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Southern African hornbill’s survival threatened by 2027

The animals that inhabit these arid regions are already suffering the consequences. For example, earlier research has shown that multiple bird species are breeding earlier and for a shorter amount of time, impairing their reproductive success.

“There is rapidly growing evidence for the negative effects of high temperatures on the behaviour, physiology, breeding, and survival of various bird, mammal, and reptile species around the world,” said first author Dr Nicholas Pattinson, of the University of Cape Town. “For example, heat-related mass die-off events over the period of a few days are increasingly being recorded, which no doubt pose a threat to population persistence and ecosystem function.”

The southern yellow-billed hornbill’s distribution includes most of southern Africa, with a large portion falling within the Kalahari Desert. Known for its peculiar breeding and nesting strategy, the bird is a socially monogamous species. They are cavity nesters; the female seals herself into the nest cavity and stays there for an average of 50 days to brood and care for chicks, with only a narrow vertical slit for an opening, through which the male feeds the female and chicks.

A researcher’s avatar was sexually assaulted on a metaverse platform owned by Meta

Do you think that crimes committed within the Metaverse should be accountable just as the same as crimes accounted for in the “real” world?


A researcher entered the metaverse wanting to study users’ behavior on Meta’s social-networking platform Horizon World. But within an hour after she donned her Oculus virtual-reality headset, she says, her avatar was raped in the virtual space.

Metaverse: another cesspool of toxic content,” a new report published by the nonprofit advocacy group SumOfUs on Tuesday, details the researcher’s violent encounter in Meta’s Horizon World.

According to SumOfUs’ account, users invited the researcher to a private party on Horizon World earlier this month. Users in the same room then asked her to disable a setting that prevented others from getting within 4 feet of her.

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