Volcanic Life-Sources Discovered Deep in Southern Ocean: A Preview of ET Life? New sources of extreme life forms have been discovered by scientists aboard the Royal Research Ship James Cook.
The expedition has located a new set of deep-sea volcanic vents in the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean. The fourth discovery made by the research team in three years, which suggests that deep-sea vents may be more common in our oceans than previously thought. Using an underwater camera system, the researchers saw slender mineral spires three meters tall, with shimmering hot water at a depth of 520 meters gushing from their peaks, and gossamer-like white mats of bacteria coating their sides. The vents are in a newly-discovered seafloor crater close to the South Sandwich Islands, a remote group of islands around 500 kilometres south-east of South Georgia.
In the three decades since scientists first encountered vents in the Pacific, around 250 have been discovered worldwide. The new vents are the fourth set to be discovered around Antarctica in three expeditions since 2009. How Snakes Can "Fly" Found in Southeast and South Asia , five snake species have been observed twisting their ribs and flattening their bodies in midair, but this doesn't fully explain how the reptiles control their descent.
"Other snakes flatten their bodies as well," said Jake Socha, a biologist at Virginia Tech. For example, king cobras can flatten their hoods for defensive purposes. To find out what else enables the snakes to glide, Socha and his colleagues used four cameras to record four flying snakes as they leaped off a five-story tower to another, smaller tower several dozen yards away. The team then used the images to create 3-D computer models of the reptiles ' body positions during flight. (See snake pictures .) The images and models revealed that the snakes position their bodies at 25-degree angles as they fall—heads up, tails down. The effect is similar to what happens when you stick your arm out of a moving car and rotate your hand so the palm is pointed slightly upward. </i>*} BBC - Earth News - Snake gives 'virgin birth' to extraordinary babies. Snakes without fathers: one of the unusual baby boas A female boa constrictor snake has given birth to two litters of extraordinary offspring.
Evidence suggests the mother snake has had multiple virgin births, producing 22 baby snakes that have no father. More than that, the genetic make-up of the baby snakes is unlike any previously recorded among vertebrates, the group which includes almost all animals with a backbone. Details are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. Virgin births do occur among animals. Many invertebrates, such as insects, can produce offspring asexually, without ever having mated. But among vertebrate animals, it remains a novelty, having been documented among less than 0.1% of vertebrate species. In 2006, scientists discovered that two komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis), the world's largest lizard species, had produced eggs that developed without being fertilised by sperm - a process called parthenogenesis. Novel beginnings "All offspring are female.