PETA and Washington Humane Society on Opposite Sides Concerning Animal Care At Shelter

By ROBY CHAVEZ/myfoxdc

WASHINGTON, D.C. - There are strong accusations against the D.C. Animal Shelter being made by PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The animal rights group says the staff is untrained. They allege that the animals are poorly treated, and the conditions deplorable.

It is unusual to have these two groups on opposite sides. Now, the shelter run by the Washington Humane Society is fighting back.

PETA accuses the shelter of gross incompetence, but the shelter says adoptions are up and fewer animals are being euthanized. PETA has now fired off a scathing letter to the Mayor Adrian Fenty demanding action.

"I suspect that some of the things they are doing violate the D.C. cruelty code," said Ingrid Newkirk, PETA President.

It's a stinging criticism from the animal rights group. The complaints allege inhumane conditions at the D.C. Animal Shelter, run by the Washington Humane Society. On Friday, PETA's president showed pictures taken by staff at the shelter.

"You can see dog bite wounds that are really severe. It's a urine-covered pen with a piece of cloth," said Newkirk as she pointed out living conditions.

PETA says their own investigation show animals living in urine, diseased and unsanitary conditions.

"The staff is untrained. They are rude to the public and unresponsive to calls and we're hearing it to all over. Yes. Incompetent," said Newkirk.

"They care about the animals. They are hurt by this. I feel obligation to defend this. This is not the Washington Humane Society," said Lisa LaFontaine, CEO of Washington Humane Society.

FOX 5 wanted to show you the conditions inside the D.C. shelter firsthand, but the city and the health department would not let our cameras inside.

Lisa LaFontaine is the director, and says it's a snapshot that doesn't tell the full story of care.

Fox 5 obtained health department letters where inspectors cite a list of unsanitary conditions as late as last July, calling it dirty and cluttered, extreme overcrowding transmission of disease and offensive smells.

PETA says it goes back two years and they say an inspector from the health department who wrote the report has been banned from the shelter. The health department has oversight over the D.C. shelter.

"Absolutely not. We have not banned anyone. One of the things we hope come out of this, we welcome the community. We want people to come see for themselves. They are malicious and unverified allegations," said LaFontaine.

PETA also says some of the acts are illegal. Its own research of health department documents show alleged acts of animal cruelty. For example, the director of the shelter, Nick Gilman, euthanized an animal with a needle thru his heart.

"In D.C., like many areas, it is illegal to cause unnecessary suffering and this causes unnecessary suffering. It is not an acceptable way to euthanize and animal," said Newkirk.

"That was not true. There was one or two occasions where that method was used on animals sedated and unconscious. That is acceptable means of euthanasia," said LaFontaine

PETA says other memos and its own pictures point to piles of feces and bad smells. Citizens have also complained to PETA. The animal rights groups is so disturbed its taking on the Humane Society and the city's health department.

"It pains me to criticize the Humane Society," said Newkirk. "I don't want to do it and I don't want people to put on street. What I want is a shelter to be proud of. "

"We are upholding the contract. We are working with city and doing the best for people animals and city," said LaFontaine.

A spokesperson for the health department would only say the city is working with the Humane Society to ensure the highest quality of animal care, and did not answer questions about why no action was taken with such serious complaints from its own inspectors.

The Washington Humane Society says it fired one employee cited for neglect in those inspections.

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You Can Help The Mountain Gorillas For Only $1.00

Photo TKnoxB CC
The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) is launching a high-tech

The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) is launching a high-tech initiative in an effort to promote awareness, tourism, and gorilla conservation. The unique Friend a Gorilla project will launch on September 26th in Kampala. Gorilla enthusiasts will now be able to watch, track and befriend real live gorillas from the comfort of their own home. But wait - there’s more!

Cameras will be positioned in the Bwinidi Impenetrable Forest, located in south-western Uganda, allowing online visitors to get up-close-and-personal from afar. Virtual visitors will be able to peek in on the endangered gorillas as they eat, sleep, interact and even give birth.

And for just one buck a year, subscribers will be able to track individual gorillas in real time. Need a friend? Subscribers can also become a virtual friend with a real-live gorilla! Learn all about the gorilla and add him or her as a Twitter or Facebook friend! Subscribers will receive weekly updates and will be able to follow the gorilla using actual GPS coordinates, provided by the UWA Gorilla Trackers! How cool is that?

In honor of the special project, a celebration will be held at the Kololo Airstrip on Saturday morning and is free to the public. Later in the evening, a grand Gorilla Gala will be held at the Kampala Serena Hotel where celebrities will be on hand. The funds generated from the Friend a Gorilla will benefit the mountain gorilla conservation effort.

Mountain Gorillas

Listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, there are only about 700 mountain gorillas left in the wild today. Once hunted for their meat, skulls and paws, other threats include habitat loss, war and instability. Gorillas are often gentle and shy and live in groups. Humans and gorillas are about 98 percent genetically identical!

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Speciation Between Humans and Chimpanzees

Presgraves and Yi, Trends in Ecology & Evolution 2009

Abstract

Two patterns from large-scale DNA sequence data have been put forward as evidence that speciation between humans and chimpanzees was complex, involving hybridization and strong selection. First, divergence between humans and chimpanzees varies considerably across the autosomes. Second, divergence between humans and chimpanzees (but not gorillas) is markedly lower on the X chromosome. Here, we describe how simple speciation and neutral molecular evolution explain both patterns. In particular, the wide range in autosomal divergence is consistent with stochastic variation in coalescence times in the ancestral population; and the lower human–chimpanzee divergence on the X chromosome is consistent with species differences in the strength of male-biased mutation caused by differences in mating system. We also highlight two further patterns of divergence that are problematic for the complex speciation model. Our conclusions raise doubts about complex speciation between humans and chimpanzees.

Complex speciation between humans and chimpanzees

You might remember the Patterson et al. paper in Nature back in 2006, that argued for a complex speciation of humans and chimps: An early separation between the two, followed by a hybridization and then the extinction of one of the species ancestral to the hybrids.

The arguments for this theory were 1) large variation in divergence time along the autosomal chromosomes and 2) a much more recent divergence of the X chromosome compared to the autosomes.

Wakeley then argued that 1) at least didn't need any complex speciation history. The variation in divergence is actually as would be expected just from variation in coalescence times along the chromosomes, assuming a reasonably large effective population size of the human/chimp ancestor species.

As for 2), the coalescence process alone cannot explain the recent divergence of X chromosomes. We do expect a more recent divergence of X chromosomes than autosomes, since the effective population size of X chromosomes is 3/4 of that of the autosomal chromosomes, but the divergence of the X chromosomes is less than what can be explained by this.

This could either be explained by selection on the X chromosome (which essentially reduces the effective population size and thus leads to a reduced divergence) or by the difference in mutation rate between males and females that would affect the X chromosome differently than the autosomes (reducing the difference between the two).

It is well known that there is a bias in mutation rate between males and females, having to do with the average number of genome replications per generation in males and females, respectively. The details I won't go into here (although they are pretty important for the post, the post would just get too long and I don't want to loose the readers who already know this ... I might write about it in a separate post another day...)

Anyway...

Selection is probably not likely. It would require a pretty uniform selection across the X chromosome. The male-biased mutation explanation sounds more reasonable.

A problem with both explanation, though - Patterson et al. argued in their reply - is that this weird pattern in X is only observed between human and chimp and not between human and gorilla (or chimp and gorilla).

If mutation-rate differences alone could explain the observed data, we would expect a consistent value for from the human–chimpanzee and human–gorilla divergence data, but estimates of are significantly different (P = 0.001). A high value of also cannot explain other important features in Table 1: the near-absence of sites on chromosome X that cluster humans and gorillas or chimpanzees and gorillas; or why human–gorilla divergence should not be reduced on chromosome X (such a reduction would be expected if high male mutation rate were responsible for low human–chimpanzee genetic divergence on chromosome X).

Lineage specific male biased mutation rate

The Presgraves and Yi paper argues that male biased mutation rate can explain the pattern after all.

True, the low divergence on X is only observed between humans and chimps and not between humans and gorillas, but if the strength of this bias is larger on the human and chimp lineages than on the gorilla lineage it could still be an explanation.

Chimps are very promiscuous, humans somewhat less so, while gorillas are polygynous. This affects sperm production so chimps produce most sperm per ejaculation, gorillas the least and humans again inbetween.

With more sperm produced in humans and chimps than in gorillas, it is therefore conceivable that the mutation bias is stronger in chimps and humans than in gorillas.

So they estimate this bias per lineage and get exactly that result: the bias is strongest in chimps, intermediate in humans and weakest in gorillas:

With different male-biased mutation rate in the lineages, with much less bias in gorillas, there is nothing strange in a reduced divergence on X chromosomes between humans and chimps than between humans and gorillas.

Voilà! No more need for a complex speciation history!

At least until the next paper...

Source

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Should Neighbors Know When Dangerous Animals Move in

By BAIRD HELGESON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 13, 2009

• Where Dangerous Animals Live

Susan Williams lives among cattle ranches and a growing number of new homes.

So she was more than a little surprised a couple years ago when rumors circulated that her neighbor had a tiger and a grizzly bear on his Okeechobee property.

Williams' curiosity led her to call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Sure enough, the neighbor had permits for a tiger, a grizzly and four other bears.

"I was astounded," Williams said. "I couldn't believe he didn't have to tell us that these animals were out there."

The wildlife commission is tweaking its requirements for those who own exotic species, and Williams is among a group pushing for neighborhood notification when people have exotic and dangerous species.

Many of the most dangerous animals in Florida aren't in zoos or sanctuaries. They are in people's houses, at fledgling private animal attractions, or in once-rural settings now surrounded by subdivisions.

More than 400 Florida businesses and individuals have Class I or Class II permits, which allow for the most wild and lethal species. These permit-holders can have animals including lions and elephants, alligators and monkeys. The Tampa Bay area is home to more than 30 licenses, including Lowry Park Zoo, Big Cat Rescue and a seven-acre refuge where a Tampa woman has a cougar and a leopard.

Three years of public hearings over the rule changes fueled a growing tension between some animal owners who wish to keep their collections private and neighbors fearful of dangerous species living so close to residential areas.

Some of the 14 proposed changes are less controversial, like changing the American alligator to a Class II animal.

For now, at least, Williams' neighborhood notification is not among the proposed changes.

Wildlife officials decided notification wouldn't do much good because neighborhood objections aren't grounds for denying a permit, said Capt. Linda Harrison, a commission spokeswoman.

Instead, the commission focused on setting strict criteria for those wanting the most dangerous species, like requiring a minimum of 5 acres, property that allows commercial uses, and a host of fencing and caging requirements.

Gini Valbuena shares the fears of many animal owners. She worries notification would breed curiosity among thrill-seekers who might scale fences for a look at the exotic species, risking injury and potentially terrorizing the animals.

More fundamentally, she says, it's her business what she does on her own property. So long as she has the necessary permits and follows the laws, it's nobody else's business.

"I don't think animals should be in the same classification as sexual predators in terms of notification," said Valbuena, who owns two chimpanzees she rents for parties and one-on-one encounters. "It's a total invasion."

Valbuena said she had problems with a neighbor who tormented her chimps and regularly complained to authorities about the animals.

After 28 years in her home, she moved her chimps to Sarasota a few weeks ago.

Deborah Cazin has a cougar and the leopard on 7 acres in an upscale area just south of the Avila Golf and Country Club.

She gets the exotic cats when the state seizes them from other owners who either run out of money or aren't able to care for the animals. She has taken in primates and other exotic species over the years, as well.

In her 30 years working with exotic cats, the only one to escape was a serval, about the size of a bobcat. She quickly captured the cat and returned it to its cage.

Cazin said exotic animals should only be kept in rural areas, like her property on Lake Byrd, which is zoned for agriculture. "I don't think they should be in people's backyards."

Carole Baskin, founder of Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, said she worries wildlife officials will appease animal owners by relaxing a law that requires those who exhibit exotic animals to carry a $10,000 bond to pay for damages.

Big Cat Rescue is aware of 584 incidents since 1990 involving captive exotic cats in the U.S. Those confrontations resulted in the deaths of 16 adults and five children, along with the mauling of 193 people.

Like Williams, Baskin worries hurricanes and other natural disasters could damage cages and fencing, sending deadly animals into the neighborhoods of unknowing residents.

This week, she sent a letter to neighbors of exotic animal owners stressing the dangers of living next to cougars, tigers, cobras and black mambas.

"Keeping wild animals in private collections is cruel to the animals and dangerous for you," she wrote.

Baskin plans to forward neighbors' comments and concerns to wildlife officials before the board makes its final decision on the changes June 17 and 18 in Crystal River.

Reporter Baird Helgeson can be reached at (813) 259-7668.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/mar/13/should-neighbors-know-when-dangerous-animals-move/

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For the cats,

Carole Baskin, CEO of Big Cat Rescue
an Educational Sanctuary home
to more than 100 big cats
12802 Easy Street Tampa, FL 33625
813.493.4564 fax 885.4457

http://www.BigCatRescue.org
SaveTheBigCats@gmail.com

Sign our petition to protect tigers from being farmed here:

http://capwiz.com/bigcatrescue/issues/alert/?alertid=9952801&type=CU

This message contains information from Big Cat Rescue that may be
confidential or privileged. The information contained herein is intended
only for the eyes of the individual or entity named above. You are hereby
notified that any dissemination, distribution, disclosure, and/or copying of
the information contained in this communication is strictly prohibited. The
recipient should check this e-mail and any attachments for the presence of
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by any virus transmitted by this e-mail."

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Malaria In Chimpanzees

"If you think about HIV virus as a singular hurricane event, malaria is like the hurricane that's been hitting for thousands of years — constantly," said Wolfe, who heads a research institute called the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative.

Although scientists have amassed volumes of knowledge about this nimble and changeable parasite, none of that knowledge has reaped a malaria vaccine or a sustainable ability to fight it.

But Wolfe believes that a discovery by his team may have tipped the balance in humans' favor.

Monday, research by Wolfe and his colleagues appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, outlining what they believe to be the origins of malaria.

According to Wolfe and his team, malaria jumped to humans from our closest living relatives: chimpanzees. This finding, he says, unlocks one of the biggest medical mysteries confronting humans.

"We can actually understand, we can actually re-create the story that explains a fundamental and important part of our history," Wolfe said. "For me, this is the microbiological equivalent of discovering the origins of HIV."

Understanding the origin — and the genetic behavior — of a pathogen is the holy grail in the world of infectious disease.

Though not a public health issue in the United States, malaria infects 500 million people every year and kills between 1 million and 3 million. Its assault on humans has been relentless, especially among African children.

Malaria hijacks and kills healthy red blood cells and infects the liver. If not treated soon after onset of symptoms — such as fever, chills, diarrhea and shortness of breath — those infected by malaria can have neurological problems or cognitive problems, or ultimately die.

It is a biological menace, constantly morphing, eluding the best efforts to fight it.

"The lack of an effective malaria vaccine is one of the biggest public health failures of our time," Wolfe said.

From Wolfe's perspective, the best way to reverse those failures, and to create a vaccine, is to first understand the genetics of the disease.

His understanding grew on one of several trips to the dense forests in Cameroon. He collaborated with a team of pathogen hunters, including Fabian Leendertz of the Robert Koch Institute in Germany and Stephen Rich of the Laboratory of Medical Zoology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. They studied chimpanzees at the Limbe Wildlife Center in the Ivory Coast.

Why look at chimpanzees?

"They are our closest ancestors," Wolfe said. "The closer two animals are, the higher the chances they will be able to share diseases and the more likely one of the viruses will jump to us."

Wolfe has not confirmed when it happened, but he believes that malaria's jump from chimpanzees to humans occurred thousands of years ago — maybe more. The conduit from infected chimpanzees to humans was most likely the mosquito, a common malaria carrier even today.

"This fills out a big blank space," Wolfe said. "But at the same time, this finding also suggests there is a lot that we don't know. The real life world of malaria is something we know very little about.

"As a scientist, the bigger the mystery, the better," he said.

But it wasn't just about mystery. Wolfe also had a personal score to settle. He has been infected three times by malaria. One time it almost killed him.

It was an experience that strengthened his resolve to fight this disease.

Five years after his brush with death, Wolfe was back in Cameroon at Mfou National Park. Mfou is also a sanctuary for orphaned animals, including chimpanzees.

Wolfe and colleagues tested the blood of 84 chimpanzees at Mfou and 10 chimpanzees in the Ivory Coast, all in captivity and all infected with malaria.

Next, the scientists teased out the genetic structure — the DNA — of the chimpanzee malaria and compared it with the DNA structure of human malaria.

The chimpanzee malaria, called plasmodium reichenowi, was genetically similar to the strain killing humans globally, plasmodium falciparum. But the chimpanzee strain is older, or what infectious disease experts would call more diverse.

That genetic similarity, and the suggestion that the chimpanzee malaria DNA is older than human DNA, is solid proof for Wolfe and his team that malaria jumped from chimpanzees to humans.

"It jumped over just like SARS did, just like avian flu did, just like HIV did," Wolfe said. "What is really crucial, what is significant, is it continuing to jump over?"

If malaria is continuing to jump over, and if it is genetically more complex than previously thought, then, according to Wolfe, the eight novel malaria parasites his team found add chapters to the story about malaria and potentially widen the scope for creating an effective vaccine.

Malaria experts are impressed with the finding, but not all are convinced that this discovery will cause the vaccine research field to explode.

"This is an interesting biological observation that may or may not have human implications," said Dr. Kent Campbell, director of the malaria program at PATH, a leading global health organization unaffiliated with Wolfe. "Malaria is a very finely evolved organism that has proven to be quite resistant to classic vaccine research. To call this a major breakthrough on making an effective vaccine might be a bit optimistic at this point in time."

Another malaria expert is only slightly more optimistic.

"The idea that all of this misery in the world could have been due to a single event of the distant past is striking," said Dr. Patrick E. Duffy, the director of the malaria program at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute. "What it reminds us is that the human species remains always at risk for introduction of new infectious agents. In terms of implications for vaccines, I don't know that it tells us that much."

Wolfe is undaunted.

"When you're developing treatment and vaccine strategies you need to know what it is in the population that you need to vaccinate against," said Wolfe. "We're just beginning to describe this iceberg. We know a lot of it's underwater. We know a lot of it is unknown. I think that is part of the excitement, scientifically, for those of us who are out there trying to discover these things."

Could those strains could change the landscape, give new information, make a malaria vaccine possible? Could those strains change the strategy by which we fight all potential pandemics?

By Stephanie Smith | cnn

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Chimpanzees Trained, But Not Domesticated

Here is a video of the some of the history and present time of how we portray chimps. When small, they are cute, adorable and so human-like. They can be trained to do human activities with their own funny antics which makes us laugh and want to see more. This also makes a small minority of people want one, thinking that they will always be this way. This is so far from the truth, because as they grow older, aggression sets in, dominance and the need to be a chimp over rides the want to please their human caretakers. Once this happens, the Chimp becomes dangerous to others which then makes it dangerous for them, as in the Travis, Sandra Herold case.
Chimpanzees can be trained, however they can never be domesticated. This is something we all need to remember the next time we watch a funny chimp on TV, thinking, where has this chimp come from and where will this chimp end up? Once you have those thoughts, it won't be funny anymore.

This short video takes us back through time with many chimps that played roles in commercials and movies along side of movie stars. I do want to warn you that the first 15 seconds or so are from the horrible day of the Travis tragedy.

Source and Video

Culture in Chimpanzees

New research has shown conclusively that chimpanzees have culture. Previously many were unprepared to grant the use of the word "culture" in reference to chimpanzees, but recently A. Whiten of the Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews, and colleagues have recognized chimpanzee behavioral patterns that, in the journal Nature, they say "resemble those in human societies, in which differences between cultures are constituted by a multiplicity of variations in technology and social customs."
No less than 39 distinct behaviors, such as aimed throw and rain dance, have been recognized and cataloged in seven chimpanzee populations across Africa indicating that the behaviors are transmitted socially rather than genetically. It is possible to see young chimpanzees observe adults and then practice the behaviors. According to Whiten and colleagues, genetics "cannot account for the observed variability," in part because they "found no evidence that habits vary more between, than within, the three existing subspecies of chimpanzee." Using a twig to fish termites out of their nests is a particularly good example of a learned behavior where the young chimpanzees carefully watch the elders and try to copy them.
It is unclear whether chimpanzees are uniaue in this behavioral respect, or if other animals were studied in as much depth we would find similar patterns. Robert Barton of the anthropology department, Durham University, says that "Wherever social learning contributes to the development of behaviors, different 'cultures' are likely to emerge." He notes that bird populations have variations of a song that is specific to their species and says that this has also been found to be the case with whales. He adds, though, that "only chimpanzees have so far been shown to exhibit cultural variation in a wide variety of behaviors, including foraging and social behaviors." Arguments have generally stated that culture in animals is as complex as in humans because the methods by which humans pass on behaviors, by teaching and learning, are not seen among animals. However, this has now been documented among chimpanzees.
In his book The Hunting Apes: Meat Eating and the Origins of Human Behavior, anthropologist Craig Stanford of the University of Southern California brings to attention the chief differences between humans and chimpanzees, namely bipedalism and larger brain size in humans. What causes humans to have larger brains has long been hotly debated. What are the implications of evidence of chimpanzees having culture for early hominid evolution and the development of the human brain? Barton says that the key questions are "what led to the cultural explosion in later hominids, in what way was this based on traits shared with chimpanzees, and what were the unique traits behind it?"

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AIDS Came From Where?

WASHINGTON - Researchers who picked up and analyzed wild chimp droppings said on Thursday they had shown how the AIDS virus originated in wild apes in Cameroon and then spread in humans across Africa and eventually the world.

"We actually know where the epidemic took off. The epidemic took off in Kinshasa, in Brazzaville." Kinshasa is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, and faces Brazzaville, in Congo, across the Congo River.

Studies have traced HIV to a man who gave a blood sample in 1959 in Kinshasa, then called Leopoldville. Later analysis found the AIDS virus.

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