Every #rhino matters. - http://clapway.com/2015/08/16/ngo-saving-the-survivors-treats-mutilated-rhino-with-elephant-skin-graft-352/

Thanks to an amazing NGO in Africa and an experimental elephant skin graft, a rhino named Hope has a chance at survival after poachers brutally mutilated the young animal for her horn.

Hope the Rhino Has Been Saved By An Elephant Skin Graft

While rhino poaching is a huge problem for South Africa, veterinarians at Saving the Survivors have been working hard to ensure that rhinos who do survive the awful, traumatic act of poaching will have a speedy recovery.

Though Saving the Survivors has been in operation since 2012, the most recent rescue of a rhino called Hope has grabbed the attention of the media as the vets used skin grafts from an elephant to repair the poor creature’s damaged face.

Dr. Johan Marais and Dr. Gerhard Steenkamp are the veterinary heroes responsible for giving Hope a future. The veteranians, both from the University of Pretoria’s Faculty of Veterinary Science, used a unique approach of using elephant skin grafts in a surgery that lasted over three hours. Two other vets, Dr. William Fowlds and Dr. Johan Joubert, also assisted in the remarkable procedure.

Saving the Survivors Believes Surgical Conservation for Rhinos Is Needed

The organization believes that treating rhinos that have been victims of poaching is absolutely critical in rhino conservation. The team relies on surgical conservation efforts, such as the procedure they performed on Hope, to ensure that the animals who have been left behind for dead don’t succumb to the terrible brutality of inhumane poachers.

The team believes that through their efforts, the rhino population has a better chance at recovering. Though the vets deal with emotions like rage for the poachers whenever one of these injured animals comes in minutes from death, they turn their hatred into help by using their surgical skills to restore the health of the magnificent beasts.

Along with their efforts to save Hope, the team gives a lot of credit to the brave rhino herself. She is only four years old, but her tenacious spirit and will to survive has allowed her to recover quite well at the Shamwari Game Reserve.

While the wound is still healing under a shield meant to protect her face, the doctors are still researching better alternatives to find a shield that can protect her as well as aid her healing. At the present moment, the shield is working, but her rate of recovery is just considered good, not great and the vets want to do everything they possibly can to help her out during this time of recovery.

Hope the Rhino Brings Animal Conservation to The Forefront in Africa

Hope the rhino has only been in recovery for five weeks. The vets believe she still has well over over a year to fully recover. While she is healing thanks to the team at Saving the Survivors and the Shamwari Game Reserve, we need to remember Hope is a symbol for all the other rhinos who still need animal rights conservationists to take a stand for them.

Hope’s skin graft from an elephant that died of natural causes brings more hope for other rhinos who are victims of poaching. Every rhino matters, no matter how injured, they can still be saved.

While we have an incredible team of vets at Saving the Survivors, perhaps we should also work harder to ensure the protection of our rhinos before the vets have to perform surgery on more rhinos.

Picture credits to Saving the Survivors and Daniel Haesslich

NGO Saving the Survivors Treats Mutilated Rhino with Elephant Skin Graft

Understanding Our Ice Age Friend, the Woolly Mammoth - http://clapway.com/2015/07/03/understanding-our-woolly-friend-the-mammoth765/

Finding out something new

If you have every wanted to know more the Woolly Mammoth but could never find any new developments in their study, here’s your chance. A research study was published just yesterday featuring our woolly friend, with new findings about its DNA structure and how it was adapted to its arctic conditions in the Ice Age. The study was published with cell.com in more scientific detail, and elaborates on the differences between the elephants that live today and the ones of yesterday.

It comes as no surprise that there was some huge reconfigurations of the DNA of the Woolly Mammoth that allowed it to live in such harsh frigid conditions. However, the study went in-depth to discover the differences and found the unique changes to be fascinating.

Genetic changes to the Woolly Mammoth

In short, the changes in the DNA that differed from the elephant creatures of today allowed for physical changes to occur in order for it to survive the cold. Basically, the gene TRPV3 helped to create the Wooly as we know it today and is extremely sensitive to change.

One researcher, Vince Lynch PhD, assistant professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, said in a news release, “This is by far the most comprehensive study to look at the genetic changes that make a Woolly Mammoth a woolly Mammoth. They are an excellent model to understand how morphological evolution works, because mammoths are so closely related to living elephants, which have none of the traits they had.”

Lynch’s research focus at the university focuses itself on that premise of morphology in terms of evolution on the genetics level and how at the molecular level, genetics can be very influential towards that morphology, as well as other interesting focuses.

Before this study, all efforts to sequence mammoth DNA were failures

However, this team of researchers found a backdoor so to speak, in that in that they sequenced not only mammoth genes but also the genes of the Asian elephant. After that, the comparisons began. Most changes in the genes dealt with fat metabolism and other such things to help brave the cold.

These genes could ostensibly be used to bring back the wooly mammoth. But that is likely a terrible idea, and sure to spark parallels to Jurassic Park. Suffice to say, the animal wouldn’t survive in conditions present today as it did then, due to the huge change in environment.

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Understanding Our Ice Age Friend, the Woolly Mammoth

“It was difficult to spend so much time so close to the big beauties and not feel a real connection with them. But thinking about things like that remind you that they are kinda gross...” - http://clapway.com/2015/06/07/11-crazy-facts-about-indian-elephants/

In October 2013, I joined a two-week volunteering program in Jaipur, Rajasthan, in which I took care of a number of Indian elephants: two in week one, and five in week two. When I type those words, it feels like I’m describing something that happened to someone else. But I really did it, and it was one of the coolest — and strangest — experiences of my life.

(Full disclosure: these ellies weren’t wild, rehabilitated, or orphaned. They were “working” elephants. Six days a week, their “job” was to give tourists a ride up a small hill to the entrance of the Amber Fort, which is a castle that sits on the outskirts of Jaipur…

The Amber Fort from afar. You’re forbidden from taking photos of the elephants while they work.

…The elephants had tons of food, could see each other, were kept very clean and their conditions were inspected regularly, but they were chained, trained, and lived an unnatural life.)

I had absolutely no idea what to expect from the programme before I started, having never been so up close and personal with an elephant before. It was really hard work, a lot of fun, and I learnt some strange and unexpected things about nellies and their behaviour:

1. They have light-coloured speckles on their face, their trunk and around their ears, and these fade and brighten at different times of the year. I was a bit worried about it at first, but all Asian elephants have it and it’s totally fine. African elephants don’t change colour like this, which is probably why I wasn’t used to it as they’re always the species you see on TV.


2. Elephants sleep lying down on their side; they don’t stand up like horses do. I don’t know if they move around or roll over when they sleep — it sounds dangerous to me! When they awaken they lie there, eyes open, for a while before standing, and some, but not all, are slow and dopey at the start of the day, just like humans.


3. Elephant carers are called mahouts, and they take care of one elephant 24/7, including riding them when they “work” at the Amber Fort. The mahouts also live with or near their elephants: when I worked in a small complex that housed five elephants, their five mahouts all slept in one room, close enough to hear them breathing. A mahout does not have a lifelong pairing with one elephant, but usually works with elephants for a long time. One mahout I met called Sanuman was 22 and had already worked with elephants for ten years.


4. When they have the ‘saddle’ (technically called a howdah) put on their back before leaving, some of them curl up their trunk in a way that reminds me of how humans rest their chin on their hand or fold their arms when they’re bored.
    “It’s way too early for this…”


5. My elephants were crazy about chapattis, and I made some for them twice a week when they had finished their “jobs”. Their other favourite food is sugarcane, which they eat vast amounts of every day, and they usually toss around to get the small leaves off. I spent ages collecting the sugarcane and putting it down in front of them; it’s strong, like bamboo, but they snap it easily and munch it down. Some elephants let you put food into their mouths or trunks, but when you try this with others, they snuffle quietly and move away — which is fair enough; I’d probably react the same if someone tried to feed me.


6. They can eat flour, and they love it. If there’s any going spare from the chapattis, the mahouts dump the sack in front of them and they suck it up their trunk like a vacuum cleaner and then squirt it down their throat. They somehow magically do this without either breathing it in or making a mess. Just the thought of it makes me want to cough.


7. Elephants’ breath is strong and musty, but it doesn’t smell bad. Their mouths are all triangular, and their tongues and teeth are very strange. When I approached some of them they expected me, as a white person, to feed and fuss over them, so they stood there with their mouths open, staring at me. They also sometimes yawn and forget to close their mouths.Someone’s hungry!


8. They have clusters of very thick skin on their ears which look like warts, and most of them have big, hard, saggy lumps on the sides of their legs. They also have long, coarse eyelashes, which they get stuff stuck in and which it gives me great pleasure to pull out. It was difficult to spend so much time so close to the big beauties and not feel a real connection with them. But thinking about things like that remind you that they are kinda gross…


9. Elephants fart. A lot. It doesn’t stink but it is incredibly loud, and it never stops being hilarious. Their shit is relatively clean — clean enough to be able to pick up with your hands — and not unpleasant-smelling. (Nothing like cows).How do I know all this? Because I spent about an hour every day cleaning up elephant poo with my hands. Here is a picture:
   


10. They can be commanded. These are the commands that I know:- Ota: move your feet
    - Zhum: more / move it / wake up
    - Beit: sit down
    - Peejahet: back
    - Zhup: eat upYou have to shout in a certain tone of voice, and in the morning usually several times until they deign to obey. There are loads more commands than the above, but they were hard to remember because they’re Hindi/Urdu


11. They recognise cameras, and this one, Rupa, could pose like a pro.

11 Crazy Facts About Indian Elephants