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.

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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.