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FOLLOWING ‘SHADOW’ FOR 7 YEARS

Thursday, February 10, 2022

In this newsletter, respecting the mighty black panther. Plus, take our Nat Geo news quiz; figure out a dog’s lifespan; watch sparring polar bears; and let us know if an annual killing of badgers to prevent disease spread is a good idea.

PHOTOGRAPH BY SHAAZ JUNG

By Rachael Bale, Executive Editor, Animals

I have a soft spot for black cats. Growing up, I had Noir (which we pronounced NEW-ar), a neighbor’s cat who ended up adopting our family. His nickname was Big Guy. Now I have Genie, a dainty black cat from the San Francisco ASPCA with so much fur that she looks almost as big as our corgi.

Nat Geo photographer Shaaz Jung fell for a black cat too. The wild black panther (pictured above), which he nicknamed Saya, or Shadow, is one of the stars of our new story about a nature reserve in India where tigers and leopards are thriving together—“tigers prowling in the undergrowth; leopards lounging in the trees,” as Yudhijit Bhattacharjee puts it. Jung has been following the black panther (a leopard with a genetic mutation) for seven years. “What I found fascinating was that he wasn’t just surviving but thriving against the odds of natural selection,” Jung tells me.

PHOTOGRAPH BY SHAAZ JUNG

Thanks to dedicated conservation efforts, the number of leopards in India has increased by 62 percent since 2014, and tiger numbers have increased by 33 percent (pictured above, a tiger drinking from a waterhole). In large part it’s a reflection of our changing attitudes toward big cats. Today they’re less often viewed as man-eaters to be eradicated and instead are seen as keystone species with as much a right to exist as we do, writer Natasha Daly says.

See more of Jung’s photos from the Nagarahole Tiger Reserve here, and read Daly’s story about how our (both humankind and National Geographic) perceptions of big cats have changed here.

VIDEO BY MICHAEL NICHOLS

A bonus for big cat lovers: Daly’s story includes photos and a great video of a tiger enjoying a bath.

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STORIES WE’RE TRACKING

What’s your dog’s lifespan? For years, it’s generally been accepted that "dog years" are roughly human years times seven, but it's actually much more complicated, say experts. The Dog Aging Project is examining canine longevity, enrolling tens of thousands of dogs of all breeds and backgrounds in the first long-term study to perhaps help our four-legged friends live longer, Mic reports. To enroll your dog in the “pack” of canine citizen scientists, visit https://dogagingproject.org. (Related: Dogs are even more like us than we thought)

Gorillas test positive for COVID: Five lowland western gorillas at the Dallas Zoo have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Dallas Morning News. The USDA says about 350 pets and captive animals have tested positive during the pandemic.

Humbertium covidum: Scientists have named a flatworm after COVID-19. The slick, black hammerhead flatworm, which is invasive, kills native earthworms and snails, and makes the soil less fertile. Why in the world was it named after COVID? Because it was discovered during the pandemic. Read more in The Cut.

Quiz: Think you’re smart? Hip to the littlest type of a certain species that was just discovered? Love a Florida icon? Take this week’s Nat Geo News Quiz. And share the quiz with a friend—or, try another!

The people’s choice: A frozen lake. Willow branches reflecting off the ice. This image won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award from London's Natural History Museum, CNN reports. See it here. And check out, if you haven’t, Nat Geo’s best animal photos of 2021.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY @DAISYGILARDINI

Sparring partners: Photographer Daisy Gilardini found these two polar bears roughhousing in the white spruce forests outside Churchill, Manitoba, which Nat Geo has called the best place on Earth to see polar bears in the wild. The bears gather on the edge of Canada’s Hudson Bay, waiting for the ice to form, then head out on the ice to hunt and feast on seals. The polar bears in this region are spending more time on land because the ice is forming later in the season and melting earlier the following spring. This particular subpopulation has declined by 30 percent since the early 1980s, Gilardini says.

SEE THE POLAR BEARS

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAN KITWOOD, GETTY IMAGES

Kill the badger? Hard to believe, but the squat animal, which has lived in Britain since the Ice Age, is the nation’s largest non-human carnivore remaining. Farmers say England’s annual killing of thousands of the animals protects cattle from deadly disease. Wildlife activists (some pictured above in badger outfits) say the cull is cruel and ineffective. The European badger, cherished in Beatrix Potter children’s stories and in The Wind in the Willows, helps balance populations of foxes, mice, and rats, Nat Geo reports. Readers, after looking at this story, let us know what you think.

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, helped fund this story through Wildlife Watch, an investigative reporting partnership with us.

IN A FEW WORDS

QUOTE

There’s this huge misconception that exploration isn’t for everyone. I’m an exception to that. It’s all about opening doors for more people who look like me or come from where I come from. I wanna see every single person from every single community out there exploring the world.

Dwayne Fields

Adventurer who walked 400 miles to the North Pole

Watch Dwayne Fields guide actor Will Smith on a once-in-a-lifetime adventure

THE LAST GLIMPSE

PHOTOGRAPH BY ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE/PS101 OFOBS TEAM

What’s for dinner? Deep in the ice-covered Arctic Ocean, it’s fossils of extinct worms. Food there is hard to come by. But a community of sea sponges has survived for centuries by dining on the fossilized remains of a what once was a vibrant tube worm colony with the help of symbiotic bacteria. Scientists were surprised to find a huge colony of sea sponges on an extinct submarine volcano. The big question? How were they surviving? (Pictured above, sea stars congregate at a dead or dying sea sponge, covered by a white bacterial mat, on a seamount in the Arctic Ocean.) Tim Vernimmen has the story.

This newsletter was curated and edited by David Beard, Monica Williams, and Jen Tse. Do you have an idea or a link for the newsletter? Let us know at [email protected]. If you want our daily newsletter, sign up here. Have a good weekend ahead.

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