How do you solve a problem like burgeoning bison? Birth control

For Catalina's storied bison herd, a smaller population means more food and better health for all. Toward that end, the Catalina Island Conservancy has a new tactic for keeping the bison birth rate low: birth control.  (Even animal-rights group In Defense of Animals supports the idea, donating $50,000 toward the program.)  Our colleague Louis Sahagun has the story; here's an excerpt:

Half a dozen men with walkie-talkies and cattle prods set out on foot at sunrise Thursday to coax a herd of 10 feral bison into a corral a mile away at the bottom of a Santa Catalina Island valley.

It wasn't easy. In the final days of the mating season, a massive bull kept one beady eye on his cows, all of them pregnant, and the other on his human pursuers, who followed close behind shouting and waving their arms as the animals lumbered up steep slopes and into plunging ravines.

It was one of several herding operations that will culminate today with the inoculation of female bison older than 2 years, part of an experimental program designed to limit the population through contraception. The goal: reduce herd size -- which increases by 15% or more each calving season -- to a manageable, healthier, less environmentally damaging and constant 150 or so.

The vaccine is non-hormonal and will not harm the animals or change their social structures, said Carlos de la Rosa, the conservancy's chief conservation and education officer. It is also reversible after about a year.

"Bison will continue to be bison," De la Rosa said. "Males will continue to compete for females, and females will continue to go into heat. The only difference is that we can control how many calves they have.  

"For bison in love," he added with a laugh, "this means romance without responsibilities."

THERE'S MORE; READ THE REST.

Photo: Biologist Carlos de la Rosa holds a test dart that will be used to inject the contraceptive vaccine Porcine Zona Pellucida into female bison. Photo credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

So long, Mary; hello, Terry. Cleveland zoo tortoise, thought female for 50-plus years, turns out to be male

A tortoise's zookeepers in Cleveland are the ones feeling slow because after more than 50 years, they've discovered "Mary" is actually a male. Officials at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo say it can be tough to establish the sex of a giant Aldabra tortoise because the reproductive organs normally aren't visible. But Mary's maleness was unexpectedly revealed earlier this month during a routine exam.

Spokesman Tom O'Konowitz said Wednesday that the zoo has decided to rename the tortoise Terry.

When the 400-pound reptile arrived at the zoo in 1955, it was assumed he was a she because of a flatter shell, shorter tail and all-around smaller size than most males.

The tortoise is estimated to be between 75 and 100 years old.

-- Associated Press

Photo: Mary, now Terry, at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.  Credit: Associated Press

In honor of Halloween: Real-life things that go bump in the night

Some Halloween enthusiasts will spend our most ghoulish holiday celebrating fictional beasts (werewolves and the like) and famous, fictional freaks (classics like Frankenstein, newfangled ones like Pinhead). 

Those Halloween enthusiasts -- and we won't name any names -- are missing out.  Like the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction, and a number of animal oddities are actually far more creepy than anything Mary Shelley ever imagined or Hollywood ever dished out.  At right, for instance, meet one of the world's largest rats, weighing 3 pounds (sure, he looks docile in the hands of mammalogist Martua Sinaga, but we'd probably view him in a rather different light were we to meet him in a dark alley).  The creature was discovered in New Guinea's Foja mountain range.

Hungry (okay, poor choice of word) for more?  Check out The Times' photo gallery of odder-than-your-typical-ghoul members of the animal kingdom.  Spoiler alert: You'll find the big-mouthed and fanged Khorat frog; the so-called "hairy frog," which can poke the sharp bones in its toes through the skin to attack a predator; the prehensile pangolin, toothless but covered in razor-sharp scales; and the barreleye fish, whose transparent head contains tubular eyes that rotate to help it make the most of dim light deep below the surface of the ocean.

We've saved the best for last: The blue-eyed Vampyroteuthis infernalis, whose name translates to "vampire squid from hell."  You don't get much more rock 'n roll -- or more Halloween -- than that.

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See-through frog, ugly salamander found on Ecuador expedition

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Bruce M. Beehler / AFP/Getty Images

New report explains largest turtle-related salmonella outbreak in the U.S.

Two girls who swam with pet turtles in a backyard pool were among 107 people sickened in the largest salmonella outbreak blamed on turtles nationwide, researchers report.

The 2007-08 outbreak involved mostly children in 34 states; one-third of all patients had to be hospitalized. In many cases, parents didn't know that turtles can carry salmonella.

Despite a 1975 ban on selling small turtles as pets, they continue to be sold illegally.

The American Veterinary Medical Assn. estimates that the number of pet turtles nationwide doubled from 950,000 in 1996 to almost 2 million in 2006.

"It's very easy to think of turtles as being a very gentle and nice pet," but many carry salmonella, without showing any signs, said Julie Harris, a scientist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the report's lead author.

Salmonella in turtle feces can end up on their shells and body, and can spread to people who handle them.

Sweden's furry, alternative fuel source: Burning bunnies

The scientific community and political realm have kicked around the possibilities of solar, wind, wave, nuclear and a smattering of other abundant resources as alternatives to fossil fuels.

But here's one that must have slipped their minds: bunnies.

Sweden was ahead of the game, though. Thousands of rabbit bodies have been shipped from Stockholm to a plant in central Sweden. There the carcasses are burned as fuel to provide heat for homes.

Stockholm authorities say rabbit overpopulation is a rampant problem, according to a report by Sweden's The Local, which we found courtesy of Live Science. Contributing to that problem is pet owners' releasing their domesticated rabbits.

Stockholm Traffic Office spokesman Tommy Tuvunger told Sweden's Vart Kungsholmen newspaper that owners looking to be free of the troubles of rabbit ownership simply "put the animals outside. They think: 'there they can play with the other rabbits'." 

Just what is the wonderpus octopus, anyway? (Besides a great band name, that is)

Although it's often confused with a similar species called the mimic octopus, the fabulously named wonderpus octopus is a unique creature in its own right.  (Just how fabulous is this creature?  So fabulous that even its scientific name, Wunderpus photogenicus, is fun to say.)

Wonderpus is native to shallow waters off Indonesia and Malaysia and, although folks began to report sightings of the species in the 1980s, it hadn't been formally described by scientists until a few years ago, when a formal scientific description appeared in the journal Molluscan Research.  Both its coloring and its preferred time of day distinguish it from the mimic octopus (which, unlike the wonderpus, is primarily active during the day -- wonderpus prefers the twilight hours of dusk and dawn). 

It's characterized by a small mantle (the part of the body that contains the mouth and vital organs), which is about an inch to an inch-and-a-half long, and long arms that measure about five to seven times the length of the mantle.  Like snowflakes, the patterns of spots (on the body) and stripes (on the arms) are unique to each individual wonderpus, which allows scientists to keep tabs on individuals.  And, according to the scientific description of the species, the colors become especially pronounced when the creatures are disturbed or threatened, suggesting a sort of warning system to deter would-be predators.

-- Lindsay Barnett

Video: rifwachterteam via YouTube

Stress, chlamydiosis killing Australia's koalas in increasing numbers

The koala, Australia's star symbol, is dying of stress.

Koalas live in the rolling hills and flat plains where eucalyptus trees grow, because they need the leaves for both food and water. But as people move in, koalas are finding themselves with fewer trees, researchers say. The stress is bringing out a latent disease that infects 50 to 90 percent of the animals.

"Koalas are in diabolical trouble," says researcher Frank Carrick, who heads the Koala Study Program at the University of Queensland. "Numbers show that even in their stronghold, koala numbers are declining alarmingly."

The problem came to national attention in August, when the well-known Sam the Koala died during surgery to treat the disease, called chlamydia. Sam captured the world's attention during major wildfires in February, when she was photographed drinking from the water bottle of a firefighter in a smoldering forest.

Sam was in such obvious pain from chlamydia that veterinarian John Butler decided to operate. But her organs were too scarred to complete the surgery, and Sam was euthanized.

New York dog park institutes waste-composting project

What has a penchant for face-licking, a tendency toward tail-wagging and deposits (on average) about 274 pounds of ... er ... waste material every year?  A dog, of course -- and one group of dog-park devotees in Ithaca, N.Y., intends to do something positive with that last thing we mentioned.

The group, called the Tompkins County Dog Owners Group (TC DOG), has partnered with a company called Cayuga Compost to put to use the enormous amount of waste that winds up at the Treman Marina Dog Park each year.  

"There was a large Dumpster at the park, and it was just always overflowing with plastic bags of dog poop. The amount was unbelievable," Leon Kochian, a Cornell University biology professor and dog owner, told the Associated Press of the genesis of the pet-waste-composting idea.  Since Ithaca, a college town, has a reputation for being environmentally conscious, "it made sense to us to find a way to compost and spare the landfill from all the plastic bags," Kochian said.

Now Cayuga Compost removes an estimated 1,000 pounds of dog waste (which owners place in corn-based, biodegradable bags) from the 5-acre park each month, according to Kochian, TC DOG's spokesperson.  Kochian hopes that the project will be able to turn something most dog owners see as a nuisance into something beneficial.

Dung beetle named for Charles Darwin

Recently, we learned that a newly discovered hairy yellow spider had been named for David Bowie.

Since the undisputed "rock star" of the field of biology would have to be Charles Darwin (no matter what Kirk Cameron may think of him), we can't be too surprised that the latest celebrity-namesake insect is a dung beetle named Canthidium (Eucanthidium) darwini.

The newly discovered beetle measures only about 4 millimeters in length and was found during a series of expeditions to the remote Talamanca mountains of Costa Rica, during which over 30 species of amphibians, beetles and plants were found.  C. darwini is one of about 180 known species of dung beetle native to Costa Rica, according to the American Museum of Natural History.

The expedition was founded by the U.K.'s Darwin Initiative project, which has granted funds since 1992 to countries that are "rich in biodiversity but poor in financial resources to meet their objectives" for conservation.  (No word on why the dung beetle was named for Darwin, rather than a seemingly more prestigious amphibian.)  Researchers were able to coax C. darwini out of hiding by baiting traps with pig manure, a delicacy by dung beetle standards, the Telegraph reports.

This year marks not only the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, but also the 150th anniversary of the publication of his landmark work "The Origin of Species."

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Undated file photo of the naturalist.

Hairy, yellow spider is named for David Bowie

A German scientist specializing in the discovery of rare species of arachnid has named his latest find after David Bowie, he who introduced the world to "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars" in 1972. 

Unlike the album for which it was named, though, the Heteropoda davidbowie is no alien -- it was discovered in Malaysia by Peter Jäger, who has found about 200 new spider species over the past 10 years. And H. davidbowie, despite its name, bears no resemblance to either the Thin White Duke or his long-discarded Ziggy Stardust persona. It's large, yellow and hairy -- but its very strangeness, in a way, does seem to fit in with the theatricality of "Ziggy."

His penchant for naming his discoveries after celebrities isn't just for fun, either, Jäger says. Instead, he hopes that the names (another species was named after German musician Nina Hagen) will grab the attention of the public, whose help is needed to save these species, many of which are endangered. "It is working against time," Jäger told the Observer. "Along with the species, we are also quickly losing genetic resources that have evolved over more than 300 million years." 

Environmental authorities, the Telegraph notes, have often shied away from including spiders on their lists of endangered species, although the same dangers that affect other animals -- habitat loss, deforestation -- can affect them too. The International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of threatened species features only 27 species of spider, although more than 40,000 species are thought to exist.

No word as of yet from Bowie himself about what he thinks of the dubious honor of having a spider named for him.

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Bowie as Ziggy Stardust in the film "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars."  Credit: Cowboy Pictures