For the first time, wild chimpanzees have been documented eating and sharing fruit containing alcohol. The research team speculates that this behavior could be described as an early evolutionary stage of “feasting”.
Researchers from the University of Exeter in England set up ten separate cameras with motion sensors in a national park in Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. There, they captured chimpanzees sharing the fermented fruit Treculia africana. The fruit contained an alcohol content of up to 0.61 percent. The behavior raises questions about whether and why chimpanzees consciously seek out alcohol.
– For humans, we know that drinking alcohol leads to a release of dopamine and endorphins, and resulting feelings of happiness and relaxation, said Anna Bowland, one of the researchers behind the study, in a press release, continuing:
– We also know that sharing alcohol – including through traditions such as feasting – helps to form and strengthen social bonds. So – now we know that wild chimpanzees are eating and sharing ethanolic fruits – the question is: could they be getting similar benefits?
The amount observed is probably not enough to get the chimpanzees drunk, but the researchers estimate that the filmed episodes only provide a small glimpse into how much fermented fruit the animals eat in a day, as their diet consists of 60-85 percent fruit.
Researchers believe that more research is needed into why chimpanzees eat fermented fruit together, but speculate that the behavior may represent an early evolutionary stage of “feasting”.
– Chimps don’t share food all the time, so this behaviour with fermented fruit might be important, says Dr. Kimberley Hockings of the University of Exeter. “If so, it suggests the human tradition of feasting may have its origins deep in our evolutionary history”.
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Restoring nature means letting it return to the wild – releasing control and allowing natural processes to develop. In Denmark, cattle and horses graze freely year-round as part of ambitious rewilding projects to recreate original ecosystems.
However, the method has created a difficult balancing act: while the projects demonstrably benefit biodiversity, they draw strong criticism from animal welfare organizations who argue that the animals are subjected to unnecessary suffering.
Knutshoved Odde is a 30-kilometer-long peninsula located near Vordingborg, about 90 kilometers southwest of Copenhagen, Denmark. The area was formed during the Ice Age and consisted until the 1800s of natural pastures, water holes, and wetlands – as evidenced by historical maps. Since then, large parts have been converted to agricultural land through drainage, stone removal, and filling of natural depressions in the landscape.
The rewilding project LIFE Clima-Bombin, which started in 2019, primarily aimed to restore the natural environment that previously existed, and then preserve it – something they have now succeeded in doing. This was made possible with funding from the EU’s LIFE fund and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. To restore the natural lands, they began by recreating the landscape from the ground up. Agricultural land has been transformed by replacing large quantities of stones and sowing seeds with wild grassland species.
— We want to recreate what we call ‘The Old Country’. That is, the landscape as it looked before 1800, when the medieval landscape contained water holes, pastures, and large, scattered oaks. Denmark was intensively grazed for 6,000 years until the king sold his land. At the beginning of the 19th century, everything changed to agriculture and dark forests. And then almost all our biodiversity disappeared, said Peer Ravn, who is a partner in the project, to the Danish Society for Nature Conservation in 2023.
The biggest change occurred when they removed the pumps that had drained the land, and now six islands have emerged after restoring the water areas. To create more biodiversity, they also have cattle and horses grazing in the areas year-round.
Now nature has returned to Knutshoved Odde. The area, which was previously poor in plants, now blooms colorfully in summer. Since the wetlands were restored, more and more breeding birds have arrived each year. The area is also an important habitat for all species of Denmark’s endangered amphibians, whose habitats were previously threatened by flooding. Now the frogs have better conditions with the restored water holes.
The agricultural land has now returned to its former state – by recreating the land and letting nature have free rein, it has relatively quickly taken hold again, where biodiversity now flourishes.
At Saksfjed Vildmark, cattle graze freely. Photo: Saksfjed Vildmark/FB
Domesticated grazing animals
The grazing animals are a central part of nature restoration as they perform so-called “natural disturbances” similar to those that existed when more large grazing animals lived freely in Europe. The Knutshoved Odde area is a completed and successful project where grazing animals were used, but far from the only rewilding project in Denmark.
The Saksfjed Vildmark project is an ongoing and relatively new project – started in 2023. It is an 800-hectare area in southern Lolland, which here too was previously agricultural land. There they have restored wetlands, sown wild species, and also introduced grazing livestock and horses.
The area is a Natura 2000 area and is described as one of the largest rewilding projects underway in Denmark. The agricultural land is gone and now the site is rich in species and biodiversity, something they claim has been made possible largely by the grazing animals.
At Saksfjed Vildmark today there are Galloway cattle, Exmoor horses, and Tauros cattle. They graze down the vegetation and thereby prevent overgrowth, trample up soil, and promote biodiversity.
– Even if we don’t see the animals, we can see that they have been here. They have made a path through this former reed sea. The horses have scratched themselves on this birch, they have scraped with their hooves on the ground so that sandy patches have formed, and they have grazed off the green leaves up to over a meter’s height, which creates a semi-open landscape, explains Jens Thorvig Andersen, who is a nature interpreter at the area, for Naturpodden.
Since ecological conditions have changed over the past hundred years, carbon dioxide and nitrogen emissions have also increased dramatically. This means that larger and faster-growing plants take over the landscape, such as grass, thistles, and nettles. But when large animals graze, it affects the landscape and gives small plants greater advantages to flourish.
Starving animals are shot
There are more ongoing rewilding projects in Denmark where grazing animals are used to promote biodiversity. The animals are allowed to live completely freely within fenced areas and often receive no supplementary feed, which in practice means they must fend for themselves. The animals also don’t have the same supervision requirements normally required and live essentially their lives outside human hands – who only check on them from a distance.
This has sparked strong criticism, particularly against the Mols Laboratory, which is a kind of field laboratory in Mols Bjerge National Park in southeastern Jutland, Denmark. There, since 2016, they have let livestock and horses roam freely year-round in a rewilding project, but it hasn’t gone entirely smoothly.
During 2023, starvation among the animals was reported and that the food available in nature simply wasn’t sufficient. A large part of the vegetation is also toxic to horses and cattle, such as ragwort.
All animals at risk of starving to death were shot instead – a total of 67 percent of the animals between 2019-2020.
– At the Mols Laboratory, the animals never get older than six years, said equine veterinarian Lotte Bøgedal to Djurskyddet (Swedish animal welfare magazine) in 2023.
It is primarily the Mols Laboratory that has received strong criticism regarding its grazing wild-living animals, and it’s unclear whether all rewilding projects have exactly the same conditions for the animals. However, a common component seems to be that the animals take care of themselves, without supplementary feeding, year-round.
Horses grazing freely in August this year at the Mols Laboratory. Photo: Molslaboratoriet/FB
Animal welfare or nature conservation
All these nature restoration projects in Denmark can see clear benefits from the year-round grazing animals in the form of rich and varied nature that has re-emerged – but the animal welfare issue becomes complex and challenging, especially in a society where animal rights carry increasing weight. Risk of starvation and suffering cannot be ruled out when animals live essentially as wild animals, but at the same time they cannot be classified as wild since they are both fenced and domesticated.
It simply becomes an animal welfare law issue, since in practice it would be illegal for, for example, a private person to keep animals in a similar way. Denmark has animal welfare laws, including that animals’ needs must always be met, which includes access to food. However, they passed a new law in 2021 that can allow animals living fenced in national parks to “regulate their population naturally according to food availability.” To implement the law, however, one must apply for an exemption from the animal welfare law. According to Bøgedal, the field laboratory had at least not received such an exemption in 2023.
Morten DD Hansen, who works at the Mols Laboratory, believes the criticism is not “unexpected” but nevertheless points out that it is not illegal to keep animals as they do at the field laboratory.
“Many people feel sorry for the animals, but we prioritize letting the animals live as wildly as possible and interact with the varied nature as unregulated as possible. Research is conducted on the animals’ behavior and when this work is finished it will naturally be published”, he writes to Djurskyddet.
Reintroduction of wild animals
In Sweden and other parts of Europe, work has been done to reintroduce European bison in forests for nature conservation purposes. The idea is that it should benefit biodiversity by, among other things, counteracting overgrowth and creating habitats for many endangered species. In Sweden, the reintroduction is still in a preliminary study phase.
The difference there, however, is that European bison are a wild species that previously existed in Swedish forests, while the animals kept free in Denmark are domesticated animals. Arguments from an animal welfare perspective can therefore be that bison are created for the wild, while the other animals are too domesticated to fend for themselves. Additionally, Sweden is considering supplementary feeding of the bison initially to reduce the risk of starvation.
Despite the criticism, Danish rewilding projects continue to develop successfully. While the results for biodiversity are clearly positive, the challenge remains of how animal welfare should be guaranteed in these semi-wild environments. The debate reflects a larger discussion about where the line is drawn between nature’s own processes and human responsibility for the animals that humans once domesticated.
Finland’s wolf population increased markedly last year – significantly more than in previous years. The largest growth occurred in the western parts of the country.
In March last year, the number of wolves in Finland was estimated at 295 individuals. By March this year, the figure had grown to 430. The numbers are estimates based on recorded observations, DNA monitoring, and data on wolf mortality. The number of wolves could therefore be between 413 and 465 individuals.
— The number of individuals has grown by a full 46 percent compared to last year, so it’s a really dramatic increase, says researcher Mia Valtonen at the Finnish Natural Resources Institute to Yle.
The wolf population has increased mainly in western Finland, particularly in the southwestern parts. However, wolves have been observed in significantly larger areas than before, even in places where they have never been seen previously.
In Scandinavia, the wolf has long been considered threatened and has had strong protection, but in May the EU Parliament approved a downgrading of the wolf’s protection status. This means that population management hunting could now be permitted in Finland, something that Finnish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Sari Essayah has strongly advocated for.
— Without population management hunting, the number of wolves is calculated to increase to 557 individuals in November and 436 in March next year. With population management hunting, there would of course be fewer, says Samu Mäntyniemi, leading researcher at the Natural Resources Institute.
The Baltic Sea is in such poor condition that even fishing bans are insufficient to save fish stocks, according to a new EU report. Today, EU ministers will hold a crisis meeting in Stockholm, Sweden to discuss the situation.
In about a month, EU countries must decide on fishing quotas for the Baltic Sea for next year. However, a new report commissioned by the EU ahead of this decision-making process, written by fisheries expert Christian Möllmann from the University of Hamburg, Germany, concludes that the current system implemented in the Baltic Sea is not working as intended.
“The MAP has largely failed to achieve its objective of restoring and maintaining harvested species populations above MSY levels”, the report states.
Furthermore, Möllmann warns that even a complete fishing ban in the Baltic Sea would not be sufficient for fish stocks to recover.
“A fast recovery of cod and open sea herring stocks is unlikely even under a fishing ban”.
On Tuesday, a meeting will be held in Stockholm where fisheries and climate ministers, commissioners, and various EU parliamentarians from Baltic Sea countries will gather to discuss the situation. Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall will lead the meeting together with her fisheries counterpart Costas Kadis.
— We all know that the Baltic Sea is in very poor condition and has been for a long time. But I think there is much greater cooperation between countries today, Roswall told Swedish news agency TT.
Computer models warning of Gulf Stream collapse are based on incorrect assumptions about Greenland ice sheet melting. Media worsens the situation by incorrectly calling computer simulations "studies", writes Tege Tornvall.
Much of the world’s climate research is conducted using computers. Various hypothetical scenarios (sequences of events) are run with different assumptions about influencing factors. Depending on the chosen assumptions, they naturally produce different results.
Media incorrectly calls such computer runs “studies”. This gives the impression that they would actually happen in reality. But they don’t. They are simply assumptions. Computers calculate based on what they are fed.
A current example concerns the Atlantic’s major ocean current AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation). This includes the Gulf Stream, which gives western Europe a milder climate than we would otherwise have. German professor Stefan Rahmstorf and others have calculated its possible development.
The assumption is that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would cause Greenland’s large ice sheet to melt. Based on this, computer models calculate the possible risk that the Gulf Stream would weaken or even collapse. This would likely give us a colder climate.
The computers seem to have run hot. With continued increasing CO2 levels, 70 percent of model runs show that the Gulf Stream would collapse before 2100. Even with less CO2 input, they calculate a 25 percent risk of collapse.
But the assumption itself is flawed. Partly because higher CO2 levels have marginal and logarithmically decreasing warming effects in the atmosphere. Partly because Greenland’s large ice expanses have annual average temperatures of minus 20-30 degrees Celsius.
Returning researchers find their camps covered with snow and ice. The old US military base Camp Century in northwestern Greenland has been covered with 30 meters of ice since it was closed over 50 years ago.
That surrounding sea ice decreases in summer and grows in winter does not affect sea level and hardly affects currents either.
Even though some researchers warn of a weaker Gulf Stream, others do not. According to ocean researcher Léon Chafik at Stockholm University, Sweden, we should not let ourselves be frightened by speculation that the Gulf Stream will soon collapse. His colleague Frederik Schenk urges us to stop alarming about the Gulf Stream.
