Blogs / Discoblog

You know those nice guys who just can’t seem to find a special someone? Meet Polo, a 36-year-old male who’s been unattached for the past eight years, ever since his mate died in 2000. Originally from Dublin, Ireland, he now lives in southern India—in a zoo. Polo is the only gorilla left in all of India. (Although in Spain, he’d practically be considered human, for legal purposes.)

Zookeepers say Polo is healthy, friendly, and bilingual (he understands both English and the local Kannada language), but extremely lonely. “The few joys he enjoys are bathing and searching for food that his keeper hides in blocks of ice or in bamboo to keep him energized,” says Vijay Ranjan Singh, the director of the zoo. Polo is a western lowland gorilla, an endangered species found in central Africa. In the wild, a handsome silverback like Polo would be leading a troop of up to 30 gorillas, most of them female.

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1. Every year during the summer and fall, ocean currents move penguins from southern Argentina to the beaches of Brazil. But this summer, almost four hundred penguins were swept away and ended up stranded hundreds of miles from their normal feeding home. The lost penguins were picked up and flown 1,500 miles on a C-130 Hercules military plane to the southern beaches and, upon landing, flopped into the sea. But the penguins didn’t get a free ride; Scientists tagged their flippers so they could track their future migration patterns. Hopefully they stick to the Mapquest route a little better next year.

2. Hundreds of adorable pandas (which may or may not be an evolutionary mistake) needed help after the Chinese Earthquake in May of 2008. The earthquake hit in a terrible spot, just 20 miles from the famous Wolong Giant Panda Reserve holding 86 pandas (all safe now). Some of the 1,200 pandas living in the wild, however, are still missing. The State Forest Administration sent in shipments of bamboo to help the reserve pandas survive.

3. Bermuda petrels were thought to be extinct for centuries. But in the 1950s, 18 nesting pairs were found. When a hurricane in 2003 destroyed the birds’ habitat, scientists moved the birds to higher ground at Nonsuch Island. (Despite the name, it does exist, we swear.) By removing the nestlings to artificial burrows on the new island, the scientists were able to build a new colony. There are now 85 pairs happily nesting there.

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