Jules Howard's Blog, page 5
December 8, 2016
We are to blame for the decline of giraffes. And only we can save them | Jules Howard
Imagine entering a museum of the future. Imagine walking across its great marble floors, dodging the schoolchildren and parents with buggies, past the toilets and the gift shop and down the corridor marked Mammals. Imagine marvelling at the bones and fossil teeth of mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and giant ground sloths. Now, pause. You are in shadow. You are in the shadow of an enormous towering skeleton of an extinct creature which stands almost 20ft high, with a long neck upon which a horny skull sits, within which would have been a tongue almost as long as a human arm. “On whose watch did such a creature face extinction?” those future museum visitors might ask.
Related: Giraffes facing extinction after devastating decline, experts warn
Perhaps it is through creatures like these that coordinated action can unite the interests of countries over continents
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October 31, 2016
Imagine a world without animals. You’ll soon see how much we need them | Jules Howard
A couple of years ago we heard news that 50% of all vertebrate species had disappeared in 40 years. On Thursday, we were greeted with news that by 2020 the figure is likely to rise to 66% of all vertebrates. It is no wonder that the conservationists are shouting. It is no wonder that they are so desperate to get their message heard. Animals, it seems, are on the way out. And no one appears to much care.
Related: Worst of times for the butterfly
Continue reading...October 6, 2016
Shhh! We’re ruining the sex lives of cod | Jules Howard
First we realised the Earth isn’t the only planet in the solar system. Then we learned that everything doesn’t revolve around it. Then we discovered that we are nothing but apes, collections of selfish genes. And now we have been dealt the final blow: we humans can’t even pride ourselves on the richness and variety of our communication. It turns out that, of all things, fish have regional accents not unlike our own.
That’s right – fish. Welcome to the world of genuine cod science.
Continue reading...September 7, 2016
Never mind the pandas. What about the endangered geometric tortoise? | Jules Howard
Look carefully at the most uppermost branches upon the great family tree of life on Earth, and near the top you will see a tiny twig labelled “panda”. It is re-growing. Slowly, it is getting sturdier.
Pandas are doing better than they were. In fact, this week, they have been officially downgraded in their conservation status from “endangered” to “vulnerable”, in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s latest “red list” update. The IUCN’s annual announcement details the survival fortunes of every leaf upon life’s great tree. It is nature’s version of the FTSE 100, turned on its head.
Where was coverage of the nubian flapshell turtle?
Related: Eastern gorilla now critically endangered while giant panda situation improves
Continue reading...July 25, 2016
Can the honeyguide show us a new way to connect with nature?
Humans have few wild friends, but the honeyguide birds who lead Mozambican hunters to honey give us hope for relationships with mutual benefit
Nature works rather like the EU. There are deals between species. Uneasy relationships. Mistrust. Boundaries. Borders. Territory. Investments. Yet every now and then, new and surprising relationships emerge between animals. Among the rarest is mutualism.
In humans, as in other animals, mutualism is rare. But this week, scientists announced that the mutualistic relationship between the wild honeyguide – a rather nondescript brown bird – and local humans is even closer and weirder than many had suspected. Not only do these strange birds lead human hunters to bees’ nests in exchange for some of the spoils, scientists have now discovered that the birds can be attracted out of the trees by a distinctive trilling sound that local hunter-gatherers use while looking for honey. According to the researchers, hunters are taught this special trilling noise by their fathers. They call the honeyguides in, essentially.
Related: Sweet talk: wild birds and human honey hunters converse, study shows
The honeyguide has negotiated what is possibly the first ever trade deal between a wild animal and a human
Continue reading...May 9, 2016
Could Brexit be the best thing for Europe’s wildlife? | Jules Howard
Nothing oozes status like a man with an endangered alligator lizard draped over his shoulder that he has bought illegally through a German reptile trade show. These are people not content with a pet bearded dragon or a pet corn snake. They want more. They want something no one else has, even if having it contributes to the extinction of these unusual lizards in the wild.
Thank goodness, then, that the Guardian exposed this illegal market last year, and that the EU committed on Thursday to tightening the loopholes in the illegal trade of reptiles such as these beautiful endangered lizards. I’d like to say that Britain was a key part of this story, but our record on tackling wildlife crime isn’t brilliant. Although we talk the talk (remember this?) in three out of the past four years the government has attempted to close our National Wildlife Crime Unit, an important department for monitoring such things as illegal pet trade activity. Thankfully the EU forced us forward – on this issue at least.
We've been very good at holding everyone back on key environmental votes in Europe
Related: Europe to crack down on wildlife smugglers to protect rare lizard species
Continue reading...April 13, 2016
The latest form of animal cruelty – death by camera phone | Jules Howard
I knew what to expect before I even clicked on it. I knew that “Python caught in Malaysia could be the longest ever recorded” would take me to a picture of a snake being held by a long queue of men, each straining to bear its weight. I knew to expect that photo because we love measuring animals in this way (see: snakes, oarfish, sturgeon); as if straining men is an international unit of measurement for long creatures. And so it was with the snake. In old money, the record-breaking serpent made famous this week was 15 men long. (That’s 8m long, and 250kg for the purists.)
It was a reticulated python – a beautiful charismatic snake that was apparently making its way over a flyover being built on the tourist haven of Penang. It was immediately caught and brought down to the ground by emergency services who then posed for some photos and TV cameras. The most predictable bit, of course, is what happened next. It died. Something went wrong with its ability to be alive, somehow, and … the snake died mysteriously. There is a report that it was kicked and quite brutally handled, but that wasn’t what killed it. I believe that the endless posing for photos will have contributed to its death. What killed it was us. Welcome to a new age of animal cruelty: an age of death by camera phone.
Related: Endangered dolphins near extinction
Photos of animals being carried or poked or pulled for ever-better snaps says more about us than the animals we disturb
Continue reading...February 16, 2016
Dear celebrities – think the Earth is flat? Aliens made us? Help is at hand | Jules Howard
Are you a creationist hitting the big time on BBC Breakfast? Or an American rapper who thinks the world is flat? Perhaps you’re an Australian cricketer confused about how we can go from monkeys to apes to humans, without the need for pyramid-building aliens? If you’re a celebrity who is dangerously close to having opinions and beliefs about things you are a bit shaky on, never fear, help is at hand …
If humans evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys?
Continue reading...February 5, 2016
Do whales have nipples? Why discussing evolution in schools can occasionally be tricky | Jules Howard
“Evolution is not a fact. That’s why it’s called a theory!” Post these words online and, ironically, you will see something rather biblical appear. Airing an opinion like this on Facebook or Twitter can make swaths of educated people become pain-stricken, as if in the midst of a great plague. You will hear them moan and wail in indignation. For evolution (by natural selection) is both a fact and a theory.
This is roughly what happened when headteacher Tina Wilkinson posted the quote above on Twitter in response to an article by fellow headteacher Tom Sherrington, who’d written about teaching evolution in school assemblies. Hellfire ensued. The usual Twitter-hate rained down upon her, because evolution is now a science topic in the national curriculum for primary schools, and because Wilkinson is a headteacher of a primary school. Wilkinson has left Twitter and I feel quite sorry for her. She was only stating an opinion, after all. But that, of course, is part of the problem.
Related: Headteacher mocked on Twitter for claiming evolution is not a fact
I don’t really have an opinion worth listening to on God, because I care about fossil animal bones and teeth
Related: George Monbiot meets David Attenborough: ‘You feel apprehensive for the future, of course you do’
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