Berlin Zoological Garden

Understanding the reproductive biology of giant pandas is crucial for their breeding success and conservation. Pregnancy monitoring, however, is challenging due to delayed implantation and obligatory pseudopregnancy, which limits the effectiveness of traditional immunoassays (IA). To remedy this, we combined polar metabolomics and steroidomics to enable a comprehensive view of the urinary molecular composition across six different reproductive phases spanning six pregnant and seven pseudopregnant cycles. Statistical comparisons revealed 696 discriminative features, including 174 features in the early luteal stages, well before the current pregnancy diagnostic window. Pregnant and pseudopregnant cycles showed differences in amino acid, energy, and steroid metabolism before and after CL reactivation, with androgen levels being significantly elevated in pregnant females specifically, suggesting a role in embryo implantation. Interestingly, we detected only one existing IA target metabolite, but identified other discriminative metabolites that may underlie IA signal detection. Finally, we demonstrated that classification models comprising biomarker panels may improve (early) pregnancy diagnosis with accuracies ranging from 0.763 to 1.000 across reproductive phases. These findings offer possibilities for assigning new biomarkers and optimizing IA target selection, thereby enhancing pregnancy monitoring sensitivity and reliability while improving our understanding of giant panda reproductive biology to support conservation efforts.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-025-19067-7.

Elephants are known for strongly lateralized trunk behaviors, but the mechanisms driving elephant lateralization are poorly understood. Here, we investigate features of elephant mouth organization that presumably promote lateralization. We find the lower jaw of elephants is of narrow width, but is rostrally strongly elongated even beyond the jaw bone. Elephant lip vibrissae become progressively longer rostrally. Thus, elephants have two lateral dense, short microvibrissae arrays and central, less dense long macrovibrissae. This is an inversion of the ancestral mammalian facial vibrissae pattern, where central, dense short microvibrissae are flanked by two lateral macrovibrissae arrays. Elephant microvibrissae have smaller follicles than macrovibrissae. Similar to trunk-tip vibrissae, elephant lip microvibrissae show laterally asymmetric abrasion. Observations on Asian zoo elephants indicate lateralized abrasion results from lateralized feeding. It appears that the ancestral mammalian mouth (upper and lower lips, incisors, frontal microvibrissae) is shaped by oral food apprehension. The elephant mouth organization radically changed, however, because trunk-mediated feeding replaced oral apprehension. Such elephant mouth changes include the upper lip-nose fusion to the trunk, the super-flexible elongated lower jaw, the loss of incisors, and lateral rather than frontal microvibrissae. Elephants' specialization for lateral food insertion is reflected by the reduction in the centering effects of oral food apprehension and lip vibrissae patterns.

Madagascar's biota is characterized by an extraordinary species richness, with a high degree of endemism. The island's freshwater habitats harbor numerous micro‐endemic species, restricted to particular regions and thus particularly at risk of extinction, due to deforestation, overfishing, and introduction of exotic species. The present study investigates for which threatened Malagasy freshwater fish species ex situ populations have already been established, as a baseline to prioritize actions to develop an effective ex situ conservation breeding network. Populations in zoos and aquaria were primarily determined using the Zoological Information System. Of 173 fish species recorded from Malagasy freshwater habitats, 123 exclusively inhabit freshwater; 79 of these are endemic to Madagascar, and 50 are classified as threatened. Our survey found 21 Malagasy freshwater fish species kept in zoos worldwide, of which 19 are endemic and threatened (22 if counting species kept by private breeders). Nine of the 19 Malagasy freshwater fish species kept in zoos have successfully reproduced within the 12 months preceding our survey. The ex situ conservation activities for threatened Malagasy freshwater fishes thus have not improved significantly since the strong start in the early 2000s. More than half of the 50 threatened endemic Malagasy freshwater fish species (viz. 31 species) are not kept ex situ, including 11 species ranked as Critically Endangered. Based on these findings we call for a better distribution of offspring among institutions, including private breeders in the framework of citizen conservation initiatives; a closer connection of ichthyological field research in Madagascar with conservation breeding efforts to set up ex situ populations—both in Madagascar and abroad—of species not yet kept in captivity; and the development of effective, integrated in situ and ex situ conservation strategies.

Artykuł koncentruje się na prezentacji Arendtowskiej teorii sądzenia ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem jej funkcji scalającej czasy minione z przyszłością. Autorka wylicza dwie parabole jako motywy sądzenia: pierwszą kafkowską - definiującą sąd jako rozstęp w czasie, drugą pitagorejską - stanowiącą odwołanie do tego, co zostało utracone. Traktując obecne czasy jako domenę sądzenia - po epoce starożytności, w której triumf święcił rozum oraz średniowiecza, gdzie dowodzenie należało do władzy woli - Arendt zdaje się nas przekonywać, jakoby zerwanie ciągłości naszej tradycji intelektualnej było dla nas szansą. W świecie globalizacji, w którym ogłoszono koniec wielkich narracji, człowiek w szczególny sposób zostaje wezwany do wydawania sądów o sobie i (pięknie) otaczającej go rzeczywistości. Tym bardziej zajmowana przez niego rola arbitra staje się konieczna, gdy tradycja, religia czy autorytet nie oferują już jasnych wytycznych myślenia (stąd słynne hasło Arendt Denken ohne Geländer; myślenie bez podpórek). Potencjalnie rozumiana umiejętność generowania własnych kryteriów osądzania to, zdaniem autorki artykułu, emanacja boskiego pierwiastka w człowieku i świadectwo jego politycznego (nie) zaangażowania w kwestie zła.

Tapirs are the only group among the perissodactyls for which no recent description of the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) exists. Historical depictions of the GIT of tapirs suggest a similarity to the GIT of equids, but do not resolve the question whether the isthmus at the caeco-colical junction, and at the transition from the proximal colon to the colon transversum—both evident in horses—occur in tapirs as well. Here, we describe the macroscopic anatomy of the GIT of a captive, adult lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris). While similar to equids in terms of the overall design and, in particular, the two mentioned isthmuses, the proximal colon of the tapir appeared less pronounced than in other perissodactyls, resulting in a GIT in which the caecum appeared as the most voluminous fermentation chamber. This finding is supported by the particular location of the ileo-caecal junction, which does not visibly separate the caecum from the colon, or the caecum head from the caecum body, but enters the caecum body in its upper third.

The raccoon, Procyon lotor (Carnivora: Procyonidae), is an invasive species that is spreading throughout Europe, in which Germany represents its core area. Here, raccoons mostly live in rural regions, but some urban populations are already established, such as in the city of Kassel, or are starting to build up, such as in Berlin. The objective of this study was to investigate Sarcoptes (Sarcoptiformes: Sarcoptidae) infections in racoons in these two urban areas and to identify the putative origin of the parasite. Parasite morphology, and gross and histopathological examinations of diseased skin tissue were consistent with Sarcoptes scabiei infection. Using nine microsatellite markers, we genotyped individual mites from five raccoons and compared them with Sarcoptes mites derived from fox, wild boar and Northern chamois, originating from Italy and Switzerland. The raccoon-derived mites clustered together with the fox samples and were clearly differentiated from those of the wild boar and chamois samples, which suggests a fox origin for the raccoon mange infection. These results are evidence of the cross-transmission of S. scabiei among wild carnivores. Although our results cannot elucidate whether raccoons became infected by frequent interaction with endemically or epidemically infected foxes or whether these cases resulted from occasional contacts among these animal species, they do nevertheless show that pathogens can be shared among urban populations of native and invasive carnivores.