Wildlife

Global Shark Survey

In the largest survey of sharks around the world, scientists have visited 100 reefs and collected more than 5,000 hours of underwater footage, revealing where the most sharks live — and where they're scarce.

These preliminary results suggest that some spots are teeming with the ocean predators, while other heavily fished areas of the ocean have little or no sign of the marine animals.

Locations like Australia's Great Barrier Reef and the Bahamas showed an abundance of sharks and rays, Chapman said.

However, cameras rolled for hours in some more heavily fished locations with little or no signs of sharks. Researchers collected more than 100 videos off the coast of Malaysia, for instance, and only one shark was caught on camera. Videos in Jamaica resulted in not a single shark sighting.

Brown Bear Mothers Seek Human Help to Save Cubs

Brown bear mothers in a Swedish forest use human "shields" against murderous males, overcoming their own fear to raise defenceless cubs near villages where hunters live, researchers said.

Some young bear mothers live closer to humans for the duration of the mating season when male bears, called boars, go into frenzies of lust-fuelled cub killing.

But motherly instinct seems to trump sex drive. While sows grin and bear the threatening human proximity for the sake of their offspring, boars continue to give humans a wide berth.

Male brown bears kill cubs to trigger oestrus, a period of sexual receptivity, in females that would otherwise come into heat only after raising their cubs to independence. Instead of having to wait 18 to 30 months, the males can obtain a mating opportunity in just a few days.

The behaviour is called sexually selected infanticide.