TO COMMENT CLICK HERE
Weird Things
The World Can Be fascinating
DECEMBER 2020
pictofacts
Scientists identify deep-sea blob as new species using only video
Duobrachium sparksae is a type of ctenophore, or comb jelly
Video identification without specimen ‘can be controversial’
Oliver Milman in New York
THE GUARDIAN
Tue 1 Dec 2020 12.11 EST
Comb jellies, or ctenophores, resemble jellyfish but are not closely related. The new species, Duobrachium sparksae, was discovered in deep waters off Puerto Rico. Photograph: Martin Almqvist/Getty Images/Johner Images
Scientists have for the first time identified a small gelatinous blob in the deep sea as a new species, using only high-definition underwater cameras.
The creature, officially known as Duobrachium sparksae, is a new species of ctenophore, or comb jelly. It was discovered in an underwater canyon north-west of Puerto Rico in April 2015 but has only now been described in a research paper.
No physical specimens of the animal have been collected but the species was declared from video taken 3,900 metres below the surface in an expedition led by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).
Noaa used a remotely controlled robotic vehicle called Deep Discoverer to take high-definition images that enabled a full analysis of the blobs.
“It was a beautiful and unique organism,” said Mike Ford, a Noaa Fisheries scientist. “We collected high-definition video and described what we saw. We went through the historical knowledge of ctenophores and it seemed clear this was a new species and genus as well. We then worked to place it in the tree of life properly.”
Comb jellies, like Duobrachium sparksae, can be just a few millimetres long but are carnivores that eat small arthropods and are able to propel themselves forward by beating rows of hairlike structures found on their surface. Although they look similar, they are not closely related to jellyfish.
Three individuals of the new species were spotted by the diving robot, intriguing scientists with their unusual behaviour. The comb jelly has two long tentacles that appear to anchor it to the seabed and control its position, as it moves like a hot air balloon.
More research will be required to learn the exact role the new comb jellies play in their environment, but for now the videos will be housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC in lieu of physical specimens.
“Video identification can be controversial,” said Allen Collins, another Noaa scientist who worked on the expedition.
“For example, some insect species descriptions have been done with low-quality imagery and some scientists have said they don’t think that’s a good way of doing things. But for this discovery, we didn’t get any pushback. It was a really good example of how to do it the right way with video.”
The creature, officially known as Duobrachium sparksae, is a new species of ctenophore, or comb jelly. It was discovered in an underwater canyon north-west of Puerto Rico in April 2015 but has only now been described in a research paper.
No physical specimens of the animal have been collected but the species was declared from video taken 3,900 metres below the surface in an expedition led by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).
Noaa used a remotely controlled robotic vehicle called Deep Discoverer to take high-definition images that enabled a full analysis of the blobs.
“It was a beautiful and unique organism,” said Mike Ford, a Noaa Fisheries scientist. “We collected high-definition video and described what we saw. We went through the historical knowledge of ctenophores and it seemed clear this was a new species and genus as well. We then worked to place it in the tree of life properly.”
Comb jellies, like Duobrachium sparksae, can be just a few millimetres long but are carnivores that eat small arthropods and are able to propel themselves forward by beating rows of hairlike structures found on their surface. Although they look similar, they are not closely related to jellyfish.
Three individuals of the new species were spotted by the diving robot, intriguing scientists with their unusual behaviour. The comb jelly has two long tentacles that appear to anchor it to the seabed and control its position, as it moves like a hot air balloon.
More research will be required to learn the exact role the new comb jellies play in their environment, but for now the videos will be housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC in lieu of physical specimens.
“Video identification can be controversial,” said Allen Collins, another Noaa scientist who worked on the expedition.
“For example, some insect species descriptions have been done with low-quality imagery and some scientists have said they don’t think that’s a good way of doing things. But for this discovery, we didn’t get any pushback. It was a really good example of how to do it the right way with video.”
Mexico
Space oddity: Mexican group claims alien base offers hurricane protection
Gulf coast cities have little to fear from extreme weather thanks, apparently, to extraterrestrials lurking underwater
Cody Copeland in Mexico City
THE GUARDIAN
Fri 17 Jul 2020 05.38 EDT
A man walks past tied up chairs at the Miramar beach as Hurricane Ingrid approaches the coast in Ciudad Madero, Mexico, in 2013, the year the municipality erected a bust of a green Martian. Photograph: Félix Márquez/AP
As communities on Mexico’s Gulf coast brace themselves for what is predicted to be a grueling hurricane season, a group of stargazers in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas are confident that a unique form of disaster preparation will keep their city safe.
Members of the Association of Scientific UFO Research of Tamaulipas, or Aicot, believe that an inter-dimensional underwater base of extraterrestrial origin has protected the coastal cities of Ciudad Madero and Tampico from hurricanes for more than 50 years.
Aicot’s president, Juan Carlos Ramón López Díaz, claims to have visited the base – known as Amupac – via astral projection, which he says he induced through meditation and a pescatarian diet.
“It’s also recommendable to ascend ancestral constructions, like temples and pyramids, that have stairs at a 45-degree angle,” he says. (Hills sloping at such a gradient will also do, if one doesn’t live near pre-Columbian ruins.)
Ciudad Madero suffered four direct landfalls in the 20th century, including Hurricane Inez in 1966 which killed 74 people in Mexico alone.
López and his allies believe that the base was established some time after that.
Explanations of exactly how and why the alien visitors are protecting Ciudad Madero vary, even among fellow investigators. López believes it’s not Amupac itself, but the esoteric power of Aicot members’ belief in the base.
“The collective mind is charged with this concept, so it generates a large force field of repulsion,” he said.
There is also talk of magnetic fields and a series of meter-long bars of an aluminum, iron and copper alloy secretly buried in the seafloor near Miramar Beach at the suggestion of the visitors over four decades ago.
Others claim that the aliens are only interested in protecting their base, and Ciudad Madero is just lucky they took a liking to this small corner of the galaxy. This theory fails to explain, however, what threat a terrestrial weather event might pose to a structure with no form in our physical dimension.
Still others simply accept the apparently inexplicable, said Marco Flores, the former official historian of Tampico. “If science gives us no explanation we’ll get one from magic,” he said. “Fantasy is always more attractive than reality.”
The municipal government placed a bust of a green Martian at Miramar Beach in 2013 and officially dubbed the last Tuesday in October the Day of the Martian. The bust was promptly stolen.
Jaime Maussan, Mexico’s leading chronicler of UFO sightings and other supernatural events allowed that southern Tamaulipas was a hotbed of extramundane activity, but said he and his team of researchers were previously unaware of Amupac. He did, however, remark that the theory was “curious”.
Dr Rosario Romero, a climate scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, agreed that Ciudad Madero’s streak of hurricane-free weather was interesting – but not that it was inexplicable.
She said that Tamaulipas is more likely to see less intense tropical storms, while broader atmospheric conditions – such as subtropical, high-pressure systems and the prevailing westerly winds – tend to push major hurricanes north toward the southern coast of the United States.
Furthermore, although Ciudad Madero has not been struck directly by a hurricane since 1966 it has not escaped damage from others that made landfall elsewhere. In 2013 the city declared a state of emergency after Hurricane Ingrid caused significant flooding.
A busy hurricane season does not necessarily portend a high number of landfalls, but Romero cautioned that predictions often turn out to be inaccurate and storms take unexpected turns – so residents of Ciudad Madero and other Gulf coast communities should take practical hurricane precautions.
“We now have advanced monitoring systems and numerical models that allow us to predict a storm’s intensity and path – but trajectories still vary widely depending on those wider atmospheric conditions,” she said.
Despite the growing body of climate science to explain weather trends around Ciudad Madero, many in the city still advance faith-based explanations.
Devout Catholics in the city trust in Our Lady of Mount Carmel, especially her patrons, the sailors who sound their horns at the mouth of the Pánuco River as they pass a statue of her, erected – curiously enough – in 1967.
Members of the Association of Scientific UFO Research of Tamaulipas, or Aicot, believe that an inter-dimensional underwater base of extraterrestrial origin has protected the coastal cities of Ciudad Madero and Tampico from hurricanes for more than 50 years.
Aicot’s president, Juan Carlos Ramón López Díaz, claims to have visited the base – known as Amupac – via astral projection, which he says he induced through meditation and a pescatarian diet.
“It’s also recommendable to ascend ancestral constructions, like temples and pyramids, that have stairs at a 45-degree angle,” he says. (Hills sloping at such a gradient will also do, if one doesn’t live near pre-Columbian ruins.)
Ciudad Madero suffered four direct landfalls in the 20th century, including Hurricane Inez in 1966 which killed 74 people in Mexico alone.
López and his allies believe that the base was established some time after that.
Explanations of exactly how and why the alien visitors are protecting Ciudad Madero vary, even among fellow investigators. López believes it’s not Amupac itself, but the esoteric power of Aicot members’ belief in the base.
“The collective mind is charged with this concept, so it generates a large force field of repulsion,” he said.
There is also talk of magnetic fields and a series of meter-long bars of an aluminum, iron and copper alloy secretly buried in the seafloor near Miramar Beach at the suggestion of the visitors over four decades ago.
Others claim that the aliens are only interested in protecting their base, and Ciudad Madero is just lucky they took a liking to this small corner of the galaxy. This theory fails to explain, however, what threat a terrestrial weather event might pose to a structure with no form in our physical dimension.
Still others simply accept the apparently inexplicable, said Marco Flores, the former official historian of Tampico. “If science gives us no explanation we’ll get one from magic,” he said. “Fantasy is always more attractive than reality.”
The municipal government placed a bust of a green Martian at Miramar Beach in 2013 and officially dubbed the last Tuesday in October the Day of the Martian. The bust was promptly stolen.
Jaime Maussan, Mexico’s leading chronicler of UFO sightings and other supernatural events allowed that southern Tamaulipas was a hotbed of extramundane activity, but said he and his team of researchers were previously unaware of Amupac. He did, however, remark that the theory was “curious”.
Dr Rosario Romero, a climate scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, agreed that Ciudad Madero’s streak of hurricane-free weather was interesting – but not that it was inexplicable.
She said that Tamaulipas is more likely to see less intense tropical storms, while broader atmospheric conditions – such as subtropical, high-pressure systems and the prevailing westerly winds – tend to push major hurricanes north toward the southern coast of the United States.
Furthermore, although Ciudad Madero has not been struck directly by a hurricane since 1966 it has not escaped damage from others that made landfall elsewhere. In 2013 the city declared a state of emergency after Hurricane Ingrid caused significant flooding.
A busy hurricane season does not necessarily portend a high number of landfalls, but Romero cautioned that predictions often turn out to be inaccurate and storms take unexpected turns – so residents of Ciudad Madero and other Gulf coast communities should take practical hurricane precautions.
“We now have advanced monitoring systems and numerical models that allow us to predict a storm’s intensity and path – but trajectories still vary widely depending on those wider atmospheric conditions,” she said.
Despite the growing body of climate science to explain weather trends around Ciudad Madero, many in the city still advance faith-based explanations.
Devout Catholics in the city trust in Our Lady of Mount Carmel, especially her patrons, the sailors who sound their horns at the mouth of the Pánuco River as they pass a statue of her, erected – curiously enough – in 1967.
Florida
Florida hunters capture more than 80 giant snakes in Python Bowl
Annual challenge encourages the public to catch as many of the invasive giant snakes that decimate native wildlife as possible
Richard Luscombe in Miami
the guardian
Thu 30 Jan 2020 09.10 EST
A Florida Wildlife Commission employee captures a Burmese python during the kickoff event for the Florida Python Challenge in Sunrise, Florida, on 10 January. Photograph: Joe Cavaretta/AP
Most visitors to the mosquito-infested swamps of the Florida Everglades are happy to leave again quickly: a half-hour airboat ride and photograph of a basking alligator is usually enough to satisfy the curiosity of any tourist keen to return to the theme parks and beaches – or sports events – of the sunshine state’s more traditional attractions.
But Mike Kimmel wouldn’t be anywhere else. The professional wildlife trapper and self-styled python cowboy’s most recent excursion into the uninhabitable backwaters of the famed River of Grass region was rewarded with the grand prize in this year’s extra-special version of the annual Python Challenge encouraging the public to catch as many of the invasive giant snakes that decimate native wildlife as possible.
This year the hunt was called Python Bowl because nearby Miami is hosting the annual finale to the National Football League season – the Super Bowl - this weekend, which brings hordes of extra visitors to the state. The hunt attracted extra sports sponsorship and more categories and prizes this year, on offer to intrepid reptile hunters from near and far.
Local Kimmel bagged eight Burmese pythons, accounting for 10% of the entire haul of 80 captured during the 10-day event.
It was organised by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and South Florida Water Management District, with involvement from the Miami Super Bowl host committee this year, and strong support from Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.
The Python Challenge had a category for armed service members and veterans this year for the first time, with different prizes for professional hunters and rookies.
The tally was a drop in the ocean compared to the tens of thousands of snakes thought to be lurking in the wild, upsetting the fragile ecosystem and devouring native wildlife such as deer, rabbits, raccoons and wading birds at an ever-increasing rate.
Kimmel won an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) for his efforts, presented at a ceremony in south Florida on Saturday at which fellow trapper Tom Rahill collected $4,000 in prize money for capturing the heaviest snake, a whopping 62lb, (28.1kg), and the longest at a slithering 12ft 7.3in (3.84m).
The Rookies’ prize for newcomers was won by Kristian Hernandez, also an ATV, for removing six pythons.
But most of the hunters were out of luck. According to the FWC, more than 750 hunters registered to take part in this year’s challenge from 20 states.
“It was not an easy win, that’s for sure,” Kimmel said in an Instagram post. “I ran into all kinds of obstacles.
“I hunted 10 days straight, covering thousands of miles of levees and woods, sleeping in the swamp when not hunting. [I] kept my nose to the grindstone and I can proudly say I gave it my all. The Lord and the swamp always provides for ‘ole Trapper Mike!”
Wildlife officials have been fighting a losing battle for years to try to purge pythons from the Everglades, employing a range of strategies, including the Python Challenge and training members of the public to capture the snakes. Other measures have included training dogs to sniff out the snakes, employing amorous male pythons known as Judas snakes to lead hunters to egg-laying females and even hiring chanting tribesmen from India.
Pythons have been slithering through the Everglades since the 1980s when some were released into the wild as overgrown pets. A research study in 2012 found a massive decline in the population of native Everglades mammals coincided with a proliferation in python numbers.
But Mike Kimmel wouldn’t be anywhere else. The professional wildlife trapper and self-styled python cowboy’s most recent excursion into the uninhabitable backwaters of the famed River of Grass region was rewarded with the grand prize in this year’s extra-special version of the annual Python Challenge encouraging the public to catch as many of the invasive giant snakes that decimate native wildlife as possible.
This year the hunt was called Python Bowl because nearby Miami is hosting the annual finale to the National Football League season – the Super Bowl - this weekend, which brings hordes of extra visitors to the state. The hunt attracted extra sports sponsorship and more categories and prizes this year, on offer to intrepid reptile hunters from near and far.
Local Kimmel bagged eight Burmese pythons, accounting for 10% of the entire haul of 80 captured during the 10-day event.
It was organised by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and South Florida Water Management District, with involvement from the Miami Super Bowl host committee this year, and strong support from Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.
The Python Challenge had a category for armed service members and veterans this year for the first time, with different prizes for professional hunters and rookies.
The tally was a drop in the ocean compared to the tens of thousands of snakes thought to be lurking in the wild, upsetting the fragile ecosystem and devouring native wildlife such as deer, rabbits, raccoons and wading birds at an ever-increasing rate.
Kimmel won an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) for his efforts, presented at a ceremony in south Florida on Saturday at which fellow trapper Tom Rahill collected $4,000 in prize money for capturing the heaviest snake, a whopping 62lb, (28.1kg), and the longest at a slithering 12ft 7.3in (3.84m).
The Rookies’ prize for newcomers was won by Kristian Hernandez, also an ATV, for removing six pythons.
But most of the hunters were out of luck. According to the FWC, more than 750 hunters registered to take part in this year’s challenge from 20 states.
“It was not an easy win, that’s for sure,” Kimmel said in an Instagram post. “I ran into all kinds of obstacles.
“I hunted 10 days straight, covering thousands of miles of levees and woods, sleeping in the swamp when not hunting. [I] kept my nose to the grindstone and I can proudly say I gave it my all. The Lord and the swamp always provides for ‘ole Trapper Mike!”
Wildlife officials have been fighting a losing battle for years to try to purge pythons from the Everglades, employing a range of strategies, including the Python Challenge and training members of the public to capture the snakes. Other measures have included training dogs to sniff out the snakes, employing amorous male pythons known as Judas snakes to lead hunters to egg-laying females and even hiring chanting tribesmen from India.
Pythons have been slithering through the Everglades since the 1980s when some were released into the wild as overgrown pets. A research study in 2012 found a massive decline in the population of native Everglades mammals coincided with a proliferation in python numbers.
Thousands of 'penis fish' appear on California beach
Fat innkeeper worms typically burrow under the sand but recent storms have swept away layers, leaving them exposed
Vivian Ho in San Francisco
the guardian
Thu 12 Dec 2019 20.32 EST
A beachgoer holds a fat inkeeper worm – otherwise known as a ‘penis fish’ – in Bodega Bay in June 2019. Photograph: Kate Montana/iNaturalist Creative Commons
I’m not sure this is what the Weather Girls meant when they sang, “It’s raining men.”
Following a bout of winter storms in northern California, “thousands” of pink, throbbing, phallic creatures wound up pulsating along a beach about 50 miles north of San Francisco, Bay Nature reported.
According to the nature magazine, these 10in wrigglers are marine worms called fat innkeeper worms, but they are known colloquially as exactly what you’d want to call them: penis fish.
These penile figures typically burrow under the sand, far beneath the feet of beachgoers, but the recent storms brought on some waves that swept away the layers, leaving them exposed.
As seen in the first photo, seagulls enjoy gobbling up these penis fish, as do otters, other fish, sharks and rays. But the penis fish is a human delicacy to some as well. In South Korea, they call it gaebul.
So the next time you bury your toes in the sand, think about what throbs beneath the surface.
Following a bout of winter storms in northern California, “thousands” of pink, throbbing, phallic creatures wound up pulsating along a beach about 50 miles north of San Francisco, Bay Nature reported.
According to the nature magazine, these 10in wrigglers are marine worms called fat innkeeper worms, but they are known colloquially as exactly what you’d want to call them: penis fish.
These penile figures typically burrow under the sand, far beneath the feet of beachgoers, but the recent storms brought on some waves that swept away the layers, leaving them exposed.
As seen in the first photo, seagulls enjoy gobbling up these penis fish, as do otters, other fish, sharks and rays. But the penis fish is a human delicacy to some as well. In South Korea, they call it gaebul.
So the next time you bury your toes in the sand, think about what throbs beneath the surface.
SPECTACULAR STARRY NIGHT HARLEQUIN TOAD REDISCOVERED AFTER BEING LOST TO SCIENCE FOR 30 YEARS
BY ARISTOS GEORGIOU - newsweek
ON 12/12/19 AT 11:50 AM EST
A critically endangered toad belonging to one of the most threatened groups of amphibians in the world has been documented by scientists for the first time in 30 years.
The starry night harlequin toad has been lost to science since 1991. However, a collaboration between Colombian non-profit Fundación Atelopus and the Arhuaco indigenous group has managed to capture photographic evidence of the toad in Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta—the world's highest coastal mountain range.
The latest evidence is welcome news given that harlequin toads—which are found across Central and South America as far south as Bolivia—have been decimated by deadly fungal pathogens, habitat destruction, habitat degradation, invasive species and climate change.
In fact, eighty of the 96 known harlequin toad species are considered endangered, critically endangered or extinct in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List. Thirty-seven of these species have not been seen since the early 2000s, despite efforts to track them down.
"While harlequin toads across Latin America at these higher altitudes have largely vanished over the past three decades as the result of a deadly fungal pathogen, it turns out that the starry night harlequin toad has bucked the trend," Lina Valencia, Colombia conservation officer at Global Wildlife Conservation—a partner of Fundación Atelopus—said in a statement.
"This is a powerful story about how working with indigenous and local communities can help us not just find species lost to science, but better understand how some species are surviving and how we can conserve the natural world in a way that connects spiritual and cultural knowledge. We are tremendously grateful to the Arhuaco people for giving us this opportunity to work with them," she said.
According to Valencia, the toad is likely poisonous given that all harlequin toads—which features striking black and white markings—have toxins in their skin.
"Its bright coloration gives us clues about their possible toxicity," she told Newsweek. "They live along creeks in mountain forests with low humidity, in one of the driest areas of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta."
Even though scientists had not documented the starry night harlequin toad for 30 years, it has always been known to the Sogrome community of the Arhuaco people who live in the Sierra Nevada.
"The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is a place that we consider sacred, and harlequin toads are guardians of water and symbols of fertility," Kaneymaku Suarez Chaparro, a member of the Sogrome community, said in a statement.
"We manage our resources and conserve our home as the law of origin dictates, which means that we live in balance with Mother Earth and all of the life here. Now we have a great opportunity to bring together two worldviews for the protection and preservation of the Sierra species: the Western scientific knowledge and the indigenous scientific, cultural and spiritual knowledge," he said.
One of the reasons that scientists have not seen the toad for so long is that they have not had access to its habitat. But Fundación Atelopus developed a relationship with the Sogrome community, who agreed to take a team from the non-profit into the field to photograph the species.
"It is an incredible honor to be entrusted with the story of the starry night harlequin toad and the story of the Sogrome community's relationship with it," Fundación Atelopus vice president and biologist José Luis Pérez-González said in the statement.
"We were hoping to find one individual of the starry night harlequin toad, and to our great surprise we found a population of 30 individuals. We were full of joy and hope as we had the chance to observe a healthy population from a genus for which very few species remain," he said.
Conservationists are now working with local indigenous communities to help protect this rare amphibian
"With the starry night harlequin toad records, we confirm that Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is one of the most important sites for the conservation of harlequin toads in Latin America," Luis Alberto Rueda, professor at Universidad del Magdalena and Fundación Atelopus co-founder, said in a statement. "And thanks to the indigenous communities like Sogrome, this special place continues to be a sanctuary for these special animals."
The starry night harlequin toad has been lost to science since 1991. However, a collaboration between Colombian non-profit Fundación Atelopus and the Arhuaco indigenous group has managed to capture photographic evidence of the toad in Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta—the world's highest coastal mountain range.
The latest evidence is welcome news given that harlequin toads—which are found across Central and South America as far south as Bolivia—have been decimated by deadly fungal pathogens, habitat destruction, habitat degradation, invasive species and climate change.
In fact, eighty of the 96 known harlequin toad species are considered endangered, critically endangered or extinct in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List. Thirty-seven of these species have not been seen since the early 2000s, despite efforts to track them down.
"While harlequin toads across Latin America at these higher altitudes have largely vanished over the past three decades as the result of a deadly fungal pathogen, it turns out that the starry night harlequin toad has bucked the trend," Lina Valencia, Colombia conservation officer at Global Wildlife Conservation—a partner of Fundación Atelopus—said in a statement.
"This is a powerful story about how working with indigenous and local communities can help us not just find species lost to science, but better understand how some species are surviving and how we can conserve the natural world in a way that connects spiritual and cultural knowledge. We are tremendously grateful to the Arhuaco people for giving us this opportunity to work with them," she said.
According to Valencia, the toad is likely poisonous given that all harlequin toads—which features striking black and white markings—have toxins in their skin.
"Its bright coloration gives us clues about their possible toxicity," she told Newsweek. "They live along creeks in mountain forests with low humidity, in one of the driest areas of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta."
Even though scientists had not documented the starry night harlequin toad for 30 years, it has always been known to the Sogrome community of the Arhuaco people who live in the Sierra Nevada.
"The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is a place that we consider sacred, and harlequin toads are guardians of water and symbols of fertility," Kaneymaku Suarez Chaparro, a member of the Sogrome community, said in a statement.
"We manage our resources and conserve our home as the law of origin dictates, which means that we live in balance with Mother Earth and all of the life here. Now we have a great opportunity to bring together two worldviews for the protection and preservation of the Sierra species: the Western scientific knowledge and the indigenous scientific, cultural and spiritual knowledge," he said.
One of the reasons that scientists have not seen the toad for so long is that they have not had access to its habitat. But Fundación Atelopus developed a relationship with the Sogrome community, who agreed to take a team from the non-profit into the field to photograph the species.
"It is an incredible honor to be entrusted with the story of the starry night harlequin toad and the story of the Sogrome community's relationship with it," Fundación Atelopus vice president and biologist José Luis Pérez-González said in the statement.
"We were hoping to find one individual of the starry night harlequin toad, and to our great surprise we found a population of 30 individuals. We were full of joy and hope as we had the chance to observe a healthy population from a genus for which very few species remain," he said.
Conservationists are now working with local indigenous communities to help protect this rare amphibian
"With the starry night harlequin toad records, we confirm that Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is one of the most important sites for the conservation of harlequin toads in Latin America," Luis Alberto Rueda, professor at Universidad del Magdalena and Fundación Atelopus co-founder, said in a statement. "And thanks to the indigenous communities like Sogrome, this special place continues to be a sanctuary for these special animals."
Thousands of rare 'ice eggs' found on beach in Finland
Jessica Murray
the guardian
Thu 7 Nov 2019 09.18 EST
Risto Matilla, an amateur photographer, took this picture of the eggs, the largest of which was the size of a football. Photograph: Risto Mattila
A rare collection of “ice eggs” has been spotted in Finland, a phenomenon experts say only occurs in highly particular conditions.
Risto Mattila, who photographed the eggs, said he and his wife were walking along Marjaniemi beach on Hailuoto island on Sunday when they came across the icy balls covering a 30-metre (98ft) expanse of shoreline.
“The biggest of the eggs was about the size of a football,” said Mattila, an amateur photographer. “It was an amazing view. I have never seen this phenomenon before.”
Jouni Vainio, an ice specialist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, said the occurrence was not common, but could happen about once a year in the right weather conditions.
“You need the right air temperature (below zero, but only a bit), the right water temperature (near freezing point), a shallow and gently sloping sandy beach and calm waves, maybe a light swell,” he said.
“You also need something that acts as the core. The core begins to collect ice around it and the swell moves it along the beach, forward and back. A small ball surface gets wet, freezes and becomes bigger and bigger.”
Autumn is the perfect time to see the phenomenon, according to Dr James Carter, emeritus professor of geography-geology at Illinois State University, as this is when ice starts to form on the surface of water, creating a form of slush when moved by waves.
“I can picture the back and forth motion of the surface shaping the slushy mix,” he said. “Thanks to the photographer who shared the photos and observations, now the world gets to see something most of us would never be able to see.”
Risto Mattila, who photographed the eggs, said he and his wife were walking along Marjaniemi beach on Hailuoto island on Sunday when they came across the icy balls covering a 30-metre (98ft) expanse of shoreline.
“The biggest of the eggs was about the size of a football,” said Mattila, an amateur photographer. “It was an amazing view. I have never seen this phenomenon before.”
Jouni Vainio, an ice specialist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, said the occurrence was not common, but could happen about once a year in the right weather conditions.
“You need the right air temperature (below zero, but only a bit), the right water temperature (near freezing point), a shallow and gently sloping sandy beach and calm waves, maybe a light swell,” he said.
“You also need something that acts as the core. The core begins to collect ice around it and the swell moves it along the beach, forward and back. A small ball surface gets wet, freezes and becomes bigger and bigger.”
Autumn is the perfect time to see the phenomenon, according to Dr James Carter, emeritus professor of geography-geology at Illinois State University, as this is when ice starts to form on the surface of water, creating a form of slush when moved by waves.
“I can picture the back and forth motion of the surface shaping the slushy mix,” he said. “Thanks to the photographer who shared the photos and observations, now the world gets to see something most of us would never be able to see.”
Jackdaw birds can tell humans apart — and remember which ones are violent
A new experiment finds these little crows send warning calls about scary humans
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
OCTOBER 5, 2019 6:00PM (UTC)
Birds don’t merely chirp to sing songs that sound pretty to the human ear; they chirp to communicate with each other. For some species, like the Eurasian jackdaw, their sounds are used to warn each other about dangerous humans approaching. More curiously, these jackdaws can tell humans apart — and remember the dangerous ones or the friendly ones.
In a new study published in Royal Society Open Science, researchers at the University of Exeter observed 34 jackdaw bird houses. To observe whether they have specific calls to warn each other about dangerous humans, the researchers, who wore full-head latex masks throughout the experiment to avoid the birds becoming familiar with the experimenters, approached the wild jackdaw nests. During the approach, scientists played a recording of a threatening warning call or a non-threatening call, also known as a contact call. The recorded calls were obtained during the 2014–2016 breeding seasons.
“We predicted that if jackdaws use social learning to inform their response to unfamiliar people, subjects would show a heightened response to a human watching their nest-box after seeing that person associated with conspecific scold calls,” the authors stated in the study. “This study provides direct evidence that individual animals alter their responses to individual people via social learning.”
Researchers landed on this conclusion because the jackdaws that received the fabricated warning calls returned to their bird boxes twice as fast on average. The jackdaws that received the positive contact calls took longer to return to their nests. Researchers say this suggests jackdaws don’t have to have an unpleasant experience with a human directly to see them as dangerous. Understanding this behavior can better help researchers mitigate the effect human activity can have on the birds’ habitats.
“One of the big challenges for a lot of animals is how to live alongside humans,” lead author Victoria Lee, a PhD researcher at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall, said in a media statement. “People can provide some benefits, such as the food at bird feeders, but in some cases humans are also a threat.”
Lee added: “Being able to discriminate between dangerous and harmless people is likely to be beneficial, and in this case we see jackdaws can learn to identify dangerous people without having had a bad experience themselves.”
Previous research from the University of Exeter found that each jackdaw bird has a unique call, and that the size of a mobbing— which is when a prey species mob a predator—depends on which is sending out the warning.
“Joining a mobbing event can be dangerous, as it involves approaching a predator, so it makes sense for individuals to be selective in whom they join,” researchers stated. “Our results show that jackdaws use the ability to discriminate between each other’s voices when deciding whether to join in potentially risky collective activities.”
Jackdaws are the smallest members of the crow family (known as corvids) and are known to be one of the world's most intelligent birds. Interestingly, they are also known to form strong pair bonds with their mates and their devotion to their partners. Clear, they are good at looking out for each other.
In a new study published in Royal Society Open Science, researchers at the University of Exeter observed 34 jackdaw bird houses. To observe whether they have specific calls to warn each other about dangerous humans, the researchers, who wore full-head latex masks throughout the experiment to avoid the birds becoming familiar with the experimenters, approached the wild jackdaw nests. During the approach, scientists played a recording of a threatening warning call or a non-threatening call, also known as a contact call. The recorded calls were obtained during the 2014–2016 breeding seasons.
“We predicted that if jackdaws use social learning to inform their response to unfamiliar people, subjects would show a heightened response to a human watching their nest-box after seeing that person associated with conspecific scold calls,” the authors stated in the study. “This study provides direct evidence that individual animals alter their responses to individual people via social learning.”
Researchers landed on this conclusion because the jackdaws that received the fabricated warning calls returned to their bird boxes twice as fast on average. The jackdaws that received the positive contact calls took longer to return to their nests. Researchers say this suggests jackdaws don’t have to have an unpleasant experience with a human directly to see them as dangerous. Understanding this behavior can better help researchers mitigate the effect human activity can have on the birds’ habitats.
“One of the big challenges for a lot of animals is how to live alongside humans,” lead author Victoria Lee, a PhD researcher at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall, said in a media statement. “People can provide some benefits, such as the food at bird feeders, but in some cases humans are also a threat.”
Lee added: “Being able to discriminate between dangerous and harmless people is likely to be beneficial, and in this case we see jackdaws can learn to identify dangerous people without having had a bad experience themselves.”
Previous research from the University of Exeter found that each jackdaw bird has a unique call, and that the size of a mobbing— which is when a prey species mob a predator—depends on which is sending out the warning.
“Joining a mobbing event can be dangerous, as it involves approaching a predator, so it makes sense for individuals to be selective in whom they join,” researchers stated. “Our results show that jackdaws use the ability to discriminate between each other’s voices when deciding whether to join in potentially risky collective activities.”
Jackdaws are the smallest members of the crow family (known as corvids) and are known to be one of the world's most intelligent birds. Interestingly, they are also known to form strong pair bonds with their mates and their devotion to their partners. Clear, they are good at looking out for each other.
THESE SHARKS GLOW GREEN IN THE DARK AND SCIENTISTS NOW KNOW WHY
BY KASHMIRA GANDER - Newsweek
ON 8/8/19 AT 11:38 AM EDT
Scientists have identified a substance that enables some sharks to give off a bright green glow, which they believe only other sharks can see.
The authors of the paper, published in the journal iScience, previously showed that swell sharks--who live in California's Monterey Bay to southern Mexico and the coast of Chile—are biofluorescent. That means they soak up light—in this case ambient blue ocean light—and use it to give off light in a different color, usually green, red or orange.
In their latest study, researchers wanted to learn more about what being biofluorescent means for these creatures. They looked at the swell shark, as well as the chain catshark that inhabits the western Atlantic ocean.
Past studies have shown the lighter beige parts of the species have a higher intensity of green fluorescence, compared with the darker areas.
Now, by testing the dark and light patches, the team found a group of small molecule metabolites in the lighter skin. What are known as brominated tryptophan-kynurenine small-molecule metabolites are different to the green fluorescent proteins used by biofluorescent creatures like jellyfish and corals.
Study co-author David Gruber, professor at City University of New York, told Newsweek: "I was surprised that the biofluorescence in sharks was so chemically different from the other forms previously discovered."
As well as giving sharks their glow, the metabolites also appear to have other jobs, like fighting infection, and finding one another in the ocean.
Jason Crawford, a professor at Yale University who co-authored the work, explained in a statement: "Imagine if I were bright green, but only you could see me as being bright green, but others could not."
He explained: "It's a completely different system for them to see each other that other animals cannot necessarily tap into. They have a completely different view of the world that they're in because of these biofluorescent properties that their skin exhibits and their eyes can detect."
"This study opens new questions related to potential function of biofluorescence in central nervous system signaling, resilience to microbial infections and photoprotection," said Gruber.
The team hopes the findings could be used to create new imaging techniques, which could be used in scientific research or medicine.
The authors of the paper, published in the journal iScience, previously showed that swell sharks--who live in California's Monterey Bay to southern Mexico and the coast of Chile—are biofluorescent. That means they soak up light—in this case ambient blue ocean light—and use it to give off light in a different color, usually green, red or orange.
In their latest study, researchers wanted to learn more about what being biofluorescent means for these creatures. They looked at the swell shark, as well as the chain catshark that inhabits the western Atlantic ocean.
Past studies have shown the lighter beige parts of the species have a higher intensity of green fluorescence, compared with the darker areas.
Now, by testing the dark and light patches, the team found a group of small molecule metabolites in the lighter skin. What are known as brominated tryptophan-kynurenine small-molecule metabolites are different to the green fluorescent proteins used by biofluorescent creatures like jellyfish and corals.
Study co-author David Gruber, professor at City University of New York, told Newsweek: "I was surprised that the biofluorescence in sharks was so chemically different from the other forms previously discovered."
As well as giving sharks their glow, the metabolites also appear to have other jobs, like fighting infection, and finding one another in the ocean.
Jason Crawford, a professor at Yale University who co-authored the work, explained in a statement: "Imagine if I were bright green, but only you could see me as being bright green, but others could not."
He explained: "It's a completely different system for them to see each other that other animals cannot necessarily tap into. They have a completely different view of the world that they're in because of these biofluorescent properties that their skin exhibits and their eyes can detect."
"This study opens new questions related to potential function of biofluorescence in central nervous system signaling, resilience to microbial infections and photoprotection," said Gruber.
The team hopes the findings could be used to create new imaging techniques, which could be used in scientific research or medicine.
Cosmo Park, which sits on top of a shopping mall. Photograph: Shahrir Bahar/instagram/@shahrirbahar1
Suburb in the sky: how Jakartans built an entire village on top of a mall
Depending who you ask, Cosmo Park is an ingenious urban oasis or an ill-conceived dystopia
Kate Lamb in Jakarta
The Guardian
Mon 5 Aug 2019 06.00 BST
Cosmo Park is a complex of neat, two-storey homes built on top of a car park. Photograph: Muhammad Fadli
It’s Thursday and the residents of Jakarta’s Cosmo Park are out jogging, watering their plants or walking their dogs along neat asphalt roads.
Neighbourhood kids pedal their bikes under frangipani trees and peach-coloured bougainvillea to the pool and tennis court. Apartments, comfortable and modern, sit side by side, with barbecues and toys stacked outside.
Quiet and orderly, it feels like any other suburban idyll – but there is one difference. Cosmo Park is a village in the sky, perched 10 storeys up on top of a shopping centre and car park, a world away from the heaving megalopolis below.
It is a surreal urban bubble, where normal life unfolds at an abnormal altitude. To access ground level, resident drive their cars down a ramp. A tall metal fence runs around the perimeter to make sure no one falls or drives off. Peer beyond the fence and you can spot the city’s landmarks below.
Cosmo Park was built 10 years ago but was largely unknown outside Jakarta until last month, when a drone photograph broadcast its oddness to the world.
In June, Twitter user @shahrirbahar1 posted a bird’s eye view of the complex, 78 two-storey, cookie-cutter units on top of the parking lot with Jakarta’s immense urban sprawl in the background. It was a photo that captured both the scale and incongruity of the project.
“Good morning Jakarta,” he wrote. “What type of person thinks about developing a housing complex on top of a building?”
Retweeted almost 27,000 times, the post spawned a long thread of incredulity and wisecracks (how do food delivery drivers find it?) but also serious questions about the wisdom of the city’s urban development, such as how might a complex like this fare in an earthquake?
Home to 10 million people and almost three times that including the greater Jakarta area, the Indonesian capital is buckling under the weight of its problems, from chronic floods and unbelieveably bad traffic to severe pollution, overcrowding and the fact that it is literally sinking.
So severe are the city’s problems the president has once again raised the idea of moving the capital.
Is Cosmo Park some kind of postmodern dystopia or, in a city beset by perennial woe, an ingenious use of urban space? While some outsiders are unconvinced, those who live at Cosmo Park offer glowing reviews.
“It’s a lovely oasis,” says Fazila Kapasi, as she tails her four-year-old son around on his bike along one of the complex’s neat roads. “I cannot recommend it enough.”
Fazila and her husband moved to Jakarta from Mumbai, and chose Cosmo Park partly because they were concerned about Jakarta’s floods. But after living there for six years Fazila can reel off a string of other advantages, including that it is less isolating than standard apartment living.
In the afternoon Fazila stops to chat to her neighbours, while most days she and her son feed the pigeons that live in a nearby tree. She also has her own garden, where she has a hammock and space to grow aubergines, tomatoes and chillies.
“It is so good. There is so much open space, my son can ride his bike around. It’s so central, it’s really safe, and there is a lovely neighbourhood feel,” she says.
At Cosmo Park there is an uncanny sensation of being simultaneously up and down, but residents are used to it.
“I feel like this is a real house, not an apartment,” exclaims Indri Lestari, who moved into Cosmo Park with her husband, who is Spanish, and their young son three months ago. “It’s just there is no kaki lima [street food cart] here,” she jokes.
Indri says she laughed when she saw the complex on Instagram.
“It’s high here, for sure,” says Indri, who moved from a higher apartment block nearby. “But lots of places are and here we have more space and privacy, and it’s better for my family. My son can play outside, just out the door.”
Situated amid a cluster of mega malls in Jakarta’s centre, Cosmo Park is one of two such developments in Jakarta by the Indonesian property developer the Agung Podomoro Group, and was built according to regulations. The second is above the Mall of Indonesia in the city’s north.
“But this one is more popular,” notes the real estate agent showing the Guardian around Cosmo Park, past the pool and launderette and minimarket, as she extols its convenient location.
“A lot of foreigners choose this place,” she says, before leaving with a parting note: “You know who to call if you want to live here.”
Neighbourhood kids pedal their bikes under frangipani trees and peach-coloured bougainvillea to the pool and tennis court. Apartments, comfortable and modern, sit side by side, with barbecues and toys stacked outside.
Quiet and orderly, it feels like any other suburban idyll – but there is one difference. Cosmo Park is a village in the sky, perched 10 storeys up on top of a shopping centre and car park, a world away from the heaving megalopolis below.
It is a surreal urban bubble, where normal life unfolds at an abnormal altitude. To access ground level, resident drive their cars down a ramp. A tall metal fence runs around the perimeter to make sure no one falls or drives off. Peer beyond the fence and you can spot the city’s landmarks below.
Cosmo Park was built 10 years ago but was largely unknown outside Jakarta until last month, when a drone photograph broadcast its oddness to the world.
In June, Twitter user @shahrirbahar1 posted a bird’s eye view of the complex, 78 two-storey, cookie-cutter units on top of the parking lot with Jakarta’s immense urban sprawl in the background. It was a photo that captured both the scale and incongruity of the project.
“Good morning Jakarta,” he wrote. “What type of person thinks about developing a housing complex on top of a building?”
Retweeted almost 27,000 times, the post spawned a long thread of incredulity and wisecracks (how do food delivery drivers find it?) but also serious questions about the wisdom of the city’s urban development, such as how might a complex like this fare in an earthquake?
Home to 10 million people and almost three times that including the greater Jakarta area, the Indonesian capital is buckling under the weight of its problems, from chronic floods and unbelieveably bad traffic to severe pollution, overcrowding and the fact that it is literally sinking.
So severe are the city’s problems the president has once again raised the idea of moving the capital.
Is Cosmo Park some kind of postmodern dystopia or, in a city beset by perennial woe, an ingenious use of urban space? While some outsiders are unconvinced, those who live at Cosmo Park offer glowing reviews.
“It’s a lovely oasis,” says Fazila Kapasi, as she tails her four-year-old son around on his bike along one of the complex’s neat roads. “I cannot recommend it enough.”
Fazila and her husband moved to Jakarta from Mumbai, and chose Cosmo Park partly because they were concerned about Jakarta’s floods. But after living there for six years Fazila can reel off a string of other advantages, including that it is less isolating than standard apartment living.
In the afternoon Fazila stops to chat to her neighbours, while most days she and her son feed the pigeons that live in a nearby tree. She also has her own garden, where she has a hammock and space to grow aubergines, tomatoes and chillies.
“It is so good. There is so much open space, my son can ride his bike around. It’s so central, it’s really safe, and there is a lovely neighbourhood feel,” she says.
At Cosmo Park there is an uncanny sensation of being simultaneously up and down, but residents are used to it.
“I feel like this is a real house, not an apartment,” exclaims Indri Lestari, who moved into Cosmo Park with her husband, who is Spanish, and their young son three months ago. “It’s just there is no kaki lima [street food cart] here,” she jokes.
Indri says she laughed when she saw the complex on Instagram.
“It’s high here, for sure,” says Indri, who moved from a higher apartment block nearby. “But lots of places are and here we have more space and privacy, and it’s better for my family. My son can play outside, just out the door.”
Situated amid a cluster of mega malls in Jakarta’s centre, Cosmo Park is one of two such developments in Jakarta by the Indonesian property developer the Agung Podomoro Group, and was built according to regulations. The second is above the Mall of Indonesia in the city’s north.
“But this one is more popular,” notes the real estate agent showing the Guardian around Cosmo Park, past the pool and launderette and minimarket, as she extols its convenient location.
“A lot of foreigners choose this place,” she says, before leaving with a parting note: “You know who to call if you want to live here.”
THE WORLD'S 2ND BIGGEST TREE CAPTURED IN ONE SPECTACULAR IMAGE
These staggering numbers represent one single tree, a giant sequoia called The President. Whats even more mind-blowing is that the tree is more than 3 thousand years old, and comprised of some 54,000 cubic feet (1530 cubic metres) of wood and bark. Photographer Michael Nichols photographed the 250ft behemoth in Sequoia National Park.
FOREST OF GIANTS
On a gentle slope above a trail junction in Sequoia National Park, about 7,000ft/2134m above sea level in the southern Sierra Nevada, looms a very big tree indeed. Its trunk is rusty red, thickened with deep layers of furrowed bark, and 27ft/8.23m in diameter at the base. Its footprint would cover your dining room. Trying to glimpse its top, or craning to see the shape of its crown, could give you a sore neck. That is, this tree is so big you can scarcely look at it all. It has a name, the President, bestowed about 90 years ago by admiring humans. It’s a giant sequoia, a member of Sequoiadendron giganteum, one of several surviving species of redwoods.
View at: https://brightvibes.com/1303/en/the-president-the-worlds-2nd-biggest-tree-captured-in-one-spectacular-image?fbclid=IwAR2OxKOBuhklv64spbQFsXBM4YKbTsDTdB-v8l0flGJiqUSlckB9nsXxbAo
FOREST OF GIANTS
On a gentle slope above a trail junction in Sequoia National Park, about 7,000ft/2134m above sea level in the southern Sierra Nevada, looms a very big tree indeed. Its trunk is rusty red, thickened with deep layers of furrowed bark, and 27ft/8.23m in diameter at the base. Its footprint would cover your dining room. Trying to glimpse its top, or craning to see the shape of its crown, could give you a sore neck. That is, this tree is so big you can scarcely look at it all. It has a name, the President, bestowed about 90 years ago by admiring humans. It’s a giant sequoia, a member of Sequoiadendron giganteum, one of several surviving species of redwoods.
View at: https://brightvibes.com/1303/en/the-president-the-worlds-2nd-biggest-tree-captured-in-one-spectacular-image?fbclid=IwAR2OxKOBuhklv64spbQFsXBM4YKbTsDTdB-v8l0flGJiqUSlckB9nsXxbAo
Meet Jonathan, The Oldest-Known Animal In The World
Cattledog - demo underground
3/30/19
|
|
The year was 1832 — and Jonathan the tortoise was just a tiny hatchling.
The world was a very different place back then; the lightbulb had yet to be invented, and cars were still half a century away.
But Jonathan, who is a Seychelles giant tortoise, lived to see it all. At around 187 years old, he’s now the oldest-known animal in the world — and he’s living a relaxing life on the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, where he’s been since the late 1880s.
Jonathan’s longevity has certainly surprised a lot of people, Lucy said. He’s the oldest member of his companions at the mansion, who consist of three other giant tortoises; the second-oldest tortoise is his friend, 80-year-old David.
Jonathan is likely fully blind, but he still makes his way around very well. He typically spends his days lounging in the sun, munching on grass and relaxing with his tortoise friends. It’s a very calm life for someone of such status; he’s so popular that his portrait is even on the back of the small island’s five pence coin.
https://www.thedodo.com/in-the-wild/tortoise-jonathan-oldest-animal-in-the-world?fbclid=IwAR36jr9HLHt9Q1AJ_Zw6ccg7a98kXqVCLyIx-9uuaXh-VSY1eTcbgNbyyd8#
The world was a very different place back then; the lightbulb had yet to be invented, and cars were still half a century away.
But Jonathan, who is a Seychelles giant tortoise, lived to see it all. At around 187 years old, he’s now the oldest-known animal in the world — and he’s living a relaxing life on the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, where he’s been since the late 1880s.
Jonathan’s longevity has certainly surprised a lot of people, Lucy said. He’s the oldest member of his companions at the mansion, who consist of three other giant tortoises; the second-oldest tortoise is his friend, 80-year-old David.
Jonathan is likely fully blind, but he still makes his way around very well. He typically spends his days lounging in the sun, munching on grass and relaxing with his tortoise friends. It’s a very calm life for someone of such status; he’s so popular that his portrait is even on the back of the small island’s five pence coin.
https://www.thedodo.com/in-the-wild/tortoise-jonathan-oldest-animal-in-the-world?fbclid=IwAR36jr9HLHt9Q1AJ_Zw6ccg7a98kXqVCLyIx-9uuaXh-VSY1eTcbgNbyyd8#
THESE MINI FROGS ARE SO SMALL THEY CAN SIT ON YOUR THUMBNAIL—AND THEY'RE COMPLETELY NEW TO SCIENCE
BY MARK D. SCHERZ - newsweek
ON 3/28/19 AT 12:52 PM EDT
An adult male “Mini mum”, one of the world’s smallest frogs, rests on a fingernail with room to spare.
DR ANDOLALAO RAKOTOARISON
Miniaturized frogs form a fascinating but poorly understood group of amphibians. They have been exceptionally prone to taxonomic underestimation because when frogs evolve small body size they start to look remarkably similar—so it is easy to underestimate how diverse they really are.
As part of my PhD I have been studying frogs and reptiles on Madagascar, an island in the Indian Ocean that’s a little larger than mainland France. It has more than 350 frog species, giving it possibly the highest frog diversity per square kilometer of any country in the world. And many of these frogs are very small.
We have added to the knowledge of these tiny species by describing five new species as belonging to the group of frogs commonly referred to as “narrow-mouthed” frogs. The largest of them could sit happily on your thumbnail. The smallest is just longer than a grain of rice.
We’ve dubbed three of the new species as “Mini”—a group that is wholly new to science. When a whole group or “genus” like this is new to science, it needs a name, so that information about it can be accumulated with a fixed anchor. We also wanted to have a bit of fun. And so, we named the species Mini mum, Mini scule, and Mini ature. Adults of the two smallest species--Mini mumand Mini scule—are 8–11 mm, and even the largest member of the genus, Mini ature, at 15 mm, could sit on your thumbnail with room to spare.
The other two new species, Rhombophryne proportionalis and Anodonthyla eximia, are also just 11–12 mm, and are much smaller than their closest relatives.
The frogs we identified belong to three different groups that are not closely related to one another, and they have independently evolved to be much smaller in body size.
Our findings tell us that the evolution of body size in Madagascar’s miniature frogs has been more dynamic than previously understood. And future studies will hopefully shed light on the interplay between the ecology and evolution of these remarkably diverse frogs.
Tiny frogs
The “narrow-mouthed” frog species is part of a highly diverse family found on every continent except Antarctica and Europe. But the frogs we found on the island belong to the subfamily Cophylinae which is endemic to Madagascar. The subfamily has a particularly large diversity of miniaturized species which, based on their small size, were historically attributed to the single genus Stumpffa.
Although most narrow-mouthed frogs are small to moderately large, many are tiny, including the smallest frog in the world, Paedophryne amauensis from Papua New Guinea. It’s adult body size is 7.7 mm. That’s about the length of your average Tic Tac candy.
What’s remarkable is that the smallest frogs have evolved to become tiny again and again, often several times within a single region, as highlighted in this new study. This means there must be some kind of advantage to being a tiny frog or something that allows tiny frogs to survive, thrive, and diversify.
What we found
Mini mum is from Manombo in eastern Madagascar. It is one of the smallest frogs in the world, reaching an adult body size of 9.7 mm in males and 11.3 mm in females. It could sit on a thumbtack.
Mini scule from Sainte Luce in southeastern Madagascar is slightly larger and has teeth in its upper jaw.
Mini ature from Andohahela in southeast Madagascar is larger than its relatives but is similar in build.
Rhombophryne proportionalis from Tsaratanana in northern Madagascar is unique among Madagascar’s miniaturised frogs because it’s a proportional dwarf, meaning it has the proportions of a large frog, but is only about 12 mm long. This is very unusual among tiny frogs, which usually have large eyes, big heads, and other characters that are “baby-like”; so-called “paedomorphisms”.
Anodonthyla eximia from Ranomafana in eastern Madagascar is distinctly smaller than any other Anodonthyla species. It lives on the ground, providing evidence that miniaturisation and terrestriality may have an evolutionary link. Maybe getting really small makes it hard to stay up in the trees.
Finding frogs
Finding tiny frogs in the leaf litter is hard work. We often spend months in the forest, under very difficult conditions, trying to find frogs and reptiles. Because of their size, the tiny frogs are exceptionally hard to find so the trick is to listen for their calls, and then track them.
But calling males often sit one or two leaves deep and stop calling at the slightest disturbance. When you eventually find a frog, you record its call and then try to catch it—a very tough exercise.
Then there are other challenges. Cyclones often batter Madagascar’s eastern coast in the December–March rainy season, which can make searching even more difficult. We found Anodonthyla eximia in the early morning after a terrible night, when a cyclone swept away most of the camp. Miserable conditions for biologists can make great conditions for frogs.
Madagascar is a treasure trove of biodiversity. We already know hundreds of species of reptiles and amphibians from the island and, because we have DNA information on a lot of species that are not yet named, we also have a sense for how much we don’t know about that diversity.
It is one of the best places in the world to study reptiles and amphibians and their evolutionary processes. But we are aware that we’re working in a very tight time frame. Madagascar’s forests are dwindling at an astounding rate. It is one of the poorest countries, and with growing populations, the forests bear the brunt of human needs. Conservation work in the country is intensifying, but there is still a long way to go before we can consider species like Mini mum and Mini scule safe for the foreseeable future.
As part of my PhD I have been studying frogs and reptiles on Madagascar, an island in the Indian Ocean that’s a little larger than mainland France. It has more than 350 frog species, giving it possibly the highest frog diversity per square kilometer of any country in the world. And many of these frogs are very small.
We have added to the knowledge of these tiny species by describing five new species as belonging to the group of frogs commonly referred to as “narrow-mouthed” frogs. The largest of them could sit happily on your thumbnail. The smallest is just longer than a grain of rice.
We’ve dubbed three of the new species as “Mini”—a group that is wholly new to science. When a whole group or “genus” like this is new to science, it needs a name, so that information about it can be accumulated with a fixed anchor. We also wanted to have a bit of fun. And so, we named the species Mini mum, Mini scule, and Mini ature. Adults of the two smallest species--Mini mumand Mini scule—are 8–11 mm, and even the largest member of the genus, Mini ature, at 15 mm, could sit on your thumbnail with room to spare.
The other two new species, Rhombophryne proportionalis and Anodonthyla eximia, are also just 11–12 mm, and are much smaller than their closest relatives.
The frogs we identified belong to three different groups that are not closely related to one another, and they have independently evolved to be much smaller in body size.
Our findings tell us that the evolution of body size in Madagascar’s miniature frogs has been more dynamic than previously understood. And future studies will hopefully shed light on the interplay between the ecology and evolution of these remarkably diverse frogs.
Tiny frogs
The “narrow-mouthed” frog species is part of a highly diverse family found on every continent except Antarctica and Europe. But the frogs we found on the island belong to the subfamily Cophylinae which is endemic to Madagascar. The subfamily has a particularly large diversity of miniaturized species which, based on their small size, were historically attributed to the single genus Stumpffa.
Although most narrow-mouthed frogs are small to moderately large, many are tiny, including the smallest frog in the world, Paedophryne amauensis from Papua New Guinea. It’s adult body size is 7.7 mm. That’s about the length of your average Tic Tac candy.
What’s remarkable is that the smallest frogs have evolved to become tiny again and again, often several times within a single region, as highlighted in this new study. This means there must be some kind of advantage to being a tiny frog or something that allows tiny frogs to survive, thrive, and diversify.
What we found
Mini mum is from Manombo in eastern Madagascar. It is one of the smallest frogs in the world, reaching an adult body size of 9.7 mm in males and 11.3 mm in females. It could sit on a thumbtack.
Mini scule from Sainte Luce in southeastern Madagascar is slightly larger and has teeth in its upper jaw.
Mini ature from Andohahela in southeast Madagascar is larger than its relatives but is similar in build.
Rhombophryne proportionalis from Tsaratanana in northern Madagascar is unique among Madagascar’s miniaturised frogs because it’s a proportional dwarf, meaning it has the proportions of a large frog, but is only about 12 mm long. This is very unusual among tiny frogs, which usually have large eyes, big heads, and other characters that are “baby-like”; so-called “paedomorphisms”.
Anodonthyla eximia from Ranomafana in eastern Madagascar is distinctly smaller than any other Anodonthyla species. It lives on the ground, providing evidence that miniaturisation and terrestriality may have an evolutionary link. Maybe getting really small makes it hard to stay up in the trees.
Finding frogs
Finding tiny frogs in the leaf litter is hard work. We often spend months in the forest, under very difficult conditions, trying to find frogs and reptiles. Because of their size, the tiny frogs are exceptionally hard to find so the trick is to listen for their calls, and then track them.
But calling males often sit one or two leaves deep and stop calling at the slightest disturbance. When you eventually find a frog, you record its call and then try to catch it—a very tough exercise.
Then there are other challenges. Cyclones often batter Madagascar’s eastern coast in the December–March rainy season, which can make searching even more difficult. We found Anodonthyla eximia in the early morning after a terrible night, when a cyclone swept away most of the camp. Miserable conditions for biologists can make great conditions for frogs.
Madagascar is a treasure trove of biodiversity. We already know hundreds of species of reptiles and amphibians from the island and, because we have DNA information on a lot of species that are not yet named, we also have a sense for how much we don’t know about that diversity.
It is one of the best places in the world to study reptiles and amphibians and their evolutionary processes. But we are aware that we’re working in a very tight time frame. Madagascar’s forests are dwindling at an astounding rate. It is one of the poorest countries, and with growing populations, the forests bear the brunt of human needs. Conservation work in the country is intensifying, but there is still a long way to go before we can consider species like Mini mum and Mini scule safe for the foreseeable future.
Nebraska family built a lifelike Ford Mustang out of snow, and a state trooper gave it a ticket
Omaha Steve - demo underground
3/12/19
By Chris Peters / World-Herald staff writer 6 hrs ago
A family in northwest Nebraska built a Ford Mustang out of snow so lifelike that a state trooper gave it a ticket.
During Saturday’s snow in Chadron, Jason Blundell, a 43-year-old concrete plant manager, and his two teenage kids shoveled neighboring driveways into a massive mound and created a work of art. They spent five hours sculpting a clone of the 1967 Ford Mustang GTA that they store in their garage, then they posted a photo to Facebook.
That caught the eye of Nebraska State Patrol Sgt. Mick Downing, who attends the same church as the family. He drove by and recorded himself giving the sculpted car a pretend tow notice, then posted the video on the patrol’s social media channels.
“Holy cow, this thing blew up,” Do
FULL story: https://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/nebraska-family-built-a-lifelike-ford-mustang-out-of-snow/article_3af5bc5a-27da-51d1-a4af-0e3fd721b511.html
A family in northwest Nebraska built a Ford Mustang out of snow so lifelike that a state trooper gave it a ticket.
During Saturday’s snow in Chadron, Jason Blundell, a 43-year-old concrete plant manager, and his two teenage kids shoveled neighboring driveways into a massive mound and created a work of art. They spent five hours sculpting a clone of the 1967 Ford Mustang GTA that they store in their garage, then they posted a photo to Facebook.
That caught the eye of Nebraska State Patrol Sgt. Mick Downing, who attends the same church as the family. He drove by and recorded himself giving the sculpted car a pretend tow notice, then posted the video on the patrol’s social media channels.
“Holy cow, this thing blew up,” Do
FULL story: https://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/nebraska-family-built-a-lifelike-ford-mustang-out-of-snow/article_3af5bc5a-27da-51d1-a4af-0e3fd721b511.html
Holy mola: huge sunfish washes up in northern waters for first time in 130 years
Beached hoodwinker sunfish, which is two metres long, baffles locals on California beach
Kate Lyons
the guardian
Mon 4 Mar 2019 09.09 EST
Jessica Nielsen examines a beached hoodwinker sunfish at at Coal Oil Point Reserve in Santa Barbara, California. Photograph: Thomas Turner/AP
|
A hoodwinker sunfish lays on the beach at Coal Oil Point Reserve in Santa Barbara Photograph: Thomas Turner/AP
|
A giant sunfish has washed up on a beach in California, the first time this particular species of the animal has been sighted in the northern hemisphere in 130 years.
The sunfish measuring 2.05 metres (6ft 8 in) and weighing several hundred kilograms, or more than 600lb, was found on the beach of the Coal Oil Point Reserve in California.
Staff at the reserve posted photographs of the enormous fish on social media, incorrectly but understandably identifying it as an ocean sunfish (Mola mola), which is commonly found in seas off the US.
Instead, it was something more remarkable, a hoodwinker sunfish (Mola tecta), a rare species that was first spotted in 2014 by a Danish PhD student working in New Zealand, and formally identified in 2017.
“We don’t really know much about it,” said Marianne Nyegaard, associate researcher at Auckland War Memorial Museum, who discovered and named the new species, and was able to inform the California team that they had a hoodwinker on their hands.
With the exception of one documented sighting off the Netherlands in 1889, the hoodwinker has only ever been spotted in southern hemisphere waters, off New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Peru.
“That’s as far north as I have seen it, that corresponds to a cold water current,” she said. “For this fish to suddenly rock up in California is really exciting.”
It can be difficult to identify the different species of sunfish – which is why it took so long for the hoodwinker to be classified as a separate species – and Nyegaard has trawled through dozens of reports of hoodwinker sightings on social media. As a result, when she was sent the Facebook post from the Coal Oil Point Reserve, she had her doubts.
“I was really skeptical,” she said.
But after asking staff from the reserve to go out and take more pictures of the features that distinguish a hoodwinker sunfish from an ocean sunfish – a flap dividing the rounded clavus that the fish has in place of a tail, bony structures along the clavus and the scale structure – it was clear that this was a hoodwinker.
“When the pictures came through, they were so so clear, I just could not believe it, it was a mix of disbelief and excitement,” she said.
As to why this particular fish made its way so far north – potentially more than 4,000 miles (6,800km) from home – that is unclear.
“It could just be a lost sunfish, or it could be we don’t understand the distribution yet,” she said. “Then of course there is the whole issue around climate change, we can’t conclude anything from just one specimen, but of course it is the question.”
Researchers from the University of Santa Barbara collected samples from the dead fish, including one bound for Nyegaard’s research. The genetic samplewill enable her to check if the Californian hoodwinker is from the same population as those off New Zealand.
The genetic analysis will be done by Nyegaard’s sister Dr Mette Nyegaard, a geneticist at Aarhus University in Denmark.
The sunfish measuring 2.05 metres (6ft 8 in) and weighing several hundred kilograms, or more than 600lb, was found on the beach of the Coal Oil Point Reserve in California.
Staff at the reserve posted photographs of the enormous fish on social media, incorrectly but understandably identifying it as an ocean sunfish (Mola mola), which is commonly found in seas off the US.
Instead, it was something more remarkable, a hoodwinker sunfish (Mola tecta), a rare species that was first spotted in 2014 by a Danish PhD student working in New Zealand, and formally identified in 2017.
“We don’t really know much about it,” said Marianne Nyegaard, associate researcher at Auckland War Memorial Museum, who discovered and named the new species, and was able to inform the California team that they had a hoodwinker on their hands.
With the exception of one documented sighting off the Netherlands in 1889, the hoodwinker has only ever been spotted in southern hemisphere waters, off New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Peru.
“That’s as far north as I have seen it, that corresponds to a cold water current,” she said. “For this fish to suddenly rock up in California is really exciting.”
It can be difficult to identify the different species of sunfish – which is why it took so long for the hoodwinker to be classified as a separate species – and Nyegaard has trawled through dozens of reports of hoodwinker sightings on social media. As a result, when she was sent the Facebook post from the Coal Oil Point Reserve, she had her doubts.
“I was really skeptical,” she said.
But after asking staff from the reserve to go out and take more pictures of the features that distinguish a hoodwinker sunfish from an ocean sunfish – a flap dividing the rounded clavus that the fish has in place of a tail, bony structures along the clavus and the scale structure – it was clear that this was a hoodwinker.
“When the pictures came through, they were so so clear, I just could not believe it, it was a mix of disbelief and excitement,” she said.
As to why this particular fish made its way so far north – potentially more than 4,000 miles (6,800km) from home – that is unclear.
“It could just be a lost sunfish, or it could be we don’t understand the distribution yet,” she said. “Then of course there is the whole issue around climate change, we can’t conclude anything from just one specimen, but of course it is the question.”
Researchers from the University of Santa Barbara collected samples from the dead fish, including one bound for Nyegaard’s research. The genetic samplewill enable her to check if the Californian hoodwinker is from the same population as those off New Zealand.
The genetic analysis will be done by Nyegaard’s sister Dr Mette Nyegaard, a geneticist at Aarhus University in Denmark.
MYSTERY TRACKS DISCOVERED AT BOTTOM OF BELIZE’S GREAT BLUE HOLE
BY HANNAH OSBORNE - newsweek
ON 2/27/19 AT 7:02 AM
Belize's Great Blue Hole.
ISTOCK
Mystery tracks have been discovered at the bottom of the Great Blue Hole—the world’s biggest ocean sinkhole, which sits about 60 miles from the coast of Belize.
In December last year, a team of explorers, including billionaire Richard Branson and Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of French explorer Jacques Cousteau, took part in a mission to dive to the bottom of the hole to find out what was down there. At over 1,000 feet wide and 410 feet deep, it is a largely unexplored natural wonder.
It formed as a limestone cave hundreds of thousands of years ago when the sea level was far lower. At the end of the last ice age, ice-caps melted and sea levels rose, submerging the cave to become what is now the Great Blue Hole.
In November and December last year, teams conducted over 20 dives into the void in order to create a 3D map of it. One of these dives was broadcast live on the Discovery Channel. In it, Branson and Cousteau, led by submarine pilot Erika Bergman, ventured into the hole's depths.
In an interview with CNN Travel, Bergman has spoken about what she saw inside the Great Blue Hole. She said they found never-before-seen stalactites at the base of the hole: "That was pretty exciting, because they haven't been mapped there before, they haven't been discovered there before.”
Even though the water was completely dark, high-resolution sonar equiptment onboard allowed them to see hidden features of the formation. "You can be 20 or 30 meters away from a stalactite or a hunk of the wall and see it in every perfect detail, better than eyesight could even provide,” she said, adding that they also found some unidentifiable tracks right at the base of the hole—the source of which are “open to interpretation.”
Researchers are now close to completing the 3D sonar map of the hole. "It looks really cool, it's this mesh-layered, sonar scan of the entire thousand-foot diameter hole," Bergman told the website.
As well as mystery tracks, Branson also recently said they found plastic bottles sitting at the bottom of the Great Blue Hole. In a blog post about the dive, he wrote: “As for the mythical monsters of the deep? Well, the real monsters facing the ocean are climate change—and plastic. Sadly, we saw plastic bottles at the bottom of the hole, which is a real scourge of the ocean. We’ve all got to get rid of single-use plastic.”
A documentary about the dive, by INE Entertainment, is due to be released this spring.
In December last year, a team of explorers, including billionaire Richard Branson and Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of French explorer Jacques Cousteau, took part in a mission to dive to the bottom of the hole to find out what was down there. At over 1,000 feet wide and 410 feet deep, it is a largely unexplored natural wonder.
It formed as a limestone cave hundreds of thousands of years ago when the sea level was far lower. At the end of the last ice age, ice-caps melted and sea levels rose, submerging the cave to become what is now the Great Blue Hole.
In November and December last year, teams conducted over 20 dives into the void in order to create a 3D map of it. One of these dives was broadcast live on the Discovery Channel. In it, Branson and Cousteau, led by submarine pilot Erika Bergman, ventured into the hole's depths.
In an interview with CNN Travel, Bergman has spoken about what she saw inside the Great Blue Hole. She said they found never-before-seen stalactites at the base of the hole: "That was pretty exciting, because they haven't been mapped there before, they haven't been discovered there before.”
Even though the water was completely dark, high-resolution sonar equiptment onboard allowed them to see hidden features of the formation. "You can be 20 or 30 meters away from a stalactite or a hunk of the wall and see it in every perfect detail, better than eyesight could even provide,” she said, adding that they also found some unidentifiable tracks right at the base of the hole—the source of which are “open to interpretation.”
Researchers are now close to completing the 3D sonar map of the hole. "It looks really cool, it's this mesh-layered, sonar scan of the entire thousand-foot diameter hole," Bergman told the website.
As well as mystery tracks, Branson also recently said they found plastic bottles sitting at the bottom of the Great Blue Hole. In a blog post about the dive, he wrote: “As for the mythical monsters of the deep? Well, the real monsters facing the ocean are climate change—and plastic. Sadly, we saw plastic bottles at the bottom of the hole, which is a real scourge of the ocean. We’ve all got to get rid of single-use plastic.”
A documentary about the dive, by INE Entertainment, is due to be released this spring.
Rare African black leopard captured by camera trap's extraordinary photos
Images were taken by British wildlife photographer, Will Burrard-Lucas, in Laikipia Wilderness Camp in Kenya
Kate Lyons
the guardian
Wed 13 Feb 2019 06.41 EST
A black leopard at night time in Kenya, photographed with a Camtraptions camera trap. Photograph: Burrard-Lucas Photography/Camtraptions
The wild African black leopard has been the stuff of legend and campfire story for decades.
The animal – whose coat is sooty black as a result of melanism, the opposite of albinism – is extremely rare.
But a British wildlife photographer has taken the first professional camera trap photos of a wild black leopard in Africa.
Will Burrard-Lucas captured the images, which were released to the public on Monday, at the Laikipia Wilderness Camp in Kenya after hearing reports of sightings in the area.
After meeting with locals who had seen the animals, and following leopard tracks, Burrard-Lucas set up a Camtraptions camera trap that included wireless motion sensors, in the hope of photographing the animals at night.
After several days without success Burrard-Lucas returned to his cameras to find a striking image.
“I had a quick look at the last trap, not expecting to find much,” Burrard-Lucas wrote on his blog. “As I scrolled through the images on the back of the camera, I paused and peered at the photograph below in incomprehension … a pair of eyes surrounded by inky darkness … a black leopard! I couldn’t believe it and it took a few days before it sank in that I had achieved my dream.”
Nicholas Pilfold, from the institute for conservation research at the San Diego Zoo, is the author of an article in the African Journal of Ecology about the new photographic evidence captured by Burrard-Lucas.
Pilfold writes that while there have been recorded reports of black leopards in Africa for more than a century, only one had been confirmed with photographic evidence, a 1909 photograph taken in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
“We had always heard about black leopard living in this region,” Pilfold told USA Today. “Collectively these are the first confirmed images in nearly 100 years of a black leopard in Africa, and this region is the only known spot in all of Africa to have [the] black leopard.”
The animal – whose coat is sooty black as a result of melanism, the opposite of albinism – is extremely rare.
But a British wildlife photographer has taken the first professional camera trap photos of a wild black leopard in Africa.
Will Burrard-Lucas captured the images, which were released to the public on Monday, at the Laikipia Wilderness Camp in Kenya after hearing reports of sightings in the area.
After meeting with locals who had seen the animals, and following leopard tracks, Burrard-Lucas set up a Camtraptions camera trap that included wireless motion sensors, in the hope of photographing the animals at night.
After several days without success Burrard-Lucas returned to his cameras to find a striking image.
“I had a quick look at the last trap, not expecting to find much,” Burrard-Lucas wrote on his blog. “As I scrolled through the images on the back of the camera, I paused and peered at the photograph below in incomprehension … a pair of eyes surrounded by inky darkness … a black leopard! I couldn’t believe it and it took a few days before it sank in that I had achieved my dream.”
Nicholas Pilfold, from the institute for conservation research at the San Diego Zoo, is the author of an article in the African Journal of Ecology about the new photographic evidence captured by Burrard-Lucas.
Pilfold writes that while there have been recorded reports of black leopards in Africa for more than a century, only one had been confirmed with photographic evidence, a 1909 photograph taken in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
“We had always heard about black leopard living in this region,” Pilfold told USA Today. “Collectively these are the first confirmed images in nearly 100 years of a black leopard in Africa, and this region is the only known spot in all of Africa to have [the] black leopard.”
Chimps use branch as ladder to escape Belfast zoo enclosure
Breakout is second in recent weeks after runaway red panda found in a nearby garden
Ben Quinn
the guardian
Sun 10 Feb 2019 06.46 EST
Chimpanzees have used a branch to escape from their enclosure at Belfastzoo in the second breach by animals in recent weeks.
They took advantage of damage caused by stormy weather to stage a breakout, which visitors caught on film.
It comes after a red panda cub called Amber was found in a garden less than a mile from the zoo after it escaped from its enclosure last month.
The latest bid for freedom was made by chimps who used a branch as a makeshift ladder and scaled high walls surrounding their pen on Saturday.
Visitors described seeing one of the escapees emerge from the bushes on to a path while others were sitting on top of their enclosure wall.
In footage posted on social media, a child can be heard exclaiming: “Don’t escape, you bad little gorilla.”
Zookeeper Alyn Cairns said trees in the enclosure had been weakened by the storms, allowing the chimps to break them and use them as a ladder to escape.
He told the BBC: “They’re intelligent primates and know they’re not supposed to be out of their enclosure, so got back in themselves.”
Danielle Monaghan, who was at the zoo with her two children, partner and his young nieces, expressed concern about safety.
“I was petrified, obviously, having the kids, and I tried not to show fear but inside I was a bit like: what happens if it attacks us or tries to take the kids or runs over?” she told the BBC.
“But we just had to stay calm. It may have been a different story if it had been aggressive but it absolutely wasn’t. It made us feel at ease. We just walked past it and it was absolutely grand.”
She said they were in disbelief when they saw one of the chimpanzees start to climb out of its enclosure and ended up a foot away when they walked over to take a closer look.
A spokesperson for Belfast city council, which runs the zoo, said one chimpanzee left its enclosure for a short time. “Zookeepers were present as the chimpanzee quickly returned from an adjacent wall to the rest of the group inside the enclosure,” it said.
They took advantage of damage caused by stormy weather to stage a breakout, which visitors caught on film.
It comes after a red panda cub called Amber was found in a garden less than a mile from the zoo after it escaped from its enclosure last month.
The latest bid for freedom was made by chimps who used a branch as a makeshift ladder and scaled high walls surrounding their pen on Saturday.
Visitors described seeing one of the escapees emerge from the bushes on to a path while others were sitting on top of their enclosure wall.
In footage posted on social media, a child can be heard exclaiming: “Don’t escape, you bad little gorilla.”
Zookeeper Alyn Cairns said trees in the enclosure had been weakened by the storms, allowing the chimps to break them and use them as a ladder to escape.
He told the BBC: “They’re intelligent primates and know they’re not supposed to be out of their enclosure, so got back in themselves.”
Danielle Monaghan, who was at the zoo with her two children, partner and his young nieces, expressed concern about safety.
“I was petrified, obviously, having the kids, and I tried not to show fear but inside I was a bit like: what happens if it attacks us or tries to take the kids or runs over?” she told the BBC.
“But we just had to stay calm. It may have been a different story if it had been aggressive but it absolutely wasn’t. It made us feel at ease. We just walked past it and it was absolutely grand.”
She said they were in disbelief when they saw one of the chimpanzees start to climb out of its enclosure and ended up a foot away when they walked over to take a closer look.
A spokesperson for Belfast city council, which runs the zoo, said one chimpanzee left its enclosure for a short time. “Zookeepers were present as the chimpanzee quickly returned from an adjacent wall to the rest of the group inside the enclosure,” it said.
HUNGA TONGA HUNGA HA'APAI, THE VOLCANO ISLAND THAT ROSE FROM THE SEA, EXPLORED BY NASA SCIENTISTS FOR THE FIRST TIME
BY HANNAH OSBORNE - newsweek
ON 2/5/19 AT 6:40 AM
In 2015, a new land emerged in the South Pacific. The eruption of an underwater volcano had sent ash and lava spewing into the sea for over a month. As the ash mixed with the warm water, it solidified into a rock and, over the course of a month, this rock built up enough to create a new island.
The island was nestled in between two landmasses—Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha'apai—hence its name, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH).
Underwater volcanic eruptions often form small new islands but they are normally very short-lived—the ocean waves quickly erode the rock and they disappear back into the sea. HTHH, however, did not vanish. Instead, it grew to be over a mile wide and long, and almost 400 feet in height. In 2017, NASA scientists studying the island estimated it would last for between six and 30 years—providing researchers with an unprecedented insight into the early life and evolution of a new land.
By understanding the processes taking place on HTHH, researchers believe they will be able to get an insight into the otherworldly features on places like Mars. "Everything we learn about what we see on Mars is based on the experience of interpreting Earth phenomena," Jim Garvin, chief scientist of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement at the time. "We think there were eruptions on Mars at a time when there were areas of persistent surface water. We may be able to use this new Tongan island and its evolution as a way of testing whether any of those represented an oceanic environment or ephemeral lake environment."
NASA scientists have now traveled to the island and explored it for the first time. Before this, their only experience of the landscape was from satellite images—which can be misleading. “There’s no map of the new land,” said Dan Slayback, also of the Goddard Space Flight Center.
Slayback, Garvin and Vicki Ferrini, from Columbia University, have spent the last three years making a 3D model of HTHH. Working with the Woods Hole’s Sea Education Association, they sailed around the northern coast of the island taking GPS measurements, before finally setting foot on HTHH.
“We were all like giddy school children,” Slayback said. “Most of it is this black gravel, I won’t call it sand—pea-sized gravel—and we’re mostly wearing sandals so it’s pretty painful because it gets under your foot. Immediately I kind of noticed it wasn’t quite as flat as it seems from satellite. It’s pretty flat, but there’s still some gradients and the gravels have formed some cool patterns from the wave action.
“And then there’s clay washing out of the cone. In the satellite images, you see this light-colored material. It’s mud, this light-colored clay mud. It’s very sticky. So even though we’d seen it we didn’t really know what it was, and I’m still a little baffled of where it’s coming from. Because it’s not ash.”
The team discovered vegetation growing on the island, apparently having been seeded by bird droppings. They also saw a barn own and hundreds of nesting sooty terns living on HTHH.
They also took high-precision measurements of the land so they can produce a higher-resolution 3D map. This will allow them to monitor the erosion of the island over the coming years. “The island is eroding by rainfall much more quickly than I’d imagined,” Slayback said. “We were focused on the erosion on the south coast where the waves are crashing down, which is going on. It’s just that the whole island is going down, too. It’s another aspect that’s made very clear when you’re standing in front of these huge erosion gullies. Okay, this wasn’t here three years ago, and now it’s two meters deep.”
The team now plans to work out the volume of the island and how much ash erupted from the volcano’s vent. Garvin said: “Volcanic islands are some of the simplest landforms to make. Our interest is to calculate how much the 3D landscape changes over time, particularly its volume, which has only been measured a few times at other such islands. It's the first step to understand erosion rates and processes and to decipher why it has persisted longer than most people expected."
The island was nestled in between two landmasses—Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha'apai—hence its name, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH).
Underwater volcanic eruptions often form small new islands but they are normally very short-lived—the ocean waves quickly erode the rock and they disappear back into the sea. HTHH, however, did not vanish. Instead, it grew to be over a mile wide and long, and almost 400 feet in height. In 2017, NASA scientists studying the island estimated it would last for between six and 30 years—providing researchers with an unprecedented insight into the early life and evolution of a new land.
By understanding the processes taking place on HTHH, researchers believe they will be able to get an insight into the otherworldly features on places like Mars. "Everything we learn about what we see on Mars is based on the experience of interpreting Earth phenomena," Jim Garvin, chief scientist of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement at the time. "We think there were eruptions on Mars at a time when there were areas of persistent surface water. We may be able to use this new Tongan island and its evolution as a way of testing whether any of those represented an oceanic environment or ephemeral lake environment."
NASA scientists have now traveled to the island and explored it for the first time. Before this, their only experience of the landscape was from satellite images—which can be misleading. “There’s no map of the new land,” said Dan Slayback, also of the Goddard Space Flight Center.
Slayback, Garvin and Vicki Ferrini, from Columbia University, have spent the last three years making a 3D model of HTHH. Working with the Woods Hole’s Sea Education Association, they sailed around the northern coast of the island taking GPS measurements, before finally setting foot on HTHH.
“We were all like giddy school children,” Slayback said. “Most of it is this black gravel, I won’t call it sand—pea-sized gravel—and we’re mostly wearing sandals so it’s pretty painful because it gets under your foot. Immediately I kind of noticed it wasn’t quite as flat as it seems from satellite. It’s pretty flat, but there’s still some gradients and the gravels have formed some cool patterns from the wave action.
“And then there’s clay washing out of the cone. In the satellite images, you see this light-colored material. It’s mud, this light-colored clay mud. It’s very sticky. So even though we’d seen it we didn’t really know what it was, and I’m still a little baffled of where it’s coming from. Because it’s not ash.”
The team discovered vegetation growing on the island, apparently having been seeded by bird droppings. They also saw a barn own and hundreds of nesting sooty terns living on HTHH.
They also took high-precision measurements of the land so they can produce a higher-resolution 3D map. This will allow them to monitor the erosion of the island over the coming years. “The island is eroding by rainfall much more quickly than I’d imagined,” Slayback said. “We were focused on the erosion on the south coast where the waves are crashing down, which is going on. It’s just that the whole island is going down, too. It’s another aspect that’s made very clear when you’re standing in front of these huge erosion gullies. Okay, this wasn’t here three years ago, and now it’s two meters deep.”
The team now plans to work out the volume of the island and how much ash erupted from the volcano’s vent. Garvin said: “Volcanic islands are some of the simplest landforms to make. Our interest is to calculate how much the 3D landscape changes over time, particularly its volume, which has only been measured a few times at other such islands. It's the first step to understand erosion rates and processes and to decipher why it has persisted longer than most people expected."
How on Earth Are Birds Surviving During Chicago’s Incredible Cold Snap?
First of all, they have those down coats.
JESSICA LEIGH HESTER - mother jones
JANUARY 31, 2019 6:00 AM
Chicago is shuddering. With temperatures dropping down to -20 degrees Fahrenheit (colder, with the windchill), school is canceled, museums are closed, and transit agencies are relying on flaming, kerosene-soaked ropes to warm up steel tracks. The temperatures are life-threatening, and several 24-hour warming sheltersare open. Humans are trying their best to hunker down, but what are the region’s birds supposed to do?
Though the city’s feathered denizens can die in the subzero temperatures—from hypothermia or starvation, if their food sources are locked up in frozen bodies of water—many are generally equipped to handle at least a short burst of bracing cold.
Some of Chicago’s wintertime residents have popped down from their breeding grounds in the Arctic—snowy owls, common redpolls, and snow buntings are known to drop by the Windy City in the cold months, says Alexandra Anderson, a graduate student in environmental and life sciences at Trent University, who studies Arctic birds. “These species may be able to tolerate colder temperatures than other species,” Anderson says. The current temperatures are the harshest that many of the city’s other avian urbanites have seen in their lifetimes—but even so, any bird that winters in Chicago is accustomed to heavy snow and fierce wind. “Species that spend the winter regularly in the region have evolved lots of different ways to deal with these cold snaps,” says John Bates, associate curator of birds at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
They’ve already got cozy coats, for one thing. “Every bird is walking around wearing a down sleeping bag,” says Kevin McGowan, a behavioral ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. When temperatures plummet, birds will “stay the heck out of the wind,” McGowan says, and fluff up their feathers to trap air inside. Their body heat keeps the air pocket warm, and the birds carry their insulation with them like a little portable space heater. “I guarantee you every bird you see in Chicago is going to look fat,” McGowan says. “But they’re not—they’re just cold.” They’ll probably also find the warmest crannies they can—up in the the cavities or branches of a tree, close to puffing chimneys, or on window ledges, away from the strongest gusts.
They’ll also be strategic about when and where they leave their redoubts to feed. To limit their time out in the elements, geese, gulls, and ducks may just hold off on eating until the weather eases up (like, “‘To heck with it, I’m not moving until this is done,’” McGowan says). Chickadees and other species that need to eat more often may flock to feeders, where they don’t have to work very hard to rustle up sustenance. These guaranteed food sources will be “inundated,” McGowan says, with birds that might otherwise take or leave the seeds. Jays and crows may head to their own caches, where they previously squirreled away snacks for later.
“Birds, like humans, have a range of temperatures that the body is comfortable in,” says Anderson. This band, known as the thermoneutral zone, varies by species. Arctic seabirds such as eider ducks and thick-billed murres are quite comfortable in cold temperatures, and goldfinches, for instance, have been known to survive temperatures of -140 degrees Fahrenheit for up to eight hours, Anderson says. When temperatures slip below a given bird’s thermoneutral zone, that creature needs to bump up its metabolism to generate heat. “This uses much more energy than normal, which will mean the bird will need to eat more to stay alive,” Anderson says. “Eventually, if the body cannot generate enough heat, the birds will become hypothermic and likely die.”
When birds are exposed to the whipping wind, their extremities can handle the cold a bit better than, say, human fingers or toes. “Unlike humans, they have counter-current blood circulation in their legs, which allows heat to be transferred from warm arteries to cool veins and keep their legs from freezing,” Anderson says. Even when “their toes get pretty darn close to freezing, that’s okay because there’s not a lot of tissue to be damaged in there,” McGowan says. Chickens—with their wattle and comb—are more vulnerable to nippy temperatures, but, as a rule, he adds, “you don’t see fleshy ornaments on [birds] that have to survive the winter.” Many birds, including geese, will also tuck their bills under their feathers to stay warm “while also increasing breathing efficiency by utilizing warmer air,” according to a statement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Midwest Region.
Birds don’t have to hang in there much longer in order to survive this particular freeze. The icy fist should loosen its grip in a couple of days, when temperatures will inch—barely—into the single digits. Though some birds won’t make it through, the short duration “hopefully means most individuals will be able to ride it out,” Bates says. In the meantime, birds will do “all the stuff your mom would tell you to do” on cold day, McGowan says. “Don’t go anywhere, and stay wrapped up.”
Though the city’s feathered denizens can die in the subzero temperatures—from hypothermia or starvation, if their food sources are locked up in frozen bodies of water—many are generally equipped to handle at least a short burst of bracing cold.
Some of Chicago’s wintertime residents have popped down from their breeding grounds in the Arctic—snowy owls, common redpolls, and snow buntings are known to drop by the Windy City in the cold months, says Alexandra Anderson, a graduate student in environmental and life sciences at Trent University, who studies Arctic birds. “These species may be able to tolerate colder temperatures than other species,” Anderson says. The current temperatures are the harshest that many of the city’s other avian urbanites have seen in their lifetimes—but even so, any bird that winters in Chicago is accustomed to heavy snow and fierce wind. “Species that spend the winter regularly in the region have evolved lots of different ways to deal with these cold snaps,” says John Bates, associate curator of birds at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
They’ve already got cozy coats, for one thing. “Every bird is walking around wearing a down sleeping bag,” says Kevin McGowan, a behavioral ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. When temperatures plummet, birds will “stay the heck out of the wind,” McGowan says, and fluff up their feathers to trap air inside. Their body heat keeps the air pocket warm, and the birds carry their insulation with them like a little portable space heater. “I guarantee you every bird you see in Chicago is going to look fat,” McGowan says. “But they’re not—they’re just cold.” They’ll probably also find the warmest crannies they can—up in the the cavities or branches of a tree, close to puffing chimneys, or on window ledges, away from the strongest gusts.
They’ll also be strategic about when and where they leave their redoubts to feed. To limit their time out in the elements, geese, gulls, and ducks may just hold off on eating until the weather eases up (like, “‘To heck with it, I’m not moving until this is done,’” McGowan says). Chickadees and other species that need to eat more often may flock to feeders, where they don’t have to work very hard to rustle up sustenance. These guaranteed food sources will be “inundated,” McGowan says, with birds that might otherwise take or leave the seeds. Jays and crows may head to their own caches, where they previously squirreled away snacks for later.
“Birds, like humans, have a range of temperatures that the body is comfortable in,” says Anderson. This band, known as the thermoneutral zone, varies by species. Arctic seabirds such as eider ducks and thick-billed murres are quite comfortable in cold temperatures, and goldfinches, for instance, have been known to survive temperatures of -140 degrees Fahrenheit for up to eight hours, Anderson says. When temperatures slip below a given bird’s thermoneutral zone, that creature needs to bump up its metabolism to generate heat. “This uses much more energy than normal, which will mean the bird will need to eat more to stay alive,” Anderson says. “Eventually, if the body cannot generate enough heat, the birds will become hypothermic and likely die.”
When birds are exposed to the whipping wind, their extremities can handle the cold a bit better than, say, human fingers or toes. “Unlike humans, they have counter-current blood circulation in their legs, which allows heat to be transferred from warm arteries to cool veins and keep their legs from freezing,” Anderson says. Even when “their toes get pretty darn close to freezing, that’s okay because there’s not a lot of tissue to be damaged in there,” McGowan says. Chickens—with their wattle and comb—are more vulnerable to nippy temperatures, but, as a rule, he adds, “you don’t see fleshy ornaments on [birds] that have to survive the winter.” Many birds, including geese, will also tuck their bills under their feathers to stay warm “while also increasing breathing efficiency by utilizing warmer air,” according to a statement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Midwest Region.
Birds don’t have to hang in there much longer in order to survive this particular freeze. The icy fist should loosen its grip in a couple of days, when temperatures will inch—barely—into the single digits. Though some birds won’t make it through, the short duration “hopefully means most individuals will be able to ride it out,” Bates says. In the meantime, birds will do “all the stuff your mom would tell you to do” on cold day, McGowan says. “Don’t go anywhere, and stay wrapped up.”
‘Demonic cult!’: Louisiana neighbor goes off when woman puts Santa hats on dragons for Christmas display
Dominique Jackson - raw story
17 DEC 2018 AT 17:54 ET
Dragons in front of Diana Rowland house. [Photo: Twitter]
A South Lousiana resident, Diana Rowland, was greeted with an unlikely surprise when her neighbor criticized her choice of Christmas decorations.
Rowland set up inflatable dragons she had for Halloween and decorated them in Santa hats.
“At first, we took it down after Halloween, but then we thought, ‘Why not?’ and put it back up for Christmas, with a Santa hat and sparkly decorations — everyone loved the dragon,” she told Buzzfeed News.
However, a neighbor left her a note saying dragons were not in the Christmas spirit and asked her to remove them.
“Your dragon display is only marginally acceptable at Halloween. It is totally inappropriate at Christmas. It makes your neighbors wonder if you are involved in a demonic cult. God Bless you and help you to learn the true meaning of Christmas,” the note read.
Rowland said the note did not bother her.
“I chortled, and then ran to my daughter and said, ‘Look at this, we got hate mail!’” she said. “I did consider removing them for about a nanosecond, and then went, ‘Nope,’” she said.
“I think [the person who sent the note] misses the point about what Christmas is,” Rowland said. “Christmas is about joy. That’s what it boils down to. If you’re a Christian, you’re feeling joy about the birth of Christ. We should all be looking for things to be joyful about.”
Some people have offered to help her buy more inflatable dragons, but she insisted that people spend their money giving to charity and spreading joy.
Rowland set up inflatable dragons she had for Halloween and decorated them in Santa hats.
“At first, we took it down after Halloween, but then we thought, ‘Why not?’ and put it back up for Christmas, with a Santa hat and sparkly decorations — everyone loved the dragon,” she told Buzzfeed News.
However, a neighbor left her a note saying dragons were not in the Christmas spirit and asked her to remove them.
“Your dragon display is only marginally acceptable at Halloween. It is totally inappropriate at Christmas. It makes your neighbors wonder if you are involved in a demonic cult. God Bless you and help you to learn the true meaning of Christmas,” the note read.
Rowland said the note did not bother her.
“I chortled, and then ran to my daughter and said, ‘Look at this, we got hate mail!’” she said. “I did consider removing them for about a nanosecond, and then went, ‘Nope,’” she said.
“I think [the person who sent the note] misses the point about what Christmas is,” Rowland said. “Christmas is about joy. That’s what it boils down to. If you’re a Christian, you’re feeling joy about the birth of Christ. We should all be looking for things to be joyful about.”
Some people have offered to help her buy more inflatable dragons, but she insisted that people spend their money giving to charity and spreading joy.
‘Cheating’ gorillas show clever puzzle-solving
Reuters - raw story
05 DEC 2018 AT 06:38 ET
Gorilla (Shutterstock)
Gorillas at a zoo in England have demonstrated a distinctly human trait while attempting to solve a new puzzle game – cheating.
The gorillas were presented with a wall-mounted device where the aim is to guide a peanut through a series of obstacles by poking a stick through various holes to move it along. Eventually the peanut reaches the bottom of the device and drops out.
Some gorillas, however, figured out an easier way to retrieve the nut.
“We’ve seen a lot of cheating behavior where they’ve been putting their lips up against the device and sucking the nut out which was not how we intended the device to be used. But it just shows you that they’re very flexible, they’re capable of creating new solving strategies to access the food,” Dr Fay Clark from Bristol Zoo Gardens told Reuters.
“They have some fascinating problem-solving abilities that have probably not been witnessed before,” she added.
Since first being introduced to the prototype device earlier this year, the scientists say the game has proved a hit with the troop of endangered western lowland gorillas, who regularly returned to play with the game even when there were no more nuts to win.
The ‘Gorilla Game Lab’ project from the University of Bristol and Bristol Zoological Society developed the game to encourage the gorillas’ cognitive and puzzle-solving abilities. The prototype device had to be strong enough to withstand a frustrated gorilla, which can be seven times stronger than humans. It also had to be engaging enough to keep them coming back for more.
“With each of the modules in the game, they’re removable so we can take the modules out, re-designed them and put in an additional module or change the actual structure. So it creates an endless stream of new and novel puzzles for them to solve,” said engineer Dr Stuart Gray of the University of Bristol.
While the main aim of the project is to create a “positive psychological state of pleasure and satisfaction in the gorillas”, the researchers are already setting their sights on more advanced models that would help zookeepers better understand both the mental and physical condition of the animal.
“Things like eyesight, hearing, other cognitive functions – all of these could be measurable further on down the line,” added Gray.
The gorillas were presented with a wall-mounted device where the aim is to guide a peanut through a series of obstacles by poking a stick through various holes to move it along. Eventually the peanut reaches the bottom of the device and drops out.
Some gorillas, however, figured out an easier way to retrieve the nut.
“We’ve seen a lot of cheating behavior where they’ve been putting their lips up against the device and sucking the nut out which was not how we intended the device to be used. But it just shows you that they’re very flexible, they’re capable of creating new solving strategies to access the food,” Dr Fay Clark from Bristol Zoo Gardens told Reuters.
“They have some fascinating problem-solving abilities that have probably not been witnessed before,” she added.
Since first being introduced to the prototype device earlier this year, the scientists say the game has proved a hit with the troop of endangered western lowland gorillas, who regularly returned to play with the game even when there were no more nuts to win.
The ‘Gorilla Game Lab’ project from the University of Bristol and Bristol Zoological Society developed the game to encourage the gorillas’ cognitive and puzzle-solving abilities. The prototype device had to be strong enough to withstand a frustrated gorilla, which can be seven times stronger than humans. It also had to be engaging enough to keep them coming back for more.
“With each of the modules in the game, they’re removable so we can take the modules out, re-designed them and put in an additional module or change the actual structure. So it creates an endless stream of new and novel puzzles for them to solve,” said engineer Dr Stuart Gray of the University of Bristol.
While the main aim of the project is to create a “positive psychological state of pleasure and satisfaction in the gorillas”, the researchers are already setting their sights on more advanced models that would help zookeepers better understand both the mental and physical condition of the animal.
“Things like eyesight, hearing, other cognitive functions – all of these could be measurable further on down the line,” added Gray.
SARLACC PIT: ENORMOUS UNEXPLORED CAVE DISCOVERED IN CANADA COULD BE 6,000 FEET LONG
BY KASHMIRA GANDER - newsweek
ON 12/4/18 AT 10:01 AM
A newly discovered cave in a remote valley in British Columbia's Wells Gray Provincial Park just might be the country's largest such feature. The entrance to the cave, nicknamed 'Sarlacc's Pit' by the helicopter crew who discovered it, is seen in an undated handout photo. (B.C. Ministry of Environment and Climate Change/Catherine Hickson/Canadian Press)
An enormous, unexplored cave of "national significance" has been discovered in a remote alpine corner of Canada.
A helicopter team from the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations stumbled upon the chamber in April, as they counted caribou in British Columbia’s Wells Gray Provincial Park, Global News reported.
On September 9, a team of scientists explored the cave, likely becoming the first people to see its interior.
The cave’s entrance measures 100 by 60 meters (328 by 197 feet) wide (around the size of a football pitch), archaeological surveyor John Pollack, who co-led the team, told Canadian Geographic.
“When you’re standing on the edge looking down into it, your line of sight is nearly 600 feet. You don’t get lines of sight of 600 feet in Canadian caves—it just doesn't happen," he said.
Pollack, who has studied some of the world’s biggest caves, described it as “immense” by international standards and "as big as they come in Canada." The researchers were unable to measure the depth of the cave but estimated it goes down as far as 180 meters (590 feet) and is 2 kilometers (6,561 feet) in length, BBC News reported.
Beneath the mouth is a steep drop leading to water flowing into it. It is believed that the rush of a large stream filled with melted snowpack and glacier water may have formed the cave.
Writing in a document detailing the finding seen by Canadian Geographic, Pollack and geochemist and speleologist Chas Yonge said the finding marks a “dramatic new chapter in the story of Canadian cave exploration."
Catherine Hickson, who co-led the team, told Global News the discovery came down to luck, as the crew flew above the cave at a time when it wasn’t masked by snow. She told BBC News the entrance was “awe-inspiring.”
Bevan Ernst, a biologist who works for the Canadian government, was on board the helicopter assessing the caribou and told BBC News, "We were looking for caribou, not caves.”
Ernst dubbed the chamber Sarlaac Pit, according to Canadian Geographic, because of its resemblance to the lair of the Star Wars villain.
The team told BBC News it believes the cave is the biggest known karst, a cave formed by the dissolution of soluble rocks. As a striped karst, it is made of marble embedded with marble-combined rocks.
Because of the equipment needed to scale the Sarlaac Pit, with its “precipitous, intimidating” entrance, it’s unlikely that the cave has ever been explored, Pollack told Canadian Geographic.
The team hopes it will be granted access to continue probing the cave in 2020, according to Canadian Geographic.
A helicopter team from the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations stumbled upon the chamber in April, as they counted caribou in British Columbia’s Wells Gray Provincial Park, Global News reported.
On September 9, a team of scientists explored the cave, likely becoming the first people to see its interior.
The cave’s entrance measures 100 by 60 meters (328 by 197 feet) wide (around the size of a football pitch), archaeological surveyor John Pollack, who co-led the team, told Canadian Geographic.
“When you’re standing on the edge looking down into it, your line of sight is nearly 600 feet. You don’t get lines of sight of 600 feet in Canadian caves—it just doesn't happen," he said.
Pollack, who has studied some of the world’s biggest caves, described it as “immense” by international standards and "as big as they come in Canada." The researchers were unable to measure the depth of the cave but estimated it goes down as far as 180 meters (590 feet) and is 2 kilometers (6,561 feet) in length, BBC News reported.
Beneath the mouth is a steep drop leading to water flowing into it. It is believed that the rush of a large stream filled with melted snowpack and glacier water may have formed the cave.
Writing in a document detailing the finding seen by Canadian Geographic, Pollack and geochemist and speleologist Chas Yonge said the finding marks a “dramatic new chapter in the story of Canadian cave exploration."
Catherine Hickson, who co-led the team, told Global News the discovery came down to luck, as the crew flew above the cave at a time when it wasn’t masked by snow. She told BBC News the entrance was “awe-inspiring.”
Bevan Ernst, a biologist who works for the Canadian government, was on board the helicopter assessing the caribou and told BBC News, "We were looking for caribou, not caves.”
Ernst dubbed the chamber Sarlaac Pit, according to Canadian Geographic, because of its resemblance to the lair of the Star Wars villain.
The team told BBC News it believes the cave is the biggest known karst, a cave formed by the dissolution of soluble rocks. As a striped karst, it is made of marble embedded with marble-combined rocks.
Because of the equipment needed to scale the Sarlaac Pit, with its “precipitous, intimidating” entrance, it’s unlikely that the cave has ever been explored, Pollack told Canadian Geographic.
The team hopes it will be granted access to continue probing the cave in 2020, according to Canadian Geographic.
A MYSTERY SEISMIC WAVE JUST SWEPT EARTH—BUT SCIENTISTS CAN'T WORK OUT WHY
BY KATHERINE HIGNETT - newsweek
ON 11/30/18 AT 8:18 AM
Scientists are baffled by a strange seismic ripple that traveled around the globe the morning of November 11.
Seismic waves buzzed sensors from Africa to New Zealand and Hawaii for about 20 minutes, but it seems no humans felt the bizarre ripple, National Geographic reported.
Twitter user matarikipax spotted the strange motion on U.S. Geological Survey graphs. He noticed a "most odd and unusual seismic signal” on data from Kilimambogo, Kenya; Lusaka, Zambia, Mount Furi, Ethiopia; San Pablo, Spain; and Wellington, New Zealand.
The signals, National Geographic reported, resembled the long-period surface waves that rumble out from earthquakes alongside other higher-frequency waves. But there was no major earthquake that morning to set off the ripple.
Stranger still, the waves were monochromatic, stripped of the fuzzy noise that multiple different frequencies create.
“I don't think I've seen anything like it,” Göran Ekström, a seismologist at Columbia University, told National Geographic.
“It's like you have colored glasses and [are] just seeing red or something,” added Anthony Lomax, an independent seismology consultant.
Some scientists think the weird ripple might be something to do with a seismic storm lashing Mayotte, an archipelago in Africa near where the signal began. But that storm has declined in ferocity since a magnitude 5.8 tremor struck in May.
The French Geological Survey (BRGM), National Geographic stated, suspects a new center of volcanic activity could be emerging near the island. Magma might be on the move deep below the ocean some miles from the shores.
An incredibly slow earthquake, which released stress over a long period of time, could also have caused the strange ripple, Ekström told the publication. Such events, often linked to volcanic activity, can last from minutes to days. “The same deformation [as a regular earthquake] happens, but it doesn't happen as a jolt,” Ekström said.
But scientists are still far from certain. “It is very difficult, really, to say what the cause is and whether anyone's theories are correct,” Helen Robinson, a doctoral candidate in applied volcanology at the University of Glasgow, told National Geographic.
Explanations as fanciful as a sea monster, a weapons test or an alien attack have all been shared online. BGRM plans on probing the bottom of the ocean near Mayotte to see if a submarine eruption occurred. But for now, at least, the enormous planet-sweeping ripple of November 11 remains a mystery.
Seismic waves buzzed sensors from Africa to New Zealand and Hawaii for about 20 minutes, but it seems no humans felt the bizarre ripple, National Geographic reported.
Twitter user matarikipax spotted the strange motion on U.S. Geological Survey graphs. He noticed a "most odd and unusual seismic signal” on data from Kilimambogo, Kenya; Lusaka, Zambia, Mount Furi, Ethiopia; San Pablo, Spain; and Wellington, New Zealand.
The signals, National Geographic reported, resembled the long-period surface waves that rumble out from earthquakes alongside other higher-frequency waves. But there was no major earthquake that morning to set off the ripple.
Stranger still, the waves were monochromatic, stripped of the fuzzy noise that multiple different frequencies create.
“I don't think I've seen anything like it,” Göran Ekström, a seismologist at Columbia University, told National Geographic.
“It's like you have colored glasses and [are] just seeing red or something,” added Anthony Lomax, an independent seismology consultant.
Some scientists think the weird ripple might be something to do with a seismic storm lashing Mayotte, an archipelago in Africa near where the signal began. But that storm has declined in ferocity since a magnitude 5.8 tremor struck in May.
The French Geological Survey (BRGM), National Geographic stated, suspects a new center of volcanic activity could be emerging near the island. Magma might be on the move deep below the ocean some miles from the shores.
An incredibly slow earthquake, which released stress over a long period of time, could also have caused the strange ripple, Ekström told the publication. Such events, often linked to volcanic activity, can last from minutes to days. “The same deformation [as a regular earthquake] happens, but it doesn't happen as a jolt,” Ekström said.
But scientists are still far from certain. “It is very difficult, really, to say what the cause is and whether anyone's theories are correct,” Helen Robinson, a doctoral candidate in applied volcanology at the University of Glasgow, told National Geographic.
Explanations as fanciful as a sea monster, a weapons test or an alien attack have all been shared online. BGRM plans on probing the bottom of the ocean near Mayotte to see if a submarine eruption occurred. But for now, at least, the enormous planet-sweeping ripple of November 11 remains a mystery.
Spider Milk? Researchers Make Surprising Discovery
Researchers discover a breed in which the mothers nurse their offspring
By John Johnson, Newser Staff
Posted Nov 30, 2018 8:45 AM CST
(Newser) – It was an arachnid mystery: Scientists studying a particular type of spider couldn't figure out how the babies kept growing in the nest even though mom wasn't bringing back any food to them. Then a researcher spotted a baby clinging to its mother's abdomen. "I had this radical idea that maybe spider moms feed their babies with something they produced," Zhanqi Chen of the Chinese Academy of Science tells New Scientist of the jumping spider Toxeus magnus. He was spot on: It turns out mothers feed their offspring "milk," similar to mammals, the researchers report in Science. Technically, the secretion from the abdomen might not be milk—spiders don't have the special glands required—but it's at least milk-ish, perhaps made up of partially digested eggs that went unfertilized, explains Popular Science.
And when researchers describe it as a "nutritious milk-like substance," they're not kidding. The stuff has four times the protein of cow's milk. Researchers found that the mother continues feeding her offspring for about 40 days, though the spiders are able to leave the nest at 20 days and begin supplementing their diet with insects. Generally, females were allowed to return more frequently to feed than their male counterparts, reports Gizmodo. When the scientists blocked the mother's secretion glands, her baby spiders died after about 10 days. And if they removed her from the nest at 20 days, the babies had a significantly lower rate of survival. When it comes to spiders, "this type of maternal care may be more widespread than has been assumed," the researchers conclude. (Spider fans will want to visit this Greek town.)
And when researchers describe it as a "nutritious milk-like substance," they're not kidding. The stuff has four times the protein of cow's milk. Researchers found that the mother continues feeding her offspring for about 40 days, though the spiders are able to leave the nest at 20 days and begin supplementing their diet with insects. Generally, females were allowed to return more frequently to feed than their male counterparts, reports Gizmodo. When the scientists blocked the mother's secretion glands, her baby spiders died after about 10 days. And if they removed her from the nest at 20 days, the babies had a significantly lower rate of survival. When it comes to spiders, "this type of maternal care may be more widespread than has been assumed," the researchers conclude. (Spider fans will want to visit this Greek town.)
For 4,000 Years, Termites Have Been Building Something Incredible in Brazil
Their huge mounds cover an area the size of Britain, and are visible from space.
ED YONG - the atlantic
11/19/18
In the east of Brazil, mysterious cones of earth rise from the dry, hard-baked soil. Each of these mounds is around 30 feet wide at its base, and stands between six and 13 feet tall. From the ground, with around 60 feet of overgrown land separating each mound from its neighbors, it’s hard to tell how many there are. But their true extent becomes dramatically clear from space.
Using satellite images, Roy Funch from the State University of Feira de Santana has estimated that there are around 200 million of these mounds. They’re arrayed in an uncannily regular honeycomb-like pattern. Together, they cover an area roughly the size of Great Britain or Oregon, and they occupy as much space as the Great Pyramid of Giza 4,000 times over. And this colossal feat of engineering is, according to Funch, the work of the tiniest of engineers—a species of termite called Syntermes dirus, whose workers are barely half an inch long.
Termites are well-known for creating elaborate nests, with vast networks of underground tunnels. Many species create skyscraping chimneys atop these lairs to ventilate the underground chambers, and in some African species, these mounds can tower 30 feet high. But the Brazilian mounds are neither chimneys nor nests. They’re just amorphous lumps of soil, with no internal structures. Nothing lives inside them. Instead, “they’re just slag piles,” says Funch.
The local termites create extensive subterranean labyrinths of tunnels, and they eject whatever soil they don’t need on the surface. The process is slow and gradual, but the termites have been at it for millennia. They’re more like a geological force than an organism. Just as rivers or glaciers sculpt the landscape around them, so too have these tiny insects sculpted some 90,000 square miles of Brazil into a junkyard that’s visible from space.
These mounds are known as murundus, and rather confusingly, they’re different from other mounds called campos de murundus. The latter are found in the wet, savannah-like areas of southern and central Brazil, instead of the dry north-east, and it’s not clear whether they’re built by termites at all. Campos de murundus have also been well-studied for decades; by contrast, the northeastern murundus, though well-known by locals, have been largely neglected by scientists.
Funch first saw them three decades ago, when he arrived in Brazil as a Peace Corps volunteer. After an unsatisfying stint doing administrative work in the nation’s capital, he found a more compelling life in Lençóis, a former diamond-mining town in the east. Surrounded by forests, waterfalls, and caves, Funch became a tour guide, national park director, and environmentalist. And wherever he went, he kept noticing the striking mounds. He wrote about them in local popular-science magazines, but never managed to stoke much interest in them.
Since then, farmers have exposed more of the mounds in an attempt to create more grazing land by clearing local plants. Their efforts were mostly futile: the local soil is too poor for crops or livestock. But they did allow Funch and other researchers to start cataloging the murundus using satellite imagery. “It used to be all green and brown, but around eight years ago, Google Earth sharpened their images, and I could see the mounds that I had known from the ground,” he says.
The honeycomb distribution of the murundus is just one example of mysterious repeating patterns in nature. The famous fairy circles of Namibia and Australia—discs of bare red soil that pockmark miles of low grassland—are another. For years, scientists have argued about the cause of these circles. Some say that they’re the work of termites. Others think they’re caused by the grasses themselves, battling for water and nutrients. Still others have argued that it’s a bit of both.
The murundus, Funch says, are likely to be much simpler in origin. “There’s no doubt,” he says, that they’re termite-made. “I’ve seen termites building the mounds with my own eyes.”
By examining murundus that had been sliced open by road-construction teams and probing them using optic fibers, Funch and his colleague Stephen Martin realized that each one begins when a termite colony builds a vertical tube rising straight up from its underground nest. The tube isn’t a chimney—it’s mostly closed at the top except for small side-holes around the rim. As the termite workers excavate their nest, they chuck soil out of these holes, eventually creating a cone. “There’s no engineering involved,” says Funch. “They’re just throwing the stuff out.” The cones aren’t even used as portals to the surface world: When termites forage at night on the forest floor, they emerge through temporary tubes between the murundus that they then seal during the day.
At first, Funch and his team thought that each mound was the work of a separate termite colony—but that’s not the case. By collecting soldiers from beneath different mounds and seeing if they would fight one another, they showed that a single colony can occupy the space beneath many cones. They need that space to survive. These termites live in an extremely dry ecosystem, so the leaves they forage upon drop rarely and erratically. To find enough fallen foliage, they need to expand their networks of tunnels to cover large tracts of forest. And to dig these tunnels efficiently, they need to make several waste mounds.
Funch’s colleague Paul Hanson analyzed sand grains from the center of 11 murundus using a technique that can measure when the grains were last exposed to sunlight. Using this method, he could work out when the first grains were buried, and thus when construction on each mound began. The youngest was 690 years old. The oldest was 3,820. That’s comparable to the oldest known termite mounds elsewhere in the world, and having only studied 11 murundus, Funch thinks that far older ones likely exist.
Termites don’t live for 3,820 years, so do murundus lie unused for most of their lifespans after their creators die? Or, perhaps, do many generations of termites exploit the same mounds?
“Beats the shit out of me, man,” says Funch. “We have no idea.”
Using satellite images, Roy Funch from the State University of Feira de Santana has estimated that there are around 200 million of these mounds. They’re arrayed in an uncannily regular honeycomb-like pattern. Together, they cover an area roughly the size of Great Britain or Oregon, and they occupy as much space as the Great Pyramid of Giza 4,000 times over. And this colossal feat of engineering is, according to Funch, the work of the tiniest of engineers—a species of termite called Syntermes dirus, whose workers are barely half an inch long.
Termites are well-known for creating elaborate nests, with vast networks of underground tunnels. Many species create skyscraping chimneys atop these lairs to ventilate the underground chambers, and in some African species, these mounds can tower 30 feet high. But the Brazilian mounds are neither chimneys nor nests. They’re just amorphous lumps of soil, with no internal structures. Nothing lives inside them. Instead, “they’re just slag piles,” says Funch.
The local termites create extensive subterranean labyrinths of tunnels, and they eject whatever soil they don’t need on the surface. The process is slow and gradual, but the termites have been at it for millennia. They’re more like a geological force than an organism. Just as rivers or glaciers sculpt the landscape around them, so too have these tiny insects sculpted some 90,000 square miles of Brazil into a junkyard that’s visible from space.
These mounds are known as murundus, and rather confusingly, they’re different from other mounds called campos de murundus. The latter are found in the wet, savannah-like areas of southern and central Brazil, instead of the dry north-east, and it’s not clear whether they’re built by termites at all. Campos de murundus have also been well-studied for decades; by contrast, the northeastern murundus, though well-known by locals, have been largely neglected by scientists.
Funch first saw them three decades ago, when he arrived in Brazil as a Peace Corps volunteer. After an unsatisfying stint doing administrative work in the nation’s capital, he found a more compelling life in Lençóis, a former diamond-mining town in the east. Surrounded by forests, waterfalls, and caves, Funch became a tour guide, national park director, and environmentalist. And wherever he went, he kept noticing the striking mounds. He wrote about them in local popular-science magazines, but never managed to stoke much interest in them.
Since then, farmers have exposed more of the mounds in an attempt to create more grazing land by clearing local plants. Their efforts were mostly futile: the local soil is too poor for crops or livestock. But they did allow Funch and other researchers to start cataloging the murundus using satellite imagery. “It used to be all green and brown, but around eight years ago, Google Earth sharpened their images, and I could see the mounds that I had known from the ground,” he says.
The honeycomb distribution of the murundus is just one example of mysterious repeating patterns in nature. The famous fairy circles of Namibia and Australia—discs of bare red soil that pockmark miles of low grassland—are another. For years, scientists have argued about the cause of these circles. Some say that they’re the work of termites. Others think they’re caused by the grasses themselves, battling for water and nutrients. Still others have argued that it’s a bit of both.
The murundus, Funch says, are likely to be much simpler in origin. “There’s no doubt,” he says, that they’re termite-made. “I’ve seen termites building the mounds with my own eyes.”
By examining murundus that had been sliced open by road-construction teams and probing them using optic fibers, Funch and his colleague Stephen Martin realized that each one begins when a termite colony builds a vertical tube rising straight up from its underground nest. The tube isn’t a chimney—it’s mostly closed at the top except for small side-holes around the rim. As the termite workers excavate their nest, they chuck soil out of these holes, eventually creating a cone. “There’s no engineering involved,” says Funch. “They’re just throwing the stuff out.” The cones aren’t even used as portals to the surface world: When termites forage at night on the forest floor, they emerge through temporary tubes between the murundus that they then seal during the day.
At first, Funch and his team thought that each mound was the work of a separate termite colony—but that’s not the case. By collecting soldiers from beneath different mounds and seeing if they would fight one another, they showed that a single colony can occupy the space beneath many cones. They need that space to survive. These termites live in an extremely dry ecosystem, so the leaves they forage upon drop rarely and erratically. To find enough fallen foliage, they need to expand their networks of tunnels to cover large tracts of forest. And to dig these tunnels efficiently, they need to make several waste mounds.
Funch’s colleague Paul Hanson analyzed sand grains from the center of 11 murundus using a technique that can measure when the grains were last exposed to sunlight. Using this method, he could work out when the first grains were buried, and thus when construction on each mound began. The youngest was 690 years old. The oldest was 3,820. That’s comparable to the oldest known termite mounds elsewhere in the world, and having only studied 11 murundus, Funch thinks that far older ones likely exist.
Termites don’t live for 3,820 years, so do murundus lie unused for most of their lifespans after their creators die? Or, perhaps, do many generations of termites exploit the same mounds?
“Beats the shit out of me, man,” says Funch. “We have no idea.”
ORCAS HAVE PERSONALITIES SIMILAR TO HUMANS
BY ARISTOS GEORGIOU - newsweek
ON 11/15/18 AT 9:29 AM
Killer whales share similar personality traits with humans and chimps, according to a new study.
ISTOCK
Killer whales display personality traits similar to those of humans and chimpanzees—such as cheerfulness and affection—according to a paper published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology.
A team from the University of Girona in Spain analyzed the personality traits of 24 captive orcas—six of which were caught in the wild, while the others were born in captivity—at SeaWorld Orlando, SeaWorld San Diego and the Loro Parque zoo in Tenerife, Spain.
To assess their personalities, the researchers asked trainers and staff who work closely with the killer whales to complete surveys rating each animal on a list of 38 personality traits, including playfulness, independence, stubbornness, bravery, sensitivity, and protectiveness.
The team then compared the results of this survey to those of previous studies looking at the same personality traits in chimpanzees and humans.
As part of their analysis, they used a common personality measure called the five-factor model which describes personality traits using a combination of single adjectives or descriptive phrases. It includes five main personality dimensions—extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, dominance and carefulness.
The findings showed that the personality traits of the whales were similar to those of both humans and chimpanzees (albeit more similar to chimps).
For example, the orcas were found to be similar to chimps and humans when it came to extraversion, which involves being gregarious, playful and sociable. Killer whales and chimps also shared a combination of personality traits for conscientiousness (e.g. being stubborn and protective) and agreeableness (e.g. patient, peaceable and not bullying), in addition to some traits relating to dominance.
"This is the first study to examine the personality traits of killer whales and how they relate to us and other primates," Yulán Úbeda, lead author of the study from Girona, said in a statement. "These similar personality traits may have developed because they were necessary to form complex social interactions in tightly knit groups that we see in killer whales, humans and other primates."
According to the researchers, the new results are an example of evolutionary convergence—the process whereby organisms not closely related independently evolve similar traits as a result of having to adapt to similar environments or ecological niches. In this sense, the personality traits of killer whales and primates are similar because of the advanced cognitive abilities required for their complex social interactions.
Orcas can live into their 90s, spending their time in tightly-knit pods that hunt together and share food. The complex social interactions between individuals in these whale communities are made possible with the help of advanced communication and cooperation skills.
The highly complex behavior of these animals was clearly demonstrated last year when a 20-year-old killer whale received international news coverage for keeping her dead newborn calf afloat for 17 days while swimming hundreds of miles. While some have suggested that this is evidence of mourning or grief, at present this is unclear.
In the context of the latest study, it is important to note that previous research has shown how captivity can alter the personality of killer whales, increasing certain traits such as neuroticism and aggression, in addition to causing physical changes, like dorsal fin collapse.
This means that if wild killer whales had been used for the research, the results may have looked different (although the effects of captivity were not assessed in the study).
SeaWorld, in particular, has been widely criticized for the cramped conditions that its killer whales are kept in. However, studying the personality traits of wild killer whales would be very difficult, so captive animals were used, Úbeda said.
A team from the University of Girona in Spain analyzed the personality traits of 24 captive orcas—six of which were caught in the wild, while the others were born in captivity—at SeaWorld Orlando, SeaWorld San Diego and the Loro Parque zoo in Tenerife, Spain.
To assess their personalities, the researchers asked trainers and staff who work closely with the killer whales to complete surveys rating each animal on a list of 38 personality traits, including playfulness, independence, stubbornness, bravery, sensitivity, and protectiveness.
The team then compared the results of this survey to those of previous studies looking at the same personality traits in chimpanzees and humans.
As part of their analysis, they used a common personality measure called the five-factor model which describes personality traits using a combination of single adjectives or descriptive phrases. It includes five main personality dimensions—extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, dominance and carefulness.
The findings showed that the personality traits of the whales were similar to those of both humans and chimpanzees (albeit more similar to chimps).
For example, the orcas were found to be similar to chimps and humans when it came to extraversion, which involves being gregarious, playful and sociable. Killer whales and chimps also shared a combination of personality traits for conscientiousness (e.g. being stubborn and protective) and agreeableness (e.g. patient, peaceable and not bullying), in addition to some traits relating to dominance.
"This is the first study to examine the personality traits of killer whales and how they relate to us and other primates," Yulán Úbeda, lead author of the study from Girona, said in a statement. "These similar personality traits may have developed because they were necessary to form complex social interactions in tightly knit groups that we see in killer whales, humans and other primates."
According to the researchers, the new results are an example of evolutionary convergence—the process whereby organisms not closely related independently evolve similar traits as a result of having to adapt to similar environments or ecological niches. In this sense, the personality traits of killer whales and primates are similar because of the advanced cognitive abilities required for their complex social interactions.
Orcas can live into their 90s, spending their time in tightly-knit pods that hunt together and share food. The complex social interactions between individuals in these whale communities are made possible with the help of advanced communication and cooperation skills.
The highly complex behavior of these animals was clearly demonstrated last year when a 20-year-old killer whale received international news coverage for keeping her dead newborn calf afloat for 17 days while swimming hundreds of miles. While some have suggested that this is evidence of mourning or grief, at present this is unclear.
In the context of the latest study, it is important to note that previous research has shown how captivity can alter the personality of killer whales, increasing certain traits such as neuroticism and aggression, in addition to causing physical changes, like dorsal fin collapse.
This means that if wild killer whales had been used for the research, the results may have looked different (although the effects of captivity were not assessed in the study).
SeaWorld, in particular, has been widely criticized for the cramped conditions that its killer whales are kept in. However, studying the personality traits of wild killer whales would be very difficult, so captive animals were used, Úbeda said.
Older than Dracula: In search of the English vampire
THE CONVERSATION - raw story
29 OCT 2018 AT 06:16 ET
The Premature Burial. Antoine Wiertz (1854)
The story of Count Dracula as many of us know it was created by Bram Stoker, an Irishman, in 1897. But most of the action takes place in England, from the moment the Transylvanian vampire arrives on a shipwrecked vessel in Whitby, North Yorkshire, with plans to make his lair in the spookily named Carfax estate, west of the river in London.
But Dracula wasn’t the first vampire in English literature, let alone the first to stalk England. The vampire first made its way into English literature in John Polidori’s 1819 short story “The Vampyre”. Polidori’s vampire, Lord Ruthven, is inspired by a thinly disguised portrait of the predatory English poet, Lord Byron, in Lady Caroline Lamb’s novel Glenarvon (1816). So the first fictional vampire was actually a satanic English Lord.
It is nearly 200 years since this Romantic/Byronic archetype for a vampire emerged – but what do we know about English belief in vampires outside of fiction? New researchat the University of Hertfordshire has uncovered and reappraised a number of vampire myths – and they are not all confined to the realms of fiction.
The Croglin Vampire reputedly first appeared in Cumberland to a Miss Fisher in the 1750s. Its story is retold by Dr Augustus Hare, a clergyman, in his Memorials of a Quiet Life in 1871. According to this legend, the vampire scratches at the window before disappearing into an ancient vault. The vault is later discovered to be full of coffins that have been broken open and their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, are scattered over the floor. One coffin only remains intact, but the lid has been loosened. There, shrivelled and mummified – but quite intact – lies the Croglin Vampire.
Elsewhere in Cumbria, the natives of Renwick, were once known as “bats” due to the monstrous creature that is said to have flown out of the foundations of a rebuilt church there in 1733. The existence of vampire bats, which sucked blood wouldn’t be confirmed until 1832, when Charles Darwin sketched one feeding off a horse on his voyage to South America in The Beagle. The creature in Renwick has been referred to as a “cockatrice” – a mythical creature with a serpent’s head and tail and the feet and wings of a cockerel – by Cumbrian County History. But it’s the myth of the vampire bat that has prevailed in the surrounding villages and is recorded in conversations in local archives and journals
What picture emerges then in this history of the English vampire? The Croglin Vampire has never been verified – but it has an afterlife in the 20th century, appearing as The British Vampire in 1977 in an anthology of horror by Daniel Farson, who turns out to be Stoker’s great-grandnephew.
But there is one case that has no connection to fiction, the little-known Buckinghamshire Vampire, recorded by William of Newburgh in the 12th century. Historical records show that St Hugh, the Bishop of Lincoln, was called upon to deal with the terrifying revenant and learned to his astonishment, after contacting other theologians, that similar attacks had happened elsewhere in England.
St Hugh was told that no peace would be had until the corpse was dug up and burned, but it was decided that an absolution – a declaration of forgiveness, by the church, absolving one from sin – would be a more seemly way to disable the vampire. When the tomb was opened the body was found to have not decomposed. The absolution was laid inside on the corpse’s chest by the Archdeacon and the vampire was never again seen wandering from his grave.
The Buckinghamshire revenant did not have a “vampire” burial – but such practices are evidence of a longstanding belief in vampires in Britain. Astonishingly, the medieval remains of the what are thought to be the first English vampires have been found in the Yorkshire village of Wharram Percy. The bones of over 100 “vampire” corpses have now been uncovered buried deep in village pits. The bones were excavated more than half a century ago and date back to before the 14th century. They were at first thought to be the result of cannibalism during a famine or a massacre in the village but on further inspection in 2017 the burned and broken skeletons were linked instead to deliberate mutilations perpetrated to prevent the dead returning to harm the living – beliefs common in folklore at the time.
The inhabitants of Wharram Percy showed widespread belief in the undead returning as revenants or reanimated corpses and so fought back against the risk of vampire attacks by deliberately mutilating their own dead, burning bones and dismembering corpses, including those of women, children and teenagers, in an attempt to stave off what they believed could be a plague of vampires. This once flourishing village was completely deserted in the aftermath.
Just recently at an ancient Roman site in Italy the severed skull of a ten-year-old child was discovered with a large rock inserted in the mouth to prevent biting and bloodsucking. Then skull belongs to a suspected 15th-century revenant which they are calling locally the “Vampire of Lugano”.
There has been a wealth of other stories from the UK and other parts of Western Europe – but, despite this, thanks to the Dracula legend, most people still assume such practises and beliefs belong to remote parts of Eastern Europe. But our research is continuing to examine “vampire burials” in the UK and is making connections to local myths and their legacy in English literature, many years before the Byronic fiend Count Dracula arrived in Yorkshire carrying his own supply of Transylvanian soil.
But Dracula wasn’t the first vampire in English literature, let alone the first to stalk England. The vampire first made its way into English literature in John Polidori’s 1819 short story “The Vampyre”. Polidori’s vampire, Lord Ruthven, is inspired by a thinly disguised portrait of the predatory English poet, Lord Byron, in Lady Caroline Lamb’s novel Glenarvon (1816). So the first fictional vampire was actually a satanic English Lord.
It is nearly 200 years since this Romantic/Byronic archetype for a vampire emerged – but what do we know about English belief in vampires outside of fiction? New researchat the University of Hertfordshire has uncovered and reappraised a number of vampire myths – and they are not all confined to the realms of fiction.
The Croglin Vampire reputedly first appeared in Cumberland to a Miss Fisher in the 1750s. Its story is retold by Dr Augustus Hare, a clergyman, in his Memorials of a Quiet Life in 1871. According to this legend, the vampire scratches at the window before disappearing into an ancient vault. The vault is later discovered to be full of coffins that have been broken open and their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, are scattered over the floor. One coffin only remains intact, but the lid has been loosened. There, shrivelled and mummified – but quite intact – lies the Croglin Vampire.
Elsewhere in Cumbria, the natives of Renwick, were once known as “bats” due to the monstrous creature that is said to have flown out of the foundations of a rebuilt church there in 1733. The existence of vampire bats, which sucked blood wouldn’t be confirmed until 1832, when Charles Darwin sketched one feeding off a horse on his voyage to South America in The Beagle. The creature in Renwick has been referred to as a “cockatrice” – a mythical creature with a serpent’s head and tail and the feet and wings of a cockerel – by Cumbrian County History. But it’s the myth of the vampire bat that has prevailed in the surrounding villages and is recorded in conversations in local archives and journals
What picture emerges then in this history of the English vampire? The Croglin Vampire has never been verified – but it has an afterlife in the 20th century, appearing as The British Vampire in 1977 in an anthology of horror by Daniel Farson, who turns out to be Stoker’s great-grandnephew.
But there is one case that has no connection to fiction, the little-known Buckinghamshire Vampire, recorded by William of Newburgh in the 12th century. Historical records show that St Hugh, the Bishop of Lincoln, was called upon to deal with the terrifying revenant and learned to his astonishment, after contacting other theologians, that similar attacks had happened elsewhere in England.
St Hugh was told that no peace would be had until the corpse was dug up and burned, but it was decided that an absolution – a declaration of forgiveness, by the church, absolving one from sin – would be a more seemly way to disable the vampire. When the tomb was opened the body was found to have not decomposed. The absolution was laid inside on the corpse’s chest by the Archdeacon and the vampire was never again seen wandering from his grave.
The Buckinghamshire revenant did not have a “vampire” burial – but such practices are evidence of a longstanding belief in vampires in Britain. Astonishingly, the medieval remains of the what are thought to be the first English vampires have been found in the Yorkshire village of Wharram Percy. The bones of over 100 “vampire” corpses have now been uncovered buried deep in village pits. The bones were excavated more than half a century ago and date back to before the 14th century. They were at first thought to be the result of cannibalism during a famine or a massacre in the village but on further inspection in 2017 the burned and broken skeletons were linked instead to deliberate mutilations perpetrated to prevent the dead returning to harm the living – beliefs common in folklore at the time.
The inhabitants of Wharram Percy showed widespread belief in the undead returning as revenants or reanimated corpses and so fought back against the risk of vampire attacks by deliberately mutilating their own dead, burning bones and dismembering corpses, including those of women, children and teenagers, in an attempt to stave off what they believed could be a plague of vampires. This once flourishing village was completely deserted in the aftermath.
Just recently at an ancient Roman site in Italy the severed skull of a ten-year-old child was discovered with a large rock inserted in the mouth to prevent biting and bloodsucking. Then skull belongs to a suspected 15th-century revenant which they are calling locally the “Vampire of Lugano”.
There has been a wealth of other stories from the UK and other parts of Western Europe – but, despite this, thanks to the Dracula legend, most people still assume such practises and beliefs belong to remote parts of Eastern Europe. But our research is continuing to examine “vampire burials” in the UK and is making connections to local myths and their legacy in English literature, many years before the Byronic fiend Count Dracula arrived in Yorkshire carrying his own supply of Transylvanian soil.
The ancient origins of werewolves
THE CONVERSATION - raw story
29 OCT 2018 AT 06:38 ET
The werewolf is a staple of supernatural fiction, whether it be film, television, or literature. You might think this snarling creature is a creation of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, a result of the superstitions surrounding magic and witchcraft.
In reality, the werewolf is far older than that. The earliest surviving example of man-to-wolf transformation is found in The Epic of Gilgamesh from around 2,100 BC. However, the werewolf as we now know it first appeared in ancient Greece and Rome, in ethnographic, poetic and philosophical texts.
These stories of the transformed beast are usually mythological, although some have a basis in local histories, religions and cults. In 425 BC, Greek historian Herodotus described the Neuri, a nomadic tribe of magical men who changed into wolf shapes for several days of the year. The Neuri were from Scythia, land that is now part of Russia. Using wolf skins for warmth is not outside the realm of possibility for inhabitants of such a harsh climate: this is likely the reason Herodotus described their practice as “transformation”.
Wikimedia
The werewolf myth became integrated with the local history of Arcadia, a region of Greece. Here, Zeus was worshipped as Lycaean Zeus (“Wolf Zeus”). In 380 BC, Greek philosopher Plato told a story in the Republic about the “protector-turned-tyrant” of the shrine of Lycaean Zeus. In this short passage, the character Socrates remarks: “The story goes that he who tastes of the one bit of human entrails minced up with those of other victims is inevitably transformed into a wolf.”
Literary evidence suggests cult members mixed human flesh into their ritual sacrifice to Zeus. Both Pliny the Elder and Pausanias discuss the participation of a young athlete, Damarchus, in the Arcadian sacrifice of an adolescent boy: when Damarchus was compelled to taste the entrails of the young boy, he was transformed into a wolf for nine years. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that human sacrifice may have been practised at this site.
Monsters and men
The most interesting aspect of Plato’s passage concerns the “protector-turned-tyrant”, also known as the mythical king, Lycaon. Expanded further in Latin texts, most notably Hyginus’s Fabulae and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lycaon’s story contains all the elements of a modern werewolf tale: immoral behaviour, murder and cannibalism.
In Fabulae, the sons of Lycaon sacrificed their youngest brother to prove Zeus’s weakness. They served the corpse as a pseudo-feast and attempting to trick the god into eating it. A furious Zeus slayed the sons with a lightning bolt and transformed their father into a wolf. In Ovid’s version, Lycaon murdered and mutilated a protected hostage of Zeus, but suffered the same consequences.
Ovid’s passage is one of the only ancient sources that goes into detail on the act of transformation. His description of the metamorphosis uses haunting language that creates a correlation between Lycaon’s behaviour and the physical manipulation of his body:
…He tried to speak, but his voice broke into
an echoing howl. His ravening soul infected his jaws;
his murderous longings were turned on the cattle; he still was possessed
by bloodlust. His garments were changed to a shaggy coat and his arms
into legs. He was now transformed into a wolf.
Ovid’s Lycaon is the origin of the modern werewolf, as the physical manipulation of his body hinges on his prior immoral behaviour. It is this that has contributed to the establishment of the “monstrous werewolf” trope of modern fiction.
Lycaon’s character defects are physically grafted onto his body, manipulating his human form until he becomes that which his behaviour suggests. And, perhaps most importantly, Lycaon begins the idea that to transform into a werewolf you must first be a monster.
The idea that there was a link between biology (i.e. appearance) and “immoral” behaviour developed fully in the late 20th century. However, minority groups were more often the target than mythical kings. Law enforcement, scientists and the medical community joined forces to find “cures” for socially deviant behaviour such as criminality, violence and even homosexuality. Science and medicine were used as a vehicle through which bigotry and fear could be maintained, as shown by the treatment of HIV-affected men throughout the 1980s.
However, werewolf stories show the idea has ancient origins. For as long as authors have been changing bad men into wolves, we have been looking for the biological link between man and action.The Conversation
In reality, the werewolf is far older than that. The earliest surviving example of man-to-wolf transformation is found in The Epic of Gilgamesh from around 2,100 BC. However, the werewolf as we now know it first appeared in ancient Greece and Rome, in ethnographic, poetic and philosophical texts.
These stories of the transformed beast are usually mythological, although some have a basis in local histories, religions and cults. In 425 BC, Greek historian Herodotus described the Neuri, a nomadic tribe of magical men who changed into wolf shapes for several days of the year. The Neuri were from Scythia, land that is now part of Russia. Using wolf skins for warmth is not outside the realm of possibility for inhabitants of such a harsh climate: this is likely the reason Herodotus described their practice as “transformation”.
Wikimedia
The werewolf myth became integrated with the local history of Arcadia, a region of Greece. Here, Zeus was worshipped as Lycaean Zeus (“Wolf Zeus”). In 380 BC, Greek philosopher Plato told a story in the Republic about the “protector-turned-tyrant” of the shrine of Lycaean Zeus. In this short passage, the character Socrates remarks: “The story goes that he who tastes of the one bit of human entrails minced up with those of other victims is inevitably transformed into a wolf.”
Literary evidence suggests cult members mixed human flesh into their ritual sacrifice to Zeus. Both Pliny the Elder and Pausanias discuss the participation of a young athlete, Damarchus, in the Arcadian sacrifice of an adolescent boy: when Damarchus was compelled to taste the entrails of the young boy, he was transformed into a wolf for nine years. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that human sacrifice may have been practised at this site.
Monsters and men
The most interesting aspect of Plato’s passage concerns the “protector-turned-tyrant”, also known as the mythical king, Lycaon. Expanded further in Latin texts, most notably Hyginus’s Fabulae and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lycaon’s story contains all the elements of a modern werewolf tale: immoral behaviour, murder and cannibalism.
In Fabulae, the sons of Lycaon sacrificed their youngest brother to prove Zeus’s weakness. They served the corpse as a pseudo-feast and attempting to trick the god into eating it. A furious Zeus slayed the sons with a lightning bolt and transformed their father into a wolf. In Ovid’s version, Lycaon murdered and mutilated a protected hostage of Zeus, but suffered the same consequences.
Ovid’s passage is one of the only ancient sources that goes into detail on the act of transformation. His description of the metamorphosis uses haunting language that creates a correlation between Lycaon’s behaviour and the physical manipulation of his body:
…He tried to speak, but his voice broke into
an echoing howl. His ravening soul infected his jaws;
his murderous longings were turned on the cattle; he still was possessed
by bloodlust. His garments were changed to a shaggy coat and his arms
into legs. He was now transformed into a wolf.
Ovid’s Lycaon is the origin of the modern werewolf, as the physical manipulation of his body hinges on his prior immoral behaviour. It is this that has contributed to the establishment of the “monstrous werewolf” trope of modern fiction.
Lycaon’s character defects are physically grafted onto his body, manipulating his human form until he becomes that which his behaviour suggests. And, perhaps most importantly, Lycaon begins the idea that to transform into a werewolf you must first be a monster.
The idea that there was a link between biology (i.e. appearance) and “immoral” behaviour developed fully in the late 20th century. However, minority groups were more often the target than mythical kings. Law enforcement, scientists and the medical community joined forces to find “cures” for socially deviant behaviour such as criminality, violence and even homosexuality. Science and medicine were used as a vehicle through which bigotry and fear could be maintained, as shown by the treatment of HIV-affected men throughout the 1980s.
However, werewolf stories show the idea has ancient origins. For as long as authors have been changing bad men into wolves, we have been looking for the biological link between man and action.The Conversation
FBI agent dodges killer hot tub but is shot by booby-trapped wheelchair
Court documents describe visit to property in Oregon as ‘like scene from Indiana Jones movie’
Associated Press - the guardian
Tue 2 Oct 2018 00.47 EDT
A man has been charged with assault on a federal officer after a FBI agent sent to a property in Oregon was shot from a booby-trapped wheelchair.
Law enforcement officers responded to the home in the small town of Williams in September at the request of a real estate lawyer tasked with selling the property, local media reported on Monday.
A criminal complaint filed in US district court in Medford said officers found traps throughout the property including spike strips and a circular hot tub turned on its side and rigged to roll over anyone who triggered a tripwire.
“(It was) much like a scene from the movie ‘Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark’ in which actor Harrison Ford is forced to outrun a giant stone boulder that he inadvertently triggered by a booby trap switch,” the complaint said.
After making it past the hot tub, a bomb squad and FBI agent approached the house and blasted open the fortified front door.
Inside the home a wheelchair fitted with a fishing line, shotgun ammunition and other items triggered the explosion that wounded the agent, according to court documents. An X-ray found a .410-gauge shotgun pellet in the agent’s leg, documents said.
Authorities said the makeshift weapons were created by 66-year-old Gregory Rodvelt, who was forced to forfeit his property as part of an elder abuse case involving his mother.
Rodvelt is in Arizona’s Maricopa county jail, where he is in the midst of an assault trial in a separate case related to an alleged armed standoff. He has refused a court-appointed defense lawyer, the Mail Tribune reported.
Rodvelt had been in the jail since April 2017, but he was released in mid-August for two weeks so he could prepare the property for sale.
In the weeks since the agent was injured, a team of private contractors consisting of former military experts has inspected the property, the real estate attorney said.
Law enforcement officers responded to the home in the small town of Williams in September at the request of a real estate lawyer tasked with selling the property, local media reported on Monday.
A criminal complaint filed in US district court in Medford said officers found traps throughout the property including spike strips and a circular hot tub turned on its side and rigged to roll over anyone who triggered a tripwire.
“(It was) much like a scene from the movie ‘Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark’ in which actor Harrison Ford is forced to outrun a giant stone boulder that he inadvertently triggered by a booby trap switch,” the complaint said.
After making it past the hot tub, a bomb squad and FBI agent approached the house and blasted open the fortified front door.
Inside the home a wheelchair fitted with a fishing line, shotgun ammunition and other items triggered the explosion that wounded the agent, according to court documents. An X-ray found a .410-gauge shotgun pellet in the agent’s leg, documents said.
Authorities said the makeshift weapons were created by 66-year-old Gregory Rodvelt, who was forced to forfeit his property as part of an elder abuse case involving his mother.
Rodvelt is in Arizona’s Maricopa county jail, where he is in the midst of an assault trial in a separate case related to an alleged armed standoff. He has refused a court-appointed defense lawyer, the Mail Tribune reported.
Rodvelt had been in the jail since April 2017, but he was released in mid-August for two weeks so he could prepare the property for sale.
In the weeks since the agent was injured, a team of private contractors consisting of former military experts has inspected the property, the real estate attorney said.
'Keep robot brothels out of Houston': sex doll company faces pushback
Kinky S Dolls, a Canadian firm, is targeting Houston as the first market in a planned US expansion
Tom Dart in Houston
the guardian
Tue 2 Oct 2018 01.00 EDT
Kinky S Dolls, a Canadian company that bills itself as the first ‘adult love dolls rent-before-you-buy service in North America’ wants to set up shop in Houston. Photograph: Guardian
Houston’s perhaps lesser-known status as a sex trade hub was noted by Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, in June when he lamented that the city had more brothels than Starbucks outlets. And this city has a lot of coffee shops.
But what Houston is apparently badly missing is a robot brothel, so called. Now a Canadian company is trying to fill that yawning gap.
Kinky S Dolls, a firm that bills itself as the first “adult love dolls rent-before-you-buy service in North America”, sells realistic-looking life-size dolls with basic artificial intelligence functions – and also offers them for use by the half-hour or hour at a warehouse in Toronto.
Now the firm is targeting Houston as the first market in a planned US expansion, but is meeting resistance from a Christian anti-sex trafficking and anti-pornography group and the city’s mayor.
“It’s not the sort of business that I want in the city of Houston,” the city’s Democratic mayor, Sylvester Turner, said at a press conference last week, adding that he has asked the city’s legal and health departments to examine the proposal.
Kinky S Dolls, which did not respond to a request for comment, had reportedly intended to open its new location imminently. “The States is a bigger market, and a healthier market, and God bless Trump,” owner Yuval Gavriel told the Washington Examiner, referencing the United States’ 45th president, Donald Trump.
But city officials have frustrated that hope, at least for now. The city “has told the lessor or owners of the property to cease demolition and/or construction work there until they obtain a city construction permit – for which they have not yet applied,” a spokesman for the mayor’s office told the Guardian.
There do not appear to be any local, state or federal laws specifically banning “robot brothels” but Elijah Rising, a Houston not-for-profit that gives public tours of areas where sex trafficking is common, hopes moral pressure will force a rethink. It started a “Keep Robot Brothels Out of Houston” online petition that as of Monday had more than 12,600 signatures.
“We want to see the end of this systemic problem. We said, this robot thing looks very similar to pornography, in that when men engage with pornography it sort of detaches them from any sort of human relation, and we’ve noticed that with sex buyers,” said a staff member, David Gamboa.
He fears that realistic sex dolls will increase, not lower, demand for human prostitution and embolden men to act out violent fantasies. “We’ve been seeing a lot of people on social media say this is going to solve the issue of sex trafficking. That is not our stance. We saw it as going to actually encourage men, or at least create that proclivity in men, to go out and purchase a woman,” he said.
Gamboa spoke at Elijah Rising’s office, a squat brown building next to a freeway near central Houston. Close to some of the city’s richest and poorest neighborhoods, the location is typically eclectic in a place that prides itself on its lack of official zoning regulations: three doors down there is a 24-hour “bikini lounge” next to a dog day-care centre. A Ferrari dealership, a gun range and a country music saloon are only a short drive away, as is the proposed Kinky S Dolls store, in a plain two-story building just off a busy road.
Elijah Rising consulted with Kathleen Richardson, professor of ethics and culture of robots and AI at De Montfort University in Leicester, in the UK, and founder of the Campaign Against Sex Robots. “Sex dolls are merely a new niche market in the sex trade,” she said by email.
“While these dolls are hidden from the public at the present there is nothing stopping any of the buyers taking their ‘sex doll’ to the supermarket, on the school run, or in any public space. Therefore we have to consider the dolls as a form of 3D pornography.
“There are also issues about what happens when you normalise a culture where women as the prostituted become visibly and openly interchangeable with dolls.”
Kinky S Dolls offers nine dolls for sale on its website, all young-looking, light-skinned females. A part-silicone blonde doll for sale at $3,499, “Kim”, is listed as 153cm tall and weighing 35kg with a voice and heated body. Another company is reportedly opening a sex doll brothel in Vancouver.
A company in California has produced a prototype hyper-realistic sex robot that can tell jokes, quote Shakespeare and remember birthdays.
As developments in animatronics and artificial intelligence make “sexbots” ever more lifelike, the sphere of internet-connected sex toys is also set for a boost since a US “teledildonics” patent that was blamed for stifling innovation expired in August.
But what Houston is apparently badly missing is a robot brothel, so called. Now a Canadian company is trying to fill that yawning gap.
Kinky S Dolls, a firm that bills itself as the first “adult love dolls rent-before-you-buy service in North America”, sells realistic-looking life-size dolls with basic artificial intelligence functions – and also offers them for use by the half-hour or hour at a warehouse in Toronto.
Now the firm is targeting Houston as the first market in a planned US expansion, but is meeting resistance from a Christian anti-sex trafficking and anti-pornography group and the city’s mayor.
“It’s not the sort of business that I want in the city of Houston,” the city’s Democratic mayor, Sylvester Turner, said at a press conference last week, adding that he has asked the city’s legal and health departments to examine the proposal.
Kinky S Dolls, which did not respond to a request for comment, had reportedly intended to open its new location imminently. “The States is a bigger market, and a healthier market, and God bless Trump,” owner Yuval Gavriel told the Washington Examiner, referencing the United States’ 45th president, Donald Trump.
But city officials have frustrated that hope, at least for now. The city “has told the lessor or owners of the property to cease demolition and/or construction work there until they obtain a city construction permit – for which they have not yet applied,” a spokesman for the mayor’s office told the Guardian.
There do not appear to be any local, state or federal laws specifically banning “robot brothels” but Elijah Rising, a Houston not-for-profit that gives public tours of areas where sex trafficking is common, hopes moral pressure will force a rethink. It started a “Keep Robot Brothels Out of Houston” online petition that as of Monday had more than 12,600 signatures.
“We want to see the end of this systemic problem. We said, this robot thing looks very similar to pornography, in that when men engage with pornography it sort of detaches them from any sort of human relation, and we’ve noticed that with sex buyers,” said a staff member, David Gamboa.
He fears that realistic sex dolls will increase, not lower, demand for human prostitution and embolden men to act out violent fantasies. “We’ve been seeing a lot of people on social media say this is going to solve the issue of sex trafficking. That is not our stance. We saw it as going to actually encourage men, or at least create that proclivity in men, to go out and purchase a woman,” he said.
Gamboa spoke at Elijah Rising’s office, a squat brown building next to a freeway near central Houston. Close to some of the city’s richest and poorest neighborhoods, the location is typically eclectic in a place that prides itself on its lack of official zoning regulations: three doors down there is a 24-hour “bikini lounge” next to a dog day-care centre. A Ferrari dealership, a gun range and a country music saloon are only a short drive away, as is the proposed Kinky S Dolls store, in a plain two-story building just off a busy road.
Elijah Rising consulted with Kathleen Richardson, professor of ethics and culture of robots and AI at De Montfort University in Leicester, in the UK, and founder of the Campaign Against Sex Robots. “Sex dolls are merely a new niche market in the sex trade,” she said by email.
“While these dolls are hidden from the public at the present there is nothing stopping any of the buyers taking their ‘sex doll’ to the supermarket, on the school run, or in any public space. Therefore we have to consider the dolls as a form of 3D pornography.
“There are also issues about what happens when you normalise a culture where women as the prostituted become visibly and openly interchangeable with dolls.”
Kinky S Dolls offers nine dolls for sale on its website, all young-looking, light-skinned females. A part-silicone blonde doll for sale at $3,499, “Kim”, is listed as 153cm tall and weighing 35kg with a voice and heated body. Another company is reportedly opening a sex doll brothel in Vancouver.
A company in California has produced a prototype hyper-realistic sex robot that can tell jokes, quote Shakespeare and remember birthdays.
As developments in animatronics and artificial intelligence make “sexbots” ever more lifelike, the sphere of internet-connected sex toys is also set for a boost since a US “teledildonics” patent that was blamed for stifling innovation expired in August.
Sightings and satellites help track mysterious ocean giant
Agence France-Presse - raw story
19 AUG 2018 AT 15:42 ET
Basking shark (Youtube)
The sight of a basking shark’s brooding silhouette gliding through the waters off western France is more than just a rare treat for sailors — it is a boon for scientists trying to trace its secretive migrations across the globe.
It may be the world’s second largest fish, growing to more than 10 metres (35 feet), but the basking shark, or Cetorhinus maximus, is an enigma for scientists eager to help preserve the plankton-eating giant after centuries of overfishing.
Hunted voraciously for its massive fin — highly prized for sharks’ fin soup in China — as well as its oily liver and meat, global populations of basking shark declined precipitously during the 20th century. The species has struggled to recover because of slow reproduction rates.
While the sharks have captured the imagination of sailors for hundreds of years — some think early seafarers mistook the massive sharks swimming in single file for sea monsters — crucial details about their behaviour remain elusive to researchers.
“It’s a shark that remains very mysterious,” said Alexandra Rohr of the research group APECS, which is based in the Brittany town of Brest and dedicated to the study of sharks, skates and rays.
Even population estimates, the age of sexual maturity and where and when the sharks reproduce are not known for certain, Rohr said.
They are spotted more frequently during the summer months while in winter they all but vanish from view, leading to theories that they migrate to warmer regions or dive down into the ocean depths.
Using new tracking technology, APECS researchers monitoring sharks when they are near the water’s surface have discovered evidence of a much greater migratory range than previously thought.
One tagged female was tracked off the coast of northern Scotland on September 20, 2016, and then resurfaced four months later south of the Canary Islands. By May 2017 the shark was back in the Bay of Biscay, south of Brittany.
APECS also relies on crowd-sourced information from divers, sailors and other members of the public.
Alain Quemere sighted a basking shark during a fishing trip in the Glenan archipelago off the south coast of Brittany and reported details to APECS, enabling a research team to find the shark and fit it with a satellite tracker.
“I just saw the tip of his fin,” said Quemere, still enraptured by the memory of his five-hour encounter.
“One moment it grazed the front of the boat, which made me laugh because my boat is barely five and a half metres and the shark was eight.”
– ‘Wise, old grandfather’ –
APECS has tagged four sharks so far this year with its new tracking devices, after deploying three in 2016.
Some 77 basking sharks were spotted in 2017 from February to September, with most seen in the Bay of Biscay and around 24 spotted in the Mediterranean.
“You have the impression of seeing a wise old grandfather, it is beautiful,” said Frederic Bassemayousse, a diver and photographer who has spotted the sharks three times.
Like the world’s largest fish, the whale shark, and the smaller megamouth shark, the basking shark is not a predator.
It earned its common name for its languid movements near the surface of the water, and it eats plankton, which it filters through ribbed gill slits encircling its head.
A single individual is thought capable of sieving nearly an Olympic swimming pool’s worth of water every hour, according to APECS.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) now lists it as “vulnerable” across the world and “endangered” in the North Pacific and Northeast Atlantic.
Basking sharks and whale sharks were in 2003 put onto the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) “Appendix II”, which bans all trade in parts, unless under stringent conditions.
Following the last CITES meeting in 2013, a total of eight species of sharks and all manta rays were included.
Overall an estimated 100 million sharks are killed every year, according to an authoritative 2013 study, an amount that conservationists say threatens the survival of many shark species.
It may be the world’s second largest fish, growing to more than 10 metres (35 feet), but the basking shark, or Cetorhinus maximus, is an enigma for scientists eager to help preserve the plankton-eating giant after centuries of overfishing.
Hunted voraciously for its massive fin — highly prized for sharks’ fin soup in China — as well as its oily liver and meat, global populations of basking shark declined precipitously during the 20th century. The species has struggled to recover because of slow reproduction rates.
While the sharks have captured the imagination of sailors for hundreds of years — some think early seafarers mistook the massive sharks swimming in single file for sea monsters — crucial details about their behaviour remain elusive to researchers.
“It’s a shark that remains very mysterious,” said Alexandra Rohr of the research group APECS, which is based in the Brittany town of Brest and dedicated to the study of sharks, skates and rays.
Even population estimates, the age of sexual maturity and where and when the sharks reproduce are not known for certain, Rohr said.
They are spotted more frequently during the summer months while in winter they all but vanish from view, leading to theories that they migrate to warmer regions or dive down into the ocean depths.
Using new tracking technology, APECS researchers monitoring sharks when they are near the water’s surface have discovered evidence of a much greater migratory range than previously thought.
One tagged female was tracked off the coast of northern Scotland on September 20, 2016, and then resurfaced four months later south of the Canary Islands. By May 2017 the shark was back in the Bay of Biscay, south of Brittany.
APECS also relies on crowd-sourced information from divers, sailors and other members of the public.
Alain Quemere sighted a basking shark during a fishing trip in the Glenan archipelago off the south coast of Brittany and reported details to APECS, enabling a research team to find the shark and fit it with a satellite tracker.
“I just saw the tip of his fin,” said Quemere, still enraptured by the memory of his five-hour encounter.
“One moment it grazed the front of the boat, which made me laugh because my boat is barely five and a half metres and the shark was eight.”
– ‘Wise, old grandfather’ –
APECS has tagged four sharks so far this year with its new tracking devices, after deploying three in 2016.
Some 77 basking sharks were spotted in 2017 from February to September, with most seen in the Bay of Biscay and around 24 spotted in the Mediterranean.
“You have the impression of seeing a wise old grandfather, it is beautiful,” said Frederic Bassemayousse, a diver and photographer who has spotted the sharks three times.
Like the world’s largest fish, the whale shark, and the smaller megamouth shark, the basking shark is not a predator.
It earned its common name for its languid movements near the surface of the water, and it eats plankton, which it filters through ribbed gill slits encircling its head.
A single individual is thought capable of sieving nearly an Olympic swimming pool’s worth of water every hour, according to APECS.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) now lists it as “vulnerable” across the world and “endangered” in the North Pacific and Northeast Atlantic.
Basking sharks and whale sharks were in 2003 put onto the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) “Appendix II”, which bans all trade in parts, unless under stringent conditions.
Following the last CITES meeting in 2013, a total of eight species of sharks and all manta rays were included.
Overall an estimated 100 million sharks are killed every year, according to an authoritative 2013 study, an amount that conservationists say threatens the survival of many shark species.
'Urinoir' furore: Paris residents peeved at eco-friendly urinals
Île Saint-Louis residents demand removal of bright-red receptacles with no stall
Reuters in Paris
the guardian
Mon 13 Aug 2018 11.00 EDT
The designer of the ‘Uritrottoir’ said it offered an ‘eco solution to public peeing’. Photograph: Philippe Wojazer/Reuters
A set of eco-friendly but completely exposed urinals that have been introduced to the streets of Paris are provoking uproar among residents.
One of the bright-red “urinoirs” installed on the Île Saint-Louis, not far from Notre Dame Cathedral and overlooking tourist boats passing on the Seine, has caused particular indignation.
Residents and businesses have written to the town hall to demand its removal and are planning a petition.
“There’s no need to put something so immodest and ugly in such an historic spot,” said Paola Pellizzari, 68, owner of a Venetian art store.
“It’s beside the most beautiful townhouse on the island, the Hôtel de Lauzun, where Baudelaire lived,” she said, referring to the 19th-century French poet.
She feared the urinal, installed about 20 metres from a primary school, “incites exhibitionism”.
The designer of the “Uritrottoir” – a combination of the French words for urinal and pavement – said it offered an “eco solution to public peeing”.
The device is essentially a box with an opening in the front and a floral display on top containing straw which transforms into compost for use in parks and gardens.
But residents and businesses of Île Saint-Louis said the receptacle, with no stall around it of any kind, could blight the neighbourhood.
“It’s horrible,” said the 50-year-old owner of a nearby art gallery, who declined to give his name. “We’re told we have to accept this but this is absolutely unacceptable. It’s destroying the legacy of the island. Can’t people behave?“
Ariel Weil, the local mayor, said the devices were necessary. Paris authorities have rolled out four of theurinals in spots where public peeing has been a problem, and a fifth is planned.
“If we don’t do anything, then men are just going to pee in the streets,” Weil said. “If it is really bothering people, we will find another location.”
Some have described the urinals as discriminatory.
“They have been installed on a sexist proposition: men cannot control themselves [from the bladder point of view] and so all of society has to adapt,” said Gwendoline Coipeault of French feminist group Femmes Solidaires. “The public space must be transformed to cause them minimum discomfort. It’s absurd, no one needs to urinate in the street.”
One of the bright-red “urinoirs” installed on the Île Saint-Louis, not far from Notre Dame Cathedral and overlooking tourist boats passing on the Seine, has caused particular indignation.
Residents and businesses have written to the town hall to demand its removal and are planning a petition.
“There’s no need to put something so immodest and ugly in such an historic spot,” said Paola Pellizzari, 68, owner of a Venetian art store.
“It’s beside the most beautiful townhouse on the island, the Hôtel de Lauzun, where Baudelaire lived,” she said, referring to the 19th-century French poet.
She feared the urinal, installed about 20 metres from a primary school, “incites exhibitionism”.
The designer of the “Uritrottoir” – a combination of the French words for urinal and pavement – said it offered an “eco solution to public peeing”.
The device is essentially a box with an opening in the front and a floral display on top containing straw which transforms into compost for use in parks and gardens.
But residents and businesses of Île Saint-Louis said the receptacle, with no stall around it of any kind, could blight the neighbourhood.
“It’s horrible,” said the 50-year-old owner of a nearby art gallery, who declined to give his name. “We’re told we have to accept this but this is absolutely unacceptable. It’s destroying the legacy of the island. Can’t people behave?“
Ariel Weil, the local mayor, said the devices were necessary. Paris authorities have rolled out four of theurinals in spots where public peeing has been a problem, and a fifth is planned.
“If we don’t do anything, then men are just going to pee in the streets,” Weil said. “If it is really bothering people, we will find another location.”
Some have described the urinals as discriminatory.
“They have been installed on a sexist proposition: men cannot control themselves [from the bladder point of view] and so all of society has to adapt,” said Gwendoline Coipeault of French feminist group Femmes Solidaires. “The public space must be transformed to cause them minimum discomfort. It’s absurd, no one needs to urinate in the street.”
Rook at this mess: French park trains crows to pick up litter
Birds will be rewarded with food every time they bring a cigarette butt or other rubbish, says manager
Guardian staff
the guardian
Fri 10 Aug 2018 22.34 EDT
Crows could teach us to take care of the environment, said the manager of the theme park in France. Photograph: Arco Images GmbH / Alamy/Alamy
Six crows trained to pick up cigarette ends and rubbish will be put to work next week at a French historical theme park, according to its president.
“The goal is not just to clear up, because the visitors are generally careful to keep things clean” but also to show that “nature itself can teach us to take care of the environment”, said Nicolas de Villiers of the Puy du Fou park, in the western Vendee region.
Rooks, a member of the crow family of birds that also includes the carrion crow, jackdaw and raven, are considered to be “particularly intelligent” and in the right circumstances “like to communicate with humans and establish a relationship through play”, Villiers said.
The birds will be encouraged to spruce up the park through the use of a small box that delivers a nugget of bird food each time the rook deposits a cigarette end or small piece of rubbish.
The crow family is not the only one that might have decent litter-picking skills – Australian magpies have been found to understand what other birds are saying to each other.
Research published in May in the journal Animal Behaviour says the wily magpie has learned the meanings of different calls by the noisy miner and essentially eavesdrops to find out which predators are near.
Noisy miners – a small, native honeyeater – have different warning calls for ground-based and aerial predators. By playing both kinds of recording to a series of wild magpies, researchers observed the magpies raising their beaks to the sky, or dropping their heads to the ground.
“The goal is not just to clear up, because the visitors are generally careful to keep things clean” but also to show that “nature itself can teach us to take care of the environment”, said Nicolas de Villiers of the Puy du Fou park, in the western Vendee region.
Rooks, a member of the crow family of birds that also includes the carrion crow, jackdaw and raven, are considered to be “particularly intelligent” and in the right circumstances “like to communicate with humans and establish a relationship through play”, Villiers said.
The birds will be encouraged to spruce up the park through the use of a small box that delivers a nugget of bird food each time the rook deposits a cigarette end or small piece of rubbish.
The crow family is not the only one that might have decent litter-picking skills – Australian magpies have been found to understand what other birds are saying to each other.
Research published in May in the journal Animal Behaviour says the wily magpie has learned the meanings of different calls by the noisy miner and essentially eavesdrops to find out which predators are near.
Noisy miners – a small, native honeyeater – have different warning calls for ground-based and aerial predators. By playing both kinds of recording to a series of wild magpies, researchers observed the magpies raising their beaks to the sky, or dropping their heads to the ground.
slavery doesn't work even on elephants!!!
ELEPHANTS CAPTURED FROM THE WILD LIVE SHORTER LIVES THAN THOSE BORN IN CAPTIVITY, NEW STUDY SHOWS
BY ABBEY INTERRANTE - newsweek
ON 8/8/18 AT 10:13 AM
Elephants captured from the wild will die sooner than those born in captivity, a new study has found.
Researchers from the University of Turku in Finland analyzed the lives of captive Asian elephants to determine how their living situation affects their long-term health. Published in Nature Communications on Tuesday, the article explains how the change captive elephants experience can negatively affect the elephants. The animals experience long-term stress from their capture and changes in their social environments, potentially leading to shorter lives. The elephants also reproduce poorly in captivity. Elephants captured from the wild lived three to seven fewer years than those born in captivity. While not much research has been done on how long Asian elephants live, they likely can survive until their mid-50s.
"Our analysis reveals that wild-captured elephants had lower survival chances than captive-born elephants regardless of how they'd been captured, whether by stockade of whole groups, lassoing single elephants, or immobilization by sedation,” Mirkka Lahdenpera, lead author of the study, said in a press release.
“This means that all these methods had an equally negative effect on the elephant's subsequent life," Lahdenpera added. "We also found that older elephants suffered the most from capture; they had increased mortality compared to elephants caught at younger ages."
Researchers from the University of Turku in Finland analyzed the lives of captive Asian elephants to determine how their living situation affects their long-term health. Published in Nature Communications on Tuesday, the article explains how the change captive elephants experience can negatively affect the elephants. The animals experience long-term stress from their capture and changes in their social environments, potentially leading to shorter lives. The elephants also reproduce poorly in captivity. Elephants captured from the wild lived three to seven fewer years than those born in captivity. While not much research has been done on how long Asian elephants live, they likely can survive until their mid-50s.
"Our analysis reveals that wild-captured elephants had lower survival chances than captive-born elephants regardless of how they'd been captured, whether by stockade of whole groups, lassoing single elephants, or immobilization by sedation,” Mirkka Lahdenpera, lead author of the study, said in a press release.
“This means that all these methods had an equally negative effect on the elephant's subsequent life," Lahdenpera added. "We also found that older elephants suffered the most from capture; they had increased mortality compared to elephants caught at younger ages."
thank stupid people!!!
Invasion of big, voracious lizards threatens U.S. South: study
Jon Herskovitz - reuters
AUGUST 3, 2018 / 3:10 AM
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A group of South American lizards that can grow up to four feet long (1.2 meters) has established a home in the Florida wild after being brought to the United States as pets, and the reptiles could begin a voracious march across the U.S. South, according to a new study.
Tegu lizards, which currently live in two large colonies in Florida, could expand into an area from the Carolinas to Central Texas, according to the scientific report published in July on the website for the journal Nature.
“They are voracious, omnivorous predatory lizards that can live in a variety of habitats, but we can’t know what is going to happen or how intense this invasion is going to become until the effects are upon us,” said Lee Fitzgerald, a professor at Texas A&M University and curator of its Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections.
Fitzgerald, a co-author of the study, said in an interview this week it could take years for the tegu lizards to reach their potential range, but new hot spots pop up as more pet lizards escape or are dumped in the wild by owners.
There are no current estimates of wild populations of tegus in the United States. In South America, the large-bodied lizards range widely east of the Andes and include species such as the Argentine black and white tegu.
Armed with strong jaws and tails that they can wield as thumping weapons, the lizards in Florida devour the eggs of American alligators and ground-nesting birds, wildlife officials said. The reptiles also have a taste for insects, fruit and birds.
“As far as being a damaging invasive species, it really depends on what the threatened resources are in the areas where you might get tegus,” said Robert Reed, chief of the Invasive Species Science Branch at the U.S. Geological Survey, and another report co-author.
Tegu owners describe their pets as big, calm and occasionally affectionate lizards that like sunning themselves and are not picky about what they eat. But they can also be ornery and tough to handle.
In Florida, local wild populations of breeding tegu lizards are found in at least two counties, Miami-Dade and Hillsborough, home to Tampa, while there have been sightings in other parts of the state, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
On private lands, Florida hunters without a license are allowed to kill tegu lizards if it is done humanely. On public lands, the state is trying to get rid of the lizards through traps.
“The most important thing that the public can do to stop the spread of nonnative species like tegus is to NEVER release nonnative animals into the wild,” commission specialist Jamie Rager said in an email. “Don’t let it loose.”
Tegu lizards, which currently live in two large colonies in Florida, could expand into an area from the Carolinas to Central Texas, according to the scientific report published in July on the website for the journal Nature.
“They are voracious, omnivorous predatory lizards that can live in a variety of habitats, but we can’t know what is going to happen or how intense this invasion is going to become until the effects are upon us,” said Lee Fitzgerald, a professor at Texas A&M University and curator of its Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections.
Fitzgerald, a co-author of the study, said in an interview this week it could take years for the tegu lizards to reach their potential range, but new hot spots pop up as more pet lizards escape or are dumped in the wild by owners.
There are no current estimates of wild populations of tegus in the United States. In South America, the large-bodied lizards range widely east of the Andes and include species such as the Argentine black and white tegu.
Armed with strong jaws and tails that they can wield as thumping weapons, the lizards in Florida devour the eggs of American alligators and ground-nesting birds, wildlife officials said. The reptiles also have a taste for insects, fruit and birds.
“As far as being a damaging invasive species, it really depends on what the threatened resources are in the areas where you might get tegus,” said Robert Reed, chief of the Invasive Species Science Branch at the U.S. Geological Survey, and another report co-author.
Tegu owners describe their pets as big, calm and occasionally affectionate lizards that like sunning themselves and are not picky about what they eat. But they can also be ornery and tough to handle.
In Florida, local wild populations of breeding tegu lizards are found in at least two counties, Miami-Dade and Hillsborough, home to Tampa, while there have been sightings in other parts of the state, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
On private lands, Florida hunters without a license are allowed to kill tegu lizards if it is done humanely. On public lands, the state is trying to get rid of the lizards through traps.
“The most important thing that the public can do to stop the spread of nonnative species like tegus is to NEVER release nonnative animals into the wild,” commission specialist Jamie Rager said in an email. “Don’t let it loose.”
Pot-loving dogs: why cannabis extract is the new trend for our pets
Jason Wilson
the guardian
Thu 2 Aug 2018 07.26 EDT
...Internet searches seemed promising. Advocates, entrepreneurs and even scientists have advocated CBD as a treatment for a wide range of canine and feline maladies from allergies to anxiety. There are widely-repeated industry claims that the pet market for CBD doubled between 2008 and 2014, with further projections of 3-5% annual growth in the market.
CBD is not psychoactive in humans, unlike THC, the compound that gets people and other animals high.
But like THC and other compounds in cannabis plants, CBD interacts with the human – and mammalian – endocannabinoid system. The precise effects of CBD on our bodies are a matter of extensive ongoing research, but advocates of marijuana as a medicine have long held that CBD can treat epilepsy, chronic pain, anxiety and other maladies.
A selection of recent findings suggest that it may be useful for humans in treating problems like PTSD, chronic pain and the psychological effects of long-term cannabis use.
CBD also supposedly moderates the effect of THC, so it has been deliberately cultivated in certain strains and introduced into extracts on the theory that it creates a smoother high. (Informal “testing” supports this view.)
---
But what does the science say? At Colorado State University, the veterinary school has the wheels turning on a long-term study of the effects of CBD on pets, including any therapeutic benefits. So far, the results are encouraging.
A team led by Dr Stephanie McGrath found an 89% reduction in epileptic seizures for dogs treated with CBD. They are moving on to study CBD as a treatment for osteoarthritis in dogs, and are recruiting for a larger epilepsy study.
When I got home I tried Max Daddy’s treats on Monty. (Although Gardner says they offer a more consistent dose than other products, the treats, made with organic ingredients, are still very minimal doses for a 55lb pet.)
Although no fireworks have exploded recently, I did notice that Monty’s preternatural chill seemed to deepen after taking them. When we went to the park to play fetch, he didn’t drag me in the way he usually does. A beloved visitor was not jumped on in the way the visitor usually is. Monty stopped scratching as much.
While the jury is still out on the stronger claims of the CBD sellers, for now it appears that the treats do little harm, and there is emerging evidence that they may well do some good for certain conditions.
There is still, however, the delicate matter of the law.
Although marijuana has been legalized in the west coast states, Colorado and elsewhere, it is still illegal under federal law; as a consequence, pot products cannot be carried across state lines, and weed businesses still have problems with banking.
Many people in the burgeoning medical industry think CBD is different, based on their interpretations of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s public advisories on the matter. The DEA says otherwise. A DEA spokesman, Special Agent Wade Sparks, says: “CBD is a schedule 1 controlled substance,” meaning as far as the federal government is concerned CBD remains in the same legal category as meth or heroin.
If there is limited enforcement, it’s because of the varying prosecutorial stances of federal prosecutors, especially in states where pot is legal, and the priorities forced on the DEA by epidemics of meth and opioid use.
“I think reasonable taxpayers understand that we devote our resources to the most pressing issues in the community,” Sparks says.
Although CBD products are widely available even in states where pot is not legal, people possessing or using it, as well as anyone shipping it across a state line, are taking a calculated legal risk.
Nevertheless, CBD has long been used in medical marijuana for humans. The legalization of recreational and medical pot up and down the western seaboard of the US, and now in Canada, means that it has become a key product of a massive international growth industry.
Urban dog owners ask a lot of the animals who live with them. Our environments are full of objects and situations that stress dogs out.
Our schedules don’t always match up with our dogs’ needs for affection, attention and exercise. And our neighborhoods are full of humans who, for reasons best known to themselves, enjoy explosions. All of these things are a source of anxiety for our animals.
If CBD is proven to be as useful as its advocates believe it is, it may be revolutionary. In the meantime, it could at least be a salve for owners who, like me, can’t stand to see their dogs in distress.
CBD is not psychoactive in humans, unlike THC, the compound that gets people and other animals high.
But like THC and other compounds in cannabis plants, CBD interacts with the human – and mammalian – endocannabinoid system. The precise effects of CBD on our bodies are a matter of extensive ongoing research, but advocates of marijuana as a medicine have long held that CBD can treat epilepsy, chronic pain, anxiety and other maladies.
A selection of recent findings suggest that it may be useful for humans in treating problems like PTSD, chronic pain and the psychological effects of long-term cannabis use.
CBD also supposedly moderates the effect of THC, so it has been deliberately cultivated in certain strains and introduced into extracts on the theory that it creates a smoother high. (Informal “testing” supports this view.)
---
But what does the science say? At Colorado State University, the veterinary school has the wheels turning on a long-term study of the effects of CBD on pets, including any therapeutic benefits. So far, the results are encouraging.
A team led by Dr Stephanie McGrath found an 89% reduction in epileptic seizures for dogs treated with CBD. They are moving on to study CBD as a treatment for osteoarthritis in dogs, and are recruiting for a larger epilepsy study.
When I got home I tried Max Daddy’s treats on Monty. (Although Gardner says they offer a more consistent dose than other products, the treats, made with organic ingredients, are still very minimal doses for a 55lb pet.)
Although no fireworks have exploded recently, I did notice that Monty’s preternatural chill seemed to deepen after taking them. When we went to the park to play fetch, he didn’t drag me in the way he usually does. A beloved visitor was not jumped on in the way the visitor usually is. Monty stopped scratching as much.
While the jury is still out on the stronger claims of the CBD sellers, for now it appears that the treats do little harm, and there is emerging evidence that they may well do some good for certain conditions.
There is still, however, the delicate matter of the law.
Although marijuana has been legalized in the west coast states, Colorado and elsewhere, it is still illegal under federal law; as a consequence, pot products cannot be carried across state lines, and weed businesses still have problems with banking.
Many people in the burgeoning medical industry think CBD is different, based on their interpretations of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s public advisories on the matter. The DEA says otherwise. A DEA spokesman, Special Agent Wade Sparks, says: “CBD is a schedule 1 controlled substance,” meaning as far as the federal government is concerned CBD remains in the same legal category as meth or heroin.
If there is limited enforcement, it’s because of the varying prosecutorial stances of federal prosecutors, especially in states where pot is legal, and the priorities forced on the DEA by epidemics of meth and opioid use.
“I think reasonable taxpayers understand that we devote our resources to the most pressing issues in the community,” Sparks says.
Although CBD products are widely available even in states where pot is not legal, people possessing or using it, as well as anyone shipping it across a state line, are taking a calculated legal risk.
Nevertheless, CBD has long been used in medical marijuana for humans. The legalization of recreational and medical pot up and down the western seaboard of the US, and now in Canada, means that it has become a key product of a massive international growth industry.
Urban dog owners ask a lot of the animals who live with them. Our environments are full of objects and situations that stress dogs out.
Our schedules don’t always match up with our dogs’ needs for affection, attention and exercise. And our neighborhoods are full of humans who, for reasons best known to themselves, enjoy explosions. All of these things are a source of anxiety for our animals.
If CBD is proven to be as useful as its advocates believe it is, it may be revolutionary. In the meantime, it could at least be a salve for owners who, like me, can’t stand to see their dogs in distress.
Scorpion deaths on rise in Brazil as arachnid adapts to urban life
Deaths have more than doubled as specialists warn of increasing danger for city-dwellers
Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
the guardian
Sun 15 Jul 2018 04.00 EDT
Tityus serrulatus, a deadly Brazilian scorpion, has adapted from its traditional habitat to survive in sewers, garbage and rubble. Photograph: Rogério Bertani
Specialists in Brazil have warned of the rising danger of deadly scorpions amid a spiraling number of reported deaths and stings by the hardy arachnids which are proliferating in the country’s urban centres.
The number of deaths from scorpion stings reported to the country’s public health system has more than doubled in the past four years, from 70 in 2013 to 184 in 2017, while cases of scorpion stings rose from 37,000 in 2007 to 126,000 last year.
Meanwhile, the death last week of a four-year old girl in São Paulo state has reinforced concerns that many small towns lack anti-venom to treat stings.
Four dangerous species of scorpion are found in Brazil but the yellow scorpion, or Tityus serrulatus, has proved particularly deadly, having adapted from its traditional savannah habitat to survive in sewers, garbage and rubble in urban areas.
“With deforestation and the increase in urban centres this scorpion is increasing its presence,” said Rogério Bertani, a scientific researcher and scorpion specialist at the Butantan Institute, a São Paulo research institute attached to the state government. “Contact with human beings is very big. I believe personally this will tend to get worse.”
The yellow scorpion is parthenogenetic, which means the female can breed without being fertilised by males and it eats insects such as cockroaches.
“These scorpions have a low metabolism and can live various months without feeding,” Bertani said.
Small children are especially vulnerable. This week Yasmin de Campos, four, died after being stung by a scorpion in Calabria Paulista in the interior of São Paulo state, the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper reported.
She was driven to a hospital in Duartina just 10km away but it had no anti-venom and she was only treated three hours later after being driven another 50 kilometres to Bauru – by which time it was too late. A receptionist at the hospital in Duartina said that it had no anti-venom stock.
José Brites Neto, a medical veterinarian, leads a four-man scorpion team in city of Americana in São Paulo state which has captured nearly 8,000 scorpions this year, using ultra-violet light and hunting at night.
Brites Neto said that the yellow scorpion has spread around sewage networks and rainwater drains because of the abundance of cockroaches. “This species is dominating, colonising and very adaptable,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health said anti-venom is sent to state health authorities who distribute to towns.
“Deaths by scorpions are most strongly associated with the pediatric age group and poisoning by Tityus Serrulatus,” she said. “Light cases, which don’t need anti-venom, are 87% of cases.”
The number of deaths from scorpion stings reported to the country’s public health system has more than doubled in the past four years, from 70 in 2013 to 184 in 2017, while cases of scorpion stings rose from 37,000 in 2007 to 126,000 last year.
Meanwhile, the death last week of a four-year old girl in São Paulo state has reinforced concerns that many small towns lack anti-venom to treat stings.
Four dangerous species of scorpion are found in Brazil but the yellow scorpion, or Tityus serrulatus, has proved particularly deadly, having adapted from its traditional savannah habitat to survive in sewers, garbage and rubble in urban areas.
“With deforestation and the increase in urban centres this scorpion is increasing its presence,” said Rogério Bertani, a scientific researcher and scorpion specialist at the Butantan Institute, a São Paulo research institute attached to the state government. “Contact with human beings is very big. I believe personally this will tend to get worse.”
The yellow scorpion is parthenogenetic, which means the female can breed without being fertilised by males and it eats insects such as cockroaches.
“These scorpions have a low metabolism and can live various months without feeding,” Bertani said.
Small children are especially vulnerable. This week Yasmin de Campos, four, died after being stung by a scorpion in Calabria Paulista in the interior of São Paulo state, the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper reported.
She was driven to a hospital in Duartina just 10km away but it had no anti-venom and she was only treated three hours later after being driven another 50 kilometres to Bauru – by which time it was too late. A receptionist at the hospital in Duartina said that it had no anti-venom stock.
José Brites Neto, a medical veterinarian, leads a four-man scorpion team in city of Americana in São Paulo state which has captured nearly 8,000 scorpions this year, using ultra-violet light and hunting at night.
Brites Neto said that the yellow scorpion has spread around sewage networks and rainwater drains because of the abundance of cockroaches. “This species is dominating, colonising and very adaptable,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health said anti-venom is sent to state health authorities who distribute to towns.
“Deaths by scorpions are most strongly associated with the pediatric age group and poisoning by Tityus Serrulatus,” she said. “Light cases, which don’t need anti-venom, are 87% of cases.”
How native American dogs disappeared — and left a contagious cancer behind
The Conversation - raw story
06 JUL 2018 AT 10:18 ET
Portrait of a Mexican hairless dog of xoloitzcuintli breed. (Shutterstock)
Cancer can be frighteningly complex and unpredictable. Cancer can evolve, change, evade and resist, but one thing we can usually rely on is that cancer can’t infect. For a handful of unlucky species, however, this isn’t the case. Thousands of dogs around the world – from Aboriginal camp dogs in Australia to street dogs in Buenos Aires – are affected by an extraordinary type of infectious cancer that causes genital tumours and can jump between individuals, known as Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumour or CTVT.
All of these tumours are clones – genetically highly similar to one another but genetically distinct from their hound hosts. DNA from the tumours can trace them to a single individual, the “founder dog”. This cancer arose only once, thousands of years ago, from the cells of this “founder dog” – an unsuspecting pooch. Since then the tumours have persisted through the millennia by transmission of cancer cells between dogs during mating. The founder dog has spawned a modern-day doggy cancer dynasty. This story begins and ends with the question of when and where this mysterious founder dog lived when its cancer lineage first emerged.
An American tail
Preserved in every single CTVT tumour is ancient DNA from the long-dead founder. Previous research showed that this founder was genetically similar to modern Siberian huskies, Alaskan malamutes and Arctic sledge dogs and most likely belonged to an isolated population. This suggested that the answer to our question probably lay buried somewhere in the Arctic tundra. To dig a little deeper, we took DNA from ancient dog remains, spanning roughly 9,000 years of dog evolutionary history, from sites across North America and Siberia, and compared this with CTVT. What we found was a huge surprise.
Dogs were present in North and South America long before the arrival of European colonists. These pre-contact dogs were widespread across the continent, varying in size and shape, and were largely the only domestic animals associated with Native American groups. They were not domesticated from North American wolves but instead padded their way into the Americas from Asia alongside humans at least 10,000 years ago.
At this time, the landmasses now known as Russia and North America were not separated by water, but connected by a continuous expanse of land, the Bering Land Bridge. Humans and dogs dispersed together across this bridge into the New World. Evidence that these dogs were used in sledding, along with suggestions that they were used for hunting and hauling, means that they could have facilitated the early settlement of the Americas.
Barking up the wrong family tree
Previously the dog family tree was thought to be split into two evolutionary branches– dogs from East Asia, like Chinese village dogs and Tibetan Mastiffs, and dogs from West Eurasia, with modern Arctic dogs falling within both of these groups. However, once we added ancient dog samples to this family gathering we found that pre-contact dogs in the Americas, modern Arctic dogs and the elusive CTVT founder animal defined a new major dog “clade” – a genetically distinct group of organisms sharing a common ancestor.
The data suggest that east, west and Arctic dogs diverged at roughly the same time. Pre-contact dogs then split from their cousins in Siberia and remained isolated from other continental dog populations in the Americas until the arrival of Europeans. Although there is intriguing evidence that during this time these dogs interbred with wild canids endemic in North America, like coyotes and grey wolves.
Missing: America’s first dogs
No direct descendants of pre-contact dogs have so far been confirmed in modern populations. Genetic traces of these dogs have largely vanished, even when we look at breeds still considered to be “native American” like Chihuahuas, Mexican hairless dogs, and South American village dogs. While unsampled pockets of American dogs might still remain, what we’ve found so far suggests that they have been extensively replaced by European breeds.
Major factors leading to the demise of pre-contact dogs probably include susceptibility to European-borne diseases, systematic persecution by European colonists and a cultural preference for European dogs. Because of their isolation, the immune systems of pre-contact dogs may have been unprepared for the arrival of new pathogens. And, although CTVT could have arisen on the Asian side of the Bering Bridge, perhaps the emergence of transmissible cancer itself even played a role. Bizarrely, their almost total disappearance means that the closest living relative of these bygone dogs is now CTVT, an opportunistic, sexually-transmitted dog cancer that has hitchhiked around the world at least two times over.
Dogs have journeyed with us through changing times and cultures and to a large extent their histories reflect our own. Pre-contact dogs were present as the first travellers journeyed from Siberia into the Americas and began to thrive. These stalwart companions were also present as native cultures were disrupted, displaced, and declined over the last 500 years.
We set out to find the origin of the oldest known contagious cancer. What we uncovered were the last traces of ancient American dogs.
All of these tumours are clones – genetically highly similar to one another but genetically distinct from their hound hosts. DNA from the tumours can trace them to a single individual, the “founder dog”. This cancer arose only once, thousands of years ago, from the cells of this “founder dog” – an unsuspecting pooch. Since then the tumours have persisted through the millennia by transmission of cancer cells between dogs during mating. The founder dog has spawned a modern-day doggy cancer dynasty. This story begins and ends with the question of when and where this mysterious founder dog lived when its cancer lineage first emerged.
An American tail
Preserved in every single CTVT tumour is ancient DNA from the long-dead founder. Previous research showed that this founder was genetically similar to modern Siberian huskies, Alaskan malamutes and Arctic sledge dogs and most likely belonged to an isolated population. This suggested that the answer to our question probably lay buried somewhere in the Arctic tundra. To dig a little deeper, we took DNA from ancient dog remains, spanning roughly 9,000 years of dog evolutionary history, from sites across North America and Siberia, and compared this with CTVT. What we found was a huge surprise.
Dogs were present in North and South America long before the arrival of European colonists. These pre-contact dogs were widespread across the continent, varying in size and shape, and were largely the only domestic animals associated with Native American groups. They were not domesticated from North American wolves but instead padded their way into the Americas from Asia alongside humans at least 10,000 years ago.
At this time, the landmasses now known as Russia and North America were not separated by water, but connected by a continuous expanse of land, the Bering Land Bridge. Humans and dogs dispersed together across this bridge into the New World. Evidence that these dogs were used in sledding, along with suggestions that they were used for hunting and hauling, means that they could have facilitated the early settlement of the Americas.
Barking up the wrong family tree
Previously the dog family tree was thought to be split into two evolutionary branches– dogs from East Asia, like Chinese village dogs and Tibetan Mastiffs, and dogs from West Eurasia, with modern Arctic dogs falling within both of these groups. However, once we added ancient dog samples to this family gathering we found that pre-contact dogs in the Americas, modern Arctic dogs and the elusive CTVT founder animal defined a new major dog “clade” – a genetically distinct group of organisms sharing a common ancestor.
The data suggest that east, west and Arctic dogs diverged at roughly the same time. Pre-contact dogs then split from their cousins in Siberia and remained isolated from other continental dog populations in the Americas until the arrival of Europeans. Although there is intriguing evidence that during this time these dogs interbred with wild canids endemic in North America, like coyotes and grey wolves.
Missing: America’s first dogs
No direct descendants of pre-contact dogs have so far been confirmed in modern populations. Genetic traces of these dogs have largely vanished, even when we look at breeds still considered to be “native American” like Chihuahuas, Mexican hairless dogs, and South American village dogs. While unsampled pockets of American dogs might still remain, what we’ve found so far suggests that they have been extensively replaced by European breeds.
Major factors leading to the demise of pre-contact dogs probably include susceptibility to European-borne diseases, systematic persecution by European colonists and a cultural preference for European dogs. Because of their isolation, the immune systems of pre-contact dogs may have been unprepared for the arrival of new pathogens. And, although CTVT could have arisen on the Asian side of the Bering Bridge, perhaps the emergence of transmissible cancer itself even played a role. Bizarrely, their almost total disappearance means that the closest living relative of these bygone dogs is now CTVT, an opportunistic, sexually-transmitted dog cancer that has hitchhiked around the world at least two times over.
Dogs have journeyed with us through changing times and cultures and to a large extent their histories reflect our own. Pre-contact dogs were present as the first travellers journeyed from Siberia into the Americas and began to thrive. These stalwart companions were also present as native cultures were disrupted, displaced, and declined over the last 500 years.
We set out to find the origin of the oldest known contagious cancer. What we uncovered were the last traces of ancient American dogs.
INSIDE THE WEIRD DINOSAUR PARK WHERE THE SOUTH DEFEATS THE UNION ARMY
By Elle Reeve - vice news
Jul 4, 2018
NATURAL BRIDGE, Virginia — Dinosaur Kingdom II is a theme park where dinosaurs defeat the Union Army in a Civil War battle forgotten by history. It has a mock Ken Burns-style documentary and everything. Of the more than 1,700 monuments and markers for the Confederacy across the country, this is one of the strangest.
The sci-fi alt-history theme park was built in 2016 by Mark Cline — someone people in the south would call "a character." Admission is $10 and Cline says the park can bring in $10,000 on any happening summer weekend.
"The Yankee troops wanted to use these dinosaurs as weapons of mass destruction against the South. It kind of backfired on them," Cline told VICE News. "And this is the story that was left out of most of the history books. So I'm trying to bring the story to light to make sure that history is told the way it's supposed to be."
VICE News visited to ask the creator about why he built the park and why he wanted to see the South win.
This segment originally aired June 26, 2018 on VICE News Tonight on HBO.
The sci-fi alt-history theme park was built in 2016 by Mark Cline — someone people in the south would call "a character." Admission is $10 and Cline says the park can bring in $10,000 on any happening summer weekend.
"The Yankee troops wanted to use these dinosaurs as weapons of mass destruction against the South. It kind of backfired on them," Cline told VICE News. "And this is the story that was left out of most of the history books. So I'm trying to bring the story to light to make sure that history is told the way it's supposed to be."
VICE News visited to ask the creator about why he built the park and why he wanted to see the South win.
This segment originally aired June 26, 2018 on VICE News Tonight on HBO.
D.B. Cooper: Investigators Claim They've Discovered Skyjacker's Identity
demo underground
7/2/18
Source: Rollingstone
A team of former FBI investigators is claiming to have proof of the real identity of D.B. Cooper, the notorious airplane hijacker who has remained at large since he parachuted out of a Seattle-bound plane with $200,000 in November 1971. According to filmmaker and author Thomas Colbert – who has led the independent investigation into the cold case for the last seven years – the real Cooper is a 74-year-old Vietnam veteran named Robert Rackstraw. And the proof is hidden in a series of letters allegedly written by Cooper in the months after the hijacking and his disappearance.
Rackstraw – a former Special Forces paratrooper, explosives expert and pilot with about 22 different aliases – was once a person of interest in the case, but was eliminated as a suspect by the FBI in 1979. His elimination was controversial amongst the investigating agents, and he remained, for many, the most viable suspect in what remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in the United States. In 2016, the FBI announced they were ending their investigation into the case.
“This has been a cover up, they’re stonewalling,” Colbert told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He believes that the FBI protected Rackstraw because he was involved in numerous classified units during the war and may have worked for the CIA. “This is an old fashioned scandal,” he said. (A rep for FBI’s Seattle field office told Rolling Stone that they have received “an immense number” of tips over the years, but “none to date have resulted in a definitive identification of the hijacker.” They did not respond to a request for comment on whether the FBI stonewalled an investigation into Rackstraw.)
Colbert and his 40-person team, many of whom are former federal agents, say D.B. Cooper’s identity has been in the FBI’s file all along, hidden in a series of letters sent to various newspapers in the months after the hijacking. While the first four letters had been made public, the FBI kept a fifth and sixth letter under wraps, until Colbert successfully sued for the Cooper case file under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Colbert claims both letters contain coded messages that point directly at Rackstraw. According to the Post-Intelligencer, the newspaper contacted Rackstraw – who is currently living in San Diego – last November. They wrote that he did not confirm or deny anything, telling the reporter to “verify Colbert’s facts.”
Read more: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/d-b-cooper-investigators-claim-theyve-discovered-skyjackers-identity-693912/
A team of former FBI investigators is claiming to have proof of the real identity of D.B. Cooper, the notorious airplane hijacker who has remained at large since he parachuted out of a Seattle-bound plane with $200,000 in November 1971. According to filmmaker and author Thomas Colbert – who has led the independent investigation into the cold case for the last seven years – the real Cooper is a 74-year-old Vietnam veteran named Robert Rackstraw. And the proof is hidden in a series of letters allegedly written by Cooper in the months after the hijacking and his disappearance.
Rackstraw – a former Special Forces paratrooper, explosives expert and pilot with about 22 different aliases – was once a person of interest in the case, but was eliminated as a suspect by the FBI in 1979. His elimination was controversial amongst the investigating agents, and he remained, for many, the most viable suspect in what remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in the United States. In 2016, the FBI announced they were ending their investigation into the case.
“This has been a cover up, they’re stonewalling,” Colbert told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He believes that the FBI protected Rackstraw because he was involved in numerous classified units during the war and may have worked for the CIA. “This is an old fashioned scandal,” he said. (A rep for FBI’s Seattle field office told Rolling Stone that they have received “an immense number” of tips over the years, but “none to date have resulted in a definitive identification of the hijacker.” They did not respond to a request for comment on whether the FBI stonewalled an investigation into Rackstraw.)
Colbert and his 40-person team, many of whom are former federal agents, say D.B. Cooper’s identity has been in the FBI’s file all along, hidden in a series of letters sent to various newspapers in the months after the hijacking. While the first four letters had been made public, the FBI kept a fifth and sixth letter under wraps, until Colbert successfully sued for the Cooper case file under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Colbert claims both letters contain coded messages that point directly at Rackstraw. According to the Post-Intelligencer, the newspaper contacted Rackstraw – who is currently living in San Diego – last November. They wrote that he did not confirm or deny anything, telling the reporter to “verify Colbert’s facts.”
Read more: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/d-b-cooper-investigators-claim-theyve-discovered-skyjackers-identity-693912/
3000-year-old sawn-off tooth may be the earliest evidence of horse dentistry
By Lizzie Wade - science
Jul. 2, 2018 , 3:00 PM
The notch in this horse incisor, which had grown in crooked, shows that a herder tried to saw part of it off. W. TAYLOR ET AL.; ORIGINS OF EQUINE DENTISTRY, PNAS, (2018)
Three thousand years ago, a horse in Mongolia had a toothache that was probably making it—and its owner—miserable. So the owner tried to help, by attempting to saw the painful top off the offending incisor. The procedure is among the earliest evidence of veterinary dentistry in the world, according to a new study, and the practices that flowed from it may have helped horses transform human civilization.
“It’s a great study,” says Robin Bendrey, an archaeologist and ancient horse expert at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the work. As horses became more important, he says, nomadic herders “are investing greater effort in understanding how to care for them.”
William Taylor, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, first came across the strange sawn tooth in the collections of the National Museum of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar. “I could not for the life of me muster an explanation,” he says.
He turned to his Mongolian colleagues, archaeologists Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan and Tumurbaatar Tuvshinjargal, who grew up in the Mongolian countryside and have firsthand knowledge of traditional horse husbandry. The group concluded that the sawn tooth was an early, if inefficient, form of dentistry. The tooth had grown in crooked and was likely painful, but rather than pulling the incisor out completely, the notch shows that the ancient herder tried to cut its top off to restore a flat chewing surface, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (The procedure may not have worked, as the herder only made it halfway through the tooth. Shortly after, the horse was sacrificed and ritually buried.)
Together with another cut tooth from around the same time, the discovery shows that about 2000 years after horses were first domesticated, people were still figuring out the best way to take care of their teeth using basic stone tools.
Over time, horse dental care in Mongolia became much more systematic, Taylor and colleagues found. In the 3000-year-old horse skulls the team studied, many horses still had their “wolf teeth”—small, pointy teeth that grow in the space between the teeth in the front of a horse’s mouth and those in their cheeks. Wolf teeth are an evolutionary relic, and horses no longer use them for chewing; many horses don’t even develop them.
In today’s horses, when wolf teeth do grow in, they occupy some of the space where the bit sits. The contact between the tooth and the metal riding equipment can cause pain and tooth damage, so both Western veterinarians and Mongolian herders routinely remove these teeth.
But back when ancient herders were making their first forays into horse dentistry, bits were still made of leather. With softer equipment, early domesticated horses could keep their wolf teeth.
Beginning around 750 B.C.E., however, nearly all of the horses Taylor’s group examined were missing their wolf teeth. In many of the skulls, they could see a healed hole where a wolf tooth had been pulled out. That shift coincides with the adoption of bronze and iron bits in Mongolia, which gave riders much greater control over their horses—but meant that wolf teeth had to go.
“They’re adapting to new ways of riding and new ways of using the horse,” says Alan Outram, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom who studies horse domestication and wasn’t involved in the new research. “People innovated fairly quickly.”
Without such innovations, world history might look a lot different. Metal bits enabled herders to use horses in war and for long distance travel, shaping Mongolia and its nomadic cultures in ways that ultimately led to the rise of Genghis Khan’s mounted army and the Mongol Empire that controlled most of Eurasia in the 13th century. “Horses absolutely transformed Mongolia into a cultural and economic center of the world,” Taylor says.
“It’s a great study,” says Robin Bendrey, an archaeologist and ancient horse expert at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the work. As horses became more important, he says, nomadic herders “are investing greater effort in understanding how to care for them.”
William Taylor, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, first came across the strange sawn tooth in the collections of the National Museum of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar. “I could not for the life of me muster an explanation,” he says.
He turned to his Mongolian colleagues, archaeologists Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan and Tumurbaatar Tuvshinjargal, who grew up in the Mongolian countryside and have firsthand knowledge of traditional horse husbandry. The group concluded that the sawn tooth was an early, if inefficient, form of dentistry. The tooth had grown in crooked and was likely painful, but rather than pulling the incisor out completely, the notch shows that the ancient herder tried to cut its top off to restore a flat chewing surface, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (The procedure may not have worked, as the herder only made it halfway through the tooth. Shortly after, the horse was sacrificed and ritually buried.)
Together with another cut tooth from around the same time, the discovery shows that about 2000 years after horses were first domesticated, people were still figuring out the best way to take care of their teeth using basic stone tools.
Over time, horse dental care in Mongolia became much more systematic, Taylor and colleagues found. In the 3000-year-old horse skulls the team studied, many horses still had their “wolf teeth”—small, pointy teeth that grow in the space between the teeth in the front of a horse’s mouth and those in their cheeks. Wolf teeth are an evolutionary relic, and horses no longer use them for chewing; many horses don’t even develop them.
In today’s horses, when wolf teeth do grow in, they occupy some of the space where the bit sits. The contact between the tooth and the metal riding equipment can cause pain and tooth damage, so both Western veterinarians and Mongolian herders routinely remove these teeth.
But back when ancient herders were making their first forays into horse dentistry, bits were still made of leather. With softer equipment, early domesticated horses could keep their wolf teeth.
Beginning around 750 B.C.E., however, nearly all of the horses Taylor’s group examined were missing their wolf teeth. In many of the skulls, they could see a healed hole where a wolf tooth had been pulled out. That shift coincides with the adoption of bronze and iron bits in Mongolia, which gave riders much greater control over their horses—but meant that wolf teeth had to go.
“They’re adapting to new ways of riding and new ways of using the horse,” says Alan Outram, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom who studies horse domestication and wasn’t involved in the new research. “People innovated fairly quickly.”
Without such innovations, world history might look a lot different. Metal bits enabled herders to use horses in war and for long distance travel, shaping Mongolia and its nomadic cultures in ways that ultimately led to the rise of Genghis Khan’s mounted army and the Mongol Empire that controlled most of Eurasia in the 13th century. “Horses absolutely transformed Mongolia into a cultural and economic center of the world,” Taylor says.
New York authorities are using dry ice to rid themselves of rat infestation
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE - raw story
22 JUN 2018 AT 17:10 ET
A rat tries to escape as Health Department workers place dry ice into rat burrows in New York's Sara D. Roosevelt Park on June 7, 2018 AFP / Don EMMERT
A snout and two little black eyes pop out from the hole, too late: A foot already covers them and the hole will be quickly filled with dry ice.
This new weapon in the hands of the New York City Health Department pest control team spells certain death for the rat.
Rick Simeone’s team is at work in Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side, one of Manhattan’s oldest districts.
The day before, they spent more than three hours locating all the entrances to the burrows, 67 in all. That means there could be more than 250 “rattus norvegicus,” the scientific name for common brown rats, living there.
Burrow by burrow, the team drops into each hole several small pellets resembling ice cubes but which are actually dry ice, carbon dioxide in solid form.
The surrounding air temperature ensures that the carbon dioxide reverts to gaseous form and asphyxiates the rats, which are usually asleep at this time of the day.
Normally, 90 to 100 percent of the rodents are exterminated.
“It’s a method that’s very effective in mostly green spaces, parks,” says Simeone, director of pest control for the New York City Health Department.
“You always hear that rats are winning the battle. But this turns it around.”
A 2014 study published by a PhD candidate at Columbia University estimated about two million rats in the US financial capital, which has a human population of more than 8.5 million.
The rats are most often seen scurrying in the street or in the subway. A celebrated video posted on YouTube in 2015 showed a rat dragging a slice of pizza on the subway stairs.
They live an average of only six or seven months in the port city, but a female can give birth to as many as 100 baby rats each year.
– Shutting the pantry door –
In 2012, John Stellberger became the first to use dry ice against rats in the United States, based on an idea from one of his employees.
The head of EHS Pest Control company, Stellberger recalls that he spoke of the idea with sanitation officials in Boston, who conducted a brief trial in 2016.
That pilot was suspended after several months pending an approval by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which came in June 2017.
At the beginning of this year after several months of tests, New York officially adopted the dry ice technique, joining Boston, Chicago and Washington.
Dry ice is only used in open spaces including parks and green areas, Simeone explained, because it would be too complicated to identify rat tunnels in the streets or residential areas where concrete is everywhere.
Aside from its effectiveness, dry ice presents no risk to wildlife in parks and public gardens, unlike rodenticide which had previously been the only weapon deployed against rats.
The newer method, which costs about the same as poison, corresponds to the times, Stellberger explains. Many of his customers ask him to get rid of rats without cruelty.
Simeone says the rodents “sort of go to sleep” as they asphyxiate.
But dry ice alone will not resolve New York’s rat problem, warns Simeone, as well as Robert Corrigan, the president of RMC Pest Management Consulting who is sometimes called the “Rat Czar” for his expertise in ridding the world of rodents.
In July, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio presented a major $32 million plan targeting rats and focused on the three most infected districts of the city.
The plan did not put dry ice in the forefront but rather the rats’ access to food, which is the heart of the problem. Each pest needs about 80 grams (2.5 ounces) of food a day to survive.
Intelligent garbage cans, closed containers, greater frequency of garbage collection, and collaboration among different city services — the program aims to put an end to the permanent pantry which New York streets have become for rats.
Corrigan, who worked with the Department of Health for 12 years, is pleased that authorities have finally chosen to tackle the question from a scientific rather than an empirical way.
“When I see a lot of rats on a block, instead of asking where should I put my poison, I ask: ‘Who’s feeding these rats?’,” Corrigan said to illustrate this change in philosophy.
As Simeone says, “eliminate the garbage” and you no longer need poison.
This new weapon in the hands of the New York City Health Department pest control team spells certain death for the rat.
Rick Simeone’s team is at work in Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side, one of Manhattan’s oldest districts.
The day before, they spent more than three hours locating all the entrances to the burrows, 67 in all. That means there could be more than 250 “rattus norvegicus,” the scientific name for common brown rats, living there.
Burrow by burrow, the team drops into each hole several small pellets resembling ice cubes but which are actually dry ice, carbon dioxide in solid form.
The surrounding air temperature ensures that the carbon dioxide reverts to gaseous form and asphyxiates the rats, which are usually asleep at this time of the day.
Normally, 90 to 100 percent of the rodents are exterminated.
“It’s a method that’s very effective in mostly green spaces, parks,” says Simeone, director of pest control for the New York City Health Department.
“You always hear that rats are winning the battle. But this turns it around.”
A 2014 study published by a PhD candidate at Columbia University estimated about two million rats in the US financial capital, which has a human population of more than 8.5 million.
The rats are most often seen scurrying in the street or in the subway. A celebrated video posted on YouTube in 2015 showed a rat dragging a slice of pizza on the subway stairs.
They live an average of only six or seven months in the port city, but a female can give birth to as many as 100 baby rats each year.
– Shutting the pantry door –
In 2012, John Stellberger became the first to use dry ice against rats in the United States, based on an idea from one of his employees.
The head of EHS Pest Control company, Stellberger recalls that he spoke of the idea with sanitation officials in Boston, who conducted a brief trial in 2016.
That pilot was suspended after several months pending an approval by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which came in June 2017.
At the beginning of this year after several months of tests, New York officially adopted the dry ice technique, joining Boston, Chicago and Washington.
Dry ice is only used in open spaces including parks and green areas, Simeone explained, because it would be too complicated to identify rat tunnels in the streets or residential areas where concrete is everywhere.
Aside from its effectiveness, dry ice presents no risk to wildlife in parks and public gardens, unlike rodenticide which had previously been the only weapon deployed against rats.
The newer method, which costs about the same as poison, corresponds to the times, Stellberger explains. Many of his customers ask him to get rid of rats without cruelty.
Simeone says the rodents “sort of go to sleep” as they asphyxiate.
But dry ice alone will not resolve New York’s rat problem, warns Simeone, as well as Robert Corrigan, the president of RMC Pest Management Consulting who is sometimes called the “Rat Czar” for his expertise in ridding the world of rodents.
In July, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio presented a major $32 million plan targeting rats and focused on the three most infected districts of the city.
The plan did not put dry ice in the forefront but rather the rats’ access to food, which is the heart of the problem. Each pest needs about 80 grams (2.5 ounces) of food a day to survive.
Intelligent garbage cans, closed containers, greater frequency of garbage collection, and collaboration among different city services — the program aims to put an end to the permanent pantry which New York streets have become for rats.
Corrigan, who worked with the Department of Health for 12 years, is pleased that authorities have finally chosen to tackle the question from a scientific rather than an empirical way.
“When I see a lot of rats on a block, instead of asking where should I put my poison, I ask: ‘Who’s feeding these rats?’,” Corrigan said to illustrate this change in philosophy.
As Simeone says, “eliminate the garbage” and you no longer need poison.
'Horror Plant' Discovered in Another US State
Giant hogweed, which can cause severe burns and blindness, has spread to Virginia
By Jenn Gidman, Newser Staff
Posted Jun 18, 2018 12:51 PM CDT
Don't touch a plant that looks like this. (Getty Images/dmitry_7)
(Newser) – What ScienceAlert calls a "giant horror plant" has made its way to yet another US state, and people who come in contact with it could feel the pain. Virginia Tech's Massey Herbarium tweeted last week it had IDed a giant hogweed (aka Heracleum mantegazzianum) plant in Clarke County, later updating that count on Facebook to 30 plants. The plant holds what Fox News deems a "toxic sap," which prevents human skin from protecting itself from the sun's rays, leading to severe burns that can be worsened by sweat. New York state's Department of Environmental Conservation lists other hazards that can result from coming in contact with the plant (as well as some photos of terrible burns), including long-term sunlight sensitivity, oozing blisters, scarring, and even permanent blindness if the sap makes its way into one's eyes.
And it doesn't take a lot to fall prey to the poison of the giant hogweed, which resembles an umbrella or mushroom made up of white flowers: A simple brush up against its bristles can spur a reaction as soon as 15 minutes later, with "sensitivity peak between 30 minutes and two hours after contact," per the DEC. It's difficult to stop the spreading of the invasive plant, which is native to the Caucasus region near Russia and was introduced to the US sometime in the early 20th century. Virginia environmental officials are warning the plant may have been spotted in other parts of the state and for people who come across it to not let their bare skin make contact. It also offers a guide for very carefully getting rid of the plant. (Giant hogweed has been found in at least a dozen other states.)
And it doesn't take a lot to fall prey to the poison of the giant hogweed, which resembles an umbrella or mushroom made up of white flowers: A simple brush up against its bristles can spur a reaction as soon as 15 minutes later, with "sensitivity peak between 30 minutes and two hours after contact," per the DEC. It's difficult to stop the spreading of the invasive plant, which is native to the Caucasus region near Russia and was introduced to the US sometime in the early 20th century. Virginia environmental officials are warning the plant may have been spotted in other parts of the state and for people who come across it to not let their bare skin make contact. It also offers a guide for very carefully getting rid of the plant. (Giant hogweed has been found in at least a dozen other states.)
Military Report: UFOs May Have Attempted Rendezvous With Giant Undersea Object
Water beneath a UFO looked like “something rapidly submerging from the surface.”
By Ed Mazza - huff post
05/29/2018 05:28 am ET
New details are emerging about a UFO sighting recorded by the U.S. military in the waters off the coast of California 14 years ago.
The 2004 incident involving the “Tic Tac” UFO, named because it was a fast-moving white object that resembled one of the mints, was first revealed late last year by The New York Times and The Washington Post.
KLAS, the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas, obtained a copy of a report “prepared by and for the military” in 2009 that details multiple interactions with anomalous aerial vehicles (AAVs) over two weeks in late 2004. The report also discussed the high speed and advanced cloaking capabilities that allowed the AAVs to evade observation and detection.
“The AAVs would descend ‘very rapidly’ from approximately 60,000 feet down to approximately 50 feet in a matter of seconds,” the report noted.
Pilots indicated there may have been something in the water as well. One pilot detailed a disturbance up to the size of a football field:
“The disturbance appeared to be 50 to 100 meters in diameter and close to round. It was the only area and type of whitewater activity that could be seen and reminded him of images of something rapidly submerging from the surface like a submarine or a ship sinking.”
The disturbed area also resembled shoal water around “a barely submerged reef or island,” but as the pilot flew away, he could see that the disturbance had cleared and seas calmed. Although he never made visual contact with whatever caused the disturbance, the report stated that it may have been caused by an AAV, which was unseen due to cloaking “or invisible to the human eye.”
Another pilot described a disturbance beneath the water of an AAV that “looked like frothy waves and foam almost as if the water was boiling.”
A submarine in the vicinity did not detect anything unusual underwater. If an object was indeed in the Pacific Ocean, “it would represent a highly advanced capability given the advanced capability of our sensors.”
One aircrew reporting on the events received “a high level of ridicule” about the incident, the report noted.
The military did not confirm nor deny any of the details in the report and had little to say about other recent footage, including a video released in March of a 2015 encounter.
The videos of the “Tic Tac” UFO caused a sensation when they were first released last year as the Times reported on a secret Pentagon UFO program that has now concluded with no evidence of alien life visiting the Earth. However, Luis Elizondo, the former military intelligence official who led the program, indicated that there was more information the public had not yet seen.
“My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone,” he told CNN last December.
Other possible explanations include advanced capabilities by the U.S. military or foreign governments that have not yet been made public.
The 2004 incident involving the “Tic Tac” UFO, named because it was a fast-moving white object that resembled one of the mints, was first revealed late last year by The New York Times and The Washington Post.
KLAS, the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas, obtained a copy of a report “prepared by and for the military” in 2009 that details multiple interactions with anomalous aerial vehicles (AAVs) over two weeks in late 2004. The report also discussed the high speed and advanced cloaking capabilities that allowed the AAVs to evade observation and detection.
“The AAVs would descend ‘very rapidly’ from approximately 60,000 feet down to approximately 50 feet in a matter of seconds,” the report noted.
Pilots indicated there may have been something in the water as well. One pilot detailed a disturbance up to the size of a football field:
“The disturbance appeared to be 50 to 100 meters in diameter and close to round. It was the only area and type of whitewater activity that could be seen and reminded him of images of something rapidly submerging from the surface like a submarine or a ship sinking.”
The disturbed area also resembled shoal water around “a barely submerged reef or island,” but as the pilot flew away, he could see that the disturbance had cleared and seas calmed. Although he never made visual contact with whatever caused the disturbance, the report stated that it may have been caused by an AAV, which was unseen due to cloaking “or invisible to the human eye.”
Another pilot described a disturbance beneath the water of an AAV that “looked like frothy waves and foam almost as if the water was boiling.”
A submarine in the vicinity did not detect anything unusual underwater. If an object was indeed in the Pacific Ocean, “it would represent a highly advanced capability given the advanced capability of our sensors.”
One aircrew reporting on the events received “a high level of ridicule” about the incident, the report noted.
The military did not confirm nor deny any of the details in the report and had little to say about other recent footage, including a video released in March of a 2015 encounter.
The videos of the “Tic Tac” UFO caused a sensation when they were first released last year as the Times reported on a secret Pentagon UFO program that has now concluded with no evidence of alien life visiting the Earth. However, Luis Elizondo, the former military intelligence official who led the program, indicated that there was more information the public had not yet seen.
“My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone,” he told CNN last December.
Other possible explanations include advanced capabilities by the U.S. military or foreign governments that have not yet been made public.
Yes, giant predatory worms really are invading France
The Conversation - raw story
30 MAY 2018 AT 07:18 ET
A giant worm Bipalium kewense, prepares to kill and eat an earthworm. Pierre Gros, CC BY
One of the consequences of globalisation and increased international trade in goods is the introduction of invasive species. In France, we have seen recently the arrival and proliferation of the “devil bug”, the Asian hornet and the Siberian chipmunk, as well as land flatworms such as Platydemus manokwari (from New Guinea) and Obama nungara(from South America).
These flatworms, which move from continent to continent as plants and soil are transported, are generally of modest size, about 5 cm long – they can be held in the hand, although it is a bad idea to touch them. Among them, however, is a group of “giant” species, all of which have a “hammerhead”: the bipaliines, belonging to the genera Bipalium and Diversibipalium. The largest can reach 1 metre in length, and are mostly from Asia.
40 centimetres long
Our team has just published the results of five years of work with the help of citizen scientists, who sent us photographs and also specimens. More than 700 reports of land flatworms were received, of which more than 100 were bipaliines. Two of the species present in France, and sometimes very abundant, can reach 40 cm long. Think about this before you continue: if you’re reading this article on your laptop, 40 cm is easily longer than your screen is wide…
Land flatworms consume soil fauna and pose a threat to soil biodiversity and ecological balance. Species of Bipalium feed on earthworms, and are able to kill and eat prey much larger than themselves. To do so, the Bipalium have a chemical armament including tetrodotoxin, one of the most powerful neurotoxins in the world, a thousand times more so than cyanide.
Tetrodotoxin is the weapon of choice of the fugu, the poisonous fish beloved in Japan and eaten very carefully.
While our survey of land flatworms was originally intended only for mainland France, we received reports from the French overseas territories of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy, French Guiana, Réunion, Mayotte and Polynesia, as well as from countries such as Switzerland, Monaco and Portugal. Unexpectedly, some of the citizens’ testimonials date back 20 years, as volunteers sent us older photographs and even videos from as far back to 1999.[...]
These flatworms, which move from continent to continent as plants and soil are transported, are generally of modest size, about 5 cm long – they can be held in the hand, although it is a bad idea to touch them. Among them, however, is a group of “giant” species, all of which have a “hammerhead”: the bipaliines, belonging to the genera Bipalium and Diversibipalium. The largest can reach 1 metre in length, and are mostly from Asia.
40 centimetres long
Our team has just published the results of five years of work with the help of citizen scientists, who sent us photographs and also specimens. More than 700 reports of land flatworms were received, of which more than 100 were bipaliines. Two of the species present in France, and sometimes very abundant, can reach 40 cm long. Think about this before you continue: if you’re reading this article on your laptop, 40 cm is easily longer than your screen is wide…
Land flatworms consume soil fauna and pose a threat to soil biodiversity and ecological balance. Species of Bipalium feed on earthworms, and are able to kill and eat prey much larger than themselves. To do so, the Bipalium have a chemical armament including tetrodotoxin, one of the most powerful neurotoxins in the world, a thousand times more so than cyanide.
Tetrodotoxin is the weapon of choice of the fugu, the poisonous fish beloved in Japan and eaten very carefully.
While our survey of land flatworms was originally intended only for mainland France, we received reports from the French overseas territories of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy, French Guiana, Réunion, Mayotte and Polynesia, as well as from countries such as Switzerland, Monaco and Portugal. Unexpectedly, some of the citizens’ testimonials date back 20 years, as volunteers sent us older photographs and even videos from as far back to 1999.[...]
Scientists plan DNA hunt for Loch Ness monster next month
Reuters Staff
MAY 23, 2018 / 3:11 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - A global team of scientists plans to scour the icy depths of Loch Ness next month using environmental DNA (eDNA) in an experiment that may discover whether Scotland’s fabled monster really does, or did, exist.
The use of eDNA sampling is already well established as a tool for monitoring marine life like whales and sharks.
Whenever a creature moves through its environment, it leaves behind tiny fragments of DNA from skin, scales, feathers, fur, faeces and urine.
“This DNA can be captured, sequenced and then used to identify that creature by comparing the sequence obtained to large databases of known genetic sequences from hundreds of thousands of different organisms,” said team spokesman Professor Neil Gemmell of the University of Otago in New Zealand.
The first written record of a monster relates to the Irish monk St Columba, who is said to have banished a “water beast” to the depths of the River Ness in the 6th century.
The most famous picture of Nessie, known as the “surgeon’s photo”, was taken in 1934 and showed a head on a long neck emerging from the water. It was revealed 60 years later to have been a hoax that used a sea monster model attached to a toy submarine.
Countless unsuccessful attempts to track down the monster have been made in the years since, notably in 2003 when the BBC funded an extensive scientific search that used 600 sonar beams and satellite tracking to sweep the full length of the loch.
The most recent attempt was two years ago when a high-tech marine drone found a monster - but not the one it was looking for. The discovery turned out to be replica used in the 1970 film “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes”, which sank nearly 50 years ago.
Gemmell’s team, which comprises scientists from Britain, Denmark, the United States, Australia and France, is keen to stress the expedition is more than just a monster hunt.
“While the prospect of looking for evidence of the Loch Ness monster is the hook to this project, there is an extraordinary amount of new knowledge that we will gain from the work about organisms that inhabit Loch Ness,” Gemmell said on his university website.
He predicts they will document new species of life, particularly bacteria, and will provide important data on the extent of several new invasive species recently seen in the loch, such as Pacific pink salmon.
Their findings are expected to be presented in January 2019.
The use of eDNA sampling is already well established as a tool for monitoring marine life like whales and sharks.
Whenever a creature moves through its environment, it leaves behind tiny fragments of DNA from skin, scales, feathers, fur, faeces and urine.
“This DNA can be captured, sequenced and then used to identify that creature by comparing the sequence obtained to large databases of known genetic sequences from hundreds of thousands of different organisms,” said team spokesman Professor Neil Gemmell of the University of Otago in New Zealand.
The first written record of a monster relates to the Irish monk St Columba, who is said to have banished a “water beast” to the depths of the River Ness in the 6th century.
The most famous picture of Nessie, known as the “surgeon’s photo”, was taken in 1934 and showed a head on a long neck emerging from the water. It was revealed 60 years later to have been a hoax that used a sea monster model attached to a toy submarine.
Countless unsuccessful attempts to track down the monster have been made in the years since, notably in 2003 when the BBC funded an extensive scientific search that used 600 sonar beams and satellite tracking to sweep the full length of the loch.
The most recent attempt was two years ago when a high-tech marine drone found a monster - but not the one it was looking for. The discovery turned out to be replica used in the 1970 film “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes”, which sank nearly 50 years ago.
Gemmell’s team, which comprises scientists from Britain, Denmark, the United States, Australia and France, is keen to stress the expedition is more than just a monster hunt.
“While the prospect of looking for evidence of the Loch Ness monster is the hook to this project, there is an extraordinary amount of new knowledge that we will gain from the work about organisms that inhabit Loch Ness,” Gemmell said on his university website.
He predicts they will document new species of life, particularly bacteria, and will provide important data on the extent of several new invasive species recently seen in the loch, such as Pacific pink salmon.
Their findings are expected to be presented in January 2019.
GREEN-BLOODED LIZARDS MAY HOLD KEY TO NEW VIRUS FIGHTERS
MAY 19, 2018
CLAIRE WANG - who.what.why
Green tree skink. Photo credit: Chris Austin / Louisiana State University / NSF
Recent findings about the lineage of a mystifying green-blooded lizard, a toxin-resistant amphibian prevalent in the rainforests of New Guinea, may aid the development of new antiviral treatments.
Famous for its glossy, emerald coating, the prasinohaema lizard is a type of skink, and bears an unsettling resemblance to the offspring of a snake and a frog. A group of scientists ventured into the jungles of New Guinea to harvest DNA samples from 52 species of skinks, including six green-blooded varieties.
In mapping out an evolutionary tree of the native amphibian, researchers discovered that green blood actually developed in four groups of lizards at different time periods, according to a paper published in Science Advances. Given that multiple lineages of lizards turned green — all seemingly descended from red-blooded ancestors — experts surmised that green blood may have been favored by natural selection, and likely contains evolutionary benefits.
The lizard’s fluorescent lime-green coloration is caused by elevated levels of biliverdin, a toxic bile pigment known to trigger jaundice; in sufficient quantities it overwhelms the vermilion hue of red blood cells. To put that into context, the bile concentration in a green lizard — higher than in any other animal — can kill a human 40 times over.
Yet the lizards are in remarkably good health. Meanwhile, jaundice, manifested by yellowing of the skin, can be virulent in other species, including humans; one serious complication is liver failure. But this toxicity has an upside: a similar liver pigment, bilirubin, is thought to be lethal to malaria parasites in humans.
Zachary Rodriguez, the lead author of the study, said that the group will work to identify the genes that are responsible for the green blood.
“Understanding the underlying physiological changes that have allowed these lizards to remain jaundice-free may translate to non-traditional approaches to specific health problems,” Rodriguez said.
Famous for its glossy, emerald coating, the prasinohaema lizard is a type of skink, and bears an unsettling resemblance to the offspring of a snake and a frog. A group of scientists ventured into the jungles of New Guinea to harvest DNA samples from 52 species of skinks, including six green-blooded varieties.
In mapping out an evolutionary tree of the native amphibian, researchers discovered that green blood actually developed in four groups of lizards at different time periods, according to a paper published in Science Advances. Given that multiple lineages of lizards turned green — all seemingly descended from red-blooded ancestors — experts surmised that green blood may have been favored by natural selection, and likely contains evolutionary benefits.
The lizard’s fluorescent lime-green coloration is caused by elevated levels of biliverdin, a toxic bile pigment known to trigger jaundice; in sufficient quantities it overwhelms the vermilion hue of red blood cells. To put that into context, the bile concentration in a green lizard — higher than in any other animal — can kill a human 40 times over.
Yet the lizards are in remarkably good health. Meanwhile, jaundice, manifested by yellowing of the skin, can be virulent in other species, including humans; one serious complication is liver failure. But this toxicity has an upside: a similar liver pigment, bilirubin, is thought to be lethal to malaria parasites in humans.
Zachary Rodriguez, the lead author of the study, said that the group will work to identify the genes that are responsible for the green blood.
“Understanding the underlying physiological changes that have allowed these lizards to remain jaundice-free may translate to non-traditional approaches to specific health problems,” Rodriguez said.
How does a one-ton dinosaur hatch its eggs? Carefully
Agence France-Presse - raw story
16 MAY 2018 AT 07:32 ET
Feathered carnivores called oviraptorosaurs did not sit directly on their eggs, so as not to crush them, a new study found NAGOYA UNIVERSITY/AFP / Masato HATTORI
Most dinosaurs buried their eggs and hoped for the best, but some species — including a few hefty ones — built nests and pampered unhatched offspring much as birds do today, researchers reported Wednesday.
Which raises an intriguing question: How did creatures nearly as heavy as a hippo brood eggs without squashing them?
“Large species may have not sat directly on their eggs,” explained Kohei Tanaka, a researcher at Nagoya University Museum and lead author of a study in Biology Letters that details the incubation strategy of feathered carnivores called oviraptorosaurs.
“Eggs are arranged in a circular pattern with a large central opening,” he told AFP, describing clutches of potato-shaped eggs found in China up to half-a-metre (20 inches) long and weighing up to seven kilos (15 pounds) each.
“The dinosaurs likely sat in the middle of the nest so that they didn’t crush the eggs.”
That didn’t keep the unborn dinos warm, but it may have protected them from predators and the elements, Tanaka speculated.
Modern birds descend from a large group of mostly carnivorous dinosaurs called theropods, all of which — including the fearsome T-rex — are thought to have laid eggs.
But very few theropods built nests, which is why the brooding displayed by oviraptorosaurs — a clade of several dozen species ranging from the turkey-sized Caudipteryx to the 1.4-tonne Gigantoraptor — is so important.
– Sitting on eggshells –
“The incubation behaviour of birds — such as adults sitting in the nest and possibly brooding — likely evolved from theropod dinosaurs,” said Tanaka. “Our research provides additional evidence.”
Oviraptorosaurs lived during the Cretaceous period, the 80 million years leading up to the asteroid or comet strike blamed for wiping out non-avian, terrestrial dinosaurs.
They had short snouts and beak-like jaws with few or no teeth, and some sported bony crests on their heads. Evidence of generous plumage — especially on the tail — has been found on several species.
Besides the spoke-like arrangement of the fossilised eggs, the eggshell itself provided further evidence that large oviraptorosaurs sat near their unborn progeny, not on top of them.
The eggs of big dinos, the researchers discovered, were more fragile than the eggs of smaller ones, which were clearly designed to carry more weight.
How big is too big to park a dino butt on top of unhatched eggs?
“That’s hard to say,” said Tanaka. “There is a gap in the data, but the threshold should be between 200 and 500 kilos (440 and 1,110 pounds).”
Oviraptorosaurs were falsely accused by early paleontologists of stealing the eggs so often found along side their fossil remains, giving rise to their name: “egg-thief lizards.”
Which raises an intriguing question: How did creatures nearly as heavy as a hippo brood eggs without squashing them?
“Large species may have not sat directly on their eggs,” explained Kohei Tanaka, a researcher at Nagoya University Museum and lead author of a study in Biology Letters that details the incubation strategy of feathered carnivores called oviraptorosaurs.
“Eggs are arranged in a circular pattern with a large central opening,” he told AFP, describing clutches of potato-shaped eggs found in China up to half-a-metre (20 inches) long and weighing up to seven kilos (15 pounds) each.
“The dinosaurs likely sat in the middle of the nest so that they didn’t crush the eggs.”
That didn’t keep the unborn dinos warm, but it may have protected them from predators and the elements, Tanaka speculated.
Modern birds descend from a large group of mostly carnivorous dinosaurs called theropods, all of which — including the fearsome T-rex — are thought to have laid eggs.
But very few theropods built nests, which is why the brooding displayed by oviraptorosaurs — a clade of several dozen species ranging from the turkey-sized Caudipteryx to the 1.4-tonne Gigantoraptor — is so important.
– Sitting on eggshells –
“The incubation behaviour of birds — such as adults sitting in the nest and possibly brooding — likely evolved from theropod dinosaurs,” said Tanaka. “Our research provides additional evidence.”
Oviraptorosaurs lived during the Cretaceous period, the 80 million years leading up to the asteroid or comet strike blamed for wiping out non-avian, terrestrial dinosaurs.
They had short snouts and beak-like jaws with few or no teeth, and some sported bony crests on their heads. Evidence of generous plumage — especially on the tail — has been found on several species.
Besides the spoke-like arrangement of the fossilised eggs, the eggshell itself provided further evidence that large oviraptorosaurs sat near their unborn progeny, not on top of them.
The eggs of big dinos, the researchers discovered, were more fragile than the eggs of smaller ones, which were clearly designed to carry more weight.
How big is too big to park a dino butt on top of unhatched eggs?
“That’s hard to say,” said Tanaka. “There is a gap in the data, but the threshold should be between 200 and 500 kilos (440 and 1,110 pounds).”
Oviraptorosaurs were falsely accused by early paleontologists of stealing the eggs so often found along side their fossil remains, giving rise to their name: “egg-thief lizards.”
Hunt for MH370 Turns Up Indian Ocean's Deepest Wrecks
They're 2.3 miles below the ocean's surface
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted May 4, 2018 8:40 AM CDT
This undated image provided by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau shows debris of a ship, maritime historians said on Thursday. The wreckage is possibly the brig W. Gordon or the barque Magdala, according to incomplete records of ships lost in that period. (ATSB via AP)
(NEWSER) – A four-year search of the depths of the Indian Ocean has failed to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. But the unprecedented sonar hunt for the missing airliner might be close to solving 19th-century mysteries—the locations of two sailing ships that vanished with cargoes of coal, reports the AP. Maritime historians on Thursday published a short list of the possible identities of two shipwrecks found in 2015. They're 22 miles apart and 1,440 miles southwest of Australia in debris fields scattered with coal more than 2.3 miles below the ocean's surface. The searchers had a closer look with underwater drones that took photographs of both sites and retrieved a coal sample from one. Analysis showed the coal was probably from Britain, a Western Australian Museum report said.
The museum's examination of the images of the scattered remnants of a wooden ship discovered on May 19, 2015, found it was possibly the brig W. Gordon or the barque Magdala. W. Gordon was on a voyage from Scotland to Australia when it disappeared in 1877 with 10 crew aboard; Magdala was lost in 1882 while sailing from Wales to Indonesia. An iron wreck found on Dec. 19, 2015, was most likely the barque West Ridge, which vanished while sailing from England to India with 28 sailors in 1883. The museum's curator of maritime archaeology, Ross Anderson, said he doubted that the identities would ever be confirmed without a wealthy private benefactor because of their depth and remoteness. "These are the deepest wrecks so far located in the Indian Ocean," he said. The AP has much more here.
The museum's examination of the images of the scattered remnants of a wooden ship discovered on May 19, 2015, found it was possibly the brig W. Gordon or the barque Magdala. W. Gordon was on a voyage from Scotland to Australia when it disappeared in 1877 with 10 crew aboard; Magdala was lost in 1882 while sailing from Wales to Indonesia. An iron wreck found on Dec. 19, 2015, was most likely the barque West Ridge, which vanished while sailing from England to India with 28 sailors in 1883. The museum's curator of maritime archaeology, Ross Anderson, said he doubted that the identities would ever be confirmed without a wealthy private benefactor because of their depth and remoteness. "These are the deepest wrecks so far located in the Indian Ocean," he said. The AP has much more here.
His Ex Used His Sperm Without His Permission. Now He Owes Child Support
Court rules against German man in odd case
By Evann Gastaldo, Newser Staff
Posted May 3, 2018 12:35 PM CDT
(NEWSER) – A married German couple, identified in the press only as Karl and Inge, fertilized Inge's eggs with Karl's sperm and froze them five years ago, intending to have children someday. Instead, they divorced. Inge decided to have a baby anyway, allegedly forging Karl's signature two times on paperwork in order to move forward with in-vitro fertilization—and after the baby boy was born, biological father Karl found he was legally obligated to pay child support. He sued, but a regional court in Munich ruled against him Wednesday, DW
reports.
The couple had given written permission for the eggs to be frozen; in his lawsuit, Karl said he revoked his permission for them to be used after the couple's divorce, but the court ruled that he was not clear enough when he called to revoke consent. Karl also argued the clinic should instead be responsible for the child's financial support, but the court found that the clinic had no reason to question whether Karl's signature had been forged. In an odd post-script, DW notes that the court's medical malpractice section made the ruling and that it is not legally binding.
reports.
The couple had given written permission for the eggs to be frozen; in his lawsuit, Karl said he revoked his permission for them to be used after the couple's divorce, but the court ruled that he was not clear enough when he called to revoke consent. Karl also argued the clinic should instead be responsible for the child's financial support, but the court found that the clinic had no reason to question whether Karl's signature had been forged. In an odd post-script, DW notes that the court's medical malpractice section made the ruling and that it is not legally binding.
Tiny Frogs' No. 1 Option: Hold in Pee All Winter
Behold the wood frog, which literally freezes to 'death' and comes back to life
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted May 2, 2018 9:20 AM CDT
This April 24, 2018, photo shows a wood frog in Ohio. (Clara do Amaral, Mount St. Joseph University via AP)
(NEWSER) – If you've ever been unable to find a bathroom in a moment of need, you know the gotta-go feeling. That's nothing compared to the wood frog, which doesn't urinate all winter; in Alaska, that's eight months without peeing, reports the AP. Scientists have figured out how they do it, or rather how they survive without doing it. Recycling urea—the main waste in urine—into useful nitrogen keeps the frogs alive as they hibernate and freeze. Urea protects cells and tissues, even as the critters' hearts, brains, and bloodstreams stop. The frogs can do it because special microbes in their guts recycle the urea, according to a study in Tuesday's Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Some call the frog pee a type of antifreeze, but study co-author Jon Costanzo, a Miami University zoologist, bristles at that. "Their eyes are white. Their skin is frosty. They're like little rocks. They're frozen," Costanzo says.
Costanzo's team captured wood frogs during active times, then turned them into frog-sicles under controlled conditions. Costanzo and colleagues looked at the bacteria that live in frog guts. One type of bacteria, Pseudomonas, soars in the winter but can't be seen in active frogs. If the frogs were human, they would be called dead, Costanzo notes; some Alaskan wood frogs get as cold as zero degrees. But once the temperatures warm, they come back to life. Other animals don't urinate when they hibernate, but mammals don't do the big freeze quite like wood frogs, which wake up in still-cold February to mate. "This is stress that would definitely kill any mammal," Costanzo says. "People are fascinated by bear hibernation, but in my book any animal that allows itself to freeze solid and is able to ... go about its business like nothing happened, to me that's about as cool as it gets."
Costanzo's team captured wood frogs during active times, then turned them into frog-sicles under controlled conditions. Costanzo and colleagues looked at the bacteria that live in frog guts. One type of bacteria, Pseudomonas, soars in the winter but can't be seen in active frogs. If the frogs were human, they would be called dead, Costanzo notes; some Alaskan wood frogs get as cold as zero degrees. But once the temperatures warm, they come back to life. Other animals don't urinate when they hibernate, but mammals don't do the big freeze quite like wood frogs, which wake up in still-cold February to mate. "This is stress that would definitely kill any mammal," Costanzo says. "People are fascinated by bear hibernation, but in my book any animal that allows itself to freeze solid and is able to ... go about its business like nothing happened, to me that's about as cool as it gets."
Funky, Green-Haired Turtle Is in Trouble
Mary River Turtle of Australia is under threat of extinction
By Arden Dier, Newser Staff
Posted Apr 16, 2018 10:27 AM CDT
The Mary River Turtle. (Chris Van Wyk)
(NEWSER) – You'd think its punk-rock hair would be enough to bring an Australian turtle fans, even before they learn of its ability to breathe through its genitals. But if overlooked now, researchers hope the Mary River Turtle's spot on a list of unique, endangered reptiles will bring necessary attention before it's too late. Found only in the Mary River of Queensland, the docile turtle that spouts green algae resembling spiky hair is in the 29th spot on the Zoological Society of London's Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) list, which identifies 572 reptiles in all. Its cousin, the Madagascan big-headed turtle, takes the top spot, with a score denoting it as more at risk than any other amphibian, bird, or mammal in the world, per the Press Association.
"Just as with tigers, rhinos, and elephants, it is vital we do our utmost to save these unique and too often overlooked animals," says an EDGE coordinator, noting many endangered reptiles "are the sole survivors of ancient lineages" that "stretch back to the age of the dinosaurs." In the case of the Mary River Turtle—which uses gill-like organs to breathe when underwater—"you have to go back about 50 million years to find a closely related species," a researcher tells Reuters. Though the Mary River Turtle's total population isn't known, numbers plummeted beginning in the 1960s, when nest sites were pillaged and the reptiles sold as pets. Advocates hope the new listing will help in the push for better protection of its habitat.
"Just as with tigers, rhinos, and elephants, it is vital we do our utmost to save these unique and too often overlooked animals," says an EDGE coordinator, noting many endangered reptiles "are the sole survivors of ancient lineages" that "stretch back to the age of the dinosaurs." In the case of the Mary River Turtle—which uses gill-like organs to breathe when underwater—"you have to go back about 50 million years to find a closely related species," a researcher tells Reuters. Though the Mary River Turtle's total population isn't known, numbers plummeted beginning in the 1960s, when nest sites were pillaged and the reptiles sold as pets. Advocates hope the new listing will help in the push for better protection of its habitat.
Rats can accurately detect this disease in humans
Newsweek - raw story
09 APR 2018 AT 15:09 ET
Rats can detect whether children have tuberculosis (TB)—a deadly infectious disease which generally affects the lungs—and are more effective at this task than commonly used tests, according to a new study published in the journal Pediatric Research.
Inspired by anecdotal reports that TB patients give off a specific odor, a team led by Georgies Mgode from the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania trained African giant pouched rats to sniff samples of saliva and mucus—known as sputum samples—from 982 children under five infected with the disease. These children had already been given standard smear tests at clinics in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam.
Of these children, the smear tests showed that 34 children had TB. However, when the same samples were given to the rats, a further 57 cases were found. These extra cases were later confirmed with a more advanced fluorescence microscope test and the relevant clinics were notified so that infected patients who had been missed by the first examinations could receive treatment.
The rats' abilities are promising, according to Mgode, because current methods for detecting TB are far from perfect, especially in less-affluent nations in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia where the disease is rife and cheap smear tests are commonly used.
The accuracy of these smear tests depends on the quality of the sputum samples, but often, very young children cannot provide enough saliva or mucus to be analyzed.
"As a result, many children with TB are not bacteriologically confirmed or even diagnosed, which then has major implications for their possible successful treatment," Mgode said in a statement. "There is a need for new diagnostic tests to better detect TB in children, especially in low and middle-income countries."
The new study builds on previous work conducted in Tanzania and Mozambique where African giant pouched rats were taught to pick up the scent of the tuberculosis bacterium using a similar technique to how rats are taught to trained to detect the odors released by landmines.
Tuberculosis is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, killing 1.7 million people in 2016. More than 95% of these deaths occur in low and middle-income countries.
Inspired by anecdotal reports that TB patients give off a specific odor, a team led by Georgies Mgode from the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania trained African giant pouched rats to sniff samples of saliva and mucus—known as sputum samples—from 982 children under five infected with the disease. These children had already been given standard smear tests at clinics in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam.
Of these children, the smear tests showed that 34 children had TB. However, when the same samples were given to the rats, a further 57 cases were found. These extra cases were later confirmed with a more advanced fluorescence microscope test and the relevant clinics were notified so that infected patients who had been missed by the first examinations could receive treatment.
The rats' abilities are promising, according to Mgode, because current methods for detecting TB are far from perfect, especially in less-affluent nations in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia where the disease is rife and cheap smear tests are commonly used.
The accuracy of these smear tests depends on the quality of the sputum samples, but often, very young children cannot provide enough saliva or mucus to be analyzed.
"As a result, many children with TB are not bacteriologically confirmed or even diagnosed, which then has major implications for their possible successful treatment," Mgode said in a statement. "There is a need for new diagnostic tests to better detect TB in children, especially in low and middle-income countries."
The new study builds on previous work conducted in Tanzania and Mozambique where African giant pouched rats were taught to pick up the scent of the tuberculosis bacterium using a similar technique to how rats are taught to trained to detect the odors released by landmines.
Tuberculosis is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, killing 1.7 million people in 2016. More than 95% of these deaths occur in low and middle-income countries.
Study Reveals Why Some Dinosaurs Had Horns
Hint: It's the same reason peacocks have such impressive tail feathers
By Michael Harthorne, Newser Staff
Posted Mar 23, 2018 5:39 PM CDT
A model of a skull of new dinosaur species named Spiclypeus shipporum is displayed at the Research and Collections Facility of Canadian Museum of Nature in Gatineau, Quebec, Wednesday, May 18, 2016. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP)
(NEWSER) – The horns and frills of dinosaurs like Triceratops and Styracosaurusweren't for defending against predators, regulating body temperature, or even attaching fearsome battle helmets, according to a study published this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Rather researchers found the defining features of ceratopsian dinosaurs were actually for attracting mates. "Individuals are advertising their quality or genetic make-up," researcher Andrew Knapp tells the BBC. "We see that in peacocks too, with their tail feathers." Business Insider reports there are over 70 species of ceratopsian dinosaurs, and their horns and frills vary widely. Researchers behind the recent study had set out to see if the purpose of the horns and frills was to let different species tell each other apart for mating purposes (previous research had ruled out temperature regulation and defense).
After looking at 350 different traits from 46 ceratopsian species, researchers concluded that wasn't the case. In modern animals, features for species to differentiate between each other are typically subtler and more evolutionary work goes into features used to attract members of the same species. The relatively speedy evolution of horns and frills was also another clue as to their purpose. "Modern computer models have suggested that sexual selection can promote rapid speciation, adaptation, and extinction," Knapp says in a press release. As for both male and female ceratopsian dinosaurs having horns and frills, Knapp says it could "tell us a lot about how these animals lived." For example, they may have been co-parents when it came to raising their young. (The Sahara Desert revealed the "Holy Grail" of dinosaur discoveries.)
After looking at 350 different traits from 46 ceratopsian species, researchers concluded that wasn't the case. In modern animals, features for species to differentiate between each other are typically subtler and more evolutionary work goes into features used to attract members of the same species. The relatively speedy evolution of horns and frills was also another clue as to their purpose. "Modern computer models have suggested that sexual selection can promote rapid speciation, adaptation, and extinction," Knapp says in a press release. As for both male and female ceratopsian dinosaurs having horns and frills, Knapp says it could "tell us a lot about how these animals lived." For example, they may have been co-parents when it came to raising their young. (The Sahara Desert revealed the "Holy Grail" of dinosaur discoveries.)
200K Mice Plagued the Islands. Amazingly, There Are Now None
A seeming victory for biodiversity on New Zealand's Antipodes Islands
By Jenn Gidman, Newser Staff
Posted Mar 23, 2018 9:14 AM CDT
No more of these in the Antipodes. (Getty Images/faslooff)
(NEWSER) – A subantarctic archipelago is making "huge news": The New Zealand Heraldreports there are officially no more mice on the country's Antipodes Islands, which once housed up to 200,000 of the rodents. They caused a big threat to the World Heritage Site by preying on native birds, bugs, and plants, and the five-year effort to do away with them got an assist from the public, with the "Million Mouse Project" fundraising campaign bringing six figures. The Department of Conservation explains that cereal bait laced with rodent toxin was dropped via helicopter on the island during the winter of 2016. A team scoured the island last month looking for any mice and found none. "This is huge news for conservation both in New Zealand and internationally," says New Zealand Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage.
She says more than two dozen types of birds, 21 uncommon plants, and more than 150 insect species will benefit. Both Radio New Zealand and NPR note the mice originally found their way to the Antipodes either on 19th-century ships or via a shipwreck and proceeded to purge the island of at least two insect species, as well as to displace some seabirds to other islands. The initiative in the Antipodes isn't a stand-alone: The island nation has also gotten rid of other invasive species in the name of boosting biodiversity, including goats, rats, cats, rabbits, and a local meat-eating weasel. New Zealand's ultimate goal is to rid itself completely of all invasive pests by 2050, per Nature. (Scientists are bashing in the heads of invasive iguanas in Florida.)
She says more than two dozen types of birds, 21 uncommon plants, and more than 150 insect species will benefit. Both Radio New Zealand and NPR note the mice originally found their way to the Antipodes either on 19th-century ships or via a shipwreck and proceeded to purge the island of at least two insect species, as well as to displace some seabirds to other islands. The initiative in the Antipodes isn't a stand-alone: The island nation has also gotten rid of other invasive species in the name of boosting biodiversity, including goats, rats, cats, rabbits, and a local meat-eating weasel. New Zealand's ultimate goal is to rid itself completely of all invasive pests by 2050, per Nature. (Scientists are bashing in the heads of invasive iguanas in Florida.)
Platypus milk: unlikely weapon in fight against superbugs
Australian biologists solve the puzzle of why monotreme’s milk is so potent against bacteria
Kelsey Munro
the guardian
Thu 15 Mar 2018 02.05 EDT
They are duck-billed, egg-laying, semi-aquatic mammals with poisonous spurs on their webbed feet: the Australian platypus is so weird that early European zoologists thought it must be an elaborate hoax.
But now a team of Australian scientists have found something else unique to the strange little animals: their milk has a novel chemical structure that could be used to fight superbugs.
Molecular biologists from Australia’s national science agency CSIRO have isolated the monotreme lactation protein structure for the first time, identifying a novel three-dimensional fold that the researchers say could lead to the creation of a new type of antibiotics.
“Platypus are such weird animals that it would make sense for them to have weird biochemistry,” said Janet Newman, CSIRO scientist and lead author on the research, which also involved scientists from Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria.
In 2010 scientists from Deakin discovered platypus milk contains a lactation protein with potent antibacterial properties.
“This special component has antibacterial properties against some of the nastier bugs you find in the environment but not against some bacteria found in the guts of the young,” Newman said.
Platypus and echidnas are monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. They don’t have teats, so the mothers express their milk onto their bellies for their young to feed.
The scientists hypothesise that the antibacterial properties are related to this milk delivery system, evolving in order to protect the young from the possibility of infection. When mammals evolved teats, a sterile delivery system for milk, the protein was no longer as important in an evolutionary sense.
The Deakin researchers approached specialists at CSIRO’s collaborative crystallisation centre to replicate the protein and decode its shape in the laboratory, to seek clues to understanding its potency.
The scientists dubbed it the Shirley Temple protein because of its ringlet-like formation. Most intriguingly, the protein has a novel fold in its structure that has not been identified in any of the more than 100,000 known protein structures, Dr Newman said.
“That’s interesting, because it’s the shape of proteins which dictate their function,” she explained.
“So the hope is that the novel structure, in the best possible world, would eventually lead to a therapeutic that is based on a completely different way of dealing with microbial infections than our current antibiotics,” she said.
The research identifying the new protein fold, which was published on Thursday in the journal Structural Biology Communications, will inform ongoing drug discovery work, Dr Newman said.
Since 2014 the World Health Organisation has warned of a potential “post-antibiotic era” where antibiotics are no longer effective against common infections and minor injuries.
Superbugs are bacteria that were once responsive to antibiotics but have built up resistance to them, leading to ineffective treatments and more persistent infections and sometimes to fatalities.
But now a team of Australian scientists have found something else unique to the strange little animals: their milk has a novel chemical structure that could be used to fight superbugs.
Molecular biologists from Australia’s national science agency CSIRO have isolated the monotreme lactation protein structure for the first time, identifying a novel three-dimensional fold that the researchers say could lead to the creation of a new type of antibiotics.
“Platypus are such weird animals that it would make sense for them to have weird biochemistry,” said Janet Newman, CSIRO scientist and lead author on the research, which also involved scientists from Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria.
In 2010 scientists from Deakin discovered platypus milk contains a lactation protein with potent antibacterial properties.
“This special component has antibacterial properties against some of the nastier bugs you find in the environment but not against some bacteria found in the guts of the young,” Newman said.
Platypus and echidnas are monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. They don’t have teats, so the mothers express their milk onto their bellies for their young to feed.
The scientists hypothesise that the antibacterial properties are related to this milk delivery system, evolving in order to protect the young from the possibility of infection. When mammals evolved teats, a sterile delivery system for milk, the protein was no longer as important in an evolutionary sense.
The Deakin researchers approached specialists at CSIRO’s collaborative crystallisation centre to replicate the protein and decode its shape in the laboratory, to seek clues to understanding its potency.
The scientists dubbed it the Shirley Temple protein because of its ringlet-like formation. Most intriguingly, the protein has a novel fold in its structure that has not been identified in any of the more than 100,000 known protein structures, Dr Newman said.
“That’s interesting, because it’s the shape of proteins which dictate their function,” she explained.
“So the hope is that the novel structure, in the best possible world, would eventually lead to a therapeutic that is based on a completely different way of dealing with microbial infections than our current antibiotics,” she said.
The research identifying the new protein fold, which was published on Thursday in the journal Structural Biology Communications, will inform ongoing drug discovery work, Dr Newman said.
Since 2014 the World Health Organisation has warned of a potential “post-antibiotic era” where antibiotics are no longer effective against common infections and minor injuries.
Superbugs are bacteria that were once responsive to antibiotics but have built up resistance to them, leading to ineffective treatments and more persistent infections and sometimes to fatalities.
World's oldest message in a bottle found by beachwalker in Australia
Gin bottle was thrown overboard from a German ship before ending up on a beach in Western Australia 132 years later
Naaman Zhou
the guardian
Tue 6 Mar 2018 02.40 EST
The bottle found in Western Australia had a message that noted the ship’s coordinates and name, plus the date it was thrown into the sea. Photograph: Kym Illman.com
The world’s oldest message in a bottle has been found on a beach in Western Australia by a couple who thought it might “look good on a bookshelf”.
Tonya Illman found the 132-year-old gin bottle in the dunes near Wedge Island in January. Her husband, Kym Illman, told Guardian Australia she initially thought it was rubbish but picked it up because it had distinct, raised lettering and would be at home on their bookshelf.
Inside, she found a roll of paper printed in German and dated to 12 June 1886, which was authenticated by the Western Australian Museum.
“It was an absolute fluke. It won’t get better than than this,” said husband Kym Illman.
The bottle had been thrown overboard from the German sailing ship Paula in 1886 as it crossed the Indian Ocean, 950km from the Australian coast, according to Ross Anderson, the museum’s assistant curator of maritime archaeology.
At the time, German ships were conducting a 69-year experiment that involved throwing thousands of bottles into the sea to track ocean currents.
Each message was marked with the ship’s coordinates, the date, and the name of the ship, which Anderson used to verify the message.
Details from the Illmans’ message matched Paula’s maritime records, and Anderson also compared handwriting samples with captain’s entries in Paula’s meteorological journal. “Incredibly, there was an entry for June 12, 1886, made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard,” Anderson said.
His finding was confirmed by experts at the German Naval Observatory. The previous record for oldest message in a bottle was 108 years.
Kym Illman said that after bringing it home the damp and ancient paper was put in the oven for five minutes to dry it out.
He added: “I have a basic understanding of German and it said could the finder please plot the coordinates it was found, and the date it was found, and send it back.”
Of the thousands jettisoned, 662 other messages from the same German experiment have been found and returned before the latest discovery. The most recent was found in 1934.
Tonya Illman found the 132-year-old gin bottle in the dunes near Wedge Island in January. Her husband, Kym Illman, told Guardian Australia she initially thought it was rubbish but picked it up because it had distinct, raised lettering and would be at home on their bookshelf.
Inside, she found a roll of paper printed in German and dated to 12 June 1886, which was authenticated by the Western Australian Museum.
“It was an absolute fluke. It won’t get better than than this,” said husband Kym Illman.
The bottle had been thrown overboard from the German sailing ship Paula in 1886 as it crossed the Indian Ocean, 950km from the Australian coast, according to Ross Anderson, the museum’s assistant curator of maritime archaeology.
At the time, German ships were conducting a 69-year experiment that involved throwing thousands of bottles into the sea to track ocean currents.
Each message was marked with the ship’s coordinates, the date, and the name of the ship, which Anderson used to verify the message.
Details from the Illmans’ message matched Paula’s maritime records, and Anderson also compared handwriting samples with captain’s entries in Paula’s meteorological journal. “Incredibly, there was an entry for June 12, 1886, made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard,” Anderson said.
His finding was confirmed by experts at the German Naval Observatory. The previous record for oldest message in a bottle was 108 years.
Kym Illman said that after bringing it home the damp and ancient paper was put in the oven for five minutes to dry it out.
He added: “I have a basic understanding of German and it said could the finder please plot the coordinates it was found, and the date it was found, and send it back.”
Of the thousands jettisoned, 662 other messages from the same German experiment have been found and returned before the latest discovery. The most recent was found in 1934.
Creepy underwater statue of Jason Voorhees in Minnesota lake continues to spook swimmers
Rare - raw story
02 MAR 2018 AT 14:34 ET
Jason Voorhees
As if horror flicks aren’t full of enough things that go bump in the night, here’s an underwater discovery that will make scary movie fans extra terrified.
Jason Voorhees, the hockey-mask wearing slasher hellbent on getting revenge on his tormenters (and pretty much everyone he comes across) at Camp Crystal Lake, has just been discovered hanging out at the bottom of a Minnesota lake. Kind of.
According to “Friday the 13th” film lore, the machete wielding murderer was chained to the bottom of Crystal Lake by former camper Tommy Jarvis at the end of the sixth film. The iconic sequence was remodeled by a particularly enterprising film fan Curtis Lahr, who built his own life size statue and placed it in Crosby, Minnesota. A video of Lahr’s amazing homage was shared on YouTube in 2014, but as horror site Bloody Disgusting reported, it’s only recently been uncovered and has been making its way across the internet.
Jason’s statue comes complete with hockey mask, machete and chains, and for fans who won’t settle for online videos, professional diving gear is the only way to see it 120 feet below.
Who’s going swimming?
Jason Voorhees, the hockey-mask wearing slasher hellbent on getting revenge on his tormenters (and pretty much everyone he comes across) at Camp Crystal Lake, has just been discovered hanging out at the bottom of a Minnesota lake. Kind of.
According to “Friday the 13th” film lore, the machete wielding murderer was chained to the bottom of Crystal Lake by former camper Tommy Jarvis at the end of the sixth film. The iconic sequence was remodeled by a particularly enterprising film fan Curtis Lahr, who built his own life size statue and placed it in Crosby, Minnesota. A video of Lahr’s amazing homage was shared on YouTube in 2014, but as horror site Bloody Disgusting reported, it’s only recently been uncovered and has been making its way across the internet.
Jason’s statue comes complete with hockey mask, machete and chains, and for fans who won’t settle for online videos, professional diving gear is the only way to see it 120 feet below.
Who’s going swimming?
A Fish that Barely Sleeps Could Help Turn Humans Into All-Right Party Animals
This blind Mexican cave fish might make you quite jealous.
By Claire Maldarelli / Popular Science - alternet
February 10, 2018, 2:47 PM GMT
The fish species Astyanax mexicanus exists in two populations. The cavefish, top, evolved to have no eyes and little to no pigment. The surface dwelling fish, below the cavefish, have eyes and more pigment.
The Mexican cavefish have no eyes, little pigment, and require about two hours of sleep per night to survive.
There’s something about the blind Mexican cavefish that will make you quite jealous: To survive and thrive, they require just two hours of sleep each night; no more, no less. Imagine everything you could do with those extra six hours.
Among all the animals in the world that need their zzz's, species differ remarkably in their sleep patterns and behavior. Humans fall somewhat in the middle of the spectrum, requiring a strict eight hours for adults, according to recent studies. But on one end of the spectrum are the brown bat, which sleeps about 20 hours a day and the giant armadillo and the python, which both take in 18 hours per day. And then there’s certain cave dwelling species’, including the Mexican cavefish, which gets by unscathed, health-wise, with about two hours of sleep per 24 hour period.
“We think we can use cavefish to ask fundamental questions about why we sleep and why there is so much variation in sleep across the animal kingdom,” says Alex Keene, lead author of the paper and a neuroscientist at Florida Atlantic University. “If we can figure out why these fish get by despite little sleep, we may be able to find better ways to manipulate sleep in humans.”
For over a century, the species Astyanax mexicanus have mystified scientists. The species exists in two very different populations: A surface population, known as surface fish, that inhabits rivers, as well as multiple populations that live in caves, known as cavefish, without access to sunlight. The cave populations have evolved this sleeplessness whereas the surface populations have not. They sleep normally, a solid eight hours of fish sleep per night. They look different, too. The cave-dwelling populations all have extremely small or completely absent eyes, and they have very little pigmentation or color in their bodies—both of which (sight and pigment) are involved in regulating sleep patterns.
What confused the researchers most, however, were two unique traits about the cave dwelling populations: First, how these fish—who live about 30 years in the laboratory—are able to both not fall or stay asleep for more than two hours every 24 hours, and second, not suffer any health consequences from it.
In a study out this week in the journal eLife, researchers narrowed in on a neuropeptide called hypocretin, or HCRT. This protein is found in the hypothalamus of many animals, including humans. Its location makes sense. The hypothalamus is a tiny chunk of many animals’ brain space and it executes functions in our body that we have little physical control over, like body temperature, thirst, hunger, and sleep. Hypocretin has been studied quite a bit, particularly in narcolepsy, a sleep disorder in which a person tends to fall asleep during any relaxed setting. Previous studies found that narcoleptic dogs had mutations in the hypocretin receptor, and there’s been similar studies to suggest that hypocretin is involved in human narcolepsy as well, and that it regulates sleep in flies and zebrafish.[...]
There’s something about the blind Mexican cavefish that will make you quite jealous: To survive and thrive, they require just two hours of sleep each night; no more, no less. Imagine everything you could do with those extra six hours.
Among all the animals in the world that need their zzz's, species differ remarkably in their sleep patterns and behavior. Humans fall somewhat in the middle of the spectrum, requiring a strict eight hours for adults, according to recent studies. But on one end of the spectrum are the brown bat, which sleeps about 20 hours a day and the giant armadillo and the python, which both take in 18 hours per day. And then there’s certain cave dwelling species’, including the Mexican cavefish, which gets by unscathed, health-wise, with about two hours of sleep per 24 hour period.
“We think we can use cavefish to ask fundamental questions about why we sleep and why there is so much variation in sleep across the animal kingdom,” says Alex Keene, lead author of the paper and a neuroscientist at Florida Atlantic University. “If we can figure out why these fish get by despite little sleep, we may be able to find better ways to manipulate sleep in humans.”
For over a century, the species Astyanax mexicanus have mystified scientists. The species exists in two very different populations: A surface population, known as surface fish, that inhabits rivers, as well as multiple populations that live in caves, known as cavefish, without access to sunlight. The cave populations have evolved this sleeplessness whereas the surface populations have not. They sleep normally, a solid eight hours of fish sleep per night. They look different, too. The cave-dwelling populations all have extremely small or completely absent eyes, and they have very little pigmentation or color in their bodies—both of which (sight and pigment) are involved in regulating sleep patterns.
What confused the researchers most, however, were two unique traits about the cave dwelling populations: First, how these fish—who live about 30 years in the laboratory—are able to both not fall or stay asleep for more than two hours every 24 hours, and second, not suffer any health consequences from it.
In a study out this week in the journal eLife, researchers narrowed in on a neuropeptide called hypocretin, or HCRT. This protein is found in the hypothalamus of many animals, including humans. Its location makes sense. The hypothalamus is a tiny chunk of many animals’ brain space and it executes functions in our body that we have little physical control over, like body temperature, thirst, hunger, and sleep. Hypocretin has been studied quite a bit, particularly in narcolepsy, a sleep disorder in which a person tends to fall asleep during any relaxed setting. Previous studies found that narcoleptic dogs had mutations in the hypocretin receptor, and there’s been similar studies to suggest that hypocretin is involved in human narcolepsy as well, and that it regulates sleep in flies and zebrafish.[...]
Arachnophobes take heed: this ancient spider had a whip-like tail
Will Dunham - reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If you are not a fan of spiders, you may not like the creepy little arachnid scientists found entombed in chunks of amber from northern Myanmar. Unlike its spider cousins alive today, this guy had a tail.
Scientists on Monday described four specimens of the arachnid, called Chimerarachne yingi, that inhabited a Cretaceous Period tropical forest about 100 million years ago during the dinosaur age. Alongside modern spider traits such as a silk-producing structure called a spinneret, it possessed a remarkably primitive feature: a whip-like tail covered in short hairs that it may have used for sensing predators and prey.
“It is a key fossil for understanding spider origins,” said paleontologist Bo Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Our new fossil most likely represents the earliest branch of spiders, and implies that there was a lineage of tailed spiders that presumably originated in the Paleozoic (the geological era that ended 251 million years ago) and survived at least into the Cretaceous of Southeast Asia.”
Despite its fearsome appearance, the fanged Chimerarachne was only about three-tenths of an inch (7.5 mm) long, more than half of which was its tail.
University of Kansas paleontologist Paul Selden said Chimerarachne represents “a kind of missing link” between true spiders and earlier spider forerunners that had tails but lacked spinnerets.
“Chimerarachne could be considered as a spider. It all depends on where we decide to draw the line,” Selden said. “I am sure arachnophobes would not like this animal, except that it is only a few millimeters long, so it would be living almost unseen by them.”
The earliest arachnids, a group including spiders, scorpions, mites, ticks and others, dates to about 420 million years ago. The oldest-known true spiders lived about 315 millions year ago.
Numerous animals and plants have been found beautifully preserved inside amber, which is fossilized tree resin. Many important amber finds have been made in Myanmar. Chimerarachne may have lived under bark or in the moss at the foot of a tree.
“All four specimens are adult males, which would have been roving around looking for females at this point in their lives,” Selden said.
“Chimerarachne most likely wove a sheet web, and possibly a burrow lined with silk. Spiders use silk for a great many purposes, of which prey-capture webs is just one. Egg-wrapping is a vital function for spider silk, as well as laying a trail to find its way back home.”
The research was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Scientists on Monday described four specimens of the arachnid, called Chimerarachne yingi, that inhabited a Cretaceous Period tropical forest about 100 million years ago during the dinosaur age. Alongside modern spider traits such as a silk-producing structure called a spinneret, it possessed a remarkably primitive feature: a whip-like tail covered in short hairs that it may have used for sensing predators and prey.
“It is a key fossil for understanding spider origins,” said paleontologist Bo Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Our new fossil most likely represents the earliest branch of spiders, and implies that there was a lineage of tailed spiders that presumably originated in the Paleozoic (the geological era that ended 251 million years ago) and survived at least into the Cretaceous of Southeast Asia.”
Despite its fearsome appearance, the fanged Chimerarachne was only about three-tenths of an inch (7.5 mm) long, more than half of which was its tail.
University of Kansas paleontologist Paul Selden said Chimerarachne represents “a kind of missing link” between true spiders and earlier spider forerunners that had tails but lacked spinnerets.
“Chimerarachne could be considered as a spider. It all depends on where we decide to draw the line,” Selden said. “I am sure arachnophobes would not like this animal, except that it is only a few millimeters long, so it would be living almost unseen by them.”
The earliest arachnids, a group including spiders, scorpions, mites, ticks and others, dates to about 420 million years ago. The oldest-known true spiders lived about 315 millions year ago.
Numerous animals and plants have been found beautifully preserved inside amber, which is fossilized tree resin. Many important amber finds have been made in Myanmar. Chimerarachne may have lived under bark or in the moss at the foot of a tree.
“All four specimens are adult males, which would have been roving around looking for females at this point in their lives,” Selden said.
“Chimerarachne most likely wove a sheet web, and possibly a burrow lined with silk. Spiders use silk for a great many purposes, of which prey-capture webs is just one. Egg-wrapping is a vital function for spider silk, as well as laying a trail to find its way back home.”
The research was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Here's the surprising reason why some countries drive on the left side of the road
Noah Friedman - business insider
Around 76 countries and territories use left-hand traffic, and the practice is believed to have originated in ancient Rome to help defend against enemy attacks. Following is a transcript of the video.
Why do some countries drive on the left side of the road? Most of the world drives on the right side of the road. But around 76 countries and territories use left-hand traffic.
The practice is believed to date back to ancient Rome. Romans steered their carts and chariots with the left hand, to free up the right so they could use weapons to defend against enemy attacks.
This carried over into medieval Europe and in 1773, the British government passed measures to make left-hand traffic the law. But post-revolution France favored the right.
Napoleon was left-handed and riding on the right proved to be an intimidating military tactic. Britain and France brought their driving styles to their respective colonies. That's why many former British territories are among the few modern left-hand traffic countries.
In the US, right-hand traffic goes back tot he 18th century. Freight wagons were pulled by teams of horses. and the drivers rode on the left rear horse using their right hand to more easily control the team. Traffic shifted to the right so drivers could easily avoid collisions.
Eventually, with the rise of the automobile and increase in global traffic many countries switched to the right to fit in with neighbors. Including Samoa, which just switched from the left in 2009.
Why do some countries drive on the left side of the road? Most of the world drives on the right side of the road. But around 76 countries and territories use left-hand traffic.
The practice is believed to date back to ancient Rome. Romans steered their carts and chariots with the left hand, to free up the right so they could use weapons to defend against enemy attacks.
This carried over into medieval Europe and in 1773, the British government passed measures to make left-hand traffic the law. But post-revolution France favored the right.
Napoleon was left-handed and riding on the right proved to be an intimidating military tactic. Britain and France brought their driving styles to their respective colonies. That's why many former British territories are among the few modern left-hand traffic countries.
In the US, right-hand traffic goes back tot he 18th century. Freight wagons were pulled by teams of horses. and the drivers rode on the left rear horse using their right hand to more easily control the team. Traffic shifted to the right so drivers could easily avoid collisions.
Eventually, with the rise of the automobile and increase in global traffic many countries switched to the right to fit in with neighbors. Including Samoa, which just switched from the left in 2009.
World's oldest fossils found in Canada, say scientists
Nicola Davis
Haematite filament attached to a clump of iron (lower right) from hydrothermal vent deposits found in a rock formation in Quebec, Canada. Photograph: Matthew Dodd/PA
From The Guardian: Scientists say they have found the world’s oldest fossils, thought to have formed between 3.77bn and 4.28bn years ago.
Comprised of tiny tubes and filaments made of an iron oxide known as haematite, the microfossils are believed to be the remains of bacteria that once thrived underwater around hydrothermal vents, relying on chemical reactions involving iron for their energy.
If correct, these fossils offer the oldest direct evidence for life on the planet. And that, the study’s authors say, offers insights into the origins of life on Earth.
“If these rocks do indeed turn out to be 4.28 [bn years old] then we are talking about the origins of life developing very soon after the oceans formed 4.4bn years ago,” said Matthew Dodd, the first author of the research from University College, London.
With iron-oxidising bacteria present even today, the findings, if correct, also highlight the success of such organisms. “They have been around for 3.8bn years at least,” said the lead author Dominic Papineau, also from UCL.
The team says the new discovery supports the idea that life emerged and diversified rapidly on Earth, complementing research reported last year that claimed to find evidence of microbe-produced structures, known as stromatolites, in Greenland rocks, which formed 3.7bn years ago.
However, like the oldest microfossils previously reported – samples from western Australia dating to about 3.46bn years ago – the new discovery is set to be the subject of hot debate.
The discovery of the structures, the authors add, highlights intriguing avenues for research to discover whether life existed elsewhere in the solar system, including Jupiter’s moon, Europa, and Mars, which once boasted oceans. “If we look at similarly old rocks [from Mars] and we can’t find evidence of life, then this certainly may point to the fact that Earth may be a very special exception and life might just have arisen on Earth,” said Dodd.
Published in the journal Nature by an international team of researchers, the new study focuses on rocks of the Nuvvuagittuq supracrustal belt in Quebec, Canada.
The rocks are some of the oldest in the world and are believed to have formed around underwater hydrothermal vents – a theory backed up by various chemical signatures hinting at a submarine formation, as well as the presence of structures such as pillow basalts that are formed when lava encounters water.
“These rocks were of a period in time when we don’t know whether there was life,” said Dodd. “If we believe the long-standing hypothesis that life evolved from hydrothermal vents billions of years ago then these were the perfect rocks to look at for answering these questions.”
The authors say scrutiny of very thin sections of the iron-containing quartz in which the fossils were found, together with an analysis of the minerals within them and microfossils themselves, suggests the haematite structures were not formed by physical processes alone.
Instead, the authors write, “the tubes and filaments are best explained as remains of iron-metabolising filamentous bacteria, and therefore represent the oldest life forms recognised on Earth.”
Up to half a millimetre in length and half the width of a human hair, the filaments have a range of forms, from loose coils to branched structures with some apparently linked together through a central knob of haematite – structures, said Dodd, that are common to microbes known to have lived near deep sea vents.[...]
Comprised of tiny tubes and filaments made of an iron oxide known as haematite, the microfossils are believed to be the remains of bacteria that once thrived underwater around hydrothermal vents, relying on chemical reactions involving iron for their energy.
If correct, these fossils offer the oldest direct evidence for life on the planet. And that, the study’s authors say, offers insights into the origins of life on Earth.
“If these rocks do indeed turn out to be 4.28 [bn years old] then we are talking about the origins of life developing very soon after the oceans formed 4.4bn years ago,” said Matthew Dodd, the first author of the research from University College, London.
With iron-oxidising bacteria present even today, the findings, if correct, also highlight the success of such organisms. “They have been around for 3.8bn years at least,” said the lead author Dominic Papineau, also from UCL.
The team says the new discovery supports the idea that life emerged and diversified rapidly on Earth, complementing research reported last year that claimed to find evidence of microbe-produced structures, known as stromatolites, in Greenland rocks, which formed 3.7bn years ago.
However, like the oldest microfossils previously reported – samples from western Australia dating to about 3.46bn years ago – the new discovery is set to be the subject of hot debate.
The discovery of the structures, the authors add, highlights intriguing avenues for research to discover whether life existed elsewhere in the solar system, including Jupiter’s moon, Europa, and Mars, which once boasted oceans. “If we look at similarly old rocks [from Mars] and we can’t find evidence of life, then this certainly may point to the fact that Earth may be a very special exception and life might just have arisen on Earth,” said Dodd.
Published in the journal Nature by an international team of researchers, the new study focuses on rocks of the Nuvvuagittuq supracrustal belt in Quebec, Canada.
The rocks are some of the oldest in the world and are believed to have formed around underwater hydrothermal vents – a theory backed up by various chemical signatures hinting at a submarine formation, as well as the presence of structures such as pillow basalts that are formed when lava encounters water.
“These rocks were of a period in time when we don’t know whether there was life,” said Dodd. “If we believe the long-standing hypothesis that life evolved from hydrothermal vents billions of years ago then these were the perfect rocks to look at for answering these questions.”
The authors say scrutiny of very thin sections of the iron-containing quartz in which the fossils were found, together with an analysis of the minerals within them and microfossils themselves, suggests the haematite structures were not formed by physical processes alone.
Instead, the authors write, “the tubes and filaments are best explained as remains of iron-metabolising filamentous bacteria, and therefore represent the oldest life forms recognised on Earth.”
Up to half a millimetre in length and half the width of a human hair, the filaments have a range of forms, from loose coils to branched structures with some apparently linked together through a central knob of haematite – structures, said Dodd, that are common to microbes known to have lived near deep sea vents.[...]
"Simpsons" three-eyed fish,
