Authorities recognized his while he walked through the courthouse metal detectors and notified the deputies in the courtroom he was headed to. “Mr. Brunette thought he had a court date today, but he didn’t. He was taken into custody,” Officer Plageman said.

The warrant against him was issued just last week after he violating terms of his release. Two witnesses saw him walking dogs in the woods close to Deer Creek Road. When Brunette was released from jail on his own recognizance Aug. 20, he agreed not to have dogs while he awaits trial this fall.

The bail has been set at $50,000 according to Prosecutor Celia Rowland. “I think $50,000 bail is going to ensure his appearance in court,” Rowland said. Brunette was arrested July 31st - only five days after animal services and police officers served him with a warrant to search his land and take away dozens of malnourished and mistreated dogs and puppies.

At least 51 dogs have been taken from the run-down rural site. Many of the dogs were caged without food and water, and some had untreated medical problems, such as worms and severe flea infestations, according to animal services officers.

ShareThis

At the mere hint of a threat, the insects adjust their preflight stance to flee in the opposite direction, ensuring a clean getaway, they said in a finding that helps explain why flies so easily evade swipes from their human foes.

“These movements are made very rapidly, within about 200 milliseconds, but within that time the animal determines where the threat is coming from and activates an appropriate set of movements to position its legs and wings,” Michael Dickinson of the California Institute of Technology said in a statement. “This illustrates how rapidly the fly’s brain can process sensory information into an appropriate motor response,” said Dickinson, whose research appears in the journal Current Biology.

Dickinson’s team studied this process in fruit flies using high-speed digital imaging equipment and a fancy fly swatter. In response to a threat from the front, the fly moves its middle legs forward, leans back and raises its back legs for a backward takeoff. If the threat is from the side, the fly leans the other way before takeoff.

The findings offer new insight into the fly nervous system, and lends a few clues on how to outsmart a fly. “It is best not to swat at the fly’s starting position,” Dickinson said. Instead, aim for the escape route.

ShareThis

Until now, scientists had grouped this species with an identical looking fish living in the Atlantic Ocean. “For more than a century, ichthyologists have thought that Pacific and Atlantic goliath grouper were the same species,” said lead researcher Matthew Craig of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, “and the argument was settled before the widespread use of genetic techniques.”

Scientists disagree about how to define the term “species” and what separates species from one another biologically, though some say that a species is a group that can mate with one another and produce offspring that are not sterile. However, this biological definition doesn’t always hold up, for instance, with coyotes and wolves (considered separate species), which can successfully produce fertile offspring. In this study, the scientists relied on differences in the fishes’ genetic codes to establish the separate grouper species.

“In light of our new findings, the Pacific goliath grouper should be treated with separate management and conservation strategies,” said researcher Rachel Graham of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York.

ShareThis

Zebras are generally 2.3 m (8ft) long, stand 1.25-1.5 m (4-5ft) at the shoulder, and weigh around 300kg (660 lbs), although some can grow to more than 410 kg (900 lbs). In addition to their stripes, zebras have erect, mohawk-like manes. Unlike their closest relatives, horses and donkeys, zebras have not been truly domesticated.

There are three species of zebra: the Plains Zebra, Grevy’s Zebra and the Mountain Zebra. They can be found in a variety of habitats, such as grasslands, savannas, woodlands, thorny scrublands, mountains and coastal hills.

ShareThis

The video shows some type of creature, which looks similar to that of a dog or coyote, running in broad daylight as Corp. Brandon Reidel followed it in his car. But while the animal may have some similarities, Reidel said from his view, it didn’t look like a dog or a coyote to him.

“I’ve been patrolling these back roads for a long time and I’ve never run across anything like this until that day,” he told reporters. Reidel said he noticed some interesting characteristics as he followed the fleeing animal. “And you can tell that the front legs were shorter than the back legs. And the way it’s running, it doesn’t run like a normal coyote or dog would.”

But what really sealed the deal, Reidel said, was when he watched the video later and got a good look as the animal turned its head towards the camera. “When I saw it from the side, I was like that is exactly what we have been seeing in the papers, what we’ve seen on the T-shirt,” he said of the animal’s unusually long snout.

The creature was not caught. While Sheriff Joe Zavesky told reporters that he loves what the chupacabra sightings have done for DeWitt County, he said he believes in all likelihood that the creature was most likely some type of coyote-dog hybrid. However, he hasn’t appeared to rule it out totally. “I love this for DeWitt County,” he said. “It has brought a lot attention to us, and I believe there is something to it.”

ShareThis

Deep sea turtles are born with myoglobin-rich blood that helps them to stock up on oxygen. Jonathan Houghton and colleagues from the University of Swansea in Britain conducted experiments to find out why the lumbering sea creatures make these rare forays, and published their findings Friday in the British Journal of Experimental Biology.

The researchers fitted 13 leatherbacks with data loggers which recorded location, temperature, dive depth and duration, and transmitted the information to satellites as the animals surfaced. Of more than 26,000 dives logged all across the North Atlantic Ocean, only 95 — less than half of one percent — went below three hundred meters.

A turtle trying to avoid becoming some fish’s lunch would surely swim a bit more vigorously that usual, but the data collected indicates they were in no hurry as they plunged. Moreover turtles spent several hours at the surface just before deep diving, probably to boost oxygen efficiency.

“Hanging out at the surface would be a daft strategy for avoiding predators, because that is where they can spot your silhouette,” said Houghton. As for keeping cool, temperatures don’t drop much after the 350-meter mark, so there’s little incentive to go any deeper. But the food hypothesis, the study found, may be at least half right: even if the turtles don’t eat the food they find at extreme depth, they probably find the food they will eat - later on.

Leatherbacks like to dine on surface-dwelling jellyfish, but during the months spent traveling from their tropical breeding grounds in the Caribbean to cooler waters, they rely on jellyfish-like animals that form long colonies during the day at depths of about 600 meters.

The turtles, Houghton speculates, dive when the sun is out to find the colonies, and then wait for them to surface at night to begin feasting. This would explain why the leatherbacks often loiter in the same area for days or weeks after such a deep dive, he said.

ShareThis

While the cubs were trying to find their mother - who was ignoring them - the golden retriever took them in. Harvey said it’s unusual for dogs to care for tiger cubs, but it does happen. He said he has seen reports of pigs nursing cubs in China, and he actually got the golden retriever after his wife saw television accounts of dogs caring for tiger cubs.

Puppies take about the same amount of time as tiger cubs to develop, and Harvey said the adoptive mother just recently weaned her own puppies. “The timing couldn’t have been any better,” he said. The mother doesn’t know the difference, Harvey said. He said the adopted mother licks, cleans and feeds the cubs.

ShareThis

When the animal has been given birth to it is only an embryo helpless to do anything. It will climb from the birth canal to the nipples of its mother where it will grab on with its mouth and develop. It may take weeks or months to develop.

The short gestation time is due to having a yolk-type placenta in the mother marsupial. Placental mammals nourish the developing embryo using the mother’s blood supply, allowing longer gestation times. Like other mammals, the marsupials are covered with hair. Mothers nurse their young — a young kangaroo may nurse even when it has grown almost to the mother’s size.

The only naturally occurring marsupial in the United States is the opossum. In the past, however, marsupials were quite common. During the Mesozoic marsupials were very common in North America; more common, in fact, than placental mammals. They persisted here until the mid- to late-Tertiary.

Though marsupials today do not have as many species as do the placental mammals, they are quite structurally diverse. They range from small four-footed forms like the marsupial mole, to the large two-legged kangaroos.

ShareThis

Beverly Prady owns the home and actually gave authorities permission to enter the home – which was in horrible shape. Close to 90% of the animals will have to be euthanized because they were beyond help due to the conditions of the house. Burns held back tears after seeing the inside of the house, where he shot a video of the conditions.

“She thought she was doing it out of love. What kind of love is that?” Burns said. People who live in the neighborhood said the stench from the animals was noticeable. Former resident Joseph Dufit said the smell was so bad that he moved. “I used to be here for 15 years,” Dufit said. “It was bad.”

Prady was charged with one count of animal cruelty, police said. “It’s kind of hard to tell whether or not all her mental capacities are there. One would suspect that they’re not, because again, this isn’t something that a balanced person would involve themselves in,” said Lt. Neal Cuevas of the North Miami Police Department.
Animal control said the animals that can be saved will be put up for adoption. Prady will likely face additional charges. She was taken to the Miami-Dade County Jail on $5,000 bond.

ShareThis

There are now more than 21,000 rhinos across Africa, according to figures complied by the African Rhino Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN, based in Gland. The group of rhino experts are part of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, a network of conservation experts brought together to work against the species extinction crisis.

Numbers of the white rhino, Ceratotherium simum, have increased from 14,540 animals counted in 2005 to 17,480 animals found in 2007, the specialists say. Living in protected areas and private game reserves, the white rhino is listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, but one of its two subspecies, the Northern white rhino, Ceratotherium simum cottoni, is listed as Critically Endangered and is on the brink of extinction.

Once found in several countries in East and Central Africa south of the Sahara desert, the wild population of Northern white rhino numbered about 500 animals in the 1970s. Now, the Northern white rhino is restricted in the wild to Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the only remaining population was reduced by poaching from 30 in April 2003 to only four confirmed animals by August 2006.
“Worryingly, recent fieldwork has so far failed to find any presence of these four remaining rhinos,” says Dr. Martin Brooks, chair of the African Rhino Specialist Group.

“Unless animals are found during the intensive surveys that are planned under the direction of the African Parks Foundation, the subspecies may be doomed to extinction,” he said. By contrast, the other subspecies, the Southern white rhino, Ceratotherium simum simum, continues to increase in numbers and range.

Southern white rhinos are listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List, which means that they are not presently classed as Endangered or Vulnerable to extinction, but may qualify for a threatened category in the near future.

The southern white rhino is considered one of conservation’s greatest success stories. Thought to be extinct in the late 19th century, in 1895 a small population of less than 100 animals was discovered in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. After more than a century of protection and management, the southern white rhinos are now the only non-endangered rhinos.

ShareThis