Saturn was An alligator who survived WWII

Saturn the Alligator

Alligator called Saturn who survived World War Two in Berlin and
was wrongly rumoured to have belonged to Adolf Hitler dies at
Moscow Zoo aged 84


Will Stewart for MailOnline

An alligator who survived WWII in Berlin and was rumoured to have belonged to Hitler has died at Moscow Zoo at the age of 84. Found by British soldiers in Berlin after WWll & handed to the Red Army. Called Saturn, he has lived at Moscow Zoo since 1946.


Known to have been a pre-war star attraction at Berlin Zoo in Nazi Germany, the story also circulated that the reptile had been in Hitler's personal pet collection, as suggested by famous Russian writer Boris Akunin.


'Almost immediately after the arrival of the animal [in Russia], the myth appeared that it was supposedly in Hitler's collection, and not in the Berlin zoo,' Interfax news agency reported. Despite being a widespread rumour, there is no proof to support the claim.


Dmitry Vasilyev, a Moscow zoo veterinarian, said there was no doubt that Hitler admired the alligator, who was a popular attraction at the zoo in Berlin before the war. Saturn lived until the 75th anniversary of Hitler's defeat earlier this month. The alligator was born in the wild in Mississippi in 1936 before being caught and shipped to Berlin Zoo


 Provided by Daily Mail Pictured: Berlin Zoo in the aftermath of the battle of Berlin, when Russian forces stormed the German capital There is mystery over the Saturn's whereabouts after Berlin was bombed from November 1943. He was eventually found by British soldiers three years later. One theory is he 'hid in basements, dark corners and sewage drains', another that he was in the menagerie of a senior Nazi.


In the early 1990s, Saturn witnessed the Soviet collapse and reports said he had 'tears in his eyes' when tanks shot the nearby Russian parliament because it 'reminded him of the bombing of Berlin'. Saturn was the longest resident of Moscow Zoo, several times cheating death. A slab of concrete fell from his the alligator's aquarium in the 1980s narrowly missing him.


A story by a Russian writer suggested that Saturn was one of the animals in Hitler's private pet collection. A cruel visitor threw a stone at his head - requiring months of medical care. When a new aquarium was built, Saturn went on hunger strike for four months in protest. He did the same in 2010 - for a year - but eventually started eating again.


An obituary by Moscow Zoo said: 'Saturn is a whole era for us. This is not the slightest exaggeration. He arrived after the Victory (in the war) - and met its 75th anniversary. 'It is a great happiness that each of us could look into his eyes. He saw many of us as children. We hope we did not disappoint him.'





https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/world/alligator-called-saturn-who-survived-world-war-two-in-berlin-and-was-wrongly-rumoured-to-have-belonged-to-adolf-hitler-dies-at-moscow-zoo-aged-84/ar-BB14vC9D?li=BBqg6Q6&ocid=iehp

Mercury contamination in American alligators fades with age, and scientists aren’t sure why.

When it comes to alligator meat, ecologist Abby Lawson says “there are a lot of strong opinions as far as the taste.” Photo by Ingo Arndt/Minden Pictures

For Older Alligators, Mercury Is in Retrograde
Mercury contamination in American alligators fades with age, and scientists aren’t sure why.

Authored by Jess Mackie

February 13, 2020 | 600 words, about 3 minutes




South Carolina’s low country—a 2,000-square-kilometer swath of coastal marsh and swampland—is gator country and has been for millions of years. That landscape has changed in recent decades with industrial development. Emissions from coal-burning power plants and other sources of pollution, like a large paper mill in the city of Georgetown, have contaminated the area with heavy metals.

“We’re lousy with mercury around here,” says Jay Butfiloski, a wildlife biologist with South Carolina’s Department of Natural Resources, referring to how widespread the pollutant is.

In the low country, as with other wetlands, bacteria living in the oxygen-starved soil convert the heavy metal deposited onto the landscape into methylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Methylmercury accumulates up the food chain, concentrating in the bodies of plants and animals over time. That means American alligators—apex predators that can live up to 50 years in the wild—can serve as proverbial canaries in the coal mine. Though alligators seem unaffected by the pollutant, measuring the concentrations of mercury in their bodies can give scientists a rough assessment of the level of contamination in the environment.

There’s another good reason scientists monitor mercury concentrations in the reptile: fried, grilled, or boiled in a stew, wild alligator is on the menu for hunters brave enough to wrangle and cook one.

In South Carolina, eating wild alligator comes with a warning: healthy adults should consume it no more than once a week, and those who are particularly sensitive to mercury’s ill effects, such as pregnant women or young children, should eat it no more than once a month. (Those advisories don’t transfer to farmed alligator—the kind sold in restaurants and grocery stores.)

But because mercury accumulates over time, not all alligators pose the same risk when eaten—theoretically, older alligators contain the most mercury.

The trouble is, until recently, scientists had assumed alligators, like some reptiles, never stop growing, meaning the largest animals are also the oldest. In 2016, that perception was disproved by scientists who have been capturing and studying wild alligators in Georgetown’s Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center since 1979. By knowing each alligator’s approximate age, they found the reptiles stopped growing around middle age: 31 for females and 43 for males.

Once age and size were teased apart, Abby Lawson, a population ecologist at Alabama’s Auburn University, used the same decades-long data set to identify patterns between age and mercury concentration. The research led her to a puzzling finding: old alligators have less mercury in their bodies than middle-aged alligators. Somehow, the heavy metal stopped accumulating and then began to decline.

Lawson has a few hypotheses on why this is happening. She says the alligators could be offloading the contaminant through their skin or claws, which they lose throughout their lives. It’s also possible their diet changes as they age. Older alligators may consume less, or, as Butfiloski suggests, switch from fish and other aquatic prey to terrestrial mammals that harbor less mercury such as raccoons, deer, and wild hogs.

Though it remains unclear why mercury contamination in alligators peaks and then dips, Lawson says alligator meat, which has the texture of chicken and the flavor of fish, is enough of a novelty that hunters likely aren’t eating it often enough to be at risk of mercury poisoning.

Still, precaution should be taken since mercury levels vary geographically, Lawson says. For those willing to take a risk to indulge in some unconventional meat, stick to the oldest alligators. (Juveniles, the other age class that would be safer to consume, can’t legally be harvested in South Carolina.) But since elderly and middle-aged alligators can’t be distinguished by size, scientists will need to work out some other way of easily telling them apart—only then could South Carolina’s wild alligator consumption guidelines potentially be tweaked.  

Witness to Steve Irwin's Death

Link: https://youtu.be/twyoQ8LWatU

SmarterEveryDay


Dr. Seymour "Jelly Dude from Nemo Land" talks about how spending a week with Steve Irwin affected his life. 

Tweet: http://bit.ly/IrwinTWT FB: http://bit.ly/IrwinFB 

Visit Steve Irwin's Legacy: http://www.australiazoo.com.au/

More info! ⇊ Click below for more links! ⇊ Here's more info on Jamie (He told me not to call him Dr. Seymour): https://research.jcu.edu.au/portfolio... Dr. Seymour teaches at James Cook University Official comment thread on Reddit here: http://bit.ly/IrwinComments (I participate in this discussion) A huge thanks to Dr. Jamie Seymour, a world renouned venom biologist at James Cook University. He's a top notch guy who helped me open my eyes to the wonders of the ocean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_S... 

Also, the beautiful Underwater clip of Dr. Seymour and I watching the anemonefish was taken by "Shark Dude" Richard Fitzpatrick. Richard is the man. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dar1x..

Hatchling Gharials

Hatchling Gharials 

How hatchling gharials from multiple females congregate near the dominant male, likely their father, on the territory where they hatched, in an impressive photo taken by Dhritiman Mukherjee, among the winning entries from the 2018 Drone Awards

  https://buff.ly/2LS54aB  

Massimo

@Rainmaker1973