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Two-headed turtle with six legs hatches in Cape Cod

A two-headed turtle, the size of a chicken McNugget, is the newest attraction at the New England Wildlife Centre at Cape Cod.

“No you are not seeing double! This diamondback terrapin hatchling actually has two heads. 🐢🐢,” the centre posted on Facebook. The hatchling was found in a protected nesting site and taken to the hospital for assessment by the Barnstable department of natural resources.

The unnamed turtle, thought to be twins with fused spines, are very alert and active, the team looking after them shared in the post.

They added: “They are eating, swimming, and gaining weight each day. It is impossible to get inside the heads of these two, but it appears that they work together to navigate their environment.”

An X-ray by the veterinarians revealed that the two heads also have two spines which fuse into one further down the body.

According to veterinarians, the turtle has bicephaly — a condition of having two heads — occurring from genetic and environmental factors that shape an embryo during its development and into a rare anomaly.

© New England Wildlife Center diamondback turtle.jpg

The condition is similar to that of conjoined twins in humans where they share parts of their body but have some parts freely moving and independent to their functioning.

Officials at the wildlife centre explained that animals with such a condition do not always survive very long because of difficulties like escaping predators and equal intake of food. “But these two have given us a reason to be optimistic!”

The twin-headed turtle is being observed while moving and swimming with control of three legs each.

“After hatching they had one shared yolk sac that provided them nutrition in the first few days after entering the world, however, with that resource used up our next step was to see what their gastrointestinal (GI) tract looked like and if they would each be able to eat and absorb nutrients to continue to grow,” the centre said.

The right side of the body appears to be more developed but the hatchlings are both eating and digesting food.

They can also coordinate swimming and come up to the surface to breathe, showed a supervised deep water swim test.

In the days ahead, the wildlife team said it is looking to get a CT scan for more information on internal structures.

However, the question looms on the survival of the hatchling which can face difficulties or pain in future, said Katrina Bergman, CEO of the centre.

“Our only hesitation is, we didn’t want them to be in any pain, because if that was the case, we would humanely euthanise them. But as far as we can tell, they’re happy little guys,” she told The Washington Post. 

Reference: Independent: Arpan Rai  2

Deadly beetroot juice cocktail kills mosquitos in six hours, research shows

An insecticide cocktail of beetroot juice laced with a synthetic toxin is an effective mosquito repellent and could be an additional tool in the fight against diseases such as malaria and dengue, researchers have found. 

The solution – christened “pink juice” by the researchers – mimics blood so closely that the insects prefer this meal, the study, published in Communications Biology, shows. 

Researchers say that the eco-friendly, low cost solution should be tested in the field and has the potential to be used widely.

“This mixture, that we call pink juice, is a harmless, inert, eco-friendly solution, but it is naturally toxic for female mosquitos when ingested by them,” said Noushin Emami, associate professor in the department of molecular biosciences at Stockholm University.

“Altogether, we here provide a proof-of-concept for a specialised and eco-friendly feeding trap that can be deployed where needed. We hope to see it tested in a field setting and in combination with other vector control approaches,” she said. 

The key ingredient in the cocktail was HMBPP – a molecule produced by the malaria parasite – alongside a toxin, called fipronil sulfone. 

Researchers tested other toxins - capsaicin, savory oil and boric acid - but found that the mosquitoes did not feed on solutions containing these. 

The addition of HMBPP was crucial in attracting the mosquitoes – adding just a toxin to the juice did not attract the insects, the researchers found. Mosquitoes found HMBPP so tasty that they would even feed on it if it was added to coffee. 

© Olympia de Maismont/AFP Mosquitoes are highly adaptable and can develop resistance to treatment and prevention - Olympia de Maismont/AFP

The insecticide cocktail killed all the mosquitoes that fed on it within one to six hours, the research showed. 

The paper highlighted how additional tools are desperately needed in the fight against malaria, which kills around 450,000 people every year. Mosquitoes are highly adaptable and have developed resistance to the insecticide used to treat bed nets. 

There is also emerging evidence that some mosquitoes have switched their behaviour to biting during the day, rather than at night, rendering bed nets ineffective. 

The cocktail could also be used against mosquitoes that carry other diseases such as dengue.

Last week the World Health Organization gave the go ahead for the first ever malaria vaccine to be rolled out in sub Saharan Africa but said that preventive measures were still desperately needed. 

“There are a number of new, exciting, high tech approaches targeting mosquitoes which are entering large-scale testing but I believe that there is a lot of potential in developing very simple, but highly effective solutions based on simple molecules and using materials which are not only affordable but also accessible to almost anyone. We used beetroot in this study to demonstrate exactly this point,” added Dr Emami.

She said that the "cocktail" was harmless to humans because only very small amounts of toxins were used.

"Our goal is not to use traditional pesticides at all in the final products but substances which are natural and completely harmless to animals, but harmful to mosquitoes when digested."

Dr Emami added that "beauty of this solution is that it can be combined with different delivery techniques: from feeder station/passive traps to deploying it as spay/dew on foliage so mosquitoes can drink it from the droplets."

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Reference: The Telegraph: Anne Gulland 

Elk that lived for two years with rubber tyre around its neck finally freed

A bull elk that wandered the hills of Colorado with a rubber car tyre around its neck for over two years, has finally been freed.

According to Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials, this was the fourth attempt to help the four-and-a-half years old elk which weighs about 270 kgs.

Officials said that they had to tranquilise the elk and cut off its five-point antlers to remove the tyre because they couldn’t cut through the steel in the bead of the tyre.

“We would have preferred to cut the tyre and leave the antlers for his rutting activity, but the situation was dynamic and we had to just get the tyre off in any way possible,” officer Scott Murdoch said to agencies.

While officials estimated that the tyre weighed around 16 kgs, the elk surprisingly did not suffer any grievous injuries. “The hair was rubbed off a little bit, there was one small open wound maybe the size of a nickel or quarter, but other than that it looked really good,” said Mr Murdoch to the Associated Press.

He adding: “I was actually quite shocked to see how good it looked.”

Officials were able to locate the elusive elk after residents near Pine Junction, southwest of Denver, reported its location.

“I am just grateful to be able to work in a community that values our state’s wildlife resource,” said Dawson Swanson, Mr Murdoch’s fellow officer.

“I was able to quickly respond to a report from a local resident regarding a recent sighting of this bull elk in their neighbourhood. I was able to locate the bull in question along with a herd of about 40 other elk.”

Officials also said that due to the rutting season, the elk was spotted alongside a bigger bull-which made it easier to locate it.

The elk was first spotted in 2019 in the Mount Evans wilderness during a wildlife population survey for Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and mountain goats.

Officials said that while this elk has been freed, wildlife like deer, elk, bears often get entangled in a host of other objects like swing sets, hammocks, clothesline, and volleyball nets. 

Reference: Independent: Sravasti Dasgupta 

Maryland woman catches rare tropical bacterial disease from her fish tank

A woman in Maryland contracted a rare bacterial disease from her home aquarium, according to a new report.

The disease, called melioidosis, is usually seen only in tropical areas outside of the U.S., and when cases do appear in the U.S., they almost always occur in people who have traveled to other countries. The Maryland case, which occurred in 2019 and is described in a report published Sept. 27 in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, is unusual because the woman had never traveled outside the U.S. Her case is also the first in the world to be connected to a home aquarium, the authors said.

Such non-travel-related cases of melioidosis are becoming more common, however. In August, U.S. health officials announced they were investigating four cases of melioidosis that occurred in 2021 and weren't tied to travel, Live Science previously reported. The sources of those cases still haven't been identified, but officials suspect that an imported product — such as a food, drink, personal care item or cleaning product — may be the culprit. The Maryland case doesn't appear to be connected to the 2021 cluster.

Melioidosis is caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei, which grows in tropical climates and is most commonly seen in Southeast Asia and northern Australia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). People can become infected through contact with contaminated soil or water, particularly if they have cuts on their skin, the report said. People can also catch the disease by drinking contaminated water or inhaling contaminated dust or water droplets.

© Provided by Live Science A fancy-tailed guppy (Poecilia reticulata) in an aquarium.

The disease can cause a range of symptoms depending on where the infection occurs in the body. Symptoms of a lung infection include cough, chest pain and high fever; symptoms of a skin infection include swelling and abscesses; and symptoms of a bloodstream infection include headache, abdominal pain and disorientation, according to the CDC. Not everyone infected with the bacteria experiences symptoms, but in those who do, the disease can be serious, with a fatality rate between 10% and 50%, according to a 2019 paper in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases. (Among the four U.S. melioidosis cases in 2021, two died.) Certain medical conditions, including diabetes and liver disease, can increase a person's risk of infection, according to the CDC.

The 56-year-old Maryland woman, who had a history of diabetes, was first hospitalized in September 2019 with fever, cough and chest pain, and tests showed she had pneumonia. Several days later, further testing revealed that she was infected with B. pseudomallei.

She began receiving an antibiotic called meropenem, which is recommended for treating melioidosis. After 11 days, she was well enough to leave the hospital. But three weeks later, her infection relapsed even though she was still on antibiotics. She was hospitalized for another week and given a second antibiotic. Overall, it took 12 weeks of continuous antibiotics to clear her infection.

To determine where her infection came from, health officials took samples from in and around the woman's home, including samples from her two freshwater aquariums. Samples from one fish tank were positive for B. pseudomallei, and the bacterial strain in the tank was a genetic match to the one that infected the patient.

The woman reported that she had purchased the aquariums, tank supplies and several types of tropical fish, including cherry barbs (Puntius titteya) and fancy-tailed guppies (Poecilia reticulata), in July 2019.

She also reported that she had put her bare hands and arms into the tank while cleaning it, the report said.

So officials investigated the pet store where the woman bought the fish, as well as the vendors that imported the fish, to check for B. pseudomallei contamination.

"Because these vendors might distribute freshwater animals and aquatic plants to pet store retailers throughout the United States, identifying possible source(s) of introduction with B. pseudomallei in the supply chain is essential to public health," the authors wrote in their report.

As a result of the case, the CDC is now including questions about ownership of aquariums and tropical fish in questionnaires used for investigating melioidosis cases, according to Gizmodo.

The case "really broadened our understanding about how the bacteria might be able to travel across borders through imported products. And now that we've identified this new route of exposure, that can raise awareness about this risk," study lead author Patrick Dawson, an epidemiologist in the Office of Science at the CDC, told Gizmodo.

To reduce the risk of catching diseases from fish in general, the CDC recommends that people wash their hands before and after cleaning aquariums and feeding fish. People should also wear gloves to cover any cuts on their hands while cleaning aquariums or handling fish, according to the agency.

Originally published on Live Science. :  Reference: Live Science: Rachael Rettner