Mexico City's 9-month old ban on circus animals has left Mexican officials with another issue: the glut of big cats, elephants and even bears that need to find new homes. Enter Black Jaguar White Tiger Foundation's Eduardo Serio. The big cat sanctuary opened in September 2013, but already is home to 45 big cats and two grizzly bears. Serio took his first few cats into his home, but quickly realized that his garden was unfit to save these rambunctious young cats. He purchased 32 acres just outside of Mexico City and has built a large infrastructure of animal pens to quarantine new arrivals and house the cats in large areas with pools and toys to enrich them. But the only place to see Serio's big cat sanctuary is on Instagram, as they don't allow visitors in person.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Ebola is Wiping Out West Africa's Apes - Ken Cameron
The recent West African Ebola outbreak killed approximately 10,000 people, but it killed five to ten times that number of non-human apes. Ken Cameron, a Wildlife Conservation Society field veterinarian based in Congo, says that the virus that doctors and government have scrambled to contain has been running rampant in the region's forests, killing half of the apes in one national park, and bringing the western lowland gorilla to the brink of extinction. Cameron and his team have been looking for areas where bats, long considered to be an Ebola reservoir between outbreaks, apes and hogs all overlap. He says that certain fruit trees have multiple species feeding at them, which could be way to transmit the disease between species.
Documenting Life in the Endangered Coral Triangle - David Doubilet
A lifetime of being a professional diver and photographer in the world's oceans has left David Doubilet with a unique understanding of their reefs and animals that depend on these reefs. This in-depth understanding also has Doubilet worried. Ocean acidification and coral bleaching endanger the South Pacific's "Coral Triangle," surrounding the island nations of Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. Doubilet explains that if the coral dies, the "city of great complexity beneath the sea," full of everything from bacteria to sharks and whales will go with it.
Eating Vietnam - Graham Holliday
Eating street food on the other side of the world can be intimidating, but author and longtime resident of Vietnam Graham Holliday insists it's the only way, in that country. The foods might be foreign to us, like pig intestines and uterus, which are "popular drinking foods," but Holliday insists that the Vietnamese are notoriously fastidious and clean when it comes to food prep. Eating from carts and huts on the side of the road, the sickest he got in his 10 years in the country was after he had eaten at a well-known French restaurant. But Holliday does recommend skipping alcohols made from fermented snakes: they taste pretty bad. His new book, Eating Viet Nam is available now.
The Science Behind El Niño - Tom DiLiberto
2015 is officially an El Niño year, as declared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. The Western United States had been hoping for the weather phenomenon to bring storms and water to the parched areas of California, but that might not happen this time. NOAA's Tom DiLiberto says that the El Niño weather phenomenon is caused by weakening trade winds blowing away from the Americas, toward Asia. The weaker winds allow water that is usually "piled up" in the western Pacific to flow back east, warming up the ocean off the coast of South America. These warmer ocean temperatures also warm up the atmosphere, disrupting more typical weather patterns.
Finding The Truth Behind Atlantis - Mark Adams
The myth of "The Lost City of Atlantis" stems from a Plato story. Plato was one of the founders of Western philosophy and did use parables to illustrate points, but every time he discussed Atlantis, he clearly stated "This is not a parable." So Mark Adams went on a hunt for a plausible location of the city, based on clues from Plato and historical events in antiquity. Even if Adams never finds Atlantis, he offers a moral from Atlantis' myth: a technologically advanced society loses its bearings, and is punished for its hubris with natural disasters. Adams' new book, Meet Me in Atlantis is available now.
Why Don't People Believe in Science? - Joel Achenbach
"Most people really do like science." Reporter Joel Achenbach researched the pervasive disbelief in some of science's findings, like climate change, the moon landing and autism's disproven connection to vaccines, to find that people tend to think of themselves as rationalists. But, when scientists discover something that conflicts with our worldview, the public wants the findings to be completely infallible before they'll accommodate the findings. But science, by its nature, is fallible: "By definition it's rarely truly settled, because if it was settled, it wouldn't be a scientific question at that moment. Scientists do their work with a certain level of uncertainty in the results, and they're comfortable with that." Achenbach recommends that the public take a less absolute approach. Just because there is some degree of uncertainty, doesn't mean that we don't know anything about the topic.
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