Mr. Miyagi Says Don't Mess with this Mantis

From Wired.

Whales Speak in Dialects

A new study shows that some whale species sing in different dialects depending on where they're from. Blue whales off the Pacific Northwest sound different than blue whales in the western Pacific Ocean, and these sound different than those living off Antarctica. And they all sound different than the blue whales living near Chile.

The whales in the eastern Pacific have a very low-pitched pulsed sounds, followed by a tone. Other populations use different combinations of pulses, tones, and pitches. Using newly developed underwater microphones called autonomous hydrophones, scientists recorded the symphony of whale clicks, pulses, and calls throughout the Pacific Ocean.

The hydrophones were developed to listen for earthquakes. But researchers soon realized that they were picking up the sounds of right whales from 25 miles away, and even farther if the water is shallow and the terrain is even. It is not known why whales around the world sound differently, including whether it is tied to genetics or some other reason.

The research is detailed in the January issue of the journal BioScience.

Is Mount Everest really the highest point on earth?

Mount Everest is well known as the highest spot above sea level on our planet and is likely to remain so for a long time; that is, unless you reconsider the definition of "highest."

When measured as the either the spot on earth closest to space, or the spot on the surface furthest from the center of the earth, Mount Everest is in fact NOT the highest point -- Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is!

The Earth is in fact not a perfect sphere. It is more like a beach ball that someone sat on: It has a slightly distended middle.

Mathematicians call this an "oblate spheroid," which means there is a bulge that circles the Earth just below the equator, so anyone standing in that part of the world is already standing "higher," or closer to outer space, than people who aren't on the bulge.

Mount Chimborazo, in the Andes, is a 20,000-plus-foot peak sitting on top of a bulge on the Earth. Mount Everest is a 29,000-plus-foot peak sitting lower down on that same bulge. Because Chimborazo is a bump on a bigger part of the bulge, it is higher. In fact, it's 1.5 miles higher than Everest!

Perhaps more interesting: using this same logic, Death Valley -- the lowest point below sea level in North America -- is in fact higher than Mount McKinley, the highest point above sea level in North America!

In fact, the Dead Sea -- the lowest point on the terrestrial Earth -- is also higher than Mount McKinley!

Listen to NPR's audio story here.

Study Suggests Earth was Purple

The earliest life on Earth might have been just as purple as it is green today, a scientist claims. Ancient microbes might have used a molecule other than chlorophyll to harness the Sun’s rays, one that gave the organisms a violet hue.

Chlorophyll, the main photosynthetic pigment of plants, absorbs mainly blue and red wavelengths from the Sun and reflects green ones, and it is this reflected light that gives plants their leafy color.

According to the scientist, chlorophyll appeared after another light-sensitive molecule called retinal was already present on early Earth. Retinal, today found in the plum-colored membrane of a photosynthetic microbe called halobacteria, absorbs green light and reflects back red and violet light, the combination of which appears purple.

Primitive microbes that used retinal to harness the sun’s energy might have dominated early Earth, thus tinting some of the first biological hotspots on the planet a distinctive purple color.

Earthquake Lifts Island Ten Feet Out of Ocean

Residents of Ranongga island in the South Pacific Ocean sit on a massive coral reef that was exposed by the magnitude 8.1 earthquake that struck in the Solomon Islands last week, sparking a deadly tsunami.

The quake lifted Ranongga ten feet out of the sea, widening beaches by up to 230 feet. The uplift has left some of the island's pristine coral reefs fatally exposed. In some places the beaches in the Solomons now resemble a barren moonscape with once vibrant corals bleaching under the sun.

Dry Valleys of Antarctica

The Dry Valleys of Antarctica get almost no snowfall, and except for a few steep rocks are the only continental part of Antarctica devoid of ice. The terrain looks like something not of this Earth; the valley floor occasionally contains a frozen lake with ice several meters thick. Many simple organisms, the subject of ongoing research, live under the ice in the extremely salty water.

Below are some examples of this landscape taken from this photo gallery.

Animal Love

Some samples from this photo gallery of "animal love":

One Gene Determines Size of Dogs

Scientists have just discovered which gene fragment controls the size of dogs, which have the greatest size range of any mammal — no other species produces adults with 100-fold differences, like that between a two-pound chihuahua and a 200-pound Newfoundland.

In a study published in the journal Science, researchers analyzed 3,241 purebred dogs from 143 breeds. Genetically, tiny dogs are almost identical to large dogs, except for a tiny bit of DNA that suppresses the “insulin-like growth factor 1” (or IGF-1) gene.

Dog breeders have unwittingly been selecting for the gene since the last Ice Age. Dogs emerged from the wolf about 15,000 years ago, and as far back as 10,000 years ago, domesticated dogs as big as mastiffs and as small as Jack Russell terriers were trotting the earth.

Alabama Sturgeon caught

A male Alabama sturgeon was recently caught in the Alabama River in Wilcox County. It is the first Alabama sturgeon that biologists have netted since 1999. Alabama sturgeons are believed to be among the rarest fish species in the world.

Scientists cut a three-quarter-inch incision in the sturgeon to determine its sex. Under a current breeding program, if the fish had been a female in breeding season they would have held it and inseminated it with frozen sperm saved from Alabama sturgeon caught in the 1990's. If it had been a male ready for breeding, they would have removed sperm. However, because all five fish previously caught under the current breeding program have been male, the biologists decided almost immediately that they would release him in hopes of subsequently catching a female. For tracking purposes, the scientists inserted a sonar device equipped with a four-year battery into the fish.

The Alabama sturgeon is believed to be the rarest vertebrate in all North America, surpassing even the Florida panther and the California condor. There is little information on its lifespan, but the species is believed to live 12 to 20 years, similar to other sturgeon species. Unlike other sturgeon, the Alabama sturgeon has a distinct yellowish-orange color.

Although biologists were aware of a distinct sturgeon species in Alabama's rivers as far back as the 1950s or 1960s, they were unable to formally identify it until 1991. Alabama is home to more fish species than any other state. The state has the third-highest number of endangered species, most of them aquatic.

Below are some pictures of the Alabama sturgeon taken from this photo gallery:

Giant 90-year-old Rockfish caught in Alaska

A commercial fishing boat in Alaska caught a giant rockfish that is estimated to be about a century old. The 44-inch, 60-pound female shortraker rockfish was caught last month south of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle measured, photographed and documented the fish. They removed an ear bone, the otolith, which contains growth rings similar to rings in the trunks of trees. They estimate the rockfish was 90 to 115 years old. That's toward the upper end of the known age limit for shortraker rockfish.

The contents of the rockfish's stomach were examined and scientists took tissue samples to measure her reproductive potential. Her ovaries were reportedly full of developing embryos.