Snatched from the jaws of death: Zoo rescues cubs after confused polar bear mother EATS her two babies

The giant polar bear looks like a mother tenderly caring for her newborn.
As Vera emerges from her den at Nuremberg Zoo, she carries her tiny cub - believed to weigh less than 8lb - by the scruff of its neck.But rather than a loving encounter this was, in fact, the final scene from an extraordinary drama involving primeval nature, a controversial zoo experiment and a tragic outcome.

Moments later, Vera began violently swinging the cub round her head. When she dumped it in the den, keepers moved in to rescue the cub.An attempt to force the bears to raise their cubs as nature intended has already led to two others being eaten by their confused mother, Wilma.

This grisly find, which keepers discovered yesterday, forced them to move in on Vera and - finally - check on her cub. The zoo hurriedly announced that keepers would begin bottle-feeding the surviving cub.It's an ironically late move. Managers at the German zoo had previously announced that the cubs would not be bottle-fed as bears in captivity often are.

Even when they later realised that the mothers had failed to bond with their offspring-officials said it was vital that the tiny cubs should be reared "naturally", even admitting they would leave them to starve. In the wild, cubs whom the mother cannot care for are often killed and then eaten - protein is not to be wasted when the carnivores have to survive temperatures of -70c.

Last weekend, zoo staff became worried when Vera did not appear to be feeding her cub, which she had hidden in a man-made den carved out of rock inside her enclosure.
Wilma's cubs had also remained inside their den.But the zoo refused to check on them, saying they did not want repeats of "Knut-mania" - a reference to the worldwide outcry after a baby polar bear faced starvation at Berlin Zoo last year.

Abandoned by his mother at birth, animal rights activists claimed that Knut should die rather than be raised by humans. But zoo officials disagreed, rearing him by hand in defiance of death threats by extremists.Nuremberg officials took a sterner line on the raising of their cubs.As radio phone-ins and internet sites were bombarded with pleas to save the tiny animals, deputy director Helmut Maegdefrau insisted they would not intervene.

"If you don't let the mothers practise, they'll never learn how to bring up their cubs," he said."If we were to keep checking, we would disturb them and make it more likely that something goes wrong." Yet something had already gone wrong. On Monday morning, zoo staff heard Wilma pawing at the gates of her den, where it was believed she was raising her litter.Keepers had assumed that there was no crying from her cubs because they were content and fed.

But when zoo keepers let Wilma into a separate area to investigate, the den was empty.Wilma's customarily ravenous appetite had also disappeared and the obvious conclusion was drawn.Last night, Vera's surviving cub was being examined by vets in case being thrown about by its mother had caused internal injuries.

Now the zoo is facing just as rough a ride from an outraged international community.
Let's hope that Vera's sole surviving cub will grow up as healthy and happy as the now one-year-old Knut who has his own TV show and blog - and not care whether it is raised by humans holding bottles of milk.

Rare Prehistoric Shark In Japan

A rare prehistoric shark was discovered by local residents in Shizuoka, southwest of Tokyo. The huge eel-like creature, considered to be a living fossil, was taken to Japan’s Awashima Marine Park and placed in a seawater pool. But the new environment was fatal and, only just a few hours after it was moved, the unusual shark died.

Schoolgirl's Guide to Teenage Slang

A school girl from Britain has written a guide to teenage slang for confused parents.

Lucy van Amerongen, 13, penned The A-Z of Teen Talk after her parents complained they couldn’t follow her conversations with pals – and a publisher snapped it up.

Now Lucy, who goes to posh private school Cheltenham Ladies’ College, is “stoked” (very happy) because sales of her “nang” (cool) book are “owdish” (excellent).

Her guide includes 300 teen words such as “antwacky” (unstylish), “cotch down” (sleep), “rago” (OK) and “zip” (yob).

It also includes her three golden teen talk rules – never make eye contact when talking to a “mouldie” (parent), always mumble inaudibly, and try to include “like” in every sentence.

Lucy, of Box, Gloucs, said: “I hope the book clears up confusion. Some parents don’t give teenagers enough credit for some of the words they use. More come up every day and a lot are very creative.”

How to make Hot Ice

crazy experiment turning a liquid to a solid with just a touch.. amazing

6 Most unusual roads in the World

Toronto, Canada - the longest road.

Castletown, England - the narrowest street.

Buenos Aires, Argentina - the widest road.

Dunedin, New Zealand - the most abrupt road.

Svindon, England - the most complicated/tangled junction.

San Francisco, USA - The most curved road.

Hu Ziwei Embarrassing Her CCTV Sports Anchor Husband Zhang Bin

Hu Ziwei is a (former) business anchor of Beijing TV Station. She was recently shot to the international fame after the video showing her embarrassing husband Zhang Bin, a famous sports anchor on China's CCTV 5 channel,Ziwei bravely scolded Zhang Bin for betraying her by having an improper affair with another woman when Zhang Bin was on the event that the CCTV-5 was relaunched as the Olympics Channel on. Stunned by Ziwei's unusual behaviour, Zhang Bin stood open-mouthed and didn't know what to do.

40 amazing facts about sleep

The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

- It's impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.

- Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you're sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you're still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.

- A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year

- One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.

- The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.

- REM sleep occurs in bursts totalling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.

- Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases. It's possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.

- REM dreams are characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery - obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.

- Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams, suggesting at least part of the dreaming process is analagous to watching a film

- No-one knows for sure if other species dream but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.

- Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.

- Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting - to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains.

- Dreams may not serve any purpose at all but be merely a meaningless byproduct of two evolutionary adaptations - sleep and consciousness.

- REM sleep may help developing brains mature. Premature babies have 75 per cent REM sleep, 10 per cent more than full-term bubs. Similarly, a newborn kitten puppy rat or hampster experiences only REM sleep, while a newborn guinea pig (which is much more developed at birth) has almost no REM sleep at all.

- Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock.

- British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers' body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hrs. Tiny optical fibres embedded in special spectacles project a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to a sunrise) around the edge of soldiers' retinas, fooling them into thinking they have just woken up. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.

- Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.

- The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.

- The NRMA estimates fatigue is involved in one in 6 fatal road accidents.

- Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper doesn’t wake. Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.

- The "natural alarm clock" which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.

- Some sleeping tablets, such as barbiturates suppress REM sleep, which can be harmful over a long period.

- In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.

- Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a "neural switch" in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.

- To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain's sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That's why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees - one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.

- A night on the grog will help you get to sleep but it will be a light slumber and you won't dream much.

- After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you've slept enough.

- Humans sleep on average around three hours less than other primates like chimps, rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys and baboons, all of whom sleep for 10 hours.

- Ducks at risk of attack by predators are able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.

- Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnoea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

- Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep

- Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal

- Some studies suggest women need up to an hour's extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.

- Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time. Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.

- Diaries from the pre-electric-light-globe Victorian era show adults slept nine to 10 hours a night with periods of rest changing with the seasons in line with sunrise and sunsets.

- Most of what we know about sleep we've learned in the past 25 years.

- As a group, 18 to 24 year-olds deprived of sleep suffer more from impaired performance than older adults.

- Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

- The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.

The top 10 Famous Monkeys in Science

1. Kanzi

So you think you’re special because you taught you simian sign language? Before you go and register the little guy in any big talent shows, be prepared to put your monkey where your mouth is.

In the 1980s, researchers at Georgia State University began studying the bonobo chimpanzees’ ability to understand and mimic human language। They started out with a bonobo trainee named Matata, but even after several years, they weren’t able to make much headway with her. Matata’s adopted baby son Kanzi, however, was a different story. Turns out, the young chimp picked up quite bit (more than his mommy, certainly) by accompanying Matata to "school" every day. In 2002, researchers began noticing that Kanzi was able to express his needs using four distinct sounds that corresponded to specific objects or commands (banana, juice, grapes, and yes). While this particular brand of beat poetry isn’t necessarily stimulating, the very suggestion that primates employ an audible "language" is a direct affront to the linguistic experts who claim they don’t have the marbles to do so.Besides accomplishing the academic kiss-off "Nim" Chimpsky could only dream about, Kanzi has established himself a true primate prodigy. In addition to "bonobo," he understands between 2,000 and 3,000 spoken words in English. He even communicates with his tutor, psychologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, by punching abstract symbols on a special keyboard. While most Americans still can’t bring themselves to learn a second language, Kanzi is now dabbling in three.

2. Koko

Noam Chomsky didn’t get long to bask in the glory of Nim Chimpsky’s failures. In 1972, Stanford graduate student Francine Patterson began teaching American Sign Language to a female lowland gorrila named Koko. In only a few weeks, she was making the correct signs for food and drink.
Known as the world’s first "speaking" gorilla, Koko currently boasts a vocabulary of more than 1,000 signs and understand roughly 2,000 spoken words. She still struggles with the occasional word, though. Unfortunately, one of them happens to be "people," which she tends to substitute with "nipple," thus explaining how she became the defendant in a sexual harassment case against some caretakers a few months back (seriously).

When not signing or pushing the envelope of political incorrectness,koko enjoys playing on her computer. In 1998, she even logged onto America Online and fielded questions from the public through an interpreter. During that chat, fans were able to learn what pet Koko would like to have ("dog"), the first-hand gossip on what she thought about the male gorilla brought in to be her mate ("frown bad bad bad"), and what a 310-pound gorilla really wants ("candy, give me"). But such mindless banter clearly wasn’t enough to hold the attention of a genius gorilla. Koko soon grew bored with the chat (calling it "obnoxious") and wandered off to play with her dolls.

3. "Nim" Chimpsky

After David Greybeard proved that chimps could make tools, scientists scrambled to establish another dividing line between man and primate. This time, they decreed it to be the use of language. One avid proponent of the new theory was Noam Chomsky, renowned linguist at MIT. Chomsky derided trainers for attempting to teach sign language to primates and insisted that only the human mind is capable of grasping the complexities of language syntax.

Naturally, zoologist around the world became eager to prove him wrong. Enter Neam Chimpsky ("Nim" for short), the chimpanzee designed to be a stiff middle finger to the doubtful Chomsky. In the mid 1970s, trainers did everything they could to teach American Sign Language to Nim, but the chimp only mastered 125 signs. Apparently, his lingual development was sabotaged by his own one-track mind. his most advanced utterance was, "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you."

Nim might have failed to grasp the concepts of syntax and sentence structure, but he wasn’t a total disappointment. Turns out, Nim was a decent abstract artist. Working mostly with a mix of magic markers and crayons, he produced works of art that critics describe as childlike and playful.

He would often work for weeks in one color, then switch to another, allowing his drawings to highlight the transition between phases। Nim died in 2000. Today, his portfolio of roughly 200 drawings is valued at $25,000. via : http://lol-times.blogspot.com/2007/11/top-10-famous-monkeys-in-science.html

4. Oliver

If David Greybeard blurred the line between humans and chimpanzees by fishing for termites, you can imagine all the evolutionary issues raised when a chimp named Oliver started mixing his own Highballs.

Oliver was a bald-headed, Spock-eared chimpanzee that, besides playing bartender, also walked on two legs, used a toilet, and loved watching TV। For most of his life, Oliver’s various trainers paraded him around at carnivals and on television shows as a freak. But things changed for Oliver in 1975. A Manhattan lawyer who caught his act decided the chimp was so human-like that he just might be the elusive "missing link" between man and beast and put Oliver through a battery of scientific tests to prove it. Sure enough, an exam conducted in Japan indicated that oliver had 47 chromosomes - more than a human’s 46, and less than a chimp’s 48. The results were more than enough to get the press and the public excited. When subsequent exams proved inconclusive, though, the American media lost interest. But in 1996, researchers test Oliver again. This time, they definitively concluded that he had 48 chromosomes, making him all chimp. He wasn’t the missing link after all, but scientists still concede that he probably was the Albert Einstein of chimpanzees.

5. Tetra2

Tetra2 can’t speak, she can’t do math, she doesn’t known sign language, and (trust us on this one) you won’t get her within 20 feet of a space shuttle. But Tetra2 can claim something the other monkeys on this list can’t: She’s a clone.

In 1999, scientists at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center split eight-cell rhesus embryos into four identical two-cell clones and implanted 13 of them into surrogate mothers. Four of the monkeys got pregnant, but only one of the babies, Tetra2, survived. For the first time, the seemingly impossible dream of every government on Earth (to own an army of genetically identical monkeys, of course) was within reach. As an added bonus, using cloned monkeys as identical subjects for medical experiments removes the genetic variables, meaning more accurate results. The scientific ramifications are potentially enormous … but we still prefer to focus on the monkey army.

6. Baker & Able

Never send a man to do a female monkey’s job. That was the logic of the U.s. Army’s Medical Research and Development Department in 1959 when they wanted to gauge the body’s physical response to space travel. Instead of relying on fit, able-bodied Americans, researchers there turned to two highly patriotic gals named Baker and Able (a rhesus monkey). On May 28, the monkeys steeled their nerves, entered the nose cone of a Jupiter AM-18 missile, and embarked on a suborbital mission into space. It would take two more years before a human male, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, had the guts to attempt the same thing.

During their 15-minute flight, the simian sidekicks reached speeds of 10,000 mph and soared to an altitude of 300 miles। For nine minutes, they were weightless. Even more impressive, they lived to screech about the experience - making them the first two living beings to survive a space flight. Sadly, life wasn’t all bananas and back-scratches after the girls returned home. By the time Baker and Able made the cover of Life magazine on June 15, Able was dead. Although her body could withstand forces 38 times the normal force of gravity, she couldn’t cope with the anesthesia necessary to remove a tiny electrode implanted in her body for the trip. She died four days after her return to Earth. Baker, however, spent the rest of her life basking in the glow of celebrity from her specially designed enclosure at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. She died in 1984 at the ripe old age of 27.

7. Brachiator III

Speaking of monkey armies, robotics wizard Dr. Toshio Fukuda and his crack team of researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have clearly forgotten the key theme of science-fiction: the annihilation of human life at the hands of a vengeful machine. Their invention, an intelligent robotic monkey with the super tough nickname Brachiator III has trouble written all over it.

The faux ape represents two huge steps toward a fully functioning humanoid. Its unique frame, modeled from a gibbon ape’s skeleton, houses 14 motors that allow it to move every joint, making it capable of life-like movement. Dr. Fukuda also sees Brachiator III as a monumental advancement in artificial intelligence. Using a complex vision system an external computer brain, the metal monkey can actually make decisions about what movements to make and where to make them. It can even learn from its mistakes. If Brachiator III misses a bar while swinging round the jungle gym, its brain makes adjustments for the next attempt.

But don’t worry about hordes of invading pseudo-simians just yet। For now, a cumbersome external battery limits Brachiator’s environment to its jungle gym. It’ll have to wait until a smaller, more lightweight power source has been developed before it can learn to walk … and, of course, destroy.

8. David Greybeard

Once upon a time, not so long ago, members of the scientific community thought they had the whole evolution thing figured out। Simply put, humans were smarter than primates because humans made tools. But, apparently a few chipmaneez at the Gombe Stream Research Center in Tanzania didn’t get the memo.In 1960, then-fledling primatologist Jane Goodall was studying Gombe’s wild chimps when she came across an adult male "fishing" for termites by dipping a twig into a hole and feasting on the bugs that clung to the stick. She named him David Greybeard and began to track him, eventually finding that he (and other males) used such tools regularly. In addition, the chimps would customize their termite twigs by stripping off the leaves and bark layer to help fit the sticks into specific feeding holes. This was the first documented case of a non-human manufacturing a tool, and it turned the scientific community upside down. As eminent antropogolist Leakey put it, "Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans."

9. Hellion

You’ve probably wanted a "helper monkey" ever since you saw Mojo drinking beer on the couch with Homer Simpson. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to get one in real-life. But bear in mind, the fantasy wouldn’t exist at all if it weren’t for hellion, the first monkey trained to lend humans a helping hand (and tail).

In 1977, educational psychologist Mary Joan Willard started training capuchins - small, dexterous tree monkeys commonly seen with people such as organ grinders and David Schwimmer - to assist disabled humans. Just two years later, Willard placed her first trainee, Hellion, with a quadriplegic named Robert Foster, and it proved a startling success. In fact, the pair is still together today. using a mouth-operated laser Foster is able to point out what he wants Hellion to do. The monkey’s tasks range from combing Foster’s hair to locking the doors to operating the stereo. Hellion is even able to clean the house using a tiny vacuum.

Today, Hellion is a role model for other simian aides। At the 6,000-square-foot Helping Hands training center in Boston, young capuchins attended classes five to six times a week for a full year before receiving their first assignments. To date, the institute has placed more than 93 monkeys with disabled clients.

10. Indah and Azy

While chimpanzees and gorillas are puttering about in English classes, orangutan siblings Azy and Indah are working on something more akin to studying for the LSAT. At the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoo exhibit, the "Think Tank," primates are taught to practice more abstract ways of thinking, often working with logic puzzles and communicating via symbols.

Indah, for instance, learned to combine symbols representing verbs and nouns to create simple commands, such as "open bag." She was also a (relative) math whiz, having mastered the numbers one, two , and three. Before her death in 2004, her trainers were well on their way to teaching her how to assign numerical values to objects - the first step in monetary exchange. (She was so close to being able to go shoe shopping!)

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