The French owner of a rooster called Maurice was taken to court by neighbors who insisted the rooster is too noisy. An elderly couple from Limoges, complained that the rooster cut short their sleep with its dawn crowing (啼叫) next to their home. The couple wanted it 【小题1】 from earshot.

The rooster’s owner, a retired waitress who has been on the island for 35 years, argued,   “A rooster needs to 【小题2】. ” Her lawyer added that the complaints were ridiculous because crowing roosters were part of the country life. 【小题3】, many people signed petitions (请愿书) in support of Maurice and his 【小题4】 to crow.

Mayor of the main town on the island where they live, said, “Today it’s the rooster, but what will it be tomorrow? The noise of the wind? Our accents? ” He has issued a municipal law showing the need to “preserve the rural feature of the town.”

Finally, the court rejected the neighbors’ complaints of the noise pollution and ordered them to pay E1, 000. 【小题5】, the France’s most famous rooster can carry on with his dawn chorus.

A new way to reduce poaching

Researchers are working on a pilot program backed by Russia’s Rosatom Corp to inject rhino horns (犀牛角) with radioactive material, a strategy that could discourage consumption and make it easier to detect illegal trade.

Poachers (偷猎者) killed 394 rhinos in South Africa for their horns last year, government data shows, with public and private game 【小题1】 lacking the resources needed to monitor vast tracts of land and protect the animals that live there. While the toll was a third lower than in 2019 and the sixth 【小题2】 drop, illegal hunting remains the biggest threat to about 20,000 of the animals in the country — the world’s biggest population.

Thousands of 【小题3】 sensors along international borders could be used to detect a small quantity of radioactive material 【小题4】 into the horns, according to James Larkin, a professor at the University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, who has a background in radiation protection and nuclear security. “A whole new 【小题5】 of people could be able to detect the illegal movement of rhino horn,” he said. Some alternate methods of discouraging poaching, including poisoning, dyeing and removing the horns, have raised a variety of opinions as to their virtue and efficacy.

Known as The Rhisotope Project, the new anti-poaching 【小题6】 started earlier this month with the injection of an amino acid (氨基酸) into two rhinos’ horns in order to detect whether the compound will move into the animals’ bodies. Also, 【小题7】 studies using computer modeling and a replica rhino head will be done to determine a safe dose of radioactive material. Rhino horn is used in traditional medicine, as it is believed to cure disease such as cancer, 【小题8】 as a show of wealth and given as gifts.

“If we make it radioactive, these people will be hesitant to buy it,” Larkin said. “We’re pushing on the whole supply chain.”

Besides Russia’s state-owned nuclear company, the University of Witwatersrand, scientists and private rhino owners are involved in the project. If the method is 【小题9】 feasible, it could also be used to curb illegal trade in elephant ivory.

“Once we have developed the whole project and got to the point where we completed the proof of concept, then we will be making this whole idea 【小题10】 to whoever wants to use it,” Larkin said.

Ball- Rolling Bumble Bees Just Wanna Have Fun

Playtime isn’ t just for children. Lab- kept bumble bees roll small wooden balls around for no

【小题1】 purpose other than fun, a new study reveals. It supports evidence that bees experience pleasure,【小题2】 the importance of protecting them in the wild and treating them well in their natural habitats.

“It is super cool,” says Elizabeth Tibbetts, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan. “We usually think about insects as being so different that they lack complex behaviors.” But not everyone is convinced the behavior is in fact play.

Lars Chittka, a behavioral ecologist at Queen Mary University of London, and his colleagues【小题3】 came across the new evidence. The team was studying how bumble bees learn complex behaviors from their comrades by training the insects to move wooden balls to specific locations. If a bee moved a ball to the right place, it got a sugary 【小题4】. The researchers noticed that some bees moved the balls even when no reward was offered. They just seemed to like going back to them and playing around with them and rolling them all over the place. The careful design of the experiments has convinced him the bees are indeed 【小题5】 in play.

Because play implies a capacity to experience emotions, documenting it in insects could have【小题6】 implications. Insects are 【小题7】 being raised for animal feed, and there are no regulations governing their welfare. Honey bees are also known to become stressed and more 【小题8】 to disease and bee communities collapse when industrialized beekeepers transport them long distances on trucks to 【小题9】 and vast fields without diverse flowers nearby, Chittka says. The researchers hope their findings might also 【小题10】 greater fellow feeling for — and protection of — wild insects.