Endangered creature — thought missing from India forest — rediscovered. See it
Covering more than 9,500 square miles of land in northeastern India, the Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong Landscape, or KKAL, is fragmented.
The land is a 'complex mosaic of protected and non-protected areas' and is pieced together by a series of natural corridors, according to a study published June 26 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Threatened Taxa.
During a reconnaissance survey along these interconnected corridors of land, researchers set up camera traps to capture and identify animals that may be using the pathways to move between the islands of natural land, according to the study.
What they didn't expect was to rediscover a species once thought missing in the region.
From February 2021 to December 2022, a total of 83 camera traps captured 15,278 'camera-trap days' of images, according to the study.
Six of these photos were different from the others.
Captured by camera traps for the first time in October 2022, the images show an Asiatic wild dog, or dhole, passing in front of the lens, researchers said.
'This was the only instance where we captured a Dhole on camera in the landscape during the study period,' researchers said. '... The habitat consists of moist mixed deciduous forest, dominated by teak.'
The sighting marks the first photo evidence of a dhole in the region after it was 'extirpated,' or eliminated, in the 1990s, researchers said.
Dholes are listed as an endangered species, according to the study, and are protected under the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act from 1972.
They were once abundant across the Tian Shan and Altai mountains in Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, as well as further south through China, Tibet, Nepal and India, according to the study.
Their range has shrunk significantly from threats like 'retaliatory killing, habitat loss, and prey depletion,' researchers said. Less than 25% of their original range still stands today.
Dholes are dogs and communal hunters, typically traveling in packs of up to 30 animals but can hunt alone or in pairs when prey is scarce, according to the study.
They are about the size of a German shepherd, but look more like a fox with elongated legs, according to the San Diego Zoo.
'Dholes are incredibly athletic. They are fast runners, excellent swimmers and impressive jumpers,' the zoo said. 'These skills are critical when the pack is hunting. In some protected areas, they share habitat with tigers and leopards.'
They are sometimes called whistle dogs because of an 'eerie whistle' they use to communicate with one another, according to the San Diego Zoo. They also make clucks and screams that are unique to these dogs.
The KKAL is in the Assam state of India, a northeastern state south of Bhutan and China.
The research team includes Mujahid Ahamad, Jyotish Ranjan Deka, Priyanka Borah, Umar Saeed, Ruchi Badola and Syed Ainul Hussain.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
6 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Endangered creature — thought missing from India forest — rediscovered. See it
Covering more than 9,500 square miles of land in northeastern India, the Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong Landscape, or KKAL, is fragmented. The land is a 'complex mosaic of protected and non-protected areas' and is pieced together by a series of natural corridors, according to a study published June 26 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Threatened Taxa. During a reconnaissance survey along these interconnected corridors of land, researchers set up camera traps to capture and identify animals that may be using the pathways to move between the islands of natural land, according to the study. What they didn't expect was to rediscover a species once thought missing in the region. From February 2021 to December 2022, a total of 83 camera traps captured 15,278 'camera-trap days' of images, according to the study. Six of these photos were different from the others. Captured by camera traps for the first time in October 2022, the images show an Asiatic wild dog, or dhole, passing in front of the lens, researchers said. 'This was the only instance where we captured a Dhole on camera in the landscape during the study period,' researchers said. '... The habitat consists of moist mixed deciduous forest, dominated by teak.' The sighting marks the first photo evidence of a dhole in the region after it was 'extirpated,' or eliminated, in the 1990s, researchers said. Dholes are listed as an endangered species, according to the study, and are protected under the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act from 1972. They were once abundant across the Tian Shan and Altai mountains in Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, as well as further south through China, Tibet, Nepal and India, according to the study. Their range has shrunk significantly from threats like 'retaliatory killing, habitat loss, and prey depletion,' researchers said. Less than 25% of their original range still stands today. Dholes are dogs and communal hunters, typically traveling in packs of up to 30 animals but can hunt alone or in pairs when prey is scarce, according to the study. They are about the size of a German shepherd, but look more like a fox with elongated legs, according to the San Diego Zoo. 'Dholes are incredibly athletic. They are fast runners, excellent swimmers and impressive jumpers,' the zoo said. 'These skills are critical when the pack is hunting. In some protected areas, they share habitat with tigers and leopards.' They are sometimes called whistle dogs because of an 'eerie whistle' they use to communicate with one another, according to the San Diego Zoo. They also make clucks and screams that are unique to these dogs. The KKAL is in the Assam state of India, a northeastern state south of Bhutan and China. The research team includes Mujahid Ahamad, Jyotish Ranjan Deka, Priyanka Borah, Umar Saeed, Ruchi Badola and Syed Ainul Hussain.
National Geographic
7 hours ago
- National Geographic
When climbing the world's tallest mountains, what counts as cheating?
To reach the highest point on Earth, average climbers need around three to four weeks to let their bodies acclimatize on the ascent and descent. To cut that time to only seven days, mountain climber Lucas Furtenbach is offering a chemical boost with xenon, an inert gas that is mainly used as an anesthetic. Photograph by Cory Richards, Nat Geo Image Collection In 1978, Austrian physician and mountaineer Oswald Oelz was a team doctor on an expedition to Mount Everest when climbers Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler became the first people to reach its summit without supplemental oxygen. Before then, it was unthinkable that humans, unassisted, could climb 29,032 feet, the height of Everest, where due to drop in atmospheric pressure we inhale only about 30 percent of the oxygen we breath at sea level. Almost half a century later, Oelz's grand-nephew, Austrian climbing guide Lukas Furtenbach, was the architect of a new feat atop Mount Everest. This May, four of his clients, along with five Sherpas, summited the world's tallest mountain only five days after they left London. Usually, it takes an average of 40 days of slow acclimatisation to adjust to the high altitude and scarce oxygen on Everest. The secret to the team's lightning-fast ascent: About two weeks before the expedition, Furtenbach's clients were given xenon through a medical mask. The noble gas is sometimes used as an anaesthetic but is also thought to boost the production of erythropoietin, a hormone that stimulates red blood cell production. The idea, suggested to Furtenbach by German anaesthesiologist Michael Fries, was to artificially accelerate the acclimatisation process. The strategy, however, immediately caused controversy in the mountaineering community. Experts on high-altitude research who spoke to National Geographic mainly questioned whether xenon could actually produce an effect strong enough to mimic acclimatisation. And earlier this year, the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation issued a statement warning about the absence of scientific studies to prove the safety and efficacy of xenon at high altitude. Then there's the question of whether xenon, banned in professional sport by the World Anti-Doping Agency, makes the climb up Everest so easy that it obscures the line between sportsmanship and tourism. Around 7,000 people climb Everest every year with the help of supplemental oxygen. For others, using supplemental oxygen is considered a cheap shortcut akin to utilizing sherpas and fixed-ropes. Left, a climber scales Mount Everest with the aid of supplemental oxygen. Right, oxygen tanks are seen along a section of Everest called "the Balcony" near the summit. Photograph by Matthew Irving, Nat Geo Image Collection (Top) (Left) and Photograph by Mark Fisher, Nat Geo Image Collection (Bottom) (Right) In the world of mountaineering, there's no regulatory body governing monitoring performance-enhancing drugs, but the style of a climber's ascent still holds reputational cache. Ever since Messner and Habeler's 1978 expedition proved that even the highest mountain on Earth could be climbed without supplemental oxygen, not using it has become an essential part of pushing the limits of the human body in high altitude. Called alpine style, this form of mountaineering—embraced by elite climbers—prizes climbs done without medical aids, fixed lines, or large support teams. In contrast, a 30-year boom in commercial expeditions has focused on making the mountains more accessible to less experienced climbers, with hundreds of feet of fixed ropes, large amounts of supplemental oxygen, and the support of Sherpas. Some tour guides who lead these large groups say the controversy ignited by xenon places unfair scrutiny on what's simply the latest of many tools making mountain climbing more accessible and safer. American climber Adrian Ballinger, owner of Alpenglow Expeditions, thinks climbers should just be honest about the style they choose. 'Professional athletes don't use supplemental oxygen when climbing in the mountains because it makes things easier. But for recreational and non-professional climbers who hire guiding companies, it's different,' he says. However, he draws the line at the use of xenon in mountaineering—even in commercial expeditions. 'I don't see any reason,' he says, 'to use a substance banned as doping.' Doing drugs, 29,032 feet high Climbers have a long history of employing different drugs to survive the cold and dangerous conditions of Earth's highest peaks. In 1953, mountaineering legend Hermann Buhl took methamphetamine pills, then known by the brand name Pervitin, to stay awake during a perilous descent after summiting the Himalayan mountain Nanga Parbat in Pakistan. (Buhl made his climb without supplementary oxygen and became the first and only person to achieve a solo first ascent of an 8,000-meter peak, famously surviving the night at 26,000 feet by standing on a tiny ledge.) In the following decades, mountaineers experimented with both banned and legal substances, from amphetamine to Viagra. Two well-known prescription drugs, diuretic acetazolamide (commonly known as Diamox) and corticosteroid dexamethasone (Decadron) are often used to treat high-altitude conditions like acute mountain sickness or cerebral edema—but against expert recommendations, some climbers take them preventatively. Nothing, however, works better to fight hypoxia and enhance performance at high altitude than a steady flow of supplemental oxygen. Hermann Buhl in 1953, after summiting Nanga Parba, the ninth highest mountain in world, located in Pakistan. Under the influence of the drug pervitin, a stimulant similar to methamphetamine, Buhl was able to push on to the summit after the rest of his team was forced to return to camp, making Buhl the first and only person to make a solo-ascent of an 8,000 meter peak. Photograph by Touring Club Italiano/Marka/UniversalA view of Nanga Parbat as seen from Jammu & Kashmir, 1933. Photograph by Royal Air Force/Royal'If you use supplemental oxygen continuously, oxygen delivery to tissues is maintained. You will not develop altitude illness, and exercise performance will not be affected,' explains Martin Burtscher, a long-time researcher in the field of high-altitude medicine and retired professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. This is why some climbers, still devoted to purist alpine style, refrain from using supplemental oxygen, since they consider it a form of high-altitude doping. Furtenbach adhered to this minimalist climbing style when he was younger, but over time opted for climbing aids that he says made ascents safer for him and his clients. He doesn't think new techniques should be looked down on if they make climbing in the Himalaya safer. 'If you want to climb at this altitude, you can do it in either an extremely dangerous way and risk your life, or you can try to climb as safely as possible,' says Furtenbach. 'And that means you need to use all the medical aids that are available.' He argues that singling out xenon is hypocritical: 'If someone wants to ban xenon from mountaineering, then it needs to be consistent and ban everything—from oxygen to dexamethasone.' The tinkling of bells accompanies yaks hauling propane and other supplies to Advanced Base Camp. Photograph by Renan Ozturk, Nat Geo Image Collection Before he became an advocate of xenon, Furtenbach had experimented with having clients sleep at home in tents with reduced oxygen and training with limited oxygen to help simulate the acclimatization process. That shortened the ascent time to three weeks. Knowing this, Fries, the anaesthesiologist, approached Furtenbach back in 2019 with the idea of using xenon and its erythropoietin production ability to accelerate acclimatisation even further. When confronted with limited oxygen at high altitude, the human body gradually releases erythropoietin after several weeks of acclimatisation, as a climber makes rounds up and down the mountain, slowly gaining altitude. Fries, who spent 15 years researching different effects of xenon while working at Aachen University's hospital in Germany, theorized that a one-time low-dose administration of the gas could produce the same results in a matter of days. Fries also contends that xenon can prevent high-altitude sickness due, in part, to its positive effect on the blood vessels that connect the heart and lungs. Furtenbach first tested xenon on himself in 2020 while climbing Argentina's 22,831-foot Aconcagua and, two years later, on Everest. Both times, he says, he felt strong and fast, and didn't experience any negative side effects. Then he crafted a plan for including xenon in the expeditions offered by his self-titled company, Furtenbach Adventures, which facilitates climbs up Everest and other famous mountains. The decision to offer xenon to clients, he says, was done to make climbing safer. 'The fewer rotations you have to do on the mountain, the safer the expedition becomes,' he argues. (Furtenbach also thinks shorter trips could help curtail the large amounts of garbage long expeditions leave behind.) For the first-ever xenon 'powered' expedition, he chose four British clients, who boasted a combination of high-altitude climbing experience and military training. After ten weeks of pre-acclimatisation at home, sleeping and training with limited oxygen, they received a low dose of xenon in a German hospital and two weeks later embarked from London on their five-day-long ascent. No immediate serious side effects from the xenon treatment were observed by Furtenbach or the members of the expedition. The price of the climb was 150,000 euros a person. Furtenbach declined to specify how much xenon, an expensive gas, added to this total. Climbing rope is a ubiquitous tool amongst mountaineers, and learning how to safely build anchors and belay are essential skills. However, on some mountains, ropes may be pre-anchored and left in place for the entirety of the season to aid less experienced climbers. Left, the first Nepali female to climb Manaslu studies ice anchors in a climbing class. Right, a mountaineer descends to camp III during an attempt to summit Hkakabo Razi, said to be Southeast Asia's tallest mountain. Photograph by Aaron Huey, Nat Geo Image Collection (Top) (Left) and Photograph by Renan Ozturk, Nat Geo Image Collection (Bottom) (Right) Not everyone with high-altitude expertise is convinced that xenon is the best way to quickly climb Everest. Some experts argued that a one-week ascent might be possible without a miracle drug like xenon, if only the climbers would use a high enough flow of oxygen right from the bottom. 'If you have a big flow of oxygen, you don't need to work as hard to acclimatise. From an oxygen perspective, you're not going to the summit of Everest, but much lower,' says Mike Grocott, professor of anaesthesia and critical care at the University of Southampton in England and expert on the physiology of hypoxia. This theory, too, was tested this May when Ukraine-born Andrew Ushakov stated that he climbed to the top of Everest in a little less than four days after leaving New York. To achieve this, he used supplemental oxygen and trained in low-oxygen conditions. A team from the Elite Exped company guided Ushakov to the top. He says he used oxygen as soon as he started his ascent from the base camp, starting with a flow of 0.5 liters per minute and slowly increasing it to three to four liters per minute, which he used on the summit day. The xenon team, Furtenbach says, didn't start using oxygen until they reached 19,700 feet, continuing from there with a usual flow of 1 to 2 litres per minute. Higher flow was used only above 26,000 feet. This theoretically means xenon could indeed have some effect on the acclimatisation process, beyond supplemental oxygen. Still, without peer-reviewed studies, it's hard to conclude that the xenon made a difference, warns Peter Hackett, a high-altitude researcher and professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. 'My question is—why the big rush,' he says. 'These ascents reveal that Everest's challenge is now all about dealing with hypoxia and not really climbing.' For some climbers, no extra help wanted Climbers who abstain from performance-boosting drugs and supplemental oxygen see xenon as just another departure from the purest, and thereby most elite, form of climbing. The Piolet d'Or, the most coveted mountaineering award, perhaps best exemplifies the most prestigious climbing styles. The award currently doesn't consider ascents done with supplemental oxygen or fixed lines, giving the spotlight to imaginative and innovative new routes, doing more with less, and building on experience. One of the winning teams of last year's Piolet d'Or, American climbers Matt Cornell, Jackson Marvell, and Alan Rousseau, spent seven days charting a new route up the steep north face of Jannu in Nepal. To pack lightly, they shared a single sleeping bag. 'Alpinism without the factor of the unknown is only the plain physical activity,' says Slovenian climbing legend Marko Prezelj, four-time winner of Piolet d'Or. 'If somebody prepares the mountain for you by putting in fixed lines and you climb together with 500 people, there is nothing unknown.' The Everest massif from Camp I on Pumori. Photograph by Cory Richards, Nat Geo Image Collection Famous American alpinist Steve House, best known for his bold 'alpine style' first ascent on the Rupal face of Nanga Parbat in 2005, sees alpinism as a process of stripping away excesses to get closer to the experience. 'There is nothing inherently wrong with the ascents done with supplemental oxygen and xenon, but we need to understand these climbs as tourism, not alpinism,' says House. And Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, the first Nepali to climb all 14 of the world's 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen and founder of the Nepal-based guiding company Imagine Nepal, says there should be a limit to what tour companies offer. He thinks that the traditional way of doing proper acclimatisation is more valuable. 'I would always suggest to clients to do at least one rotation on the mountain up to Camp 2, before the summit push, so they can understand their body at high altitude. We also don't take clients without previous experience,' he says. But even if assisted climbs and medical aids become more common, Alpenglow Expeditions' Ballinger thinks there will always be an interest in unassisted alpine climbing. 'There are endless new route opportunities for alpinism in the Himalaya. And I don't think the fact that we have commercial guiding on a handful of routes on the world's most popular mountains gets in the way of the cutting-edge side of the sport,' says Ballinger. Peter Hackett, the high-altitude researcher, is less optimistic. 'The improved access, safety, and success on Everest have led to a new 'generation' of high-altitude tourists with high ambition but little climbing experience, and more money than time,' he says. 'It's all about— how I can bag this summit and miss as little work as possible.'
3 days ago
Hackathon teams race to solve defense tech challenges as Europe boosts military capabilities
SANDHURST, England -- Hunched over laptops, the team of four raced to solve a challenge: how to get a set of drones to fly themselves from one place to another when GPS and other signals are jammed by an enemy. Elsewhere around the hall, groups of people — engineering students, tech workers and hobbyists — gathered around long tables to brainstorm, write computer code or tinker with more drones and other hardware. Most of them were strangers when they first gathered last month at Britain's Sandhurst Military Academy to compete in a 24-hour 'hackathon" focused on defense technology. Many were drawn to the event because they wanted to use their technical skills to work on one of the biggest challenges confronting Europe: the continent's race to beef up its military capabilities as Russia's war in Ukraine threatens to widen global instability. 'Given the geopolitical climate, defense tech is relevant now more than ever,' said Aniketh Ramesh, a startup founder with a Ph.D. in robotics in extreme environments and one of the drone team members. The hackathon, he said, 'is a good place to sort of go and contribute your ideas.' 'Robotics and drones are having their iPhone moment" because costs have come down and the hardware is widely available, Ramesh said. That means building drones to do new things is more a 'thinking challenge" than a technical one, he said. Ramesh already knew one teammate, a former British army paratrooper, from a previous event. They recruited two others — one engineer and one with a Ph.D. in computer vision — through the event's group chat on Signal. The drone problem was just one of the many challenges the teams could choose to solve. The tasks were proposed by defense tech companies like German drone maker Helsing, robotics company Arx, the British military and Kyiv-based venture capital firm D3. Some worked on software, such as an algorithm to predict which way a target would move. Others came with their own ideas. One team made a plastic cup packed with sensors that could be produced in large amounts to be scattered across a battlefield. Another team built a scale model of an autonomous medical evacuation aircraft. Similar competitions have been held regularly across Europe since last year, inspired by the Ukrainian military's on-the-fly wartime innovations to fend off the larger Russian army. The grassroots meetups are part of a wider network of defense innovation that organizers hope to foster in Europe, underscoring the continent's scramble to churn out weapons that have been turbocharged by U.S. President Donald Trump's persistent threats to withdraw from the NATO trans-Atlantic security alliance. The idea is to 'go build a prototype, take your prototype to become a product, and go build a company' so that you can 'deliver stuff to the frontline and hopefully save someone's life,' said Benjamin Wolba, who organizes a separate but similar series, the European Defense Tech Hackathon. Wolba's group has held tournaments in about 10 cities in the past twelve months, including one in Lviv, Ukraine, in May, and has scheduled more this year in Sheffield, England; Gothenburg, Sweden; Marseilles, France; London; and Berlin. The European Union-backed EUDIS Defence Hackathon holds simultaneous competitions at eight universities twice a year. Meanwhile, NATO has launched DIANA, an 'accelerator' program to speed up defense innovations. The competitions are producing real-world results. The winners of one European Defense Tech Hackathon were a team of Bulgarian high school students who came up with a de-mining solution that they used to found a startup. At last year's London event, the winning team devised an idea for an anti-drone system. They went to Ukraine for more testing, and then were bought by a startup that went on to raise millions in venture capital funding, said Pass. This year, instead of a trophy, some London teams signed term sheets with investors. Hackathons have their origins in the software industry. Small teams of programmers and developers are pitted against each other in marathon brainstorming sessions to write programs that could become new products. 'The beauty of the hackathon is you get a mixture of people who never normally meet,' said Wolba. 'Engineers are 'paired with actual investors who understand something on the commercial side, but also, critically, military end users.' Organizers want to foster a culture of nimble startups to join Europe's defense ecosystem, traditionally dominated by a handful of big 'prime' military contractors such as Britain's BAE, Germany's Rheinmetall and France's Thales that are focused on building pricey hardware. 'There's definitely been a shift in the industry from the purchase of more exquisite, high-cost capabilities, such as fighter jets, or submarines, or expensive tanks, towards more low-cost systems that can give you scale advantages,' said Richard Pass, one of the co-founders of the London event. A recent aerial confrontation between Pakistan and India further highlights how Europe is at risk of losing its edge against adversaries, he said. Pass said reports that Pakistan used Chinese-made fighter jets armed with Chinese air-to-air missiles to down Indian air force planes, including three French-made Rafale jets, came as a big surprise. Not only does it show 'technological parity between the Chinese and leading Western industrial nations like France,' but it also hints at China's advantages in mass-producing fighter jets that could overwhelm Western forces, he said. Fostering a broader European defense tech start-up ecosystem is a way 'to regain that technological advantage,' he said. Defense tech startup founders can ride a wave of investment as Europe moves to beef up its military capabilities. Leaders of NATO, which includes 30 European nations, are meeting this week to endorse a goal to spend 5% of gross domestic product on defense. The European Union has sought to mobilize 800 billion euros ($927 billion) to boost the 27-nation bloc's defense, with priorities including drones, AI, autonomous systems and quantum computing. Britain, which left the EU, has meanwhile pledged to spend 10% of its defense budget on new technologies. Europe still has a long way to go. The continent's defense tech startup ecosystem is young and about five years behind the United States, consulting firm McKinsey said in a recent report. But it's growing rapidly as investors flock there. Venture capital investment in Europe's defense tech sector for 2021-2024 more than quadrupled from the previous three-year period, according to Pitchbook. At the London hackathon, teams worked into the evening, fueled by chocolate bars, energy drinks, fruit and a late-night pizza delivery. Army cots were available for those who wanted to catch a few hours of sleep. Soldiers in camouflage and defense company reps hovered on the sidelines to provide advice and answer questions. CEO Andrii Solonskyi said defense hackathons are 'a bit of a novelty.' The industry has traditionally been more structured and formal, because 'it's a serious business and there's a lot of things that can go wrong,' he said. But, "what we definitely feel is that you can be very agile in defense right now."
