The Neural Cruelty of Captivity

October 5, 2020 / activist360 / Leave a comment

Keeping large mammals in zoos and aquariums damages their brains

*Photograph of an elephant brain. Dr. Paul Manger/ University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, CC BY-ND*

Hanako, a female Asian elephant, lived in a tiny concrete enclosure at Japan’s Inokashira Park Zoo for more than 60 years, often in chains, with no stimulation. In the wild, elephants live in herds, with close family ties. Hanako was solitary for the last decade of her life.

Kiska, a young female orca, was captured in 1978 off the Iceland coast and taken to Marineland Canada, an aquarium and amusement park. Orcas are social animals that live in family pods with up to 40 members, but Kiska has lived alone in a small tank since 2011. Each of her five calves died. To combat stress and boredom, she swims in slow, endless circles and has gnawed her teeth to the pulp on her concrete pool.

Unfortunately, these are common conditions for many large, captive mammals in the “entertainment” industry. In decades of studying the brains of humans, African elephants, humpback whales and other large mammals, I’ve noted the organ’s great sensitivity to the environment, including serious impacts on its structure and function from living in captivity.

Hanako, an Asian elephant kept at Japan’s Inokashira Park Zoo; and Kiska, an orca that lives at Marineland Canada. One image depicts Kiska’s damaged teeth. Elephants in Japan (left image), Ontario Captive Animal Watch (right image), CC BY-ND

Affecting health and altering behavior

It is easy to observe the overall health and psychological consequences of life in captivity for these animals. Many captive elephants suffer from arthritis, obesity or skin problems. Both elephants and orcas often have severe dental problems. Captive orcas are plagued by pneumonia, kidney disease, gastrointestinal illnesses and infections.

Many animals try to cope with captivity by adopting abnormal behaviors. Some develop “stereotypies,” which are repetitive, purposeless habits such as constantly bobbing their heads, swaying incessantly or chewing on the bars of their cages. Others, especially big cats, pace their enclosures. Elephants rub or break their tusks.

Changing brain structure

Neuroscientific research indicates that living in an impoverished, stressful captive environment physically damages the brain. These changes have been documented in many species, including rodents, rabbits, cats and humans.

Although researchers have directly studied some animal brains, most of what we know comes from observing animal behavior, analyzing stress hormone levels in the blood and applying knowledge gained from a half-century of neuroscience research. Laboratory research also suggests that mammals in a zoo or aquarium have compromised brain function.

This illustration shows differences in the brain’s cerebral cortex in animals held in impoverished (captive) and enriched (natural) environments. Impoverishment results in thinning of the cortex, a decreased blood supply, less support for neurons and decreased connectivity among neurons. Arnold B. Scheibel, CC BY-ND

Subsisting in confined, barren quarters that lack intellectual stimulation or appropriate social contact seems to thin the cerebral cortex – the part of the brain involved in voluntary movement and higher cognitive function, including memory, planning and decision-making.

There are other consequences. Capillaries shrink, depriving the brain of the oxygen-rich blood it needs to survive. Neurons become smaller, and their dendrites – the branches that form connections with other neurons – become less complex, impairing communication within the brain. As a result, the cortical neurons in captive animals process information less efficiently than those living in enriched, more natural environments.

*An actual cortical neuron in a wild African elephant living in its natural habitat compared with a hypothesized cortical neuron from a captive elephant. Bob Jacobs, CC BY-ND*

Brain health is also affected by living in small quarters that don’t allow for needed exercise. Physical activity increases the flow of blood to the brain, which requires large amounts of oxygen. Exercise increases the production of new connections and enhances cognitive abilities.

In their native habits these animals must move to survive, covering great distances to forage or find a mate. Elephants typically travel anywhere from 15 to 120 miles per day. In a zoo, they average three miles daily, often walking back and forth in small enclosures. One free orca studied in Canada swam up to 156 miles a day; meanwhile, an average orca tank is about 10,000 times smaller than its natural home range.

Disrupting brain chemistry and killing cells

Living in enclosures that restrict or prevent normal behavior creates chronic frustration and boredom. In the wild, an animal’s stress-response system helps it escape from danger. But captivity traps animals with almost no control over their environment.

These situations foster learned helplessness, negatively impacting the hippocampus, which handles memory functions, and the amygdala, which processes emotions. Prolonged stress elevates stress hormones and damages or even kills neurons in both brain regions. It also disrupts the delicate balance of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that stabilizes mood, among other functions.

In humans, deprivation can trigger psychiatric issues, including depression, anxiety, mood disorders or post-traumatic stress disorder. Elephants, orcas and other animals with large brains are likely to react in similar ways to life in a severely stressful environment.

Damaged wiring

Captivity can damage the brain’s complex circuitry, including the basal ganglia. This group of neurons communicates with the cerebral cortex along two networks: a direct pathway that enhances movement and behavior, and an indirect pathway that inhibits them.

The repetitive, stereotypic behaviors that many animals adopt in captivity are caused by an imbalance of two neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin. This impairs the indirect pathway’s ability to modulate movement, a condition documented in species from chickens, cows, sheep and horses to primates and big cats.

*The cerebral cortex, hippocampus and amygdala are physically altered by captivity, along with brain circuitry that involves the basal ganglia. Bob Jacobs, CC BY-ND*

Evolution has constructed animal brains to be exquisitely responsive to their environment. Those reactions can affect neural function by turning different genes on or off. Living in inappropriate or abusive circumstance alters biochemical processes: It disrupts the synthesis of proteins that build connections between brain cells and the neurotransmitters that facilitate communication among them.

There is strong evidence that enrichment, social contact and appropriate space in more natural habitats are necessary for long-lived animals with large brains such as elephants and cetaceans. Better conditions reduce disturbing sterotypical behaviors, improve connections in the brain, and trigger neurochemical changes that enhance learning and memory.

The captivity question

Some people defend keeping animals in captivity, arguing that it helps conserve endangered species or offers educational benefits for visitors to zoos and aquariums. These justifications are questionable, particularly for large mammals. As my own research and work by many other scientists shows, caging large mammals and putting them on display is undeniably cruel from a neural perspective. It causes brain damage.

Public perceptions of captivity are slowly changing, as shown by the reaction to the documentary “Blackfish.” For animals that cannot be free, there are well-designed sanctuaries. Several already exist for elephants and other large mammals in Tennessee, Brazil and Northern California. Others are being developed for large cetaceans.

Perhaps it is not too late for Kiska.

Dr. Lori Marino, president of the Whale Sanctuary Project and a former senior lecturer at Emory University, contributed to this article.

Bob Jacobs, Professor of Neuroscience, Colorado College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Western Wildfires Are Spinning Off Tornadoes – Here’s How Fires Create Their Own Freakish Weather

August 25, 2020 / activist360

Fire tornado damage: WAPA's steel infrastructure mostly survived the fire intact, with one exception: the site of the fire tornado in Redding, July 26. The fire tornado destroyed at least three steel structures, including ripping two from the ground. Image by Western Area Power (Staff photo) (CC BY 2.0). — Fire tornado damage: WAPA’s steel infrastructure mostly survived the fire intact, with one exception: the site of the fire tornado in Redding, July 26. The fire tornado destroyed at least three steel structures, including ripping two from the ground. Image by Western Area Power (Staff photo) (CC BY 2.0).

By Charles Jones, Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of California, Santa Barbara and Leila Carvalho, Professor of Meteorology and Climatology, University of California, Santa Barbara. Published in collaboration with The Conversation (Public License).

It might sound like a bad movie, but extreme wildfires can create their own weather – including fire tornadoes.

It happened in California as a heat wave helped to fuel hundreds of wildfires across the region, many of them sparked by lightning. One fiery funnel cloud on Aug. 15 was so powerful, the National Weather Service issued what’s believed to be its first fire tornado warning.

So, what has to happen for a wildfire to get so extreme that it spins off tornadoes?

As professors who study wildfires and weather, we can offer some insights.

How Extreme Fire Conditions Form

Fires have three basic elements: heat, fuel and oxygen.

In a wildland fire, a heat source ignites the fire. Sometimes that ignition source is a car or power line or, as the West saw in mid-August, lightning strikes. Oxygen then reacts with dry vegetation to produce heat, ash and gases. How dry the landscape is determines whether the fire starts, how fast it burns and how hot the fire can get. It’s almost as important as wind.

Fire weather conditions get extreme when high temperatures, low humidity and strong winds combine with dead and live vegetation to produce difficult-to-fight, fast-spreading wildfires.

That combination is exactly what the West has been seeing. A wet winter fed the growth of grasses that now cover large areas of wildland in the western U.S. Most of this grass is now dead from the summer heat. Combined with other types of vegetation, that leaves lots of fuel for the wildfires to burn.

The remnants of Hurricane Elida also played a role. The storm increased moisture and instability in the atmosphere, which triggered thunderstorms further north. The atmosphere over land was pretty dry by then, and even when rain formed at the base of these clouds, it mostly evaporated due to the excessive heat. This led to “dry lightning” that ignited wildfires.

Wildfires Can Fuel Thunderstorms

Fires can also cause convection – hot air rises, and it moves water vapor, gases and aerosols upward.

Wildfires with turbulent plumes can produce a “cumulus” type of cloud, known as pyrocumulus or pyrocumulonimbus. Pyrocumulus clouds are similar to the cumulus clouds people are used to seeing. They develop when hot air carries moisture from plants, soil and air upward, where it cools and condenses. The centers of these “pyroclouds” have strong rising air.

It’s pretty common, and it’s a warning sign that firefighters could be facing erratic and dangerous conditions on the ground from the indraft of air toward the center of the blaze.

In some cases, the pyroclouds can reach 30,000 feet and produce lightning. There is evidence that pyrocumulus lightning may have ignited new blazes during the devastating fire storm in Australia in 2009 known as “Black Friday.”

Where do fire tornadoes come from?

Similar to the way cumulonimbus clouds produce tornadoes, these pyroclouds can produce fire‐generated vortices of ash, smoke and often flames that can get destructive.

A vortex can form because of the intense heat of the fire in an environment with strong winds. This is similar to a strong river flow passing through a depression. The sudden change in the speed of the flow will force the flow to rotate. Similarly, the heat generated by the fire creates a low pressure, and in an environment with strong winds, this process results in the formation of a vortex.

One fire tornado, or fire whirl, that developed during the deadly 2018 Carr Fire devastated parts of Redding, California, with winds clocked at over 143 miles per hour.

These vortices can also increase the severity of the fires themselves by sucking air rich in oxygen toward the center of the vortex. The hotter the fire, the higher the probability of stronger updrafts and stronger and larger vortices.

Persistent heat waves that dry out the land and vegetation have increased the potential of wildfires to be more violent and widespread.

Is extreme fire weather becoming more common?

Global warming has modified the Earth’s climate in ways that profoundly affect the behavior of wildfires.

Scientific evidence suggests that the severity of prolonged droughts and heat waves has been exacerbated not only by rising temperatures but also by changes in atmospheric circulation patterns associated with recent climate change. These changes can enhance extreme fire-weather behavior.

A study published Aug. 20 found that the frequency of California’s extreme fire weather days in the autumn fire season had more than doubled since the early 1980s. Over that four-decade period, autumn temperatures in the state rose by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit and autumn precipitation decreased by about 30%.

Firefighters and people living in wildfire-prone areas, meanwhile, need to be prepared for more extreme wildfires in the coming years.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Disclosure statement: Charles Jones receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the University of California. Leila Carvalho receives funding from the National Science Foundation.

Scientists are Reproducing Coral in Labs to Save Them. This is How it Works

August 24, 2020 / activist360 / Leave a comment

*Soft corals, algae, fish ( a doctorfish and butterflyfish), and sponges in a highly diverse reef scene. Photo by NOAA on Unsplash.*

By Jenny Mallon, PhD Candidate in Coral Reef Biogeochemistry, University of Glasgow, World Economic Forum published in collaboration with The Conversation (Public License).

Coral reefs are important natural ecosystems but are at risk from a variety of factors, including climate change.
Marine biologists are helping corals to reproduce in restoration projects.
Understanding successful reproduction could be the key to coral reefs’ survival.

Coral reefs host a quarter of all sea species, but climate change, overfishing, and pollution could drive these ecosystems to extinction within a matter of decades.

Marine biologists have been racing to restore degraded reefs by collecting corals from the wild and breaking them into fragments. This encourages them to grow fast and quickly produces hundreds of smaller corals which can be raised in nurseries and eventually transplanted back onto the reef.

But if each fragment is an identical copy with one common parent, any resulting colony is likely to be genetically identical to the rest of the population. This matters – having a diverse range of genetically conferred traits can help insure reefs against disease and a rapidly changing environment.

So what if scientists could use sexual reproduction in coral restoration projects? In the wild, the stony coral species that compose the bulk of the world’s tropical reefs cast their sperm and eggs into the water column to reproduce. Corals often synchronise these mass spawning events with full moons, when tides are exceptionally high. This ensures powerful water currents disperse the eggs far and wide, so that they’re fertilised by sperm of distant colonies.

*Corals often broadcast reproductive material during the full moon, to take advantage of powerful water currents. Image: Jenny Mallon, Author provided.*

Sexually produced offspring have a unique combination of genes from distinct parents, and this helps keep coral populations genetically diverse. Reefs restored with corals created by sexual reproduction are likely to be more resilient, though managing this process hasn’t been easy for scientists to do. But by working on one project in Mexico, I saw what is possible, and learned how to do it myself.

Coral Sex in the Lab

Coral reefs are so enormous they’re visible from space. But watching them spawn is surprisingly tricky. They only do it on a handful of nights each year and the exact date and time is determined by environmental factors that scientists are still working to fully understand.

Climate change is causing reefs with known spawning patterns to shift their timing too, making these events less frequent and predictable. This makes it difficult for different colonies to synchronise spawning, reducing their chances of successful fertilisation in the wild.

The CORALIUM Laboratory of the National Autonomous University of Mexico is part of a Caribbean-wide network of dedicated coral spawning experts. Scientists here collect coral sperm and eggs from multiple Caribbean reefs in order to fertilise them in the lab.

The team wait for the full moon to signal when corals are likely to spawn. Coral sperm and eggs are collected with floating nets and plastic containers, and divers take extreme care to avoid damaging the reef. The millions of sperm and eggs collected are rushed back to the lab where they’re cleaned and monitored all night as they undergo assisted fertilisation to begin life as free swimming larvae. These larvae are very sensitive to water quality, temperature and pathogens, so they need constant care.

Eventually, the larvae settle on hard surfaces where they change into polyps – the initial building blocks of a coral colony. In the ocean, these surfaces are often dead coral skeletons. In the lab, they are seeding units – 3-D shapes designed by scientists at the conservation organisation SECORE to resemble coral rubble that can float on ocean currents before resting on reefs.

*Seeding units mimic coral rubble that floats on ocean currents. Image: SECORE International/Amanda Baye, Author provided.*

Each juvenile produced this way carries a unique mix of genes which they will pass on to a new generation of corals. The resulting population has a stronger gene pool that can help it withstand new diseases and other threats. This long-term strategy also ensures sexual reproduction can continue on restored reefs, which would not be possible for a population composed of identical clones.

Restoring Caribbean Reefs

The Caribbean may have lost as much as 80% of its coral cover since the mid-1970s. The colonies that remain are now relatively isolated, reducing the chances of them being able to crossbreed. But in the controlled conditions of the lab, fertilisation rates of over 80% are common and larval survival is high. That means thousands of juvenile corals are reared until they’re ready for the reef after just a few weeks of incubation.

But with late night dives by experts, specialised materials for collecting spawn and a lab where fertilisation is carefully controlled, this work is often too expensive for smaller restoration projects. So scientists here have developed low-cost methods for lab spawning and are training teams from across the Caribbean to do it.

I took their course in 2016, and one year later, found myself setting up a new spawning site in Akumal, one hour south of the CORALIUM lab near Cancun. Coral spawning had never been observed here, but I trained volunteers from a local dive centre on how to spot the signs. On our fifth consecutive night dive, we saw the synchronised spawning of multiple colonies of Elkorn corals.

We set up a hotel room as a temporary lab with sterilised plastic larvae tanks and filtered seawater and produced thousands of coral babies for restoration sites. In 2018, we built a beachside coral spawning laboratory on a shoestring budget. Positioned under a tree, the breeze block structure has mosquito netting walls that allow the cool sea breeze to keep the tanks at a constant 28-29°C.

*Scientists are using laboratories for coral spawning, to ensure survival. Image: Jenny Mallon, Author provided.*

The lab was just about up and running in time for that year’s lunar eclipse. We hadn’t anticipated a mass spawn of so many colonies, so the lab inauguration was a chaos of colour coded collection cups from different sites and parent colonies.

Running a coral spawning site has been the most rewarding experience of my career so far. It is everything that research should be: cutting edge, dynamic and challenging. It’s what I signed up for when I became a marine scientist.