Endangered Sea Turtles Get Second Life at Tunisian Center 

Onlookers, many of them children, watch as one of three protected species of turtle is released after being rescued and looked after, on the coast of Sfax, central-eastern Tunisia on October 15, 2023. (AFP)
Onlookers, many of them children, watch as one of three protected species of turtle is released after being rescued and looked after, on the coast of Sfax, central-eastern Tunisia on October 15, 2023. (AFP)
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Endangered Sea Turtles Get Second Life at Tunisian Center 

Onlookers, many of them children, watch as one of three protected species of turtle is released after being rescued and looked after, on the coast of Sfax, central-eastern Tunisia on October 15, 2023. (AFP)
Onlookers, many of them children, watch as one of three protected species of turtle is released after being rescued and looked after, on the coast of Sfax, central-eastern Tunisia on October 15, 2023. (AFP)

A crowd has gathered to see off Rose, a loggerhead sea turtle, who labors across the Tunisian sand to rejoin the waters of the Mediterranean.

For the last month, Rose has been recovering at the First Aid Sea Turtle Center in the coastal city of Sfax after she was ensnared in a fishing net.

The facility, one of two in North Africa, is run by the EU-funded Life Med Turtles project, which looks after endangered species, such as the loggerhead, and aims to improve marine life protection by gathering data on their behavior.

Since the center opened in 2021, nearly 80 turtles have been treated and returned to their natural environment, said its chief Imed Jribi.

The project also aims to educate the local population in places like Sfax, which relies on fishing.

"Before, we were ignorant," said 29-year-old local fisherman Hamadi Dahech, who brought Rose into the center after trapping her accidentally.

"People ate them, used them for witchcraft, or as medicine and many other things. Today, thanks to (the center) raising awareness among fishermen, she has a better chance of survival at sea," Dahech said at Rose's release.

Do not eat

"We use the turtles that arrive here for scientific research, for their protection as well as raising awareness," Jribi said.

To highlight the natural wonders in the waters off Tunisia, the center opens to the general public on weekends.

Malak Morali, a 30-year-old local who brought her two children to watch Rose's release, said her son loves the ocean-going creatures.

"Every time he hears that there are turtles, he wants to come to take photos and learn new things," she said.

Morali said that it was only thanks to the center that she learnt "that the meat is not edible".

"We usually say that cooking it is good, but it is the opposite."

The consumption of sea turtle meat is dangerous due to the high levels of pollution in the waters they inhabit.

Toxins, such as mercury, build up in their liver and kidneys, posing a significant threat to human health.

Besides the deadly metals, the turtles often eat floating waste.

The creatures can "confuse plastic bags with jellyfish", said Hamed Mallat, a marine biologist.

A 2015 study by the University of Queensland in Australia found that the majority of the world's sea turtle population was consuming plastic.

Trapped in nets

Every year, around 10,000 loggerheads are caught by trawlers and in fishing nets in the waters off Tunisia, a potential death sentence for the turtles.

Life Med Turtles estimates that around 70 percent of sea turtle deaths in the Mediterranean alone are caused by gillnets, a sort of large net suspended vertically in the water.

Some, however, make it through alive and at the center in Sfax, it is often the fishermen themselves who bring in the injured turtles.

As an acknowledgement of their help, the rescued animals are frequently named after the fishermen themselves.

One of them, a frail baby turtle called Ayoub, was fed by caretakers with a syringe.

As well as fishing, global warming poses an acute threat to the turtles by altering their sex ratio.

According to the US National Ocean Service, if a turtle's egg incubates below 27.7 Celsius (81.9 degrees Fahrenheit), the hatchling will be male.

But above 31 degrees Celsius the baby turtle will be female, putting the turtles at greater risk of extinction as fewer males are born.

The rescue center in Sfax nonetheless has hope and is continuing its work to prevent the death of the species.

Before releasing Rose, Jribi and Mallat attached a location tracker to her shell.

They aim to analyze where Rose is most active, which could reveal more about her species' migration and behavior.

"She is the one who will protect the ecosystem at sea," said Rose's rescuer Dahech.



Jungle Music: Chimp Drumming Reveals Building Blocks of Human Rhythm

In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
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Jungle Music: Chimp Drumming Reveals Building Blocks of Human Rhythm

In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)

Like humans, chimpanzees drum with distinct rhythms - and two subspecies living on opposite sides of Africa have their own signature styles, according to a study published in Current Biology.

Previous work showed chimpanzees pound the huge flared buttress roots of rainforest trees to broadcast low‑frequency booms through dense foliage.

The idea that ape drumming might hold clues to the origins of human musicality has long fascinated scientists, but collecting enough clean data amid the cacophony of the jungle had, until now, proven elusive.

“Finally we've been able to quantify that chimps drum rhythmically - they don't just randomly drum,” lead author Vesta Eleuteri of the University of Vienna told AFP.

The findings lend fresh weight to the theory that the raw ingredients of human music were present before our evolutionary split from chimpanzees six million years ago.

For the new study, Eleuteri and colleagues - including senior authors Catherine Hobaiter of the University of St Andrews in the UK and Andrea Ravignani of Sapienza University in Rome - compiled more than a century's worth of observational data.

After cutting through the noise, the team focused on 371 high-quality drumming bouts recorded from 11 chimpanzee communities across six populations living in both rainforest and savannah-woodland habitats across eastern and western Africa.

Their analysis showed that chimpanzees drum with definitive rhythmic intent - the timing of their strikes is not random.

Distinct differences also emerged between subspecies: western chimpanzees tended to produce more evenly timed beats, while eastern chimpanzees more frequently alternated between shorter and longer intervals.

Western chimps also drummed more frequently, kept a quicker tempo, and began drumming earlier in their signature chimp calls, made up of rapid pants and hoots.

The researchers do not yet know what is driving the differences - but they propose that it might signify differences in social dynamics.

The western chimps' faster, predictable pulse might promote or be evidence of greater social cohesion, the authors argue, noting that western groups are generally less aggressive toward outsiders.

By contrast, the eastern apes' variable rhythms could carry extra nuance - handy for locating or signaling companions when their parties are more widely dispersed.

Next, Hobaiter says she would like to study the data further to understand whether there are intergenerational differences between rhythms within the same groups.

“Music is not only a difference between different musical styles, but a musical style like rock or jazz, is itself going to evolve over time,” she said.

“We're actually going to have to find a way to tease apart group and intergenerational differences to get at that question of whether or not it is socially learned,” she said. “Do you have one guy that comes in with a new style and the next generation picks it up?”