Tag: Elephants

A RETURN TO ANIMALS

About: We assume that we know a lot about animals: birds, insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians, etc. Are you certain? This is to clear some cobwebs of myths about them and learn many a lesson; maybe apply animal instincts in our lives. Call it Part-I: I have more coming. Meanwhile, I have fallen in love with Dragonflies, Wolves, Sloths and Sharks – in that order![Image Credit: Canva AI]

WOLVES

The ‘two wolves’ story is a popular parable about the battle between positive and negative minds within a person. The classic version is: an old man tells his grandson, a fight is going on inside me-and inside every person. It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is dark-evil: anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is light-good: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The grandson asks which wolf wins. The old man replies, “the one you feed.”

That’s the story of wolves that we have been fed, but actually wolves are in a league of their own and we can learn a lot from them. Let’s hunt them down.

A Wolf is generally a monogamous animal spending its entire life dedicated to a single partner. It does not mate with its mother or its sister; it does not cheat. If its partner dies, the wolf often remains alone for the rest of its life-though some, ‘out of necessity’, do find another partner. They are opportunistic carnivores, eating dead animals-scavenging-only out of necessity, but mainly feeding on hoofed herbivores such as moose, elk, and deer. They prey occasionally on domestic livestock and pets-a conflict with some people, that has earned wolves a bad reputation. They generally keep away from humans and rarely eat dead humans. And it’s a myth that wolves do not eat dead animals – they eat carrion if they have to, for survival.

Wolves recognize their young, and is perhaps the best example of an animal that cares for aging parents who can no longer keep up with hunting. Younger adults bring food for them and often regurgitates meat for the older or injured ones in the pack. Other animals that look after the elderly are Elephants and Chimpanzees, working as a cooperative community.

Wolf pups are born blind, deaf, and with blue eyes that typically change to yellow-amber as they mature. They share about 99.8% of their DNA with domestic dogs. Wolves have an extraordinary sense of smell-about 100 times better than humans. They can detect prey or other animals from over a mile away, under clear conditions. Their hearing is also highly acute, capable of picking up faint sounds over long distances.

Wild wolf packs function more like nuclear families than rigid-dominance-hierarchies. The so-called, ‘Alphas’ are typically just the breeding parents, and the rest of the pack consists of their offspring from recent years. Younger wolves usually disperse to form their own packs rather than fight for leadership. The breeding pair mates for life and stays very close-within about 100 meters of each other, much of the time. That’s unmatched intimacy, all through. Howling is a sophisticated long-distance communication. And not directed at the moon, as is made out to be! Individual howls can help pack members identify one another, and the sound can carry 6–10 miles or more, depending on conditions. It serves to locate pack-mates, reinforce bonds, and advertise territory.

A hungry adult wolf can consume up to about 9 kg of meat in a single feeding and can survive without food for a few weeks, or longer. Wolves can manipulate objects in ways that may qualify as simple tool use, such as pulling on ropes and buoys attached to crab traps to access bait.

Wolves remind me of Lee Falk’s famous comic-strip about the masked vigilante crime-fighter, Phantom (the Ghost who walks)- My favourite childhood hero. Devil is the loyal Gray Mountain Wolf companion of the Phantom. The 21st Phantom found him as a cub-under his dead mother’s body after hunters killed her-and raised him. Devil’s father was a feared wolf named Satan(rightfully). He chose to stay with the Phantom rather than lead a wolf pack, becoming his constant, highly intelligent, and fiercely protective partner who has saves his life many a time. Devil travels with the Phantom on all his adventures and is one of his most reliable allies alongside Phantom’s horse, Hero.

Then there are the Direwolves – an enormous and intelligent species of canine, genuine Ice-Age animals, made famous in modern culture by the popular Television Series, ‘Game of Thrones’, but they have been extinct for over 10,000 years. Recently, in April 2025, using gene-editing and ancient DNA, Scientists produced (not ‘brought-back’) three Direwolf pups naming them Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi. They genetically modified Gray Wolves to resemble the traits of Direwolves- that’s the closest they could get to ‘bringing back’ Direwolves.

BULLS

Bulls, and cattle in general, are partially colour-blind, specifically to red. They had what we call dichromatic vision. They have only two types of colour-detecting cone cells in their retinas which is blue and yellow (unlike humans who typically, have three – red, green, and blue). Their cones are mainly sensitive to shorter wavelengths of blue/violet. They lack the long-wavelength cones needed to perceive red distinctly. To a bull, red appears as a muted shade of gray, yellowish-gray, or dull brown-similar to how a person with red-green colour blindness might see it. Bulls can distinguish blues and yellows reasonably well, but do not see red as a vivid colour.

The red cloth used in bullfights is mainly for the human spectators rather than to provoke the animal. Then, what actually makes the Bull to charge? The bull reacts to movement, not colour. The matador’s waving, flapping cape creates a moving target that the bull perceives as a threat or challenge. Fighting bulls are selectively bred for aggression and will charge almost any rapidly moving object in the arena.

We have been cheated all along, in the movies, showing a bull unleashed on a beautiful red-saree wearing woman – wish I could tell her!

Dogs too have dichromatic vision with only two types of colour – blue and yellow- seeing cone cells in their eyes, similar to Bulls.

ELEPHANTS

Elephants, the largest living land animals, are packed with ‘tons of features’. They have the largest brain of any living land mammal: 3 to 4 timers the size of the human brain. They are highly intelligent, passing the self-awareness-mirror test with flying colours. They have empathy and can grieve over a loss; can use tools, have social learning, long-term memory, including recognizing individuals and locations after years, and complex problem-solving skills.

Elephants have massive molar-teeth that are ridged for grinding tough vegetation. They use a horizontal-conveyor-belt-tooth replacement technique: new molars emerge at the back of the jaw and move forward as worn ones fall out at the front. They replenish about six sets, over a lifetime.

Columnar, pillar-like legs support enormous weight with relatively little muscular effort. Feet have a unique fibrous fatty pad-with a shock-absorbing kind of heel-under the toes. This enables nearly silent walking and helps detect seismic vibrations from the ground. That means Elephants can tip-toe effortlessly and sneak-up behind you.

Elephants (the African ones) have the largest ears of any animal: a dense network of blood vessels allows heat dissipation when the ears are flapped-acting like radiators. Elephants also use mud-bathing, dusting, and specialized skin ‘thermal windows’ for cooling given that they have limited sweat glands.

Elephants live in highly complex, matriarchal family groups with multi-tiered social networks; strong lifelong bonds and cooperative care of calves. Remember, an Elephant remembers!

OTHERS

Polar Bears aren’t truly white: they only appear white. Their fur consists of hollow, transparent hairs that scatter light making it appear white, while their skin is actually jet black, to absorb heat. Polar bear cubs are born with pink skin that turns black as they grow. Polar bears spend more time on ice than land. They have a clever way of hunting a herd of walruses: causing a stampede resulting in the young and the old left behind, for them to coolly walk-over for the kill.

Horned lizards, often called horned toads, are small, spiny reptiles that have flattened, rounded bodies, short tails, and prominent horn-like spines on their heads and backs that provide camouflage and defense. Horned Lizards can squirt foul-tasting blood from their eyes, up to several feet, as a defense mechanism. The blood can confuse or irritate predators. Another means of defence is, they can swallow air to puff up to twice their normal size making them look like a sharp, un-swallowable shiny balloon. They harvest rain water through microscopic skin channels and flatten their toad-like bodies for desert camouflage. They can eat up to 100 harvester ants per day and possess tolerance to ant venom.

Star-Nosed Moles-a small semi-aquatic mammal- have one of the fastest foraging systems. Their nose has 22 fleshy appendages/tentacles that can identify and decide on prey in a fraction of a second-faster than a human blink. Its touch system is about 100 times more sensitive than human fingertips. The tentacles radiating from its snout, like a star, make them unique and one of the most weird looking animals in the world. They have a rare capability of ‘smelling underwater’ by blowing air bubbles onto objects and re-inhaling them to track scents.

Sloths are sloth is almost every sense. They are special because of their ‘odd’ upside-down lifestyle, ultra-slow metabolism and their fur that acts as home(sweet home) for green algae and moths -a living, breathing microcosm. Their multi-chambered stomach works like a slow cooker; it can take up to a month to digest a single meal!

They are incredibly fussy about personal hygiene and climb down from their trees to poop about once a week. While pooping upside down seems so easy, they make a slow arduous journey from the tree they hang, to the bottom of the same tree in order to defecate or urinate on the forest floor.

They are surprisingly good swimmers and can hold their breath for up to 40 minutes by slowing their heart rate. They spend most of their lives in ‘suspended animation’, hanging motionless or slowly moving between tree branches using their long, curved claws. Everything about them happens in the trees (except the pooping part).

Fish

Octopuses are the closest to aliens, on Earth and are fascinating creatures. They have three hearts: two of them pump blood to the gills, and third to the body; and a systemic heart, which stops when they swim. Their blood is blue, being copper-based, compared to the red, iron-based of humans. They have a lot of brain: effectively nine brains -a central one plus a mini-brain in each arm that can act somewhat independently. They can also change colour or texture in milliseconds and squeeze through any opening as long as it is larger than its beak. Yes, they have a hard, sharp parrot-like beak hidden in the centre of their tentacles on the underside of their body. You did not know this, did you?

Pistol Shrimp, a tiny crustacean, also called the ‘snapping shrimp’ is among the loudest animals. Its claw snap creates a cavitation bubble that collapses (speeds reaching 100 km per hour) with a sonic boom up to about 230dB and generates temperatures (4,000 degrees centigrade) nearly as hot as the surface of the sun for a split second-enough to stun or kill prey. Despite being only about 2 inches long, it is the most formidable and loudest creature in the Ocean.

Then there is this Immortal Jellyfish that can reverse its life cycle and potentially avoid death from aging. When stressed or aging, it transforms back into an early stage-polyp- and potentially restarts, theoretically allowing indefinite regeneration, However, it can still die from injury or disease. It retracts its tentacles, reabsorbs its body, sinks, and forms an unstructured cyst-a blob of tissue. Through transdifferentiation, specialized adult cells transform into different cell types needed for the polyp stage. Within roughly 1–3 days, a new polyp colony develops, which can later bud new, genetically identical Jellyfish. This process can theoretically repeat indefinitely, making the species biologically immortal.

SHARKS

The Shark is a kind of encyclopaedia. Shark ancestors date back about 450 million years: before trees, Dinosaurs, Saturn’s rings, or the North Star as we know it. They survived all five of Planet Earth’s major mass extinctions and they have been around, perhaps the longest. Their basic body plan has proven highly successful and adaptable, carrying them along this far.

They have six senses, and they can, sort of sense electricity in the atmosphere. They can smell blood from miles away. The five senses of, Smell, Hearing, Sight, Taste, Touch, and the Sixth of Electroreception -tiny jelly-filled pores on their snouts, called the ampullae of Lorenzini, detect faint electrical fields from muscle movements, heartbeats, and the Earth’s magnetic field.

Sharks do not have bones. Instead, they have a cartilaginous skeleton, which is lightweight and flexible, made of cartilage-the same tissue as in human ears and nose tips. This reduces weight, improves manoeuvrability, and allows more body mass for muscle.

Their skin is covered in dermal denticles (skin teeth)-tiny, tooth-like scales that provide armour, and feel like sandpaper; the scales point towards the tail, reducing drag for efficient swimming (inspiring designs for boats and aircraft).

Sharks are capable of endless tooth replacement they have multiple rows of teeth that act like a conveyor belt-new ones move forward as old ones are lost or worn. A single shark may go through tens of thousands of teeth in its lifetime. Some have fluoride-rich enamel that resists cavities. No need for a Dentist Shark!

In many species, the upper jaw can move independently and protrude, enabling powerful bites or suction feeding. They lack a swim bladder and instead rely on a large, oil-filled liver for controlling buoyancy.

Sharks use internal fertilization for breeding. Some species practice intrauterine cannibalism, where the strongest embryos eat their siblings. Certain females can reproduce by asexual cloning in captivity. Some live-bearing species even have temporary ‘belly buttons’ from an umbilical cord.

Sharks play vital ecological roles as apex predators that help maintain healthy ocean ecosystems. Most are not aggressive toward humans; unprovoked bites are extremely rare.

Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster movie – Jaws-, based on Peter Benchley’s Novel portrayed a great white shark as a deliberate, relentless man-eater terrorizing a beach town. This created or greatly amplified the ‘Jaws effect’—widespread irrational fear of sharks as mindless killers. And gave the Sharks an awfully bad reputation. Both Spielberg and Benchley later expressed regret over the real-world harm. Benchley became an advocate of conservation.

Over recent decades, attitudes have shifted toward greater respect, interest in coexistence, and conservation efforts, though negative stereotypes and media sensationalism persist.

Birds

Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards, hover, and fly sideways in flight. Their wings beat extremely fast, and they can enter a state of torpor at night that drastically slows down metabolism.

Woodpeckers can endure extreme forces without brain damage. Pecking generates G-forces far higher than what would injure humans, yet specialized skull features, a tongue that acts partly like a safety belt, and other adaptations protect them-even with thousands of pecks per day.

Most male birds lack a penis. About 97% transfer sperm via a brief ‘cloacal kiss’ – with some exceptions. The cloaca is a single, multi-use opening for waste, urine, and reproduction. During mating season, the cloacal tissues swell and move close to the surface. The male balances on the female’s back.They touch their openings together to pass sperm.The entire contact takes just a fraction of a second. And we wondered all the time about how birds mated!

Lyrebirds are extraordinary mimics-they can copy other birds, machinery, human sounds, and more, sometimes for hours during the mating season.

INSECTS

These days, Cockroaches are in the limelight and have become extremely popular, especially in India. Some People call themselves cockroaches and are trying to steal their super powers. They even named a kind of Political Party after them. Big Brother is watching!

Cockroaches stand out for their extreme resilience, generalist adaptations, ancient evolutionary success, and a suite of biological traits that let them thrive in diverse, often harsh, environments-qualities that have earned them a reputation as ultimate survivors. Most of the about 4,500 to 7,000 species are not household pests; and only about 30 species commonly live with humans; the rest occupy forests, caves, deserts, mountains, and other wild habitats, often playing ecological roles as scavengers and recyclers.

Cockroach-like insects, called ‘roachoid’ existed for roughly 315–320 million years, while the lineage leading to modern cockroaches dates back about 140–235 million years.

Their rapid escape response is legendary: sensory cerci (appendages) at the rear detect minute air-current changes, triggering a sprint in just a few milliseconds. Relative to size, they rank among the fastest invertebrates, reaching speeds of up to about 50 body lengths per second. Cockroaches can survive for days, sometimes longer, without a head. Their open circulatory system and ability to breathe through spiracles allow this; they eventually die of thirst. Hard to digest?

A quick round-up of what other insects are capable of.

Houseflies taste with their feet, which are roughly 10 million times more sensitive to sugar than a human tongue. Caterpillars have around 4,000 muscles enabling precise, coordinated movement. Some Aphids(Green Fly) – a small sap-sucking insect- are born already pregnant (‘telescoping generations’), allowing extremely rapid population growth. Ants often ‘farm’ aphids for their sugary honeydew, protecting them and even restricting their movement or wings. A fruit fly species produces the longest sperm relative to body size-nearly 6 cm long, about 20 times the fly’s length. Termite Queens can lay tens of thousands of eggs per day (over 40,000 in some species) and may live for decades. Mayflies as adults often live only about a day (or less in some cases), existing primarily to reproduce. Certain Beetles are extraordinarily strong relative to size. The Hercules Beetle can lift hundreds of times its own weight-estimated about 850x in some cases.

DRAGONFLIES

Be warned, you may have never known about this.

The humble Dragonfly is one of the most remarkable insects in the natural world, operating with an evolutionary design that has remained effective for over 300 million years. The ancestors of the dragonflies of today, thrived in a period of biological plenty. They were the original sentinels of a greening planet, a reminder that Earth’s history is one of vibrant, booming life. Dragonflies 3 times the size of today’s lived for 47 million years from about 298 million to 251 million years ago. One of their ancestors even had a wingspan of up to 28 inches! Don’t take them lightly.

The Dragonfly is more than an insect, it is the world’s apex predator in miniature.

Hard to believe, but the Dragonfly remains the most efficient killer in history, with a hunting success rate of over 95%. It does not merely chase prey, it intercepts it. Using a biological ‘on-board computer’ and four independent wings, it calculates trajectories and executes omnidirectional manoeuvres in real-time.

Just one dragonfly can consume over 100 mosquitos in a day; they can fly backwards; they have nearly 360 degree vision. Their wings made of an ultra-thin, flexible sheet of pure translucent chitin (a long-chain polymer-second most abundant in nature only behind cellulose) are unmatched engineering, combining a fingerprint-like geometric vein pattern, a corrugated structural profile, and direct muscle connection that allows all four wings to move completely independently. And their wings inhibit bacterial growth due to their natural structure.

Long before the first bird took flight or the first Dinosaur walked the Earth, the Dragonfly had perfected the physics of the hunt. It is perhaps the ultimate success story of life. While we debate our future using computer simulations, this ancient masterpiece harmlessly zooms over us. When we see them darting through the ghostly yellow light of a moonlit evening, we are not looking at a fragile relic. We’re looking at a champion of endurance. Give it a flying-kiss!

The dragonfly belongs to an ancient kingdom that tells us the Earth is not falling apart. It’s a resilient, self-correcting orchestration of beauty and power. They are actually beautiful. We should keep them around to take them with us to the next Planet we hope to inhabit -Mars? Provided they do not learn to eat us, and increase their body-weight and wingspan!

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-24

About: the world this week, 6th June to 12th June 2021, how a Group of wealthy Nations met, a butcher of people punished, classic Tennis played, the pandemic cornered, and Animals on the Planet drawing our attention, in mysterious ways.

Everywhere

The Group of Seven (G7)

The G7 is an informal group of seven of the world’s wealthiest democracies, which meet annually to discuss the economy, peace, security, climate change, and of course, this year in particular, the coronavirus pandemic.

The Group consists of the United States of America (USA), Canada, the United Kingdom (UK), Germany, France, Italy, and Japan. The Annual Summit is normally held in the country which holds the rotating Presidency and this year it was the turn of the UK to play host. Leaders of four other prominent democracies have also been invited to attend: Australia, India, South Korea, and South Africa.

In a prelude to the main G7 Summit, a meeting of G7 Finance Ministers was held on 5th June, at Lancaster House, London to discuss economic policies, and perhaps reach an agreement on something. They did. The attending Finance Ministers decided on a Global Corporation Tax rate of 15%, which can ultimately be applied by all nations. This creates a new right for countries to tax the profits, of large multinational companies, based on where they make their sales.

The landmark deal, signed last Saturday, is intended to prevent digital companies such as the Google, Amazon, and the Facebook kind, from finding and exploiting tax-avoidance or minimisation loopholes in the national tax system of countries. And also to tackle the huge inequalities between such digital firms, and the rest of the business community, a divide which has grown wider during the ongoing pandemic.

International tax deals are rare, and usually thwarted by countries that either charge low levels of tax, such as Ireland, Hungary, and Cyprus, or that have close ties to tax-havens, such as the UK and the Netherlands.

There are significant details yet to be worked out, and the deal is not sufficient to see the new rules applied globally. For that to happen, it would require support from the Group of 20 (G20) leading economies, which includes China and India, as well as the backing of the 135 countries that have been negotiating the new rules as part of what is known as the Inclusive Framework.

Finance Heads of the G20 countries are due to meet in Venice, Italy, on 9th and 10th July 2021 to make hay on the new G7 tax sunshine.

Taxing large companies is awfully taxing, but that’s where the wealth of nations lie!

Meanwhile, the main G7 Summit is being held this week, between the 11th & 13th June at the Carbis Bay Hotel, Cornwall, United Kingdom, in which leaders of G7 nations are meeting each other, to hold face-to-face discussions. And see, meet, and get to know the better halves-if around, on the sidelines.

The ever-brightly dressed Queen, all of 95 years, sharing her childhood name, Lilibet, with her freshly minted great-grand daughter, posed for a photo with the G7 Kings, and cheekily posed the question, ‘Are you supposed to be looking as if you are enjoying yourself?’ Watch this space.

The Butcher of Bosnia

Bosnia and Herzegovina, often known simply as Bosnia, is a country located within the Balkans in South-East Europe with capital as Sarajevo, its largest city. It is bordered by the countries of Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro, with a narrow coast to the Adriatic Sea.

Recall that the countries of Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Slovenia was once a federation of republics called Yugoslavia, which eventually disintegrated into separate countries, much like the Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) did.

In the year 1992 Bosnian Muslims, called Bosniaks, and Croats voted for independence in a referendum boycotted by the Serbs. The region then descended into an ugly war with the Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats on one side and the Bosnian Serbs on the other, fighting for control over ethnic territory, in what was called the Bosnian War, which lasted four years. Several other former Yugoslav Republics also declared Independence about this time.

Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serb Military leader-nicknamed ‘the Butcher of Bosnia’-who was fanatical about ethnically cleansing Bosnaiks from Bosnia, led the Bosnian Serb Army in the war, which left about 100,000 people dead and displaced another 2.2 million. He orchestrated a campaign to slaughter and annihilate more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the mountain Town of Srebrenica, in July 1995, in the worst massacre to have taken place in Europe since the Second World War.

When the Bosnian War came to an end in 1995, Mladic facing an indictment of war crimes, went on the run and for 16 long years evaded capture until his arrest, finally, in May 2011. He was then extradited for trial in the Netherlands.

For years he was offered protection by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, and the Serbian and Bosnian Serb military and police. Milosevic was himself a master-mind behind ethnic cleansing of non-serbs and when he lost power in October 2000 was sent packing to The Hague War Crimes Tribunal.

Mladic was captured in the village of Lazarevo, near the town of Zrenjanin in northern Serbia, after an anonymous tip-off to police was made by someone who had seen a man who looked like Mladic and was carrying documents bearing that name.

He was put on trial in 2012 at The Hague, Netherlands, for crimes committed during the Bosnian War, with a total of eleven charges including genocide.

In 2017 he was found guilty and convicted to life in prison on one count of genocide and nine crimes against humanity and war crimes by an international criminal tribunal. He was found ‘not guilty’ of one only charge of genocide.

Ratko Mladic had appealed against the ruling and this week he lost. The International United Nations Court dismissed the appeal and upheld his Life Sentence.

Mladic’s behaviour was absolutely reprehensible during the trial. In the 2017 conviction he shouted the choicest and ‘most colourful’ obscenities, gesticulating at the relatives of the victims. This time he scowled and showed little emotion. He was the only person in court not wearing a mask.

He joins his one-time master and boss, former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic who is also convicted and serving a life sentence for being a key architect in ethnic cleansing and civil war that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia.

Ratko Mladic’s name is consigned to ‘the dustbin list’ of history’s most depraved, ruthless and barbaric figures.

French Open 2021

Switzerland’s Tennis ace and Legend, Roger Federer, had a gruelling, clay-grinding time at the French Open given that he is coming-back to the game from two back-to-back knee surgeries in 2020. He played over three hours to defeat Germany’s Dominik Koepfer in a five-set match including three tie-breaks sets, to set up his next encounter with Italy’s Matteo Berrettini for a place in the quarterfinals. Back and Knee breaking for sure.

Federer then proceeded to ‘talk to his knees’ and came out with an unanimous decision to quit the French Open and save his knees for Wimbledon, where he is targeting a 9th Title, later this month, on his favourite grass court surface.

Wimbledon’s Pride, French Open’s Envy? See you in Wimbledon.

Meanwhile, in yesterday’s Men’s semi-final, Tennis fans were enthralled seeing almost perfect clay-court, classic Tennis being played when Serbian Novok Djokovic beat – the until then, undefeatable, 13-time hero of the Roland Garros-Spaniard Rafal Nadal, to reach the Finals in an absolutely gripping four-set match. The third set will go down in History as one for the best ever and should be framed. Djokovic meets Greek Stefanous Tsitsipas in the final, to be played on Sunday, for a possible 19th Tennis Grand Slam Title.

In the Woman’s Final, an unlikely match as been set with unseeded Czech, Barbora Krejcikova reaching the final to challenge Russian, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova for the title. Well, that’s open!

India Looks Up

India is steadily looking up from the second wave of COVID19 with diving daily infections, but there is an alarming increase in deaths as previously unaccounted data is being added. However more lives are being saved and many States have started a process of awfully slow unlocking.

With the Vaccines of Covishield, Covaxin, and Sputnik V already rolled out, India placed an advance order worth Rs 1,500 crore for 300 million doses of Hyderabad, India, based Biological E’s CORBEVAX Vaccine.

Corbevax is a protein subunit vaccine, which comprises only spike proteins that are injected into the body to trigger an immune response. Such vaccines are considered to be one of the safest and time-tested, juxtaposed to mRNA based Vaccines, which is relatively new technology. Further, it does not involve injecting a whole de-activated virus. The Vaccine is currently undergoing Phase-3 trials and is expected to be ready for regulatory authorization and launch in August 2021.

India’s homemade Vaccine, Covaxin, is struggling to get approved abroad as its Phase-3 clinical trials are yet to be published-made public. Recall that India had approved Covaxin for Emergency Use, in January 2021 without waiting for the phase-3 clinical trials. Subsequently interim results were published in April, which showed satisfactory efficacy, justifying their use. More than 29 million doses of Covaxin have already been administered. The manufacturer, Bharat Biotech, Hyderabad, has said the results will be released in a couple of weeks. I’m sure it will pass with distinction.

In the background of a seemingly mangled Vaccination Policy, which the States compounded by acting like Rambo’s, trying to buy Vaccines on their own, India’s Prime Minister rightfully went on national Television to give a new direction to the Vaccination Drive. Enough is enough. He announced that the Centre will, in addition to the 50% it is already buying from the Vaccines manufacturers will also buy out the 25% State quota – a total of 75% production of Vaccines- and give it free of cost to the States, to distribute. The remaining 25% will go to Private Hospitals who can charge a fixed service fee of Rs 150 over the declared cost of the Vaccine. The new plan unfolds from the 21st June.

Lets have our eyes on the needle.

It’s Raining Babies in Africa

In World Inthavaram 2021-19, I talked about a Population Explosion, when a 25 years old woman, Halima Cisse, from Mali, gave birth to nine babies in a single delivery. This challenged the ruling eight-babies world record of Nadya Slueman, California, USA, in the Guinness World Records.

The record did not change heads or stomachs, not yet, as there is a weighty competition from a 37 years old woman in Pretoria, South Africa, Gosiame Thamara Sithole, who this week gave birth to 10 babies-five through natural birth and five through Caesarean section, seven boys and three girls, in a single delivery. In her previous adventure Gosiame Sithole had given birth to twins, who are now six years old.

Wonder where we are heading? Better start getting that flight to the Moon or Mars ready?

Meanwhile, in Nigeria the Town of Igbo-Ora has an unusually high birth rate of twins, where you might think you are seeing double. The Town has one of the highest birth rates of twins in the world.

China, which is struggling with birth rates and recently upgraded itself to a three-child policy, needs to send a team out to Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular, to penetrate the secret that makes the twins-show tick. Beg, borrow, or steal twins-making technology? China Can!

Animal Planet

24,000 Years Under the Ice

Heard of something called Bdelloid Rotifer? I haven’t until today.

They are unique microscopic, multicellular freshwater invertebrates with complex anatomies that are one of Earth’s most radiant-resistant animals. They can withstand extreme acidity, starvation, low oxygen, years of dehydration, and just about any form of torture.

They are solely female, reproduce entirely asexually and have avoided sex for nearly 80 million years. That’s loneliness to the limits. They have a complete digestive tract that includes a mouth and an anus and have the ability to halt all activities and almost entirely arresting their metabolism. At any point in their life cycle they can be completely dried-out and ‘vanish’ in to a sublime dormant state. And can spring back to life – alive and kicking- after tens of thousands of years in deep freeze.

The closest relatives of the Bdelloid Rotifer are the Tardigrades or ‘water bears’, which are impossibly cute animals and perhaps the hardest animals alive and known to survive incredibly inhospitable conditions. That’s toughness written all over them.

This week, Scientists in Siberia discovered Bdelloid Rotifer that have survived 24,000 years frozen in Siberian Permafrost at a time when Woolly Mammoths still roamed the planet. Scientists collected samples by drilling about 11 feet below the surface of permafrost in northeastern Siberia. They found living Bdelloid Rotifers locked in the ancient permafrost, whose average temperature hovers around 14 degrees Fahrenheit. They then successfully ‘revived’ the animal, after all these years of ‘sleep-walking’.

Sleeping Beauty and Snow White could have been ‘distant relatives’? But the Bdelloid Rotifer dwarfs them by thousands of years.

Dinosaurs Down Under

Scientists have confirmed a new dinosaur species in Australia as one of the largest in the Continent, fourteen years after it was first discovered in 2007 when cattle farmers uncovered bones of the animal on a farm in South-West Queensland. Farming can be productive to the bone.

The Australotitan Cooperensis or the ‘Southern Titan’, nicknamed ‘Cooper’ is one among the 15 largest dinosaurs found worldwide, joining an elite group of Titanosaurs previously only discovered in South America. It reaches a height of nearly 6.5 metres at the hip and 25-30 metres in tip-of-nose to tip-of-tail length, making it as long as a basketball court and as tall as a two-storey building.

Cooper, the plant-eating long-necked sauropod lived in the Cretaceous Period between 92 million and 96 million years ago when Australia was attached to, and a part of Antarctica.

The time taken to confirm the find, since the first find, is itself ‘dinosaurian’! Meanwhile Australia continues to amaze us with mind-boggling animals grabbing our attention week after week.

Elephants Get Lost in China

While China is within striking distance of ‘herd immunity’ against the coronavirus, a different kind of herd-15 wild Asian Elephants, including three calves, decided to do the Elephant Dance and steadily marched from China’s South-West province of Yunnan, escaping from the Nature Reserve of Xishuangbanna-near the border with Laos and Myanmar-to the North, Jinning District, on the outskirts of Kunming.

That’s a distance of over 500km: the journey of which began about 15 months ago, early last year. Drone photos showed ‘the gang’ taking a well-deserved, cute rest, sleeping on their sides with calves snuggling to find the cosiest position to curl their young trunks.

The Elephant trek has captivated millions of people who are herding themselves remotely with the Elephants, enjoying the journey, watching their every move – thanks to a ‘herd of drones’ buzzing above them.

Along the way the Elephants have had a whale of a time on land, breaking into Villagers’ homes, eating their food, drinking their water and destroying their crops. They have showed a growing interest in alcohol laden wooden barrels, and last month one of the baby elephants passed-out on trunking one such barrel, and was able to join the herd only the next day. Another broke into a car dealership and obviously couldn’t find itself a seat to drive. On the last count 400 separate incidents of break-in’s and damages were reported on the route costing over a million bucks.

Local Authorities have tried to steer the Elephants in directions away from Villages, Small Towns, and Cities by laying cobs of corn, bananas, and pineapples. They pounced on the corn, but largely ignored the pineapples, and kept the direction.

No-one seems to have any idea why the Elephants left their home. Did they sense an Earthquake or smell a Volcano, or another kind of disease Outbreak? Or did they simply run out of their favourite foods? Maybe the Leader of the Elephant Herd is lacking in experience and led the whole group astray. A loss of head?

Herd yourself for updates and stories in the coming weeks.