FIVE THINGS TO K NOW ABOUT ANIMALS TODAY

1

FRESH MILK WITHOUT MAMA

Ceramic vessels were used thousands of years ago as baby bottles to feed infants milk from animals such as cows, sheep and goats. Archaeologists found chemical traces of milk in three vessels buried in child graves in Germany, the oldest made 2,800 to 3,200 years ago.

2 DOGS LOVE YOU? OF COURSE THEY DO

A Japanese research group analyzed dogs’ and people’s urine for levels of the hormone

oxytocin, called the love hormone because it spikes when two people are in loving contact. They had people and dogs come into the lab and look at each other lovingly. Oxytocin levels went up on both sides of the relationship.

3

PENGUIN PARADOX

In Antarctica, where researchers aren’t allowed to approach wildlife, Anna Bergstrom sees seals and penguins miles from shore. “They’re all over the place, too,” says the hydrologist who studies how dust enhances melt on glaciers. “The ( penguins are) up on the glaciers, and we don’t know how they got up there.”

4

MEAL MYTHBUSTERS

Everybody knows rabbits eat carrots, right? Except they don’t. In the wild, they prefer greens. Pandas will nibble on carcasses if given the chance. And “while we do see bears feeding on elk and bison, most of those animals didn’t survive the winter, or were wolf kills,” says a wildlife biologist. Bears’ diets are about 80 per cent plants. “They’ll eat anything. Mosses, fungus, mushrooms.”

5

PORPOISE PRESERVATION

With only 1,000 of the unique species remaining, the Yangtze

finless porpoise is a symbol of the damage done to China’s longest river. President Xi Jinping’s call for sustainable growth in the Yangtze economic belt has raised hopes for the river’s last surviving mammal. China counted 1,012 of the porpoises in 2017, down from 2,500 in 1991, with numbers falling about 10 per cent a year.