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A big brown bat warns others to back off. Photo: Reuters

Short Science, March 30, 2014

The world's rarest gorilla, of which there are believed to be fewer than 300 remaining, can be saved with a US$10.5 million action plan, conservationists say. The Cross River gorilla lives in a hilly rainforest area 12,000 square kilometres in size along the Nigeria-Cameroon border, regarded as a globally significant "biodiversity hotspot".

Agencies

The world's rarest gorilla, of which there are believed to be fewer than 300 remaining, can be saved with a US$10.5 million action plan, conservationists say. The Cross River gorilla lives in a hilly rainforest area 12,000 square kilometres in size along the Nigeria-Cameroon border, regarded as a globally significant "biodiversity hotspot". It is the rarest of four gorilla sub-species and is listed as critically endangered. But experts at the World Conservation Society believe its population could remain stable and even increase if a new five-year plan is put into place to protect it from poachers who hunt it for bushmeat, and habitat loss as land is turned over to farming. The Guardian

 

The sound made by a male big brown bat as it zeroes in on a bug that might make a tasty meal - if another bat doesn't get there first - is a sequence of chirps beyond the range of human ears. But to another bat, the meaning is unmistakable: "Back off". US scientists say they have identified a previously unknown call made by these bats - different from the sonar-like echolocation used for mid-air navigation and hunting - that tells another foraging bat to keep away from their prey. The call is made exclusively by the males of this species for reasons that are not entirely clear. And the other foraging bats seem to honour the request, the researchers found. The discovery indicates that acoustic communication in these flying mammals may be more sophisticated than previously thought and underscores the importance of vocal social communication for these nocturnal insect-eating animals, the researchers said. "Bats may be avoiding aggressive interactions with the other bat," said University of Maryland biologist Genevieve Spanjer Wright, who led the study published in the journal . "Chasing and even occasional physical contact have been observed in this species during foraging flight, so use of - and response to - social calls could be a way to limit the need for aggressive interactions or even injury to the responding bat," Wright added. Reuters

 

Scientists have created the first man-made chromosome for a complex-celled organism - a feat hailed as a big step towards acquiring the ability to redesign plants or animals. A synthetic chromosome was inserted into a brewer's yeast cell, which functioned as normal - the key test of success, the team reported in the journal . AFP

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