OOPA: Golden Possum turns up in Brisbane

We love it when unusual wildlife turn up where they're not supposed to - in this case the rather splendid-looking Golden Possum, a rare colour phase previously only known to turn up in small pockets of Tasmania (and every once in a Blue Moon, on the outskirts of somewhere like Sydney).

These beauties have a hard time in the wild - it's tricky staying out of sight from large predators like Powerful Owls when your fur is as blingy as this bloke's!

So our thanks to Queensland-based CFZ Australia reader Dylan Smerdon for sharing his friend Auresh Yousefpour's pictures of this rare beauty, which appeared in a suburban backyard in Highgate Hill, Brisbane recently. We've never heard of a Golden Possum so far north.

Have you seen an Out of Place Animal (OOPA) in Australia? Send in your pics, we'd love to see and share them on the blog.

Will the Dingo join the Thylacine?

The last Tasmanian tiger died a lonely death in the Hobart Zoo in 1936, just 59 days after new state laws aimed at protecting it from extinction were passed in parliament.

But the warning bells about its likely demise had been pealing for several decades before that protection came too late - and today we’re making many of the same deadly mistakes, only now it’s with dingoes.

Read more at The Conversation.

CFZ Australia talks to UK amateur Archnologist Carl Portman

CFZ Australia caught up with one of our favourite authors, chess demon and spider expert Carl Portman this week.

Carl is the author of A Daintree Diary, which documents his travels through the rainforest of the same name in far north Queensland on the hunt for the elusive Whistling Spider. Carl also wrote Fangs for the Memories: The Search for Tarantulas in Ecuador, which documents his travels in the South American country in 1997 on the trail of giant spiders! A quest not for the faint-hearted or arachnophobic...

How did you first become interested in spiders? What is it you like about them?
I hated spiders with a passion until the summer of 1994 when on holiday in Norwich, England. Whilst trying to kill yet another of the repellent beasts (this time by spraying shaving foam on it) a mental grenade went off in my head and I recall thinking ‘this isn’t logical, this isn’t a fair fight – why am I killing this animal? I resolved from that moment to try to live with spiders. I bought my first tarantula (a Chile rose called Wilma) and it wasn’t long before I found myself in Ecuador studying them. I haven’t looked back.

How many eight-legged friends do you share your home with?
About thirty that I know about. At my zenith I had 1500 and spent six hours a day looking after them all.

What’s your favourite spider?
That’s easy – Selenocosmia honesta otherwise known as the FAK FAK Ochre. I had one once and a taxidermist has preserved the feisty arachnid. They originate from Papua New Guinea.

Spiders elicit a lot of fear and mistrust – are they simply misunderstood?
They certainly are; grossly misunderstood and much maligned. There are many reasons for this but an interesting one is they don’t have a ‘face’ as such for humans to identify with therefore there is less compassion, less of the aaaah factor. Shame considering they have been around for 450 million years. You would think that they might have made more friends by now.

What initiated your trip to Australia?
Steve Irwin! He brought Queensland into my living room in a sleepy English village. From the moment I saw it I knew I had to go. It is a beautiful area not only of Australia but the planet. There’s such a small bit of rainforest left there – and it is the oldest one in the world at that. It is even older than the Amazon. Treasure it Australia, for I always will.

Without giving away any twists, did you find your quarry – the elusive whistling spider?
Well I travelled a round trip of 20,000 miles to find one. That’s dedication above and beyond. Did I find one? Well you’ll just have to read my book ‘A Daintree Diary’ and you’ll find out what happened…

The Night Parrot and Tasmanian Tiger are considered ‘holy grails’ of the cryptozoological world due to their extinct status, occasional sightings and the potential that their rediscovery could tip a comeback for the species. Is there a spider equivalent?
Oh yes. There’s talk of some kind of Hercules Baboon Spider from Africa, a goliath of a species called Hysterocrates hercules that outranks even the great bird eating goliath (Theraphosa blondi) of South America. We know of Hysterocrates gigas which is a large baboon spider and I have kept and indeed bred many but I am yet to see such a monster as H hercules and there’s much debate as to whether or not it really exists. They are obligate burrowers so there must be one ‘down there’ somewhere guarding the underworld. If it is there, part of me hopes we will never find it…

Public called on to help with Giant Australian cuttlefish research

Giant Australian Cuttlefish. Photo by Professor Sean Connell

Scientists are calling on the public to help with new research seeking greater understanding of the biology of the Giant Australian Cuttlefish to help stop its decline.

Led by the University of Adelaide, the researchers will study the movement - at several stages of its life history - and the population structure of the Giant Cuttlefish in the northern Spencer Gulf.

They also aim to resolve whether the northern Spencer Gulf cuttlefish is a separate species, and develop a model to measure and assess the effects of potential environmental and human impacts on the cuttlefish population.

Chief Investigator Professor Bronwyn Gillanders says: "The Giant Australian Cuttlefish is renowned for its extraordinary breeding habits when each winter thousands of cuttlefish gather in a colourful display near Point Lowly to mate and lay their eggs on a small stretch of rocky reef. This is the largest known breeding aggregation of any cuttlefish species in the world."

"Historically there were tens of thousands of individuals but there have been dramatic declines since the 2010 breeding season."

"As part of this new project, we are asking fishers, divers, boaters and others to report any sightings of cuttlefish and their eggs, especially in the northern Spencer Gulf. Sightings will help determine if the cuttlefish are moving elsewhere to breed and how the distribution and abundance of the population might be changing."

The research is supported by Australian Government funding through the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation. The University's partners include the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI), Primary Industries and Regions SA (PIRSA), Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources (DEWNR), and South Australian Museum.

Professor Gillanders says the magnitude of the decline in cuttlefish numbers at Point Lowly has raised concerns about the cuttlefish and highlighted the lack of knowledge about its population structure and dispersal within the northern Spencer Gulf. Most studies have concentrated on the adults focusing around Point Lowly.

"The dispersal of hatchlings away from the spawning site and location of sub-adults is currently unknown," she says. "Our earlier research has also suggested this northern Spencer Gulf population may be genetically isolated from populations in the rest of the State, and may constitute a separate species.

"If so, there is an even greater imperative to identify the factors behind the decline and to see if any particular stages of the cuttlefish are more vulnerable than others."

Members of the public are asked to record sightings of individuals (numbers and size) and eggs at www.redmap.org.au

Eastern bettong returns to mainland Australia

Thanks again to Brad Wolfe for spotting and sharing this great news.

A rare marsupial long disappeared from Australia's mainland is now thriving near Canberra, with reports the population is fat and happy.

Last year a group of 17 eastern bettongs were brought to protected forest areas in Canberra from Tasmania, their first appearance on the mainland for 80 years.

Adrian Manning, from the Australian National University, says health checks show the small members of the kangaroo family are faring well, with about 35 bettongs leaving the pouch and about 20 more young on the way.

"They've hit the ground running, digging for truffles - which is what they do - and they've actually put weight on" he said.

"The fact that six months in, most of the animals seem to be doing well, putting on weight, breeding, those are all signs that they're happy.

"I don't think we could really have expected any better than we've got, so the whole team's really pleased."

This year, researchers will examine how the bettongs adapt to the environment, and what affect they have on the ecosystem.

And there are plans to eventually move some of the bettongs to sanctuaries and restoration projects in other parts of south-east Australia.

CFZ's Journal of Cryptozoology gets a Naish wrap

A great piece by Darren Naish about the new Journal of Cryptozoology (CFZ Press), the history of similar publications, and why cryptozoology should be taken more seriously.

"...cryptozoology cannot and should not be considered a pseudoscience. Why? Mostly because there is no contradiction whatsoever between the scepticism, hypothesis-testing, self-correction and need for autoptic evidence typical of ‘proper’ science with analyses of cryptozoological data, nor does investigation of cryptozoological data hinge on the assumption that there are always real, flesh-and-blood animals at the bottom of eyewitness reports.

Read the full post over at his Scientific American blog here.

Yowie-haunted farm yields weird prints on car!

Holy hairy hominid Batman!

This Yowie-plagued property yielded a few surprises for our cameraman - strange (marsupial?) prints all over the window of the occupant's car.

What? Where? How? Why?

Yowie? We don't think so...

Previous analysis by the CFZ's Mike Williams has shown that this image is in fact of a possum on top of a rock! Note the thermal signature of the 'yowie' is the same as the surrounding trees and the rock - mystery solved!

In the wake of a visiting US television show, which claims to have recorded evidence of a yowie bellowing in remote bushland, Australia seems to be in the grip of 'yowiemania' - or at least our media outlets do.

Secret state government files have revealed a yowie man was recently sighted in the Blue Mountains, according to the Daily Telegraph.

The case emerged among almost 60 suspected panther, leopard and big cat sightings from the past decade sitting in the bowels of the government archives and obtained under freedom of information laws.

But just for the record, these reports haven't been sitting in the bowels of anywhere for a decade - they were liberated at least eight years ago and have since been published in Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers, a massive tome that dedicates more than 430 pages to exploring the phenomenon.

After an overseas TV crew last week claimed it had recorded audio of a yowie man in a remote region on the NSW-Queensland border, documents show the Australian version of Bigfoot was also allegedly sighted last year far closer to metropolitan areas at Springwood, west of Sydney.

In an email to National Parks and Wildlife Service rangers, the witness said he had filmed the creature in March last year and taken photos of footprints. He even drew the yowie man's head, pecs, arms and feet on the picture to make it clearer.

"I have had a seven-year history with this creature," the witness wrote.Canberra crypto-naturalist Tim The Yowie Man, who claims to have seen a yowie in the Brindabella Ranges in 1994, said he was interested in the latest sighting.

"The Blue Mountains has been a common spot for big cats, obviously, but it is not unusual for yowies either," he said. "I have no doubt people believe they are seeing something unusual but many can be cases of mistaken identity."

The NSW Environment Department declined to comment last week. Three years after a government study found there was no evidence of the Blue Mountains Panther - aka the Hawkesbury Big Cat and the Penrith Panther - rangers are still receiving sightings of the creatures.

In an unsolved attack last summer, a Bilpin family's pet alpaca was mauled to death by a suspected big cat that later gutted a kangaroo.

"'Big cat' kill report," Hawkesbury area ranger David Monahan wrote in an email to his boss a few days after the attack.

"Victim was a large alpaca, head crushed, 7cm puncture wounds in skull, adult animal, hairs left on wire fence to be brought in today."

In June 2010, a witness claimed to have seen a cat the size of a german shepherd with yellow eyes beside a "roo on side of the road with head missing", a report said.

On July 13 last year, a man wrote to another ranger after spotting "the panther" on a trip home from Singleton a few days earlier.

There are 400-odd claimed big cat cases in recent decades.

And the rest!

Victorian wildlife in the firing line

Thousands of Australian native animals and birds have been killed or 'moved on' under permits granted by a Victorian city council.

Permits in the City of Greater Geelong area in 2011 were issued for the control of 81 emus, 100 possums and 235 eastern grey kangaroos.

Other permits related to birds, including galahs, corellas, gulls and cape barren geese.

Landowners who cannot resolve a wildlife issue can apply for a permit to the Department of Sustainability and Environment. Control methods include "scaring; trap and release; trap and destroy; culling; and egg and nest destruction".

Read the whole story here.

New species discovered off Australian coast

A new species of venomous sea snake mysteriously covered head to tail in spiny scales has been discovered in treacherous seas off northern Australia, according to a new study.

Though some other sea snakes have spiky scales on their bellies, "no other [known] sea snake has this curious feature," study leader Kanishka Ukuwela, an ecologist at the University of Adelaide, said by email.

Normally snakes have smooth scales, but each of the newly named Hydrophis donaldi's scales has a spiny projection, he said.

Scientists cruising shallow seagrass beds in the Gulf of Carpentaria (map) recently captured nine of the rough-scaled reptiles, National Geographic reported.

"The minute the first one landed on the deck, I knew we had something special," study co-author Bryan Fry of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, said by email. "It was quite unlike any of the sea snakes I have seen."

Each of the specimens was found on the rocky seafloor, a habitat that could explain the new species' uniquely strong scales, Fry noted.

Overall, though, "we don't know why this interesting feature evolved in this species, or what they are used for," study leader Ukuwela said.

The new Hydrophis—literally "water serpent"—likely eluded notice for two reasons. The species is apparently rare, and it lives in coastal habitats largely avoided by fishers, Ukuwela said. Many Australian sea snake species live in the open ocean and are often accidentally caught in prawn trawls. (See snake pictures.)

Little is known about the yellowish brown reptile, other than that it gives birth to live young and, like nearly all live-bearing sea snakes, is "venomous and potentially dangerous to humans," according to the study, published February 21 in the journal Zootaxa.

Furthermore, venom is just one obstacle to unraveling the new species' mysteries, the University of Queensland's Fry noted.

"Field observations are impossible, because the water is very murky and filled with lots of very large bull sharks and saltwater crocodiles, in addition to [highly poisonous] box jellyfish," he said.

"If we tried to dive there, our life expectancy would be measured in minutes. The only question is which animal would kill us.

"My money is on the bull sharks."

Thylacine hunting 'a waste of money'

People should stop wasting time and money looking for the Tasmanian tiger, according to new Australian research.

Dr Diana Fisher and Dr Simon Blomberg from the University of Queensland's school of biological sciences report their findings in a recent issue of Conservation Biology.

Since the last wild thylacine was captured in 1933, there have been ongoing searches and numerous unconfirmed sightings of the carnivorous marsupial.

But, says Fisher, such efforts are misguided.

"There's been more search efforts for the thylacine than any other mammal globally," she says.

"I think that's just a waste of money."

What do you think?

This Bearded Dragon loves his iPad...

Here's a short video that's been immensely popular lately on Youtube - an Australian bearded dragon 'going for broke' trying to eat digital ants as they run down the screen of its owner's iPad in the game 'Ant Crusher'.

Now we've seen everything!

Qld yowie witness shares encounter

Over the years the CFZ Australia mob have amassed a reasonable amount of witness accounts on video, which we are now uploading to our Youtube channel for readers to enjoy.

Here is one such account, which occurred in south-east Queensland, just outside Brisbane.

Rare albino whale visits Australian waters

A white whale calf spotted off the Whitsundays coast is believed to be just a few weeks old but it's impossible to tell yet whether the animal is related to Migaloo.

Species expert Mark Read, of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, said without DNA information experts would be unable to link the calf to the other famous white whale.

"We know from basic genetics that this animal could have come from a dark mum and dark father and Wayne Fewings, who took the photograph, said the female was in attendance was a standard dark humpback."

Wayne Fewings captured the white calf on camera while diving near the entrance to Cid Harbour last week.

Mr Fewings, who calls both the Whitsundays and the Gold Coast home, said he and his son's family were in a 4.5m runabout boat when the white calf, believed to be around 4m in length, and two predominantly black adult humpback whales swam towards them.

From the archives: A Venerable Cockatoo (1916)

Meet Cocky Bennett - a cockatoo by birth but cocky by nature, and once a popular pub fixture at the Sea Breeze Hotel at Tom Ugly's Point in Blakehurst, Sydney, Australia.

The featherless bird with the abnormally long beak is rumoured to be Australia's most long-lived bird, falling off his perch at the impressive age of 120!

Cockatoos normally live for up to 80 years, but it is not unknown for them to kick on a bit longer, but not by much.

He was frequently heard to croak "one feather more and I'll fly" and "one at a time, gentlemen, please" when he was harassed by other birds, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, which ran the following obituary when Cocky finally flew off to the great tree in the sky:

Baby quoll no more than a handful

Staff at the Ballarat Wildlife Park are busy giving some tender loving care to a baby quoll abandoned by her mother.

Named “Flare” the 82- day old quoll has quickly become attached to her keepers and is improving rapidly from her ordeal.

A Ballarat Wildlife Park spokesperson said Flare had taken to the bottle and was even beginning to walk around.

“I don’t know why she was abandoned,” the spokesperson said.

“But things are looking positive though, there is still the possibility she may not come through.”

Quolls, she said, belonged to the Tasmanian Devil family and were found mainly in Tasmania.

Calling all birders - solve this avian conundrum!

Name That Bird!

CFZ Director Jon Downes has thrown down the challenge - name this Australian bird! 

Yes they're Lorikeets, but what sort? Some kind of strange hybrid? Birders, tell us all about it! And let the videographer know too!

Oh deer - OOPAs run loose in Qld

Authorities deny they have run out of 'i-deers' after four feral deer that caused peak hour chaos on the Gold Coast this morning eluded capture.

The deer ran amok through Southport this morning, leaping busy roads and high backyard fences as they led their would-be captors and a media posse on a merry chase.

Gold Coast City Council rangers armed with rifles and tranquiliser guns tried to round up the rogue creatures but were outsmarted and outpaced.

"One of our officers is a crack shot but couldn't get within cooee of them,'' said Geoff Irwin, who heads the council's animal control section.

Mr Irwin said the fact the deer were in a built-up area, close to Southport State High, meant shooting them was too dangerous.

He said even using a tranquiliser gun or net gun was difficult because they could only be fired at close range, and the deer moved too quickly.

"They're very fast,'' he said.

Mr Irwin said it was hoped the deer would calm down later today so they could be captured.

The public has been asked to report sightings and warning signs have gone up on roads.

The four deer are believed to be part of a feral herd in the Nerang State Forest, about 10km from Southport, and are thought to have fled a buck deer.

Forget the cute factor and save iconic species

In the past, the plants and animals that have received the most conservation resources are usually the cutest, the most iconic or those that have all but disappeared.

The Tasmanian devil, koalas and whales have all received significant funding or media attention. But a growing number of scientists question whether this is the most effective conservation method. Instead, they propose using economics and mathematics to develop cost-effective analyses of which animals should be saved and, more controversially, which ones should be ignored.

This method is already being used to prioritise recovery programs for threatened species in New Zealand and Tasmania, while the NSW government is developing a priority list of recovery projects for about 450 to 500 species.

University of Queensland ecology professor Hugh Possingham, who started his career studying mathematics, says merging conservation with economic principles makes perfect sense. He argues that given the scant resources allocated to rehabilitate threatened species, getting ''bang for your buck'' is important.

In the past, bad decision-making resulted in conservation resources being poorly spent, he says. He cites the extensive campaign to try to stop cane toads advancing into north-western Australia as an example of an inefficient conservation program.

''Everybody considers that a futile activity but we've spent money on it,'' says Possingham, who is the director of the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions. ''Given the limited amount of money, every dollar we spend is precious,'' he adds.

More than $10 million has been handed to scientists to develop methods to eliminate the species over the past two decades and several more million dollars have been given to community groups to prevent the spread of the pest. But none of these endeavours has stopped, or even slowed, the toad invasion, according to a threat-abatement plan released by the federal government in June.

As part of his research, Possingham and colleagues, including his former postgraduate researcher, Liana Joseph, came up with a method to pinpoint which programs to save threatened species should receive funding over others. As part of the model, all species are given a value, which is often based on how genetically distinct they are.

''In Australia, the echidna and platypus, neither of whom are doing very well, are so taxonomically unique, it would be a global tragedy if we lost them, whereas a subspecies of honeyeater has many close relatives,'' Possingham says.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/survival-of-the-cheapest-20110810-1imox.html#ixzz1UiGWNIcw

On the lookout for the Powerful Owl

The Powerful Owl (Ninox strenua), one of Australia's iconic birds, is currently listed as vulnerable in NSW with only 20-30 mating pairs in the Sydney region.

In response Birds Australia has put out a call to the general public to report sightings of the Powerful Owl. They are also giving people the opportunity to volunteer as trainer-observers and gather more detailed data.

A large cause of the birds’ vulnerable status is land clearing of their natural habitat. In recent times the owls have been known to live in fragmented habitats such as farms and suburban areas - a significant change from open forest and woodland areas where the birds' main nesting location is inside tree hollows, a perfect space for females to incubate eggs and brood their young.

The owl is the largest of Australia’s nocturnal birds: 50-60cm in size so when identifying the bird size is a definite factor to consider.

The owl is prevalent in eastern and south-eastern Australia, mainly on the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range, from south-eastern QLD to VIC.

The bird is a carnivore, commonly known to eat Ringtail Possums, Great Gliders and other tree-dwelling mammals, as well as rabbits and small marsupials. The bird catches prey with its feet.
Communication:

The bird can also be distinguished by its call: a deep, double hoot “woo-hoo”, with the males' call generally deeper than the females'.

The Powerful Owl mates for life and defends an all-purpose territory. Breeding season is April to September, so in this time period it will be much more likely to sight the male bird.

To report a sighting or volunteer as an observer, email: birdsinbackyards@birdsaustralia.com