Wildlife

South Africa revives ‘extinct’ zebra subspecies

In a spectacular valley less than two hours’ drive north of Cape Town, a small herd of animals provides the chance to travel back in time over more than a century.

The animals roaming over a wide plain encased by jagged mountain ranges look like quaggas, a subspecies of the plains zebra — but quaggas are extinct.

They were wiped out by colonial hunters in the 19th century.

Now, a small group of scientists and conservationists believe they have recreated the quagga, which is distinct from other zebra mainly through the lack of the characteristic black and white stripes on its hindquarters.

Over a period of 30 years the Quagga Project has used selective breeding of plains zebra to produce, in the fifth generation, an animal they say is indistinguishable from those that roamed the same plains centuries ago.

The last of the original quagga, found only in South Africa’s Western Cape region, died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883.

New Glow-in-the-Dark Species Discovered in Red Sea

Russian scientists say they have found a new species of glowing “fluorescent lanterns’ living in the coral reefs of Saudi Arabia’s Farasan archipelago, in the southern Red Sea.

The researchers from Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Tussian Academy of Sciences say the green-glowing polyps are a form of hydrozoa, of which only six other species have been found to be fluorescent.

The new Red Sea species attaches itself to the shells of a type of mud snail that comes out only at night. Writing in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers believe the green fluorescent proteins around the hydrozoa’s mouth could be there to attract prey.

Swarms of Moths Plague Outback Town

Australia’s outback town of Winton, Queensland, was invaded for more than three days by millions of moths that clogged gutters and blanketed parts of the downtown area following heavy rain.

Residents said the swarms were so dense that they sounded like rain banging against the walls and roofs of buildings.

Bartender Max Jurd told the Australian Associated Press that the town is often overrun by insects when they breed after rainfall, but he said he’d never seen anything like this before.

Jurd and others tried to rid the town of the infestation by raking the moths into trash bags and taking them to the local dump.