Hollywood, Los Angeles, in the US, is home to some 5000 pigeons, and their population is booming day by day. But the residents of the area are displeased, as the mess the birds make is getting too tough to manage. So, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), an animal rights group, has given them a solution — to put a birth control product OvoControl P in bird food.
“The pigeon population is expected to shrink by at least half by 2012”, says Laura Dodson, president of the Argyle Civic Association, the group leading this effort. The idea sure seems better than using spiked rooftops, and poisons.
A sheep in Canterbury, New Zealand, recently gave birth to a lamb with seven legs! It has three rear legs, one leg attached to the hoof, and two legs behind its forelegs, which are completely useless. The polydactyl (with many legs) lamb is able to walk with its two forelegs and three hind legs.
These types of cases are very rare and occur just once in several million sheep. But unfortunately, a portion of its bowel is missing, which will force authorities to eventually euthanise it.
Ants will now help us to plan our future townships. Their movement and the way they deal with congestion will help us establish congestion-free cities without traffic jams. Their teamwork is perhaps ‘far more superior’ to our individual approach.
“Ants will organise their freeways so that those bearing loads are in the middle of the freeway, all going in one direction, and the ants that are un-laden are on both sides of the middle row”, says Professor Graham Currie of Melbourne’s Monash University. Smart indeed!
A new member has been added to the Caribbean island family. A tiny island has been recently born near Trinidad to a ‘mud volcano’ — an ocean floor-fissure continuously spewing mud. Similar islands were born off the Trinidad and Tobago coast in 1964 and 2001. But this member has a short-life, as large waves may wash away the mud and with it the fissure.
Nevertheless, an advisory has been issued as a security to small boats, as the 500 feet long island may endanger them. Though a bit unsafe for the fishermen, the island will surely be a boon for the region’s tourism industry.
The civil war in Indonesia's Aceh province has been a blessing. For the orangutans living there. The war, which ended in 2005, kept away logging firms and palm oil estates from one of the world’s richest expanses of rainforest. This helped to stabilise the decreasing population of the orangutans. Now, there are about 7,300 Sumatran orangutans left in the wild.
But of course, the loggers might get back to their business soon, risking the survival of this critically endangered mammal, and the Leuser Ecosystem — the last place on Earth where orangutans, tigers, rhinos, leopards and elephants coexist.
The rhetoric use of the phrase ‘golden country’ for India has become quite literal. Indians drove the global demand for gold, which reached its peak during April-June quarter, and bought 317 tonnes of of the precious metal! This is almost half of world’s gold production in the same quarter.
According to World Gold Council’s latest report, there was a 91 per cent rise in demand owing to a strong currency that led to a fall in gold prices in rupee terms; rise in purchasing power of the people; and a successful festival season (including Akshaya Tritiya). And the demand is not only for gold jewellery, but also for gold as an investment option. “The figures from India this quarter are pleasing and we will continue to encourage India’s ongoing love affair with gold,” says WGC CEO James Burton.
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