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aamukherjee A Slice of Entropie -
alchymista Alchymista -
crownedrose Fading Like A Dead Star -
expose-the-light Quarks to Quasars -
kenobi-wan-obi CWL -
abluegirl A Blue Girl -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
The EDGE of Existence - a web mapping application that allows users to explore the world’s most unique and endangered mammals and amphibians. This map was developed by the Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) project of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), and it highlights regions of the world which should be priorities for conservation efforts. Read more at BBC, or try the application yourself.
abluegirl
As shown above, the monarch butterfly population is so dense in their mountainous, winter residence of central Mexico that they cover the trees like leaves.
Some branches noticeably sway from the weight of the myriad monarchs even though they each weigh less than a gram. Many of the butterflies on this tree have journeyed 3,000 mi (5,000 km) or further to get to this several-hundred-acre colony, near the village of Michoacan. They overwinter until March before winging their way north to the U.S. and Canada, where they’ll feed, most often on milkweed, until late summer.
They begin their southern migration in early fall, and by the first few days of November, virtually all of them have arrived in Michoacan. The butterflies that make this arduous circuit are the great-great-grand-butterflies of the ones that left the subtropics the previous spring! Genetic programming related to the monarchs’ internal circadian clock guides them, likely using the Sun as a navigation aid, to their winter destination. — Steve Spiegel / Jim Foster
kenobi-wan-obiThe Field Museum - Gorilla gorilla
Look forward to small photosets of my trip behind the scenes at the Chicago Field Museum in the coming days! There were so many remarkable things, it’d be rude not to share.
We came across this specimen in the mammal prep lab waiting to be reunited with the rest of its skeleton, presumably still being processed in their dermestid colony. It’s the spinal column of a gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) that was donated by the Lincoln Park Zoo once the animal died.
What is absolutely jaw-droppingly fascinating about this specimen is that the entire spinal column is fused. All of the vertebrae have grown together to form one continuous, smooth bone, rather than being comprised of multiple moving vertebrae. There is also a large healing pathology towards the top of the lumbar vertebrae and at the bottom of the thoracic. An obvious reason for this to have occurred is because this animal had a limited range of movement as it lived in a zoo enclosure for the majority, if not duration of its life.
It makes me wonder what human skeletons must look like if we continue to live our lives in front of computers, heavily restricting our range of movement day-in and day-out.
The ‘FlipperBot’ Is Almost as Cute as the Baby Sea Turtles It Mimics
This adorable little Flipper Bot was designed to mimics the motion of baby turtles as they crawl across a beach toward the ocean. The speed with which it crawls has a lot to do with an individual turtle’s survival, and along the way, some baby turtles may get stuck in a rut created by the turtles that went before it.
Scientists at Georgia Tech and Northwestern University built the Flipper Bot to understand the motion the turtles use as they cross the sand. This is valuable not only with respect to sea turtle conservation, but also with respect to beach restoration:
Umbanhowar said understanding beach surfaces and how turtles move is important because many beaches in the United States are often subject to beach nourishment programs, where sand is dredged and dumped to prevent erosion.
“If you are restoring a beach, it might be the wrong kind of sand or deposited in a way that is unnatural,” Umbanhoward said. “In order for this turtle to advance, it has to generate these kind of thrust forces and it may be unable to get their flippers into it. We could say something about that given our models.”
Pulsing corals. Scientists hypothesize that the movement of the coral keeps oxygen from building up near by, improving the availability of carbon dioxide for the photosynthetic algae that the coral rely on. The pulsation also stirs the water to improve nutrient supplies. Only corals of the Xeniidae pulsate.
Read more about the study at Science News.
Giant snails on advance in Florida
Snails as large as rats are invading South Florida. Sure, they look adorable with their wiggling eye stalks, but like all destructive invasive species, they’re causing havoc not only in the Florida ecosystem, but in the lives of the people who live there. They can eat through plaster walls, consume vast quantities of the native vegetation, and the shells can puncture car tires. The snails have an unfortunate habit of leaving slime everywhere they go.
This problem is growing. An individual snail can produce 1200 eggs a year. They also carry a parasite that can cause illness in humans. Recently, experts gathered to determine the best way to eradicate the snails, including using bait designed to kill the snails, however that method could kill indigenous snails also.
You can read more about the snails at BBC news, and at gawker.com.
James’s Flamingo (Phoenicoparrus jamesi)
Also known as the Puna Flamingo or the Bolivian Flamingo, James’s Flamingo is a species of flamingo endemic to a small area in the Andes which ranges from southern Peru to western Bolivia and northern Argentina and Chile. Like most flamingos James’s flamingo feeds solely on plankton using its modified bill to filter them out of the water. Unlike their Andean relative the bill of James’s flamingo is shorter and more rounded. They are often found gathered in large nesting colonies where they raise their young.
Phylogeny
Animalia-Chordata-Aves-Phoenicopteriformes-Phoenicopteridae-Phoenicoparrus-jamesi
Oldest Dinosaur Embryos Discovered
By Azadeh Ansari, CNN: Everyone knows dinosaurs were gigantic, but they grew from tiny embryos just like birds do. What were these extinct reptiles like at this early stage of development?
Scientists have found some new clues that could shed light on this age-old mystery.
In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, scientists said they have discovered the oldest known collection of fossilized dinosaur embryos.
“In a way, I think we have set a new standard for dinosaur embryology,” said paleontologist Robert Reisz, the lead study author.
Scientists found these dinosaurs grew extremely fast in comparison to present-day living animals and even flexed their muscles while still in the egg.
The bigger the spaces between primary bone cavities, the faster an animal grows. These bone cavities house soft tissue responsible for blood vessel generation.
“In other animals, about 15% to 45% of the embryo bone tissue is made up of these soft tissue cavities; in these dinosaur fossil samples, we found the cavities to make up roughly 60% of the bone tissue,” Reisz said.
crownedrose
French zoo to generate its own electricity from panda poo
The Pandas, on loan from China and currently at the Beauval Zoo in France, will produce 65 lbs of fuel every day, which can be converted to electricity at the zoo’s processing plant, along with waste obtained from other animals at the zoo. Some of the energy will be used to keep animal enclosure’s warm, the rest will be sold to a French power company. Go pandas!
Squid’s Daily Rhythms Are Controlled by Glowing Symbiotic Bacteria
At nightfall, the Hawaiian bobtail squid digs itself out of the sand and rises into the ocean water like a spaceship taking off. It switches on its cloaking device: glowing bacteria inside its body light up, disguising the squid’s silhouette against the moonlight for any predators swimming below. As sleek a vehicle as it appears, though, the bobtail may not totally outrank its microscopic crewmembers. The bacteria seem to power a clock inside the squid’s body that can’t function without them.
Hiding during the day and hunting at night in shallow Pacific waters, Euprymna scolopes clearly has a working circadian clock. Researchers had noticed, though, that the squid’s light organ—the specialized pocket inside its body that houses its bacterial helpers—seemed to have a rhythm of its own. The Vibrio fischeri bacteria give off fluctuating amounts of light throughout the day, for one thing. And the bacteria have their own daily rhythm of gene expression (when various genes are turned on or off), explains Margaret McFall-Ngai, a microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
McFall-Ngai and her coauthors looked for genes linked to circadian rhythms within the squid. They found two types of “cry” genes, which are known to control internal clocks throughout the animal and plant kingdoms. One gene had a daily cycle of activity in the squid’s head—which is what you’d expect, since animals’ main circadian clocks are in our brains. Other clocks can be elsewhere in the body, though, and this is what researchers found with the second cry gene. It was cycling only within the light organ.
Baby squid, which hadn’t yet collected bacterial friends in their light organs, didn’t show the same cycling. So it seemed that the bacteria themselves were driving the daily rhythms in the light organ. When the researchers let squid fill their light organs with defective, non-glowing bacteria, the cry gene still didn’t cycle properly. This suggested that the glow of the bacteria was the crucial ingredient.
The Science of Cats
The guys at AsapSCIENCE take aim at the internet’s favorite animal/purpose for its existence: Cats.
You’ll never believe what a cat is doing when it sticks its tail up and rubs along your leg. Smelly little weirdos.
“I notice they forgot to cover the science of why dogs are so much cooler,” said the science blogger who was clearly trying to raise a ruckus by starting a cats vs. dogs battle after the video he posted.
Bonus: Check out The Oatmeal’s infographic on just how much cats kill.
(Blind Mexican cave fish Astyanax fasciatus)
The blind Mexican cave fish lacks vision and thus cannot see a wall right in front of its face. However, they rarely hit walls while swimming. So the question arises: how do they prevent themselves from hitting obstacles that they cannot see?
Scientists have determined that they use what they call hydrodynamic imaging. A. fasciatus uses hydrodynamic imaging by creating a flow field around themselves and sensing the perturbations in that field.
(A. fasciatus avoiding a head-on collision with the wall)
(A physical model created to visualize the velocity (A-E) and pressure (F-J) contours used for hydrodynamic imaging against a head-on wall by A. fasciatus)
To create the flow field, A. fasciatus swims in short controlled bursts. By doing so, they create a flow field (velocity and pressure) around them. As the fish approaches the wall, the flow field deforms, which the fish senses with its lateral line, and adjusts their swimming trajectory accordingly for.
(A. fasciatus avoiding contact with wall parallel to its body)
(A physical model created to visualize the velocity (A-E) and pressure (F-J) contours used for hydrodynamic imaging against a parallel wall by A. fasciatus
And as you can imagine, the same principle applies for the fish when swimming parallel against a wall; the fish senses the deformation in the flow field with its lateral line and adjusts its swimming trajectory accordingly.
(A. fasciatus with its lateral line function removed lacks the ability to perform hydrodynamic imaging)
The above figure shows A. fasciatus specimens whose lateral lines were made dysfunctional. As you can see, they lack the ability to perform hydrodynamic imaging and need direct contact, be it with their face, pectoral fin, or other parts of their body, in order to sense the wall.
Sources: Windsor, Tan, and Montgomery 2008, Windsor et al 2010a, Windsor et al 2010b
“Ice Fish” Bleeds Clear Blood:
The deep oceans have yielded many mysteries that have puzzled people for centuries, from the giant squid to huge jellyfish that look like UFOs. To that list add a fish with totally transparent blood.
The Ocellated Ice Fish lives in the freezing waters of the Antarctic Ocean, where it manages to keep its body doing all the things that other fish do, but with blood that is absolutely clear, researchers said.
The reason, say experts at Tokyo Sea Life Park, is that the Ocellated Ice Fish has no hemoglobin, making it unique among vertebrates the world over.
Hemoglobin is the protein found in every other animal with bones. It is what makes blood red and is the agent that carries oxygen around the body.
The fish, which has no scales, is a prize catch for the aquarium, the only place on the planet that has the curious specimen in captivity.
Satoshi Tada, an education specialist at the center, said very little is known about the fish, which was brought back to Japan by krill fishermen.
“Luckily, we have a male and a female, and they spawned in January,” he said, adding that having more examples to study might help scientists unlock some of the fish’s secrets.
Researchers believe the fish can live without hemoglobin because it has a large heart and uses blood plasma to circulate oxygen throughout its body.
Its skin is also thought to be able to absorb oxygen from the rich waters of the Antarctic, where it is found at depths of up to a kilometer(3,300 feet).
But the evolutionary mechanism that left this creature with clear blood running through its veins is a mystery.
“Why is it the fish lost hemoglobin? More studies are needed on the question,” Tada said.
Tadpole Sees Through Eyeball on Its Tail
Recent experiments show that tadpoles bred with eyes surgically implanted in their tails instead of their heads still see—the first discovery of its kind.
Remarkably, despite their placement far from the brain, these out-of-place eyeballs—or “ectopic eyes”—still worked by sending signals to the brain via the spinal cord.
“Not all the tadpoles with the ectopic eyes could see,” study leader Michael Levin, director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology, said in an email.
“But of the ones that could, their performance was very similar to those with normal eyes.”
Ability to ‘think about thinking’ not limited to humans
Humans’ closest animal relatives, chimpanzees, have the ability to “think about thinking” – what is called “metacognition,” according to new research by scientists at Georgia State University and the University at Buffalo.
Michael J. Beran and Bonnie M. Perdue of the Georgia State Language Research Center (LRC) and J. David Smith of the University at Buffalo conducted the research, published in the journal Psychological Science of the Association for Psychological Science.
“The demonstration of metacognition in nonhuman primates has important implications regarding the emergence of self-reflective mind during humans’ cognitive evolution,” the research team noted.
Metacognition is the ability to recognize one’s own cognitive states. For example, a game show contestant must make the decision to “phone a friend” or risk it all, dependent on how confident he or she is in knowing the answer.
“There has been an intense debate in the scientific literature in recent years over whether metacognition is unique to humans,” Beran said.
Chimpanzees at Georgia State’s LRC have been trained to use a language-like system of symbols to name things, giving researchers a unique way to query animals about their states of knowing or not knowing.
In the experiment, researchers tested the chimpanzees on a task that required them to use symbols to name what food was hidden in a location. If a piece of banana was hidden, the chimpanzees would report that fact and gain the food by touching the symbol for banana on their symbol keyboards.
But then, the researchers provided chimpanzees either with complete or incomplete information about the identity of the food rewards.
In some cases, the chimpanzees had already seen what item was available in the hidden location and could immediately name it by touching the correct symbol without going to look at the item in the hidden location to see what it was.
In other cases, the chimpanzees could not know what food item was in the hidden location, because either they had not seen any food yet on that trial, or because even if they had seen a food item, it may not have been the one moved to the hidden location.
In those cases, they should have first gone to look in the hidden location before trying to name any food.
In the end, chimpanzees named items immediately and directly when they knew what was there, but they sought out more information before naming when they did not already know.
The research team said, “This pattern of behavior reflects a controlled information-seeking capacity that serves to support intelligent responding, and it strongly suggests that our closest living relative has metacognitive abilities closely related to those of humans.”
neuromorphogenesis