Lion Cub Triplets Raise Hope for The Endangered Asiatic Lion: Now Copenhagen Zoo Kills Other Lions!

                                                                     

                                                                     
About the clip:

The Asiatic lion (Panthera leo persica) or Indian Lion is a subspecies of the lion.

The only place in the wild where the lion is found, is in the Gir Forest of Gujarat, India. The Asiatic lion is one of the five major big cats found in India, the others being the Bengal tiger, the Indian leopard, the snow leopard and clouded leopard. The Asiatic lions once ranged from the Mediterranean to the north-eastern parts of the Indian subcontinent, but excessive hunting, water pollution and decline in natural prey reduced their habitat.

This footage is part of the professionally-shot stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of imagery from South Asia. 

The Wilderness Films India collection comprises of thousands of hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM 1080i High Definition, HDV and Digital Betacam. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world... wfi @ vsnl.com and admin@wildfilmsindia.com.

Now, triplets born at a French Zoo to bolster the current numbers.Good news!

The cubs were born on December 30 in a zoo attached to the natural history museum in Besancon, eastern France.

“These births raise hopes for the survival of this endangered species,’’ the zoo’s veterinarian Melanie Berthet said.

According to the museum, there are only 350 Asiatic lions left in the wild, all of them living in the Gir forest in India’s western Gujarat state.

“There are 56 zoos across the world which have Asiatic Lions but only eight of them are in a position to breed,’’ Ms Berthet added.

The latest arrivals’ eight-year-old mother, Shiva, was born in the same zoo. The father, Tejas, was born in Bristol in Britain five years ago.

The two lions were paired last year and Shiva gave birth to a first female cub in August.

Ms Berthet said the mother was “raising the new cubs brilliantly’’.

The father was being kept at a distance but was able to smell and see them and appeared to have accepted them.

She said the father would only be allowed to come into direct contact with the cubs in a month’s time as there was still a risk that he could attack them.

Listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, the Asiatic lion (panthera leo persica) was once widely distributed across southwest Asia.

Picture: Endangered Asiatic lion Shiva with her three cubs at France’s Besancon zoo.

With thanks to The Australian

But this is truly barbaric! I am sure another zoo would have taken them!

 Copenhagen zoo that killed giraffe puts down two lions and cubs

                                                                

A COPENHAGEN zoo that prompted international outrage by putting down a healthy giraffe and dissecting it in public has killed two lions and their two cubs to make way for a new male, it says. 

“Because of the pride of lions' natural structure and behaviour, the zoo has had to euthanise the two old lions and two young lions who were not old enough to fend for themselves,” Copenhagen Zoo said in a statement.

The 10-month-old lions “would have been killed by the new male lion as soon as he got the chance,” it said.

The four lions were put down on Monday after the zoo had failed to find a new home for them, a spokesman told AFP, confirming the four were all from the same family.

There would be no public dissection of the animals since “not all our animals are dissected in front of an audience,” he added. Within a few days the new male will be introduced to the zoo's two female lions who, born in 2012, have reached breeding age. “The zoo is recognised worldwide for our work with lions, and I am proud that one of the zoo's own brood now forms the centre of a new pride of lions,” chief executive Steffen Straede said.

Last month, zoo boss Bengt Holst received death threats for the decision to kill its 18-month-old giraffe Marius, which was put down with a bolt gun before children were able to watch it being chopped up, dissected and fed to lions.

The move shocked thousands of animal lovers around the world who had signed an online petition to save him.

The zoo said on its website it had no choice but to prevent the animal attaining adulthood since under European Association of Zoos and Aquaria rules, inbreeding between giraffes is to be avoided. Many Danes were surprised and even angered by international reactions to the event, with a leading expert on the ethics of the treatment of animals decrying the “Disneyfication” of zoo creatures.

The Copenhagen zoo that faced protests for killing a healthy giraffe to prevent inbreeding says it has put down four lions, including two cubs, to make room for a new male lion. Picture: AP Source: AP

(pay wall) From the Australian

Here are the slaughtered cubs - picture credit and more info -  Yahoo:

                                                             

Below -  from Twitter via @planetepics: A terrific picture of a lion and lioness, and another with her cub. 
The caption is great!
                                                                  

                                                                         

Some related posts: 

Earliest Big Cat Fossil Found in Tibet

The Serengeti Lion: An Exquisite National Geographic Project 

Buddhist Monks and The "Tiger Temple" of Kanchanaburi

Lion Cub Triplets Raise Hope for The Endangered Asiatic Lion

The Siberian Tiger

Bornean Marbled Cat: An Ultra-rare Cat Species Captured On Camera

Iranian Cheetah Sighting Gives Hope To Conservation Efforts

Cincinnati Zoo Cheetah Sets New World Speed Record!

Snow Leopard and Cubs at Magdeburg Zoo

Swimming Tigers at Australia Zoo

Clouded Leopard Cubs At Houston Zoo

Lion Protector, Shivani Bhalla Helps Big Cats and People Coexist


Surprising Facts About Our Favorite Big Cats

Asher Jay: Art Of The Matter

India’s Wild Tiger Population Has Increased 30% Since 2010

Clouded Leopard Born at Florida Zoo

World Lion Day: Some Stunning Images Of The King Of The Jungle

Two Snow Leopard Cubs Born at Brookfield Zoo

 
White Lions - A Royal Family 
  
Lions Gain New Endangered Species Protections

Leopard Hunting Banned in South Africa For Remainder of 2016

A Hidden Population Of Up To 200 Lions Has Been Found In Ethiopia


Africa’s Big Five Animals

Tigers Are Coming Back!

Russia Builds A Huge Tunnel To Save A Near-Extinct Group of Leopards

30 Tiger Zoos In Thailand Face Nationwide Checks

The Truth Behind The Tiger Temple

The Black Panther
 
Russia's 'Extinct' Persian Leopards Reintroduced To Black Sea Mountains

Why Big Cat Rescue Doesn’t Have Cheetah or Jaguars 

The Best Big Cat Videos Come From The Wild

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Sabrina:A Sumatran/Bengal tiger

 

The Piano Guys: Let It Go (Disney's "Frozen") Vivaldi's Winter

                                                                        

How do you make classical music really cool? Ask the Piano Guys!!

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All the sounds you hear were created by 90 tracks of cello, piano, and vocals (with a little wind and suspended cymbal)

This is NOT green screen. Everything you see is real snow and ice.

Story behind the song:

The location was a huge factor in picking the song Let it Go from Disney's movie Frozen. Ryan Davis from the Ice Castles contacted Paul a year ago wanting us to film there, but at that time we could never think of a song that would do it justice until last December when Paul took his family to see the movie Frozen. After coming out of the theater, he knew what needed to be done and got the ball rolling.

So who doesn't love a story about an estranged ice princess, a dynamic mountain man/reindeer duo and a snowman obsessed with warm weather? We all loved the movie "Frozen" and its single, "Let It Go." So much emotion, energy and drama packed into one tune. But we thought we'd add a little more drama...by melting together "Let It Go" and themes from Vivaldi's classical piece, "Winter." 

(You can watch an impressive performance of the original here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu6Hr9... - see if you can find where we used the main themes from each of the three movements.) Vivaldi's almost reckless string motives helped us surround the determined, upbeat melody and chords from "Let It Go" with intensity and uncertainty. We wanted the music to alternate between "freezing" and "thawing," representing the opposing forces throughout the "Frozen" story.

We were extra ambitious about capturing as much definition of the ice as possible so we decided to give 4K a try (a step up from 1080p HD) using the "RED" camera (same camera used in filming "The Hobbit"). So we called up our buddy Jacob Schwartz who rented us his awesome camera set up! It was challenging for Paul and Shaye to learn a whole new system and camera minutes before the shoot, but after awhile started getting the hang of it...:-) Editing the video on the other hand was a whole new process in processing that 4k footage. It took us 4 times as long to edit the video and fix glitches that kept happening working with such large files! After this experience, we might have to give 4k a try again, but not until we've mastered the art of it all which this video got us on the path at least.

Special thanks to Ryan Davis and his way cool crew at the Midway Ice Castles for hosting us. They built this winter palace one icicle at a time. Amazing! They were so nice and they really went the extra mile for us. 

Check the Ice Castles out here: http://www.icecastles.com/
Ice Castle Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IceCastlesCO

If you've read this far into the description you're awesome. Let's catch a movie together. What should we go see?

Credits
"Let It Go" written by Kristen Anderson & Robert Lopez and produced by Wonderland Music Company Inc. (BMI)

Also based on themes from Antonio Vivaldi's Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 8, RV 297, ("The Four Seasons") - "L'inverno" (Winter)

Arrangement produced by Al van der Beek & Steven Sharp Nelson
Arrangement written by Al van der Beek, Jon Schmidt & Steven Sharp Nelson
Mixed & mastered by Al van der Beek at TPG Studios in Utah.

Performed by
Jon Schmidt: Piano
Steven Sharp Nelson: Cellos, cello-percussion
Al van der Beek: Vocals, percussion
Video produced by Paul Anderson
Video filmed and edited by Shaye Scott & Paul Anderson
Red Epic camera provided by Jacob Schwarz http://tinyurl.com/l9zunkj
Helicopter footage provided by Chris Newman http://cinechopper.com/
Special effects provided by Tel Stewart and Zak Cioti
Piano Stunt Coordinator: Jeremy Crawford 


With many thanks to The Piano Guys on You Tube

There are other clips by the Piano Guys on the blog. Use search engine top left.

The Piano Guys: The Hobbit - Lord of The Rings

The Piano Guys: Let It Go (Disney's "Frozen") Vivaldi's Winter

The Piano Guys: Mission Impossible - Featuring Lindsey Stirling


The Piano Guys: Batman Evolution

The Piano Guys: Ants Marching/Ode To Joy

The Piano Guys: I Want You Bach!






                                                                        

NASA Discovers 715 New Planets

                                                       

                                                                    
                                                                    
                                                                     

Our galactic neighborhood just got a lot bigger. NASA on Wednesday announced the discovery of 715 new planets, by far the biggest batch of planets ever unveiled at once.

By way of comparison, about 1,000 planets total had been identified in our galaxy before Wednesday.

Four of those planets are in what NASA calls the "habitable zone," meaning they have the makeup to potentially support life.

The planets, which orbit 305 different stars, were discovered by the Kepler space telescope and were verified using a new technique that scientists expect to make new planetary discoveries more frequent and more detailed.

"We've been able to open the bottleneck to access the mother lode and deliver to you more than 20 times as many planets as has ever been found and announced at once," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.

Launched in March 2009, the Kepler space observatory was the first NASA mission to find planets similar to Earth that are in, or near, habitable zones -- defined as planets that are the right distance from a star for a moderate temperature that might sustain liquid water.

Tuesday's planets all were verified using data from the first two years of Kepler's voyage, meaning there may be many more to come.

"Kepler has really been a game-changer for our understanding of the incredible diversity of planets and planetary systems in our galaxy," said Douglas Hudgins, a scientist with NASA's astrophysics division.

The new technique is called "verification by multiplicity," and relies in part on the logic of probability. Instead of searching blindly, the team focused on stars that the technique suggests are likely to have more than one planet in their orbit.

NASA says 95% of the planets discovered by Kepler are smaller than Neptune, which is four times as big as Earth.

One of them is about twice the size of Earth and orbits a star half the size of Earth's sun in a 30-day cycle.

The other three planets in habitable zones also are all roughly twice the size of Earth. Scientists said the multiplicity technique is biased toward first discovering planets close to their star and that, when further data comes in, they expect to find a higher percentage of new planets that could potentially have a life-supporting climate like Earth's.

"The more we explore the more we find familiar traces of ourselves amongst the stars that remind us of home," said Jason Rowe, a research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and co-leader of the research team.

By Doug Gross

                                                       

With thanks to CNN. More information and pictures there.

Royal Academy of British Art Coming To Town

                                                                   

SIX months after a survey of Australian art opened at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, see side bar, an exhibition of British art from that institution is due to open at Bendigo Art Gallery. It is unlikely, though, that Genius and Ambition - the show of “diploma works” by academicians of the exclusive art society - will be subject to the same critical drubbing that greeted Australia when it opened in London last September. 

Charles Saumarez Smith, the dapper secretary and chief executive of the RA, says he was surprised at the vitriol heaped on the exhibition by two prominent London critics in particular. He believes the antipathy was motivated by “old-fashioned, reactionary cultural prejudice”.

“I think a small number of critics wrote with unusual and distasteful vehemence,” he says, referring to Waldemar Januszczak of The Sunday Times and Brian Sewell of the London Evening Standard. “I thought their reviews were exceptionally and unhelpfully unpleasant.”

The Bendigo exhibition is not a survey of two centuries of British art but a display of paintings, sculpture and drawings from its collection. 

Among the artists represented are Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner, Constable and Millais. 

 Stylistically, it traces an art history from 18th-century academicism to romantic landscapes, Victorian narrative pictures, orientalism and society portraits.

It includes a bust of “mad” King George by Italian-born Agostino Carlini, several Constable landscapes such as A Boat Passing a Lock, below, Victorian classicism by Lawrence Alma-Tadema and John William Waterhouse, and depictions of the leisured classes at play by John Singer Sargent. “Many people do not know, even in (Britain), that it is still a private institution run by a council of academicians,” says Saumarez Smith. “Every academician has to give one work, and those works, historically, have provided a series of very important works.”

                                                                 

The RA was established by decree of George III in 1768, and is unlike other art museums, being a private organisation not reliant on government funds. It has historically had three roles: as an art school, an exhibitor and an artists’ club. Originally, it admitted only 40 academicians at any time; the roll was later expanded to 80.

The unique position of the RA gives it an independence not enjoyed by some other public collections. The 1997 exhibition Sensation, for example, could not have been held at the Tate, for example. The showcase of fashionable “Young British Artists” was from the collection of Charles Saatchi; a public gallery would not have given such prominence to a single collection because the exposure tends to augment market value. (This was the reason the National Gallery of Australia cancelled the show in 1999.)

Reynolds’s allegorical painting Theory, of 1779, may be emblematic of the RA’s origins and founding principles, not least because Reynolds was its first president. It was painted for the ceiling of New Somerset House in London, one of the RA’s several homes before its permanent move to Burlington House in Piccadilly, and shows a classical female figure in billowing drapery, mounted on a cloud. She holds a scroll of parchment as a symbol of learning.

Reynolds in his famous Discourses at the RA lectured on the primacy of intellect over intuition in art. Students were instructed to draw the forms of classical sculpture before they were permitted to draw from life.

“Reynolds through his Discourses was one of the key influences on the academy,” Saumarez Smith says. “They became a great textbook of so-called academy theory, which is the idea that history painting was the greatest form of painting and landscape was a secondary genre. You learned to draw through hard work, observation, close attention to classical precedent and learning by copying from the great masters. Reynolds was the person who described and articulated the traditions of academic practice in a way that was dominant for a hundred years.”

Academicism fell out of fashion as art movements such as impressionism and modernism presented dynamic new ways of seeing the world. A glance at the list of current academicians reveals how the RA has evolved: among them are sculptor Anish Kapoor, David Hockney and installation artist Tracey Emin, who in 2011 was appointed professor of drawing.

From its beginnings, the RA has hosted an annual exhibition to show the work of the artists of the day. It’s a popular event for Londoners and visitors, where a stroll around the galleries is usually followed with a glass of Pimm’s.

Australian artists were showing at the RA from the late 19th century, among them Robert Dowling, Nicholas Chevalier, Rupert Bunny, George Lambert, Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts. By the early 1920s, there was sufficient interest for a survey show of Australian art.

The exhibition of Australian art of 1923 presented 212 works by Lambert, Streeton, Phillips Fox and others, attracting 28,000 people across 27 days.

Genius and Ambition picks up the connection by including paintings that were once shown in London. Many of these works have been lent from Australian collections, and include the Victorian social commentary of Chevalier’s Weary, Lambert’s dandyish Self-portrait with Gladioli and English landscapes by Streeton.

Saumarez Smith says last year’s show of Australian art at the RA was long overdue, being 90 years since the 1923 exhibition. It attracted a “perfectly respectable” 125,000 people. “I was incredibly pleased we did it,” he says.

“I’ve always been, like a lot of British people, incredibly impressed by the quality and interest of Australian art. I think it should be better known in this country.”

Apart from the scorn of some British critics, several Australian gallery-watchers had reservations about the show, saying it aimed to be too inclusive and lacked focus.

Saumarez Smith, due in Australia this week for the Bendigo opening, says he will have a debriefing with the NGA’s Ron Radford, whose gallery helped organise the show.

“We wanted to be true to all aspects of Australian culture because, as is obvious, these things come about not so often,” he says.

“It remains an open question: would it have been better to do only Aboriginal art, or historical art, or contemporary art?” He says he is open to the idea of another, possibly more focused show of work by Australian artists.

By MATTHEW WESTWOOD

Genius and Ambition, Bendigo Art Gallery, Sunday to June 9.

Top Picture: The Council of the Royal Academy selecting Pictures for the Exhibition, by Charles West Cope, 1875. 

With thanks to The Australian. (pay wall)

Other posts on Art:
Van Gogh On Dark Water Animation

Christopher Allen:50 Years of Australian Visual Arts

This Fake Rembrandt Was Created By An Algorithm  

Fore-edge Painting: Artists Hide Paintings Along The Edges Of Old Books  

Insanely Realistic Pencil Drawings

Found: A Missing Paul Gauguin Painting

Royal Academy of British Art Coming To Town

Australia and the UK Battle Over Historic Paintings Of A Kangaroo And A Dingo

Finally: A Digital Home For Lost Masterpieces

America: "Painting a Nation" Exhibition in Art Gallery of NSW

Chauvet Cave Paintings: Cave Women Left Their Artistic Mark

London exhibition of Australian art holds up a mirror to our nation: more iconic images
 
500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art

Some Fascinating Pictures featuring Alyssa Monks

Visual Art of the Human Body by Cecelia Webber

Ronnie Wood: His Art and The Rolling Stones

The lost Van Gogh: Painting found in Norwegian attic is confirmed as priceless work by Dutch master

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Charles Dellschau: Secrets of An Undiscovered Visionary Artist

Tom Pinch: Time - Lapse Portraits of Paul McCartney and John Lennon

How JMW Turner Set Painting Free 

The Curious Case Of The Renaissance Cockatoo

Images On Andy Warhol’s Old Computer Discs Excite University Students

Human Ingenuity: From the Renaissance to the Age of the Internet - The Sistine Chapel

Katsushika Hokusai: Japanese Artist

Picasso's "Women of Algiers" Breaks Auction Record

Looted Treasures Open Door To The Dark Nazi Past

Long-lost Caravaggio Masterpiece Found In French Attic

Frederic Remington: The Man Who Helped Bring The West To Life 

Loving Vincent: The World's First Fully Painted Film 

Vincenzo Peruggia: The Man Who Stole The Mona Lisa And Made Her more Famous Than Ever

The Isleworth Mona Lisa: A Second Leonardo Masterpiece? 

 Optical Illusions In Art

MC Escher: An Enigma Behind an Illusion           
                                               
Hidden Degas Portrait Revealed

First Faberge Egg Created For 99 Years Goes To Doha  

The World’s Priceless Treasures

Woman in Gold: Another Biopic For Dame Helen Mirren 

Australia and the UK Battle Over Historic Paintings Of A Kangaroo And A Dingo

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Could Anyone Paint A Vermeer? 

Artemisia Gentileschi - Her Biography And Her Art

John Constable Painting Sold By Christie's For £3,500 In June 2013 Will Now Go To Market To Sell For £2 million

The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy

Yulia Brodskaya:Paper Explodes With Life In This Artist's Hands

Images On Andy Warhol’s Old Computer Discs Excite University Students

Human Ingenuity: From the Renaissance to the Age of the Internet - The Sistine Chapel

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David Bowie's Personal Art Collection Auctioned Off For $30 Million

Why Do We Dream?

                                                               

                                                                                                                                          

We all have them. Some are good others not so much.But it seems it is hard to ascertain why we have them and what they mean.

by Charles W. Bryant
The human brain is a mysterious little ball of gray matter. After all these years, researchers are still baffled by many aspects of how and why it operates like it does. Scientists have been performing sleep and dream studies for decades now, and we still aren't 100 percent sure about the function of sleep, or exactly how and why we dream. We do know that our dream cycle is typically most abundant and best remembered during the REM stage of sleep.

 It's also pretty commonly accepted among the scientific community that we all dream, though the frequency in which dreams are remembered varies from person to person.

The question of whether dreams actually have a physiological, biological or psychological function has yet to be answered. But that hasn't stopped scientists from researching and speculating. 

There are several theories as to why we dream. One is that dreams work hand in hand with sleep to help the brain sort through everything it collects during the waking hours. Your brain is met with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of inputs each day. Some are minor sensory details like the color of a passing car, while others are far more complex, like the big presentation you're putting together for your job. 

During sleep, the brain works to plow through all of this information to decide what to hang on to and what to forget. Some researchers feel like dreams play a role in this process.

It's not just a stab in the dark though -- there is some research to back up the ideas that dreams are tied to how we form memories. Studies indicate that as we're learning new things in our waking hours, dreams increase while we sleep. Participants in a dream study who were taking a language course showed more dream activity than those who were not. In light of such studies, the idea that we use our dreams to sort through and convert short-term memories into long-term memories has gained some momentum in recent years.

Another theory is that dreams typically reflect our emotions. During the day, our brains are working hard to make connections to achieve certain functions. When posed with a tough math problem, your brain is incredibly focused on that one thing. And the brain doesn't only serve mental functions. If you're building a bench, your brain is focused on making the right connections to allow your hands to work in concert with a saw and some wood to make an exact cut. The same goes for simple tasks like hitting a nail with a hammer. 

Have you ever lost focus and smashed your finger because your mind was elsewhere?

Some have proposed that at night everything slows down. We aren't required to focus on anything during sleep, so our brains make very loose connections. It's during sleep that the emotions of the day battle it out in our dream cycle. If something is weighing heavily on your mind during the day, chances are you might dream about it either specifically, or through obvious imagery. 

For instance, if you're worried about losing your job to company downsizing, you may dream you're a shrunken person living in a world of giants, or you're wandering aimlessly through a great desert abyss.

There's also a theory, definitely the least intriguing of the bunch, that dreams don't really serve any function at all, that they're just a pointless byproduct of the brain firing while we slumber. 

We know that the rear portion of our brain gets pretty active during REM sleep, when most dreaming occurs. Some think that it's just the brain winding down for the night and that dreams are random and meaningless firings of the brain that we don't have when we're awake. 

The truth is, as long as the brain remains such a mystery, we probably won't be able to pinpoint with absolute certainty exactly why we dream.

With thanks to How Stuff Works

Picture Credit: Huffington Post and more “Recurring Dreams:Your Dreams Are Trying to Tell You Something. Lots more information there.

See also

A day in the life of dreams

SWEET dreams are made of leaves. Who am I to dis a tree? That is at least one conclusion of a study into how sounds influence sleep, which found that those who listened to a recording of the rustling of a breeze through trees were likelier to have pleasant dreams. 

The same was true when they listened to a relaxing beachscape. Conversely, those whose unconscious mind heard a jarring cityscape reported more bizarre and disjointed dreams.

The results came after 500,000 people downloaded an iPhone app called Dream:ON that is primed to play different music for the final phase of sleep. Placed under the pillow, it uses motion sensors to play the music while users are dreaming.

They are asked to write down their dreams when they wake up, and have produced more than a million such reports.

One thousand of the most coherent were selected and compared with placebo reports where no music was played.

Richard Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire, who conducted the study, said: “One of our most regular dreams is having an imaginary affair with George Clooney.”

He cited an indisputably happy dream. “The two of them first met when George asked if she would like to go for a walk with his imaginary giraffe.”

From the Australian