Jax, a Belgian malinois, was too gentle to be a military dog and found work attacking a different kind of enemy: invasive species taking over North America.

The two-year-old animal has been trained by Working Dogs for Conservation, a charity based in Montana that uses dogs to help conservatives. From Yellowstone, Wyoming, to Alberta, Canada, they sniff out unwelcome ants, and weeds threatening natural ecosystem.

Jax and two other dogs, Barley and Tobias, were used in Yellowstone to detect zebra and quagga mussels, which have reached 46 US states and can damage lake ecosystems by eating algae that fish feed on. Their spread is hard to stop because their larvae can be picked up on boats.

Kayla Fratt, who trained the dogs, said, ''People were more willing to have their boats inspected and to learn about the mussels as soon as we were there with the dogs. We talked to over 700 people about invasive species.''

Invasive species cost the US economy more than $ 120 billion a year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service said in a report last month. Americans national parks had become overrun with invasive species, the Service said.

The 35 animals trained by Working Dogs come from shelters or previous training programs, but all have high energy and intense focus. They'll do anything to get their reward, making them easier to train. Tobias started life as a stray, and Barley was given up by a family who couldn't handle his energy.

The group also helped others to train dogs. Last year was its first working with US national parks and they hope the work would continue. Ms Fratt said, "We were joking that 2020 is going to shape up to be the year of the ferret for us. ” Conservationists are eager to study black-footed ferrets, a highly endangered North American species with signs of recovering. They're difficult to track and it's hoped that the dogs can help.

Thousands of emperor penguin chicks across four colonies in Antarctica are believed to have died because of record-low sea ice levels that caused a catastrophic breeding (繁殖) failure in late 2022, according to new research.

Analysis of satellite images showed the break-up of the stable sea ice and the disappearance of the colonies at a time when chicks had not yet grow n their waterproof feathers. Scientists have said emperor penguins face an uncertain future under global heating because they are so dependent on sea ice.

The research said that the breeding failures in the Bellingshausen Sea never happened before, as it was the first time multiple colonies across a large region had all failed in a single season. “It’s a worrying story,” said Dr. Peter Fretwell, a researcher with the British Antarctic Survey and the lead author of the research. “The sea ice loss has been far quicker than we imagined.” Many parts of the region had near-total loss of sea ice. Fretwell estimated as many as 7,000 chicks may have perished. “In some cases it’s possible the sea broke up into smaller floes (浮冰) or under the feet of the penguins,” he said. “If immersed, the chicks will drown. If they get back on to the ice floes, they will freeze because of lack of their waterproof feathers.”

Dr. Barbara Wienecke, a senior research scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division, said“They still have their down y plumage (全身茸毛). If the ice breaks out before they can safely enter the water, the plumage becomes so wet that the chicks die of exposure. It’s extraordinarily upsetting to think of this happening.”

Both Wienecke and Fretwell said predictions of the future for the penguin species may have to be revised, with the risk potentially greater than previously feared. Fretwell said: “It’s only by changing our behaviour and the amounts of fossil fuels we use will we completely change the situation for these emperor penguins, and many other species. How bad it gets is still up to us.”

The baby monkey is much more developed at birth than the human baby. Almost from the moment it is born, the baby monkey can move around and hold tightly to its mother. During the first few days of its life the baby will approach and hold onto almost any large, warm, and soft object in its environment, particularly if that object also gives it milk. After a week or so, however, the baby monkey begins to avoid newcomers and focuses its attentions on "mother" — the real mother or the mother-substitute.

During the first two weeks of its warmth is perhaps the most important psychological thing that a monkey mother has to give to its baby. The Harlows, a couple who are both psychologists, discovered this fact by offering baby monkeys a choice of two types of mother-substitutes — one covered with cloth and one made of bare wire. If the two artificial mothers were both the same temperature, the little monkeys always preferred the cloth mother. However, if the wire model was heated, while the cloth model was cool, for the first two weeks after birth the baby monkeys picked the warm wire mother-substitutes as their favorites. Thereafter they switched and spent most of their time on the more comfortable cloth mother.

Why is cloth preferable to bare wire? Something that the Harlows called contact comfort seems to be the answer, and a most powerful influence it is. Baby monkeys spend much of their time rubbing against their mothers’ skins, putting themselves in as close contact with the parent as they can. Whenever the young animal is frightened, disturbed, or annoyed, it typically rushes to its mother and rubs itself against her body. Wire doesn’t "rub" as well as does soft wire cloth. Prolonged "contact comfort"with a cloth mother appears to give the babies confidence and is much more rewarding to them than is either warmth or milk.

According to the Harlows, the basic quality of a baby’s love for its mother is trust. If the baby is put into an unfamiliar playroom without its mother, the baby ignores the toys no matter how interesting they might be. It screams in terror and curls up into a fury little ball. If its cloth mother is now introduced into the playroom, the bay rushes to it and holds onto it for dear life. After a few minutes of contact comfort, it obviously begins to feel more secure. It then climbs down from the mother-substitute and begins to explore the toys, but often rushes back for a deep embrace as if to make sure that its mother is still there and that all is well. Bit by bit its fears of the new environment are gone and it spends more and more time playing with the toys and less and less time holding on to its "mother".