Photos of the Largest Fish on Earth. Spectacular Russian jellyfish of the White Sea – in pictures | Environment. SCIENCE IN PICS: Skeleton Shrimp on Whip Coral | Earth & Environment | Science. Skeleton shrimps on a whip coral at Lembeh Strait in Sulawesi, Indonesia. (Matthew Oldfield) Skeleton shrimp belong to the family Caprellidae, and are sometimes also referred to as ghost shrimp.
They have slim, thread-like bodies that make them hard to spot on the fine filaments of their seaweed or invertebrate hosts. These shrimp are usually found in shallow waters living on eel grass or sessile animals in oceans around the world. A few species live at depth. They typically attach themselves to the substrate using their pereopods, which are gripping appendages.
Skeleton shrimp are omnivores, and eat a variety of food, including smaller crustaceans, planktonic algae, and detritus. Generally they ambush their prey, waiting motionless until it passes by, although some use their antennae for filter feeding or to remove it from the sea bed. Matthew Oldfield is a freelance photographer based in Bali, Indonesia, specializing in editorial and documentary images from both above and below the waves. Oh They’re So Surprised! Oh They’re So Surprised! Posted by SHMO on November 5, 2012 · 124 Comments What if the animal kingdom could understand the dramatic presidential election? What if they could comprehend the shocking nightly news? What if they could understand the latest gossips from our weekends… “She left with who? … He got arrested for what!?” …We figured they might look like this… 12 Cutest Baby Seahorse Pictures.
Marketing the Mystery of the Giant Squid. The new canary in the coal mine could be a giant squid. Conservation efforts often rally around charismatic species like the African elephant or the bald eagle. Popular affection for these “flagship” animals can be leveraged into funding and political will. But who speaks for the 95 percent of Earth’s inhabitants without a backbone? No worm has the rock-star appeal of a Bengal tiger.
Enter the giant squid. Ángel Guerra, a research professor at CSIC (the National Research Council of Spain), makes the case for turning this unusual animal, the largest invertebrate in the world, into a flagship for its marine peers. Given their global distribution throughout the deep sea — Earth’s least explored ecosystem — giant squid could be that proverbial canary in the coal mine, a warning of environmental change. He had heard that similar numbers of dead giant squid were sometimes found across the Atlantic, on the beaches of Newfoundland. Slothville. The Mystery of the Suction-Feeding Sea Croc | Wired Science. A gallery of Late Jurassic sea crocs. From Young et al., 2012.
The fossil record can be a frustrating tease. Although it’s wonderful that paleontologists are assembling an ever more complete understanding of prehistoric life, every ancient species contains mysteries within mysteries. It’s one thing to discover the remains of a fossil organism. Herpetologist Wilfred Neill considered this fact in the introduction of The Last of the Ruling Reptiles – his 1971 ode to alligators, crocodiles, gharials, and their extinct cousins. What would we not give for a firsthand look at the Mesozoic Era, that remote time when reptiles, often of great size and grotesque mien, walked the earth, swam in the fresh waters and the seas, even glided through the air on leathery wings.
The past provides essential context for the present, but, in that classic aphorism which all geology and paleontology students are relentlessly taught, the present is the key to the past. Dakosaurus had a truly frightening smile. Wwf-lightbox.jpg (900×1350) The battle of Shark vs. Octopus has a shocking ending. How to Write About Hermaphrodite Sex. As regards "penis-fencing": clearly these two are each aroused, and each wishes to penetrate the other, because each is capable - and aroused - engorged if you will; there is quite evidently a competition afoot, which inevitably ends when one penetrates and the other is penetrated. So, while they may not be fighting, and the penetrator nor the penetratee may not necessarily fit male and female gender stereotypes per se - there IS a competition motivated by the desire to penetrate... notice that neither of them 'run away'... no, not a fight, but it does end in a capitulation, after beginning with a competition; the capitulation is an acceptance by the one who is penetrated, who then goes on to be pregnant and give birth.
I wonder if you object to the traditional, human gender role associations of male with competition and penetration, and female with capitulation and carrying-to-term, so much as having them couched in the metaphor of a 'fight' with a winner and a loser. Deep-Sea News. Underwater. How Do Cats Purr? Biologists used to think that purrs were the sound of blood surging through cats’ inferior vena cava, the large vein that carries blood from the lower half of the body into the heart. More recent research suggests that the sound is actually produced by laryngeal muscles, which are responsible for moving the vocal cords and opening and closing the glottis (space between the cords). Signaled by a “neural oscillator” in the cat’s brain, the muscles rhythmically contract and rapidly open and close the glottis. As the cat breathes in and out, air hits the vibrating muscles and the glottis, producing bursts of noise 25 times a second, which gives us the familiar purring sound.
The signal from the central nervous system that sets the whole thing in motion doesn’t appear to be controlled by the cat, making a purr more of a muscular twitch than a conscious vocalization. Cat Got Your Hyoid Bone? The mechanism for purring seems simple enough, so it's puzzling that not all cats can make the sound. 5 Newly Discovered Creatures That Will Haunt Your Nightmares. I often wake in a cold sweat, swiping at my arms and inside my ears frantically trying to scatter the insects crawling on my skin. These are my nightmares, invaded by creepy crawlers of all shapes and sizes. Perhaps it's because my worst nightmares seem to be coming true. Recently in China, a woman found that a spider had made a home of her ear for five days before doctors extracted it. If ear-nesting spiders don't do it for you, perhaps these recently discovered creatures will have you calling out for Mommy in the wee hours of the night. 1.
The Cave Spider That Could Rip Your Eyes Out What's scary about the Trogloraptor marchingtoni isn't that it's pretty big for a spider or that it was found right here on our home turf (in a cave in Oregon), it's that at the end of its legs are barbed, scythe-like claws. 2. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons What do you do if you're a spider without claws? 3. Now this is what I'm talking about. 4. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Who Cleans Up After Seeing Eye Dogs? Dog turds are stealth weapons. People with 20/20 vision often fail to notice them until they appear hours later, on the bottom of a shoe. How the heck is someone who can’t see supposed to track down and eliminate these sidewalk scourges, then? First off, not everyone who is legally blind or has a guide dog is completely without vision. Some still have some vision and can pick up their dog’s mess just fine. Whether the dog’s handler can see anything or not, you have to keep in mind that these dogs are pros. When the dogs start their training as puppies, they’re taught to associate a specific verbal command with the green light to go ahead and squat. With a well-trained dog, a blind handler can give the command to go, and pet the dog once it has found a spot and started to go. More from Mental Floss... Why Do People Feel Phantom Cellphone Vibrations? If You Touch a Baby Bird, Will Its Mother Really Abandon It?
Mike Truchon / Shutterstock.com When I was a kid, our living room opened out onto a back deck through a set of French doors. A pine tree stood over the deck, providing a home for countless birds. Baby birds would regularly fall from their nests onto the deck, and would lie there crying in full view of my brother and me as we sat on the floor watching TV. Our parents always told us that we should never attempt to rescue these birds, no matter how long they were out on the deck, because our scent would cause their parents to reject and abandon them. Some of these babies would get their act together and find their way back into the nest. Some would get dragged off by neighborhood cats. These days, I feel bad about that.
Scent of a Human Birds will not readily abandon their young because they “smell humans.” Even if they could detect your scent, and make a negative association with it, they’re not just going to up and leave. Rescue Mission Fledglings you should leave alone. Bonobo genius makes stone tools like early humans did - life - 21 August 2012. Video: Watch this bonobo go to all ends to get food Kanzi the bonobo continues to impress. Not content with learning sign language or making up "words" for things like banana or juice, he now seems capable of making stone tools on a par with the efforts of early humans. Eviatar Nevo of the University of Haifa in Israel and his colleagues sealed food inside a log to mimic marrow locked inside long bones, and watched Kanzi, a 30-year-old male bonobo chimp, try to extract it. While a companion bonobo attempted the problem a handful of times, and succeeded only by smashing the log on the ground, Kanzi took a longer and arguably more sophisticated approach.
Both had been taught to knap flint flakes in the 1990s, holding a stone core in one hand and using another as a hammer. Kanzi used the tools he created to come at the log in a variety of ways: inserting sticks into seams in the log, throwing projectiles at it, and employing stone flints as choppers, drills, and scrapers. Promoted Stories. Newly-discovered owl makes the ultimate "mwhaha!" face.
Study shows one kind of squid can jettison parts of its arm (w/ Video) 7 Absolutely Insane Animal Defense Mechanisms. Scientists recently recorded footage of a never-before-seen defense mechanism deployed by a small species of deep-sea squid: When threatened, the squid attacks its predator and then pulls away, breaking off the tip of its own arm and leaving it behind as a distraction. The arm continues to glow and twitch, creating a diversion and enabling the squid to escape. But this squid isn't the only creature with a bizarre way of defending itself.
Here are several other ways animals try to save their own lives, or the lives of their comrades. 1. The Texas Horned Lizard is a scary-looking creature. 2. Image credit: Blackburn/ New Scientist What if every time you felt threatened, your first and only method of defense was to break your own bones and use them for weapons?
While it's not completely clear what happens to the bones after the threat of attack subsides, researchers believe the bones slide back under the skin when the frog's muscles relax. 3. 4. Image credit: R. 5. BBC Nature - Ants 'sow the seeds' of the Cape. 16 August 2012Last updated at 01:50 By Matt Bardo Reporter, BBC Nature The fire-prone fynbos shrubland in South Africa's Western Cape is a biodiversity hotspot Ants helped create a biodiversity hotspot in the Cape region of South Africa, scientists believe. Researchers have highlighted two recent studies that suggest seeds spread by ants may be an important driver of plant diversity in the Cape.
The two studies used genetic data from areas with and without seed-dispersing ants to assess their contribution to diversity. The scientists said the evidence showed a "great role for tiny players". Professor Jonathan Majer and Professor Ladislav Mucina from Curtin University in Australia wrote their report in response to a scholarly article calling for the causes of diversification in the Cape region to be identified. "It's one of the world's global biodiversity hotspots," Prof Majer, an expert in insect conservation, told BBC Nature.
But the biodiversity of each region has puzzled scientists. Bombardier beetle. The spray is produced by a reaction between two chemical compounds, hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide, stored in separate reservoirs in the beetle's abdomen and mixed when needed in a third chamber with water and catalytic enzymes. Heat from the reaction brings the mixture to near the boiling point of water and produces gas that drives the ejection.
The damage caused can be fatal to attacking insects and small creatures and is painful to human skin. [citation needed] Some bombardier beetles can direct the spray over a wide range of directions. Habitat[edit] Australian Bombardier Beetle (Pheropsophus verticalis) Bombardier beetles inhabit most of the continents, with the exception of Antarctica. Behavior[edit] Most species of bombardier beetles are carnivorous, including the larva.[1] The beetle typically hunts at night for other insects, but will often congregate with others of its species when not actively looking for food.[2] Defense mechanism[edit] Evolution of the defense mechanism[edit]
Sponging Dolphins Form Cultural Cliques | Inspiring Discoveries | Science. By Cassie RyanEpoch Times Staff Created: July 31, 2012 Last Updated: August 4, 2012 Juvenile female sponger and grand-daughter of the first sponger identified in the 1980s. (Eric M. Patterson, monkeymiadolphins.org) The first evidence of cultural behavior in dolphins may have been revealed, according to a study of the Shark Bay bottlenose dolphins in Australia.
In this population of around 3,000 dolphins, less than 5 percent have learned to use sea sponges to protect their snouts while foraging for fish on the seafloor, and are referred to as spongers. A team of researchers from Georgetown University used social network analysis to study the social preferences of 36 spongers and 69 non-spongers over a 22-year period. Although sponging is mostly a solitary activity, they found that female spongers preferred to associate with one another, even after controlling for location, gender, and matrilineal relatedness. Biologists now say that red tide algal blooms could be the ‘killer of the ocean world’ Blobfish: world's most 'miserable looking' marine animal 'facing exinction'
A cephalopod that switches from male to female, depending who's looking. The First Ever Fossils of Vertebrates Who Died During Sex. Presenting The Hamster Jazz Band. The Latest on the Great Magnetic Cow Smackdown | Discoblog. Heterochromia in Dogs: Loveable Pooches With Different Colored Eyes. Shelter puppy with one light blue and one darker colored eye Everyone knows about ‘puppy dog eyes’ – that devious tactic which, if executed properly, can get certain members of the animal (and human) kingdom almost anything they desire.
Who could resist, much less ignore, that oh-so-innocent expression coupled with those sad, gentle eyes? ‘I want,’ they say. And more often that not, they get. Now imagine those very same puppy dog eyes were different in color from each other. Simone Preuss Scribol Staff. A Sea Slug Out of Water? Dinosaurs are more incredible and diverse than you might think | David Hone | Science. Zombie-Ant Fungus Has Its Own Killer Fungus. The 7 Grossest Creatures To Ever Wash Up On Shore - InfoBarrel. Strange Science: Mammals.