Lauren on September 12th, 2008

A tiny frog species thought by many experts to be extinct has been rediscovered alive and well in a remote area of Australia’s tropical north, researchers said Thursday.
The 1.5 inch-long Armoured Mistfrog had not been seen since 1991, and many experts assumed it had been wiped out by a devastating fungus that struck northern Queensland [...]

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Lauren on September 12th, 2008

Attention, amorous guys: Killarney’s an Australian cutie, but woo her with care.
The feisty gal once swatted at a beau who got a little close, and gave another poor fellow the cold shoulder during their introduction.
Undaunted, Killarney’s friends keep updating her online profile in the hope of finding her Mr. Right. Like many of her contemporaries, [...]

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kittymowmow on September 3rd, 2008

1. Pigs

Pigs are not meant to be ridden, which is exactly why my unnamed source and her little childhood friends tried to ride them. I suppose kids growing up in semi-rural Alabama in the 1960’s didn’t have many other entertainment options.
“We used to sneak out to this pig pen out by the woods, and [...]

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Lauren on August 26th, 2008

Cats with a fondness for gourmet meals are threatening fish supplies, an Australian scientist says.
Deakin University scientist Dr Giovanni Turchini has discovered an estimated 2.48 million tonnes of forage fish - a limited biological resource - is consumed by the global cat food industry each year.
“That such a large amount of fish is used for [...]

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Lauren on August 19th, 2008

A wild dolphin is apparently teaching other members of her group to walk on their tails, a behaviour usually seen only after training in captivity.
The tail-walking group lives along the south Australian coast near Adelaide.
One of them spent a short time after illness in a dolphinarium 20 years ago and may have picked [...]

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Lauren on August 18th, 2008

Australian media say a lost humpback whale calf has bonded with a yacht it seems to think is its mother. The 1- to 2-month-old calf was first sighted Sunday in waters off north Sydney, and on Monday tried to suckle from a yacht, which it would not leave.
Rescuers towed the yacht out to sea, and [...]

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Lauren on August 1st, 2008

 
The first pictures of what has been dubbed the world’s ugliest dolphin were shown on Australian television on Thursday.
The snub fin dolphin with its distinctive bulbous head was first identified three years ago off Western Australia’s remote Kimberley coast.
It is the first new dolphin species to be discovered in fifty years.
Unlike some dolphins, the snub [...]

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An Australian pest controller who got lost in the desert while prospecting for gold survived by turning for help to the bugs he usually kills — and eating them.
Theo Rosmulder, 52, managed to stay alive in the harsh West Australian desert for five days by knocking the tops off termite mounds and “getting stuck into [...]

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Lauren on July 26th, 2008

Humans have over-exploited the whale shark — the world’s largest living fish — to such a degree that the ocean giants are actually shrinking in size, according to new research.
The whale shark population has also fallen by approximately 40 percent over the past decade in Western Australian waters, the new study has found, suggesting [...]

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Lauren on July 25th, 2008

Two feet across, with 12 to 20 dark brown arms covered in inch-long spines, the crown-of-thorns starfish sweeps across Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, devouring corals and leaving only chalk-white skeletons behind.
But new research suggests that fishing bans help control starfish outbreaks on the world’s largest reef system.
Click here for the full article.

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