MelSkunk's stories

More attention is being focused on the Iberian Lynx, topic of a previous Flayrah article. Europe's "last big cat" needs more than just good intentions, says the IUCN, the World Conservation Union's, cat specialist group. It needs the rabbits it feeds on to be protected as well. Myxomatosis was introduced to control rabbits, and a later viral haemorrhagic fever almost whiped out the regional population. Now habitat must be returned to its wild state, and that includes reintroducing rabbits along with cats in the near future.

Psychologist Richard Wiseman has spent eight year studying why some people seem luckier than others, and it's not intelligence or psychic ability, but a person's outlook that makes them pay more attention to lucky or unlucky events. He now runs a luck school, teaching people simple principles to approach fortuous, or not-so-good, events in their lives to improve their 'luck'.

Two recent articles on the BBC website have pointed to further advancements in the understanding of ape intellegence. Orang-utans, not one of the most social of great apes, still seem to be social enough to have developed regional cultures, everything from making a bronx cheer before sleeping to riding falling dead trees for the excitement. And like human cultures, once these groups are seperated, or extinct, the culture is gone too.
A group of researchers is claiming a pygmy chimpanzee they work with is talking. Well, not in full phrases, but the ape, kept as part of a linguistics group, has been noted making distinct sounds to accompany things like 'yes' or 'banana.' Given that he'll say the same sounding 'yes' whether happy or angry, it seems to be a case of spontanious vocal development, something thought not in the range of chimps.

Ironically enough, the mistaken desire for 'environmentally friendly' replacements for cork, a crop that doesn't harm the tree and encouranges people to leave old growth forests be, is causing the extinction of the Iberian lynx. Though it's not the first feline extinction of the modern age, as the article mistakenly claims, it is still a catastrophic loss. The cork forests which were the home of this highly endangered cat are being cut down to plant crops as the livelyhood of the local farmers shifts from cork as synthetics reduce the market for the real thing.