Philip Bethge

Tag: animals

  • Cloned Meat Soon to Hit European Supermarkets

    Cattle cloning has long been standard practice in the United States. Now EU agriculture ministers have decided that cloned meat and milk should be allowed onto the European market. Not everyone is pleased.

    By Philip Bethge

    Anyone who considers creation sacred should make sure they never talk to a cattle breeder. In-vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and embryo transfer are the terms of their trade. And now another word from the lexicon of reproductive medicine has joined the breeder’s jargon: cloning.

    The European Union’s agricultural ministers decided on Monday of last week that in the future, the meat and milk of the offspring of cloned animals should be allowed on the European market. The European Parliament still needs to approve the proposal. However environmental and animal protection organizations responded immediately to the news and condemned the decision. They consider cloning to be unethical and cruel, and warn that the risks of cloned meat for human health have not been adequately researched.

    The ministers’ decision was long overdue. In the US and South America, cloning has long been standard practice among breeders. German experts like Heiner Niemann from the Institute for Animal Breeding at the Friedrich Loeffler Institute also have high expectations of the technique. “In the future, cloning will be one of the standard cattle-breeding techniques,” says Niemann.

    The technology is already widely used in the US. Companies like ViaGen, Cyagra or Trans Ova Genetics offer cattle clones for between $10,000 and $20,000. The benefits are obvious: Multiple copies can be made of a bull with particularly desirable characteristics. And multiple “superbulls” naturally have more offspring than just one — meaning more premium meat for the breeder.

    “With elite animals, cloning can quickly pay for itself,” says Mark Walton of ViaGen. Karen Batra from the Biotechnology Industry Organization estimates there are already about 600 cloned super cattle in the US. The meat of their offspring is already on sale in supermarkets, she says, explaining that it doesn’t need to be specially labeled. “For breeders, cloning is just another reproductive technique, much like in-vitro fertilization,” says Batra.

    But critics see significant differences. Cloning is said to produce deformed animals with short life expectancies. The cloned sheep Dolly is known to have met a painful end. But genetics expert Heiner Niemann claims that “major progress” has been made since then. Far fewer embryos die and “defects” are much more seldom.

    The meat of the cloned animal itself doesn’t end up in supermarkets, however: Both the US and Europe prohibit its sale. What ends up in the store freezers are the steaks from the clone’s offspring. Its quality is indisputable — and these animals are not even clones. Both the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced last year that the milk and meat of the offspring of cloned animals pose no health risks.

    So is it only a matter of time before “cloned” meat is to be found on European supermarket shelves too? After all, it can’t be distinguished from normal steaks. The European Parliament needs to decide soon, before American products start landing on the European market unnoticed.

    According to an EFSA report, the technology “is on the verge of widespread commercial use.” The institution’s experts expect the technique will be used around the world “before 2010.”

    –> read original article at SPIEGEL Online International

  • Germany’s Mystery Cow Disease: ‘Holy Mary, Help Us in Our Hour of Need!’

    A mysterious illness is causing calves to bleed to death on German farms. Veterinarians are stumped over what is causing the deaths: vaccines, genetically modified feed or perhaps even the first mother’s milk?

    What can a cattle farmer do when he sees blood running from his calves like water, when they become lethargic and febrile and, by the next morning, are lying dead on the floor, their coats covered in blood?

    “Our calves from last summer looked like they had been beaten,” says farmer Robert Meyboom, who is still shocked and perplexed today. “The animals’ bodies were covered with drops of blood, and their eyes were bloodshot.”

    The veterinarian tried everything, he says, including administering vitamins and blood-clotting agents. But nothing worked, and “within two or three days, they were all dead.” … More

  • An Undersea Kama Sutra: The Disturbing Sex Lives of Deep Sea Squid

    A Dutch biologist has extensively studied the reproductive techniques of deep-ocean squid. During sex, they are brutal and ruthless — and sometimes clumsy.

    By Philip Bethge

    Sex in the deep sea is a difficult proposition. The problems already begin with the partner search: How do you find someone to mate with in the pitch-black depths of the ocean? And for any creature that does manage to have a rendezvous beneath the waves, failure is simply not an option.

    “Seize the moment,” is how Dutch researcher Hendrik Jan Ties Hoving describes the most basic rule of undersea reproduction. “Chances are low of finding a partner a second time.”

    Hoving, a biologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, is in a position to know what he’s talking about, too. He recently completed his doctoral thesis on the reproduction of deep-sea squid. He studied 10 different species, from mini-squid measuring just 25 millimeters (one inch) in length to 12-meter (40-foot) giant squid. Among Hoving’s striking findings: Squid bite during sex, males drive sperm packets directly into the skin of females and brutal wrestling is part of their mating ritual.

    The array of techniques is impressive, Hoving says, but also takes some getting used to. His conclusion: “Reproduction is no fun if you’re a squid.”

    Most of the squid behaviors that have come to light so far are striking and bizarre. For example, researchers in California photographed one species, Gonatus onyx, caring for its brood. This squid, which measures just under half a meter (one and a half feet) long and lives in water around 2,500 meters (8,000 feet) deep, stretched its arms into a kind of web, holding a gelatinous matrix containing 2,000 to 3,000 eggs. It regularly flushed fresh water through this egg mass, presumably to aerate the embryos.

    Meanwhile, American researchers Clyde Roper and Michael Vecchione caught another species, Brachioteuthis beanii, in the act off the coast of North Carolina. One squid grabbed another from behind, and the one being grabbed “bent its body and vigorously moved its arms around the head and mantle opening of the grasping squid” — one pulling the other, the second sinking toward the first. The experts’ opinion: “Probably mating.”

    Now Hoving has unveiled what seems like an entire Kama Sutra of the squid world. The subjects of his study were all already dead at the time he observed them, but what the biologist found in museums, obtained from fishermen and collected from the ocean on scientific expeditions off the coast of Namibia and the Falkland Islands is nonetheless sensational:

    • Using their sharp beaks or the hooks on their tentacles, males of the species Taningia danae make cuts more than five centimeters (two inches) deep into the females’ flesh. They then deposit sperm packets, called spermatophores, into the wounds.
    • Females of a mini-squid species, Heteroteuthis dispar, store sperm within their bodies in a special pouch. The precious cargo can account for up to 3 percent of the squid’s total body weight.
    • Some males of the species Ancistrocheirus lesueurii appear outwardly almost like females. “Possibly an adaptation for getting closer to the females,” Hoving suggests.
    • For another species, Moroteuthis ingens, the males simply release their sperm packets and don’t need to do anything more. The spermatophores penetrate the female’s skin independently, using a substance that dissolves tissue.

    Hoving has an explanation for this strange avoidance of bodily contact: “Mating is probably quite risky for the male,” he says. “In most species they’re smaller, and could get eaten.”

    He has a similar explanation for the males’ rough behavior: “More than anything, it’s about being fast.” It seems the males are quite literally under great pressure. A few years ago, Australian biologists discovered sperm packets under the skin of a freshly caught 15-meter (50-foot) female giant squid. Covered with a “gelatinous” substance, they had presumably been “injected” by a male, the researchers reported, “under hydraulic pressure,” with a penis “up to 92 centimeters (three feet) long.”

    Small wonder that things sometimes go wrong. Hoving discovered sperm packets, among other places, in the eyes of animals he studied. And one giant squid found off the coast of Norway seems to be a not atypical case: a male, it also had spermatophores under its skin. The science journal Nature offered the interpretation that the squid may have “literally shot itself in the foot.”

    In the end, however, it seems fertilization does manage to take place in most cases. Squid are certainly numerous enough — according to Hoving, there are around 200 species in the deep ocean. Not even overfishing does harm to them, he says. Quite the opposite, in fact: “The squid have more to eat, since they don’t have to share their food with the fish that are caught for consumption.”

    A female squid releases millions of tiny eggs into the water, but generally only once in her lifetime. When she does, the sperm stored under her skin are discharged simultaneously. The father for this legion of embryos is often the single male who got his beak or hooks on the female first.

    Thus the brutal attacks by some male squid have another purpose, Hoving believes. “The females have downright negative experiences with mating, meaning that afterwards they won’t let any other male near them.”

    It’s a forced fidelity for the squid, and Hoving even has a technical term ready for it: “traumatic insemination.”

    –> read original story at SPIEGEL Online International

  • German Cities for the Bees: Wanted — Young, Urban, Professional Beekeepers

    Germany is running out of bees. But urban beekeeping may just be the solution. The country’s aging beekeepers are looking to attract young city dwellers to the hobby.

    By Philip Bethge

    Emil Wiedenhöft’s bees know their way around the urban jungle. They buzz in, flying around the 71-year-old beekeeper’s head as they carry nectar and pollen to the hive. Then they swarm out again, heading back into the surrounding sea of buildings — a squadron of tiny, striped nectar collectors

    “They have to fly out of here at a steep angle to make it over the buildings,” says Wiedenhöft, as he casually wipes one of the bees from his shirt and points up into the air. The gray wall of his apartment building towers over the beekeepers’ patio. Two beehives stand in front of his apartment window.

    Wiedenhöft is a beekeeper in Berlin. “Beekeeping in the big city isn’t a problem at all,” says Wiedenhöft, who is retired. He has even managed to convince a few neighbors to take up the hobby. “I’ve trained six beekeepers in the eight years I’ve been living here,” he says, proudly. “A young beekeeper needs a role model.”

    Still, despite Wiedenhöft’s efforts, there are too few beekeepers in Germany and, as a result, not enough bees. Experts already fear that the shortfall could have serious consequences for fruit farmers, because the industrious pollen collectors are no longer adequately pollinating their plants. But beekeepers like Wiedenhöft are bucking the trend. The profession, which includes a disproportionately high percentage of older people, is trying to recruit new blood with courses and special offers — especially in cities.

    Hundreds of thousands of bees are constantly dashing through the backyards and courtyards of cities like Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich. The densely populated Ruhr region is now home to more bees than the surrounding countryside. Bees are at home on Berlin’s balconies, rooftop terraces and hotel roofs. Bees are also popping up in larger numbers in cities around the world. In London, beehives can be seen on the roof of the Bank of England — honey from the London metropolitan area has even won the first prize at Britain’s National Honey Show. And in Manhattan, “Sheriff Beekeeper” David Graves sells his Rooftop Magic Honey at a premium price.

    Armies of Bees

    “Cities are ideally suited for bees,” says Jürgen Hans, chairman of Berlin’s beekeepers’ association. There are roughly 500 beekeepers in the German capital alone. Hamburg is home to at least 50 million bees from more than 2,100 bee colonies.

    While many city dwellers are likely to gasp at such numbers, the armies of bees are hopeful signs for beekeepers. “The animals develop marvelously in the city, because it’s warmer there than in the countryside,” says Hans, adding that cities offer “a large and constant selection of flowers for bees searching for nectar.” Hans, a beekeeper himself, waxes lyrical about the chestnut, black locust and maple trees lining the streets, and the sweet pea, briar roses and knotgrass on playgrounds.

    Hamburg’s trendy Ottensen neighborhood is the ideal place for lively city bees. On this early summer day, for example, beekeeper Georg Petrausch is checking his hives on the roof of the “Motte,” a neighborhood cultural center. “Nice flying weather today,” says the 45-year-old, as he gazes across streets and alleyways flooded with sunlight, the sound of traffic drifting up from the street below. It is a trendy quarter, with Moroccan restaurants across the street and numerous bars where hip urbanites hang out.

    Petrausch lights a bundle of hemp straw in a pipe-like device. The beekeeper uses the smoke to calm the insects. Then he carefully removes a bee-covered honeycomb from the hive and opens a few of the hexagonal cells. Petrausch has lovingly dubbed the glistening honey flowing from the cells Ottenser Wildblüte (Ottensen Wildflower).

    Bees and Bratwurst

    He harvests between 150 and 200 kilos of the sweet stuff a year, often with the help of neighborhood children. A teacher, Petrausch has also founded a beekeeping program for kids. Once a week, young bee enthusiasts meet in the garden of a school nearby where the students handle the honeycombs without protective clothing while bees buzz around their heads.

    “I’m not afraid at all anymore,” says 12-year-old Iris, “and the honey we make here also tastes better than honey from the store.”

    As enthusiastic as members of the trade are about these young, budding beekeepers, they haven’t prevented the nationwide number from continuing its decline. Today there are only 82,000 beekeepers in Germany, and they manage about 700,000 bee colonies. Experts say this is far too little, and that Germany needs at least a million bee colonies. “The honeybee pollinates 80 percent of our flowering plants,” says Jürgen Tautz of the “Beegroup” at the University of Würzburg in southern Germany. “The loss of bees is a threat to diversity.” Declining bee populations can mean a drop in the numbers and quality of apples, cherries, berries and agricultural crops. Many wild plants also do not reproduce as efficiently without the industrious insects.

    To make matters worse, bees are getting more sensitive. Like domestic pigs, they are now overbred, says Tautz, which makes them more susceptible to disease and environmental toxins. Only recently, clothianidine (sold under the commercial name Poncho), a pesticide used to treat seeds, was blamed for the deaths of large numbers of bees in southwestern Germany. The use of monocultures in agriculture is also detrimental to the insects. According to Tautz, “if bees can only find pollen from rapeseed and sunflowers, it’s about as harmful to them as it is for people to eat nothing but bratwurst.”

    But the insects’ greatest enemy is a parasitic mite called Varroa destructor. It infests the hive, sucks bee “blood” and weakens the entire colony. In the end, the bees are no longer capable of surviving winter. In the winter of 2002, for example, about 30 percent of all bee colonies in Germany died with infestations of these killer mites believed to have been one of the main causes.

    Young Beekeepers Needed

    Only experienced beekeepers are capable of controlling mite infestation, which is one of the reasons efforts to train new beekeepers are so important to the industry. The beekeeping profession is in rapid decline, with only about a dozen apprentices throughout Germany today. This highlights the importance of hobby beekeepers — about 95 percent of all bee owners — recruiting young people.

    The latest trend is beekeeping on a trial basis. Experienced apiarists lease individual colonies to young beekeepers for a year and provide them with advice and support. At the end of this trial year, the young beekeepers can opt to continue or return the bees.

    “We had 11 new beekeepers in our club last year,” says “bee godfather” Peter Schömbs of Berlin’s Zehlendorf Beekeeping Club, “and 10 of them decided to stay.” The 65-year-old trained Bert Kleinlosen. Although Kleinlosen is 58 himself, the bearded novice is, oddly enough, considered a young beekeeper. Beekeeping clubs are firmly in the hands of the 60 and old generation. Anyone who can bring down the average age is more than welcome.

    In Berlin’s Schmargendorf neighborhood, experienced and novice beekeepers work side-by-side. Together they make small frames for the honeycombs, hunt down mites or prevent the bees from swarming. This happens when the beehive becomes too crowded and the queen escapes with part of the colony. Recapturing the swarm is an arduous task.

    When bees swarm, they congregate in large groups in trees or on lampposts, as they search for a new place to start a hive. The mere sight of such a large concentration of bees leads many a city dweller to question the wisdom of urban beekeeping. What happens if the poisonous insects decide to sting, after all? Bee stings can be dangerous, even life-threatening to people who are allergic.

    ‘Don’t Try This Yourself’

    “When people and bees begin living in closer quarters, the incidence of allergies automatically rises,” says Munich allergist Bernhard Przybilla. Wolfgang Sieger, an internist from the Bavarian town of Wörth an der Donau, warns “every beekeeper should find out if there are people who are allergic to bees living nearby.” But, Sieger adds, the problem isn’t as dire as some might believe, because only about one in every 100 people is allergic to bees. Compared to wasps, says Sieger, bees are “a very peaceful species.”

    Beekeepers feel the same way. For decades, they have been trying to breed gentleness into these industrious insects. Apis mellifera carnica, or Carniolan bees, are the result of this ongoing breeding effort. “It’s the ideal city bee,” says Benedikt Polaczek, a bee researcher at the Free University of Berlin, “it’ll only sting if I try to turn it into a postage stamp.”

    Polaczek, who has been keeping bees for 40 years, teaches university courses for beekeepers and regularly hosts groups of schoolchildren and even kindergarten classes. Recently, the 51-year-old bee expert was showing the youngsters how to extract honey. Using a tool called a frame lifter, he opened the cells of a honeycomb and then placed it into a honey extractor. The device uses centrifugal force to extract the sweet, amber-colored liquid from the wax.

    “City honey has an outstanding aroma,” said the beekeeper, and gave his young visitors a taste. “And besides, it’s very clean, because they don’t spray pesticides as much in the city.” Then the researcher showed the children his hives. Using his hand, he carefully brushed several dozen worker bees from a honeycomb. The agitated animals crawled around on his fingers.

    “Look, the bees are completely peaceful,” says Polaczek. But before his guests left, he gave them a bit of advice: “Just don’t try this yourself.”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    –> read original story at SPIEGEL Online International

  • The Price of Survival: What Would It Cost to Save Nature?

    How much is the Earth worth to us? At a global conference in Bonn, Germany, representatives of 191 nations are discussing a revolution in conservation. By making a highly profitable business out of saving forests, whales and coral reefs, environmentalists hope to put a stop to a dramatic wave of extinctions.

    The envoy from Europe can hardly believe his eyes. Butterflies the size of dessert plates are fluttering around his nose. Orchids hang in cascades from towering trees. Hornbills sail across the treetops. The tropical air is filled with the saturated scent of growth and proliferation.

    Biologists have already tracked down more than 10,000 plant and 400 mammal species in the Congo basin. These plants and animals are part of the world’s second-largest uninterrupted rainforest, one of the planet’s most potent carbon storage systems. Indeed, it is for precisely this reason that Hans Schipulle, 63, is tramping around in the wilderness near the Sangha River on a humid morning in the Central African Republic.

    “This forest stores carbon dioxide, and thus helps to slow down global warming. It regulates the global water supply and holds valuable pharmaceuticals,” says Schipulle, a veteran environmentalist who works for the German government. “We must finally realize that these are services that are worth something to us.”

    Schipulle is in the region on a sensitive mission. Since December, he has headed the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), a group founded by Americans, Europeans and the countries along the Congo River. The alliance aims to prevent the Congo basin from being plundered and transformed into oil palm and coffee plantations by mid-century. The Congo rainforest is still largely in one piece, but investors from around the world have already discovered the region’s potential for big business — ore, diamonds, plantations and lumber. But Schipulle and his partners have other plans for the Congo basin. They want international financial institutions or the world community to fork over money to preserve the rainforest as it is today. The threat of clear-cutting poses a double risk for the world. First, destroying the Congo rainforest would eliminate one of the earth’s most important cooling systems. Second, the carbon dioxide (CO2) released as a result of slash-and-burn agriculture would further accelerate global warming.

  • The Taxidermy World Championships: Finding Life in Dead Animals

    Last week saw the World Taxidermy Championships take place in Salzburg, Austria — the first time the event has ever been staged in Europe. It offered an unusual glimpse of a world as unsettling as it is fascinating — one where the greatest joy comes from pulling the pelt off an alpine marmot or a white-tailed deer.

    The magic lies in the squinting eyes of the fox; she turns her head slightly away from the younger animal next to her, irritated and yet full of affection.

    Like a queen she tolerates being humbled by the others. Her muzzle is still closed, and it looks like she could yawn at any moment. But this is where Dirk Opalka’s devotion ends. “I had to do them over,” Opalka, 40, says, referring to the yellow eyes of the fox, “they were seated wrong — and then the clay in the eyelids slid too.”

    Opalka is an animal taxidermist. His mission could almost be called religious: He is seeking life in death. “The animal must look very much alive, that’s the secret,” says the man from Fuhlendorf, near Rostock, the German Baltic sea port. His great act of creation took eight weeks — and it paid off. Opalka has won a world championship of a particularly bizarre kind.

    The World Taxidermy Championships came to an end on Sunday in Salzburg, Austria. One-hundred-forty participants from 25 countries had flooded into Salzburg, the city of Mozart, to find out who could best preserve the nostril of a stag, most perfectly model the lips of a hyena, or color the anal opening of a common pipistrelle (a small bat) the rosiest shade possible. Over 500 dead animals transformed a Salzburg exhibition center into the deck of a Noah’s Ark of absurdities — full of lifeless passengers.

    (—> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE International)

    Animal cadavers are the objects of this eccentric craft; freezers, scalpels and de-greasing liquid the tools. And the craft unifies this unsettling passion with a nearly devout obsession for preserving the beauty of nature beyond death.

    “Taxidermy is not just a craft, it’s an art,” says Larry Blomquist, the American doyen of taxidermists and organizer of the competition, which has taken place in Europe for the first time. “I am thrilled with the quality we get to see here.”

    Practiced as far back as ancient Egypt, the art of taxidermy gained popularity in the 19th century when it became a way to preserve the trophies of colonial hunting societies. Today taxidermy — the preparing, stuffing and mounting of skin — is a multi-million-dollar business, especially in the United States, where it is estimated that 50,000 taxidermists preserve hunting trophies and other animals for American living rooms.

    Germany’s national association brings together around 260 biological taxidermists. There are professionals like former world champion Berend Koch, who has created a menagerie at the Technical University in Darmstadt that is highly esteemed in the field. But above all there are the self-employed, who fervently bathe bagged does in polyethylene glycol or give deceased ducks new dark brown eyes, diameter 9 millimeters (0.35 inches), from the German company KL-Glasaugen (KL-Glass Eyes).

    Measured against the World’s Best

    They have all come to Salzburg, to this high-performance show of animal preservation, in order to measure themselves against the best in the world. The contest is carried out by people in outdoor clothes, whose greatest joy is pulling the pelt of an alpine marmot or a white-tailed deer over its head.

    Rewind to two weeks earlier, and Dirk Grundler is preparing for the Salzburg event at his taxidermy workshop in the eastern German city of Magdeburg. His workshop has a low ceiling, and the carpeted floor is littered with hair and spare bits of foam. Paint brushes, forceps, resins, dyes, hairsprays and varnishes complete the chaos. It’s a whimsical zoo: magpies with fluttering wings, frozen in motion, dance on the floor; on the ceiling flies a huge raven. Alongside it are a bearded tit, a hoopoe and a large, black-billed Capercaillie.

    “That one comes from Lake Baikal (in Russia),” says Grundler, 43. With a full beard, gray vest and sturdy build, he doesn’t look like a man who deals in fine motor skills. But his daily bread does indeed consist of detail work. “I only preserve birds,” says Grundler. He operates according to the motto: emptied and feathered. He skins the birds, cuts bodies out of polyurethane foam and sprays the legs with formalin (“so they don’t shrivel,” he explains). Then he molds the skin over the artificial body. As a final step, he applies a substance to protect the bird from insects. Any “naked areas of skin” are colored in with an airbrush.

    The expertise of a taxidermist is vast. That’s the only way the work can succeed, says Grundler. He knows bird anatomy like the back of his hand. Neck length? “Female peregrine falcon 5.5 centimeters, mallard duck 19, ringed teal nine,” he says, ticking off data.

    “It calls for the greatest possible perfection,” explains Grundler, who is self-taught in the profession. “You have to know: How does the bird look in nature? How would it move? For example, if a pheasant looks to the side, it gets a very certain kind of swing in its neck.”

    The birds for Salzburg are already sitting ready in two boxes. Grundler wants to enter the most challenging division for the first time. Among his taxidermic preparations are a peregrine falcon, a kingfisher with iridescent blue plumage and an eagle owl, at least half a meter long. And where do all the animals come from? “All bred,” affirms the taxidermist, “anything else would be illegal.”

    This is one of the basic problems faced by taxidermists: Exotic species are both a challenge and a curse. It’s not difficult to find someone preserving a freshly shot lion for a big game hunter. Indeed, taxidermists argue that without hunting tourism, many species would be worse off than they already are. But what are people supposed to make of a person like Ron from Texas, who bags a leopard, stuffs it and then says: “I just love being able to take something that’s lifeless and give it life again, make it look like it was, you know, out there in the wild”?

    Still, whether it’s a tiger, a macaw or a Komodo dragon, taxidermy is all about high art. The work of Ken Walker, a Canadian who specializes in creating taxidermic representations of extinct species, is legendary. At the 2005 world championship, he wowed the crowds with an Irish Elk — a species that died out more than 7,500 years ago. To reconstruct the animal, Walker sewed together the skins of three stags.

    More Obssessive than a Model Train Enthusiast

    And then there’s Matthias Fahrni of Switzerland — a luminary in the art of fish taxidermy. “Since childhood” he has been obsessed with fish, says the taxidermist. “It is probably a genetic defect,” he jokes. Fahrni almost exclusively preserves scaled fish smaller than 15 centimeters. When it comes to his fastidiousness in terms of detail, he even outdoes model train builders.

    With miniature scalpels and instruments used for eye surgery, Fahrni removes the fish skin with its scales still intact. Then, like anatomist Gunther von Hagens, creator of the “Body Worlds” exhibits of human bodies, he pumps in plastic. For the head, he keeps the original. The last step is to color the fish: living animals provide the model. “A fish changes its color and the expression of the eyes in the first five minutes after death,” says Fahrni. For this reason, he has developed a technique of anesthetizing the animal he wants to observe.

    Fahrni has brought a bullhead and a perch to Salzburg and they rest, effectively lit, among the other mortal remains. A pair of men, their eyes hidden behind thick magnifying glasses, bend over the fish, whispering to one another. They are the jurors, designated experts who assign the points here.

    And the Winner Is …

    Further away, among the preserved deer, American Joe Meder shines a flashlight into the nostrils of a stag. The last fern of its life dangles from the animal’s mouth. Meanwhile, Peter Sunesen bends over a lilac-breasted roller. “This bird has problems with its anatomy,” deems the Danish judge. For this, points are deducted.

    Or take Dieter Schön of Munich’s Museum of Man and Nature. The 46-year-old taxidermist was responsible for preserving Bruno, the brown bear shot in Bavaria in 2006. Now his critical eye falls on an Eversmann’s hamster. “The whiskers are very good,” Schön says to Berend Koch. But he is skeptical: “The body is far too compacted — the animal looks half starved to death.”

    So what is taxidermy? Is it a morbid plundering of bodies or a celebration of the high art of life? It is the contrast between the loving devotion of the taxidermists and the macabre slaughterhouse atmosphere that simultaneously unsettles and fascinates.

    At the end of the event, the taxidermists stock up on plastic bear tongues and artificial lion’s teeth at the exposition stands. Dirk Grundler is satisfied: For his kingfisher, he receives 88 out of 100 possible points. The jury also agrees on 96 points for Opalka’s fox, the overall winner.

    “This entry captures the essence of the moment,” says Larry Blomquist, running his hand devoutly over the fox’s red fur. “You hardly ever get to see something like this in nature.”

    (—> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE International)

  • Polar Bears for the South Pole?: Biologists Debate Relocating Imperiled Species

    As global warming changes the face of habitats around the world, scientists are asking if humans can help save species from extinction by moving them to cooler climes. But before polar bear resettlement and tiger transports begin, is it time to take a look at easier alternatives?

    Indian and Bangladeshi fishermen appeal to Bonobibi, the goddess of the forest, before they set out into the swamps. They also send their prayers to heaven to placate Daksin Ray, the tiger god.

    But no amount of prayer can deter the Bengal tiger. People are killed by tigers almost weekly in the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, located in the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers. The region is one of the last refuges for Bengal tigers. Though still the masters of the forest, a gas could prove to be the tigers’ undoing. The gas is called carbon dioxide, and it’s warming the earth. … More

  • Elephant Poaching on the Rise: Africa Mulls Loosening Ivory Trade Ban

    Some African nations are seeking to relax an international ban on the ivory trade, but wildlife conservations fear that will lead to a renewed massacre of African elephants. Meanwhile, poachers in Africa are killing more elephants than they have in almost 20 years.

    Four hours before the freighter was scheduled to arrive in Singapore, customs officials received a tip; and sure enough, when they examined a container from Malawi, they discovered 532 gleaming elephant tusks. The tusks were accompanied by a shipment of 42,120 hankos, carved ivory seals used in Japan to notarize documents. By the time they had finished their inspection, Singapore harbor officials had seized more than 6.5 tons of gleaming ivory. The Hankos alone were worth around $8.4 million. That 2002 Singapore smuggling bust has …. More