Giant Rat and Tiny Possum in Indonesia

Researchers in a remote jungle in Indonesia have discovered a giant rat and a tiny possum that are apparently new to science. The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat, and the possum was described as "one of the world's smallest marsupials." Finding new species of mammals in the 21st century is considered very rare. The discoveries are being studied further to confirm their status. The animals were found in the Foja mountains rainforest in eastern Papua province.

Elephants Keep Tabs on Family

New research suggests that elephants keep track on up to 30 absent relatives by sniffing out their scent and building up a mental map of where they are. Herd members use their good memory and sense of smell to stay in touch as they travel in large groups.

Scientists collected samples of female elephant urine from the ground and presented it to relatives to trick them into believing that the elephant had recently passed by. Elephants showed surprise when they encountered the scent of an individual who was actually walking behind them so could not possibly have been there. The elephants also reacted when the urine was from a family member who was far away, and not supposed to be in the area.

National Geographic International Photography Contest

Below are some of the pictures that were submitted for the National Geographic International Photography Contest:

Stem Cell Milestone Announced

Scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells (2), a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy.

The "direct reprogramming" technique avoids the ethical, political and practical obstacles that have stymied attempts to produce human stem cells by cloning embryos.

Scientists prize embryonic stem cells because they can turn into virtually any kind of cell in the body. The cloning approach -- which has worked so far only in mice and monkeys -- should be able to produce stem cells that genetically match the person who donates body cells for cloning. That means tissue made from the cells should be transplantable into that person without fear of rejection.

Man-sized Sea Scorpion claw found

Scientists have discovered an immense fossilized claw of an 8-foot sea scorpion. The 390-million-year-old specimen was found in a German quarry.

The creature, which has been named Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, would have paddled in a river or swamp. The size of the beast suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought.

The eurypterids (sea scorpions) are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of modern land scorpions and possibly all arachnids (the class of animals that also includes spiders).

Rusty Metal Animal Sculptures

Below are some examples from this neat gallery of metal animal sculptures:

Virtual Microscope

The Virtual Microscope is a cool software program that provides simulated scientific instrumentation.

The Virtual Microscope supports functionality from electron, light, and scanning probe microscopes, datasets for these instruments, training materials to learn more about microscopy, and other related tools. There are currently 90 samples totaling over 62 gigapixels of image data. It includes everything from Meteorites to Pond Scum to a Firefly!

You can download the program for FREE by clicking here (scroll to "Installers for Windows and Mac"). Once you have installed and opened the program, you can directly select from the many samples. Try adjusting the "Magnification" and "Opacity" controls to see some great detail!

Below is a screen shot of sand from Costa Rica at 1800x magnification:

Wildlife Photography

Below are several examples from this neat gallery of wildlife photos:

Food Fight

Purpose of appendix believed found

Scientists think they have figured out the real job of the troublesome and seemingly useless appendix: It produces and protects good germs for your gut. For generations doctors figured it had no function. Surgeons removed them routinely and people live fine without them.

In this picture, the appendix is visible at the lower right, labeled as "vermiform process":


According to the new research, the function of the appendix seems related to the massive amount of bacteria populating the human digestive system. There are more bacteria than human cells in the typical body. Most are good and help digest food.

But sometimes the flora of bacteria in the intestines die or are purged. Diseases such as cholera or amoebic dysentery would clear the gut of useful bacteria. The appendix's job is to reboot the digestive system in that case.

The appendix "acts as a good safe house for bacteria" according to scientists. Its location -- just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of "gut cul-de-sac" -- helps support the theory.

Also, the worm-shaped organ outgrowth acts like a bacteria factory, cultivating the good germs. That use is not needed in a modern industrialized society, according to the scientists. If a person's gut flora dies, it can usually be repopulated easily with germs they pick up from other people. But before dense populations in modern times and during epidemics of cholera that affected a whole region, it wasn't as easy to grow back that bacteria and the appendix came in handy.

Tiny Frog Species Discovered

India’s smallest land vertebrate, a 10-millimeter frog, has been discovered in the Western Ghats of Kerala. The picture shows the tiny frog sitting on an Indian 5 rupee coin.


Scientists discovered the tiny frog living under leaf litter and among the roots of ferns in a humid and mountainous rainforest. The species has been named Nyctibatrachus minimus. This frog can be found during the night (hence the common name of the genus - "Nightfrog") and its mating calls can be heard from under the leaf litter during monsoon months, the ideal time for reproduction.

Pink and White Katydids

A resident of Osaka, Japan found some interesting insects in her flower bed. Among them was an odd pair of grasshopper-like bugs — one pink, one white. An Osaka Museum of Natural History entomologist identifies them as the larvae of Euconocephalus thunbergi (”kubikirigisu” in Japanese), a close relative of the katydid. While he says it is normal for these insects to change between green and brown to match their surroundings, pink and white are considered abnormal. Speculation is that the pink is an extreme variation of the brown coloration, and the white specimen is believed to be an albino, though nobody will know for sure until it becomes an adult.

Zoo Sells Gorilla's Art On eBay

Little Joe and Okie, two of the western lowland gorillas at the Boston zoo, are avid finger painters and their paintings are now being sold on eBay. The finger painting is a part of the zoo’s enrichment program designed to keep the gorillas intellectually stimulated.

Polar Bear Gallery

Some cool pictures taken from this Flickr photo gallery:

Eel Species with Protruding Throat Jaw

Researchers studying one species of moray eels have uncovered a deadly secret that helps the fish to swallow their prey. Like the creatures from the sci-fi movie Alien, these eels have a second, extendable pair of jaws — encrusted with sharp teeth — that thrusts forward to ensnare their prey.

High-speed videos and X-ray photos show how the second jaws, called pharyngeal jaws, lie in wait inside the throat (top of picture), and then extend forwards into the mouth to grab prey that has been captured by the eel's main teeth (bottom of picture). The morsel is then drawn into the eel's esophagus.

This helps the eels (Muraena retifera) to be deadly hunters, despite the fact that, unlike many other predatory fish, they cannot generate strong suction forces inside the mouth cavity to capture a meal. Zoologists had previously been puzzled as to how moray eels, which live on coral reefs and rocky shorelines all over the world, keep hold of their prey long enough to swallow it. Unlike the movie creatures, however, these moray eels cannot extend their second set of jaws out beyond their first.

Many fish species have extra jaws in their throats, which can function to filter food from water or to grind prey when swallowing. But the eel's extendable jaws are the first throat jaws known to be adapted to help catch prey, rather than simply to help swallow it.

Be sure to check out the video of the jaws in action:

Monster spider web spun in Texas

Entomologists are debating the origin and rarity of a sprawling spider web that blankets several trees, shrubs and the ground along a 200-yard stretch of trail in Lake Tawokoni Texas State Park.

Spider experts say the web may have been constructed by social cobweb spiders, which work together, or could be the result of a mass dispersal in which the arachnids spin webs to spread out from one another.

Genome transplant changes one species into another

For the first time, scientists have completely transformed a species of bacteria into another species by transplanting its complete set of DNA. The achievement marks a significant step toward the construction of synthetic life, with applications including the production of clean fuel in as little as a decade. The researchers hope that genome transplantation will enable the production of synthetic microbes for green energy sources, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and textiles.

The scientists’ results show that it is possible to transplant the complete set of DNA—the genome—from one species into the genome of a different species, so that the recipient organism is phenotypically and genotypically identical to the donor organism.

Baby Mammoth Found in Permafrost

The discovery of a baby mammoth preserved in the Russian permafrost gives researchers their best chance yet to build a genetic map of a species extinct since the Ice Age. The mammoth, a female who died at the age of six months, was named "Lyuba." She had been lying in the frozen ground for up to 40,000 years. Weighing 110 pounds and measuring 85 centimeters high and 130 centimeters from trunk to tail, Lyuba is roughly the same size as a large dog.

The fact the mammoth was so remarkably well-preserved -- its shaggy coat was gone but otherwise it looked as though it had only recently died -- meant it was a potential treasure trove for scientists. Its skin condition protects all the internal organs from modern microbes and micro-organisms.

Unidentified "Octosquid" Found

What appears to be a half-squid, half-octopus specimen found off the Big Island of Hawaii remains unidentified and could possibly be a new species. The specimen was found caught in the filter of a deep-sea water pipeline. The pipeline, which runs 3,000 feet deep, sucks up cold, deep-sea water for the tenants of the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii.

The specimen tentatively belongs to the genus Mastigoteuthis, but the species is undetermined. Biologists termed the specimen "octosquid" for the way it looked. It is about a foot long, with white suction cups, eight tentacles and an octopus head with a squidlike mantle. The octosquid was pulled to the surface, along with three rattail fish and half a dozen satellite jellyfish, and stayed alive for three days.

The pitch-black conditions at 3,000 feet below sea level are unfamiliar to most but riveting to scientists who have had the opportunity to submerge. The sea floor is full of loose sediment, big boulders and rocks, and a lot of mucuslike things floating in the water, which are usually specimens that died at the surface and drifted to the bottom. Lots of fish have heads like a fish and a body like an eel. There are fish floating in a vertical position, with the head up, and don't move unless they're disturbed.

Elephants on an Evening Stroll

Lake disappears suddenly in Chile

Scientists in Chile are investigating the sudden disappearance of a glacial lake in the south of the country. When park rangers patrolled the area in the Magallanes region in March, the five-acre lake was its normal size. But last month they found a huge dry crater and several stranded chunks of ice that used to float on the water. One theory is that an earthquake opened up a fissure in the ground, allowing the lake's water to drain through. The lake's disappearance seems to be part of the continual reforming of the landscape. The lake itself had not been there 30 years ago.

Before:



After:

No Fear of Heights

Birds & Prey

Purple Frog

Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis is a frog species from the Western Ghats, India. It is commonly referred to as Purple Frog or Pignose Frog. It was first discovered in 2003. The frog spends most of the year underground, surfacing only for about two weeks, during the monsoon, for purposes of mating. The frog's reclusive lifestyle is what caused the species to escape earlier notice by biologists.

Shark conceived without male contact

Genetic analysis of a bonnethead shark pup has revealed the first example of a virgin birth in the shark world (see a video here as well). The female baby - which died from a stingray bite just hours after being born - did not contain a single strand of male genetic material. Instead, she had inherited all of her genes from her mother.

Her aquarium birth stunned scientists who had thought that, like humans, sharks always required a sperm and an egg to become pregnant. Now, it seems that when starved of male attention, female sharks are capable of activating an ancient survival mechanism that allows them to reproduce without any sexual contact. In this particular case, the pup's mother had had not been near another male bonnethead shark for at least three years.

Analysis of the baby shark's DNA has shown it reproduced by parthenogenesis - a process in which eggs develop into embryos without being fertilized by sperm. Although such virgin births are common in the insect world, and have been known to occur among lizards and some snakes, fish and birds, they had never been documented among sharks.

Chicken-eating Spider

There are around 800 species of Tarantula spider in the world - at least those are the ones that have been discovered. It is estimated that there could be just as many unknown species in the rainforests, tropical scrublands and savannas around the world. The Chicken-eating Spider has been confirmed as one of these new species (second article here), identified as being within the genus Pamphobeteus. It is called the Chicken Eating spider because eye witnesses claim to have seen it dragging chickens into its burrow on the edge of jungle clearings. Estimates put it at around 10 inches from one hairy foot to another.

As well as being new to science, the Chicken Spider has thrown into doubt many of the accepted truths about tarantulas that have been held for almost a century. For instance, tarantulas are supposed to be strictly solitary creatures. Usually baby spiders - or spiderlings - quickly disperse once they emerge from the nest. This is because a mother tarantula's maternal instincts don't last long once the spiderlings have hatched. She starts looking for food, having fasted during the incubation period. Any spiderlings remaining in the nest find themselves on the menu. This solitary behaviour also minimizes competition for food. Tarantulas are ambush predators and stay very close to their burrows at all times, waiting for their prey to pass close by. With more than one spider in the same burrow there is less food to go around and one would expect smaller spiders and compromised populations.

The Chicken Spider, not only tolerates its offspring shortly after they have hatched, it shares its burrow with several generations of its progeny. Up to 50 spiders in one burrow and a thriving, healthy population in the surrounding forest. Here is evidence that this remarkable spider subdues any aggressive responses to its fellow burrow inhabitants and has actually learned to cooperate in prey capture, allowing for the predation of larger animals than would be possible if it were alone.

Vegetable Sculptures

Below are some examples from this neat gallery of vegetable/animal sculptures: