Surprise!

Crows demonstrate their cleverness with tools

Scientists studying New Caledonian crows have found they can use three different tools in succession to gain a food treat. The crows are known to solve problems and fashion and use tools in the wild, but their clevernes and innovation in the experiments astounded the researchers.

Investigations into the abilities of the New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) revealed the birds can create tools out of unfamiliar materials, and they can also use several tools in succession.

The scientists captured seven wild crows and placed them in an aviary where they were presented with a complex problem in which meat was placed out of reach. It could be drawn out by a long stick, but the stick was out of reach inside a barred toolbox. The long stick could be retrieved using a short stick, but this was attached to a string tied to a branch. So to win the treat, the birds had to first pull up the string to retrieve the short stick, then use the short stick to pull out the long stick, and then use the long stick to draw out the meat.

One of the birds (nicknamed Sam) spent the first 110 seconds simply inspecting the parts of the task, and then completed it the first time without error.  Below is Sam's successful first trial:



Below is Professor Russell Gray discussing recent research on New Caledonian crows, their capacity to make and wield tools, and experimental results which suggest that their understanding of tool use should not be overestimated:



Original article here.

Giant deep sea jellyfish filmed in Gulf of Mexico

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8638000/8638527.stm

Remarkable footage of a rarely seen giant deep sea jellyfish has been recorded by scientists.  Using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), they captured a video of the huge Stygiomedusa gigantea.  (Click on the link above to see a page with the video).

The jellyfish has a disc-shaped bell than can be a meter wide, and has four arms that extend up to six metres in length.  The jellyfish has only been seen 114 times in the 110 years it has been known to science, say researchers.

Original article here.

Nature's 'treasure' unearthed in Borneo

Color-changing frogs, the world's longest stick insect and a slug that shoots "love darts" are among the biological "treasure" discovered by scientists in the lush green heart of Borneo.

The number of new plant species discovered in Borneo in the last three years outnumbers all the other categories combined. Sixty-seven new plants have been found, along with 29 invertebrates, 17 new species of fish, one bird, five amphibians and five reptiles.

Below are pictures of several newly discovered creatures:

Original article here.

David Attenborough Says Boo to a Sloth

Red Pandas

The below pictures are of Red Pandas, which are native to the forests in the Himalayas. There are only an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 of them worldwide.

In the past Red pandas have been misclassified as being in the same families as raccoons and bears, but have recently been reclassified in a family all their own. In fact, they are considered “living fossils" and are only distantly related to Giant Pandas.













Original article here.

Octopus steals camera from diver and swims away with it

The below video shows an octopus grabbing a diver's video camera while he was filming underwater and then swimming away with it (while it was still filming).

The diver had been filming the eight-armed bandit off the coast of Wellington, New Zealand, when it suddenly reached out with a tentacle and grabbed at him.

The diver initially thought he was being attacked and tried to get back up to the surface. But he soon realized the octopus was only after his bright blue underwater camera.

The diver caught up with the octopus then held out his speargun in a bid to distract it. When it grabbed the gun with several tentacles, he used the chance to free his camera.



Original article here.

Meet the Chambered Nautilus, a Living Fossil

In the video below, Wired goes to the California Academy of Sciences to see the Chambered Nautilus, an animal that hasn't evolved much since its earliest relatives lived 500 million years ago.

High-Speed Video Shows How Flies Change Direction So Quickly

Fruit flies turn in midair with a shrug of their shoulders. A new analysis shows that the flies’ aerial gymnastics are driven by wing joints that act like wind-up toys, letting the bugs whirl around almost automatically. The insights could someday help build better flying robots.

Fruit flies beat their wings about once every 4 milliseconds — much faster than their neurons can fire — and can turn 120 degrees in 18 wing beats.

The researchers set up three high-speed cameras trained at the center of a box holding about 10 flies (see video below). A fly crossing the center of the box triggered the cameras to start rolling at 8,000 frames per second. At the same time, a disk of LED lights projected a rotating striped pattern on the inside of the box to trick the flies into making a U-turn.

The team found that when the fly turns, one wing tilts more than the other, similar to the way a rower pulls one oar harder than the other to make a boat turn. Thanks to aerodynamics, a wing-tilt difference of just 9 degrees is enough to send a fly off in another direction.

Further analysis using computer models of the fly and aerodynamic simulations showed that the fly’s wing joint acts like a torsional spring, the kind found in wind-up toys or old clocks. To change its wing tilt and set up a turn, all the fly has to do is twitch the muscle that controls the spring.



Original article here.

First Animals Found That Live Without Oxygen

In the deep Mediterranean seafloor, scientists have found the first multicellular animals capable of surviving in an entirely oxygen-free environment.

Some types of bacteria and other single-celled organisms can live without oxygen, but nothing as complex had been found as these three species of Loricifera, a group of marine sediment dwellers who inhabit one Earth’s most extreme and little-known environments.

Like other Loricifera, the new species are sub-millimeter-long tangles of tentacle and shell, with their closest taxonomical relatives found among mud dragons and penis worms.

The new species, however, don’t have the mitochondria found in almost every other animal cell, converting oxygen and nutrients into chemical energy.

Even the few parasite species once thought to be mitochondria-free seem to have had them at some point in history, and possess mitochondrial remnants that perform the same essential functions.

Instead the new Loricifera species have structures called hydrogenosomes, which are found in some single-celled organisms and require no oxygen to produce chemical energy.

The evolutionary history of these creatures is not known, but they live in an environment reminiscent of Earth’s oceans some 600 million years ago, before the deep seas were oxygenated and large animals evolved.

Original article here.

New Giant Lizard Discovered in the Philippines

Scientists have tracked down a new giant lizard and named it Varanus bitatawa. It is a skittish reptile that’s hard to spot even though it grows up to 6 feet long and sports bright yellow speckles.

In forests on the Philippine island of Luzon, the newly discovered monitor lizard hauls itself up into trees in search of fruit and melts into the vegetation if humans approach.

Although the species is “new to us,” Agta and Ilongot peoples living in forests of the Sierra Madre range know the lizard well — as a delicacy. It mostly eats fruit and reportedly tastes better than a much more common scavenging monitor that’s “attracted to stinky stuff.”

Original article here.

95 Million-Year-Old Bugs Found in African Amber Surprise Scientists

Newly discovered pieces of amber have given scientists a peek into the Africa of 95 million years ago, when flowering plants blossomed across Earth and the animal world scrambled to adapt.

Suspended in the stream of time were ancestors of modern spiders, wasps and ferns, but the prize is a wingless ant (above) that challenges current notions about the origins of that globe-spanning insect family.



The amber, which is formed when plant resin fossilizes, preserving flora and fauna trapped within, was found in what is now northwest Ethiopia. Ninety-five million years ago, it was part of a disintegrating Gondwana, one of two vast land masses that spawned the seven modern continents.

The amber in the latest study dates to the middle of the Cretaceous era, which followed the dinosaur-dominated Jurassic and witnessed the rise of mammals, birds and flowering plants. Mammals get most of the attention, but changes to flora were just as profound.

Before the Cretaceous, flowering plants — which are now the most diverse type of terrestrial plant — didn’t exist. By the mid-Cretaceous, they dominated the land. Existing plants and animals had to adapt, filling the flowery new niches. The new study is a snapshot of that process.

Inside the Ethiopian amber is an ant that looks nothing like ants found in Cretaceous amber from France and Burma. Those deposits had placed the origin of ants in Laurasia. That’s no longer certain.





In order, the pictures are of the following: 1) Wingless ant; 2) False fairy wasp; 3) Tree fern; 4) Springtail.

Original article here.