Scientists have have known that birds are able to see magnetic fields, and utilize this seeing power to navigate their way on their day to day lives, and on long migrations. This “ 6th sense” or magnetoreception birds possess is incredible, however scientists always thought that it was the iron in their beaks that helped them navigate their way. Now however, they realize that birds have a substance in their eyes that gives them the power to see magnetic fields. This substance is a protein called Cry4 that allows the birds to detect blue light. Scientists performed a number of experiments to determine that it was the Cry4 protein that enables birds to see magnetic fields. One of the results compared the amount of Cry4 in robins and chickens. Since chickens don’t migrate and generally stay in one place, there was less Cry4 in their eyes than that in robins, who migrate regularly. These results were published in the journal Current Biology. I think this discovery is amazing, and it shows the superpowers that birds possess. 

I’m IzzyKat and remember to bikepenguin !

A hundred years ago, at the turn of the century, there were one million Western Black Rhinos – today there are zero. Seven years ago the Western Black Rhino was finally declared extinct, and perhaps most sadly its extinction had nothing to do with natural causes, and everything to do with humans.  

The Black rhinos from Africa were most commonly found in Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Sudan and South Sudan.  In the first few decades of the last century, they were hunted for sport. Sports hunting killed many Rhinos, but really this practice was only a needle in the haystack. In the next decades, deforestation and the creation of industrial settlements led many rhinos to lose their homes. Plus, the settlers would kill the rhinos to prevent them from entering their farms and settlements.  By the 1950’s, Chinese doctors believed that shavings of rhino horns dissolved in boiling water was a medicine useful to cure fever, gout, and even cancer.  As a result, from 1960- 1995, 98 percent of Black Rhinos were slaughtered.  Conservation organizations tried to save them. By 1997, only ten were left. By 2003, many conservationists concluded that the species had gone extinct.  In 2011,  the extinction of the Western Black Rhino was officially declared.

Humans are to blame for the loss of the Western Black Rhino.  As a world, we have much to learn from the devastating extinction of this innocent creature.  We must not let the Black rhino (~5000 left), Sumatran rhino (~100), and the Javan rhino (only 67 left as of 2015) undergo the same fate as its cousin.   

I’m Izzykat and remember to bikepenguin !