The Most Interesting Animal News Stories From 2018

Pride Of Lions Eats Group Of Poachers Alive In South African Game Reserve

Sibuya Game ReserveThe lions are the watchers and guardians of the Sibuya Game Reserve.

Over the last few years, the Sibuya Game Reserve in South Africa has faced several intrusions by poachers attracted to the reserve’s vast diversity of animals.

Now, in what some are calling an act of nature’s karma, a group of poachers who broke into the reserve to hunt rhinos has been devoured by a pack of hungry lions.

The park’s owner, Nick Fox, believes that the group of poachers were eaten alive by the pride of lions sometime between the evening of July 1 and the early morning of July 2.

And so little of their remains were left, investigators weren’t even sure how many people were killed.

“The only body part we found was one skull and one bit of pelvis, everything else was completely gone,” said Fox.

However, they suspect that it was three men because they found three sets of shoes and gloves. Additionally, typical rhino poaching groups are usually made up of three people.
On the South African black market, the horn of a white rhino reportedly sells for up to $3,000 a pound. And in other areas like China, the demand for rhino horns (which are made of keratin) and ivory from elephants comes from their increased use in carvings for artwork.

A search party enlisted the help of a helicopter to scout for any survivors, though they haven’t found any thus far. Detectives are also investigating to determine the exact number of people eaten.

These Worms Unfrozen After More Than 30,000 Years Are Now The Oldest Living Animals On Earth

The Siberian TimesThe two nematode worms after they’d been thawed.

Can you imagine being awoken from a 42,000-year nap? Well, that’s exactly how one recently reanimated worm in Russia is feeling right now.

A new report, published this year in Doklady Biological Sciences, revealed that two prehistoric roundworms — one 42,000 years old and another 32,000 years old — were miraculously brought back to life in Petri dishes.

During the study, a team of Russian scientists from four different institutions worked together with researchers from Princeton University’s Department of Geosciences to analyze 300 prehistoric worms and, of those 300, just two “were shown to contain viable nematodes.”

“We have obtained the first data demonstrating the capability of multicellular organisms for longterm cryobiosis in permafrost deposits of the Arctic,” the animal news report stated.

Both of the worms were found in permafrost in Yakutia, a frigid region of Russia near Siberia. According to IFLScience, to revive the worms after they were removed from the glacial samples, they were placed in a 20 degree Celsius culture with agar and given E. coli bacteria as food.

“After being defrosted, the nematodes showed signs of life,” the report said. “They started moving and eating.”
The worms, both believed to be females, were resurrected in Moscow at the Institute of Physico-Chemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science in Moscow. They are living, eating, and moving for the first time since the Pleistocene Epoch.

The ability of these worms to come back to life after such a long period of time truly highlights the power of the nematode. The incredibly diverse phylum is known for its ability to withstand especially extreme conditions that ordinary organisms could never survive.

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