small apes in the Africa section when I heard a thud behind me. I turned around and there was Bokito. I had nowhere to go. He gripped me, sat on me with his full weight and began biting me," the woman told the Telegraaf.
"I could only think 'O God, I'm going to die, I'm going to die'."
The Telegraaf said people had since come from across the country to Rotterdam Zoo to see the gorilla.
Macaques diverged from our ancestors 25 million years ago
Scientists have decoded the genetic make-up of the rhesus macaque, an Old World monkey.
It is the third primate (after humans and chimps) to have the secrets of its DNA laid bare.
The work, led by the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, is reported in the journal Science.
Researchers say the information will help them understand better the evolutionary relationships between humans and their closest relatives.
It will also have major implications for the study of human health and disease.
Macaques are used worldwide as laboratory "models" to study medical conditions as diverse as HIV and heart disease.
The international team behind the sequencing effort incorporates more than 170 scientists from 35 institutions.
Macaques are used to study heart disease and HIV
They say in their analysis that the rhesus macaque, chimp and humans share about 97.5% of the same genes.
The researchers identified about 200 genes that show evidence of positive selection during evolution, making them potential candidates for determining the differences among primate species.
These genes are said to be involved in hair formation, immune response, membrane proteins and sperm-egg fusion.
Also, the geneticists found some instances where the normal form of the macaque protein looks like the diseased human protein.
One example found is phenylketonuria (PKU) which can lead to brain damage and mental retardation because the human lacks an important enzyme.
The research indicates macaques diverged from our ancestors 25 million years ago.
While many of us Bigfooters were hopeful that Biscardi and his Bigfoot searchers would make a Bigfoot discovery,bad weather ended their latest BigfootExpedition to the southeast Texas area.Biscardi states and is witnessed making a trackcast allegedly from a bigfoot creature.Other searchers stated they heard the creatures and even got glimpses as the creatures crouched and watched from a safe distance.Biscardi also appeared on the Internet program "Coast to coast".com featuring Art Bell.
CRYPTOVIDEOGRAPHY.COM WANTS YOU! Crypto-V was started with you, the researcher and you, the witness of cryptozoological phenomenon in mind. Much of our footage and documentaries comes from the field and we would like to give you the opportunity to participate. If you have footage, interviews, or any subject matter you wish to send to us please contact us. And if YOU would like to become a Cryptovideographer, we can show you how simple and enjoyable it can be. Our crew is always working on a new production and you can be a part of it! All you need is your camcorder and the willingness to send us your footage. We do all the editing and production. We, and our audience, want to see your research area, hear you tell about your findings and get to know you and what you are doing to solve the mysteries around us. Your material will be featured in a forthcoming program and you will get full credit for your work. {Plus FREE DVDs!} Join the staff of Cryptovideography.com today!
to the 500+people that viewed this webpage in Feb 07
by Bigfoot America
I thankyou for taking the time to read some of the posts.I am going out again this summer searching for the Sasquatch.I donot use information from others to search, I look on my own.Care to join me?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chimpanzees and humans split from a common ancestor just 4 million years ago -- a much shorter time than current estimates of 5 million to 7 million years ago, according to a study published on Friday.
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The researchers compared the DNA of chimpanzees, humans and our next-closest ancestor, the gorilla, as well as orangutans.
They used a well-known type of calculation that had not been previously applied to genetics to come up with their own "molecular clock" estimate of when humans became uniquely human.
"Assuming orangutan divergence 18 million years ago, speciation time of human and chimpanzee is consistently around 4 million years ago," they wrote in their study, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Genetics, available online at http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document& doi=10.1371/journal.pgen.0030007#toclink4.
"Primate evolution is a central topic in biology and much information can be obtained from DNA sequence data," Dr. Asger Hobolth of North Carolina State University said in a statement.
The theory of a molecular clock is based on the premise that all DNA mutates at a certain rate. It is not always a steady rate but it evens out over the millennia and can be used to track evolution.
Experts agree that humans split off from a common ancestor with chimpanzees several million years ago and that gorillas and orangutans split off much earlier. But it is difficult to date precisely when, although most recent studies have put the date at somewhere around 5 million to 7 million years ago.
Hobolth and colleagues from the University of Aarhus in Denmark and the University of Oxford in Britain looked at four regions of the human, chimpanzee, and gorilla genomes.
QUICK SPLIT
They used a statistical technique called the hidden Markov model, developed in the 1960s and originally applied to speech recognition.
What they found may contradict some other recent research. They found evidence that it took only 400,000 years for humans to become a separate species from the common chimp-human ancestor.
Just last May, David Reich of the Broad Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School's Department of Genetics found evidence that the split probably took 4 million years to occur, although his team put the final divergence at just 5.4 million years ago.
"I don't think it really contradicts our paper," Reich said in an e-mail exchange.
"We were focusing on a maximum time for the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, while they were focusing on a best estimate," added Reich, who reviewed Hobolth's paper before it was published.
Experts have long known that humans and chimpanzees share much DNA, and are in fact 96 percent identical on the genetic level.
And one year ago, Soojin Yi and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology said they found genetic evidence that chimpanzees may be more closely related to humans than to gorillas and orangutans.
Their look at the molecular clock showed humans evolved one unique trait just a million years ago -- our longer life span and our long childhood that means humans reach sexual maturity very late in life compared to other animals.
The study suggests LB1 is a creature new to science
The tiny skeletal remains of human "Hobbits" found on an Indonesian island belong to a completely new branch of our family tree, a study has found.
The finds caused a sensation when they were announced to the world in 2004.
But some researchers argued the bones belonged to a modern human with a combination of small stature and a brain disorder called microcephaly.
That claim is rejected by the latest study, which compares the tiny people with modern microcephalics.
LB1 has a highly evolved brain. It didn't get bigger, it got rewired and reorganised, and that's very interesting
Dean Falk
Florida State University
Microcephaly is a rare pathological condition in humans characterised by a small brain and cognitive impairment.
In the new study, Dean Falk, of Florida State University, and her colleagues say the remains are those of a completely separate human species: Homo floresiensis.
They have published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The remains at the centre of the Hobbit controversy were discovered at Liang Bua, a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, in 2003.
Researchers found one near-complete skeleton, which they named LB1, along with the remains of at least eight other individuals.
The specimens were nicknamed Hobbits after the tiny creatures in JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Computer model
The researchers believe the 1m-tall (3ft) people evolved from an unknown small-bodied, small-brained ancestor, which they think became small in stature to cope with the limited supply of food on the island.
The little humans are thought to have survived until about 12,000 years ago, when a volcanic eruption devastated the region.
The Hobbit has forced a re-think of human evolution
LB1 possessed a brain size of around 400 cubic cm (24 cu inches) - about the same as that of a chimp.
Long arms, a sloping chin and other primitive features suggested affinities to ancient human species such as Homo habilis.
Professor Falk's analysis used the skulls of 10 normal humans, nine microcephalics, one dwarf and the Hobbit.
The brain leaves a mirror image imprinted onto the skull, from which anatomists can reconstruct its shape. The resulting brain cast is called an endocast.
Professor Falk's team scanned all 21 skulls into a computer and then created a "virtual endocast" using specialist software.
Then, they used statistical techniques to study shape differences between the brain casts and to classify them into two different groups: one microcephalic, the other normal.
Advanced tools
The dwarf's brain fell into the microcephalic category, while the Hobbit brain fell into the normal group - despite its small size.
In other ways, however, the Hobbit brain is unique, which is consistent with its attribution to a new species.
Archaeologists had found sophisticated tools and evidence of a fire near the remains of the 1m-tall adult female.
"People refused to believe that someone with that small of a brain could make the tools," said Professor Falk.
She said the Hobbit brain was nothing like that of a microcephalic and was advanced in a way that is different from living humans.
A previous study of LB1's endocast revealed that large parts of the frontal lobe and other anatomical features were consistent with higher cognitive processes.
"LB1 has a highly evolved brain," said Professor Falk. "It didn't get bigger, it got rewired and reorganised, and that's very interesting."
This apparently contrasts with LB1's other "primitive" anatomical features.
In September last year, Professor Teuku Jacob and colleagues published a scientific study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which claimed the Hobbit showed similarities to living pygmies and to microcephalics.
However, a different analysis by Australian researchers, published last year in the Journal of Human Evolution, supported the idea that LB1 was a creature new to science.
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Wildlife officials on Thursday credited a woman with saving her husband's life by clubbing a mountain lion that attacked him while the couple hiked in a California state park.
Jim and Nell Hamm, who will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next month, were hiking Wednesday in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, 60 miles south of the Oregon state line, when the lion pounced.
"He didn't scream. It was a different, horrible plea for help, and I turned around, and by then the cat had wrestled Jim to the ground," Nell Hamm said in an interview from the hospital.
Jim Hamm was recovering from a torn scalp, puncture wounds and other injuries.
After the attack, game wardens closed the park and released hounds to track the lion. They later shot and killed two lions found near the trail where the attack happened.
The carcasses were flown to a state forensics lab to determine if either animal had mauled the man.
Although the Hamms are experienced hikers, neither had seen a mountain lion before Jim Hamm was mauled, his wife said.
Nell Hamm said she grabbed a 4-inch-diameter log and beat the animal with it, but it would not release its hold on her husband's head.
"Jim was talking to me all through this, and he said, 'I've got a pen in my pocket and get the pen and jab him in the eye,"' she said.
"So I got the pen and tried to put it in his eye, but it didn't want to go in as easy as I thought it would."
When the pen bent and became useless, Nell Hamm went back to using the log. The lion eventually let go and, with blood on its snout, stood staring at the woman. She screamed and waved the log until the animal walked away.
"She saved his life, there is no doubt about it," said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the Department of Fish and Game.
Nell Hamm, 65, said she was afraid to leave her dazed, bleeding husband alone, so the couple walked a quarter-mile to a trail head, where she gathered branches to protect them if more lions came around. They waited until a ranger came by and summoned help.
"My concern was to get Jim out of there," she said. "I told him, 'Get up, get up, walk,' and he did."
Jim Hamm, 70, was in fair condition Thursday. He had to have his lips stitched and underwent surgery for other lacerations on his head and body.
He told his wife he still wants to make the trip to New Zealand they planned for their anniversary, she said.
Nell Hamm warned people never to hike in the backcountry alone. Park rangers told the couple if Jim Hamm had been alone, he probably would not have survived.
"We fought harder than we ever have to save his life, and we fought together," she said.
As a deer hunter, Steve Fiske wanted to know what kinds of bucks were cruising the woods where he hunts.
He knew all about trail cameras, the stealth units that hunters mount remotely in the woods. The cameras are triggered by the motion of a passing animal. But one of Fiske’s friends had had problems with a $300 commercial model.
“I figured there had to be a better way,” said Fiske, 37, a Cloquet police officer.
So he went to the Internet, bought components and built his own trail-cam. That was September 2005.
“It’s kind of an addiction,” Fiske admitted. “I’ve got 12 of ’em now.”
The cameras are all up and working, capturing pictures of the areas where Fiske hunts. He lives on 15 acres near Cloquet, and his property is bordered by county land.
His “home-brew” cameras, as he calls them, have taken photos of beautiful bucks, inquisitive does, fawns up to their spots in a food plot and even a slinking timber wolf.
Fiske pursues trail-cam photography mostly out of curiosity.
“Just to see what’s out there,” he said. “Once you know what’s out there, you want to see more and more and more.”
It took Fiske three weeks to build his first trail camera out of basic components — the computer board, a digital camera, connecting cables and the case. Now he can build one in about three hours. He typically buys his digital cameras online at e-Bay.
“I can build a decent camera for about $200,” Fiske said. “The quality, for 200 bucks, is head and shoulders above commercial cameras.”
He has had good luck using Sony P32 and P41, S40 and S600 cameras in his trail-cam applications. It’s important to have a camera that “powers up” within two or three seconds after the motion sensor has activated it, Fiske said. And a Trail-Mode chip option allows the camera to keep shooting as fast as it can cycle to get several images of the same moving animal.
His favorite trail-cam shot so far?
“Probably that little fawn,” he said. “I watched it grow up with the food plot. Of course, I’m always looking for that monster buck.”
Snapshots from the trail
In a little over a year, Steve Fiske has learned a lot about trail-cam photography, using it near his home and in southeastern Iowa where he hunts deer with friends. He offers these tips for trail-cam users:
* “Height is important,” Fiske said. “A lot of people put them up too high. I put them right above my knee. You have to remember, deer are not that tall.”
* The angle of the camera toward the deer trail is important. If you put the camera at a 90-degree angle to the trail, the deer or other animal may be gone before your camera can power up and capture it. “Set it up at 45 degrees to the trail or head on,” Fiske said. “Your chances of getting a whole animal are a lot better.”
* Because some photos will be taken during daylight hours, you might want to point your camera north so the sun will be behind it for most of the day, Fiske said. He has placed cameras pointing east or west to get sunrise or sunset photos, acknowledging that shooting directly into the sun may ruin some photos, too.
* Don’t check your cameras too often. “I like to leave them in the woods for a week or two at a time,” Fiske said, “so the area is undisturbed.” If you check cameras too often, you’ll leave too much of your scent in the woods and discourage deer from coming around.
* Fiske has tried to enhance his chances of seeing deer by planting vegetation to attract them. He uses a seed mix that includes clover, rye, rapeseed, chicory and two kinds of turnips. It grew about 2½ feet high this past summer and attracted lots of does and fawns. “Once fall came, I had 10 or 12 bucks in there in a week and a half,” he said.
on the Web
Here are Web sites that Steve Fiske of Cloquet has found helpful in building his own trail cameras and learning how to use them:
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Turns out humans aren't the only primates using songs to warn of life's dangers and travails.
White-handed gibbons in Thailand's forests have been found to communicate threats from predators by singing -- the first time the behavior has been discovered among non-human primates, researchers said Wednesday.
While other animals have been shown to use song to attract mates or signal danger, researchers writing in this month's science journal PLoS One said their study was the first to show gibbons -- a slender, tree-dwelling ape -- issuing song-like warnings to each other.
"This work is a really good indicator that non-human primates are able to use combinations of calls ... to relay new and, in this case, potentially lifesaving information to one another," said Esther Clarke, a University of St. Andrews graduate student and co-author of the study.
"This type of referential communication's commonplace in human language, but has yet to be widely demonstrated in some of our closest living relatives -- the apes," she said.
Along with Klaus Zuberbuhler from St. Andrews in Scotland and Ulrich Reichard of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, Clarke spent 2004 and 2005 at Khao Yai National Park in Thailand observing groups of gibbons.
Mostly black with a white face, gibbons live in the treetops and are known for issuing elaborate hooting sounds that echo across the forest for up to a half mile to advertise pair bonds or attract mates.
To test the primates response to danger, the team conducted a series of experiments in which they put models of predators -- snow leopards, pythons and crested serpent eagles -- near a group of gibbons and then made audio recordings of their response.
What they found, Clarke said, is that the gibbons approached the potential predator and began warbling a series of sounds -- "wahs, wows and hoos" -- that were picked up by other gibbons, who then repeated the calls to others.
The sounds made when encountering a predator were more chaotic and louder than those used to win over a mate, Clarke said. "Gibbons can rearrange their songs to denote different circumstances, much like we do with words," she said.
Thad Q. Bartlett, a gibbon expert at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said the findings were interesting and significant.
"From a cognitive standpoint, the claim that gibbon calls are digital is interesting because this is one of the hallmarks of human language, that is, the ability to rearrange discrete elements to create new meanings," he said in an e-mail.
Bartlett also said the findings provide further insight into the behavior of gibbons, contradicting earlier suggestions that their small social network -- a male, female and their offspring -- was largely a result of the apes facing few threats.
"Because large group size is often seen as a response to predator pressure, researchers have long assumed that gibbons are largely immune from predators," he said.
"To my mind, this research further demonstrates the importance of predator pressure to the evolution of gibbon social systems.
An important arena of research is occurring regarding the collection and testing of hair samples, especially from Bigfoot/Sasquatch. The focus of such testing is now on the acceptance of such hair samples for morphological examination through the efforts of Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach. Dr. Fahrenbach welcomes any samples, especially since the presumptive positive ones broaden his regional database. DNA analysis on Sasquatch hairs (all of which appear to look congruous from all different sites) has come to a halt since the extracted DNA, even from fresh roots, turns out to be so fragmented that no sequencing can be accomplished. However, the morphology is the precursor to any other analysis, and the greater the sampling the broader the foundation of the database. Hair samples should be sent to the below address in a plastic baggie in a normal envelope. Expensive and fast mailing procedures are superfluous and unnecessary. Please label the sample clearly with the date of collection, location of collection, name and address of the collector and/or field investigator.
Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach
Laboratory of Microscopy
Oregon Regional Primate Research Center
505 NW 185th
Beaverton, OR 97006
In the spirit of cooperation, the following is posted in the hopes that people with valuable Bigfoot cast and footprint photograph information will forward it to Dr. Jeff Meldrum, Associate Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology, Idaho State University, and Affiliate Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Idaho Museum of Natural History.
Meldrum is convinced that there is a tremendous untapped source of information to be realized in the form of photographs and casts of footprints discovered by various individuals which have never been reported to or examined by a researcher such as Meldrum. The assistance of readers is requested in locating and contributing to this data set and thereby participating in and furthering his investigation. If you have in your possession, or know of an acquaintance or relative who has original photographs or casts of footprints, please contact Dr. Jeff Meldrum at your earliest convenience.
Furthermore, original newpaper photographs of casts and prints (such as those shown here) would be useful as well. Meldrum has a number of poorly photocopied clippings that have significant pictures of casts, but in their present state are not extremely helpful. He is hoping to increase his files in this regard, and assistance would be appreciated.
Dr. Jeff Meldrum
Dept. Biological Science
Campus Box 8007
Idaho State University
Pocatello, ID 83209-8007
We have determined to start an old fashioned newsletter to be mailed out during the year. The newsletter will contain information gathered from the diverse population within this field of endeavor.
It will be cheaply done, crudely copied, and thoroughly fun to read! But, most importantly, it will be free!
Here is how you can get on the mailing list:
Send your name and address to this email (please place
"Newsletter" in the subject line):
sesarc.research@yahoo.com
or send a letter/postcard requesting to be placed on the mailing list to:
SESARC
P.O. Box 151
Experiment, GA 30212
We will get underway for the 2007 Winter/Spring issue real soon. Please let others know and do get in on the fun. We will offer classifieds, letters to the editor, etc...
Sincerely,
The Southeastern Skunk Ape Research Center
AKA
The Georgia Swamp Ape Research Center
After DNA testing and a CT scan Zana found to be Modern Sapien also her son Kwit was found to have modern DNA and same with the CT scan.30 years of waiting have finally payed off with definitive scientific answers.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Neanderthals may have given the modern humans who replaced them a priceless gift -- a gene that helped them develop superior brains, U.S. researchers reported Tuesday.
And the only way they could have provided that gift would have been by interbreeding, the team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Chicago said.
Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides indirect evidence that modern Homo sapiens and so-called Neanderthals interbred at some point when they lived side by side in Europe.
"Finding evidence of mixing is not all that surprising. But our study demonstrates the possibility that interbreeding contributed advantageous variants into the human gene pool that subsequently spread," said Bruce Lahn, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher at the University of Chicago who led the study.
Scientists have been debating whether Neanderthals, who died out about 35,000 years ago, ever bred with modern Homo sapiens. Neanderthals are considered more primitive, with robust bones but a smaller intellect than modern humans.
Lahn's team found a brain gene that appears to have entered the human lineage about 1.1 million years ago, and that has a modern form, or allele, that appeared about 37,000 years ago -- right before Neanderthals became extinct.
"The gene microcephalin (MCPH1) regulates brain size during development and has experienced positive selection in the lineage leading to Homo sapiens," the researchers wrote.
Positive selection means the gene conferred some sort of advantage, so that people who had it were more likely to have descendants than people who did not. Lahn's team estimated that 70 percent of all living humans have this type D variant of the gene.
"By no means do these findings constitute definitive proof that a Neanderthal was the source of the original copy of the D allele. However, our evidence shows that it is one of the best candidates," Lahn said.
The researchers reached their conclusions by doing a statistical analysis of the DNA sequence of microcephalin, which is known to play a role in regulating brain size in humans. Mutations in the human gene cause development of a much smaller brain, a condition called microcephaly.
By tracking smaller, more regular mutations, the researchers could look at DNA's "genetic clock" and date the original genetic variant to 37,000 years ago.
They noted that this D allele is very common in Europe, where Neanderthals lived, and more rare in Africa, where they did not. Lahn said it is not yet clear what advantage the D allele gives the human brain.
"The D alleles may not even change brain size; they may only make the brain a bit more efficient if it indeed affects brain function," Lahn said.
Now his team is looking for evidence of Neanderthal origin for other human genes.