Could goats become our new best friends?
In a new paper in the journal Biology Letters, researchers from QMUL's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences found that goats respond to people by gazing at them when facing a problem they cannot solve alone, and their responses change depending on the person's behaviour.
To investigate, the team trained goats to remove a lid from a box to receive a reward. They made the reward inaccessible and recorded their reaction. In the test, the goats redirected their gaze frequently between the inaccessible reward and human experimenters. They also gazed towards a forward facing person earlier, more often and for longer compared to when the person was facing away.
The results provide strong evidence for complex communication between humans and goats, which were domesticated primarily for agricultural production, and show similarities with animals bred to become pets or working animals, such as dogs and horses.
The research indicates that the domestication of animals has a much broader impact on our knowledge about human-animal relationship than previously believed. For example, it's thought that the capacity of dogs to be aware of information from humans is the result of changes to the brain from becoming a companion animal through domestication.
“Goats were the first livestock species to be domesticated, about 10,000 years ago,” said lead author Dr Alan McElligott from the School's Department of Biological and Experimental Psychology.
From our research, we know that many domesticated animals for agricultural production are smarter than their reputation suggests, and these results show how they can communicate and interact with their human handlers just as pets or working animals.
The researchers hope the study will lead to a better understanding of how skilled livestock are in their ability to solve problems and interact with humans. They also wish that an improvement in animal welfare would be reached ultimately.
Bears and humans often meet in National Parks. Although campers and hikers are warned not to fed the bears, many people ignore these warning and feed the beasts anyway. When bears are used to people's food, problems soon arise.
Bears like to cat a large variety of things, both meat and vegetable. Without human assistance, bears live nicely on roots, twigs, leaves of trees, insects and small animals. With people around, the bears’ tastes quickly expand to in-chide sandwiches, hot dogs, hamburgers, and anything else they can temp humans into giving up.
Bears often develop clever strategics for getting people to let go their food supplies. More often than not, an unsuspecting hiker has taken off his or her pack for a rest only to have a bear charge out of the woods, grab the pack and quickly disappear into the underbrush with it. Hanging the pack on a tree branch won't help. Bears have been known to climb up, jump off, and catch the pack on the way down. One mother bear stretched up with her baby on her shoulders to reach a pack stored on a pole. Many bears threaten people into giving up their supplies. Although a bear is unlikely to attack a person and would probably run away if screamed at, few people are willing to do so. Most people drop the pack and run the other way. This, of course, delights the bear.
In some places, the Park Service installed some metal barrels with lids to help campers keep their supplies safe from bears. Although the bears were unable to open these containers, the effort was less than successful. Most campers, unable to tell the metal drums from rubbish cans, never used them for the intended purpose.
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In the past two hundred years, people have caused many kinds of animals to die out. People keep building houses and factories in fields and woods. As they spread over the land, they destroy animals’ homes. If animals can’t find a place to live, they die out. Sixteen kinds of Hawaiian birds have become extinct for this reason. Other animals, such as the Florida Key deer, may soon die out because they are losing their homes. Hunters have caused some animals to become extinct, too. In the last century, hunters killed all the passenger pigeons in North America and most of the buffaloes（水牛）.
Pollution is killing many animals today, too. As rivers become polluted, fish are poisoned. Many die. Birds that eat the poisoned fish can’t lay strong, healthy eggs. New birds aren’t born. So far, no animals have become extinct because of pollution. But some, such as the bald eagle （白头鹫）and the brown pelican（鹈鹕）, have become rare and may die out.
Scientists think that some animals become extinct because of changes in climate. The places where they live become hotter or cooler, drier or wetter. The food that they eat cannot grow there anymore. If the animals can’t learn to eat something else, they die. Dinosaurs （恐龙）may have died out for this reason.
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Does Kilimanjaro Still Have Its Beauty?
Kilimanjaro is a watershed (分水岭)between Tanzania and Kenya. It is a volcano and a snowy mountain. Surrounded by mountain forests, Kilimanjaro is home to numerous mammals, some of which are endangered. Kilimanjaro was established as a national park in 1968 and was added to the World Heritage List in 1981. In the Tanzanians’ mind, Kilimanjaro is not just a bright mountain, and it is also an interesting mountain. Kilimanjaro is a world-famous tourist resort with the world's explorers and mountain enthusiasts gathering there.
Every year about 40,000 people attempt to climb Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. They bring with them lots of waste. The crowds might damage the beauty of the place. The glaciers are disappearing, changing the face of Kilimanjaro. Hearing these stories, I’m wondering about the place-other destinations are described as purer natural experiences.
However, I soon discover that much has changed since the days of disturbing reports of camps among tons of rubbish. I find a clean mountain, with toilets at camps and along the paths. The environmental challenges are significant but the efforts made by the Tanzania National Park Authority seem to be paying off.
The best of a Kilimanjaro experience, in my opinion, isn’t reaching the top. Mountains are regarded as spiritual places by many cultures. This view is especially evident on Kilimanjaro as climbers go through five ecosystems in the space of a few kilometers. At the base is a rainforest. It ends suddenly at 3, 000 meters, giving way to lands of low growing plants. Further up, the weather changes—low clouds envelope the mountainsides covered with thick grass. I count twelve shades of green from where I stand. Above 4, 000 meters is the highland desert: gravel (砾石)，stones and rocks. Finally, you climb into an arctic-like zone with permanent snow and the glaciers that may soon disappear.
Does Kilimanjaro deserve its reputation as a crowded mountain with lines of tourists ruining the atmosphere of peace? I found the opposite to be true.
