It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
These legless, egg-laying amphibians secrete ‘milk’ from their butts Caecilians, the wormlike creatures you’ve never heard of, produce a viscous clear liquid to feed their young.
Siphonops annulatus. Mother with babies starting skin pigmentation.
Carlos Jared
Alternatives to cow’s milk keep popping up. There’s oat milk, there’s goat’s milk, and now there’s amphibian milk (though you won’t find it on grocery store shelves). A team of Brazilian biologists have documented legless, subterranean amphibian mothers producing a milk-like liquid– packed with fats and carbohydrates–for their offspring. The research published March 7 in the journal Science is the first known instance of an egg-laying amphibian provisioning its babies with “milk.” The findings unveil new bodily functions and possible complex communication in an understudied animal weirdo.
Non-dairy discovery
Generally, milk is associated with mammals. After all, the word ‘mammal’ comes from the Latin mamma for “breast,” a reference to our taxonomic classes’ milk-producing mammary glands. But mammals are not the only group of animals to feed their babies with specialized secretions. Pigeons, penguins, and flamingos have “crop milk”–a goopy substance made by bird parents of both sexes within the lining of their digestive tracts. Some spiders and cockroaches, too, produce milk for their many-legged young. Enter caecilians, wormlike relatives of frogs, toads, and salamanders that live primarily in tropical areas.
Siphonops annulatus. Female with eggs. Credit: Carlos Jared
Ringed caecilians (Siphonops annulatus) are one of about 220 known caecilian species worldwide, and are the newest addition to the list of milk-able animals. The odd, nearly-blind organisms live secretive lives under the soil and leaf litter of South American forests and grasslands. “They are one of the least-well understood vertebrates, because access to these animals is very difficult,” says Carlos Jared, senior study author and an integrative biologist at the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, Brazil. But the effort is worth it, he adds because caecilians are a “surprise box,” constantly offering up unexpected biological treats.
Through years of careful study, collection, and observation in the wild and the lab, Jared and his colleagues have overcome the unknown to make some remarkable discoveries about S. annulatus. Most recently, they’ve learned that the amphibians provision their young with a viscous clear liquid “the consistency of honey,” says Jared. Ringed caecilians secrete this nutritious milk from their “vents”–the all-purpose opening at the rear-end of the body where waste and eggs are also released. In other words: these vertebrate worms feed their offspring with milk from their butts.
“It’s an exciting discovery of incredibly interesting reproductive modifications,” says Marvalee Wake, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Wake was not involved in the new study but has studied caecilians extensively and penned a perspective article accompanying the research in Science. The finding “challenges existing understanding of the evolution of parental care,” she writes in that note. Dedicated parents
Some caecilians give live birth, but ringed caecilians lay eggs. Mothers guard their broods closely. Even after the young hatch and emerge as tiny, slimy wrigglers, mom continues to invest about two months in parental care, forsaking food to ensure the babies are well-fed. Previous research by Jared and others has documented some of the ringed caecilians’ unorthodox parenting methods. While raising offspring, the amphibian mothers’ skin changes color, developing a fatty outer-layer. The offspring use special teeth to scrape it off as a meal.
(“It doesn’t cause any harm to the mother,” clarifies Marta Antoniazzi, a co-author on both the new study and prior skin-feeding work, and a researcher at the Butantan Institute.) But with the new research, it’s clear that caecilians have more than just skin in the game–they’re producing an additional, energetically costly food source. Females lose an average of 30% of their body weight in providing for their young, according to the study.
Following up on past observations that caecilian broods spend a lot of time around the maternal vent, Jared, Antoniazzi, and their co-researchers collected 16 female caecilians and their young from beneath the forest floor of cacao plantations. Digging up the study subjects was “difficult” and required “great patience,” says Jared. In the lab, they housed the animals in tanks designed to mimic their natural environment, and set up cameras to record S. annulatus’ parental care. They confirmed that hatchlings ingest a secretion from their mother’s vent, and that such feedings occur multiple times a day–much more frequently than the weekly skin feedings. After each milk session, the young become less active and laze around “with bellies facing up, demonstrating apparent satiety,” according to the study.
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Milk provisioning in the caecilian Siphonops annulatus. Speed was raised 600X. Credit: Mailho-Fontana et al.
Through analyzing thin layers of tissue from different organs, the biologists found that the milk is produced by special glands that appear only during the parental care period. These temporary glands form in the skin of the caecilians’ oviducts–the equivalent of a mammalian fallopian tube.
It’s been known for decades that some live-bearing caecilian species produce a secretion in their oviducts to nourish their young internally, thanks to earlier research from Wake. But for an egg-laying species to do a similar thing is startling. “The dogma, based on all known similar species, is that even when an egg-laying mom provides some care or stays with the young for a time, there isn’t any such provisioning,” says Wake. “Switching to something that live-bearers do is really novel,” she adds. More surprises
To assess S. annulatus’ milk composition, the scientists extracted the liquid from five of the caecilian mothers with careful massages and the help of gravity, according to Pedro Mailho-Fontana, lead study author and another researcher at Butantan Institute. Multiple analyses revealed the presence of carbohydrates and fat. (Though ringed caecilian milk lacks protein, the maternal skin fills that nutritional gap, says Antoniazzi.) Two types of fatty acids, palmitic and stearic acid, make up more than 90% of the caecilian milk-fat total, per the study. Three of the major fatty acids detected in the amphibian milk are also a significant part of the make-up of cow’s milk.
Then, the cameras captured yet another surprise. Hatchlings make clicking noises and wriggling movements near the vent in the lead-up to milk feedings, says Mailho-Fontana. He and his colleagues found that these sounds and movements peak in frequency just before milk is released, suggesting the offspring are begging and the mother is responding. “Most amphibian biologists are pretty conservative about claiming communication, but it’s entirely plausible based on the recordings that this team has,” says Wake. This type of vocal food solicitation would be unique among amphibians, she notes–just another way these bizarre animals set themselves apart.
Siphonops annulatus. Female with pigmented babies at the end of the period of parental care.
Credit: Carlos Jared
What lies ahead
The study scientists are hoping to conduct follow-up research further examining the offspring vocalizations. Wake would like to see additional work assessing the hormonal cues that prepare a caecilian mother for parental care. “We have many other things to discover in these animals,” says Jared. Even with this new set of findings, so much remains unknown. Perhaps, as Jared suggests, the burrowing amphibians could play a critical role as soil engineers–helping plants grow. Maybe we have caecilians to thank for our chocolate bars, as they dig their way through cacao plantations.
That scientists are still discovering such basic things about vertebrate biology proves, “we need to know more about the biology of all the species on the planet,” says Wake. “Facing climate change and habitat modification, we need to know what we’re doing to our ecosystems–our support base.” Ringed caecilians put tons of effort into supporting their young, and in the process, they’re an inevitable part of the delicate web that supports us all.
Got milk? Meet the weird amphibian that nurses its young
Some caecilians feed their young on a combination of their own skin and a
The worm-like caecilian Siphonops annulatus is the first amphibian described to produce ‘milk’ for offspring hatched outside its body.Credit: Carlos Jared
An egg-laying amphibian found in Brazil nourishes its newly hatched young with a fatty, milk-like substance, according to a study published today in Science1.
Lactation is considered a key characteristic of mammals. But a handful of other animals — including birds, fish, insects and even spiders — can produce nutrient-rich liquid for their offspring.
That list also includes caecilians, a group of around 200 limbless, worm-like amphibian species found in tropical regions, most of which live underground and are functionally blind. Around 20 species are known to feed unborn offspring — hatched inside the reproductive system — a type of milk. But the Science study is the first-time scientists have described an egg-laying amphibian doing this for offspring hatched outside its body.
The liquid is “functionally similar” to mammalian milk, says study co-author Carlos Jared, a naturalist at the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, Brazil.
An unusual diet
In the 2000s, researchers showed that in some caecilians, the young hatched with teeth and that they fed on a nutrient-rich layer of their mother’s skin2 around every seven days. “It sounded a little strange — babies eating just once a week,” says Marta Antoniazzi, a naturalist also at the Butantan Institute. “That wouldn’t be sufficient for the babies to develop as they do.”
Antoniazzi, Jared and their colleagues wanted to investigate these young amphibians’ bizarre feeding habits in more detail, so they collected 16 nesting caecilians of the species Siphonops annulatus and their young at cacao plantations in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. The researchers then filmed the animals and analysed more than 200 hours of their behaviour.
The footage revealed that as well as munching on their mother’s skin, S. annulatus young could get their mother to eject a fat- and carbohydrate-rich liquid from her cloaca — the combined rear opening for the reproductive and digestive systems — by making high-pitched clicking noises. The young would also stick their heads into the cloaca to feed.
The finding that S. annulatus is “both a skin feeder and now a milk producer is pretty amazing”, says Marvalee Wake, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. It is probably just one of the caecilians’ many biological quirks. “Most species have not been studied at this level of detail,” says Wake. “So, who knows what else they’re doing.”
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00686-5
AUSTRALIA
Facebook ate and then ignored the news industry. It's hard, but we should leave it be
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned Facebook from a "digital town square" to a "digital lounge" with less news.(Getty Images: Alex Wong)
Facebook owner Meta's decision to stop paying Australian publishers for news marks a bitter end to a long and often toxic relationship with digital news publishers.
It was a hot-and-cold affair that defined over a decade of online publishing and the work experience of a generation of reporters, and has ultimately left the industry a shadow of its former self.
Although it may be tempting for lots of reasons, the Australian government should avoid putting the boot into Meta by enforcing the News Media Bargaining Code as it's threatened to do.
Doing so will only make a bad situation worse and won't solve the underlying problem of who will pay for the news.
Meta isn't stealing news content. It's ignoring it
Last week, the US social media giant announced it would not renew the commercial deals it (reluctantly) signed with some Australian digital news publishers in 2021.
The response since has generally been one of outrage and anger, plus calls to force Meta back to the bargaining table.
The government said Meta was "appropriating" the work done by Australian companies. By this argument, the tech giant is effectively stealing the content of struggling Australian publishers.
But that doesn't properly describe the problem facing the news industry.
The reality of the situation is far worse.
Having spent years getting news outlets to publish their content on its platforms, and then years making this content less visible, Meta has gone one step further.
It says it shouldn't pay for news content because it doesn't actually want news on Facebook.
And the worst part? It's telling the truth.
Facebook's hot-and-cold relationship with news publishers
How times have changed.
Ten years ago, in 2014, the Facebook news feed was prime real estate for digital news publishing
Reporters were drilled to "post on social". Shared articles went "viral". Armies of moderators blocked trolls in the comments.
Facebook itself (the company changed its name to Meta in 2021) encouraged this by making news content more visible, and producing tools to make it easier for publishers to share their content with its users.
Digital-only media outfits such as BuzzFeed and Vice rode a wave of growth, generating huge numbers of clicks that translated into ad revenue.
In 2023, BuzzFeed folded.
Its founding editor, Ben Smith, described this as "the end of the marriage between social media and news".
In 2024, just last month, Vice laid off reporters and closed its flagship website.
A few years earlier, it had been valued at $US5.7 billion.
What went wrong?
It can be argued that, from the 2016 US election onwards, Facebook tired of the responsibilities that came with hosting news content and weeding out misinformation.
Readers also grew weary of what news had become in the 2010s era of social media. Endless hot-takes. Clickbait headlines. A fast-spin news cycle. Content designed to polarise and inflame.
Whatever the reason, Facebook tweaked its algorithm so readers saw less news.
By 2021, when the Australian Parliament passed the News Media Bargaining Code legislation to make Facebook pay for news, Facebook had been incrementally quitting news for years.
It said at the time news made up less than 4 per cent of people's feeds.
Meta now says that figure is down to 3 per cent.
"Facebook encouraged news providers onto the platform in the ways it promoted content," Dan Angus, a professor of digital communications at QUT, said.
"Now it has the eyes of the world and doesn't need news any more."
Axel Bruns, also a professor of digital communications at QUT, agreed that Facebook seems done with news content.
"They're saying, 'Why should we be the ones paying for it?'
"I hate to admit it, but there is a certain amount of logic to Facebook's argument." Why the code doesn't solve the underlying problem facing news
And so we come to the News Media Bargaining Code, which is designed to address (to varying degrees) three related problems:1.Google and Facebook hold a monopoly over online advertising in Australia 2.Big tech in general pays very little tax in Australia, including tax on all the revenue generated by that ad spending 3.Australian news outlets don't make enough money to pay for quality journalism, partly as a result of a long-term loss of advertising revenue.
Instead of breaking up that monopoly, or closing tax loopholes, the Code effectively takes money from a profitable industry (big tech) and distributes it to an unprofitable one (news).
It's estimated the confidential two-to-three-year deals negotiated by Meta and Google with news media businesses in 2021 amounted to around $200 million.
That's great for the news outlets, but is it fair?
Arguably not.
First, why should a general purpose communications service like Facebook have to prop up the news industry?
"It's a bit like taking mining royalties to fund kindergartens," Professor Bruns said.
"There is a good argument for using one to fund the other, but it doesn't usually involve making BHP pay money directly to childcare companies."
Second, it's impossible to accurately calculate the advertising revenue Facebook and others generate from news content.
Without going into too much detail, what advertisers pay to appear beside the content is determined by an automated bidding war as a user scrolls their feed or visits a site.
This price is determined as much by the user's profile as the content itself.
Calculating advertising revenue is much more complicated than in the heyday of magazines.
But even if you could accurately calculate revenue, and even if you gave digital news publishers every cent, it still wouldn't solve the problem of how to pay for quality journalism.
The reason for this was news organisations were never in the news business, Amanda Lotz, a professor of media studies at QUT, said.
"They were in the attention-attraction business.
"In another era, if you were an advertiser, a newspaper was a great place to be.
"But now there are just much better places to be." The business model that sustained news for over a century is dead
The moment news moved online, and was "unbundled" from classifieds, sports results, movie listings, weather reports, celebrity gossip, and all the other reasons people bought newspapers or watched evening TV bulletins, the news business model was dead.
News by itself was never profitable, Professor Bruns said.
"Then advertising moved somewhere else.
"This was always going to happen via Facebook or other platforms."
This technological change has been generally costly for news outlets and very profitable for Facebook, but that's not Facebook's problem.
The News Media Bargaining Code is trying to restore a model for financing journalism that has gone the way of the fax machine, the fountain pen, and the pocket address book.
The real question is how to pay for a public good that's no longer being adequately privately funded, Professor Angus said.
"How do we pay for this thing that we know is pretty important in a functioning democracy?
"The thing that's annoyed me through the News Media Bargaining Code discussion is that it fundamentally misrepresents that challenge.
"This is not the regulatory solution that many think it is."
One widely proposed solution was more public funding of quality journalism, Professor Lotz said.
"We need to look at journalism the way we look at streets and hospitals.
"It's a thing that's good for all of us to have."
The value of journalism shouldn't be solely defined by readership figures and advertising revenue, she said.
"The idea that you have entities keeping an eye on things, that you have governments that are aware that if they're not following the rules, there's somebody paying attention to them ... that's the thing we've been losing.
"And so there is enormous public value in simply having journalism doing its role, whether or not it's being consumed by hundreds of thousands of people every day." What happens next probably won't be good
With Meta's announcement last week, Australia is heading towards another Facebook news ban similar to 2021. This will be bad for everyone.
Here's a likely scenario for what will happen next.
The government will designate Meta under the Code, which means it will force it to negotiate with media companies to pay for content.
Assistant treasurer Stephen Jones recently told reporters, "we'll be taking all of the actions that are available to us under the code".
Meta will then ban news on its platforms in Australia.
It did this in Canada in July last year, in response to similar government regulation. Canada's news ban is still going.
As a result of this ban in Australia, fewer Australians will read the news.
A third of Australians use Facebook for "finding, reading, watching, sharing or discussing news" — more than any other social media platform.
Much of this news consumption on Facebook was "incidental and unwilling", Professor Bruns said.
That is, Facebook users didn't seek out news, but it popped up in their feeds. That won't happen any more
. Facebook is still the main way Australians get their news on social media.
Misinformation will flourish, as has happened in Canada.
Digital publishers will see even less ad revenue, due to Facebook referring fewer readers to their sites.
"If I'm going to take a punt, I think the government will designate Meta," Professor Angus said.
"They will want to be seen to be tough on platforms and Facebook."
In trying to force a platform that doesn't want news to pay for news content, Australia may end up doing itself more harm.
The Madonna-whore complex may have an evolutionary explanation
In studying human sexuality and relationships, few concepts have sparked as much debate as Sigmund Freud’s Madonna-Whore complex. This psychological theory, first articulated in the early 20th century, suggests that men divide women into two polar categories: the Madonna, representing purity and maternity, and the Whore, embodying sexual availability and vice. A recent paper published in Evolutionary Psychological Science offers an evolutionary explanation for the Madonna-Whore complex.
The dichotomy of female sexuality is not a novel invention of Freud’s. Literature, long before Freud, grappled with this divide. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment presented characters that embodied these extremes, highlighting the tension between virtue and vice. Classic works like William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair explore these themes too, demonstrating the dance between societal expectations and individual identity.
The Madonna-Whore complex has been studied from multiple perspectives, including Enlightenment philosophy and feminist theory. Critics argue that it serves as an instrument of female oppression, perpetuating harmful stereotypes and reinforcing gender inequality. Recent research has provided empirical support to the existence of this dichotomy in men’s attitudes towards women, linking it to sexism, objectification, and relationship dissatisfaction
In this paper, researchers Steven Hertler and colleagues offer an evolutionary rationale for the Madonna-Whore complex. Human mating is profoundly shaped by internal fertilization and cryptic ovulation. Unlike other species where fertilization occurs externally or ovulation is conspicuously advertised, humans evolved a system where fertilization is hidden within the body, and the timing of ovulation is obscure. This adaptation creates uncertainty around paternity, a significant evolutionary pressure for males who risk investing resources in offspring not genetically theirs.
Unlike many other mammals, human offspring require prolonged care and resources to reach maturity. This investment, while crucial for the survival and propagation of our species, introduces a vulnerability for men: the risk of cuckoldry, or investing in offspring that are not their own. Herein lies the evolutionary rationale for the Madonna aspect of the complex, favoring women who are perceived as more likely to be faithful and thus ensure the paternity of offspring.
The multi-male/multi-female social structures that early humans likely inhabited further complicated mating. The plentiful opportunities for both short- and long-term mating strategies likely intensified male competition and concerns over paternity. The evolution of mate guarding behaviors and jealousy can be viewed as outcomes of these socioecological pressures, with the Madonna-Whore complex serving as a psychological extension of these strategies, guiding men towards women who would be more likely to ensure their genetic legacy. As human societies evolved from hunter-gatherer bands to industrial societies, the accumulation and transference of wealth became a significant factor in mating decisions. This magnified the stakes of paternal investment, as men now had not only their genetic legacy to consider but also their material legacy. In such contexts, the desire for a “Madonna” — a woman perceived as virtuous and faithful — became even more pronounced, ensuring that a man’s resources would benefit his biological offspring.
Hertler and colleagues argue that the Madonna-Whore complex’s variability across cultures and environments can also be explained through biogeographical and life history strategies. In harsher climates and environments where resources are scarce or difficult to procure, the emphasis on paternal certainty and investment increases, possibly intensifying the dichotomous view of female sexuality. But in environments where resources are abundant and survival less precarious, these pressures may subside, leading to more relaxed attitudes towards sexuality.
Importantly, this perspective does not excuse or justify harmful stereotypes or behaviors but seeks to understand their origins. Evolutionary psychology offers a lens through which to view the Madonna-Whore complex, not as a moral failing or social construct, but as an adaptation to the reproductive challenges our ancestors faced.
Becoming a parent comes with lots of bills. For new mothers, being able to afford the rent may help stave off postpartum depression.
"Housing unaffordability has serious implications for mental health," said Katherine Marcal, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Social Work and author of a study published in the journal Psychiatry Research. "For mothers who rent their homes, the ability to make monthly payments appears to have a correlation to well-being."
Housing hardship – missing rent or mortgage payments, moving in with others, being evicted or experiencing homelessness – has been associated with increased risk for depression. Yet little is understood about unique manifestations of housing hardship among postpartum mothers in renter households, said Marcal.
To address this gap, Marcal used data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a multiyear study of nearly 5,000 children born in the United States between 1998 and 2000. As part of the research, mothers were interviewed in hospitals shortly after giving birth, and five times over the next 15 years.
Marcal drew on data for 2,329 mothers who reported being renters at year one of the survey. Participants were asked a series of questions related to housing hardship. For instance, had they ever missed a rent or utility payment, moved in with friends or family or spent at least one night homeless during the postpartum year?
Using latent class analysis, a modeling approach that allows clustering of data and statistical inference, Marcal used Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study responses to investigate manifestations of housing hardship.
Four groups emerged from the data: a "stable" group with very little housing hardship; "rent-assisted" mothers with government housing assistance; "cost-burdened" mothers who skip periodic rent and utility payments but manage to avoid most severe housing outcomes; and a "housing insecure" group or mothers who experience elevated rates of displacement.
Finally, these clustered data were analyzed with responses from year three of the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, when participants were asked if they had experienced major depressive and anxiety disorders.
What emerged was a clear connection between housing hardship and depression. Mothers in the housing insecure group were far more likely to be depressed than those in the stable group. For anxiety risk, the best determinant was whether rent was paid each month. In total, the prevalence of maternal depression was 21 percent, while the prevalence of anxiety was 5 percent.
Marcal also identified a racial component to the findings: Black renters were less likely than whites to be cost-burdened.
The reason is counterintuitive, Marcal said.
Black families are more likely to receive rental assistance, but Blacks are also more likely to be evicted faster than whites."
Katherine Marcal, Assistant Professor, Rutgers School of Social Work
In other words, Black tenants don't remain cost-burdened for long. "They're either making their rent payments or they're getting evicted or moving out," Marcal said.
Taken together, the findings highlight the importance of government housing support for low-income families.
"Rental assistance is very effective in keeping people housed and in reducing risk for depression and anxiety," Marcal said. "But what this research shows is that we need to do a much better job at promoting equity in assistance programs."
Marçal, K. (2024). Housing hardship and maternal mental health among renter households with young children. Psychiatry Research. doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2023.115677.
Study links higher mortality among rural elderly to understaffed Norwegian municipalities
Elderly people living in rural areas in Norway have higher mortality rates if they are discharged to a municipality that has too many patients and not enough caregivers to provide services.
Aging baby boomers are swelling the ranks of elderly across the Western world, with Norway no exception.
We know Norway's elderly population will increase, and it's likely there will be far fewer healthcare professionals to take care of them. The last 20 years has seen the population of Norwegians over the age of 80 increase by 40,000; the percentage of people aged 67-79 has grown by 37.9 per cent over the last 10 years.
Over the next 20 years, there will be 250,000 more Norwegians over the age of 80.
The aging crisis has been predicted for a long time, but the country still doesn't appear to be prepared.
Research now shows that elderly people living in rural areas have higher mortality rates if they are discharged to a municipality under pressure.
Elderly people over the age of 70 who live in a municipality with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants are particularly vulnerable.
Over 350,000 elderly people involved in the study
Gudrun Maria Waaler Bjørnelv is an associate professor of Health Economics at NTNU. Her work has her concerned that municipal authorities in Norway may not be prepared for an aging population.
Working with a research team from NTNU, St. Olavs Hospital, Trondheim Municipal Authority and SINTEF, she has studied all Norwegians over the age of 70 who were admitted to emergency departments from 2012 to 2016.
That amounted to just over 350,000 people.
This group of elderly people had almost 900,000 emergency hospital admissions during this period. The researchers followed them for 30 days after the day they were admitted.
Nursing and care services that were under pressure led to increased mortality in elderly who were under their care, and that elderly people in small municipalities had the highest mortality rate.
A small municipality was defined as having fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. According to Statistics Norway, 70 per cent of Norwegian municipalities in 2016 had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. In total, 17 per cent of the population lives in a small municipality.
Increased mortality rates in pressured municipalities
Previously, it was thought that small municipalities do better than large municipalities, because they have fewer patients in hospitals waiting to be discharged to the municipal services. Our findings, however, indicate that small municipalities are more vulnerable during periods when the demand for nursing and care services is higher than the municipality can supply,"
Gudrun Maria Waaler Bjørnelv, Associate Professor of Health Economics at NTNU
She points out that small municipalities may experience more pressure regarding demand for available nursing home places and health professionals.
"This may make them more vulnerable to fluctuations and pressure on health services," Bjørnelv said.
To investigate how mortality rates among patients changed, the researchers relied on information regarding the amount of pressure individual municipalities were under.
The process is as follows:
As soon as a person is ready to be discharged from a hospital, the home municipality of the patient must either receive the patient in that municipality or pay a daily fee to the hospital until the patient is moved home to the municipality.
Need to know more about municipalities under pressure
"If there is a build-up of patients who are ready to be discharged from hospital to one municipality, this suggests that the municipal services such as home care and nursing homes are under pressure. It shows that they do not have the capacity to receive these patients," says Bjørnelv.
The study investigated how mortality rates changed if people were admitted to emergency departments during periods of increased pressure in the municipality. That would be during periods where many people from the same municipality as the acutely admitted patient were waiting to be discharged from hospital.
"We need to take a closer look at the municipal services, and it needs to happen now," says Bjørnelv. She believes that we must find out more about what happens when a municipality is under pressure.
"Is there a greater tendency to move some people home after hospitalization rather than to a municipal short-term care facility if the municipality is under pressure? Is it better for elderly people from a pressured municipality to longer in the hospital – without the municipality having to pay a 'fine' to the hospital? What is best for the patient?" Bjørnelv said.
Bjørnelv, G., et al. (2023). Mortality and subsequent healthcare use among older patients discharged to a municipality with excess demand for elderly care. Nordic Journal of Health Economics. doi.org/10.5617/njhe.10145.
Riverine communities join forces to preserve threatened Amazon turtles
Residents of 32 communities in Juruti, western Pará state, organize to preserve species such as the Amazon turtle (Podocnemis expansa), tracajá (P. unifilis), pitiú (P. sextuberculata) and irapuca (P. erythrocephala).
Monitoring beaches during the spawning season to collect eggs and then take them to a protected hatchery are the main actions of riverside dwellers. The numbers are on the rise: Some communities have already protected 300 nests in a single season. The Brazilian Amazon is a priority area for chelonian conservation, with 21 species described by scientists. Fourteen species live in Juruti, one of which is endemic. Despite being banned by environmental legislation, consumption of turtle eggs and meat still seems to be part of local traditions, contributing to reduce the number of individuals; mining and dam construction projects also threat the survival of the species.
JURUTI, Pará state, Brazil — One of the little sand piles appears to be moving. Fábio Andrew Cunha opens the way with his hands, and a baby pitiú emerges from the nest. Measuring around 4 centimetrs (1.6 inches), the turtle passes its flipper over its right eye and then repeats the gesture on the left side. Its eyes must be cleared so it can see the new world. Seconds later, another baby turtle comes out.
Living in one of the world’s most biodiverse biomes for chelonians, residents of Juruti have seen the number of turtles and other species plummet over the past few generations. Stories told by their ancestors and their own observations about that drastic reduction led riverside dwellers from 32 communities in the municipality of Juruti, Pará, to organize independently and voluntarily to preserve species such as the Amazon turtle (Podocnemis expansa), tracajá (P. unifilis), pitiú (P. sextuberculata) and irapuca (P. erythrocephala).
Riverbank in the municipality of Juruti, Pará. Excessive heat and severe drought warmed the waters and lowered the level of Amazonian lakes and rivers, creating difficulties for turtles to lay their eggs. Image by Julia Lemos Lima/Mongabay.
Their work consists of watching the beaches at night from September onward, when the spawning season begins and females become more vulnerable. Afterward, community members collect the eggs from each nest and take them to a nursery or hatchery — a fenced sand area where the eggs are protected until baby turtles are born. Then they are placed in tanks until their release, which in 2023 occurred in early March.
“Species are managing to increase their wild population in Amazon rivers as a result of basic community management work,” says Cunha, a chelonian expert from Juruti. “Today we have 21 species of turtles described in the Brazilian Amazon. In this area [Juruti], we have already managed to catalog 14 species, one of which is endemic. We consider Brazil a turtle hotspot, a priority area for the conservation of the group.” Between turtles and stars
Former residents used to say there were more turtles in the rivers than stars in the sky. “In some rivers in the Amazon, navigation of large boats was impossible due to the concentration of females, especially during the spawning season, when they form large bales to go upstream and lay their eggs together on the beaches,” Cunha says.
However, the number of turtles has drastically decreased in the area. According to Cunha, a biologist with a PhD in aquatic ecology and conservation in the Amazon, in the 1970s and 1980s, Juruti became a hub for gathering turtle eggs and hunting adult females. As a traditional food item, eggs were even used to pay bills, and turtle meat was once considered the second main source of animal protein in the local diet, only after fish.
Tracajá eggs are relocated and watched over by riverside dwellers at the Lake Tucunaré hatchery.
Chelonian expert Fábio Andrew Cunha monitors the work of 32 communities in Juruti.
Currently, laws protecting wild fauna ban the consumption of turtle eggs and meat. But in Juruti, the story is different between August and September: “You can often smell the [roasting] shell when you walk through the streets. I’m talking about the reality of a single place, but this happens in almost all small towns in the Amazon,” Cunha says.
It is true that a significant portion of the population has already realized the importance of preserving turtles, but research shows that approximately 1.7 million of them were consumed in urban areas of Amazonas state in 2018.
In addition to illegal hunting, the turtles face other threats. “Large-scale mining projects implemented in the Amazon affect the landscape both in spawning sites and in shelter and feeding areas,” Cunha points out. In Juruti, bauxite extraction by mining company Alcoa since 2009 has resulted in unprecedented financial settlements over socioenvironmental damages.
Deforestation, oil exploration and river dams built to expand energy options also pose dangers. “There are several combined changes that ultimately reduce the numbers and population structure of both females and males.”
Based on the reports of their ancestors and observing the number of chelonians dwindling, community members were inspired by existing projects in the Amazon, such as the Quelônios da Amazônia Program and the Pé-de-Pincha Project, and organized independently and voluntarily to protect their surroundings.
A rare albino turtle born in the Caapiranga community.
Miri Warriors
“Our group is made up of young people. There is a 25-year-old guy who started following the work when he was 8,” says Marunei Guerreiro de Mesquita, leader of the project in the Miri community in the rural area of Juruti, which gathers 20 volunteers in the Miri Environmental Warriors Association. “I’m the old one; the others are young.”
Fifteen years ago, when they started the management work, the community members were able to relocate around 50 nests to the hatchery each season. Recently, they have relocated more than 270 nests per year.
The enclosure with the eggs collected is located in front of Mesquita’s house, on the banks of the floodplain lake that connects to the Amazon River. In this season, there are 225 nests, fewer than in previous years, probably due to the severe drought that hit the area, changing the water regime and leaving the headwaters of lakes and rivers extremely dry
.
Marunei Guerreiro de Mesquita leads 20 volunteers in their work to protect turtles in the Miri community.
The Brazilian Amazon is a “turtle hotspot,” with 21 species of chelonians described by science. Juruti has 14 species, one of which is endemic.
Since the beginning of the project, the numbers have risen year after year. Not without difficulties, though. “Because of the work I do, I got in trouble with people in the community, with the [municipal environment] department, with community leaders. But this work won’t pay my bills,” Mesquita says.
Despite the challenges faced to obtain resources to keep up the work, Mesquita feels rewarded by the increase in the number of chelonians in the area, by the fact that many people admire the project, and by the new generations of volunteers joining it.
“We learn a lot and we’ll carry this forward to the generation of our children, our grandchildren,” says 20-year-old Jelso Santarém, who started working on the project when he was 13.
The tank is located in Mesquita’s backyard, where newborn turtles live for a few months. Last November, the tank was already home to a sizable number of them.
Cunha recently arrived from Bolivia, where he participated in a meeting of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to assess the status of Amazonian chelonians. He holds a baby pitiú in his hand, one of his favorite species and one of the most threatened. “It’s the most beautiful in the world; it seems to be asking us for a hug.”
In the nursery, more pitiú hatchlings are born. Two-year-old Henry Mesquita Santarém watches the event. “Put it in the box,” the boy says, referring to the plastic foam containers. Henry goes up the hill in the backyard with his grandfather Mesquita, helping as much as he can to carry the foam box to the breeding tank.
Ednaldo Lima de Sousa, project coordinator at Lake Capiranga, carries baby turtles.
Young tracajá turtles (brown) and a pitiú (gray). The pitiú is predators’ favorite.
Keep an eye on the turtles but watch for predators
“The pitiú is predators’ favorite species,” says Ednaldo Lima de Sousa, head of the project that has been operating in the Caapiranga community since 2005. “If we don’t take care of these animals that are here, we won’t be seeing any later.”
In addition to doing turtle management, many communities also manage fish. “We have a fishing agreement. Not everyone is allowed; we try to preserve it for the community. This is our agreement,” Sousa explains.
In the Caapiranga community, the increase in the number of turtles is visible and there has already been a season with 300 protected nests. “The little animals started to get close to the area where they are already preserved,” says Edir Lima de Sousa, who works with his brother Ednaldo and eight other community members.
Inside the nursery, which this year has almost a hundred nests with a privileged view of Lake Capiranga, baby tracajás emerge from the sand. Sousa helps them by clearing space at the nest’s exit, but not everything goes as planned. Few hatchlings come out; some eggs are partially or completely cooked inside the nest and some have failed to develop and hatch.
“We’d been having very positive results, but the severe drought causes general disturbance,” Cunha says.
Eggs cooked and baby turtles killed by high temperatures.
With the sand at 43o Celsius (109.4o Fahrenheit), reports of female turtles dead on riverbanks have also been common. “They were going upstream to lay their eggs and couldn’t do it, either because of the distance or the very high temperature.”
Another current concern is that temperature has an influence on sex determination of several species of river turtles. “It may be that high temperatures produce more females than the normal balance for the population. We need balance between males and females, so we are talking about a feminization process.”
On a night with a full moon and stars hidden by smoke from fires, Mongabay follows the forays of the little motorboat known as rabeta into the lake in search of adult females — without success.
“In a perfect scenario, we’d now be measuring, photographing and marking around 50, 60 females,” Cunha says. “We put the nets in the water and didn’t catch any animals. The reason is not known yet. I believe that more severe drought and illegal capture have driven females away or led them to choose other locations.”
Nests protected in a hatchery at Lake Caapiranga.
Mirror of nature
Domingos Pereira Campos carries the foam container in his arms, as if it were a child. Inside are 29 tracajá eggs that he just collected from a nest on the banks of Lake Tucunaré. The eggs will be relocated and monitored in the nursery a few meters away. “You have to take them to the pit carefully so as not to shake them,” he warns.
Entering the hatchery’s fence, Campos, who has worked with the project since its beginning in 2012, chooses a spot and digs a hole with a more pronounced, belly-shaped curve on one side.
“That’s nature’s way. We try to do it more or less like nature, but it’s not the same,” he shows. “We take them out and then put them back in the other pit. The last one to come out goes to the bottom first.”
“If you can observe how carefully the female builds the nest … it’s very moving. It’s a chamber that keeps the temperature,” Cunha says.
Indeed, not everything can be copied as nature created it. “Of course, with the displacement of eggs from their natural environment to the hatchery, there is some loss because we can’t literally choose the same microclimate as in nature. So a small percentage is expected to fail,” he explains.
The increase in the number of turtles in Juruti is directly linked to the work of riverside dwellers, who watch the beaches during the spawning season, collect the eggs and care for newborn chelonians
.
Late afternoon in the Miri community.
Every interference has its consequences — not only the change of nest location but also the months in which the young turtles grow in the tanks until they are released, which can compromise their ability to escape predators, their swimming agility and their aptitude to look for their own food.
Experts suggest that some of the young turtles be taken to the water immediately after birth to encourage adult females to return to the spawning site.
“With the discovery of vocalization, we found out that there is parental care between females and their offspring,” Cunha reports. Studies have shown that turtle embryos emit sounds, alerting females of their birth. If the females are waiting for it and do not receive any offspring, they may consider the place unsafe for laying eggs in the future.
Even though the careful protection by community members is not exactly a mirror of nature, the real positive impact of conservation work on rural communities can be seen in Juruti, with the species’ population growth and the increase in the number of nests.
On a hot November afternoon, walking along the banks of Lake Tucunaré, Fábio Cunha finds another nest. This will be the 183rd to be taken into the hatchery.
“We started this in 2012, and in 2013, we already managed to obtain six nests and 212 baby turtles,” says Jorge Simões, head of the project at Lake Tucunaré. “Residents became more and more supportive, and now it’s a huge success. Last year, we released 4,150 turtles. So, each year that passes, it evolves more.”
Banner image: Tracajás protected by riverside dwellers in the Tucunaré community, municipality of Juruti (PA). Image by Julia Lemos Lima/Mongabay.
Citation: Cunha, F. A., Sampaio, I., Carneiro, J., & Vogt, R. C. (2021). A new species of Amazon freshwater toad-headed turtle in the genus Mesoclemmys (Testudines: Pleurodira: Chelidae) from Brazil. Chelonian Conservation and Biology, 20(2). doi:10.2744/ccb-1448.1
Images by Julia Lemos Lima/Mongabay.
This story was reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and first published here on our Brazil site on Aug. 21, 2023.
Phantom deeds see Borneo islanders lose their land to quartz miners
Gelam is a small uninhabited island off the southwest coast of Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province that used to be home to a community of fishers.
In the previous decade, residents moved away from Gelam in order to access schools and public services, but the community continues to regard the island as home.
In 2021, the local government began processing land deeds before transferring the titles to quartz mining companies.
Several residents told Mongabay Indonesia they hadn’t been consulted about the transfer of the land.
GELAM ISLAND, Indonesia — Not long ago, Suparyanto discovered that his family home on a small island off the west coast of Borneo was to become a quartz mine.
“I have never signed a land certificate or given power of attorney to anyone to manage my land on Gelam Island,” Suparyanto told Mongabay Indonesia.
Suparyanto is not alone among former residents of Gelam. Mongabay Indonesia spoke with several families who said land on the island had been appropriated without their consent.
Haryanto, a 35-year-old fisher, said he found out his land was gone after seeing his name on a list in the village office.
The parcels of land were then transferred to mining operators controlled by Denny Muslimin, a parliamentary candidate for West Kalimantan province, records showed.
Gelam is a 2,800-hectare (6,900-acre) island off the southwest coast of Borneo, at the confluence of the Java and Natuna seas. The island is currently uninhabited. However, Gelam was previously home to a community of traditional fishers like Haryanto and Suparyanto, who moved away to nearby islands to access schools, health care and other public services. Despite the migration, the island’s former residents continue to see Gelam as their home.
Some families said they had received a token sum in cash, but were unaware why they had been paid.
“We received 1 million rupiah [$64],” said Sumia, a resident of neighboring Cempedak Island, where many families moved from Gelam in order to access basic public services.
“We have land and farmland in Gelam and our parents are buried there.”
A beach in Gelam, a small island off the coast of western Borneo.
Conflicting claims
In the nearly 10 years that Indonesian President Joko Widodo has been in office, there has been vastly improved infrastructure and expanded land development for extractive industries across the archipelagic nation of 275 million people.
However, the administration has simultaneously presided over an apparent increase in the number of conflicts over land, which usually affect the country’s poorest people.
The Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA), a civil society organization, documented 2,939 individual conflicts between 2015 and 2023, compared with 1,520 instances during the 10-year presidency of Joko’s predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. In 2023 alone, the civil society group said these disputes directly affected 135,608 households, likely close to a million people.
Ahmad Nurdin, the head of the Kendawangan Kiri village’s administrative section, said land deeds were issued only in response to direct requests by residents. Nurdin said the village had issued around 100 such deeds for land on Gelam.
The process required a family to write an application letter for the claimed land for signature by the head of the hamlet, known in Indonesia as a dusun. The application would then be reviewed by the village government in the presence of two witnesses.
Nurdin said applications for land deeds on Gelam Island were initiated around 2021 and published in 2022. The deeds were then transferred in early 2023 to the mining companies, which paid 7 million rupiah ($440) per certificate, he said.
A beach on Gelam Island.
“Of the 7 million rupiah, 5 million rupiah [$320] was handed over to the SKT owner,” Nurdin told Mongabay Indonesia, referring to the deed, or surat kepemilikan tanah as it’s known in Indonesian. The rest of the money, he added, went toward administrative and notary expenses.
The land deeds were signed on July 11, 2022, by the then-elected head of Kendawangan subdistrict, Eldy Yanto. The current acting head of the subdistrict, Didik Radianto, said he had no knowledge of the matter.
Fisher Haryanto said he never set foot in the office of the village government in Kendawangan Kiri.
“If my name is recorded as having applied to the village for an SKT, then I don’t accept that,” he said.
Haji Asmuni, who also claims land in Gelam, said he and several residents had reported the land deed issuances to the police, but at the time of writing had yet to be notified of any investigation.
“What I emphasized in the report is that I asked for a complete investigation into the creation of the SKT, which I suspect to be fictitious,” he said.
Susyanto, a community leader in Kendawangan subdistrict, said he had also filed a report with the West Kalimantan provincial police, but had received no follow-up after he and others had undergone a three-hour interview with police.
The residents of Cempedak Island who fish in the waters around Gelam Island.
Quartz and all
Quartz is a crystalline silica mineral used in new technology, encompassing fast-growing sectors like manufacture of semiconductor chips and solar panels.
A report published in 2023 by the consultancy Transparency Market Research estimated the annual market for high-purity quartz would likely rise from $890 million in 2022 to $1.5 billion by 2031.
Waliz Zuhery at the Indonesian Quartz Miners Association (HIPKI) said quartz had been classified as a critical mineral by Indonesia’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.
“From what I see, currently the country has the ambition to be part of the energy transition,” Waliz said, adding that numerous quartz mines have sprung up in West Kalimantan province in response to growing demand for the mineral.
The demand for quartz in particular has been driven by the opening of a silica factory on the island of Rempang across the Natuna Sea from Gelam, off the east coast of Sumatra. Like Gelam, Rempang is the site of a high-profile land dispute pitting longtime residents against corporate interests.
The two mining companies that took over Gelam Island are PT Sigma Silica Jayaraya (SSJ) and PT Inti Tama Mineral (ITM).
SSJ received a permit to explore for quartz from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources in 2022, covering an area of 839 hectares (2,073 acres). ITM received a similar permit that same year for 1,163 hectares (2,874 acres).
Adi Yani, head of West Kalimantan province’s environment office, said the companies’ early exploration work wasn’t accompanied by an environmental study or environmental management plan. He said his office hadn’t received these documents from either company, which is required under a 2021 government regulation.
“Sigma Silica Jayaraya submitted an application for the issuance of an environmental impact assessment in early 2023, specifically to build a special terminal on Gelam Island. It was only during the inspection that we discovered the location was in a marine conservation area,” Adi said.
Both companies were therefore required to seek a permit from the West Kalimantan Maritime and Fisheries Service (DKP) to operate in the conservation area. As long as the companies still lack these documents, they can’t be approved for an environmental impact assessment.
Adi said his office and other relevant provincial government agencies had “agreed to get the companies’ exploration permits [revoked by] the [mining] ministry.” The matter is now before the West Kalimantan provincial secretariat’s economic bureau for a formal recommendation to revoke the permits, Adi said.
Aerial image of Gelam Island.
Quartz of law
PT Sigma Silica Jayaraya was established on Nov. 19, 2021, with entrepreneur Denny Muslimin listed as the owner of 95% of shares. PT Inti Tama Mineral was established two days later, on Nov. 21, 2021, again with Denny as the majority owner (90%).
Denny was a candidate for the West Kalimantan provincial legislature, running in the February 2024 elections for the NasDem Party, the political vehicle of Indonesian oligarch Surya Paloh. There’s no evidence of wrongdoing on Denny’s part in the Gelam land dispute. When approached for comment, Denny referred Mongabay Indonesia to Sudirman, an executive at SSJ.
“What does this have to with me? Just go to Denny,” Sudirman said in response to reporters’ questions. “Besides, there is no activity on the island anymore. It’s empty.”
Suparyanto claims his family’s land on Gelam extended to 50 hectares (124 acres) and, like many former residents of Gelam, the entire area had been certified and transferred without his consent.
“I lived there for more than a dozen years of my childhood,” Suparyanto told Mongabay Indonesia. “It’s from my ancestors and I never sold the land.”
Banner image: Many residents of Gelam Island moved to the neighboring Cempedak Island for education and health facilities.
This story was reported by Mongabay’s Indonesia team in collaboration with Pontianak Post, Iniborneo.com, Suara.com, RRI Pontianak, Insidepontianak.com, and Projeck Multatuli supported by Khatulistiwa Women Journalists, the WeBe Foundation, Hijau Lestari Negeriku, and Garda Animalia through the Bela Satwa Project.
Siphonops annulatus. Mother with babies starting skin pigmentation. Carlos Jared
Siphonops annulatus. Female with eggs. Credit: Carlos Jared
Siphonops annulatus. Female with pigmented babies at the end of the period of parental care. Credit: Carlos Jared
