Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

Accept Deny

GoGreenNation news

The real dolphin tale: They’re smart, sometimes vicious and highly sexed

News Feed
Saturday, June 1, 2024

SARASOTA, Fla. — The research vessel Martha Jane glided slowly across the teal waters of Sarasota Bay on Florida’s Gulf Coast under a cloudless sky tailor-made for tourists on a recent day. “There’s 2094!” one of the scientists on the boat called out. “She’s still with us!”The bottlenose dolphin known to researchers as 2094 had poked her dorsal fin out of the water for only a few seconds, but that was enough to identify her as a young female that had been the focus of a dramatic rescue from a fishing line a year ago.No. 2094 is one of thousands of dolphins registered in the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program’s database, each individual identified by the nicks and notches on their dorsal — or back — fins.The world’s longest-running study of a wild dolphin population, the Sarasota effort has sighted and recorded more than 5,750 dolphins and made the shallow waters of Sarasota Bay a living laboratory for 53 years.Among the program’s key findings: The individual dolphins here live in specific “neighborhoods” generation after generation, forming a mosaic of adjacent communities along Florida’s west coast. Many males forge buddy pairs for protection and stay together for life. And hetero- and same-sex interactions are used to establish and maintain social bonds over dolphin life spans that can stretch well past the age of 60.Not ‘humans in wet suits’In 1970, when the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program launched, dolphins were the subject of numerous romantic myths, including that they were intelligent and kind — animals that could be friends and even movie stars.People viewed them as “humans in wet suits,” said Randy Wells, the director of the program, which is administered by the Brookfield Zoo Chicago.People viewed them as “humans in wet suits.”— Randy Wells, director of the Sarasota Dolphin Research ProgramBut research has shown that, while they are highly intelligent, they have sensory systems very different from those of humans and a complex and unique means of communication. Listening stations the program installed around Sarasota Bay have recorded thousands of hours of dolphin vocalizations, and the team’s work with collaborators has shown that each dolphin has its own whistle, used for life like a name.People also once believed that dolphins liked being near humans and benefited from food handouts. But the researchers have found that interactions with people can have dire consequences — including raising risks of the marine mammals ingesting inappropriate food, being exposed to spinning boat propellers and becoming entangled in fishing gear.When the program started, no one knew whether dolphins generally ranged widely or stayed local — key information for wildlife managers. Using radio tracking devices and other tools, the researchers found that the roughly 170 dolphins that live in Sarasota Bay are organized in a definable range that is their home for life.Generation after generation also stay in the same area and raise families. One 67-year-old female has given birth in a particular neighborhood at least 12 times, the program says. Before the study began, scientists had no idea bottlenose dolphins could live into their 60s in the wild.A day in the life of a Sarasota Bay dolphin is one of constant motion in which they feed on a variety of fish, travel, socialize with others and, finally, rest. Program scientists have observed the dolphins moving fluidly in and out of groups, depending on whom they encounter.Nurseries made up of mothers and their youngest calves will swim together for a while, and independent juveniles join up with each other to practice skills needed later in life. During these activities, the dolphins are seeking prey while also keeping an eye out for predatory sharks and boat traffic as well as other disruptive human activities.Sarasota Bay dolphins dine on a wide variety of fish, the data shows. They use their superb hearing to target prey fish such as toadfish and sea trout, which produce sounds.Wells said that over the years, the team consistently documented pairs of the same males surfacing together, in a sort of buddy system that begins around the age of 10 and can last a lifetime. The pairs — which are unusual among mammals — protect the animals from predators when they’re resting. And during mating, one dolphin often stands guard while the other spends time with a female. When temporarily separated, the dolphins sometimes call to each other, apparently to maintain contact.Bottlenose dolphins are very active sexually, Wells says. Both hetero- and homosexual interactions are used to create social bonds, he says, not just for procreation.The Sarasota Bay study animals are urban dolphins, living among a burgeoning human population and nearly constant exposure to boat traffic.“Dolphins can be big, mean jerks.”— Gretchen Lovewell, program manager of Mote Marine Laboratory’s Stranding Investigations ProgramFifty thousand boats are registered in the dolphins’ home range within the bay, and boats pass within 100 yards of a dolphin an average of every six minutes during the day. Program staff were among the first to document the threats of death and serious injury to the dolphins caused by interactions with recreational fishing.“Interaction with fisheries is the most common cause of death,” said Gretchen Lovewell, program manager of Mote Marine Laboratory’s Stranding Investigations Program, based in Sarasota. Lovewell works closely with Wells’s team to help fill in the dolphins’ life story, studying the animals’ skeletons to determine cause of death — and how they lived.The bones sometimes reflect a darker side of dolphin behavior, one that belies the smiling caricature perpetuated by sympathetic images. The animals have powerful tails and beaks and use them against each other during conflicts. With males reaching more than nine feet in length and weighing as much as 660 pounds, such conflicts can be lethal.Some of the bones of calves that Lovewell has examined show signs of being bashed by adult dolphins — deep teeth marks, broken bones and bruising around the babies’ jaws where adults apparently rammed them.“Dolphins can be big, mean jerks,” Lovewell says.Besides tangling with recreational fishing, the dolphins increasingly grapple with other threats. After recent severe outbreaks of a harmful algal bloom known as red tide, the dolphins altered their ranging and social patterns, interacting with anglers and boaters more often, with sometimes fatal results.Dolphin encounters with sharks also rose, probably because red tide’s lethal effects on the fish that sharks normally consume caused them to prey on dolphins instead. However, researchers have documented more healed shark bite marks on paired males than single males, leading scientists to believe wounded paired dolphins survive attacks more often.Climate change and blubberClimate change has scientists concerned for the dolphins’ future. The animals’ blubber thickness and lipid content go up and down in response to seasonal temperature changes, the program team has found. “With climate change, rising water temperatures in areas where they live come close to the dolphins’ body temperature, and there’s a limit to how much blubber they can shed to adapt,” Wells said.In some ways, dolphins can serve as canaries in a global ocean coal mine.“Understanding dolphin health, behavior and biology helps us conserve dolphins in the wild and better protect their populations,” said Michael Adkesson, president and CEO of the Brookfield Zoo Chicago, which oversees animal conservation projects around the world, including the Sarasota program. “It also provides valuable information on the overall health of the oceans and marine landscapes that impact countless other species, including humans.”Techniques developed by the team in Sarasota Bay have been used to help other scientists unravel the structure of dolphin populations and conserve them across the country and around the world, including endangered bottlenose dolphins in Greece and Mekong River dolphins in Cambodia.Small franciscana dolphins that were dying in local fishermen’s nets in two Argentina bays were tracked in collaboration with Argentine scientists using the program’s satellite-linked transmitters, determining that the animals’ range closely matched the fishing zone. The findings have been used by the fishermen and the Argentine government to help protect the dolphins.Data gathered by the program over the years has contributed to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration management plans for the species and has guided officials’ handling of environmental disasters such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.The Sarasota-based method of temporarily restraining wild dolphins for health assessments was central to understanding the impact of the spill in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay, which was heavily oiled by the spill. The dolphins were found to have significant levels of adrenal toxicity and lung disease, among other disorders related to petroleum hydrocarbon exposure and toxicity.“The techniques and long-term data coming from Sarasota served as the baseline for the data obtained in Barataria Bay,” said Michael Moore, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.“Teams and tools developed by the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program were deployed in the spill area and led to a whole new understanding of how these disasters impact marine mammals,” Moore added. “None of this would have happened without the tools Randy Wells and his team developed.”

Read more

SARASOTA, Fla. — The research vessel Martha Jane glided slowly across the teal waters of Sarasota Bay on Florida’s Gulf Coast under a cloudless sky tailor-made for tourists on a recent day. “There’s 2094!” one of the scientists on the boat called out. “She’s still with us!”

The bottlenose dolphin known to researchers as 2094 had poked her dorsal fin out of the water for only a few seconds, but that was enough to identify her as a young female that had been the focus of a dramatic rescue from a fishing line a year ago.

No. 2094 is one of thousands of dolphins registered in the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program’s database, each individual identified by the nicks and notches on their dorsal — or back — fins.

The world’s longest-running study of a wild dolphin population, the Sarasota effort has sighted and recorded more than 5,750 dolphins and made the shallow waters of Sarasota Bay a living laboratory for 53 years.

Among the program’s key findings: The individual dolphins here live in specific “neighborhoods” generation after generation, forming a mosaic of adjacent communities along Florida’s west coast. Many males forge buddy pairs for protection and stay together for life. And hetero- and same-sex interactions are used to establish and maintain social bonds over dolphin life spans that can stretch well past the age of 60.

Not ‘humans in wet suits’

In 1970, when the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program launched, dolphins were the subject of numerous romantic myths, including that they were intelligent and kind — animals that could be friends and even movie stars.

People viewed them as “humans in wet suits,” said Randy Wells, the director of the program, which is administered by the Brookfield Zoo Chicago.

People viewed them as “humans in wet suits.”

— Randy Wells, director of the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program

But research has shown that, while they are highly intelligent, they have sensory systems very different from those of humans and a complex and unique means of communication. Listening stations the program installed around Sarasota Bay have recorded thousands of hours of dolphin vocalizations, and the team’s work with collaborators has shown that each dolphin has its own whistle, used for life like a name.

People also once believed that dolphins liked being near humans and benefited from food handouts. But the researchers have found that interactions with people can have dire consequences — including raising risks of the marine mammals ingesting inappropriate food, being exposed to spinning boat propellers and becoming entangled in fishing gear.

When the program started, no one knew whether dolphins generally ranged widely or stayed local — key information for wildlife managers. Using radio tracking devices and other tools, the researchers found that the roughly 170 dolphins that live in Sarasota Bay are organized in a definable range that is their home for life.

Generation after generation also stay in the same area and raise families. One 67-year-old female has given birth in a particular neighborhood at least 12 times, the program says. Before the study began, scientists had no idea bottlenose dolphins could live into their 60s in the wild.

A day in the life of a Sarasota Bay dolphin is one of constant motion in which they feed on a variety of fish, travel, socialize with others and, finally, rest. Program scientists have observed the dolphins moving fluidly in and out of groups, depending on whom they encounter.

Nurseries made up of mothers and their youngest calves will swim together for a while, and independent juveniles join up with each other to practice skills needed later in life. During these activities, the dolphins are seeking prey while also keeping an eye out for predatory sharks and boat traffic as well as other disruptive human activities.

Sarasota Bay dolphins dine on a wide variety of fish, the data shows. They use their superb hearing to target prey fish such as toadfish and sea trout, which produce sounds.

Wells said that over the years, the team consistently documented pairs of the same males surfacing together, in a sort of buddy system that begins around the age of 10 and can last a lifetime. The pairs — which are unusual among mammals — protect the animals from predators when they’re resting. And during mating, one dolphin often stands guard while the other spends time with a female. When temporarily separated, the dolphins sometimes call to each other, apparently to maintain contact.

Bottlenose dolphins are very active sexually, Wells says. Both hetero- and homosexual interactions are used to create social bonds, he says, not just for procreation.

The Sarasota Bay study animals are urban dolphins, living among a burgeoning human population and nearly constant exposure to boat traffic.

“Dolphins can be big, mean jerks.”

— Gretchen Lovewell, program manager of Mote Marine Laboratory’s Stranding Investigations Program

Fifty thousand boats are registered in the dolphins’ home range within the bay, and boats pass within 100 yards of a dolphin an average of every six minutes during the day. Program staff were among the first to document the threats of death and serious injury to the dolphins caused by interactions with recreational fishing.

“Interaction with fisheries is the most common cause of death,” said Gretchen Lovewell, program manager of Mote Marine Laboratory’s Stranding Investigations Program, based in Sarasota. Lovewell works closely with Wells’s team to help fill in the dolphins’ life story, studying the animals’ skeletons to determine cause of death — and how they lived.

The bones sometimes reflect a darker side of dolphin behavior, one that belies the smiling caricature perpetuated by sympathetic images. The animals have powerful tails and beaks and use them against each other during conflicts. With males reaching more than nine feet in length and weighing as much as 660 pounds, such conflicts can be lethal.

Some of the bones of calves that Lovewell has examined show signs of being bashed by adult dolphins — deep teeth marks, broken bones and bruising around the babies’ jaws where adults apparently rammed them.

“Dolphins can be big, mean jerks,” Lovewell says.

Besides tangling with recreational fishing, the dolphins increasingly grapple with other threats. After recent severe outbreaks of a harmful algal bloom known as red tide, the dolphins altered their ranging and social patterns, interacting with anglers and boaters more often, with sometimes fatal results.

Dolphin encounters with sharks also rose, probably because red tide’s lethal effects on the fish that sharks normally consume caused them to prey on dolphins instead. However, researchers have documented more healed shark bite marks on paired males than single males, leading scientists to believe wounded paired dolphins survive attacks more often.

Climate change and blubber

Climate change has scientists concerned for the dolphins’ future. The animals’ blubber thickness and lipid content go up and down in response to seasonal temperature changes, the program team has found. “With climate change, rising water temperatures in areas where they live come close to the dolphins’ body temperature, and there’s a limit to how much blubber they can shed to adapt,” Wells said.

In some ways, dolphins can serve as canaries in a global ocean coal mine.

“Understanding dolphin health, behavior and biology helps us conserve dolphins in the wild and better protect their populations,” said Michael Adkesson, president and CEO of the Brookfield Zoo Chicago, which oversees animal conservation projects around the world, including the Sarasota program. “It also provides valuable information on the overall health of the oceans and marine landscapes that impact countless other species, including humans.”

Techniques developed by the team in Sarasota Bay have been used to help other scientists unravel the structure of dolphin populations and conserve them across the country and around the world, including endangered bottlenose dolphins in Greece and Mekong River dolphins in Cambodia.

Small franciscana dolphins that were dying in local fishermen’s nets in two Argentina bays were tracked in collaboration with Argentine scientists using the program’s satellite-linked transmitters, determining that the animals’ range closely matched the fishing zone. The findings have been used by the fishermen and the Argentine government to help protect the dolphins.

Data gathered by the program over the years has contributed to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration management plans for the species and has guided officials’ handling of environmental disasters such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The Sarasota-based method of temporarily restraining wild dolphins for health assessments was central to understanding the impact of the spill in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay, which was heavily oiled by the spill. The dolphins were found to have significant levels of adrenal toxicity and lung disease, among other disorders related to petroleum hydrocarbon exposure and toxicity.

“The techniques and long-term data coming from Sarasota served as the baseline for the data obtained in Barataria Bay,” said Michael Moore, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

“Teams and tools developed by the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program were deployed in the spill area and led to a whole new understanding of how these disasters impact marine mammals,” Moore added. “None of this would have happened without the tools Randy Wells and his team developed.”

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Related News

Complex Life May Have Evolved Multiple Times

Controversial evidence hints that complex life might have emerged hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought—and possibly more than once

In his laboratory at the University of Poitiers in France, Abderrazak El Albani contemplates the rock glittering in his hands. To the untrained eye, the specimen resembles a piece of golden tortellini embedded in a small slab of black shale. To El Albani, a geochemist, the pasta-shaped component looks like the remains of a complex life-form that became fossilized when the sparkling mineral pyrite replaced the organism’s tissues after death. But the rock is hundreds of millions of years older than the oldest accepted fossils of advanced multicellular life. The question of whether it is a paradigm-shifting fossil or merely an ordinary lump of fool’s gold has consumed El Albani for the past 17 years.In January 2008 El Albani, a talkative French Moroccan, was picking over an exposed scrape of black shale outside the town of Franceville in Gabon. Lying under rolling hills of tropical savanna, cut in places by muddy rivers lined by jungle, the rock layers of the Francevillian Basin are up to 2.14 billion years old. The strata are laced with enough manganese to support a massive mining industry. But El Albani was there pursuing riches of a different kind.Most sedimentary rocks of that age are thoroughly “cooked,” transformed beyond recognition by the brutal heat and pressure of deep burial and deeper time. Limestone is converted to marble, sandstone to quartzite. But through an accident of geology, the Francevillian rocks were protected, and their sediments have maintained something of their original shape, crystal structure and mineral composition. As a result, they offer a rare window into a stretch of time when, according to paleontologists, oxygen was in much shorter supply and Earth’s environments would have been hostile to multicellular organisms like the ones that surround us today.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.El Albani had been invited out by the Gabonese government to conduct a geological survey of the ancient sediments. He spent half a day wandering the five-meter-deep layer of the quarry, peeling apart slabs of shale as if opening pages of a book. The rocks were filled with gleaming bits of pyrite that occurred in a variety of bizarre shapes. El Albani couldn’t immediately explain their appearance by any common sedimentary process. Baffled, he took a few samples with him when he returned to Poitiers. Two months later he scraped together funding to head back to the Francevillian quarry. This time he went home with more than 200 kilograms of specimens in his luggage.In 2010 El Albani and a team of his colleagues made a bombshell claim based on those finds: the strangely shaped specimens they’d recovered in Franceville were fossils of complex life-forms—organisms made up of multiple, specialized cells—that lived in colonies long before any such thing is supposed to have existed. If the scientists were right, the traditional account of life’s beginning, which holds that complex life originated once around 1.6 billion years ago, is wrong. And not only did complex multicellular life appear earlier than previously thought, but it might have done so multiple times, sprouting seedlings that were wiped away by a volatile Earth eons before our lineage took root. El Albani and his colleagues have pursued this argument ever since.Rocks from the Francevillian Basin in Gabon are filled with gleaming shapes that have been interpreted as fossils of complex life-forms from more than two billion years ago.Abderrazak El Albani/University of PoitiersThe potential implications of their claims are immense—they stand to rewrite nearly the entire history of life on Earth. They’re also incredibly controversial. Almost immediately, prominent researchers argued that El Albani’s specimens are actually concretions of natural pyrite that only look like fossils. Mentions of the Francevillian rocks in the scientific literature tend to be accompanied by words such as “uncertain” and “questionable.”Yet even as most experts regard the Francevillian specimens with a skeptical eye, a slew of recent discoveries from other teams have challenged older, simpler stories about the origin of life. Together with these new finds, the sparkling rock El Albani held in his hands has raised some very tricky questions. What conditions did complex life need to emerge? How can we recognize remains of life from deep time when organisms then would have been entirely different from those that we know? And where do the burdens of proof lie for establishing that complex life arose far earlier than previously thought—and more than just once?By most accounts, life on Earth first emerged around four billion years ago. In the beginning, the oxygen that sustains most species today had yet to suffuse the world’s atmosphere and oceans. Single-celled microbes reigned supreme. In the anoxic waters, bacteria spread and fed on minerals around hydrothermal vents. Then, maybe 2.5 billion years ago, so-called cyanobacteria that gathered in mats and gave rise to great stone domes called stromatolites began feeding themselves using the power of the sun. In doing so, they kick-started a slow transformation of the planet, pumping Earth’s seas and atmosphere full of oxygen as a by-product of their feeding.That transformation would eventually devastate the first, oxygen-averse microbial residents of Earth. But amid a gathering oxygen apocalypse, something new appeared. Roughly two billion years ago a symbiotic union between two groups of single-celled organisms—one of which was able to process oxygen—gave rise to the earliest eukaryotes: larger cells with a membrane-bound nucleus, distinctive biochemistry and an aptitude for sticking together. Somewhere in the vast sweep of time between then and now, in something of a glorious accident, those eukaryotes began banding together in specialized ways, forming intricate and increasingly complex multicellular organisms: algae, seaweeds, plants, fungi and animals.Scholars have long endeavored to understand when that transition from the single-celled to the multicellular happened. By the mid-19th century researchers noticed that the fossil record got considerably livelier at a certain point, which we now know was around 540 million years ago. During this period, called the Cambrian, multicellular eukaryotes seemed to explode in diversity out of nowhere. Suddenly the seas were filled with trilobites, meter-long predatory arthropods, and even the earliest forerunners of vertebrates, the backboned lineage of animals to which we humans belong.But it wasn’t long before scientists began finding older hints of multicellular organisms, suggesting that complex life proliferated before the Cambrian. In 1868 a geologist proposed that tiny, disk-shaped objects from sediments more than 500 million years old in Newfoundland were fossils—only for other researchers to dismiss them as inorganic concretions. Similarly ancient fossils from elsewhere in the world turned up over the first half of the 20th century. The most famous of them—discovered in Australia’s Ediacara Hills by geologist Reginald Claude Sprigg, who took them to be jellyfish—helped to push the dawn of complex life back to least 600 million years ago, into what came to be called the Ediacaran period.Still, a gap of more than a billion years separates the earliest known eukaryotes and their great flowering in the Ediacaran. The contrast between the apparent evolutionary stasis of the bulk of this period and the eventful periods before and after it is so stark that researchers variously refer to it as “the dullest time in Earth’s history” and the “boring billion.” Why didn’t many-celled eukaryotes start diversifying earlier, wonders Susannah Porter, a paleontologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara? Why didn’t they explode until the Ediacaran?Researchers have historically blamed environmental conditions on ancient Earth for the delay. The dawn of the Ediacaran, they note, coincided with a noticeable shift in global conditions 635 million years ago. In the wake of a world-spanning glacial event—the so-called Snowball Earth period, when great sheets of ice scraped the continents and covered the seas—the available nutrients in the oceans shifted amid a surge in levels of available oxygen. The friendlier water chemistry and more abundant oxygen provided new opportunities for eukaryotic organisms that could exploit them. They diversified quickly and dramatically, first into the stationary animals of the Ediacaran and eventually into the more active grazers and hunters of the Cambrian. It’s a commonly cited explanation for the timing of life’s big bang, one that the field tends to accept, Porter says. And it may well be correct. But if you asked El Albani, he’d say it’s not the whole story—far from it.As a kid growing up in Marrakech, El Albani wasn’t interested in geology; football and medicine held more appeal. He drifted into the field when he was 20 largely because it let him spend time outside. He then fell in love with it in part because like his father, a police officer, he enjoys a good investigation, working out what happened in some distant event by laying out multiple lines of evidence.In the case of the ancient Gabon “fossils,” the first line of evidence involves the unusual geology of the Francevillian formation. Unlike most sedimentary rocks laid down two billion years ago—fated for deep burial and transformative heat and pressure—the Francevillian strata sit within a bowl of much tougher rock, which prevented them from being cooked. The result: shales able to preserve both biological forms and something close to the primary chemicals and minerals present in the marine sediments. “It gives us the possibility of actually reconstructing this environment that existed in the past, at a scale that we don’t see anywhere around this time,” says Ernest Chi Fru, a biogeochemist at Cardiff University in Wales, who has worked with El Albani on the Francevillian material. If you were searching for fossils of relatively large, soft-bodied multicellular organisms from this period, the Francevillian is exactly the kind of place you’d look in.“I don’t know what we need to show to prove, to convince.” —Abderrazak El Albani University of PoitiersEl Albani’s team has recovered quite a few such specimens. Three narrow rooms in the geology building at the University of Poitiers house the Francevillian collection. More than 6,000 pieces—all of them collected from the same five-meter scrape of Gabonese shale—sprawl over wood shelves and tables and glass display cabinets, the black slabs arranged in puzzle-piece configurations under white walls. El Albani is eager to show them off. He plucks out rock after rock, no sooner highlighting one when he’s distracted by another. Here are the ripplelike remnants of bacterial mats. There are the specimens encrusted with pyrite: the common, tortellinilike “lobate” forms that made the cover of the journal Nature in 2010, “tubate” shapes that resemble stethoscopes and spoons, and other forms similar to strings of pearls several centimeters long. There are strange, wormlike tracks that the team has suggested could be traces of movement. There are nonpyritized remains, too: sand-dollar-like circles ranging from one to several centimeters across imprinted on the shales.“Et voilà,” El Albani says, tapping one specimen and then another. “You see? This is totally different.” The sheer variety of forms is why he’s always surprised that people could look at them and assume they aren’t in fact fossils. Nevertheless, his lab has been exploring ways to attempt to prove their identity.One approach El Albani’s lab has taken recently is looking into the chemistry of the specimens. Eukaryotic organisms tend to take up lighter forms, or isotopes, of elements such as zinc rather than heavy ones. When examining the sand-dollar-shaped impressions in 2023, the team found that the zinc isotopes in them were mostly lighter forms, suggesting the impressions could have been made by eukaryotes. (An independent team ran a similar study of one of the pyritized specimens and reached a similar conclusion.)Earlier this year El Albani’s Ph.D. student Anna El Khoury reported another potential chemical signal for life in the contested rocks. Organisms in areas thick with arsenic sometimes absorb the poisonous chemical instead of necessary nutrients such as phosphate. Whereas confirmed mineral concretions from the Francevillian show a random distribution of arsenic in the rock, the possibly organic specimens El Khoury looked at showed dramatic concentrations of the toxin only in certain parts of the specimens, as would be expected if an organism’s cells were working to isolate the absorbed substance from more vulnerable tissues.What El Albani and his colleagues find most telling, however, are the environmental conditions that are now known to have prevailed when the putative fossils formed. The sediments that make up the Francevillian strata appear to have been deposited in something like an inland sea. The rocks show signals of dramatic underwater volcanism and hydrothermal vent activity from long before the first fossil specimens appear, which left the basin awash in nutrients such as phosphorus and zinc that are crucial for the chemical processes that power living cells.Chemical analyses of the Francevillian specimens suggest that they are the remains of eukaryotic organisms.Abderrazak El Albani/University of PoitiersWhat is more, the Francevillian samples, like the Ediacaran fossils, are from a time after a major period of ice ages: the Huronian glaciation event, wherein a surge in oxygen levels and a reduction in the greenhouse effect 2.4 billion to 2.1 billion years ago unleashed massive walls of ice from the poles. According to some analyses, that spike in oxygen levels might have hit a peak close to that in the Ediacaran before eventually falling again. In other words, the same environmental conditions that are thought to have allowed complex life to flower during the Ediacaran also occurred far earlier and could have set the stage for the emergence of Francevillian life-forms.Talk with the people in El Albani’s lab about the Francevillian, and they’ll paint you a picture of an alien world. Ancient shorelines run under the brooding gaze of distant mountains, silent but for the wind and the waves. Thick mats of bacteria stretch across the underwater sediments. Swim down 20 meters offshore, through waters thick with nutrients and heavy metals such as arsenic, and you might see colonies of spherical and tube-shaped organisms clustered amid the mats. In the oxygen-rich water column, soft-bodied organisms drift like jellyfish, sinking now and then into the mire. Below the silt, unseen movers leave spiraling mucus trails in the ooze.What were these strange forms of life? Not plants or animals as we understand them. Based on the sizes, shapes and geochemical signatures of the putative fossils, El Albani thinks they might belong to a lineage of colonial eukaryotes—perhaps something resembling a slime mold—that independently developed the complex multicellular processes needed to survive at large sizes. These colonial organisms would have been comparatively early offshoots of the eukaryotic tree, making them an entirely independent flowering of complex multicellular life from the Ediacaran bloom that took place more than a billion years later.The Francevillian organisms flourished for a time, but they did not last. After a few millennia, underwater volcanism started up again, and oxygen levels crashed. A billion years would pass before another global icebox phase and another oxygen spike gave multicellular eukaryotes another shot at emergence.This story flies in the face of decades of thinking about how complex life arose. El Albani’s team argues that rather than long epochs of stillness and stasis, rather than the rise of complex life being an extraordinary and long-brewing accident in Earth’s long history, multicellular organisms might not have been a singular innovation. “It seems to me that [the Francevillian material] is showing that complex life might have evolved twice in history,” Chi Fru says. And if ancient complex life can emerge so quickly when conditions are right, who knows where else in Earth’s rocks—or another planet’s—signs of another blossoming might turn up next? “If,” of course, being the operative word.Skeptics of El Albani’s Francevillian “fossils”—and there are many—have tended to gather around similar sticking points, says Leigh Anne Riedman, a paleontologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. For one thing, the bizarre shapes of the rocks show a lot more variety than tends to be seen in accepted early complex multicellular forms, and with their amorphous, asymmetrical features, they do not scan easily as organisms.The pyritized nature of the rocks may also be cause for concern. Colonies of bacteria living in oxygen-poor environments often deposit pyrite as a by-product. Although such colonies can grow a sparkling rind around biological material, the mineral concretions can also develop on their own, developing lifelike appearances without any biological process. Critics of the Francevillian hypothesis point to a well-known phenomenon of pyrite “suns” or “flowers,” superficially fossil-like accumulations of minerals that occasionally turn up in sediments rich in actual fossils. Shuhai Xiao, a paleontologist at Virginia Tech specializing in the Precambrian era, notes that the Francevillian material resembles similar-looking inorganic structures from Michigan that date to 1.1 billion years ago.If ancient complex life can emerge so quickly when conditions are right, who knows where else signs of another blossoming might turn up next?Even scientists who are more amenable to the idea that El Albani’s specimens are fossils tend to conclude that the pyritized specimens are probably just the remains of bacterial mats, not complex life-forms. An independent radiation of colonial eukaryotes at such an age? That’s a hard sell. “I have no problem with there being oxygen oases and there being certain groups that proliferated during those periods,” Riedman says. But the idea that they would have proliferated to that size—a jump in scale that another researcher equated to that between a human and an aircraft carrier—without any similar fossils turning up elsewhere gives her pause. “It just seems a little bit of a stretch.”Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, however. In the case of the Proterozoic fossil record, the lack of other candidate fossils of complex life as old as those from the Francevillian may reflect a lack of effort in searching for them. That is, the apparent quiet of the deep past may be an illusion—less the “boring billion” than, as Porter puts it, the “barely sampled billion.”The dullness of vast chunks of the Proterozoic has been a self-fulfilling prophecy, Riedman says. After all, who wants to devote time and scarce funding to a period when nothing much is supposed to have happened? “That name, man,” Riedman says of the boring billion. “We’ve got to kill it. Kill it with fire.”Recent findings may help reform the Proterozoic’s cursed reputation—and cast the Francevillian rocks in a more plausible light. Just last year Lanyun Miao of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and her colleagues announced that they had discovered the oldest unequivocal multicellular eukaryotes in 1.6-billion-year-old rocks from northern China. The fossils preserve small, threadlike organisms. They’re a far cry from the much larger, more elaborate forms associated with complex multicellularity. But they show that these simpler kinds of multicellular life existed some 500 million years earlier than previously hypothesized.There’s good reason to think the roots of the eukaryote family tree could run considerably deeper than that. Analyses of genome sequences and fossils have hinted that the earliest common ancestor of all living eukaryotes may have appeared as long as 1.9 billion years ago.Critics argue that the forms evident in the Francevillian rocks are merely mineral concretions, not fossils of complex eukaryotic organisms.Abderrazak El Albani/University of PoitiersAnd complex multicellularity itself may develop surprisingly fast. In a fascinating experiment published a few years ago, a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology was able to get single-celled eukaryotes—in this case, yeasts—to chain together in multicellular forms visible to the naked eye in just two years. These findings, along with the growing fossil record, suggest to some researchers that multicellular eukaryotes have a deeper history than is generally recognized.But recognizing early life in the rock is notoriously tricky. Brooke Johnson, a paleontologist at the University of Liège in Belgium, has visited Ediacaran outcrops in the U.K. with his colleagues and sometimes struggled to spot the specific fossils he knows are there.Assessing unfamiliar structures is even more fraught. Researchers constantly second-guess themselves for fear of overinterpreting any given shape or shadow in the stone. The specter of crankhood—of being the kind of researcher who drives their work off a cliff by refusing to be proved wrong—hangs over everybody. “It’s very easy to get yourself tricked into thinking that you can see something that isn’t there, because you’re used to seeing a particular pattern,” Johnson says.One spring morning in 2023, while working through hundreds of samples of rock more than one billion years old from drill cores from Australia, Johnson knocked over one of the pieces. The rock rolled into a strip of sunlight cutting through the blinds. Johnson abruptly noticed structures picked out by the low-angle light like tiny, quilted chains across the surface of the stone. A careful reexamination of many of the drill cores—rocks many previous geologists had handled without comment—showed the structures were common across the samples.Johnson speaks cautiously about the structures and has yet to publish his findings on them formally. But he thinks they might be some type of colony-living eukaryote of a size significantly larger than the microscopic examples known from elsewhere in the early fossil record.The fact that Johnson noticed the structures in the drill core samples only by chance has shaken his initial skepticism of El Albani’s work. “Something like the Francevillian stuff, people might have found it already in other rocks and just not seen it,” he says. “It just might be because they haven’t looked at it in the right way.”The sheer vanity of forms is why El Albani is surprised that people could look at them and assume they aren’t fossils.Dealing with material like the Francevillian requires trying to understand a time when Earth looked virtually nothing like the world we know now, Porter says. Much of the history of multicellular life occurred across an abyss of time on what was effectively an alien planet, with environmental conditions that were remarkably different from those of the past 600 million years. These conditions affected life in ways that are still only dimly understood. And the further back in time one goes, the more likely it is that any fossils will be difficult to recognize, to say nothing of categorize.The temptation for the field to dismiss “fossil-ish” forms as mineral concretions or the product of some other nonbiological process rather than a biogenic one therefore exerts a nearly gravitational pull. “I would imagine they’re probably frustrated [and thinking], ‘Why isn’t everybody already excited about this and coming along with us?’” Riedman says of El Albani and his colleagues. “And we’re just like, ‘We’re stuck on step one, man. We haven’t gotten past the biogenic part.’”“I don’t know what we need to show to prove, to convince,” El Albani says, his expression hangdog. He’s sitting in his office below a poster of the cover of a June 2024 issue of Science in which he and his team published their discovery of a remarkable trilobite fossil. “There’s no trouble with trilobites,” he remarks wistfully. El Albani is not a bomb thrower by nature and is not in a rush to name names. But a visible exasperation creeps in when he discusses the Gabonese specimens, along with a tendency to simultaneously pick at and try to dismiss the wound.At the end of the day, it is a question not really of belief but of arguments, El Albani says. If his critics believe the Gabonese specimens are concretions, they need to try to prove that rather than simply asserting it. If they disagree that the rocks contain fossils of eukaryotes, nothing is stopping them from subjecting the specimens to their own analyses. So far he feels that nobody has published any research that takes their conclusions apart point by point and reckons with all the strands of evidence they’ve marshaled. “If I give my opinion that your iPhone is Samsung,” he says, pulling a phone across the desk, “I should explain why!”Porter, the U.C.S.B. paleontologist, agrees. She’s not convinced by the team’s arguments for what the Francevillian samples represent—an independent lineage of colonial multicellular organisms, swiftly flowering, swiftly snuffed out. But the idea that they’re all just mineral concretions has never satisfied her. If they’re concretions, that’s something researchers need to affirmatively show, she says. Doing so, after all, would add to the field’s knowledge about how pseudofossils form in a way that simply writing them off does not. “We don’t want to discourage people from publishing these weird structures that are difficult to understand,” Porter says.“It’s fine if they’re wrong,” Porter says of El Albani and his colleagues. Everyone is offering competing hypotheses, which are always subject to new evidence from the fossil record. In the end, “we’ll probably all be somewhat wrong about our interpretation, actually.”Seventeen years after El Albani first stopped to examine a glinting blob in the Gabonese shale, his lab shows no signs of slowing down. There are always more specimens to publish, avenues of research to pursue, dissertations to finish. Members of the group are working on closer comparisons between the different environments preserved in the Francevillian quarry and the Cambrian deposits, between the chemistry of the Gabonese specimens and fossils from the Ediacaran and the Burgess Shale.They’re also digging further into the question of how, precisely, chemistry can definitively distinguish between biological and nonbiological origins for a given specimen. Findings from research like theirs could eventually be used to evaluate rock samples from other planets. In 2020 a team of researchers reported that the NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity had photographed millimeter-size, sticklike structures in an ancient lake bed that resembled fossils left by miniature tunnelers on Earth. To date, it’s been impossible to disprove nonbiological explanations for their presence. But if a lab could develop a reliable conceptual model for chemically distinguishing between signs of life and nonlife, “you could apply this on Mars or another planet based on the sediment,” El Albani says.Every year El Albani and his team make the trip to Gabon to work the scrape of black stone that reoriented his life. There they comb the flaking shales, prying apart slabs, alert to the glimmer of pyrite or the soft, subtle impression of a circular form stamped in the petrified silt. Sometimes El Albani live-streams the expeditions to French schoolchildren, explaining to them how the cellular revolution that gave rise to them lies far back in the mists of prehistory. Sometimes he bends down to examine a glittering form in the rock. It’s probably something. The question, as always, is what.

Animals
Chemicals
Government

The pangolin: An armored, insect-controlling mammal

Covered in armor and curled in mystery, the pangolin is an endangered species in Asia and Africa. Learn more about them here. The post The pangolin: An armored, insect-controlling mammal first appeared on EarthSky.

Watch this video to learn more about the amazing pangolin. Image via A. J. T. Johnsingh/ WWF-India/ NCF/ Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Deep within the tropical forests of Asia and Africa lives a creature that seems to have stepped out of an ancient legend. With its body covered in scales, surprisingly long tongue and curious way of walking, the pangolin is one of the most unique animals on the planet. Yet despite its striking appearance, very few have seen one in the wild. And even fewer understand its vital role in maintaining the ecological balance of its habitat. Unfortunately, the pangolin faces a serious threat. Poaching and illegal trafficking have made it the most trafficked mammal in the world. How can such an unknown animal be on the brink of extinction? To protect it, we must first get to know it. Discover why the pangolin is a truly one-of-a-kind creature. The pangolin has an almost impenetrable armor The pangolin is easily recognized by its body covered in tough scales made of keratin, the same substance found in human fingernails and rhinoceroses’ horns. These scales form a natural armor that serves as its main defense mechanism. When threatened, the pangolin curls up into a nearly impenetrable ball, protecting its most vulnerable parts. There are eight recognized species of pangolin, four in Asia and four in Africa. Although they vary in size and color, they share certain physical characteristics. They have elongated bodies, short legs with strong claws, and some species have prehensile tails. They lack teeth, which may seem like a disadvantage, but they are perfectly adapted to their insect-based diet. To stay safe, pangolins curl up into a ball, covering themselves with their hard, protective scales. Image via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters/ Wikipedia (CC BY 2.0). How pangolins get around This animal has a curious way of walking. Although it’s a quadruped (with four legs), it often walks mainly on its hind legs, using its front legs only partially. This is because its front legs have very long, sharp claws. They use them to tear open termite mounds and anthills. To avoid wearing down or damaging these claws while moving, many pangolins walk with their wrists bent or even in a semi-upright position, relying more on their back legs. There are also arboreal (tree-dwelling) species of pangolins. These pangolins use their long, curved claws to climb tree bark. They also have prehensile tails that help them grip branches and maintain balance. Their bodies are muscular and flexible, allowing them to move easily among branches. Pangolins have strong, curved claws on their front legs, which they use for tearing open ant and termite nests. Their front legs are shorter and more muscular for digging, while their longer hind legs support walking, often with the front claws tucked under to protect them. Image via pma/ iNaturalist (CC BY 4.0). Pangolin vs. armadillo: How similar are they? At first glance, many people confuse pangolins with armadillos due to their armor-like bodies. However, these similarities are a perfect example of convergent evolution. This is when different species develop similar traits due to similar ecological needs, even though they are not closely related. Armadillos are native to the Americas, while pangolins live in Asia and Africa. Genetically and evolutionarily, they are quite distant: the armadillo belongs to the order Cingulata, along with sloths and anteaters, while the pangolin is the only member of its order (Pholidota), making it even more unique. Another major difference is their body covering. Pangolin scales are made of keratin, while the armadillo’s shell is bony and more rigid. Additionally, armadillos are strong swimmers and expert diggers, whereas pangolins are agile climbers, although some species also dig burrows. So, despite their outward similarity, they differ greatly in behavior, habitat and evolution. Many species of pangolins are excellent climbers. They use their strong claws and prehensile tails to grip branches and navigate trees with ease, especially in forested environments. What makes the pangolin special? Unlike other mammals, the pangolin has a slow metabolism and nocturnal habits, making it even harder to spot. It is a peaceful, solitary and very shy animal that prefers the quiet of forests or savannas to live its life undisturbed. The pangolin is a specialized insectivore, feeding almost exclusively on ants and termites. Its tongue can be longer than its own body! It uses its tongue to explore underground tunnels and consume insects at high speed. Plus, it produces sticky saliva to catch its prey effectively. Pangolins also play an important ecological role in their environment. They can consume up to 70 million insects per year, helping to control pests and maintain ecosystem balance. It’s a natural cleaner, essential for environmental health. Pangolins eat large numbers of ants and termites, helping to keep the environment balanced and naturally controlling pest populations. What are baby pangolins like? Despite their scaly appearance, pangolins are mammals, and their young are born alive after a gestation period of four to five months, depending on the species. Usually, the mother gives birth to a single baby, though in rare cases there may be two. At birth, the young weigh between 0.18 and 0.99 pounds (80 to 450 grams) and are already covered in scales, although they are soft and pinkish at first. Over the following days, the scales harden, forming the protective armor that defines the species. Pangolin babies are born with their eyes open and have a remarkable ability to cling to their mother from the start. During the first weeks of life, the baby stays very close to the mother. When the mother moves, the baby clings tightly to her tail, and when resting, she curls up around the baby to shield it with her body and scales. This maternal behavior is essential for the baby’s survival, as it relies completely on its mother for nourishment and protection. In the early months, it feeds exclusively on her milk, although later it begins to eat ants and termites. Sadly, both baby and adult pangolins face serious threats. Illegal trafficking – driven by the demand for their scales and meat in Asian and African markets – has put all pangolin species at risk of extinction. This is especially critical because pangolins reproduce very slowly, making population recovery extremely difficult. Mother pangolins protect their babies by curling around them, forming a protective ball with their tough, scaly bodies. The most trafficked mammal in the world: the tragedy of illegal trade Despite their shy and peaceful nature, pangolins have drawn the wrong kind of attention: they are the most trafficked mammal in the world. It is estimated that millions have been captured over recent decades, particularly in Asia, due largely to unfounded myths about their supposed medicinal properties. In some Asian cultures – especially in China and Vietnam – there is a false belief that their scales can cure diseases such as asthma, arthritis or even cancer, despite a total lack of scientific evidence. Additionally, their meat is considered a rare delicacy and a status symbol. These myths have led to indiscriminate hunting of the pangolin. This trafficking has pushed all eight pangolin species to the brink of extinction. Some, such as the Chinese and Sunda pangolins, are already critically endangered. Habitat loss, uncontrolled hunting and a lack of public awareness about their ecological importance are worsening the crisis. Sadly, pangolins are the most heavily trafficked mammals in the world, suffering from illegal trade and poaching for their scales and meat. Image via Shukran888/ Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). What’s being done to protect them? In 2016, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) completely banned international trade of pangolins. Additionally, conservation organizations and governments are promoting protection programs, environmental education and rehabilitation of rescued animals. Still, pangolins need more than laws; they need respect, awareness and action. Only through collaboration between communities, governments and global citizens can we ensure that this enigmatic forest guardian does not disappear forever. And you? Had you heard of the pangolin before reading this? Perhaps now you’ll see it with different eyes, not as a rarity, but as a symbol of the biodiversity we are either about to lose … or save. These animals are irresistibly cute and walk like tiny T. rexes, balancing on their hind legs with their front claws held up like little arms! Bottom line: Covered in armor and curled in mystery, the pangolin is an endangered species in Asia and Africa. Learn more about them here. Read more: Anteaters are vacuum-like animals: Lifeform of the week Sloths are our calm and smiley lifeform of the week Spiky porcupines are our lifeform of the weekThe post The pangolin: An armored, insect-controlling mammal first appeared on EarthSky.

Animals
Conservation
Culture

Doctors Sound The Alarm As RFK Jr.’s Baseless Circumcision-Autism Claim Fuels Misinformation

In yet another shocking statement, Kennedy doubled down on the not-true claim that Tylenol use, in this case after circumcision, is linked to autism.

This week’s Trump administration Cabinet meeting featured everything out of a medical professional’s nightmare. Confusion about what a placenta is by the man in charge of health in this country, more false claims about Tylenol’s link to autism and new untrue claims about circumcision, Tylenol and autism risk.Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made unfounded claims about the “link” between “early circumcision” and Tylenol use in babies and autism.In the Cabinet meeting, Kennedy said, “There’s two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism,” referring to the surgical procedure in baby boys in which the foreskin of the penis is removed. “It’s highly likely because they’re given Tylenol,” Kennedy continued, repeating the debunked claim that Tylenol use is linked to autism.When asked for comment, the Department of Health and Human Services pointed to Kennedy’s recent post on X, which said, “as usual, the mainstream media attacks me for something I didn’t say in order to distract from the truth of what I did say ... An August 2025 Preprints.org review by Patel et al. directly validates my point that the observed autism correlation in circumcised boys is best explained by acetaminophen exposure, not circumcision itself.”This is not the first time Kennedy has suggested Tylenol causes autism; just a few weeks ago, he said Tylenol use in pregnancy is linked to higher rates of autism (this is not true) and told pregnant people not to take it.“His continued obsession with autism is peculiar,” Dr. Mona Amin, a board-certified pediatrician in Florida and face behind the medical social media account @pedsdoctalk, told HuffPost via email.“Instead of chasing procedures and headlines, he should focus on advancing real research like genome and exome testing to better understand genetic and neurodevelopmental factors that play a much bigger role,” Amin said.Research shows that most autism cases are genetic, not caused by things like Tylenol or circumcision. Kennedy’s comments about circumcision and autism risk only create more confusion for new parents while also peddling ableist ideas. It’s flat-out dangerous and flat-out wrong. HuffPost spoke to pediatricians about Kennedy’s dangerous circumcision and Tylenol claims. Here’s what they said.“There is no solid data” behind his claims.“I’m highly concerned, like with most of his statements,” said Amin.“We can’t make bombastic claims when they’re not supported by credible evidence. There’s no solid data behind what he’s saying,” Amin added.Dr. Lauren Hughes, a board-certified pediatrician, owner of Bloom Pediatrics in Kansas and a medical communicator on social media, told HuffPost via email that she was first surprised that Kennedy had made this statement after so recently blaming Tylenol during pregnancy as a cause of autism. “My second thought was ‘He’s lying again,’ because there is no credible study saying there is double the risk of autism,” said Hughes.Kennedy’s post on X cites 2025 research that is “pre-print, not peer-reviewed,” said Amin. “The authors are real researchers, but the findings haven’t gone through independent scientific review yet,” Amin added.“Most evidence cited is observational or animal-based, which can’t establish cause and effect,” Amin said.This is important because studies need to account for things like environment and family genetics, added Amin. This research does not do that.In regard to a Danish study from 2015 that Kennedy refers to later on in his social media post, “this study never mentioned the use of Tylenol ... at all. Instead, they looked at pain related to circumcision in infancy causing autism,” Hughes said.“That study showed a weak association in certain subgroups, but it was based on tiny numbers and didn’t even track Tylenol use,” Amin explained. “Experts have since said the findings were more about statistical noise than cause and effect.” The 2015 study also did not control for “critical confounders” like genetics, family history or prenatal history, Hughes said. “These are all known risk factors for developing autism and should be adjusted for,” Hughes added.“Before accepting this as truth,” Amin said of Kennedy’s claims, “we need well-designed, peer-reviewed studies that control for confounding factors, use accurate exposure data and replicate findings across diverse populations. Until then, [the 2025] paper should be seen as hypothesis-generating, not practice-changing.”“These kinds of claims grab attention but not truth. And when public figures keep reaching for random connections, it spreads fear, not facts,” Amin added.Babies aren’t even always given Tylenol during or after circumcision.According to Amin, Kennedy’s claim that babies are given Tylenol for pain relief during circumcision “just doesn’t line up with reality.”“In most hospitals, newborns are soothed with oral sucrose [sugar water] or other comfort measures during the procedure, not Tylenol,” Amin added.For instance, according to their websites, both Texas Children’s Hospital and the University of Kansas Health System give babies a local anesthetic and a pacifier dipped in sugar water.While some hospitals may give or prescribe babies Tylenol post-procedure, it is not an across-the-board rule.“This is very site-dependent — some [babies] get acetaminophen, some get sugar water or breast milk or directly breastfeed,” Dr. Elizabeth Meade, a pediatrician in Seattle and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told HuffPost via email.“And, if parents give Tylenol afterward, it’s usually a single dose. We can’t blame a one-time or two-time medication for a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference like autism,” Amin said.Bloomberg via Getty ImagesKennedy claimed children who go through "early circumcision" and are given Tylenol to soothe pain are at higher risk of developing autism, but Dr. Mona Amin said "there’s no proof that circumcision or Tylenol causes autism."Circumcision is a generally safe procedure that is not linked to autism.While Kennedy has since stressed that he is linking circumcision and Tylenol use to autism, and not circumcision alone, these kinds of statements only confuse caregivers who want to make the best decision for their babies.“Circumcision is a safe, commonly performed procedure, but as with any medical procedure, there are risks associated,” said Hughes.Risks include bleeding, infection, and too much or too little skin removal, according to Amin.Kennedy specifically referred to “early circumcision,” which is not a phrase Hughes uses — “I do not use the term ‘early circumcision’ and instead only call it circumcision.” Multiple sources, including the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, say circumcision is most commonly done within the first days or weeks of a baby’s life. “Early circumcision” is a bizarre way to categorize something that is commonly recommended early in a baby’s life. “It’s an elective procedure, not a medical requirement. With proper hygiene, being uncircumcised is completely healthy, too,” Amin added.Some cultures and groups of people find circumcision to be controversial, “and that’s understandable,” said Amin.“Parents should be able to make this decision based on their values and medical guidance without judgment. It’s a personal choice, not a moral or medical obligation,” she noted.It’s a parent’s choice whether or not to have their baby circumcised, but a fear of autism should not be a reason not to, said Hughes.Because, again, there is no proof that circumcision and Tylenol use are linked to a higher chance of developing autism.There is no proof that Tylenol causes autism.This is not the first time Kennedy has linked Tylenol use to autism, but there is no solid proof of a connection, experts told HuffPost again and again.“An extremely well done study was published in April of 2024 reviewing acetaminophen use in pregnancy,” said Hughes. (Acetaminophen is the active ingredient in Tylenol.)Researchers evaluated roughly 2.5 million children and “after adjusting for sibling diagnosis, they found there was no associated link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and neurodevelopmental disorders,” Hughes added.“The use of acetaminophen in childhood has not been robustly studied, but no data exists showing a causal link,” she said.“As a parent, I understand how confusing all this can feel. And as a clinician who walks families through these decisions every day, it’s frustrating to see misinformation replace genuine curiosity.”- Dr. Mona Amin, board-certified pediatrician in FloridaThe American Academy of Pediatrics says acetaminophen is safe for children when used as directed and discussed with a child’s pediatrician. “Acetaminophen remains the safest option for pain and fever during pregnancy and infancy when used as directed,” Amin added.Tylenol is commonly used to help control fevers in children and pregnant women, and having an untreated fever is dangerous. “Here’s what parents need to understand: The developing brain is affected far more by untreated high fevers or infections than by a single, properly dosed pain reliever,” Amin said. “The benefit of using Tylenol when truly needed outweighs any unproven theoretical risk,” noted Amin.Autism is complex, but research is ongoing.“Autism is complex. It’s not caused by one medication, one vaccine, or one parenting decision,” said Amin.For decades, scientists have been researching the cause of autism, Hughes added.“It is very, very important to state that no one wants to find the causes for autism more than pediatric health care providers,” Meade noted. “I say ‘causes’ very intentionally, because we know this is not a one-cause diagnosis, it is very multifactorial and complex.”“We will keep looking, and keep investigating, including looking into acetaminophen use — but the reality is that many large and well-done studies have shown absolutely no causal link at this point,” Meade said.“Research shows genetics play the biggest role — sometimes inherited from parents, sometimes through spontaneous gene changes that affect how the brain forms and communicates,” Amin said.“So, please, if you have a child with autism, do not think you did anything wrong. And know that the scientific community has not, nor will ever, forget about you,” Hughes said.Studies looking into environmental risk factors are ongoing, “but ‘environmental’ doesn’t mean things like Tylenol or vaccines. It refers to broad prenatal or early life influences like severe maternal infection during pregnancy, significant prematurity, or exposure to high levels of air pollution, lead, or pesticides,” Amin said.But, these environmental factors do not flat-out cause autism, and instead increase autism risk in combination with genetic predisposition, Amin said.YourSupportMakes The StoryYour SupportFuelsOur MissionYour SupportFuelsOur MissionJoin Those Who Make It PossibleHuffPost stands apart because we report for the people, not the powerful. Our journalism is fearless, inclusive, and unfiltered. Join the membership program and help strengthen news that puts people first.We remain committed to providing you with the unflinching, fact-based journalism everyone deserves.Thank you again for your support along the way. We’re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again.We remain committed to providing you with the unflinching, fact-based journalism everyone deserves.Thank you again for your support along the way. We’re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again.Support HuffPostAlready contributed? Log in to hide these messages.“As a parent, I understand how confusing all this can feel. And as a clinician who walks families through these decisions every day, it’s frustrating to see misinformation replace genuine curiosity,” Amin said.“We should be investing our energy into research, education and support for autistic individuals, not fighting baseless claims,” she added.

Animals
Culture
Education

Study: Commercial Lion Farming in South Africa Could Be Harming, Not Helping, Wild Lions

As we’ve seen with tigers and other threatened species, captive lion breeding may stimulate consumer demand and put additional pressure on wild populations across African home ranges. The post Study: Commercial Lion Farming in South Africa Could Be Harming, Not Helping, Wild Lions appeared first on The Revelator.

I recently co-authored a new peer-reviewed study that has delivered another blow to South Africa’s controversial commercial captive lion industry, finding no solid evidence that breeding lions in captivity benefits wild populations and warning that it may be doing the opposite. Our study, a collaboration with researchers from Blood Lions and World Animal Protection, paints a troubling picture of an industry that has exploded over the past three decades to around 350 facilities holding nearly 8,000 lions — alongside thousands of other big cats — for exhibition and breeding, tourism experiences, “canned” or captive trophy hunting, and the trade in bones and body parts. We examined 126 scientific papers and 37 organizational reports published between 2008 and 2023, flagging three major concerns: Currently there is no proof that the commercial industry aids conservation. Captive breeding may increase demand for lion parts. Links between legal and illegal trade could be strengthened. Bottle feeding and cub petting are popular revenue streams for captive predator facilities. Cubs are separated from their mothers at a young age, forcing the females back into estrus while visitors pay to interact with the cubs. © Blood Lions, used with permission. From cub-petting selfies to walking with lions, “canned” hunts, and the (now illegal) export of lion skeletons, the commercial predator industry is big business. The industry claims that commercial lion farming relieves pressure on wild lions; our study shows that it could actually fuel the demand for lion products and open the door to increased wildlife trafficking. Can Commercial Breeding Meet Consumer Demand? While proponents of commercial wildlife utilization assert that wildlife farming offers an effective means to meet the demand for wildlife commodities and relieve pressure on wild populations, our analysis of previous work by researchers and conservationists shows that this approach may be counterproductive. Farming wildlife may, in fact, put increased pressure on wild populations by promoting demand for wildlife products. This increases the risk of wildlife poaching and laundering through existing legal channels. It has also been noted that captive wildlife stock is sometimes renewed with animals from the wild to bring in fresh genes and prevent inbreeding or to breed for specific traits, such as dark manes. Countering arguments that farming wild animals is a logical means to protect wild populations, conservationists and researchers have highlighted that such mistaken assumptions may endanger wild populations. Other species have already demonstrated that commercial farming of wild species — such as tigers for bones and other body parts, bears for bile, and Southeast Asian porcupines for meat consumption — have all put increased pressure on wild populations. Consumer demand studies that have highlighted a preference for products sourced from wild-caught animals based on perceptions of medicinal strength or meat quality. Overall these studies highlight the faulty logic inherent in justifying the commercial breeding of wild animals as a supply-side approach. A lion skeleton prepared for export to be used in Traditional Chinese Medicine and trinkets. © Blood Lions, used with permission. There’s still a lot we don’t know. In our paper we highlighted the urgent need for scientific, peer-reviewed research to better understand consumer demand, economic comparisons between wild and farmed products, the genetics of captive lions, and the scale of illicit trade to get a more complete picture of the impact of commercial lion farming on wild lions. South African Wild Lion Populations Remain Stable, But What About Other Range States? In 2018 an assessment for African lions stated that the export of captive-bred lion trophies, live captive-bred lions for zoological or breeding purposes, and/or the trade of lion skeletons from the captive population would not harm South Africa’s wild lion population. The commercial captive lion industry has repeatedly failed to account for severe welfare issues, including malnourishment, obesity, overbreeding, inbreeding, poor keeping conditions, and health concerns. © Blood Lions, used with permission. But while wild lion populations in South Africa remain stable, our new research clearly highlights the risks associated with a commercial captive lion industry and the already vulnerable wild lion populations and other big cat species across other range states. Dr. Louise de Waal, director of Blood Lions and one of the paper’s authors, says South Africa’s stable wild lion population could change if the captive industry keeps growing: “We need to err on the side of caution globally, but in particular in African lion range states, to stop facilitating further emergence of commercial captive predator breeding and trade. This is particularly relevant when considering the increased wildlife trafficking opportunities between the African continent and Southeast Asia through, for example, the expansion of the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure development strategy by the Chinese government.” Welfare Concerns Continue The industry also has a long record of animal welfare violations. Some of the most recent cases include a successful conviction for animal cruelty after starved lions were discovered at a farm in May 2023. In another National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA) welfare case in 2025, horrific animal cruelty and neglect were uncovered at a notorious predator facility, where at least 80 tigers were kept for commercial purposes, one of whom had resorted to self-mutilation to relieve stress and pain from untreated injuries. Commercial captive-keeping conditions fail to provide adequate living conditions for sentient apex predators, including the ability to hunt and roam freely. © Blood Lions, used with permission. These aren’t isolated incidents. Douglas Wolhuter, national chief inspector and manager of the NSPCA Wildlife Protection Unit, reported that they had conducted 176 inspections of captive lion facilities across South Africa from 2022 to 2024. Wolhuter outlined that in most cases, captive predators were denied even the bare basics like access to clean drinking water, proper food, shelter, environmental enrichment, hygienic living conditions, and appropriate veterinary care, including treatment of parasitic infestations. Many of the captive predator- and lion-breeding facilities required repeat visits due to unaddressed noncompliances. Their inspections resulted in 64 warnings, 10 formal Animal Welfare Notices, and 21 warrants granted in 2022 alone. That year, as a result, 23 severely compromised lions had to be euthanized. Our research, combined with these on-the-ground realities, provides another catalyst for South Africa’s Minister of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment, Dr. Dion George, to take urgent action by implementing a moratorium on breeding and a time-bound phaseout plan. It also signals the serious need for caution: Lion farming in South Africa isn’t saving wild lions. It could even be accelerating their decline, particularly in already vulnerable lion range states across other African countries. Previously in The Revelator: In South Africa, Tigers and Other Captive Predators Are Still Exploited for Profit. Legislation Offers Pitiful Protection The post Study: Commercial Lion Farming in South Africa Could Be Harming, Not Helping, Wild Lions appeared first on The Revelator.

Animals
Business
Conservation

Saving Zimbabwe’s Vultures

From poisonings to collisions with power lines, these birds face many threats. But as they decline, so does their ability to control the spread of deadly diseases. The post Saving Zimbabwe’s Vultures appeared first on The Revelator.

A narrow road meanders through Zimbabwe’s Vumba Mountains, where sweet songs of various bird species fill the air on a sunny afternoon. The distant chatter of monkeys adds to this wildlife melody. But one sound, once common, no longer echoes over the mountains: the calls of soaring vultures. These majestic birds have disappeared from this part of Zimbabwe. Big game poachers despise vultures for circling over the carcasses of dead animals — a natural process that inadvertently “snitches” poachers’ illicit activities to game park rangers. Poachers have retaliated by lacing the bodies of their prey with deadly poison, which vultures consume, dramatically increasing the killers’ body counts. That’s not the only threat these birds face. Habitat loss is a big issue. In some cases vultures are killed for their parts, which are used in traditional “medicine” in some cultures of Zimbabwe. And to a lesser extent, power lines have also killed vultures, who die from electrocution or after collisions with the structures. The threats have all but wiped out the vultures, in this area known for its birds. “Birding in the Vumba as well as the Burma Valley area [in Zimbabwe] is considered a shining jewel in the Eastern Highlands, and tourists travel far and wide for the very special birds found here. However, vultures are no longer a presence,” says Sue Fenwick, a trustee of the Friends of the Vumba, an organization working to protect wildlife in the area. The group’s mission faces many challenges. In this part of Zimbabwe, illegal farming activities have decimated vast tracts of wildlife habitats. Benhildah Antonio, who manages the Preventing Extinctions Program at Birdlife Zimbabwe, says the twin threats of farming and poisons intersect. In addition to poachers’ poisons, Antonio says vultures are often poisoned unintentionally. This is prevalent in farming communities surrounding national parks, where lions prey on livestock. “Farmers put poison on carcasses to target lions or any other predators but unintentionally end up poisoning vultures,” Antonio says. “The vultures will die in large numbers because of their feeding habits. One carcass can have 50 or more vultures feeding on it.” A Loss That Echoes Vultures’ disappearance from Zimbabwe and other African countries comes with an environmental cost. “We call them the ‘clean-up crew,’” says Antonio. “When the vultures feed on dead carcasses, they help us with cleaning the environment; they help us with sanitation. That’s the main ecosystem service we get from vultures. They do this free service. They also reduce the spread of … rabies, anthrax, tuberculosis, and other diseases.” When vultures eat a carcass, they can digest pathogens without getting sick. At the same time, vultures reduce the available food sources for feral dogs and other scavengers, thereby suppressing diseases like rabies. Many Species, Similar Threats According to Birdlife Zimbabwe, Africa is home to 11 vulture species, six of which can be found in Zimbabwe. All but one of the species in Zimbabwe are threatened or endangered. The International Union of Conservation of Nature Red List, which assesses the conservation status of species around the world, classifies the white-backed vulture, white-headed vulture, and hooded vulture as critically endangered. The lappet-faced vulture and cape vulture are categorized as endangered and “vulnerable to extinction” respectively, while the palm-nut vulture is listed as “least concern” (although it was last assessed a decade ago). Regardless of their conservation status, all vultures in Zimbabwe have special protection under the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Act, making it illegal to kill a vulture, even in cases of accidental harm.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Jeannee Sacken (@authorjeanneesacken) The six species have specific habitat niches, but many of their ranges overlap in Zimbabwe. The lappet-faced vulture breeds in Lowveld semi-arid areas like Gonarezhou National Park, while the white-headed vulture breeds in Hwange National Park and Gonarezhou. Cape vultures rely on cliffs for breeding and roosting, particularly in the central parts of the country. The hooded vulture breeds in low-lying areas of Tsholotsho and Gokwe. Palm-nut vultures, though considered rare in Zimbabwe, are seen mostly in the country’s Eastern Highlands. But no matter where they’re found, they face the same dangers — and vultures’ declines aren’t unique to Zimbabwe. A Worldwide Threat José Tavares, director of the Vulture Conservation Foundation, says the major threats to vultures in Africa and globally come from the ingestion of poison baits. “These [poison baits] are mostly put to deal with human-wildlife conflict, although in Southern Africa sentinel poisoning has also been significant,” Tavares says, referring to the poisoning to prevent circling vultures from giving away poachers’ locations. “The illegal poisoning of wildlife is a non-discriminatory measure that has a profound impact.” Zimbabwe presents a powerful illustration of the problem. According to the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (Zimparks) 2019-2022 Action Plan, the country experienced increased vulture poisoning incidents that are causing vulture populations to decline and harming other species. Mass poisoning events cited in the report include 191 vultures in Gonarezhou National Park in 2012, 40 at a farm in Fort Rixon in 2014, 22 in Sinamatella in 2015, 43 at Sentinel Ranch in 2016, 94 on the border of Gonarezhou National Park in 2017, 24 at Sengwa Wildlife Research Station in 2017, 28 in Main Camp in 2018, and 21 in Hwange National Park in 2019. There is no recent data from Zimparks covering the post-COVID period. According to former Zimparks director Fulton Mangwanya, a single vulture provides over US$11,000 worth of ecosystem services. “By halting the spread of disease, they are worth much more to society in saved health service costs, not to mention contributing significant revenue to the tourism sector as well,” Mangwanya wrote in the action plan. This poses direct threats to humans. In India, for example, one study reveals that between 2000 and 2005, the loss of vultures caused around 100,000 additional human deaths annually, resulting in more than £53 billion per year in mortality damages, or the economic costs associated with premature deaths. These deaths, experts say, were due to the spread of disease and bacteria that vultures could have otherwise removed from the environment. Has the decline in vultures caused similar problems in Zimbabwe? Kerri Wolter, chief executive officer of VulPro, a South African nonprofit organization devoted to safeguarding Africa’s vulture species, says it’s impossible to link the recent outbreak of anthrax in Gonarezhou National Park to the massive poisoning deaths of 280 vultures in the park in the past few years. The anthrax outbreak last year killed more than 120 animals, including four elephants, 75 buffaloes, and 38 kudus. However, more studies are needed on the possible link between the declining vulture population in Zimbabwe and rising cases of anthrax in the country’s national parks. But Wolter says the future of these birds is dire and the threat of vulture species’ extinctions is a very real possibility. “If we cannot get a grip on poisonings, I fear we will continue to see losses and some species disappearing,” she says. Saving Zimbabwe’s Vultures With an understanding of these threats, local and international groups have mobilized several efforts in Zimbabwe that aim to save the country’s last vultures. Birdlife Zimbabwe, for example, is working with communities to resolve human-wildlife conflict issues so they don’t end up causing vulture deaths as collateral damage. “We have created vulture support groups in [Zimbabwe’s] Gwayi area, where community members do vulture monitoring and educate other community members about vulture conservation,” Antonio says. “We are also educating and building capacity for law-enforcement agents so that they are conscious about vulture conservation and crimes against vultures. We also work with traditional healers because of belief-based use of vultures in traditional medicines.” And Tavares says the Vulture Conservation Foundation is fighting illegal poisoning through engaging with the competent authorities for the proper enforcement of the law and adequate investigation of illegal poisoning incidents to reduce impunity. Wolter says their work impacts the whole Southern Africa region. “We lead by example and have assisted, trained, and worked with Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust and Jabulani Safaris [in Zimbabwe] and continue to do so,” she says. Other efforts, including one funded by tourism, help vultures by giving them what they need most: safe food. The Victoria Falls Safari Collection, operated by the Africa Albida Tourism hospitality group, runs the Vulture Culture Experience at Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, where the birds are provided with food, typically animal carcasses, to support their survival and well-being.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Estnat Engsted (@ekewildphotography) “Our … conservation initiative has been highly successful in providing a safe food source for hundreds of vultures every day and reducing the risks of poisoning they face in the wild,” says Anald Musonza, head of sales and marketing at Victoria Falls Safari Collection. Musonza says the program has also become a powerful educational platform, where thousands of visitors learn about the plight of these highly endangered raptors and turn into ambassadors for vulture conservation. “Even when our hotels stood still during COVID, the Vulture Culture Experience never stopped — that’s how seriously we take conservation,” Musonza says. He says they work with VulPro as well as the Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust on this project. “While the activity is free of charge, guests may make donations towards vulture research, and $1 from selected dishes at our MaKuwa-Kuwa Restaurant is donated to vulture conservation programs,” he says. Musonza says their biggest challenges have been in constantly raising awareness of the threats vultures face and the significant role they play in the ecosystem. “The poisoning of these birds is also of great concern, which is why education plays a crucial role in this conservation initiative,” Musonza says. Previously in The Revelator: Newest Flock of Wild California Condors Faces an Old Threat: Lead Poisoning The post Saving Zimbabwe’s Vultures appeared first on The Revelator.

Animals
Conservation
Culture

Suggested Viewing

Gopher Games: The Fight to Save the Heart of Florida

As developers slowly squeeze every ounce of profit they can out of the Florida landscape, animals like the gopher tortoise and more than 365 creatures that rely on them are being driven to extinction. Developers have infiltrated every level of government in Florida including the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, an organization supposedly dedicated to protecting Florida's wildlife and wild places. Protections for the tortoise and other species is slowly being chipped away. But there's still hope that we can save this species, and ultimately, ourselves. This film was created on a budget of only $5,000 and using 100% volunteer work, and is a story from told from the collective hearts of thousands of people who care about gopher tortoises and supported the film throughout the production process.

Conservation
Animals
Government

Wings of Hope

“Wings of Hope,” is a film chronicling the re-discovery of a population of wild Harpy Eagles in the Maya Mountains of southern Belize. It details the history of the Belize Foundation and Research and Environmental Education (BFREE) and UNC Wilmington initiative born from this discovery – the Integrated Community-based Harpy Eagle and Avian Conservation Program. Created by Emmy-award winning filmmakers, Richard and Carol Foster of Wildlife Film Productions, this 20-minute documentary is rich with breath-taking footage of adult and juvenile Harpy eagles and other wildlife and vistas found in the pristine tropical forests of the Bladen Nature Reserve. Over the seven year duration of the project, the Fosters followed local people involved as they transition from trainees to conservationists and as their lives are changed through their efforts to save this rare bird and its diminishing habitat.

Animals
Nature
Conservation

HOME

If you visit Hawaii for the first time, you might be shocked about the wild chickens everywhere around the island. HOME explores the variety of relationship between people and wild chicken in Hawaii. People are trying to protect their community, but wild chickens become a huge part of it. Now we need to find a home for wild chickens, if it’s not already taken over by humans.

Animals
Indigenous
Nature

Wild Florida's Vanishing Call

A moving, powerful inside look at what has happened to the wild, rarely seen, real Florida. A compelling, emotional soundtrack carries the viewer through the past destruction of wild Florida habitats, to beautiful scenes of Florida's rarely seen native wild animals, including the most endangered cat in North America, the Florida Panther, and ends with a positive message encouraging the viewer to work to protect Florida's wildlife and habitat before it is too late.

Animals
Nature
Music

Return of the Buffalo

The Lakota people on the Rosebud Reservation of South Dakota welcome buffalo back to their land with hopes that this reunion will restore their cultural, physical, spiritual, and economic health.

Animals
Indigenous
Social Justice

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.