Tag Archives: birds

Health

A new pandemic is killing hundreds of millions of birds, and some species may be completely lost

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The form of the flu virus that’s cutting a swatch through the feathered populace is the H5N1 virus. Infected birds spread this flu in their saliva, by contact, and in their droppings. When a person gets enough droplets of this flu—often by getting it on their hands and spreading it to their mouth or eyes—it can readily infect them with the strain that’s moving around in birds. A number of people have been infected this year through that bird-to-human route.

At the moment, fortunately, there is no version of the current strain of avian flu that has been known to be spreading person-to-person. However, it’s entirely possible for this to happen should the virus pick up necessary mutations, as happened with both the SARS and SARS-CoV-2 viruses in moving from animal hosts.

Limiting the possibility of a human-to-human version of the current avian flu, which could possibly set off yet another pandemic, is best achieved by limiting the number of humans infected by the bird-to-human route. And that’s best achieved by avoiding contact with infected birds. Which birds might be infected? Any of them, though the course of the disease in birds is generally so rapid that the period of time in which domestic fowl are infected, but not showing obvious symptoms (like dying) is brief. In any case, any interaction with a number of wild or domestic birds at this time should be treated as if entering a “hot zone,” complete with mask, gloves, and post-contact clean-up procedures.

While the “hot house” conditions of caged poultry weaken those animals and make them highly susceptible to any infection, farms that are attempting to be better stewards of their animals are also at risk. Chickens, turkeys, and ducks allowed to wander in “free range” operations have been wiped out when flocks of wild geese flew in to share in their food or water.

Some people have become so concerned about the possibility of avian flu that they’ve taken down their bird feeders. However, for the most part, songbirds, woodpeckers, and other birds that frequent feeders are considered of low concern. It’s mostly waterfowl and shorebirds that are considered to be likely carriers. That said, wash your hands after handling a feeder or other surfaces frequented by wild birds.

Mother Jones has a heartbreaking article up at the moment looking at how this flu can affect birds of all types.

In the summer of 2022, gannets and skuas on Scotland’s remote isles started behaving oddly. They walked in circles as if intoxicated. Their heads swelled. They dragged their limp wings at their sides, feathers grazing the ground. At a time when they should have been breeding and raising new life, they were dying. Scientists and birdwatchers had a front-row seat to an ecological disaster. More than two-thirds of the world’s gannets and great skuas—birds that migrate across the Atlantic Ocean from eastern North America to western Europe—are feared to have been lost.

That’s two-thirds of some ecologically vital and aesthetically majestic species lost this last year to a single disease. 

Just as the virus can make the jump from domestic birds to humans, it can also make the jump between infected wild birds and the species that prey on them. That doesn’t just include birds like eagles and hawks, but mammals like foxes. Other species, such as pelicans and seals, who live in the areas where these sea birds gather in large numbers, have also become infected.

All of this is tragic, but it’s also highly unusual. Flu is endemic among birds. It generally only makes them mildly ill. That’s true of the H5N1 strain as well as other forms of Influenza A. One of the big reasons that the term “bird flu” seems to pop up as a concern every few years is that birds don’t die from a flu infection. Instead, they get the bird equivalent of a snotty nose, then hang around, forming a reservoir of potential infection that can make that jump to humans. 

Only this time, this particular variant of H5N1 (H5N1-HPAI-clade 2.3.4.4b) is proving to be incredibly deadly to birds of all types. According to the department of agriculture, over 50 million domestic birds have been killed so far this year by the avian flu. That’s everything from chickens to emus [Note: The woman in that emu story is highly problematic for a number of reasons, the emu in the story turned out to not have avian flu, and sleeping with a bird you think does have avian flu is a colossally bad idea]. France has euthanized another 10 million in an effort to control the disease there. Similar culls of birds are going in many nations, but so far, the disease rages on.

The tally among wild birds is unknown.

So far, the 2022 flu season among birds has been spectacularly awful. This isn’t the avian equivalent of COVID-19. For many species, this is the Black Death.

Why is it so awful? In part, because it’s bouncing back and forth between the wild and domestic populations. Wild populations provide free transport. Meanwhile, when one group of birds is wiped out by disease, what do farmers do? They bring in thousands of more birds that are more or less genetically identical to the ones that just died, ensuring a new and susceptible population is ready to gestate more viruses.

Then there’s one other factor:

By infecting migratory seabirds at the right time and in the right place, clade 2.3.4.4b was able to make a journey no HPAI we know of has made before: crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Historically, HPAI influenzas in North America have either emerged locally or crossed the Pacific. Yet in December 2021, the virus was found in domestic birds in St. John’s in Newfoundland and Labrador, likely caught from infected seabirds that flew over through Iceland, Greenland, and the Canadian high Arctic. The latest data from the US Department of Agriculture shows the clade has since spread across the United States up to Alaska’s western coast. With flocks moving up and down the Atlantic Flyway, the invisible highway that birds use to migrate from North America to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, the virus has already migrated far south. Late in November 2022, roughly 14,000 seabirds, including pelicans and blue-footed boobies, died along the coast of Peru. Each body was disposed of in a black bin bag.

In recent decades, bird populations have already been under enormous pressure from pollution, hunting, and habitat loss. For some bird species, 2022 is going to take on special significance because it’s going to be their last year on earth.

Why did Democrats do so surprisingly well in the midterms? It turns out they ran really good campaigns, as strategist Josh Wolf tells us on this week’s episode of The Downballot. That means they defined their opponents aggressively, spent efficiently, and stayed the course despite endless second-guessing in the press. Wolf gives us an inside picture of how exactly these factors played out in the Arizona governor’s race, one of the most important Democratic wins of the year. He also shines a light on an unsexy but crucial aspect of every campaign: how to manage a multi-million budget for an enterprise designed to spend down to zero by Election Day.



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Science

Fossil overturns more than a century of knowledge about the origin of modern birds

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Artist’s reconstruction of the last known toothed bird, Janavis finalidens, in its original environment surrounded by the co-occurring ‘wonderchicken’, Asteriornis. 66.7 million years ago parts of Belgium were covered by a shallow sea, and conditions were similar to modern tropical beaches in places like the Bahamas. Janavis was a very large marine bird, with long wings and teeth in its jaws. It would have hunted fish and squid-like creatures in the tropical sea. Credit: Phillip Krzeminski

Fossilized fragments of a skeleton, hidden within a rock the size of a grapefruit, have helped upend one of the longest-standing assumptions about the origins of modern birds.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht found that one of the key skull features that characterizes 99% of modern birds—a mobile beak—evolved before the mass extinction event that killed all large dinosaurs, 66 million years ago.

This finding also suggests that the skulls of ostriches, emus and their relatives evolved “backwards,” reverting to a more primitive condition after modern birds arose.

Using CT scanning techniques, the Cambridge team identified bones from the palate, or the roof of the mouth, of a new species of large ancient bird, which they named Janavis finalidens. It lived at the very end of the Age of Dinosaurs and was one of the last toothed birds to ever live. The arrangement of its palate bones shows that this “dino-bird” had a mobile, dexterous beak, almost indistinguishable from that of most modern birds.






Video showing the rotating pterygoid (a palate bone) of Janavis finalidens, which is very similar to that of living duck- and chicken-like birds. The bone was found as two matching fragments, which have been digitally fitted together. The bone is hollow and was likely full of air in life, as shown by the large opening on its side. Credit: Dr Juan Benito and Dr Daniel Field, University of Cambridge

For more than a century, it had been assumed that the mechanism enabling a mobile beak evolved after the extinction of the dinosaurs. However, the new discovery, reported in the journal Nature, suggests that our understanding of how the modern bird skull came to be needs to be re-evaluated.

Each of the roughly 11,000 species of birds on Earth today is classified into one of two over-arching groups, based on the arrangement of their palate bones. Ostriches, emus and their relatives are classified into the palaeognath, or “ancient jaw” group, meaning that, like humans, their palate bones are fused together into a solid mass.

All other groups of birds are classified into the neognath, or “modern jaw” group, meaning that their palate bones are connected by a mobile joint. This makes their beaks much more dexterous, helpful for nest-building, grooming, food-gathering, and defense.

The two groups were originally classified by Thomas Huxley, the British biologist known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his vocal support of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. In 1867, he divided all living birds into either the “ancient” or “modern” jaw groups. Huxley’s assumption was that the “ancient” jaw configuration was the original condition for modern birds, with the “modern” jaw arising later.

“This assumption has been taken as a given ever since,” said Dr. Daniel Field from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, the paper’s senior author. “The main reason this assumption has lasted is that we haven’t had any well-preserved fossil bird palates from the period when modern birds originated.”

The fossil, Janavis, was found in a limestone quarry near the Belgian-Dutch border in the 1990s and was first studied in 2002. It dates from 66.7 million years ago, during the last days of the dinosaurs. Since the fossil is encased in rock, scientists at the time could only base their descriptions on what they could see from the outside. They described the bits of bone sticking out from the rock as fragments of skull and shoulder bones, and put the unremarkable-looking fossil back in storage.

Nearly 20 years later, the fossil was loaned to Field’s group in Cambridge, and Dr. Juan Benito, then a Ph.D. student, started giving it another look.

“Since this fossil was first described, we’ve started using CT scanning on fossils, which enables us to see through the rock and view the entire fossil,” said Benito, now a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge, and the paper’s lead author. “We had high hopes for this fossil—it was originally said to have skull material, which isn’t often preserved, but we couldn’t see anything that looked like it came from a skull in our CT scans, so we gave up and put the fossil aside.”

Palate of Janavis finalidens in comparison with that of a pheasant and an ostrich. The palate anatomy of Janavis likely approximates that of the most recent common ancestor of all living birds, and is more similar to that of chicken- and duck-like birds, such as pheasants, than to birds like ostriches and emus, which were previously thought to exhibit the ancestral bird condition. Credit: Juan Benito and Daniel Field, University of Cambridge

During the early days of COVID-19 lockdown, Benito took the fossil out again. “The earlier descriptions of the fossil just didn’t make sense—there was a bone I was really puzzled by. I couldn’t see how what was first described as a shoulder bone could actually be a shoulder bone,” he said.

“It was my first in-person interaction in months: Juan and I had a socially distanced outdoor meeting, and he passed the mystery fossil bone to me,” said Field, who is also the Curator of Ornithology at Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology. “I could see it wasn’t a shoulder bone, but there was something familiar about it.”

“Then we realized we’d seen a similar bone before, in a turkey skull,” said Benito. “And because of the research we do at Cambridge, we happen to have things like turkey skulls in our lab, so we brought one out and the two bones were almost identical.”

The realization that the bone was a skull bone, and not a shoulder bone, led the researchers to conclude that the unfused “modern jaw” condition, which turkeys share, evolved before the “ancient jaw” condition of ostriches and their relatives. For an unknown reason, the fused palates of ostriches and kin must have evolved at some point after modern birds were already established.

Two of the key characteristics we use to differentiate modern birds from their dinosaur ancestors are a toothless beak and a mobile upper jaw. While Janavis finalidens still had teeth, making it a pre-modern bird, its jaw structure is that of the modern, mobile kind.

“Using geometric analyses, we were able to show that the shape of the fossil palate bone was extremely similar to those of living chickens and ducks,” said Pei-Chen Kuo, a co-author of the study. Added co-author Klara Widrig: “Surprisingly, the bird palate bones that are the least similar to that of Janavis are from ostriches and their kin.” Both Kuo and Widrig are Ph.D. students in Field’s lab at Cambridge.

Artist’s reconstruction of the world’s last known toothed bird, Janavis finalidens. This reconstruction is based on the original fossil bones of Janavis and comparisons with its close relative Ichthyornis, as well as inspiration from modern marine birds such as gulls and petrels. Janavis was a large marine bird with long wings and teeth in its jaws, and would have hunted for fish and squid in warm Late Cretaceous seas. Credit: Phillip Krzeminski

“Evolution doesn’t happen in a straight line,” said Field. “This fossil shows that the mobile beak—a condition we had always thought post-dated the origin of modern birds, actually evolved before modern birds existed. We’ve been completely backwards in our assumptions of how the modern bird skull evolved for well over a century.”

The researchers say that while this discovery does not mean that the entire bird family tree needs to be redrawn, it does rewrite our understanding of a key evolutionary feature of modern birds.

And what happened to Janavis? It, like the large dinosaurs and other toothed birds, did not survive the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period. The researchers say that this may be because of its large size: Janavis weighed around 1.5 kilograms and was the size of a modern vulture.

It’s likely that smaller animals—like the “wonderchicken,” identified by Field, Benito, and colleagues in 2020, which comes from the same area and lived alongside Janavis—had an advantage at this point in Earth’s history since they had to eat less to survive. This would have been beneficial after the asteroid struck the Earth and disrupted global food chains.

More information:
Daniel Field, Cretaceous ornithurine supports a neognathous crown bird ancestor, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05445-y. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05445-y

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Health

Avian flu outbreak wipes out 50M US birds, a record

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Cage-free chickens are shown inside a facility at Hilliker’s Ranch Fresh Eggs in Lakeside, California, April 19. Avian flu has wiped out 50.54 million birds in the United States this year, making it the country’s deadliest outbreak in history. (Mike Blake, Reuters)

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CHICAGO — Avian flu has wiped out 50.54 million birds in the United States this year, making it the country’s deadliest outbreak in history, U.S. Department of Agriculture data showed on Thursday.

The deaths of chickens, turkeys and other birds represent the worst U.S. animal-health disaster to date, topping the previous record of 50.5 million birds that died in an avian-flu outbreak in 2015.

Birds often die after becoming infected. Entire flocks, which can top a million birds at egg-laying chicken farms, are also culled to control the spread of the disease after a bird tests positive.

Losses of poultry flocks sent prices for eggs and turkey meat to record highs, worsening economic pain for consumers facing red-hot inflation and making Thursday’s Thanksgiving celebrations more expensive in the United States. Europe and Britain are also suffering their worst avian-flu crises, and some British supermarkets rationed customers’ egg purchases after the outbreak disrupted supplies.

The U.S. outbreak, which began in February, infected flocks of poultry and non-poultry birds across 46 states, USDA data show. Wild birds like ducks transmit the virus, known as highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), through their feces, feathers or direct contact with poultry.

“Wild birds continue to spread HPAI throughout the country as they migrate, so preventing contact between domestic flocks and wild birds is critical to protecting U.S. poultry,” said Rosemary Sifford, the USDA’s chief veterinary officer.

Farmers struggled to keep the disease and wild birds out of their barns after increasing security and cleaning measures following the 2015 outbreak. In 2015, about 30% of the cases were traced directly to wild bird origins, compared to 85% this year, the USDA told Reuters.

Government officials are studying infections at turkey farms, in particular, in hopes of developing new recommendations for preventing infections. Turkey farms account for more than 70% of the commercial poultry farms infected in the outbreak, the USDA said.

People should avoid unprotected contact birds that look sick or have died, though the outbreak poses a low risk to the general public, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

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World

Long-lost pigeon species ‘rediscovered’ in Papua New Guinea

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CNN
 — 

A bird thought to be extinct for 140 years has been rediscovered in the forests of Papua New Guinea.

The black-naped pheasant-pigeon was documented by scientists for the first and last time in 1882, according to a news release from nonprofit Re:wild, which helped fund the search effort.

Rediscovering the bird required an expedition team to spend a grueling month on Fergusson, a rugged island in the D’Entrecasteaux Archipelago off eastern Papua New Guinea where the bird was originally documented. The team consisted of local staff at the Papua New Guinea National Museum as well as international scientists from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the American Bird Conservancy.

Fergusson Island is covered in rugged, mountainous terrain – making the expedition especially challenging for the scientists. Many members of the community told the team that they hadn’t seen the black-naped pheasant-pigeon in decades, says the news release.

But just two days before the researchers were scheduled to leave the island, a camera trap captured footage of the exceptionally rare bird.

“After a month of searching, seeing those first photos of the pheasant-pigeon felt like finding a unicorn,” John C. Mittermeier, director of the lost birds program at American Bird Conservancy and co-leader of the expedition, said in the release. “It is the kind of moment you dream about your entire life as a conservationist and birdwatcher.”

The black-naped pheasant-pigeon is a large, ground-dwelling pigeon with a broad tail, according to the release. Scientists still know little about the species and believe the population is small and decreasing.

Insight from local residents was crucial for the scientists to track down the elusive bird.

“It wasn’t until we reached villages on the western slope of Mt. Kilkerran that we started meeting hunters who had seen and heard the pheasant-pigeon,” Jason Gregg, a conservation biologist and co-leader of the expedition team, said in the release. “We became more confident about the local name of the bird, which is ‘Auwo,’ and felt like we were getting closer to the core habitat of where the black-naped pheasant-pigeon lives.”

They placed a total of 12 camera traps on the slopes of Mt. Kilkerran, which is the island’s highest mountain. And they placed another eight cameras in locations where local hunters reported seeing the bird in the past.

A hunter named Augustin Gregory, based in the mountain village Duda Ununa, provided the final breakthrough that helped scientists locate the pheasant-pigeon.

Gregory told the team that he had seen the black-naped pheasant-pigeon in an area with “steep ridges and valleys,” says the news release. And he had heard the bird’s distinctive calls.

So the expedition team placed a camera on a 3,200-foot high ridge near the Kwama River above Duda Ununa, according to the release. And finally, just as their trip was ending, they captured footage of the bird walking on the forest floor.

The discovery was a shock for the scientists and the local community alike.

“The communities were very excited when they saw the survey results, because many people hadn’t seen or heard of the bird until we began our project and got the camera trap photos,” said Serena Ketaloya, a conservationist from Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea, in the news release. “They are now looking forward to working with us to try to protect the pheasant-pigeon.”

It’s still not clear just how many of the black-naped pheasant-pigeon are left, and the rugged terrain will make identifying the population difficult. A two-week survey in 2019 failed to find any proof of the bird, although it did discover some reports from hunters that helped determine the locations for the 2022 expedition.

And the discovery might provide hope that other bird species thought extinct are still out there somewhere.

“This rediscovery is an incredible beacon of hope for other birds that have been lost for a half century or more,” said Christina Biggs, the manager for the Search for Lost Species at Re:wild, in the release. “The terrain the team searched was incredibly difficult, but their determination never wavered, even though so few people could remember seeing the pheasant-pigeon in recent decades.”

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Health

Teens’ Brains Develop Differently Depending on if They’re Night Owls or Early Birds : ScienceAlert

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It’s 11 pm on a weeknight and your teenager still has their bedroom light on. You want them to get enough sleep for school the next day, but it’s a struggle.

Our new research shows what happens to the brains and behavior of young teenagers, years after they’ve become “night owls”.

We found this shift in sleep pattern increased the risk of having behavioral problems and delayed brain development in later adolescence.

But it’s not all bad news for night owls.

Sleep habits shift

People’s sleep patterns shift during their teenage years. Teens can stay awake longer, fall asleep later, and have a lie in the next day.

Many teens also shift from being a morning lark to a night owl. They feel more productive and alert later in the evening, preferring to go to sleep later, and waking up later the next day.

This shift towards “eveningness” can clash with teens’ school and work. A chronic lack of sleep, due to these mismatched sleep schedules, can explain why teens who are night owls are at greater risk for emotional and behavioral problems than ones who are morning larks.

Emerging research also indicates morning larks and night owls have a different brain structure. This includes differences in both the grey and white matter, which have been linked to differences in memory, emotional wellbeing, attention, and empathy.

Despite these links, it’s unclear how this relationship might emerge. Does being a night owl increase the risk for later emotional and behavioral problems? Or do emotional and behavioral problems lead to someone becoming more of a night owl?

In our study, we tried to answer these questions, following teenagers for many years.

What we did

We asked over 200 teens and their parents to complete a series of questionnaires about the teens’ sleep preferences, and emotional and behavioral wellbeing. Participants repeated these questionnaires several times over the next seven years.

The teens also had two brain scans, several years apart, to examine their brain development. We focused on mapping changes in the structure of white matter – the brain’s connective tissue that allows our brains to process information and function effectively.

Earlier research shows the structure of white matter of morning larks and night owls differ. However, our study is the first to examine how changes in sleep preferences might affect how white matter grows over time.

Here’s what we found

Teens who shifted to becoming a night owl in early adolescence (around the age of 12-13) were more likely to have behavioral problems several years later. This included greater aggression, rule-breaking, and antisocial behaviors.

But they weren’t at increased risk of emotional problems, such as anxiety or low mood.

Importantly, this relationship did not occur in the reverse direction. In other words, we found that earlier emotional and behavioral problems didn’t influence whether a teenager became more of a morning lark or night owl in late adolescence.

Our research also showed that teens who shifted to becoming a night owl had a different rate of brain development than teens who remained morning larks.

We found the white matter of night owls didn’t increase to the same degree as teens who were morning larks.

We know growth of white matter is important in the teenage years to support cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development.

What are the implications?

These findings build on previous research showing differences in brain structure between morning larks and night owls. It also builds on earlier research that indicates these changes might emerge in the teenage years.

Importantly, we show that becoming a night owl increases the risk of experiencing behavioral problems and delayed brain development in later adolescence, rather than the other way round.

These findings highlight the importance of focusing on teens’ sleep-wake habits early in adolescence to support their later emotional and behavioral health. We know getting enough sleep is extremely important for both mental and brain health.

Here’s some good news

It’s not all bad news for night owls. As our research shows, morning lark and night owl preferences aren’t set in stone. Research indicates we can modify our sleep preferences and habits.

For example, exposure to light (even artificial light) alters our circadian rhythms, which can influence our sleep preferences. So minimizing late-night exposure to bright lights and screens can be one way to modify our preferences and drive for sleep.

Exposure to light first thing in the morning can also help shift our internal clocks to a more morning-oriented rhythm. You could encourage your teen to have their breakfast outside, or go onto a balcony or into the garden before heading to school or work.

Rebecca Cooper, PhD candidate in neuropsychiatry, The University of Melbourne; Maria Di Biase, Senior Research Fellow, Psychiatry, The University of Melbourne, and Vanessa Cropley, Senior Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Health

Yes, I Will Explain the Lesbian Farmer Emu Flu Drama to You

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Image: TikTok; @knucklebumpfarms

Huge news for those closely following the health and well-being of Emmanuel the emu who have not yet been deterred by his clout-chasing owner’s history of online racism: He does not have Avian bird flu! He’s just stressed out. This isn’t the greatest saga ever told, but it is a saga, and I am going to tell it.

Quickly, before we dive in—on the off-chance that you’ve let half of this discourse seep into your brain, I’m discussing Taylor Blake, NOT the other, unproblematic (as far as we know) emu influencer who works at Useless Farm and has an emu named Karen that keeps trying to murder her on camera.

Pre-Avian flu scare, Emmanuel the emu first went viral (no pun intended) this past summer. Taylor Blake, his owner and the head of Knuckle Bump Farms in South Florida, was doing this bit where she would try to post farm education videos to TikTok, but was consistently being interrupted by the emu craning his lanky emu neck into the frame, curious as to what was going on. Blake would, much to the delight of her viewers, chastise him by using his full Christian name, Emmanuel Todd Lopez. The duo reached such a height of viral fame that Blake was interviewed by both the Washington Post and the Tonight Show. The niche drama seemed so wholesome and fun-loving, but would ultimately taper out the way most five minutes of fame do: quickly and quietly! Of course, things are not always as they seem.

Turns out this was not Blake’s first rodeo: The farmer has presented many versions of herself over the years. While it took a moment, the terminally online among us soon recognized her from her previous stunts, like going viral for recording herself in 2015 asking a Taco Bell employee if she wanted to have a sleepover. All pretty innocuous internet-fame fodder, though, right? Women being nice to each other? #Win! Fast food content!? #TacoBellPartnerWin! But a #BigFail lurked beneath the surface. #Racism.

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Chugging right along the well-trodden path of internet virality, Blake’s old tweets, in which she used the N-word and disparaged Black people’s behavior, were soon discovered (she quickly deleted them). This discovery got the mid-sized reaction you’d imagine a non-famous white woman farmer from Florida being lazily racist deserves: outrage in certain corners of the internet that weren’t big enough to circle back to Fallon or the Post. Just as that cycle of indignation was dying down to make way for America’s next unlikely animal superstar, disease struck South Florida.  

On October 15th, Blake announced the farm had experienced a “massive tragedy” and lost 99 percent of their birds to Avian influenza. When AI hits a farm, the state comes in Contagion-style to “take care of” them, aka make them fly their final flight. Devastating. Emmanuel fans rightly demanded to know his status, his whereabouts—had the flu struck him, too?!? It sure seemed like it. He was “down,” according to Blake. Emmanuel had fatigue, wasn’t eating, and had a twisted neck. She proceeded to post approximately 500 photos of her cuddling, kissing, and holding the (excuse me) absolutely fucked-up-sickly looking Emu.

Cue an incidental shift in 40 percent of Twitter suddenly becoming bird disease experts. “Don’t kiss the emu that is dying from a plague,” was the general consensus. Actual bird disease expert and virologist, Dr. Angela Rasmussen, expressed how dangerous it is to be in physical contact with a bird with AI. “It sounds harsh but to prevent it’s [sic] spread, birds that get avian flu should be euthanized,” she tweeted. I, too, agreed it was time to say goodbye to Emmanuel for the sake of saving humanity, like he was Bruce Willis in Armageddon. Racist sleepover enthusiast Blake did not.

“Something in my gut just told me that this wasn’t the end for him,” she tweeted. And it turns out that feeling in her gut was not her body fighting off AI: She was right. Emmanuel was tested for all types of sicknesses, and nothing was found to be wrong with him. But why, then, did he look like he’d glided down the current of the River Styx? Why did his feathers fall out and his neck get all twisted?

Oh, he was just havin’ a bad day! “We believe this all stemmed from stress,” Blake tweeted. “Emus are highly susceptible to stress.” Was it all of his friends being killed by the government that did it? Maybe. Was it the quick ascent to fame? Perhaps. Did having a stage mom of a farm owner with a racist past cause him distress? Who’s to say? But Emmanuel Todd Lopez was fucking stressed out and on the brink of death. Been there, my man.

Is there a lesson to the 800+ words I just typed out? Well, it feels safe to say: no. Except, just don’t be racist. And also, don’t cuddle a sick bird in your bed. Or if you do, don’t post about it, because the Internet has congealed into a single Avian virologist and will have the state remove YOU if you get too close to a sick bird. My final wish is that Emmanuel recovers and that we figure out why he, against all of his bird brothers and sisters, survived annihilation.



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Health

Can you change from a night owl to an early bird? Experts weigh in

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Sign up for CNN’s Sleep, But Better newsletter series. Our seven-part guide has helpful hints to achieve better sleep.



CNN
 — 

If your body and brain fail to rev up until later in the day, you’re likely a night owl, naturally programmed to enjoy staying up late and sleeping in past traditional school and work start times.

Yet getting up early to meet life’s responsibilities is the bleary-eyed reality of most late-to-bed types — leading many exhausted night owls to wonder: “Can I reprogram my biological clock to be an early riser?”

The answer for most night owls is “Yes, you can,” according to sleep experts. How successful you will be at changing your sleep preferences, however, may be dependent on your genes and your willpower.

“We can make you less of a night owl, but not completely, because the genetic tendency, or predisposition, is still there,” said Dr. Phyllis Zee, director of the Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Illinois.

“It’s like if you have a gene for diabetes, right? You can modify that with your lifestyle, but it doesn’t change it,” Zee said.

Success is also dependent on how much you are willing to work to change behaviors that affect sleep, said Dr. Elizabeth Klerman, a professor of neurology in the division of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“Behavior change is very difficult. We can say what works, and then you have to decide if you want to do it,” Klerman said. “We don’t have a magic pill.”

Nature marries our sleep-wake cycle to the Earth’s rotation. Daylight enters your eyes, travels to your brain and suppresses the production of melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep. When the sun goes down, your body clock turns melatonin production back on, triggering sleepiness within a few hours.

Your inherited sleep chronotype may alter that process. If you’re an innate early bird, your circadian rhythm releases melatonin earlier than the norm, energizing you to become more active in the morning. Night owls, however, secrete melatonin much later, pushing peak activity and alertness later into the afternoon and evening.

Your body clock also directs when you feel hunger, feel sluggish, and are peppy enough to exercise, so being a night owl may have a downside for your health. Studies have shown evening types are more likely to skip breakfast; eat more later in the day and use more tobacco, alcohol and caffeine. Night owls also have higher levels of visceral body fat in the abdominal region, a key risk factor for type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

While you might not be able to change your genetic predisposition, you don’t have to let it control you. Sleep experts have several techniques to alter your body clock if you’re willing to do them.

Let there be morning light: The first and most important change is to control the timing and type of light you see every morning, Zee said.

“The strongest reset for the circadian system is bright light,” Zee said, “Light in the morning changes the oscillation of your circadian clock genes at both a cellular and molecular level. You are also training all your rhythms, whether it’s sleep, blood pressure, heart rate or your cortisol rhythm to be earlier.”

Flood your eyes with light as soon as that pesky alarm goes off. Use natural sunlight if possible, or turn on artificial lights, especially those in the blue spectrum, which tells the body to wake up. Getting natural light in the winter isn’t easy, so some people use products that brighten slowly until the alarm sounds.

“Dawn simulators are fine,” Zee said. “The problem with these lights is that a lot of people don’t wake up to them or keep shutting them off. If you do that, then I suggest using light (therapy) goggles. Those are easier for many of my patients because you can put them on in bed, and then get up and walk around with these glasses while you are brushing your teeth and getting ready.”

Don’t stop there, Zee added. “Continue to extend brighter light intermittently throughout the entire morning.”

Go dark in the evenings: The flip side of the circadian reset is to turn down the lights at a much earlier time in the evening, especially blue light from electronic devices, which “only pushes your biological clock later,” Klerman said.

Yes, that means turning off your smartphone, laptop, gaming device and TV a lot earlier than you may want to. Before you run screaming for the exit, there are ways to tweak your device.

“You should put filters on your phone to change the color of your display. You can do that on your computer as well so the color is more in the amber or reddish orange range, which doesn’t suppress melatonin,” Zee said.

You can also download a free app called f.lux. It casts a yellow tint upon your screen so you get less blue light exposure, Klerman said.

You can’t turn off the blue light from your television, but you can turn off the TV. “Read a book or play a card game or whatever,” she said.

Eat and exercise earlier: Night owls naturally prefer to eat late, which has been shown to be associated with weight gain and higher obesity, Zee said.

“My rule: Stop eating within three hours of bedtime,” she said. “Because this genetic molecular clock exists in almost every cell of your body, that means it is in your fat and muscle cells, affecting your metabolism. That’s why feeding should be in sync.”

Exercise is critical for good sleep and overall health no matter what time you do it. However, if you’re a night owl, you should try to exercise in the morning or early afternoon, and avoid heavy exercise in the evening, Zee said: “Remember, everything should be in sync.”

Don’t turn to sleeping pills: You want to change your biological clock, not drug your body into sleep. Besides, “behavioral treatment of insomnia is more effective than drugs,” Klerman said.

If light isn’t working quickly enough, however, you can add melatonin about three hours before bedtime — and don’t take too much, Zee said.

“You will take a very low dose of melatonin — half a milligram. More is definitely not better to shift your clock,” she said.

“Very importantly, you have to be in the dark when you do this — you cannot be exposed to bright light during this period of time or using electronics because the blue light will suppress your endogenous melatonin,” Zee added.

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Science

Humans and Cockatoos Are in an ‘Arms Race’ Over Trash in Sydney

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A cockatoo trying to push off the brick placed to keep it away from the trash it craves.
Photo: Barbara Klump

In Sydney, Australia, man and bird are waging a fierce battle over the most precious of resources: garbage. Over the past several years, a team of scientists has studied sulphur-crested cockatoo parrots in the area that have learned—and even taught other parrots—how to rob garbage bins. And in new research Monday, the team says that humans have now started to devise their own methods to keep the birds out, to varying degrees of success.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany have long been interested in deciphering the inner workings of animals around the world. Last year, they published a deep dive into the trash-robbing habits of Sydney’s sulphur-crested cockatoos. They found that the practice seemed to be an example of animal culture: a learned behavior that spread from birds in three suburbs to throughout Southern Sydney. As the technique passed from neighborhood to neighborhood, the local cockatoos developed slight variations to the behavior, such as lifting the bin lid entirely open or not—something that happens commonly enough in human culture (think about how different local cultures produce their own varieties of cheese).

The researchers told Gizmodo last year that they were next interested in documenting the human side of this struggle. And that’s just what they’ve done in their new paper, published Monday in the journal Current Biology.

Photo: Barbara Klump

“When we collected data for the original study describing bin-opening behavior by cockatoos, I saw that some people had put devices on their bins to protect them against cockatoos, and I was surprised by the variety of different measures that people had come up with. So I really wanted to investigate the human response to the cockatoos,” lead author Barbara Klump, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute, told Gizmodo in an email.

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To do so, they surveyed people living in neighborhoods beleaguered by these birds. A major stumbling block to any potential anti-cockatoo trick is that the bins are designed to open and spill their contents when lifted by the automated arm on garbage trucks, meaning they can’t be kept entirely sealed tight. But that hasn’t stopped people from devising a variety of methods, like putting bricks and stones onto the lids, fastening water bottles to the lid handles with cable ties, or using sticks to block the hinges. There are now even commercially available locks that are supposed to unlatch come collection time (one such product can be seen here).

Unfortunately for the humans, cockatoos have learned how to defeat some of the simpler measures. But much as the birds are adapting, people are developing counters right back. As the researchers put it, the parrots and people of Sydney seem to be engaged in a sort of innovation “arms race,” though Klump balked at describing it as a full-on war.

“When cockatoos learn to defeat this protection measure (e.g. by pushing off bricks so that they can then open the bin), people in our survey have reported that they increase the efficacy of their protection measures (e.g. by fixing something heavy to the lid, so that it cannot be pushed off). What we have found is that bin protection (and protection types) are geographically clustered and that people learn about them from their neighbors,” Klump said.

The entire saga, the researchers say, may be a preview of the sort of increasingly common interactions between people and wildlife that we can expect as we continue to build our cities larger and encroach on wildlife habitats. Some animals, like these parrots, may find new ways to adapt to our presence, yet many others won’t. And sometimes, these interactions can be harmful to humans, such as with the emergence of new zoonotic infectious diseases.

What exactly will happen next is anyone’s guess. “One could imagine that it will continue to escalate (i.e. cockatoos learning to defeat higher-level protection types, and people coming up with even better devices to protect their bins) or it could be that one party ‘wins’ the arms race,” Klump said.

For their part, the team plans to keep studying the underlying learning mechanisms that led these cockatoos to become proficient trash collectors, and they hope to document how adept they might become at solving the latest countermeasures meant to keep them from their garbage treasure.

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Technology

Owlboy Devs Move From Birds To Vikings In Its Bouncy Co-Op Follow-Up

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Here at Nintendo Life, we are suckers for game titles which are so weird that you can’t help but laugh, and we think that D-Pad Studio’s upcoming release may just take the biscuit. The development team behind 2018’s stunning pixel platformer, Owlboy, is back with — are you ready for this one? — Vikings on Trampolines! Yes, you read that right, it’s Vikings and they’re on trampolines.

Towards the end of last month, the studio shared a tweet claiming that they would be revealing its new game at this year’s Gamescom, but today’s trailer reveal (from IGN) suggests that the event will be solely for getting your hands on a playable demo.

The trailer shows the game to be just as comical as you would hope with a title like that. You’ll play as a team of Vikings tasked with taking down airborne enemies all from the safety of a ring of a stretchy canvas. Think the combat of Dreamworks’ How To Train Your Dragon, but replace the dragons with trampolines and you are basically there.

Expect co-op play galore as you team up with your friends and enter the bounce brawl. The trailer promises absolutely anything you can think of; you can cause chaos alone in solo play, or you can team up in up to 4-player multiplayer mayhem so you better get your posse of horned-helmet homies ready to catch some air.

The game was actually teased some 11 years ago (thanks, Destructoid), and fans of the developer’s previous game are eagerly excited to find out how this turns out. Check out some screenshots from the game’s trailer below:

As we hope the above images demonstrate, D-Pad is continuing the jaw-droppingly stunning pixel art visuals from Owlboy into this upcoming release. This was a feature that became one of the driving forces behind our love for the former game and will certainly be a pull again this time.

Need a reminder of what the studio’s former title had to offer? Check out our full review of Owlboy below:

Unfortunately, the studio is yet to comment on whether the game will be getting a Switch release, with Vikings on Trampolines currently slated for PC only. However, we are aware that this is still early days for D-Pad’s follow-up, and based on the success of Owlboy on the eShop, we would be surprised if these Vikings don’t take the same path.

Expect us to get more information on the game at this year’s Gamescom.

What do you make of this new trailer for Vikings on trampolines? Bounce on down to the comments to let us know!



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World

Polish institute classifies cats as alien invasive species

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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A respected Polish scientific institute has classified domestic cats as an “invasive alien species,” citing the damage they cause to birds and other wildlife.

Some cat lovers have reacted emotionally to this month’s decision and put the key scientist behind it on the defensive.

Wojciech Solarz, a biologist at the state-run Polish Academy of Sciences, wasn’t prepared for the disapproving public response when he entered “Felis catus,” the scientific name for the common house cat, into a national database run by the academy’s Institute of Nature Conservation.

The database already had 1,786 other species listed with no objections, Solarz told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The uproar over invasive alien species No. 1,787, he said, may have resulted from some media reports that created the false impression his institute was calling for feral and other cats to be euthanized.

Solarz described the growing scientific consensus that domestic cats have a harmful impact on biodiversity given the number of birds and mammals they hunt and kill.

The criteria for including the cat among alien invasive species, “are 100% met by the cat,” he said.

In a television segment aired by independent broadcaster TVN, the biologist faced off last week against a veterinarian who challenged Solarz’s conclusion on the dangers cats pose to wildlife.

Dorota Suminska, the author of a book titled “The Happy Cat,” pointed to other causes of shrinking biodiversity, including a polluted environment and urban building facades that can kill birds in flight.

“Ask if man is on the list of non-invasive alien species,” Suminska said, arguing that cats were unfairly assigned too much blame.

Solarz pushed back, arguing that cats kill about 140 million birds in Poland each year.

Earlier this month, the Polish Academy institute published a post on its website citing the “controversy” and seeking to clarify its position. The institute stressed that it was “opposed to any cruelty towards animals.” It also argued that its classification was in line with European Union guidelines.

As far as categorizing cats as “alien,” the institute noted that “Felis catus” was domesticated probably around 10,000 years ago in the cradle of the great civilizations of the ancient Middle East, making the species alien to Europe from a strictly scientific point of view.

The institute also stressed that all it was recommending was for cat owners to limit the time their pets spend outdoors during bird breeding season.

“I have a dog, but I don’t have anything against cats,” Solarz said.

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