A 200-year-old evolutionary puzzle surrounding a group of animals described by Charles Darwin as “the strangest ever discovered” has been resolved by scientists.
International experts, including a team from London’s Natural History Museum, found evidence that South America’s extinct “native ungulates”, the last of which died out 10,000 years ago, are related to horses.
Previously scientists had struggled to trace the evolution of the creatures, which possessed features seen in many different unrelated species. In the past they have been linked to elephants and other species with an African origin.
Crufts dog death remains a riddle
The owners of the Irish setter wrongly thought to have been poisoned at Crufts have said the “true facts” surrounding its death may never be known.
In a joint statement, the co-owners of gundog Thendara Satisfaction, who had the pet name Jagger, also criticised the Kennel Club’s handling of the “media circus” following the dog’s death.
The Kennel Club said on Monday that a toxicology report had shown that the dog, which died after returning to Belgium, could not have been poisoned while competing at Crufts in Birmingham.
Molar maintenance for giraffe
A giraffe who was struggling to chew her food has been given some dental work by a team of vets at a safari park in Scotland.
Fourteen-year-old Kelly needed a general anaesthetic to allow experts to have a look inside her mouth to check her teeth.
It comes after keepers at Blair Drummond Safari Park near Stirling noticed she was not digesting her food thoroughly and it was suspected she might have a problem with one of her molars.
Replica White House for agents
The US Secret Service wants eight million dollars (£5.4 million) to build a replica White House to help train agents after an embarrassing security breach last year.
Secret Service director Joseph Clancy said the agency needs the training facility in Beltsville, Maryland, about 20 miles from the real executive mansion, to provide agents and officers with a more realistic training experience. Mr Clancy made his pitch to a House Appropriations sub-committee.
He said training is now done in a car park but it does not have the bushes and fountains that the White House grounds do. In September a man armed with a knife was able to climb over a White House fence, dart through thick bushes and run deep into the mansion before being subdued.
Ikea hide and seek is cancelled
Ikea has a message for people wanting to converge on its stores for giant games of hide and seek – go and play somewhere else.
The phenomenon has taken off in the Netherlands where 19,000 people signed up to a Facebook group promoting a game at Ikea’s Amsterdam branch next month. Another 13,000 signed up online for a game in the Ikea store in the city of Utrecht.
But the Swedish retail giant has bad news for people wanting to hide among its room-like furniture displays: the numbers signing up are getting out of hand and the events have been blocked. Ikea spokeswoman Martina Smedberg in Sweden said: “We have contacted these pages on social media and humbly asked them to have their hide and seek games somewhere else.”
Turkeys stop traffic, cause crash
A flock of turkeys crossing a US road stopped traffic and triggered a crash near Pittsburgh in which a motorcyclist was injured.
A car stopped suddenly in Mount Lebanon to let half a dozen wild turkeys cross a road, causing a 19-year-old man on a motorcycle behind the car to lose control and fall off, police said.
The man hit the back of the car but remained conscious, police said. He was taken to hospital with injuries to his legs and upper body. Mount Lebanon is about 10 miles south of Pittsburgh.