Adventure Ausrama Blog

Forget your plastics. There is a naturally occurring material with better properties. It is produced in the nests of the Australian masked bee. The substance is resistant to fire and repels water. Furthermore, it is very strong. A company called the Humble Bee located on New Zealand is reverse-engineering the cellophane-like material in an attempt to create a biodegradable substitute for plastic.  If successful, world pollution will be substantially reduced. We are so dependent on things made from oil. The little bees sourced from Noosa in Queensland hold out great hope for a reduction in such products. A way of trapping the Hylaeus nubilosus has been developed by Chris Fuller of Kin Kin. Veronica Harwood-Stevenson has spent her house deposit and winnings from the Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency's Bright Ideas Challenge on the project. It is in the early stages. Ways of manufacturing are being studied. The aim is to initially make outdoor apparel and ...

The worldwide threat to the survival of honey bees is still here, but work on improving honey production continues. Selection of the best queen bees ironically has not been done in the past. If breeding queens only of the highest yielding hives is done, output per hive could increase by a kilogram a year. Genetic improvement in cattle has not been a one-off. The gain is cumulative each year. For this gain to be achieved small producers will have to come on board so old poor stock will not be "kept alive". Tests show that the queen bee is the main depository of better genes. Input from males is relatively stable with little change. External factors such as hive location and length of season do affect the quantity of honey, but gene selection would raise output overall. The Genetic Evaluation of Australian Honeybee report recommends the method of data collection and evaluation. Breeders must get into the habit of keeping data. The industry needs to be reformed away fr...

Much has been said about humans having mated with neanderthals. Scientists claim that all of us have Neanderthal genes. There is the real issue of humans and Neanderthal having a different number of chromosomes. It is known that if a horse is mated with a donkey, the result is an infertile mule. This holds true for all species, so how is it possible for two type of man who branched away from each other a very long time ago to have fertile offspring - the answer is it isn't possible. Another issue is the premise that Denisovans mated with Man. There is little evidence for this. Currently, we do not know the number of chromosomes Denisovans had. Yet most scientists treat the mixing hypothesis as fact. Can scientists be wrong? They have of course been very mistaken in times past and the present is no different. Why do specialists accept theories that have not been tested by the well know scientific method. It must be the case that most of them accept that Santa exists and...

Alpacas rule. Okay, they don't really but they are going strong in Australia. Farmers here say they are the best in world. This may be a tall "call". However, alpacas are cuddly, cute and low maintenance. They also provide a nice income. The first were brought to Australia 25 years ago, so growing them is a relatively new industry. Farmers are doing well because animals originally imported were genetically superior. This has resulted in high overseas demand for access to the gene pool. Most breeders in Australia are small, having only a few dozen alpacas on average. Farmers have no trouble selling the fleece. The market is growing. The future looks good for alpaca meat. The animals do not damage the land. Indeed, they all poo in one spot. As there is no centralized fleece processing body at present, individual farmers process fleece themselves. All unprocessed fleece has been pre-booked until Christmas for processing by "renters", as t...

Animal genetics in Australia is going strong. Exports of genetic material is growing particularly in Columbia, Chile and Mexico. The world generally is its oyster.  Semen is the primary export product. Chile imports bovine semen while sheep and goat semen is purchased by Columbia. Latin America is the main market. Australia has a way to go to reach the U.S. and Canada. However, it is quickly catching up. The quality of Australian beef is high and breeds suit the climate of South America. Sheep and goats are highly regarded. Surprisingly, even canine semen is exported to SA. Embryos are also sent there. ◆ Genetics by Ty Buchanan   ◆ Adventure Australia Funny Animal Photos Funny Weird Things Articles News Reviews ● Vista Computer Solutions Blog                Australian Blog   ★   Adventure Australia ALL BLOG ARTICLES · ──► ( BLOG HOME PAGE) . . . . . . . . . . . . ....

A group investigating Biotinylated dextran amine (BDA) genetic modification of sheep finds the pay-off for investment is poor.  It gives only benefit of $1.5 million for the period 2010 to 2013.  The return of only $0.45 for each dollar invested does pay for operating costs, it says. The Australian Wool Innovation body which carried out the research disputes this.  It says the consultancy has not done its job.  Indeed, the money paid to them was wasted.  The report said that MERINOSELECT did make a profit, but  overall the project ran at a loss to woolgrowers.  How can one sector be okay while the rest is rubbish? Professor Julius van der Werf of the Sheep CRC program said that the estimates were wrong.  The total gross genetic gain needs to be valued at ten times what the BDA group determined.  Tremendous gains lay in the future because genetic improvement is cumulative.  Net present value should be $6.4 M not $0.7M.  This...

Selection of the most suitable plants has been going on for thousands of years, but it has never been so intensive as modern times. It is not so much farmers who do it today. Scientists are doing this as their main work. Ram Singh a geneticist crossed a wild Australian plant with soybean to produce a super crop. Many soybean diseases have been stopped in their tracks. It wasn't easy though. Success came after years of research. The first attempt to "blend" wild Glycine attributes with soybean took place in 1983. A new process which prevents hybrid seeds from becoming sterile was the key to creating the special soybean. Many back crosses with the parent plant were necessary. Ram Singh sent seeds to other scientists as he was working. Outside input from them was a great help. Soybean is a very imported crop that feeds the world. Many products are derived from it. There is hope for the future as 26 wild species of Glycine exist. Most are disease resistant. T...

Some scientists are playing with the truth about colorful plumage in male birds. They are claiming that bright colors as well as dull colors in females are to assist in blending into the environment. This is rot. Bright colors always stand out from any background. Because just under half of bird species have females with brighter plumage than males, this supposedly proves their case. Have they considered that females need to be attractive to males as well? They predict that bright plumage will be lost in evolution. It hasn't lost been so far and there is no support for this claim. Female humans are different than males and it should stay this way. There is no evolutionary pressure for it not to continue. Birds are no different. The premise "that both natural selection and sexual selection were (are) influential to bird coloration" is not substantiated in their research. This is just an opinion. There is no proof. Indeed, evidence for this view is virt...

Artificial insemination is common these days particularly to produce better animals for meat in the market. Cattle, sheep and even horse insemination could be said to a be the norm. Higher quality animals is the goal. Should artificial insemination be used to improve animals kept as a hobby? Breeding show budgies is taken very seriously by many people, so much so that widespread "cheating" takes place. Clipping of cheek patches is not allowed but it is still sneakily done. High quality show winners are usually produced by putting fertile eggs from good birds under "sitters", common budgies with a better breeding instinct. Michael Pace went to extremes to breed his prizewinner in the opaline class at the Australian National Budgerigar Championships. He practiced artificial insemination in his own way. A capillary tube was used to extract sperm from the male which was then inserted into the female within six hours. A lot of hit-and-miss took place. It took ...