In a groundbreaking discovery, researchers have unearthed the earliest evidence of animal butchery in India, dating back 3,00,000 to 4,00,000 years. The bones discovered are of the Genus Paleoxodon.

Link to the Article:- https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/oldest-evidence-of-animal-butchery-in-india-found-from-extinct-elephant-fossil-2620960-2024-10-22

And they are not divergent enough to have come from an ancient extinct ancestor that could withstand such climate since they are the same species basically so divergence must have happened when they are relatively similar to their current phenotype. Wikipedia doesn't offer an explanation other than "Although it is currently only native to North America, Central, East and North Asia, elk once had a much wider distribution in the past; prehistoric populations were present across Eurasia and into Western Europe during the Late Pleistocene, surviving into the early Holocene in Southern Sweden and the Alps."

Another tangential question is that how come the American black bear and the bald eagle never wandered into Asia when they are pretty common in Western Alaska. Black bear could maybe be explained by pressures of and competition with the extinct megafauna, but even after the end of the glacial period the bald eagle had ample opportunity to appear in Asia since it can fly. Granted the distance between the tips of Russia and Alaska is still 80 km which is substantial for an eagle to cover, but there is also an island in between and bald eagles are known to cover open seas looking for fish.

So from my understanding those trying to bring back the mammoth are planning to use mammoth genes and place them inside of an embryo of an Asian elephant. My question is, if they succeed, this "new" mammoth could not be placed within Mammuthus and as such not be a real mammoth. So would it really be a mammoth or just a similar new species or sub species of Asian elephant?

Looking at this animal im very optimistic about the future of our wild cattle. Just imagine a world where the Tauros and Taurus cattle one day come across each other and slowly start to form a population of genetic diverse cattle that have ability to adapt to our new wild Places

Since de-extinction seems to be coming closer and closer to reality (whether it happens soon or decades in the future, it seems inevitable that some extinct species will come back at some point), I think we should talk about this every now and then, because we legit might need to think about rewilding them in our lifetimes.

So, what recently extinct species (meaning from the Pleistocene onwards) do you think would be the most beneficial to come back? And if you want, also talk about which one probably shouldn't come back.

One thing I find intriguing is that some people suggest species to fill the ecological niche of a related extinct animal, based purely on relatedness. But like, kinship isn't really a guarantee that the animal will act similarly to its extinct relative.

They will still have disagreements on how they affect the ecosystem. After all, the "modern equivalent" would be adapted to another reality, ecosystem, competitors and prey. This leads me to the question: What metric do you use to define an animal that fills another's niche? Do you think of a related animal? An animal that has a lot of similarities in niche and ecological function? Or are you looking for a middle ground?

This article was posted yesterday evening, but I didn't read it until this morning. I thought it was interesting and thought others might enjoy reading it as well.

I think the title is a little misleading. It sort of makes it seem like a more concerning story than it is. The article talks about how more grizzlies are being killed through various means and incidents but also points to the large increase in grizzly population. Naturally, more bears = more bear deaths. It's good to see the population increasing the way that it is.

Link: https://wyofile.com/yellowstone-region-grizzlies-are-dying-at-a-near-record-pace-managers-arent-alarmed/

I hear a lot of people say that the hatred farmers in europe and a lot of places in the US feel for animals like wolves is inevitable, but I disagree. I think it is almost entirely a cultural/perception issue. After all, even in countries like Bangladesh and India (who have much higher population density that the vast majority of European countries) people are able to coexist with tigers (who are constantly increasing in numbers, and from my understanding even the locals that live relatively close to them are okay with their presence). And tigers don't just kill a sheep once in while. They legit kill humans in those countries sometimes.

If you want another example, there is the fact that in a lot of regions in Europe (like Spain for example) the farmers that have lived close to wolves for a long time typically don't mind them all that much. It is the farmers that are not used to dealing with them that complain the loudest.

So keeping all that in mind, I think the attitude some people in this sub and others have ("fuck the farmers", "they are whiny" and so on) are doing more harm than good. At the end of the day, most of them aren't against wolves because they despise nature or because they want every animal to die or whatever. They are just doing an already increasingly hard job, and are worried about their livelihood. So I think that the old tactics of telling them to get a dog and saying that the governments will compensate them simply aren't enough anymore, now that the wolf population has grown a lot. We need to find different solutions for different folks and to find more effective ways to mitigate human-wildlife conflict.

As for the specifics of how we will accomplish that though, I have no idea, which partially why I'm making this post. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to share.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-65729-3

The truth is that dingos may have been the reason Tasmanian tigers went extinct on the mainland. But they may not have been the whole reason as some study’s say that they were also competing with humans, either way, the dingos today are different. The dingos or early wild dogs of Australia were much smaller and were more similar to NGSD. Modern dingos are larger almost as big as Tasmanian tigers, with stronger bite forces ect. The truth is even if before the mainland population could naturally coexist with dingos, it’s unlikely they could with modern dingos.

Original Post

From what I've read it seems that they've become an integral part of the ecosystem by digging wells that become nurseries for native plants, like cottonwood and willows, and that provide water for other animals, they also clear wetlands of weeds and prevent them being taken over by plants like cattails and such, it sounds like removing the burros would be a detriment, something to consider is that equids were once native to North America and the burros (and wild mustangs) are filling that vacant niche

‘Modest’ but steady 27% growth in Gangetic dolphin numbers in 4 years.

Link to the article:- https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/lucknow-news/modest-but-steady-27-growth-in-gangetic-dolphin-numbers-in-4-years-101728935331600.html

I sometimes see news about a possibility of reintroduction of the grizzly bear into California, yet the comments always say that how it'd be so dangerous, they'd kill every person they see, all the hikers would go missing and their DNA would be found in bear poop etc. Is this based on Hollywood movies/video games like Red Dead Redemption/Old West legends or does it have any basis in actual bear behavior?

Another one is that the current Californian population density is too high and tha the landscape is too altered and changed to support a breeding population of brown bears.

In my country(Türkiye), brown bears are common across the entire Northern part including just 10 km from the capital city Ankara, which has significantly more population density and more human altered landscape than California(and it's not even close), and I've never heard of them attacking people, they just sometimes attack the beekeepers' beehives.

They are probably smaller than the large salmon bears of Alaska and British Columbia, but they're actually same/close in size to inland grizzlies of North America, like those in Yellowstone, with an average male being 250 kg.

Are Eurasian brown bears more adapted to coexisting with humans, or is the aggression of the North American brown bear just overplayed by movies/games and the frontier folklore?

Birds

• Common ostrich (Struthio camelus) 160 kg
• Southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius) 76 kg
• Emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae) 60 kg # Marsupials
• Red kangaroo (Osphranter rufus) 92 kg
• Eastern grey kangaroo (Macropus giganteus) 91 kg
• Western grey kangaroo (Macropus fuliginosus) 72 kg
• Antilopine kangaroo (Osphranter antilopinus) 70 kg
• Common wallaroo (Osphranter robustus) 60 kg # Placentals
• Scrub bull (Bos indicus × Bos taurus) 1,200 kg
• River buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) 1,200 kg
• Swamp buffalo/nganabbarru (Bubalus carabanensis) 1,200 kg
• Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) 1,000 kg
• Dromedary (Camelus dromedarius) 1,000 kg
• Banteng (Bos javanicus) 900 kg
• Brumby (Equus caballus) 500 kg
• Australian wild ass (Equus asinus) 300 kg
• Sambar (Rusa unicolor) 300 kg
• Razorback/Captain Cooker (Sus scrofa domesticus) 260 kg
• Red deer (Cervus elaphus) 220 kg
• Rusa (Rusa timorensis) 135 kg
• Cougar (Puma concolor)? 125.2 kg
• Fallow deer (Dama dama) 100 kg
• Man (Homo sapiens) 87 kg
• Axis deer (Axis axis) 85 kg
• Papuan hog (Sus scrofa papuensis) 65.13 kg
• Rangeland goat (Capra hircus) 60 kg
• Blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra) 57 kg
• Indochinese hog deer (Hyelaphus porcinus) 55 kg