Can you spot a blackbird in your backyard?
Can you spot a song thrush in your backyard?
Can you spot a rosella in your backyard?
Can you spot a kakariki in your backyard?
Can you spot a chaffinch in your backyard?
Can you spot a starling in your backyard?
Can you spot ruru in your backyard?
Can you spot a fantail in your backyard?
Can you spot a kākā in your backyard?
Can you spot a weka in your backyard?
Can you spot a silvereye in your backyard?
Can you spot a kingfisher in your backyard?
Can you spot a grey warbler in your backyard?
Can you spot a tūī in your backyard?
Can you spot a kererū in your backyard?
A particularly virulent strain of avian influenza called H5N1 has spread to more than 60 countries since it was identified in 1996. The virus’s fatality rate in humans ranges from 50 to 60 per cent, but it hasn’t figured out how to leap between human and human: it can only make the jump between birds and people. An international consortium of scientists studied how the virus spreads, and found that its travel is associated with China’s live poultry trade. The same was true of two other strains of bird flu. “While the H5N1, H7N9 and H5N6 avian influenza viruses have not yet learned to transmit human-to-human,” says New Zealand virologist Robert Webster, “they do have pandemic potential.”
The ship rat genome has been sequenced for the first time—in the hope that this will reveal Rattus rattus’s weaknesses.
Where do cats go—and how lethal are they? Researchers put trackers on 925 pet cats in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, through four citizen science projects, in order to figure out how large the cats’ home range was, and how often they killed. They found that the average domestic tabby had a similar ecological impact as a wild predator, but over a small range; the cats killed on average 3.5 animals per month within 100 metres of their home. Only three cats in the study roamed more widely than a square kilometre—one New Zealand cat roamed over farms, while a British cat walked almost two kilometres between villages. Older cats, male cats, and urban cats moved less. The researchers recommended pet owners find ways to entertain their cats indoors in order to reduce their environmental impact. Meanwhile, a small study on the role of pets in the health of older adults had an unanticipated finding; Australian researchers interviewing 35 people aged 60 to 83 were surprised to learn that pets had protected some from suicide. Twelve of the study’s participants spoke about how their pets gave them a reason to live. Caring for an animal gave them a sense of purpose, its physical presence warded off loneliness, and, most importantly, they felt “known” by their pets.
Sea lions are coming home to the coasts of southern New Zealand, returning to their former territory after more than 300 years in exile. The big question is: Can we make room for them?
Palaeontologists have discovered our earliest ancestor—a tiny, bug-like creature that burrowed in the mud half a billion years ago. It is the first known bilatarian—an animal that’s largely symmetrical and has a front and a back, with a mouth at one end and an anus at the other. This body type turned out to be a successful innovation. It’s the shape sported by most animals today. “We now have evidence of the origin of groups of animals which went on to conquer the Earth,” says James Gehling from the Australian Museum, co-author of a paper describing the new species. It was named Ikaria wariootia. Until now, palaeontologists traced our ancestry to the explosion of marine lifeforms in the Cambrian period, which began 541 million years ago. It was thought that fossils from the earlier Ediacaran period represented some of evolution’s failed experiments—dead ends on the family tree. But this discovery, made in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges, shows that our lineage dates all the way back to the Ediacaran. The Ediacaran was “a very weird world”, says Gehling. “Little bugs like the Ikaria were ploughing through thin layers of sand, eating microbial mats. The world was really one of slime. We have nothing equivalent to it today. You’ve got to think as though you’re on a different planet.” The name acknowledges the Adnyamathanha, the indigenous custodians of the land on which the fossils were found. Ikaria is a nod to Ikara, the Adnyamathanha word for meeting place, while the species name comes from nearby Warioota Creek. There’s still so much we don’t know about these ancient animals and their strange home, says Gehling. “But whatever they were, life expands after that point and changes the planet—and that interaction between life and environment is something that indigenous people have always thought about. What we’re doing here is acknowledging that we scientists aren’t the first people that needed to understand origins.”
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