ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATEPlaces like isolated parks and forests are still not safe for Africa’s forest elephants. The decline in the elephant’s population continues even with necessary environmental remedies.
The carnivorous birds in Africa are facing the verge of extinction. Without vultures around, pests and scavengers will also increase, thus endangering also the health of people and their livestocks.
Climate changes have resulted in Horn of Africa to dry up. The Horn of Africa has been drying up consistently for the past 2000 years. Aside from the political conflict that has plagued the region for some time now, climate change is also making the situation worse.
Hope is one the way towards totally eradicating polio in Africa. The hope for the fight against polio is becoming brighter as Africa reports zero polio incident for the first time, New York Times reports.
Scientists may be one step closer to tracing the exodus of modern humans out of Africa. New genetic evidence points to a northern route leading out of the continent, which may just settle a long-disputed question concerning human migrations.
Phase 1 Trial for New Ebola Vaccine It's not in the news as much, but the Ebola outbreak is still an ongoing struggle in parts of West Africa. In response many groups around the world are attempting to rush research on a potential vaccine.
Though the two may seem entirely unrelated at first, one being a long misunderstood mystery and the other the byproduct of climate change, a new study reveals that a zebra’s stripes may too be caused by environmental factors making our sea levels rise.
While they're not alone in the vast wonders of Africa's abundant plains, zebras in particular have posed quite a quandary to scientists in past decades. Their unique striping of black and white have always sparked interest in their study, but the ever failing hypotheses quickly discouraged the discovery of their significance-if any at all. But while many researchers have failed in associating the stripes with social order of a herd or even as camouflaging tactics in the wild, a new study published this month in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers have discovered that the stripes are much more like a tan than we think.
The tallest terrestrial animal on the planet, giraffes, occupy the scorching plains of Sub-Saharan Africa. And, despite popular knowledge, "giraffe" is what scientists like to call an umbrella common name, consisting of, at least 9 different subspecies. And while some subspecies are more abundant than the rest, one particular subspecies that is quite endangered has new hope on the horizon. On December 29th, a Rothschild's giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis thornicrofti) calf, named Zahra, was born at the Chester Zoo in England, added some new genetic variation into the small population left in captivity of Rothschild's giraffes.
In what perhaps may be the most shocking upset in the news this week, ecologist revealed last Friday, Dec. 5, that giraffes may be headed towards extinction – and it’s in part due to a lack of awareness of dangers facing the African species. While contemporary studies in Africa’s central savannahs have revealed the collected threats that human encroachment , habitat loss and black market poaching has posed to wildlife communities, researchers say that giraffes are amongst some of the hardest hit populations in the long list of black market species. And without significant change in the way giraffes are protected, they may disappear all together within a matter years.