rodent
dr. dolittle | September 8, 2016 Image of a rat in the New York City subway By m01229 from USA, from Wikimedia commons
News out of Flagstaff, Arizona reports that a biotechnology company in the area, SenesTech, has developed a birth control for rats that was recently cleared by the Environmental Protection Agency. The new drug comes in the form of a sweetened liquid bait that has been shown to reduce rodent populations by as much as 40%. It works in female rats by inducing loss of eggs whereas in male rats it disrupts development of sperm.
The drug is also being tested in other feral animals such as dogs, cats, and mice.…
zooillogix | December 28, 2007As many of you might have noticed, Benny and I have been off for the week for Christmas in San Francisco. The plan was to visit the Zoo on Wednesday, which obviously did not happen, so we checked out the Monterey Bay Aquarium for a twelfth time. Anyway, our apologies for the lack of posts. We will pick up next week but we leave you with this piece, directly lifted from this Wired article.
Genetic engineering isn't just for scientists in ivory towers or corporate R&D labs anymore. Researchers are still creating new mice and crops every week, but the tools and knowledge necessary to create…
zooillogix | December 18, 2007Olney, Illinois is famous for white squirrels. In 1943 there were 1000 of the little guys but by the '90s the population remained constant around 200. The town has implemented a rather strict set of laws to protect them. Dogs are not allowed to roam free anywhere in Olney and in 1997 cats were prohibited from roaming free as well. Running over an Olnean white squirrel, which has right of way on all streets, will get you a $200 fine.
Olney's white squirrel community is a true albino population, which has managed to support itself for over sixty years. According to the White Squirrel Institute…
zooillogix | December 17, 2007Much like Pier 1 Imports is the place to make great unexpected holiday gift discoveries this season, Indonesia is the #1 source for mildly inventive new mammal species. In the Foja Mountains rainforest of eastern Papua province, a joint Indonesian and American research team recently stumbled across some new critters. More correctly, in the case of at least one, it stumbled across them. "The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat," said Kristofer Helgen, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. "With no fear of humans, it apparently came into the…
bleimanb | December 10, 2007
What? What? Huh? I can't hear you? What did you say? What?
A scientific expedition in the Gobi desert has yielded the holy grail for hamster lovers, film of the long-eared jerboa, a creature that has heretofore never been captured by a camera. Dr. Jonathan Baillie of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) tracked down the big eared desert friends, filmed them and even captured them in "pitfall traps" so that he could study them more closely. Dr. Baillie's research has discovered that these nocturnal creatures spend their days in burrows and eat insects. Wow! Didn't see that coming!
Watch…
zooillogix | November 30, 2007Benny and I subscribe to some interesting listservs... One of the few that is fit to discuss here is a zookeeper and exotic pet group that shares information on raising and feeding exotics as well animal enrichment. We have learned so much about enriching the lives of captive porcupines, pangolins and fruit bats that we could open up a Chucky Cheese targeted to these guys.
Recently, one of the group's members brought our attention to a critter we were not familiar with: the springhaas (also called a springhare). This adorable rodent from Southeast Africa is built much like a kangaroo and hops…
zooillogix | October 22, 2007Hudson County Now reported late last week that a flaming squirrel fell from the sky and blew up a woman's car in Bayonne, NJ. Lindsey Millar, 23, and her brother, Tony, 22, were inside their home when they looked outside and saw Lindsey's car in flames. Local firefighters were called and after extinguishing the flames they found the crispy culprit. Apparently the squirrel had been gnawing on power lines directly above Lindsey's Toyota Camry. After chewing through the power lines' protective coating, the electric current was enough to turn the fluffy squirrel into a flaming comet. In a…
zooillogix | July 2, 2007Scientists interested in treating infertility in humans are turning to an unlikely source for inspiration: naked mole-rats. The rats--actually more closely related to porcupines and chinchillas than moles or rats--live in large colonies much like ants. In these colonies, one dominant female called the "queen" maintains a monopoly on breeding rights by constantly bullying the other female workers and soldiers. The stress of the bullying brings on a suppression of certain fertility hormones in the victims, causing them to be infertile. In a turn-of-events that gives hope to every whipped…
zooillogix | June 20, 2007Firefighters in Pocatello, Idaho, pulled the lifeless bodies of four cats and an albino rat from a blaze and then managed to bring them back back to life through artificial resuscitation. The fire department had purchased tiny oxygen masks for use on small animals two years ago.
Do cats hear "wha-wha-wha-wha-wha" also?The firefighter who rescued the rat, Kirby Jonas, described coming upon the animal's cage. "If I were betting money, I would have put down $10,000 that anything in that cage was dead," he said, according to msnbc.com.
Actual footage of Jonas during the blaze...
Jonas also noted…