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PHOTOGRAPH BY EDWIN GIESBERS, NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY
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COVID-19 and gorillas: At least three western lowland gorillas in the San Diego Zoo have tested positive for the coronavirus. The gorillas, who live in a troop of eight, are expected to recover, zoo executive director Lisa Peterson tells Nat Geo’s Natasha Daly. Gorillas are the seventh non-human species to have contracted the virus naturally, following confirmed infections in tigers, lions, mink, snow leopards, dogs, and domestic cats. (Pictured above, a western lowland gorilla.)
Not just in Game of Thrones: The ferocious “pet” in the HBO series was a dire wolf, which roamed large stretches of the Americas before dying out 13,000 years ago. Analysis of several full genomes for these creatures found they were long separated, distant cousins to the gray wolf, with fewer genetic connections than assumed. Archaeologists tell us that the findings do not settle questions around the dire wolf’s evolution and eventual extinction.
Survival? He was the last known member of the most endangered turtle species in the world. Now a female has been discovered. Does this mean the giant Swinhoe’s softshell turtle could go on? “This is the best news of the year, and quite possibly the last decade, for global turtle conservation,” Andrew Walde, of the Turtle Survival Alliance, told the Guardian. The “new” Swinhoe’s turtle has been found in a lake in northern Vietnam, and there may be another Swinhoe’s turtle there, researchers say. The only documented male of the species is in Suzhou Zoo in China.
What did the manatee do? Authorities in Florida are investigating the scrawling of the word “TRUMP” on a threatened manatee. There were conflicting reports as to whether the word was made by scraping off skin or just the manatee’s thick cover of algae, according to the Washington Post. Harassment of a manatee is a crime, punishable by a $50,000 fine and up to a year in prison. Nat Geo’s Dina Fine Maron explains on Twitter how it could have happened.
Rainbow sensation: This bird has a blue head, green back, and red underparts. The kaleidoscopic-colored male painted bunting, rarely seen as far north as Maryland, has created a sensation in a park near the Potomac River, the Washington Post reports. Its breathtaking color also makes the species a magnet for illegal trapping, writes Maron. “The French word for these birds, nonpareil, means ‘without equal,’” she writes.
They move like lassos: These aren’t your typical sand-sidewinding, leap-between-trees, or underwater-undulating snakes. No, scientists have found invasive brown tree snakes in Guam that adapt the slither to shimmy up poles with lasso-like loops. “We just kind of looked at each other in shock. I mean, this wasn’t something a snake was supposed to be able to do,” ecologist Tom Seibert tells us.
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