Reminder That Donating Just A Few $ To Gofundme Campaigns Actually Helps, You Don't Have To Donate Huge

its pride month pillowspace. you know what that means.

huh? what? do you want me to post like, gay sea slugs? what?

phys.org

New 'chiral vortex' of light allows chemists to 'see' molecules through the mirror

An entirely new structure of light is helping to measure chirality in molecules more accurately and robustly than ever before, in a major po

An entirely new structure of light is helping to measure chirality in molecules more accurately and robustly than ever before, in a major potential step for the pharmaceutical industry. Published in Nature Photonics, a team from King's College London and the Max Born Institute have created an entirely new structure of light that traces out a chiral curve over time. This chiral curve has different shapes at different points in space, forming a vortex structure. By interacting with chiral particles it moves through over time, the new "chiral vortex" provides an accurate and robust form of measurement.

Continue Reading.

goodgoodgood.co

Conservation good news: Giant anteaters are returning to south Brazil thanks to rewilding efforts

Recent giant anteater sightings in Rio Grande do Sul state indicate the species has returned to southern Brazil, where it had been considere

— Recent giant anteater sightings in Rio Grande do Sul state indicate the species has returned to southern Brazil, where it had been considered extinct for more than a century.

— Experts concluded that the giant anteater ventured across the border from the Iberá Park in northeastern Argentina where a rewilding project has released around 110 individuals back into the habitat.

— The sightings emphasize the importance of rewilding projects, both to restore animal populations in specific regions and help ecosystems farther afield.

— Organizations across Brazil are working to protect and maintain current giant anteater populations, including rallying for safer highways to prevent wildlife-vehicle collisions that cause local extinctions.

Playing back hours of footage from a camera trap set in Espinilho State Park in the south of Brazil in August 2023, Fábio Mazim and his team banked on possible sightings of the maned wolf or the Pantanal deer and had their fingers crossed for a glimpse of a Pampas cat (Leopardus pajeros), one of the most threatened felines in the world.

What they didn’t expect to see was an animal long presumed extinct in the region. To their surprise, the unmistakable long snout and bushy tail of a giant anteater ambled into shot.

"We shouted and cried when we saw it,” the ecologist from the nonprofit Pró-Carnívoros Institute told Mongabay. “It took a few days to grasp the importance of this record. A sighting of a giant anteater was never, ever expected.”

Last seen alive in the southwest of the Rio Grande do Sul state in 1890, the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) has since been spotted 11 times since August 2023, although the scientists are unsure whether it’s the same one or different individuals. However, the sightings confirm one clear fact: The giant anteater is back.

It's a huge win for the environment. Giant anteaters play an important role in their ecosystems, helping to control insect numbers, create watering holes through digging and are prey for big cats such as jaguars and pumas.

The habitat of the giant anteater stretches from Central America toward the south cone of Latin America.

Its conservation status is “vulnerable,” although it is considered extinct in several countries, including El Salvador, Guatemala and Uruguay, as well as specific regions such as the states of Rio de Janeiro, Espirito Santo, Santa Catarina and (until now) Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and the Cordoba and Entre Rios regions in Argentina.

‍In the last six months, the giant anteater was spotted on camera 11 times in the Espinilho State Park in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. It was the first time in 130 years that the species has been seen alive there.

Yet not only is it a triumph for conservationists to see these animals returning to Brazilian biomes, it’s also a surprising mark of success for a rewilding program about 150 kilometers (93 miles) away in neighboring Argentina.

‍Rewilding Argentina’s biomes

‍Iberá National Park in Corrientes province in northeastern Argentina is a 758,000-hectare (1.9 million-acre) expanse of protected land comprising a part of the Iberá wetlands with its swaths of grasslands, marshes, lagoons and forests. The region was once home to just a handful of giant anteaters after habitat loss, hunting and vehicle collisions decimated the population.

Since 2007, the NGO Rewilding Argentina, an offspring of the nonprofit Tompkins Conservation, has been reintroducing the species back to the area, most individuals being orphaned pups rescued from vehicle collisions or poaching.

So far, they have released 110 giant anteaters back into the wild. Nowadays, several generations inhabit the park, transforming it from “a place of massive defaunation to abundance,” Sebastián Di Martino, director of conservation for Rewilding Argentina, was quoted as saying in an official statement.

The project has been so successful that the giant anteaters appear to be venturing farther afield and moving to new territories beyond national borders, such as Espinilho State Park in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul region...

Experts now hope that a giant anteater population can reestablish itself naturally in Espinilho State Park without the need for human intervention.

“The giant anteater returning to Rio Grande do Sul shows the success of the work done in Argentina and how it’s viable, possible and important to do rewilding and fauna reintroduction projects,” Mazim said. “It is also an indication that the management of conservation units and also the agricultural areas of the ecosystems are working,” he added. “Because if large mammals are coming from one region and settling in another, it is because there is a support capacity for them. It is an indication of the health of the environment.”

-via GoodGoodGood, via May 25, 2024

Uncharismatic Fact of the Day

Humans have been consuming alcohol for thousands of years, but we're not the only ones with a taste for it! The pen-tailed treeshrew's diet consists almost entirely of naturally fermented nectar, which can have an alcohol content as high as 3.8%. Given their small size, that's the human equivalent of consuming 10-12 glasses of wine. However, this species is able to fully metabolize the alcohol and avoid the intoxicating side-effects.

(Image: A pen-tailed treeshrew (Ptilocercus lowii) by Annette Zitzmann)

If you like what I do, consider buying me a ko-fi!

ScienceAlert

Wild Elephants Invent Names For One Another in Surprise Sign of Abstract Thinking

Elephants call out to each other using individual names that they invent for their fellow pachyderms, a study said on Monday.

Elephants call out to each other using individual names that they invent for their fellow pachyderms, a study said on Monday. While dolphins and parrots have been observed addressing each other by mimicking the sound of others from their species, elephants are the first non-human animals known to use names that do not involve imitation, the researchers suggested. For the new study, a team of international researchers used an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyse the calls of two wild herds of African savannah elephants in Kenya. The research "not only shows that elephants use specific vocalisations for each individual, but that they recognise and react to a call addressed to them while ignoring those addressed to others," lead study author Michael Pardo said. "This indicates that elephants can determine whether a call was intended for them just by hearing the call, even when out of its original context," the behavioural ecologist at Colorado State University said in a statement.

Continue Reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhekuli_Biya