Panda rebuild

The researchers used recordings of a sentinel's 'watchman's song' played back at different heights to observe the differences in behaviour. And indeed they found that the higher a song was transmitted, the more confident foragers were in extending the distance and duration of their activities. When sentinels moved to a higher position, their probability of detecting predators is likely to be greater, the researchers believe. Their group reduced their vigilance, spread out more widely and were more likely to venture into the open, the team said. " Consequently, they spent more time foraging and increased their foraging efficiency, resulting in a substantial increase in biomass intake. " As the babblers in this study were accustomed to human association, weighing them on scales on which they jumped was relatively easy, said Radford. " This is the first study to link explicitly a measure of the potential quality of public information with a fitness measure from those relying on the information, " the researchers say. Sentinel behaviour, where an individual adopts a raised position, scans for danger and gives alarm calls to warn foraging groupmates of predatory threats, has evolved in a number of bird and mammal species, the researchers say. " In the presence of a sentinel, foragers can benefit from both lower predation risk, because sentinels tend to detect predators more often and from further away than do individuals on the ground, and a lowered starvation risk, because they can spend more time foraging and can do so more efficiently, " they believe. Although individuals are known to respond differently to alarm calls given by callers of differing reliability, no study has investigated whether foragers monitor features associated with sentinel reliability and adjust their behaviour when these change, they say. Because pied babblers are preyed upon by a variety of terrestrial mammals, snakes and raptors, " the movement of a sentinel to a higher perch would potentially reduce the vulnerability of foraging group members, and thus explain their increased spread and use of open areas, as well as their reduced vigilance. " fund 19 projects totalling $40 million. Only about 1,600 pandas live in the wild, mostly in Sichuan. An additional 180 have been bred in captivity, many of them at Wolong, and many have been loaned or given to zoos abroad with revenues helping to fund conservation programmes. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has played a key …