reading dialy 7

Russian Begging Cat
This cat begging money was spotted in one of the cities of Belarus. He stays on one place with a note that reads “need money for meat and fish, bless you”. He doesn’t leave his place and protects the money just with his sight. His owner was found nearby. It was an old lady. She told the story that she had rescued the cat from the slaughters, but at that time she had already owned some pets and couldn’t feed them all, so he decided to let the pets earn the money for themselves.

＊要約＊
＊アドレス＊
http://englishrussia.com/?p=2356

＊要約＊
ベラルーシでは自分のエサ代を自分で稼ぐ、しっかりした猫がいるようです。これが問題の猫。前に置いてある紙に「肉と魚を買うお金が必要です。あなたに神のお恵みを」と書かれている。
この猫の飼い主。この猫が殺されそうになったのを助けたのはいいものの、既に他の動物を飼っていたため、エサ代を出せる状況になかったそうです。そこで思いついたのが「自分で稼がせる」ということのよう。

＊感想＊
かわいいです。お金を入れてくれる人がいっぱいいてよかったです。

＊単語＊
Belarus・・・・・・・・・ベラルーシ
ｎearby・・・・・・・・・近くの
ｓlaughters・・・・・・虐殺する

reading dialy 6

Shh! Quiet Bison Get More Sex

UC Davis geography graduate student Megan Wyman measures the amplitude of a bison's bellow in Nebraska's Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge. The quieter bulls mate more. Credit: Paul Haverkamp/UC Davis

Photo is of a bison and a calf in Yellowstone National Park. Credit: Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation Society

American bison block a lane of traffic in Yellowstone National Park. Credit: AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty.

American bison graze in Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. Credit: Kathryn Hoppe
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Bison with the loudest bellows lose out in the mating game, while the quietest bulls score the most mates and sire the most offspring.
"We were expecting to find that the bigger, stronger guys — the high-quality males — would have the loudest bellows, because they can handle the costs of it," said Megan Wyman, a graduate student in geography at University of California, Davis and the lead author of the study. "But instead, we found the opposite.
Wyman and colleagues also found that the volume of a bison bull's bellow was not related to its weight or age.
American bison are not buffalo. But these icons of America are prone to homosexual behavior. More than 55 percent of mounting in young males is with the same gender. Meanwhile, they eventually do get
the job of procreation done during the annual rut.
Wyman and Michael S. Mooring of Point Loma Nazarene University and a number of student interns spent two summers monitoring the mountings and other activity of 325 wild bison in Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge in the Sandhills region of north-central Nebraska.
Quiet dominance
The reason a soft touch works is not clear, but it could be the bulls want to keep it down so other males don't horn in on their activity.
Bison bellows are loud, low-frequency vocalizations performed by bulls during the rut. They are most commonly used when one male challenges another, typically when the two are within 45 to 90 feet of one another. Yet sometimes a bellow will attract bulls from further away, and this may be one reason that a herd's dominant bulls keep their voices down, Wyman speculates.
"It could be that bulls provide information about their high quality through other signals — for example, the frequency or the duration of their bellows. So they don't have to be louder, they just have to be heard," she said. "If you bellow too loudly, it could bring in too many other bison to check you out."
Wyman wonders why lower-quality males don't turn down the volume of their bellows to emulate their more successful rivals.
"That's a lot harder to explain," she said. "It could be that if you use a quieter volume, other bulls have to approach even closer to check you out, and any time you bring someone that close, there's a higher risk of attack. And that's the type of cost that these low-ranking bulls may not be able to bear."
Watching the rut
Bison once numbered in the tens of millions across the continent, but they were wiped out by commercial hunting and habitat loss. By 1889, fewer than 1,100 individuals remained. Some 500,000 exist today, but only about 20,000 are wild; one conservation group says they could be poised for a big comeback.
Observing the herd for 14 hours each day during the two-month rut of July and August, the researchers recorded each copulation and to detail the tangled web of connections between males and females as bulls lost and gained cows during their intense competitions. To assess where each bull ranked in the herd's hierarchy of dominance, Wyman tallied outcomes of challenges between rivals, including threats that ended with an animal backing down in the face of combat, as well as full-blown, head-to-head fights.
When calves were born the following spring, DNA samples were taken to determine parentage.
For measurements of amplitude, Wyman used a hand-held sound-level meter from the safety of her vehicle. With each reading, she also recorded specific behaviors of the bull, his female and any challenging rivals, as well as noting the factors that could affect the level of the reading such as the bull's head orientation, its distance from the meter and wind conditions.
Her analysis showed that, on average, the least successful bulls — those with the lowest number of copulations and offspring — bellowed at least 50 percent louder than their more successful rivals, corresponding to decibel readings averaging from 109 per bull down to 103. This drop in volume correlated with a rise in the number of times a bull copulated from none to five, and the number of calves it sired from none to nine.

＊アドレス＊
http://www.livescience.com/animals/081216-bison-mating.html

＊要約＊
一般的にどの生き物も大きく強く自分をアピールしたほうが子孫を残しやすいと考えられていますが、アメリカバイソンの群れの行動を研究した結果、鳴き声が大きいオスほど喧嘩に弱くメスにもモテないことが判明した。
研究はカリフォルニア大学デービス校ミーガン・ワイマンさんによって行われた。ミーガンさんはまずアメリカバイソンの発情期の2ヶ月間群れを追跡しオスの鳴き声を手持ちマイクで採集、そのオスが何匹のメスと交尾したか、何匹の子どもが生まれたか、メスの取り合いの勝敗はどうだったのかを記録し、鳴き声の大きさと交尾の回数の関係を調べた。その結果、交尾の回数が多かったオスの鳴き声は最も少なかったオスに比べて3分の2しかなく、体重や年齢と鳴き声の大きさにも関係が見られなかった。おそらくオスは自分の強さを声の大きさではなく周波数や鳴く時間の長短で伝えていると考えられるため、大きな声を出す必要がなく小さい声で十分らしい。また、小さな声のほうが他のオスに交尾の邪魔をされることが少なくなって有利になる。

＊感想＊
人間もうるさいのはうざいので、みんなにこれを広めて、あまりはしゃぎすぎないように気をつけてもらえたらいいと思いました。

＊単語＊
bellows……………ほえる
dominant…………主要な
bulls………………雄牛
tangled……………もつれる
assess……………評価する
threats……………脅迫・きざし
calves……………子供を生む
measurements…測定・寸法
amplitude………十分

reading dialy 5

Cats keep lost boy warm

MISIONES, Argentina, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Argentine police say a destitute 1-year-old boy was kept alive by a colony of stray cats who shared food scraps and kept him warm in the city of Misiones.
The boy, who had been missing for several days, was found by Police Officer Lorean Lindgvist, The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday
"The boy was lying at the bottom of a gutter. There were all these cats on top of him licking him because he was really dirty," Lindgvist said. "When I walked over they became really protective and spat at me. They were keeping the boy warm while he slept."
Lindgvist said she noticed scraps of food near the boy and surmised "the cats knew he was fragile and needed protecting," the Telegraph reported, noting doctors said the warmth of the cats saved the boy during freezing nights that could have killed him.
The boy's father, who is homeless, said his son vanished several days ago and that cats had always been protective of the boy, Lindgvist said.

＊アドレス＊
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2008/12/20/Cats-keep-lost-boy-warm/UPI-27331229804833/

＊要約＊
アルゼンチンのミシオネス州で1歳の幼児が数日前から行方不明になっていた。
ある日、警官のLorean Lindgvistさんが街を巡回していると、排水溝の中にいる幼児を発見。そこは猫たちのねぐらになっており、たくさんの猫たちも一緒にいた。
Lorean Lindgvistさんが幼児を保護しようとすると、猫たちは幼児を自分たちの子どものように思っており、幼児を守ろうとして威嚇してきた。
猫たちは幼児が凍死しないよう寒い夜でも幼児を暖め続け、飢え死にしないよう餌も与えていた。
また、猫たちが幼児に付いていた汚れをなめてキレイにしていた。医者は「寒い夜も猫たちが体温で幼児を暖め続けていたことが良かった」とコメントしている。

＊感想＊
とってもやさしい猫だなぁと感動しました。
猫に冷たいイメージを持っている人も結構いると思いますが、これを読んで考えなおしてほしいです。

＊単語＊
Several………数～
Telegraph……電報
gutter………排水溝
scraps………廃材
surmised……推測
fragile………か弱い

reading dialy 4

Blood from mosquito traps Finnish suspect

thief thanks to a DNA sample taken from a sample of his blood found inside a mosquito. Last June a car was stolen in Lapua, 380km north of Helsinki. It was soon found near a railway station in Seinaejoki, about 25km from where it was stolen."A police patrol carried out an inspection of the car and they noticed a mosquito that had sucked blood. It was sent to the laboratory for testing, which showed the blood belonged to a man who was in the police registers," inspector Sakari Palomaeki said. The suspect, who has been interrogated, has insisted he did not steal the car, saying he had hitchhiked and was given a lift by a man driving the car.Palomaeki said a prosecutor would decide if the evidence was solid enough for charges to be pressed.Finnish police said it was rare for them to use insects to solve crimes, although they are interested in everything found at a crime scene."It is not usual to use mosquitoes. In training we were not told to keep an eye on mosquitoes at crime scenes," Palomaeki said, laughing."It is not easy to find a small mosquito in a car, this just shows how thorough the crime-scene investigation was," he added. – AFP


＊アドレス＊
　http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-12-22-blood-from-mosquito-traps-finnish-suspect

＊要約＊
フィンランドの警察が、蚊が吸った血からDNAを解析して、容疑者を特定することに成功した。ヘルシンキから北に380km行ったところにあるラプアで自動車が盗まれる事件が起こり、車自体は盗まれた場所から25km離れたセイナヨキ駅で発見された。見つかった車を調べていた警察は、中に蚊が閉じこめられていたことに気づき、吸った血を調べるために研究所に送った。そうして警察が絞り込んだ容疑者は、尋問に対して「自分はヒッチハイクをして車に乗っただけ」と答え、容疑を否認している。フィンランドの警察が犯罪解決のため虫を使ったのは初めてであり、「トレーニング時に現場に残された蚊から目を離すなとは言われなかった」と検察官のSakari Palomaekiさんは笑いながら語っている。

＊感想＊
確かに蚊は血を吸うので捜査には重要な役割を果たしそうですが、見つけるのが大変そうです。

＊単語＊
mosquito………蚊
sucked…………吸う
laboratory………実験室
interrogated……尋問する
prosecutor………検察官
investigation……捜査