Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness

March 12, 2014

Endangered Sumatran Tiger Cub Triplets Born In London Zoo

I don't need much of an excuse to post about big cats. I love them!

Tigers, Lions, Cheetahs, Snow Leopards from different places around the world are all here.

The zoo said five-year-old Sumatran tiger Melati had given birth to triplets, a little more than a year after the endangered tiger lost a three-week-old cub.

London Zoo said the three cubs — whose sexes are not yet known — all arrived within an hour of each other early on February 3.

The cubs' first moments were captured on hidden cameras and zookeepers are monitoring the three around the clock.

Teague Stubbington, a zookeeper, said the cubs had hit several milestones including opening their eyes and taking tentative first steps, and that their personalities were starting to emerge.

Stubbington revealed that one had earned the nickname “Trouble” for being first to explore its den and also for waking up the other two cubs.

Sumatran tigers are listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Animals.

With thanks to The Australian

Top picture credit: Radio Netherlands (it is not Melati)

Related post: Swimming Tigers at Australia Zoo

The tigers at the Australia Zoo are Sumatran Tigers.

Keith Richards Writes A Story Book For Children

And why not? After all these years Keith Richards has a lot to tell us.

I especially like this clip which accompanied the article.So much of interest there.

OF all the role models parents might wish their children to have, Keith Richards is probably some way down the list.

The Rolling Stone, who wrote in his memoirs that he "used to walk down Oxford Street with a slab of hash as big as a skateboard", is appealing to children, nonetheless, with a new children's book based on his experiences with his grandfather, a man almost as roguish as Richards himself.

Gus & Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar will be a sanitised retelling of the guitarist's encounters with Theodore Augustus Dupree, an adulterous musician who not only gave Richards his first guitar, but his first cigarette.

It is based on a passage from Life, Richards's memoir, but has been adapted by Barnaby Harris and Bill Shapiro. It will be illustrated by Theodora Dupree Richards, the musician's daughter, whom Richards named after his grandfather.

The Rolling Stone, who is still touring with his band at the age of 70, is one of a stream of celebrities to turn their hand - or at least lend their name - to a children's book. Ringo Starr, the former Beatle, gave permission for his song Octopus's Garden to be turned into a book in October last year, resulting in sales of 7,000 copies worth $96,000. Madonna's 16 titles, including the English Roses series, have made almost $2.6 million.

Actors have been even more successful. Ricky Gervais's Flanimals series has made $8.5 million and David Walliams's books $36 million, according to figures compiled today by Nielsen BookScan.

Orion plans to publish Richards's book on September 9. It will also include photographs from the Richards family albums.

The singer said that he wanted to celebrate the bond between children and their grandparents.

"I have just become a grandfather for the fifth time, so I know what I'm talking about," he said. "This is a story of one of those magical moments. May I be as great a grandfather as Gus was to me."

Orion declined to mention whether the book would include Richards's recollections of his grandfather waving used condoms at his daughters' suitors and how Dupree's wife "caught him bonking an ARP warden in a blackout". Richards wrote in Life that "Gus" Dupree would take his grandson and his dog, Mr Thompson Wooft, on long walks to get away from his wife.

"On New Cross station late at night in deep fog, Gus gave me my first dog-end to smoke," he wrote. "He never drank, that I can recall. But he must have done something. We never hit pubs. But he would disappear into the back rooms of shops quite frequently. I perused the merchandise with glowing eyes. He'd come out with the same."

The most decisive moment was when Dupree handed Richards his guitar. "I can't remember when it was that he took the guitar down and said, 'Here you go.' Maybe I was nine or ten, so I started pretty late. A gut-string classical Spanish guitar - a sweet, lovely little lady. Although I didn't know what the hell to do with it. The smell of it. Even now, to open a guitar case, when it's an old wooden guitar, I could crawl in and close the lid."

Dupree, a factory worker who played violin, was once a saxophonist, but claimed that he had to give up when his lungs were damaged in a gas attack during the First World War, Richards wrote. "Gus wasn't much of a guitar player himself, but he knew the basics. He showed me the major chord shapes, D and G and E.

He said, 'Play Malaguena, you can play anything.' By the time he said 'I think you're getting the hang of it,' I was pretty happy."

With thanks to The Australian.(Pay-wall)

This picture and more with thanks to the NZ Herald

Summary of posts on the Rolling Stones in no particular order:

The Rolling Stones At Their Peak: 1965 Touring Ireland

The Rolling Stones at Villa Nellcôte and "Exile On Main Street"

The Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts: A very Different Drummer

The Rolling Stones at Glastonbury after 50 years

Keith Richards - His Life with the Rolling Stones and His Book

Will the Rolling Stones Stop Rolling? No!

Singer Jordie Lane finds the soul of the Grievous Angel: Gram Parsons

Keith Richards Writes A Story Book For Children

Ronnie Wood: His Art and The Rolling Stones : Update - Australian Tour Dates Cancelled

Film Review: Twenty Feet From Stardom

Arthur Alexander: The Forgotten Songwriter Who Inspired The Beatles, Bob Dylan And The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones To Release Two Heritage Concerts On DVD & Their Australian "On Fire" Tour

Rolling Stones Book To Cost $5,000 (or $10,000)

Behind The Song: The Rolling Stones, “Wild Horses”

Jagger Gives Charlie Watts A Special Gift!

Glyn Johns: Defining That Classic-Rock Sound

The Rolling Stones - A New Book

Altamont at 45: The Most Dangerous Rock Concert Ever?

The Rolling Stones: New Tour Announced - Zip Code Updated: Releases from The Vault And A New Album for Keith Richards

'American Pie' Lyrics Sell For $1.2 million In New York

The Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers: Super Deluxe Edition

Bill Wyman: The Rolling Stones Never Forgave Me For Leaving

The Rolling Stones To Create Their Own Museum

Don Henley Recruits Mick Jagger And Dolly Parton For Country Album Cass County

Rolling Stones' Ronnie Wood’s - "How Can It Be? A Rock & Roll Diary"

The Who Release First Song In 8 Years: Be Lucky

Bob Dylan Named Greatest Songwriter Ahead Of Lennon and McCartney According To Rolling Stone

Keith Richards ‘Under The Influence’

Keith Richards Says Jagger’s Ego Sent Him Solo

The Rolling Stones’ 'Satisfaction' Was The Result Of A Faulty Amp

Rolling Stones Rehearse Rare Songs For Their South American Tour

A History Of Mick Jagger On Film

'Vinyl' Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese's Mini-series

The Rolling Stones To Create Their Own Museum - #StonesIsm

The Rolling Stones Guide To Business Success And Survival

The Rolling Stones Reveal ‘Totally Stripped’

The Rolling Stones: A New Movie About The Making of 'Exile on Main Street'

The Rolling Stones’ ‘Havana Moon’ In Cinemas Worldwide

Rollings Stones’ Keith Richards Is Evolving, Not Ageing

The Rolling Stones:Olé Olé Olé: A Trip Across Latin America

The Rolling Stones: First Music From New Blues Album

Rolling Stones Reclaim Soul On Blue & Lonesome

The Microscope: The Tube that Changed The World

From You Tube:

Humans have long known that glass bends light. However, it took us awhile to figure out that stacking lenses in a tube would open up a whole new world to science, finally allowing us a peek at the microscopic.

Labverse: http://www.labverse.com
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Desperate Bid To Protect The Fragile Tasmanian Tiger In The Museum - Updated: Another Meat-eating Marsupial Found?

I wonder if we will ever know if there are any left.

It certainly doesn't look promising.

At least there is much work going on to save the Tasmanian Devil - also an endangered mammal, and also native to Tasmania and closely related to the tiger. Much of this work is being done by Devil Ark.

More about the Tasmanian Devil here.

It looks exactly like what it is - a creature long dead - but the animal lying on its side at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra is facing a new kind of threat.

Conservators, wearing masks, gloves and laboratory coats for protection against the chemicals they are using, have just pulled the crudely skinned thylacine carcass from a display case filled with liquid the colour of strong tea.

Among them is Simon Moore, a British freelance conservator who is an expert in the conservation of natural science specimens.

The museum has asked him to assess the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, which has become so fragile it has been removed from public display. Even vibrations created by people walking by the plate-glass container were damaging it.

''We've been concerned about the condition of the thylacine, which is very important for us and for the nation,'' deputy manager of conservation Nicki Smith said. ''We want to make sure we're doing the best that we can for it.''

Ms Smith said the Tasmanian tiger was first removed from display in 2002, when the preserving solution became so cloudy it was difficult to see the animal. The solution was changed and the specimen returned to public display in 2005, but the liquid again turned cloudy and the thylacine was removed.

Tests suggested protein from muscle, or calcium carbonate from teeth and bones, were leaching into the solution, thus weakening the specimen's structural strength.

Mr Moore, whose career includes 23 years at the Natural History Museum in London, said while the overall condition of the specimen appeared stable, he had found some white and waxy tissue near the pelvis.

''I can't say yet what it was, but it could be slightly fatty,'' he said. ''But it shouldn't be like that because formalin and preservatives stabilise fats.''

The sound generated by tapping the thylacine's bones and teeth suggested they were solid and had not decomposed, despite the carcass having being preserved some time between 1928 and 1930.

Liquid samples from the internal cavity signalled all was well with the internal organs. ''That's very encouraging, because sometimes a specimen can look fine from the outside but it can be deteriorating from the inside,'' Mr Moore said.

The thylacine is one of more than 2400 items in the museum's so-called wet collection that Mr Moore reviewed on Monday.

Among them is Phar Lap's heart, weighing 6.35 kilograms. ''At the museum in London [there] was an elephant heart, and it was almost as big as that.''

With thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald

From You Tube:

A review of over 350 reports from the Australian state of Tasmania that claim a vicious predator, once thought to have been hunted to extinction, has made a comeback—the Tasmanian Tiger, and how an Australian biologist is using preserved DNA of the animal in hopes of cloning a living specimen.

The thylacine (/ˈθaɪləsaɪn/ THY-lə-syn,[3] or /ˈθaɪləsiːn/ THY-lə-seen, also /ˈθaɪləsɨn/; binomial name: Thylacinus cynocephalus, Greek for "dog-headed pouched one") was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. It is commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger (because of its striped back) or the Tasmanian wolf. Native to continental Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, it is thought to have become extinct in the 20th century. It was the last extant member of its family, Thylacinidae; specimens of other members of the family have been found in the fossil record dating back to the early Miocene.

The thylacine had become extremely rare or extinct on the Australian mainland before European settlement of the continent, but it survived on the island of Tasmania along with several other endemic species, including the Tasmanian devil. Intensive hunting encouraged by bounties is generally blamed for its extinction, but other contributing factors may have been disease, the introduction of dogs, and human encroachment into its habitat. Despite its official classification as extinct, sightings are still reported, though none have been conclusively proven.

Like the tigers and wolves of the Northern Hemisphere, from which it obtained two of its common names, the thylacine was an apex predator. As a marsupial, it was not closely related to these placental mammals, but because of convergent evolution it displayed the same general form and adaptations.

Its closest living relative is thought to be either the Tasmanian Devil or numbat.

(ED: Actually I think the numbat is an entirely different creature)

The thylacine was one of only two marsupials to have a pouch in both sexes (the other being the water opossum). The male thylacine had a pouch that acted as a protective sheath, covering the male's external reproductive organs while he ran through thick brush. It has been described as a formidable predator because of its ability to survive and hunt prey in extremely sparsely populated areas.

Update: another meat-eating marsupial?

According to new research led by Marie Attard of the University of New England in collaboration with colleagues from the University of New South Wales, Australia, the reconstruction of an extinct meat-eating marsupial’s skull, Nimbacinus dicksoni, suggests that it may have had the ability to hunt vertebrate prey larger than itself.

The complete research results appeared April 9 in the open access journal PLOS ONE in an article titled, “Virtual Reconstruction and Prey Size Preference in the Mid Cenozoic Thylacinid, Nimbacinus dicksoni (Thylacinidae, Marsupialia).”

According to the Parks & Wildlife Service of Tasmania, the Thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, was shy and secretive and always avoided contact with humans. Despite its common name, “tiger,” it had a quiet, nervous temperament compared to its small cousin, the Tasmanian devil. Captured animals generally gave up without a struggle, and many died suddenly, apparently from shock.

Nimbacinus dicksoni is a part of an extinct family of Australian and New Guinean marsupial carnivores, Thylacinidae. Excluding one recently extinct species, the bulk of information known about species in this family comes from recovered skull fragments, which of course restricts species ecology and diversity analysis. Scientists recovered a preserved skull of Nimbacinus dicksoni dating between 16 and 11.6 million years old from the Riversleigh World Heritage Fossil Site in northwestern Queensland, Australia.

The researchers used the skull to determine if Nimbacinus dicksoni was more likely to hunt small or large prey.

The researchers applied virtual 3D reconstruction techniques and computer modeling to recreate the skull of Nimbacinus, digitally “crash-testing” and comparing it to models of large living marsupial carnivores – including the Tasmanian devil, spotted-tailed quoll and northern quoll – and to the recently extinct Tasmanian tiger, a close relative of Nimbacinus dicksoni.

The researchers found that the resemblance in mechanical performance of the skull between Nimbacinus dicksoni and the spotted-tailed quoll, was greater than the similarity to the Tasmanian tiger.

Furthermore, the authors suggest that Nimbacinus dicksoni, a medium-sized marsupial , had a high bite force for its size, was primarily carnivorous, and was likely proficient in hunting vertebrate prey that exceeded its own body mass.

With thanks to the Science Recorder