No Neigh-Sayers: Live Horses Join First-Day Veterinary Students for Anatomy Lecture in Hungary 

Dr. Péter Sótonyi, rector of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest, Hungary, shows the tongue of a horse during an anatomy lecture for first-year students, using a live horse, Monday, Sept 9. 2024. (AP)
Dr. Péter Sótonyi, rector of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest, Hungary, shows the tongue of a horse during an anatomy lecture for first-year students, using a live horse, Monday, Sept 9. 2024. (AP)
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No Neigh-Sayers: Live Horses Join First-Day Veterinary Students for Anatomy Lecture in Hungary 

Dr. Péter Sótonyi, rector of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest, Hungary, shows the tongue of a horse during an anatomy lecture for first-year students, using a live horse, Monday, Sept 9. 2024. (AP)
Dr. Péter Sótonyi, rector of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest, Hungary, shows the tongue of a horse during an anatomy lecture for first-year students, using a live horse, Monday, Sept 9. 2024. (AP)

A lecture hall full of first-year veterinary students in Hungary eagerly took their places for the first animal anatomy lesson of their academic careers, when two full-grown horses clopped inside and joined the class.

The rector at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest, Dr. Péter Sótonyi, coaxed one of the animals onto a riser at the front of the hall and used a stick of chalk to draw onto the horse — from head to hooves — where its bones, organs and muscles could be found inside.

"This is their very first lesson, and the first time should be with a living animal," Sótonyi said of his students. "They shouldn’t first meet with a carcass, because they want to heal animals. They want to make animals better."

Sótonyi has used this unique method for introducing students to animal anatomy for around 25 years, and is convinced it helps them engage more directly with the subject matter than studying solely through books, charts and models.

Horses, he said, which are "particularly intelligent and honorable animals," are especially suited to the task.

"It’s a big animal and a lot can be demonstrated on it, and people are so amazed that the horse comes into the classroom and climbs up on the podium. This immediately gives the students a lot of motivation," he said.

The horses, provided to the university each year by the Budapest Police, stood calmly throughout the lecture, encouraged by occasional treats of sugar cubes.

In addition to marking the animal's body with chalk and colorful oil pencils, Sótonyi held up pieces from a model horse skeleton to their corresponding locations to provide a clearer visual representation of the horse's anatomy.

About halfway through the hourlong lesson, Sótonyi demonstrated the oral structure of one of the animals, reaching his hand inside its mouth to grasp its long tongue — and getting a gentle nip from the horse in return.

"What's wrong with you today?" he asked the horse to laughter from the students, many of whom stood up for a better view and snapped pictures with their phones.

Following the lecture, there were no long faces or neigh-sayers, but a room of excited future veterinarians. Noémi Tamaska, 19, said that she thought the lecture with live horses was useful for future retention of the information.

"It meant a lot to me that we could see on a living animal how a skeletal system is built," she said. "I think it’s easier to imagine, especially for visually-oriented people."



Italy Oyster Farmers Dream of Pearls from Warming Mediterranean 

A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
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Italy Oyster Farmers Dream of Pearls from Warming Mediterranean 

A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 

Pearls may soon be cultivated in European seas for the first time ever, as Italian oyster farmers seek to exploit an unexpected opportunity offered by the rapidly warming Mediterranean.

In late 2023, the first specimens of Pinctada radiata, a pearl oyster native to the Red Sea, were spotted in the Gulf of Poets, a popular tourist area around 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Genoa on Italy's north-western coast.

Less than a year later, they are proliferating in what have always been some of the Mediterranean's coldest waters, more normally associated with other types of oyster used for food rather than jewellery.

"We are looking into the possibility of producing cultivated pearls here," said Paolo Varrella, the head of a cooperative that has been breeding food oysters in the area since 2011.

The group has already made contact with pearl oyster farmers in Mexico to get tips on production techniques, Varrella said.

"The Pinctada radiata has been reported in the Ionian Sea around the island of Sicily since the 1970s, but only in the last decade has it moved north" to the cooler Tyrrhenian and Ligurian seas that lap the western Italian mainland, said Salvatore Giacobbe, professor of ecology at the University of Messina.

It is the latest in a succession of alien warm-water species to enter the Mediterranean as it heats up due to climate change.

Manuela Falautano, a scientist at the Italian environmental research and protection institute ISPRA, said this trend had seen "an exponential increase" in the last decade.

Some of these species are aggressive and disrupt delicate ecosystems. In a few cases, such the spotted puffer fish and the scorpion fish, they are also dangerous to humans.

The 2.5 million square kilometer (970,000 square mile) expanse of water that separates southern Europe from Africa and the Middle East is heating up faster than the average of the world's seas, Falautano said.

BIG MONEY

Pearl production, more readily associated with Polynesian atolls than the northern Mediterranean, has an annual global turnover of 11 billion dollars, and Italian oyster farmers are keen to cash in.

Adriano Genisi, a pearl importer for more than 30 years, said the Radiata may produce gems similar to Japan's renowned "Akoya" pearls which have a diameter of 5-9 millimeters and a white color with shades of grey, pink and green.

If all goes well the first pearls could be harvested in about a year, he said.

The rising temperature of the Mediterranean is also blamed for an increase in violent storms such as the one that sank the luxury yacht of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch off Sicily last month, killing six passengers and the boat's cook.

Franco Reseghetti, a researcher at Italy's National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology, said measurements taken in the Tyrrhenian in December at depths of between 300 and 800 meters showed the highest temperatures since 2013, and he expected to see a further increase this year.

"The huge amount of energy behind this heating can act as a fuel for devastating atmospheric phenomena" such as the violent storm which appeared to have sunk the yacht off Sicily, Reseghetti said.