Many of us love pets, especially dogs. But do you know that over the last five years, they have killed more than 300 people, mostly poor and rural children? Over 20,000 rabies deaths have been caused by homeless dogs and more than 30 endangered species have been hunted by them in the wild. The human-animal conflict between people and stray dogs in India has reached an alarming level. So, the next time you venture outdoors, please take care of yourself!
You know Jackie Chan, right? Or was he a superstar when I was growing up? Yes, you are right, you probably do not know Jackie Chan, the greatest martial artist to have ever walked the earth. The world changes fast these days. Heroes of my childhood are not the heroes of your childhood. Jackie Chan was a household name in urban India when I was growing up. He was an action hero who did all of his stunts himself. Yes, that’s right, no stunt double, no CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery), nothing, and he got hurt, really hurt, while performing his stunts, but he just went on and on like a trooper...
In 1887, 18 years before they divided Bengal into two, the British laid down a railway line through the Hoollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary, located on the south bank of the Brahmaputra river system in Jorhat district. While the railway line connected British tea plantations in Tinsukia with those in Jorhat and Dibrugarh, it divided the sanctuary into two unequal compartments—one roughly 150 hectares (370 acres), the rest roughly 1,950 hectares (4,820 acres)...
When we think about biodiversity, we usually think only of animals, birds, insects and plants. We forget that fungi are also biodiversity. According to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the UK, fungi are ‘distinctive organisms that digest their food externally by secreting enzymes into the environment and absorbing organic matter...
What tigers eat and the space they occupy protects the health of their entire ecosystem.
There could come a day when the world will not see rhinos or elephants in their natural habitat.
It won’t be long before the media declares the black rhino extinct. Due to a high price of the animal’s horn, (a whopping Rs. 43 lakhs per kilogram) it is being driven to extinction by poachers. So much so that there are only 5,000 of them left. The rhino horn is a lucrative business opportunity for the poachers who sell the horn in China, Vietnam and South Korea, where its powder is used for its supposed medicinal properties.
Frogs heading uphill to escape climate change: Any idea how many eons it takes to become an avian from an amphibian?
