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A sprawl of thousands of Atlantic walruses covers a haul-out site in Alaska's Togiak National Wildlife Refuge. Walruses are highly social animals, frequently congregating in large groups and communicating with loud bellows and snorts.

Walrus Mother and Calf

An Atlantic walrus calf finds safety on its mother's back while drifting on an ice floe near Igloolik, Nunavut, Canada. Walrus mothers are extremely nurturing, constantly hugging and nuzzling their babies. They often keep their young on ice floes to avoid the crush of the jostling walrus crowds on land.

From;
Natgeo
Photograph by Paul Nicklen

Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara

On October 13, 2000, a small team of paleontologists led by Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago clambered out of three battered Land Rovers, filled their water bottles, and scattered on foot across the toffee-colored sands of the Ténéré desert in northern Niger. The Ténéré, on the southern flank of the Sahara, easily ranks among the most desolate landscapes on Earth. The Tuareg, turbaned nomads who for centuries have ruled this barren realm, refer to it as a "desert within a desert"—a California-size ocean of sand and rock, where a single massive dune might stretch a hundred miles, and the combination of 120-degree heat and inexorable winds can wick the water from a human body in less than a day. The harsh conditions, combined with intermittent conflict between the Tuareg and the Niger government, have kept the region largely unexplored.

Sereno, a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence and one of the world's most prolific dinosaur hunters, had led his first expedition into the Ténéré five years earlier, after negotiating agreements with both the leader of a Tuareg rebel force and the Niger Ministry of Defense, allowing him safe passage to explore its fossil-rich deposits. That initial foray was followed by others, and each time his team emerged from the desert with the remains of exotic species, including Nigersaurus, a 500-toothed plant-eating dinosaur, and Sarcosuchus, an extinct crocodilian the size of a city bus. The 2000 expedition, however, was his most ambitious—three months scouring a 300-mile arc of the Ténéré, ending near Agadez, a medieval caravan town on the western lip of the desert. Already, his team members had excavated 20 tons of dinosaur bones and other prehistoric animals. But six weeks of hard labor in this brutal environment had worn them down. Most had mild cases of dysentery; several had lost so much weight they had to hitch up their trousers as they trudged over the soft sand; and everyone's nerves had been on edge since an encounter with armed bandits.

Mike Hettwer, a photographer accompanying the team, headed off by himself toward a trio of small dunes. He crested the first slope and stared in amazement. The dunes were spilling over with bones. He took a few shots with his digital camera and hurried back to the Land Rovers.

"I found some bones," Hettwer said, when the team had regrouped. "But they're not dinosaurs. They're human."

From;

By Peter Gwin

National Geographic Staff

Photograph by Mike Hettwer

Sharks Killed for Oil Used in Swine Flu Vaccine

Vaccines being made to protect people from swine flu may not be so healthy for threatened species of sharks.

That's because millions of doses of the pandemic H1N1/09 vaccine contain a substance called squalene, which is extracted from shark livers. (Get more swine flu facts.)

More commonly found in beauty products such as skin creams, squalene can be used to make an adjuvant, a compound that boosts the body's immune response.

The World Health Organization recommends adjuvant-based vaccines, because they allow drug makers to create doses that use less of the active component, increasing available supplies.

Olive oil, wheat germ oil, and rice bran oil also naturally contain squalene, albeit in smaller amounts. But for now squalene is primarily harvested from sharks caught by commercial fishers, especially deepwater species. (Related: "Tomato, Tobacco Plants Produce SARS Vaccine.")

"There are several very disturbing issues associated with use of shark-liver-oil squalene," said Mary O'Malley, co-founder of the volunteer-run advocacy group Shark Safe Network.

"The deepwater sharks targeted have extremely low reproductive rates, and many are threatened species."

For example, one supplier has dubbed the gulper shark the Rolls-Royce of squalene-producing sharks—but the gulper is listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN's) Red List of Threatened Species, meaning the species faces a high risk of extinction.

Shark Oil Demand

Although vaccines containing squalene have not yet been approved for use in the U.S., they are being distributed elsewhere, including Europe and Canada.

Novartis, a drug company that produces swine flu vaccines containing shark squalene, did not answer requests for information about its squalene supply.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), another major swine-flu vaccine producer, announced in October that it had received orders for 440 million doses of vaccine containing adjuvant.

And the adjuvant in GSK's vaccines—which have been administered in 26 countries so far—contains shark-liver squalene, company spokesperson Clare Eldred confirmed in a statement.

GSK wouldn't reveal the name of its supplier or the annual quantity of shark squalene it buys. But Eldred told National Geographic News that the drug company takes about 10 percent of its supplier's total output.

O'Malley, of the Shark Safe Network, estimates that GSK's 440 million doses would require at least 9,700 pounds (4,400 kilograms) of shark oil, based on the stated squalene content of 10.69 milligrams in a dose.

This estimate, however, assumes zero waste and no refining of the squalene once it's been extracted from the sharks, O'Malley said.

Slow-Growing Sharks

Found at depths of between 984 and 4,921 feet (300 and 1,500 meters), the deep-sea sharks that produce squalene are most frequently caught via bottom trawling, either deliberately or as bycatch.

(Related: "Eight Million Sharks Killed Accidentally off Africa Yearly.")

"Bottom trawling is a horribly destructive fishing method that just bulldozes everything in its path and destroys enormous areas of the ocean floor," O'Malley said.

What's more, the already at-risk sharks are extremely slow growing and reproduce rarely.

A female gulper shark, for example, takes between 12 and 15 years to reach sexual maturity. A pregnant female gives birth to a single pup after a gestation period of about two years.

This means that the loss of a single female has a big impact on the population, said Hans Lassen, fisheries advisor for the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, an intergovernmental organization.

In 2006 the European Union imposed deep-sea shark fishing limits in the Northeast Atlantic, and the amount of shark squalene available on the market has since been reduced.

Still, some squalene suppliers are actively soliciting fishers for these sharks, the Shark Safe Network's O'Malley said.

For instance, France-based suppler Sophim lists the species it seeks on its Web site, along with an offer to evaluate samples from shark livers that "are thrown away because fishermen don't know that the liver has a value."

Shark Liver Alternatives

Some cosmetics firms have stopped using shark squalene or are phasing it out following pressure from conservation groups.

A shark-squalene alternative isn't yet an option for adjuvant vaccine makers, according to GSK's Eldred.

The drug company is currently looking at non-animal squalene sources, including olive oil.

But at the moment, she said, "we are unable to find an alternative of high enough grade."

From;

James Owen

for National Geographic News

Global Warming Indigestion May Kill Gorillas, Monkeys

Annual temperatures are predicted to rise 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) by mid-century in some climate models.Leaves that grow in hotter air contain more fiber and less digestible protein, meaning leaf-eaters would take longer to process their food.

In addition, the higher temperatures may force the animals to spend more time lounging in the shade to avoid overheating.

Such changes may force some gorilla and monkey species to sit still for long periods—time that would otherwise be used for finding food, protecting territory, or maintaining social bonds, the study says.

The inaction, combined with less nutritious food, could eventually cause mountain gorillas and African colobines—a large group of species including colobus monkeys—to go extinct, the study predicts.

(Related pictures: 25 Most Endangered Primates Named.)

"A two-degree temperature increase is not a very farfetched idea," said study leader Amanda Korstjens, a biological anthropologist at Bournemouth University in the U.K.

"Animals can adapt ... and maybe primates will find another way of coping," she added. But "I expect that they are at their limits already."

Flexible Fruit-Eaters

Korstjens and colleagues compared climate models with previously published data on primates' behavior, diets, and group sizes worldwide.

Based on the data, the team created global maps that show where primates exist now and where climate change is predicted to cause die-offs.

The data revealed that the expected higher temperatures shouldn't affect most South American primates, which eat highly digestible fruit. Also, South American primate habitats are less fragmented by agriculture and encroaching deserts than most primate habitats in Africa, Korstjens said.

Around the world, fruit-eaters—such as baboons and vervet monkeys in Africa—would also be better off. They occupy a wider range of habitat than leaf-eaters, which are confined to a narrow belt near the Equator, according to the study, published December 8 in the journal Animal Behaviour.

"Not as Stable As You Think"

The theatened primates could possibly adapt to the global warming-induced changes by changing their diets, but no one knows for sure.

Colobines could eat some fruit, but their highly leaf adapted stomachs aren't equipped for all-fruit diets, Korstjens said.

Such assumptions of inadaptability may be weak points in the new study, said Colin Chapman, a primate ecologist at Montreal's McGill University, who was not involved in the study.

"It's not clear how flexible [colobines] could be."

But "if the assumptions are correct," Chapman said, "shows a pretty big potential in changes in distribution and extinction risk."

Mountain gorillas are in a particularly serious bind, he added. They have little access to fresh fruit in their high-altitude habitats, and they're "sitting on top of mountains with nowhere else to go."

A hotter Africa would also pose a threat for conservation efforts, Chapman said.

Well-managed national parks may be able to keep out poachers and loggers, for example, but they can't protect against temperature changes, he said.

"You think you have a perfectly stable national park," he said, "all of the sudden it's not as stable as you think."

From;

Christine Dell'Amore

National Geographic News

Hebrides

Beautiful Scotland

Michael Robson fell in love in 1948—with a place he'd never been.

An illustrated magazine swept the young boy's imagination from the familiar domesticity of his English home to the wild islands that rise in jagged ranks off Scotland's northwest coast. As soon and as often as he could, first on school holidays and later on breaks from work, Robson surrendered to the call of the Hebrides, making long journeys from the mainland by steamer and bus, by small boat and on foot, venturing from the mountains of Skye to the moors and sea lochs of Lewis and Harris and even farther, across miles of ocean to a rocky speck of land where the last permanent settlement had been abandoned a century before.

By Lynne Warren

Photograph by Jim Richardson

From;
Natgeo

Prehistoric Pygmy Sea Cow Discovered in Madagascar

December 12, 2009—A new species of extinct pygmy sea cow (illustrated above with skull inset) is one of the first fossil mammal species found in Madagascar from the mysterious time period between 80 million years ago and 90,000 years ago, experts say.

"There's a big gap where we really don't know anything about what's going on in the fossil record," said study leader Karen Samonds, of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Sea cows, or sirenians, today include manatees and dugongs.

Known from a roughly 40-million-year-old skull and a few ribs, the new species has been named Eotheroides lambondrano, after the Malagasy word for dugong, which translates to "water bushpig." At about seven feet (two meters) long, the ancient pygmy sea cow was smaller than the modern dugong, which ranges from about 8 to 10 feet (2.4 to 3 meters) in length.

The pygmy sea cow would have been "a neat in-between" animal in the evolution from primitive land-dwelling mammals to today's aquatic sea cows, Samonds said. (Explore a prehistoric time line.)

E. lambondrano is also unique in that its closest relatives would have lived in what is now India and Egypt, according to the study—making its Madagascan location all the more special.

"This fossil gives us a new glimpse not just at a new time period, but at a new place," said Samonds, whose work was funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

"Madagascar already has a lot of strange beasts, and we now have a glimpse of this species from so far away."

From;

Rachel Kaufman

National Geographic News

Although the ten species aren't those most at risk, IUCN selected them because they are well-researched "flagship" species that are being affected by a spectrum of climate change impacts, from melting sea ice to beach erosion.

(See pictures of the ten IUCN "flagship" species, and related pictures of ten U.S. species feeling global warming's heat.)

"The polar bear has become an icon of climate change, and it's doing a fabulous job," report co-author Wendy Foden of IUCN's Species Programme said by phone in Copenhagen.

But "there are other species too [that] help to highlight what climate change is doing."

Sea Turtle Gender Bending

Many of the animals featured in the new report already appear on IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species for other reasons, such as habitat destruction and overharvesting. This makes climate change an "additional and major threat," the report authors say.

For instance, critically endangered leatherback sea turtles are already at risk of becoming entangled in fishing nets or choking on plastic debris in the ocean.

In a warmer world, the sea turtles must also try to nest on beaches severely eroded by extreme storms, which have been linked to rising sea-surface temperatures.

See video portraits of the ten IUCN "flagship" species.

In addition, a hatchling turtle's gender is determined by the average temperature during the egg's development—and hotter sand is spawning a disproportionately high number of females.

(Related: "Warming May Drive Gender-Bending Reptiles Extinct, Scientists Say.")

Bleaching, Tannins, and Ice Melt Perhaps the most vulnerable species on the new list is the staghorn coral, which has been greatly weakened by bleaching, IUCN's Fodel said.

Bleaching occurs when warmer oceans cause corals to lose their symbiotic algae, leaving the blanched reefs to slowly perish.

At the same time, coral declines mean that another of the report's threatened species, the clownfish, is suffering from lost habitat.

Meanwhile, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing eucalyptus plants in Australia to produce leaves with fewer nutritious proteins and more unpalatable tannins.

This means that koalas, which eat only eucalyptus, will have to consume even more to keep from starving.

"We definitely didn't anticipate that one," Fodel said.

And like the polar bear, several of the report's species—such as the arctic fox, emperor penguin, beluga whale, and ringed seal—depend on polar snows and ice for their survival.

No one knows what will happen to some these species when polar summer ice completely disappears—which may occur in the Arctic by 2040, experts say.

The report's other at-risk species include the African quiver tree, under threat due to drought, and salmon, whose home streams may experience changes in flow rate due to earlier snow melt.

"Weedy" Species to Thrive With Warming?

Some species—such as mosquitoes and jellyfish—are thriving due to global warming, experts note.

But such species tend to be the "weedy, invasive types" that may create serious problems if they explode in numbers, Fodel said.

Mosquitoes in Africa, for instance, are already expanding their ranges due to climate changes—bringing more malaria with them.

These opportunists may throw off ecosystems and put further stress on weakened species.

"While it is true that some species will benefit, that will be an overwhelmingly negative thing for biodiversity," said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, a California-based nonprofit.

Adaptable

Co-author Fodel emphasized that the species in the new report are not yet in dire straits: The ringed seal, for example, is still the most common seal in the Arctic.

"They can adapt—it's a question of whether climate change is slow enough for them to adapt," she said.

And that may rest on the outcome of this week's climate talks, which end Friday, said the Center for Biological Diversity's Siegel.

As of Monday, the draft negotiations would allow Earth's carbon dioxide levels to rise to 650 parts per million by 2100, which in turn would warm the Earth by up to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) by the same year, scientists estimate.

That, Siegel said, would "equal extinction for essentially all of these species, plus thousands of others."

From;

Christine Dell'Amore

National Geographic News

Male Fish Punish Unruly Females -- And Benefit, Study Says

Cheaters may not prosper—but punishers do, according to a new study.

Male cleaner fish will chase and pester female fish if they interfere with the male's mealtime—the first evidence of a species benefiting from third-party punishment.

If you're a cleaner fish, it's bad table manners to nibble on the mucous layer of "client" fish, which are generally bigger than the cleaners. Clients stop by multifish cleaning "stations" to get rid of their parasites, which become food for the cleaners.

(Related: "Cleaner Fish Wear 'Uniforms' to Advertise, Avoid Danger.")

But biting off a chunk of tasty mucous means the larger fish may flee—so one mischievous cleaner can deprive another from a meal.

The male "loses something if the female cheats the client, and that's why he corrects the behavior," said study co-author Redouan Bshary, a behavioral ecologist at Switzerland's Université de Neuchâtel.

Not that males are always respectable: They'll cheat, too, but females endure most of the punishment simply because they're weaker, he added.

"Imagine you are collaborating with Mike Tyson," Bshary said. "If you cheat he will punish you, but if he cheats you probably won't do anything."

Prawn Punishment

Scientists had observed male cleaner fish chasing mucous-eating females in the wild.

But to determine if the males were punishing females, Bshary and colleagues created an experiment. They provided aquarium-dwelling bluestreak cleaner wrasse with a plate of fish flakes—their boring, everyday diet—and prawns, which are about as delectable as fish mucous. (See a wrasse picture.)

Each time a female ate a prawn, scientists removed all the food from the tank.

The team observed that the males chastised prawn-eating females—and that the females obeyed by stopping the behavior.

(Related: Ants Smell Cheaters and Assault Them, Study Finds.)

Do-Gooder Evolution?

The study, published today in Science, "is really the first to show a direct benefit to the individual who does the punishing," according to Sarah Brosnan, a behavioral scientist at Georgia State University.

The discovery also offers a "potential explanation for how [punishing] might have evolved in other organisms as well—but this may not hold for other types of social [animals]," added Brosnan, who was not involved in the research.

For example most human studies of third-party punishment show that—unlike in cleaner fish—the individual doesn't benefit, according to Peter Richerson, an expert in human cultural evolution at the University of California, Davis.

Though controversial, some scientists say these experiments show that human do-gooders evolved to benefit the group, rather than the individual, Richerson said.

But he doesn't think the cleaner fish study will lend much insight into human behavior.

"No such issue arises in the [fish] experiment because the males benefit directly from punishing defector females."

From ;

Brian Handwerk

for National Geographic News

About the Virunga Gorillas

Nearly half of the world's 700-some remaining mountain gorillas live in the Virunga Mountains of central Africa, at the intersection of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The volcanic slopes here are lush with tropical forests and diverse mammal, bird, and reptile species—but they are also at the heart of a region in crisis.

Sandwiched between the 1994 Rwandan genocide and a brutal ongoing civil war in Congo, Virunga National Park, home to nearly 200 gorillas, has become a battleground for militia groups and the Congolese army. In addition, severe poverty in the region pushes poachers into the park to hunt gorillas for either meat or sale. Locals also generate income by cutting down trees to create charcoal—a nearly $30 million trade that wreaks havoc on critical habitat.

With the help of dedicated wildlife rangers, comprehensive monitoring, and community education programs, the endangered gorilla population in the Virungas experienced a nearly 20 percent increase in the early 2000s. But in 2007, at least ten gorillas in Virunga National Park were lost to murder and chaos.

Gorillas in other Virunga parks are faring a bit better, as is the other half of the world's remaining mountain gorilla population, which lives in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, just 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of the Virunga mountains.

For the Virunga gorillas, however, the future—and their survival—is uncertain.

From natgeo

Killer Whale (Orca)

Orcas, or killer whales, are the largest of the dolphins and one of the world's most powerful predators. They feast on marine mammals such as seals, sea lions, and even whales, employing teeth that can be four inches (ten centimeters) long. They are known to grab seals right off the ice. They also eat fish, squid, and seabirds.

Though they often frequent cold, coastal waters, orcas can be found from the polar regions to the Equator.

Killer whales hunt in deadly pods, family groups of up to 40 individuals. There appear to be both resident and transient pod populations of killer whales. These different groups may prey on different animals and use different techniques to catch them. Resident pods tend to prefer fish, while transient pods target marine mammals. All pods use effective, cooperative hunting techniques that some liken to the behavior of wolf packs.

Whales make a wide variety of communicative sounds, and each pod has distinctive noises that its members will recognize even at a distance. They use echolocation to communicate and hunt, making sounds that travel underwater until they encounter objects, then bounce back, revealing their location, size, and shape.

Killer whales are protective of their young, and other adolescent females often assist the mother in caring for them. Mothers give birth every three to ten years, after a 17-month pregnancy.

Orcas are immediately recognizable by their distinctive black-and-white coloring and are the intelligent, trainable stars of many aquarium shows. Killer whales have never been extensively hunted by humans.

Photograph by Gerard Lacz/Animals Animals—Earth Scenes