Nature Hub

    From - Sky & Telescope     By  -  David L Chandler      Edited by  - Amal Udawatta Constant Contact Use. This image shows the location and distribution of stars that are part of the Shakti (yellow) and Shiva (blue) streams in the Milky Way. These streams of stars were identified by their shared orbital properties. ESA / Gaia / DPAC / K. Malhan Astronomers have identified two groupings of stars in the inner Milky Way that they conclude represent two early proto-galaxies that collided with an early version of the Milky Way, helping to build it into the large whirlpool of stars that we live in today. If their interpretation is correct, it helps give credence to the idea that galaxies first formed from collisions of many smaller aggregations of gas and stars. The finding may thus provide glimpses of our galaxy in its earliest stages of formation — in essence, our galaxy’s baby pictures. The newly identified groupings have been dubbed Shakti and Shiva, after two Hindu deities, by th

     By Jacqueline Howard,  BBC News,  Edited by Amal Udawatta Share Getty Images The president of Botswana has threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany in a political dispute. Earlier this year, Germany's environment ministry suggested there should be stricter limits on importing hunting trophies. Botswana's president Mokgweetsi Masisi told German media this would only impoverish people in his country. He said elephant numbers had exploded as a result of conservation efforts, and hunting helped keep them in check. Germans should "live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to", Mr Masisi told German newspaper Bild. Botswana is home to about a third of the world's elephant population - more than 130,000 - more than it has space for. Herds were causing damage to property, eating crops and trampling residents, he told Bild. Botswana has previously given 8,000 elephants to neighbouring Angola, and has offered hundreds more to Mozambique

  From - BBC News   By Marta Vidal, ( Features correspondent)  Edited by - Amal Udawatta Izabela Cardoso and Fernando Teixeira The tauros is a specially bred version of the auroch, an extinct cattle species (Credit: Izabela Cardoso and Fernando Teixeira) The tauros, a specially bred version of the long-extinct auroch cattle, is being introduced to Portugal's Côa Valley. On a cold, misty morning, a herd of dun-coloured Sorraia horses, an endangered local breed, graze on grass and small shrubs, their short and stocky bodies enveloped in the mist by the Côa river in the mountains of northeastern Portugal. As the sun rises and the mist starts to dissipate, it unveils the deep gorges of the Côa Valley, where vultures and eagles nest on the cliffs. Further south, a herd of large black and chestnut cattle with long horns run with agility. Known as tauros, these bovines are a specially bred version of the long-extinct auroch, the wild ancestor of the modern cow. The horses and tauros were