The English Bulldog refers to a short-haired breed of dog (subgroup molosses & mastiffs). The standart refers to the breed of bodyguards and companion dog. The English bulldog was bred in the second half of the 19th century, based on the breed of an old-English bulldog. The English Bulldog has a strong character and is considered the national dog of England.
The English Bulldog, long time was known as aggressive and fearless «dog VS bull», but today it's the just respectable decorative dog. Loyal & intelligent dog, he is perfect as a companion. The Bulldog appreciates a permanent human attention. Dogs of this breed is considered as a dominant, though, tend to behave safely (except castrated males).
The English Bulldogs establish a strong bond with his family. Always faithful to one owner and ready to defend it interests. Good-natured, and, with a quiet mind — he gets along well with other dogs and pets. The English bulldogs are smart, well trainable, but very stubborn and lazy, so — I wish you patience, a potential dog owner. Anyhow, the English bulldog is the great friend and the loyal bodyguard.
The world's fastest land animal, the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), is sprinting towards the edge of extinction and could soon be lost forever unless urgent, landscape-wide conservation action is taken, according to a study published today in the journal >Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A new study confirms that the iconic cheetah is sprinting towards extinction [Credit: Zoological Society of London]
Led by Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Panthera and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the study reveals that just 7,100 cheetahs remain globally, representing the best available estimate for the species to date. Furthermore, the cheetah has been driven out of 91% of its historic range. Asiatic cheetah populations have been hit hardest, with fewer than 50 individuals remaining in one isolated pocket of Iran.
Due to the species' dramatic decline, the study's authors are calling for the cheetah to be up-listed from 'Vulnerable' to 'Endangered' on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Typically, greater international conservation support, prioritization and attention are granted to wildlife classified as 'Endangered', in efforts to stave off impending extinction.
Dr. Sarah Durant, ZSL/WCS lead author and Project Leader for the Rangewide Conservation Program for Cheetah and African Wild Dog, said: "This study represents the most comprehensive analysis of cheetah status to date. Given the secretive nature of this elusive cat, it has been difficult to gather hard information on the species, leading to its plight being overlooked. Our findings show that the large space requirements for cheetah, coupled with the complex range of threats faced by the species in the wild, mean that it is likely to be much more vulnerable to extinction than was previously thought."
The study reveals that just 7,100 cheetahs remain globally [Credit: Zoological Society of London]
Durant continued, "We have worked with range state governments and the cheetah conservation community to put in place comprehensive frameworks for action to save the species, but funds and resources are needed to implement them. The recent decisions made at the CITES CoP17 meeting in Johannesburg represent a significant breakthrough particularly in terms of stemming the illegal flow of live cats trafficked out of the Horn of Africa region. However, concerted action is needed to reverse ongoing declines in the face of accelerating land use changes across the continent."
While renowned for its speed and spots, the degree of persecution cheetahs face both inside and outside of protected areas is largely unrecognized. Even within guarded parks and reserves, cheetahs rarely escape the pervasive threats of human-wildlife conflict, prey loss due to overhunting by people, habitat loss and the illegal trafficking of cheetah parts and trade as exotic pets.
To make matters worse, as one of the world's most wide-ranging carnivores, 77% of the cheetah's habitat falls outside of protected areas. Unrestricted by boundaries, the species' wide-ranging movements weaken law enforcement protection and greatly amplify its vulnerability to human pressures. Indeed, largely due to pressures on wildlife and their habitat outside of protected areas, Zimbabwe's cheetah population has plummeted from 1,200 to a maximum of 170 animals in just 16 years -- representing an astonishing loss of 85% of the country's cheetahs.
Due to the species' dramatic decline, the study's authors are calling for the cheetah to be up-listed from 'Vulnerable' to 'Endangered' on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species [Credit: Zoological Society of London]
Scientists are now calling for an urgent paradigm shift in cheetah conservation, towards landscape-level efforts that transcend national borders and are coordinated by existing regional conservation strategies for the species. A holistic conservation approach, which incentivises protection of cheetahs by local communities and trans-national governments, alongside sustainable human-wildlife coexistence is paramount to the survival of the species.
Panthera's Cheetah Program Director, Dr. Kim Young-Overton, shared, "We've just hit the reset button in our understanding of how close cheetahs are to extinction. The take-away from this pinnacle study is that securing protected areas alone is not enough. We must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-ranging cats inhabit, if we are to avert the otherwise certain loss of the cheetah forever."
The methodology used for this study will also be relevant to other species, such as African wild dogs, which also require large areas of land to prosper and are therefore similarly vulnerable to increasing threats outside designated protected areas.
Beneath the Aurora Borealis an oil tanker glides through the night past the Coast Guard ice breaker Amundsen and vanishes into the maze of shoals and straits of the Northwest Passage, navigating waters that for millennia were frozen over this time of year.
The CCGS Amundsen reasearch ice breaker navigates near Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic on September 27, 2015 [Credit: AFP/Clement Sabourin]
Warming has forced a retreat of the polar ice cap, opening up a sea route through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for several months of the year.
Commander Alain Lacerte is at the helm as the vessel navigates the Queen Maud Gulf, poring over charts that date from the 1950s and making course corrections with the help of GPS.
"Where it's white (on the chart), it means the area hasn't been surveyed," he explains -- leaning over a map that is mostly white. "Most of the far north hasn't been surveyed, so our maps are unreliable."
The crew constantly take radar and multi-beam sonar measurements and check their position.
"We don't want any shoals named after us," says the old sea dog from behind his spectacles.
Almost the size of the European Union, the Canadian Arctic seabed remains largely uncharted. The waters are also shallow and navigating unknown parts can be deadly -- even when the north is ice-free.
Today, taking this route cuts 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) off a trip from London to Tokyo, saving time and fuel.
'Never imagined this'
Since the 15th century there have been a dozen expeditions seeking a faster shipping route from Europe to Asia through the north.
Canadian Coast Guard Ship (CCGS) Amundsen, a research icebreaker, navigates near an ice floe along Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic on September 27, 2015 [Credit: AFP/Clement Sabourin]
The Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the first to cross the Northwest Passage, on board the Gjoa, in an expedition that took three years, finishing in 1906.
Afterward interest in the waterway waned. An average of one ship per year attempted to make the crossing over the past century.
But thawing of the polar ice promises Arctic nations new opportunities to open ocean trade routes and offshore oil fields.
In the summer months the Amundsen is used by Canadian government scientists -- among them Roger Provost, a Canadian Ice Service meteorologist -- as well as a network of scientists led by the ArcticNet organization.
Provost looked with amazement from the wheelhouse at the lack of any ice cover around the coast guard ship.
"Anyone who still denies climate change is real has their head in the ground, they're blind," he said.
In 37 years of Arctic exploration, he said he "never imagined ever seeing this," pointing to satellite images showing a clear path through the Queen Maud Gulf and the M'Clintock Channel, where the Amundsen is headed.
Almost 112 years ago to the day, the explorer Amundsen got stuck in the pack ice here. And in 1979, Provost recalls, another Canadian Coast Guard ice-breaker had to cut short its inaugural journey, unable to push beyond this point through thick ice.
Over the past five years the number of cargo and cruise ships, tankers and others crossing the Passage climbed to 117.
In 2010, Canada imposed shipping regulations on seafarers going through the Passage, but the United States and the European Union do not recognize Canada's ownership of the waterway, considering it international waters.
'Completely disappear'
The ice cover has steadily retreated over the past decade, with this year set to be the hottest on record, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Ice chunks can be seen in the Northwest Passage near the CCGS Amundsen, a Canadian research ice breaker navigating in the Canadian High Arctic, on September 23, 2015 [Credit: AFP/Clement Sabourin]
The previous year saw average global temperatures rise one degree Celsius -- but by three degrees in the Arctic.
What most worries Provost is the loss of "multi-year ice," formed over centuries. "In a few years it will completely disappear," he forecast.
"It's a tragedy for all humanity what is happening."
Glaciologist Lauren Candlish said: "We're now in the transition phase, from having multi-year ice through the entire summer, to a seasonally ice free Arctic."
Poring over data on her computer in a nook of the ship the University of Manitoba researcher says: "It's a different Arctic now. Less predictable, with more fluctuations."
The last such melting occurred "before the last ice age," from AD 100,000 to AD 10,000, she noted.
Most aboard the ship doubt we are headed for an Arctic shipping boom predicted by many, as the weather remains unpredictable and harsh. But there is sure to be an increase, which raises concerns for the environment.
"When it was covered in ice, this ecosystem was not threatened," says Provost. The Arctic is a unique and diverse ecosystem that is home to whales, seals, polar bears, walruses and several bird species.
"A massive oil spill like the one in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 must never happen in the Arctic," he said. "The consequences would be much more serious."
Scientists from the Universities of Bristol and Málaga have proposed that the long extinct marsupial lion hunted in a very unique way -- by using its teeth to hold prey before dispatching them with its huge claws.
Reconstruction of Thylacoleo [Credit: Mauricio Antón]
The marsupial lion, or Thylacoleo carnifex, was a predator in the Pleistocene era of Australia and was about the same size as a large jaguar.
It was known to have existed from around two-and-a-half-million years ago until as recently as a few tens of thousands of years ago.
The animal is depicted on native Australian cave art and some speculate it still survives as the "Queensland Tiger."
As its name suggests, the marsupial lion has long been presumed to be a cat-like predator, despite lacking large canine teeth -- instead it had large, protruding incisors that have been suggested to be canine substitutes.
Thylacoleo was a powerful beast but, as other researchers have noted, it had limbs of different proportions to a lion, suggesting it was not a fast.
It also sported a very large claw on its hand, similar to the dew claw of cats but of a much bigger size, with a bony sheath foisted on a mobile first digit (thumb).
Author Christine Janis holding a cast of the skull of Thylacoleo carnifex in the Natural History Museum, London [Credit: Elsa Panciroli]
The new study, >published in Paleobiology by Christine Janis, a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Bristol (currently on a leave of absence from a professorship at Brown University, USA) with colleagues Borja Figueirido and Alberto Martín-Serra from the University of Málaga, Spain looked at the elbow joints of a large number of living mammals.
This showed a strong association between the anatomy of the humerus (upper arm bone) where it articulates with the forelimb and the locomotor behaviour of mammals.
Animals more specialized for running (like a dog) have a joint indicating movement limited for back and forwards, stabilising their bodies on the ground, while animals more specialised for climbing (like a monkey) have a joint that allows for rotation of the hand around the elbow. Modern cats, which (unlike dogs) use their forelimbs to grapple with their prey, have an elbow joint of intermediate shape.
Christine Janis said: "If Thylacoleo had hunted like a lion using its forelimbs to manipulate its prey, then its elbow joint should have been lion-like."
"But, surprisingly, it a unique elbow-joint among living predatory mammals -- one that suggested a great deal of rotational capacity of the hand, like an arboreal mammal, but also features not seen in living climbers, that would have stabilized the limb on the ground (suggesting that it was not simply a climber)."
Christine Janis and colleagues proposed that this unique elbow joint, in combination with the huge "dew claw" on a mobile thumb, would have allowed the marsupial lion to use that claw to kill its prey.
In contrast the large incisors were blunt. While Thylacoleo had massive shearing teeth in the back of its jaw, the incisors appear to have functioned better for gripping than for piercing flesh in a killing bite.
They concluded that, unlike a real lion, which holds its prey with its claws, and kills it with its teeth, the marsupial lion -- unlike any living predator -- used its teeth to hold its prey, while it despatched it with its huge claws.
