Next time you visit your hairdresser spare a thought for the pigeons.

For a long time scientists thought the fact that pigeons in urban environments often lost their toes was due to some form of infection, or was a reaction to chemical pollutants.

But now researchers in France believe they've stumbled upon the real culprit: human hair.

The team from the National Museum of Natural History and the University of Lyon recorded the occurrence and extent of toe mutilations from pigeons eking out their time in 46 sites across Paris.

The found that human pollution likely played a part in nearly all cases of missing toes -- pigeons living in areas with higher rates of air and noise pollution tended to have fewer digits than those that lived in leafier environs.

Perhaps most strikingly, the team noticed that toe mutilation "tended to increase with the density of hairdressers" -- meaning the poor birds often lose their extremities by getting them entangled in human hair.

The team suggested that more green spaces might benefit the population of birds seen by many city-dwellers as pests.

But they do in fact serve a worthy purpose for science.

"Measuring the impacts of urban pollution on biodiversity is important to identify potential adaptations and mitigations needed for preserving wildlife even in city centres," the team wrote.

The study was published in the journal Biological Conservation.

17 South African black rhino relocated to Malawi
Blantyre, Malawi (AFP) Nov 13, 2019 - Malawi has received 17 black rhinos from South Africa under a programme to replenish the endangered species which temporarily went extinct in the southern African country in the 1980s, a conservation charity said Wednesday.

Africa Parks, a charity headed by Britain's Prince Harry, said the operation began on Monday, beginning with an eight-hour drive from South Africa's Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife game reserve.

The rhinos were then released into Liwonde National Park in southern Malawi, where British troops are training local anti-poaching rangers.

"This is one of the largest international black rhino translocations to date," said a statement by Peter Fearnhead of Africa Parks, which rehabilitates and manages around a dozen parks in 10 countries.

The operation was carried out in conjunction with WWF South Africa and the Malawian and South African governments.

"Our shared vision is to bolster Malawi's existing rhino populations and to support regional efforts to conserve this critically endangered species," Fearnhead said.

Brighton Kumchedwa, Malawi's director of wildlife and parks, said the initiative would bolster the population of rhino, which went extinct in Malawi in 1981 before the reintroduction of four rhinos in 1993.

Malawi authorities have refused to state the current rhino population, citing security reasons.

But according to the Central African Wilderness Safaris website, only about 10 rhinos live in Malawi's parks.

Fearnhead said the newly introduced rhinos would be fitted with GPS sensors, and that the animals would be tracked by aerial surveillance and daily ranger patrols.

Once plentiful across sub-Saharan Africa, black rhinos first suffered from hunting by European settlers. Later, poachers largely wiped them out, with only 2,475 recorded in 1993, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Conservation efforts have since brought the population back up to around 5,000.

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Scientists find seven new leech species that live inside freshwater mussels
Washington (UPI) Nov 11, 2019
If you eat freshwater mussels, you might open a shell to find one of seven newly named leech species. Yummy. Between 2002 and 2018, Arthur Bogan, research curator of mollusks at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, recruited collaborators from all over the globe to collect freshwater mussels, sample DNA and document what they found inside. The project revealed seven new species of leeches. According to Ivan N. Bolotov, scientist of the Federal Center for Integrated Arctic Resea ... read more