Researchers have discovered that tiny mammals called the pen-tailed tree shrews spend hours each night sipping fermented palm nectar, but show no sign of intoxication–in other words, they don’t fall down after a nighttime binge.
The creatures live deep in the Malaysian rainforest, and have one favorite food source: the bertam palm, whose flowers have a very strong and distinctive smell. “They smell like a brewery,” [researcher Frank] Weins says. In fact, the flower buds function as brewing chambers — they have been invaded by previously unknown species of yeast, which ferment the nectar into frothy alcohol. “The maximum alcohol concentration that we recorded was 3.8 percent,” Weins says. “That’s in the range of a beer” [NPR].
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Orangutans, which some scientists believe are second only to humans in intelligence, could be the first great ape to go extinct if swift action isn’t taken to conserve their rainforest habitat and protect them from poachers, according to a new survey.
The orange-furred primates live in the wild on only two islands, Sumatra and Borneo. The survey, which was conducted by the Great Ape Trust and will be published this month in the journal Oryx [subscription required], alarmed researchers because it showed that orangutan populations have plummeted in just the last few years. It found that the number of orang-utans on Sumatra island in Indonesia has fallen by 14 per cent since 2004 to only 6,600 animals…. In Malaysia’s Borneo island, the largest home of the species, numbers fell by 10 per cent in the same period to 49,600 apes [Telegraph].
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You may not spend much time contemplating the benefits bestowed on the planet by Papua New Guinea’s vast tropical rain forest — in fact, you may be only vaguely aware of the island nation’s existence. But it’s down there in the Pacific Ocean, just above Australia, quietly hosting an estimated 6 percent of the world’s species in an area that accounts for less than .5 percent of the Earth’s land.
Now, a thoroughly alarming study shows that 15 percent of the rain forest had been cleared by 2002. Researchers say that if deforestation continues at the present rate, half of the forest could vanish by 2021. And if the trees go, so will many of the unique species found in this biodiversity hotspot.
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