Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts

2013-05-26

The Narwhal's Mysterious Tusk

Narwhal Tusk Discoveries

The narwhal, Monodon monoceros, has long fascinated sea explorers, scientists and aristocracy. This arctic whale is characterized by a single spiraled tusk extending six to nine feet, emerging from the upper jaw and through the lips of adult males. Some females may exhibit a tusk and, in rare instances, a male with two tusks has been observed. Often associated with the horn of the unicorn, the narwhal tooth has found its way into the books of scientific rarities and mythical tales.


The Narwhal's Mysterious Tusk - YouTube

This species of whale has an unusual and mysterious tusk, once harvested and sold as a unicorn horn for 10 times its weight in gold.




HowStuffWorks "The Narwhal Tusk"


The narwhal's tusk isn't unique at first glance. Elephants, rhinos and walruses all have these long, protruding teeth. But this one is different from any other tooth you've ever seen.

[...]

... The soft, sensitive part is on the outside, while the dense, hard part makes up the middle. Ten million tiny holes lie right on the surface on the tusk. Human teeth have these little tubules too, which is why sometimes the cold bothers your teeth, but they're covered with enamel. Imagine having all your nerves exposed in the icy waters of the Arctic. Why would the most sensitive part of a tooth be on the outside?

Harvard Gazette: Marine biology mystery solved

Function of 'unicorn' whale's 8-foot tooth discovered by Harvard School of Dental Medicine researcher


Nweeia has discovered that the narwhal's tooth has hydrodynamic sensor capabilities. Ten million tiny nerve connections tunnel their way from the central nerve of the narwhal tusk to its outer surface. Though seemingly rigid and hard, the tusk is like a membrane with an extremely sensitive surface, capable of detecting changes in water temperature, pressure, and particle gradients. Because these whales can detect particle gradients in water, they are capable of discerning the salinity of the water, which could help them survive in their Arctic ice environment. It also allows the whales to detect water particles characteristic of the fish that constitute their diet. There is no comparison in nature in tooth form, expression, and functional adaptation.


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2013-03-18

Earthquake Gold

Do Earthquakes Deposit Gold? New Study Shows That Fault Lines May Be Linked To The Precious Metal



Water in faults vaporizes during an earthquake, depositing gold, according to a model published in the March 17 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. The model provides a quantitative mechanism for the link between gold and quartz seen in many of the world's gold deposits, said Dion Weatherley, a geophysicist at the University of Queensland in Australia and lead author of the study.

Gold Forms During Earthquakes | Earth | LiveScience


When an earthquake strikes, it moves along a rupture in the ground — a fracture called a fault. Big faults can have many small fractures along their length, connected by jogs that appear as rectangular voids. Water often lubricates faults, filling in fractures and jogs.

About 6 miles (10 kilometers) below the surface, under incredible temperatures and pressures, the water carries high concentrations of carbon dioxide, silica and economically attractive elements like gold.

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2012-04-02

Tuatara, a Living Baby Dinosaur

File:Tuatara Sphenodon punctatus standing proud.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Sphenodon punctatus. Tuatara in front of its burrow at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. The Tuatara isn't a lizard - according the the Wikipedia entry about Tuatara: "Its origin probably lies close to the split between the Lepidosauromorpha and the Archosauromorpha, making it the closest living thing we can find to a "proto-reptile".

Live baby dinosaur discovered in New Zealand - by Terrence Aym - Helium

[...]
Meet the tuataras

Often called living fossils by those who know they really do exist, the tuataras sure might look like a lizard, but they're not. The tuatara is really a living dinosaur that belongs to the order Rhynchocephalia. That order of dinosaur became extinct about 60 million years in the past. All went extinct…except the tuataras.    
[....]
Fascinating tuataras facts

1. These little dinosaurs only require a breath of air once an hour.

2. They don't drink water.

3. They have three eyes. Every tuataras sports a third pineal eye on top of their heads that has a retina and primitive lens. The eye is functional—it's connected to the brain. By the time the dinosaurs become adults the third eye is overgrown with skin and no longer functions.

4. Some researchers believe the third eye evolved to protect the babies from flying predators that might swoop down from the sky.

4. Female tuataras carry their eggs for four years.


Tuatara - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cladogram showing relationships of extant members of the Sauria.[15] Numbered items are:
1. Tuatara
2. Lizards
3. Snakes
4. Crocodiles
5. Birds
"Lizards" are paraphyletic. Branch lengths do not indicate divergence times.


Current distribution of tuatara (in black).[57][58][59] Circles represent the North Island tuatara, squares the Brothers Island tuatara. Symbols may represent up to seven islands.



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2012-03-10

Killer Waves


Tsunami Facts, Tsunami Information, Tsunami Videos, Tsunami Photos - National Geographic



A tsunami is a series of ocean waves that sends surges of water, sometimes reaching heights of over 100 feet (30.5 meters), onto land. These walls of water can cause widespread destruction when they crash ashore.

These awe-inspiring waves are typically caused by large, undersea earthquakes at tectonic plate boundaries. When the ocean floor at a plate boundary rises or falls suddenly it displaces the water above it and launches the rolling waves that will become a tsunami.

Tsunami - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tsunamis cause damage by two mechanisms: the smashing force of a wall of water travelling at high speed, and the destructive power of a large volume of water draining off the land and carrying all with it, even if the wave did not look large.

When the wave enters shallow water, it slows down and its amplitude (height) increases.


The wave further slows and amplifies as it hits land. Only the largest waves crest.









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2012-02-19

A New Grasshopper-Like Insect

Illinois Natural History Survey News | University of Illinois

New species described by INHS entomologists
2/10/2012

A new species of Neotropical Orthopteran has been described by INHS Entomologists Sam Heads and Steve Taylor.  Ripipteryx mopana belongs to a group of small and unusual insects related to grasshoppers that includes the North American pygmy mole crickets.


This new species comes from the Toledo District of southern Belize, an area of tropical rainforest that is largely unexplored by entomologists.  It was named in honor of the Mopan, a Mayan people that live primarily in the area of Belize where the species was discovered.  The entomologists will return to the region this coming spring to study the local insect fauna in more detail.


ZooKeys Article
Press Release

New species of grasshopper-like insect discovered in Belize - The San Pedro Sun News

“Belize is famous for its biodiversity, but very little is known about the insects of the southern part of the country and this is particularly true of the Orthoptera” said entomologist and lead author on the paper, Sam Heads. The Orthoptera are the order of insects that include the familiar grasshoppers, crickets and their relatives. “Ripipteryx mopana is the first representative of it’s family ever to be found in Belize” said Dr. Heads.



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2012-02-16

World's Smallest Chameleon

Tiniest Chameleon, Brookesia Micra, Discovered On Madagascar Island



A species of chameleon small enough to easily perch on a match head has been discovered on a tiny island off Madagascar, a group of scientists has announced.
In addition to the discovery of Brookesia micra, now the tiniest chameleon ever discovered, the researchers also announced the discovery of three additional tiny chameleon species.

[...]

The team of scientists found the tiny reptiles in Madagascar's wild northern regions during expeditions between 2003 and 2007. For three of the species, "we immediately identified them as new species," said Glaw, a veteran herpetologist and curator at the Museum of Natural History in Munich.
"In general, these tiny chameleons are so small that it's really hard to see the small differences with the naked eye," he said.
The researchers warn that at least two of the newly-discovered chameleon species are extremely threatened because of habitat loss and deforestation in Madagascar.

Zoologger: Itsy bitsy teeny weeny chameleons - life - 15 February 2012 - New Scientist


Species: Brookesia micra, Brookesia tristis, Brookesia desperata, Brookesia confidens
Habitat: Northern Madagascar, within the leaf litter on the floor of rainforest and dry deciduous forest

They've got independently rotating eyes, a curiously curly tail, and strangely depressing names. Meet the world's tiniest – and cutest – chameleons.

Brookesia leaf chameleons are renowned for being small. Some of them – Brookesia minima, for example – are downright miniscule. From head to tail they are all between 22 and 48 millimetres. Four new species of these miniature reptiles have now been uncovered in northern Madagascar.

Like any good miniature, Brookesia chameleons function much like the full-size versions. Their eyes move independently of each other to zero in on a tasty meal, they can also rapidly change their colours when stressed, have long projectile tongues and prehensile tails that can grasp objects.



(A) adult male on black background, showing orange tail colouration; (B) juvenile on finger tip; (C) juvenile on head of a match; (D) habitat along a small creek on western flank of Nosy Hara, where part of the type series was collected.





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2012-02-10

How the Zebra got its Stripes

Zebra Stripes Evolved to Repel Bloodsuckers?


Conventional wisdom says a zebra's black-and-white stripes camouflage the animal in tall grass—the better to evade the colorblind lion. But a new study says the pattern scrambles the vision of a tinier biter: the bloodsucking horsefly.

Effect of zebra stripes on horseflies

In a relative sense, zebra stripes repel horseflies. That’s the latest discovery reported by Gábor Horváth [pictured here], who discovered that white horses attract fewer flies, and that Vikings knew a thing or two about how to use light for ship navigation. For details, see the study: 

“Polarotactic tabanids find striped patterns with brightness and/or polarization modulation least attractive: an advantage of zebra stripes,” Ádám Egri, Miklós Blahó, György Kriska, Róbert Farkas, Mónika Gyurkovszky, Susanne Åkesson and Gábor Horváth, Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 215, March 2012, pp. 736-745.
“The characteristic striped appearance of zebras has provoked much speculation about its function and why the pattern has evolved, but experimental evidence is scarce. Here, we demonstrate that a zebra-striped horse model attracts far fewer horseflies (tabanids) than either homogeneous black, brown, grey or white equivalents.”

BBC Nature - Zebra stripes evolved to keep biting flies at bay

Coloured images revealed how light was polarised as it bounced off a zebra's coat
"We created an experimental set-up where we painted the different patterns onto boards," Dr Akesson told BBC Nature. She and her colleagues placed a blackboard, a whiteboard, and several boards with stripes of varying widths into one of the fields of a horse farm in rural Hungary."We put insect glue on the boards and counted the number of flies that each one attracted," she explained.The striped board that was the closest match to the actual pattern of a zebra's coat attracted by far the fewest flies, "even less than the white boards that were reflecting unpolarised light," Dr Akesson said."That was a surprise because, in a striped pattern, you still have these dark areas that are reflecting horizontally polarised light."But the narrower (and more zebra-like) the stripes, the less attractive they were to the flies." To test horseflies' reaction to a more realistic 3-D target, the team put four life-size "sticky horse models " into the field - one brown, one black, one white and one black-and-white striped, like a zebra. The researchers collected the trapped flies every two days, and found that the zebra-striped horse model attracted the fewest.


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2011-12-30

Siku, The Danish Polar Bear Cub. The New Knut?




The New Knut? Internet Enamored by Siku, the Danish Polar Bear | NewsFeed | TIME.com

Meet Siku, the month-old polar bear from Denmark who has inspired “awww”s worldwide with his videotaped antics. Siku’s mother can’t produce any milk, so the little bear (whose name means “ice” in Greenlandic) is being bottle-fed. In addition to his prodigious ability to guzzle milk, Siku loves to lounge around, get back rubs and snooze while sticking his tongue out.

Following in the paw-steps of the Berlin Zoo’s Knut, Siku has swiftly become an online celebrity, boasting a Facebook page with 20,000 followers where fans can watch his latest videos.

Siku will be even more spoiled than Knut, however, enjoying the “world’s largest polar bear facility” at the Scandinavian Wildlife Park, according to one of his carers, Frank Vigh-Larsen.





Skandinavisk Dyrepark



Polar bear cub in Scandinavian Wildlife Park

Scandinavian Wildlife Park is already renowned for the very high stands of the animal facilities, not least the polar bear facility covering 26.000 square meters. The information and education standards are also very high, and Scandinavian Wildlife Park is now developing a new information program about the climate changes, the sea ice in the Arctic Sea and the polar bears. This program will evolve around SIKU, who will become Ambassador for his wild cousins living in the Arctic.

The polar bears in Scandinavian Wildlife Park are part of a Global breeding program for captive polar bears. The aim of the program is to sustain a population of healthy polar bears in captivity, NOT to breed polar bears to be released in the wild. This program is short on breeding animals, and it is therefore important that SIKU enters the breeding program as soon as possible.

Because Scandinavian Wildlife Park has some of the best and largest polar bear facilities in the world, we are convinced that it will be possible for SIKU to become a normal functioning polar bear within a few years, so he can live together with the other polar bears in Scandinavian Wildlife Park.

The 'New Knut': Danish Polar Bear Cub Siku Conquers the Internet - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

'A Different Bear'

Though a number of fans have made comparisons to Berlin's famous polar bear Knut, who died in March, Vigh-Larsen told the "Today" show that Siku will have a different life.


"Siku will be a completely different bear than Knut," he said. "He will grow up in a different environment. We have the world's largest polar bear facility here, covering two-and-a-half hectares, and when he's about two years old he will move in with the other four polar bears (at the park) and have a very normal polar bear life -- as normal as it can be in captivity."
While Berlin continues to struggle with how to memorialize its star bear Knut after he died suddenly this spring at the age of four, drowning after a seizure caused by encephalitis, Siku may carry on his legacy of promoting climate change awareness. His symbolic name is meant to call attention to the swiftly disappearing habitat of polar bears. With climate change rapidly melting the Arctic sea ice the species relies on for hunting, they could be extinct in the wild within 40 years, the zoo warns.

Vigh-Larsen asked "Today" viewers to make an effort to reduce their carbon footprints and save energy on Siku's behalf. "And if you all do that, he would be very, very happy," he said.

The Toledo Zoo - Polar Bear Cub

Every Cub Counts

The cub is a huge step for polar bear conservation worldwide. As we lose more of their Arctic habitat to climate change, the future of polar bears in the wild grows less certain with each passing year. That’s why polar bears are now protected under the Endangered Species Act, and that’s why cubs like this one have such an important role to play. We hope that folks who stop by to see this little bear will take a moment to consider the plight of our bears’ wild counterparts and think about steps they can take to preserve this species for generations to come.

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2011-10-12

El Camino del Rey -- The Most Dangerous Hike in the World

Photos & Guide to El Camino Del Rey, El Chorro, Spain
http://blog.thecheaproute.com/guide-to-el-camino-del-rey-el-chorro-spain
  • Some say its the most dangerous hike in the world, El Camino Del Rey (also known as El Caminito Del Rey) ...

  • The path was originally constructed in 1905 for workers of a hydro eletric damn set up in the cliffs of El Choro. Since then, the path has deteriorated and is now only for the adventurous. The government of Spain allocated 7 million euros for the restoration of El Camino Del Rey in 2006, however its clear that this has not been spent yet.
 
 The climb starts like this, get the worst part over with

 Crossing another missing section via the 3″ beam


El Caminito Del Rey To Be Restored
http://blog.thecheaproute.com/el-caminito-del-rey-to-be-restored

  • €9 million over 4 years to fund the restoration

    The announced restoration of the landmark El Caminito Del Rey was decided yesterday, with one of its major obstacles being the funding. The full council of Malaga approved a multi-year economic plan to fund the works between 2011 and 2015. The investment amounts to 9,076,880 euros, which will be contributed equally by the provincial body and the Junta de Andalucia at a rate of 907,688.05 per year for each institution.
Google Maps
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=36.909463,-4.759204&spn=0.006142,0.012971&t=h&z=17&vpsrc=6&lci=com.panoramio.all


View Larger Map
Caminito del Rey - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caminito_del_Rey
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2011-08-23

Living Bridges

  • In the depths of northeastern India, in one of the wettest places on earth, bridges aren't built—they're grown.
  • The root bridges, some of which are over a hundred feet long, take ten to fifteen years to become fully functional, but they're extraordinarily strong—strong enough that some of them can support the weight of fifty or more people at a time. In fact, because they are alive and still growing, the bridges actually gain strength over time—and some of the ancient root bridges used daily by the people of the villages around Cherrapunji may be well over 500 years old.
cherrapunjee.com
http://www.cherrapunjee.com/index.php?mid=66&pid=66
  • The lower reaches of the southern slopes of Khasi and Jaintia hills are humid and warm and are streaked by many swift flowing rivers and mountain streams.  A species of Indian Rubber tree - botanical name: Ficus elastica - thrives and flourishes alongside these streams and rivers. 
  •  Our ancestors, the early war-Khasis, had noticed these qualities of this tree and had adapted it to serve their need for bridges to cross rivers and streams.  In order to direct the roots in the desired direction, betel nut tree trunks, sliced half in the middle for their entire length, are hollowed out and are positioned according to the requirement of the bridge.
  • Cherrapunjee Holiday Resort has brought the focus on these Living Root Bridges, which are exclusive only to Meghalaya and are not found anywhere else in the world.
The Meghalaya Living Bridges - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxe5wRhSpag
  • At the base of India's Meghalaya Plateau, the local tribes have created bridges across the area's rivers using living tree roots and branches. These bridges last for hundreds of years (the lifetime of the tree).
The Living Bridges Of Meghalaya | The Velvet Rocket
http://thevelvetrocket.com/2010/11/14/the-living-bridges-of-meghalaya
  • On the surface of the bridge, which you can see below, rocks and bits of wood have been added to the mix to make for an easier crossing. There is an additional reason for the bits of wood though. As the wood decomposes, it provides nutrients for the tree roots growing around it:

  • These wonders of bioengineering are an eloquent testimony to man’s capacity to live in harmony with nature.

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2011-07-12

World's only Jumping Cockroach



Table Mountain Leaproach Hits Top-10 List

The World's only known jumping cockroach, discovered in the Table Mountain National Park by Prof. Mike Picker (University of Cape Town) and Dr. Jonathan Colville (Applied Biodiversity Research Division, SANBI) has just leapt into the Top 10 New Species for 2011! The list is compiled by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University in the US and highlights the most exciting species described taxonomically in 2010.

Top 10 New Species

'Leaproach', as Picker and Colville have named it, was described in 2010 and given the name Saltoblattella montistabularis, which loosely translates to "small jumping cockroach from Table Mountain". It joins on the Top 10 list a leech with enormous teeth, an iron-oxide consuming bacterium discovered on a rusticle from the RMS Titanic, a flat-as-a-pancake batfish that appears to hop along the ocean floor, and a six-foot-long fruit-eating lizard.

Top 10 - 2011 | International Institute for Species Exploration



Name: Saltoblattella montistabularis

Common Name:  Leaproach

Family:  Blattellidae

How it made the Top 10:  This new species of cockroach exhibits unusual morphology.  It has legs that are highly modified for jumping. Prior to its discovery jumping cockroaches were only known from the Late Jurassic. This extant cockroach has jumping ability that is on par with grasshoppers. In addition to the leg modifications, it has hemispherical shaped eyes that protrude from the sides of the head instead of kidney shaped and the antennae have an additional fixation point to help stabilize them during jumping.




UCT's Prof Mike Picker and Dr Jonathan
Colville show off their discovery.
(Images: UCT)

Unique creature

Speaking of their latest find, Picker said: “We were sweep netting and saw something that at first looked like a grasshopper, but when we got it back to the laboratory it became clear it was a cockroach, closely related to the common roach but with sophisticated hind legs and the ability to jump many times its own height.”

The leaproach measures a modest centimetre in length, and looks like a cross between a cockroach, a cricket and a grasshopper. Its Latin name is derived from Saltoblattella which means jumping small cockroach, while montistabularis refers to the place it was discovered.

Colville said: “Superficially it resembled a cricket, but not quite.”
The leaproach shares certain features with grasshoppers - large muscular hind legs for jumping; bulging eyes; toes that allow them to grip before and after jumping; and a strengthened antennae base which supports the delicate appendages during jumping.

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2011-04-11

Green Algae Could Help Clean Up Nuclear Waste

Fox News - Fair & BalancedAlgae Could Be Key to Cleaning Up Nuclear Accident Sites - FoxNews.com


Algae can secrete biofuels and pump out biologic drugs, and now researchers think it could help clean up radioactive accidents like the one unfolding at Japan's Fukushima nuclear facility.
A Northwestern University researcher has identified a certain kind of common algae, known as Closterium moniliferum, that has a unique penchant for sequestering strontium into crystals, a trick that could help remove the dangerous radioactive isotope strontium-90 from the environment.



Pond Alga Could Help Scientists Design Effective Method for Cleaning Up Nuclear Waste: McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern


The crescent-shaped, single-celled organism studied by Joester and his colleagues naturally makes biominerals that include non-radioactive strontium, and it can differentiate strontium from calcium -- a rare feat. The researchers want to learn more about this selectivity because calcium is present in far greater abundance than strontium in nuclear waste, but calcium is harmless. By concentrating the radioactive strontium (Sr-90) in the form of solid crystals with very low solubility, the dangerous high-level waste could be isolated from the rest and dealt with separately.

[...]

Joester, Krejci, Finney and Vogt all are authors of the paper, titled “Selective Sequestration of Strontium in Desmid Green Algae by Biogenic Co-precipitation with Barite.”

What’s the Context: The danger of strontium-90 is that it is chemically similar to calcium, and so can be taken up into milk, bones, and other tissues. Nuclear waste and spills can contain significant amounts of strontium; C. moniliferum is especially helpful because it can precipitate strontium but leave calcium alone (calcium is different enough from barium that the bacteria doesn’t crystallize it).

Not So Fast: Scientists don’t yet know how well the algae can withstand radioactivity, which could potentially put a damper on this clean-up method. Now, the scientists would like to find ways of increasing sulphate levels in the environment, which may in turn increase the ability of the algae to crystallize strontium.

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