WTF_Nature

Maybe it's an egg...

2012-05-24T10:53:21Z

via Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society - Saturn's moon Methone

Methone was discovered by the Cassini team in 2004, but it's taken this long for the probe to pass close enough to the small moon to get a good look at it. And it's bizarre. Saturn's 53 moons continue to startle astronomers, what with the geysers on Enceladus, the Death Star Moon Mimas, the methane lakes and rivers of Titan, the 150 Propeller Moonlets so far discovered inside the rings, the two-tone surface and equatorial ridge of Iapetus, the weirdly sponge-like Hyperion, and so on. And now Saturn has done it again.

Methone shouldn't be that smooth - it's only 3km long. It can't be gravity that's smoothed it out like that, since the smallest gravitationally rounded object in the Solar System in Mimas, and that's almost 400km across.

Lakdawalla suggests that it's covered in an ocean of very puffy dust, collecting more ice particles from the Enceladan geysers. This seems reasonable. More reasonable than somebody out in orbit around Saturn and skipping giant pebbles across the rings, anyway....

Polar bears vs. walrus - unique photos

2012-05-11T20:21:04Z

Unique set of photos of a walrus straightening out the neighbourhood thugs: http://www.nordlys.no/bilder/article6048383.ece

"Jon ended up in the middle of the polar bear and walrus-match

"Jon Sandmo is working as a doctor and tour operator on Svalbard, and constantly see both walrus and polar bear, separately, of course.

But last Saturday he saw something he had never seen before: two polar bears and a walrus who stared each other down in an intense confrontation.

- I always stay in Longyearbyen, and has a cabin at the Svea mine. I sat in the cabin and looked out the window when I saw a male and a female polar bear by the water, says Sandmo to Nettavisen.

- I saw them through the binoculars, they were about two miles from the cabin, so I took the snowmobile to get a little closer, says Sandmo, who first told his story to NRK.no.

Saw tusks

When he was about 100 meters from the bears, he saw what he first thought was a seal in the water right next to the bear.

- It was a bit big for a seal, I thought. Then I saw the tusks come out of the water, and realized that it was a walrus, says Sandmo.

The doctor and tour operator says that the female was most active, in what he describes as a sort of power struggle between the animals. Ha has no doubt as to who would have won if they had flown at each other.

- A polar bear is no match for a walrus, especially if the walrus is in the water, as it was now. Polar bears can take sick or injured walruses, but not the one I saw on Saturday, says Sandmo.

After a long staring contest and a bout of "feather flaring" both bear couple and and walrus each went their own way."

Translated (by me, sorry) from an original article in Nordlys: http://www.nordlys.no/nyheter/article6048367.ece

Strange underwater creature going viral: deepstaria enigmatica?

2012-05-10T21:21:18Z

Going viral from theblaze.com:

'Easily the Most Insane Animal Footage': What is This Strange Underwater Creature?

Initially it just whisks by, but keep watching for its return, where it balloons out to over 400% of its original size, then turns itself inside out. Its skin appears to be at least partially reflective (the light glares off of it) and it has this hexagonal membrane.

Edited: Second direct youtube link since the one above has been changed to private:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlwvRURK2eg

Allegedly a Deepstaria enigmatica -- appropriately named? If it is, this might be the first video of it, and the first live specimen recorded? This one appears to have only one arm, though the rest could be retracted up inside the bell.

Tasmanian Giant Crab

2012-05-05T19:58:56Z

I had just came across this article on Tumblr. Good lord!

Source: Daily Mail Online

A sea monster ... and he’s still a nipper! Monster Tasmanian King Crab saved from the pot and shipped to Britain for aquarium display

Claude weighs a mighty 15lbs and measures 15 inches wide and would have produced 20lbs worth of meat

He was destined for the pot – if they had found one big enough to fit.

But Claude the Tasmanian giant crab was saved from death when the fisherman who caught him sold him to a British aquarium for £3,000.

Now, after a 29-hour plane journey from Australia – where giant crab meat is a delicacy – and two weeks in quarantine, Claude is ready to meet his public.

He is the biggest crab on display in the UK and weighs a mighty 15lb with a 15-inch shell – enough to make 160 crab cakes.

Claude is 100 times bigger than a standard UK shore crab. Yet he is still a juvenile and will grow to double his weight.

Claude was caught off the coast of Tasmania last month, but was sold to the Sea Life group along with two other Tasmanian giant crabs.

He will go on display at the Sea Life centre in Weymouth, Dorset, on Thursday, and his two companions will be moved to other centres in Birmingham and Berlin if Claude responds well to his new home.

Currently he is being kept on his own in a specially made cylindrical tank, ten feet tall and six feet wide, but the aquarium will introduce some coldwater fish once he is settled.

In the wild, crabs eat any dead or dying matter they find on the seabed but Claude is currently dining on diced mackerel and squid and is reportedly very happy with his gourmet diet.

Rob Hicks, head marine biologist for Sea Life, said: ‘They are such impressive creatures we thought that it was worth the cost and effort of flying them halfway round the world so they can flourish in an aquarium display.

‘They had a stopover in Hong Kong and arrived with us two weeks ago. It took them a few days to get over the jet-lag but now they’re feeding happily and don’t seem any the worse for their trip.’

Jemma Battrick, aquarist at Weymouth Sea Life said: 'When I found out we were getting the crabs in I was really excited.

'We already have a tank here for them so it will be easy to move them in, and they will go on display straight away.

'The crabs don’t eat very much despite being one of the largest species and they will feed on shrimp, prawns, and squid when they are here.

'We want to increase their numbers but in Australia people eat them and I think visitors to the Sea Life will be shocked when they find that out because they look so magnificent.'

Fatal Spirotrich Sex

2012-05-05T19:58:46Z

A stunning DIC (differential interference contrast) microscope photo by Scientific American Blogs’ own Ocelloid shows glittering jewel-like creatures literally having sex to death. These beautiful spirotrichs have unfortunately fused at the mouth while reproducing, which you can see at the right of the image, with all the cilia. The ability for scientists to image microfauna such as these is essential, and DIC has the advantage of imaging these organisms while leaving them unstained and alive (unless they have fatal cilia mouth sex).

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/image-of-the-week/2012/04/23/fatal-spirotrich-sex/

Pimp my... exoskeleton?

2012-04-25T05:17:55Z

Outrageously coloured crabs have been discovered in the Phillipines!

"The particular violet coloration might just have evolved by chance, and must not necessarily have a very specific function or reason aside from being a general visual signal for recognition," said Freitag, whose study was published in February in the Raffles Bulletin of Zoology.

...that's right, they evolved into the classiest/most godawful looking crustaceans just because they felt like it.

A new way to do one night stands?

2012-04-25T05:17:42Z

If your partner is likely to devour you after sex, snapping off your genitals inside her and running away might seem a reasonable reproductive strategy.

Sounds kinda painful, but it could save your 8-legged life!

Eek

2012-04-17T00:38:40Z

Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, on Mars' Tornado Alley

In March, I wrote about a dust devil on Mars spotted by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It was 800 meters high, which I said was "huge".

Yeah. A week later, MRO spotted another dust devil… that was 20 kilometers high!

Not a Snake

2012-03-29T02:29:30Z

These photos were taken not far from Moscow, Russia, some any years ago.

The creature looks like a snake, but actually it is a legless lizard, Anguis fragilis. It is also known as a slowworm. Slowworms have clearly visible ears and eyelids, which snakes do not have.

They can shed their tails to escape predators. The tail measures more than half the length of the lizard.

We spotted this slowworm by chance despite its bright colouring as it looked like a pine twig. It was quite friendly and didn’t try to flee.

Bizarre behaviour of the Pearl Fish

2012-03-27T08:46:28Z

Hey guys! I saw this video a few days ago and shared with with a friend who thinks sea cucumbers are pretty cool things. Which they are. But apparently they are one of the most laid-back creatures of the sea if they allow this to happen to them on a regular basis...

I am sorry that I can't seem to embed the video, blame the BBC.

Enjoy! http://www.wimp.com/pearlfishbehavior/

Hey! Stop screwing my lunch!

2012-03-27T07:45:48Z

Video: Ants mate with half-eaten, dying queen | MSNBC -- [A more macabre video from the insect kingdom would be hard to find.]

We can't all be picky about our mates, and ants even less so. A new video taken by Adrián Skippy Purkart, a wildlife photographer from Slovakia, shows the ants swarming around repeatedly mating with their dying queen as a crab spider is consuming her head first. Sexy!

"I can't imagine anything more unpleasant than being sucked dry by a crab spider latched to my skull. Other than the same, but simultaneously being assaulted by a sex-crazed drone swarm," insect photographer Alex Wild said in a blog post.

The ants, a species called Prenolepis nitens, are a part of the ant genus commonly called the "false honey ants" or "winter ants." They are drawn to the female even though she is dying because she is still sending out chemical cues, researchers said.

"Mating in insects is facilitated by simple cues and signals. In many insects, including ants, the stimuli that induce males to attempt mating with a female are largely chemical," ant researcher Walter Tschinkel, of Florida State University, told LiveScience in an email. "Technically, this queen is not yet fully dead, and the chemical signals she emanates are undoubtedly still strong."

The video shows how strong the insect's mating behaviors are — these chemical cues are so strong the male ants are in a frenzy to mate with her, unfazed by her death and even the near presence of the crab spider predator.

"She is probably releasing tons of pheromones and the males are too hopped up on those pheromones to be very discriminating," researcher Rob Dunn, of North Carolina State University, told LiveScience in an email. "They are wasting time, but the vast majority of male ants die without mating at all, so they aren't wasting more time than average."

"I know folks that spend half their waking hours on Facebook," Tschinkel said. "That has about the same chance of increasing their fitness as does mating with a dead queen."

from which he got his name

2012-03-26T17:53:44Z

North American Wolverine: 34 inches long, 10 inch tail, 66 pounds.
Not everything fluffy is cute. Furball with an attitude.

Yeah, these things will steal kills from an entire pack of wolves. They chase down grizzly bears.

Also very territorial, they see their area as theirs for hundreds of miles in all directions.

It's a wonder they can even stand each other long enough to mate.

Arachnophobics, skip this post.

2012-03-11T23:03:46Z

Humans aren't the only ones trying to flee the floods in Wagga Wagga (NSW, Australia).

Thousands of spiders have crawled into farm fields in the city's northern outskirts to escape the swollen Murrumbidgee River.

Lethal Megapinecones!

2012-03-11T23:03:30Z

Bunya Pine begins dropping lethal, 10kg cones the size of watermelons | News.com.au -- [For the first time in 15 years, a certain pine tree in the Victorian town of Warragul has begun dropping pine cones. But apart from the fact it rarely happens, these are no ordinary pine cones. They're giant, people-killing pine cones.]

The Bunya Pine has stood in Smith Street for 120 years, most recently in the grounds of the Courthouse Restaurant.

So if you're tucking in to a medium-rare beef 'n' reef this week, enjoy it - because if one of the pine's watermelon-sized 10kg cones drops on your head, it will be your last.

"These huge pine cones have the capacity to be lethal if they were to fall on someone passing underneath from such a large height," Mayor of the Baw Baw Shire Council Diane Blackwood said in a media release.

"As such, we are asking residents to be vigilant by staying well outside of the barricades that we have placed out on the footpath while we work with the owner and a consultant arborist to reach a quick and satisfactory solution to the problem."

"Although the offending tree is not owned by the Council, or on public land, our major concern is public safety which is why we have arranged for a 40 metre high elevated work platform to be in place in Smith Street to get the offending pine cones."

FUCK YEAH, SPIDERS

2012-03-07T19:37:27Z

Spiders spin wet blanket over Wagga Wagga

http://www.news.com.au/national/spiders-spin-wet-blanket-over-wagga-wagga/story-e6frfkvr-1226291542235

Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

2012-03-01T10:15:51Z

This island has a secret...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/six-legged-giant-finds-secret-hideaway-hides-for-80-years

Aroooo

2012-02-27T12:01:14Z

The silence of the night was pierced by the chilling, lonely hunting howl of the.... Grasshopper mouse!?

Before crunching into its prey, the grasshopper mouse howls. ... The grasshopper mouse even stands on its hind legs and throws its head back. The grasshopper mouse regularly howls just before a kill.

...Bites delivered by grasshopper mice were significantly more powerful than those recorded for deer mice. Rather than opening wider, the jaws of the grasshopper mice are adapted to deliver powerful, piercing bites to prey. Grasshopper mice are not the sabercats of the rodent world, but tiny tigers of the North American deserts and prairies.

Whale shark carcass

2012-02-24T11:16:54Z

Big ass fish

Why Some Poison Frogs Taste Bittersweet When Licked

2012-02-19T09:36:41Z

It's a discovery perhaps only a frog-licking scientist could make: Some toxic frogs secrete sugars and bile acids in addition to their poisons, a new study says. Link:natgeo

Itsy-bitsy-teeny-weenie

2012-02-15T04:53:33Z

Some spot color: Meet the world's tiniest chameleon

Discovered on a small island off Madagascar, creature can perch on a match head

By Andrea Mustain

OurAmazingPlanet

updated 2/14/2012 6:45:01 PM ET

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.

Adult males of the B. micra species grow to only just over a half-inch (16 millimeters) from nose to bottom, making them one of the smallest vertebrates ever found on Earth.

From nose to tail, adults of both sexes grow to only 1 inch (30 mm) in length.

Lead researcher Frank Glaw said the team already had experience finding tiny lizards in Madagascar, "but it was also good luck."

The team searched for the tiny lizards under the cover of darkness, using headlamps and flashlights to seek out the sleeping chameleons. All four species are active during the day, and at night climb up into the branches to sleep.

But for such tiny critters, "up into the branches" means a mere 4 inches (10 centimeters) off the ground, Glaw told OurAmazingPlanet, so finding them is no easy task. However, once spotted, the tiny lizards aren't tough to catch, Glaw said.

"They are sleeping and you can just pick them up. It's like picking a strawberry, so it's easy," Glaw said. "They do not move at all at night."

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.

Glaw, who has been going to Madagascar to research its ever-expanding list of amphibians and reptiles for a quarter century, said that B. micra may represent the limit of miniaturization possible for a vertebrate with complex eyes, but said it's impossible to know for sure since each time scientists have proclaimed the discovery of the tiniest one yet, another, tinier species appears.

"Maybe there's a potential for a smaller species," Glaw said.

The newly discovered chameleon Brookesia desperata, so named because the species is facing such extreme threats. All four newfound lizard species have eyes that are extremely large for their tiny bodies.

Another group of researchers recently announced the discovery of the world's smallest frog species in Papua New Guinea. The scientists also declared it the world's smallest vertebrate, but others contend that a species of angler fish is the smallest vertebrate yet discovered on Earth.

Glaw is planning another expedition to the region of Madagascar in November.

"I'm sure there are many surprises awaiting discovery," he said.

The research is to be published in the Wednesday issue of the open access journal PLoS ONE.

Reach Andrea Mustain at amustain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @AndreaMustain. Follow OurAmazingPlanet for the latest in Earth science and exploration news on Twitter @OAPlanet and on Facebook.

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46388892/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/some-spot-color-meet-worlds-tiniest-chameleon/#.Tzstu16GKws

Caustic Soda

2012-02-14T23:39:08Z

Good news for insect fans - the Caustic Soda podcast has done a second instalment about insects. This time, True Bugs.

"Assassin bugs, Chaga's disease, bat bugs and water bugs that take down reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals are all on topic! Plus: The Lesser of Two Evils – would you rather spend a few years in an Uzbekistan bug pit or trying to farm out a living under the Khmer Rouge?"

Last time it was Flies and Maggots. The Soda Jerks Toren Atkinson, Kevin Leeson and Joe Fulgham are once again ably assisted by forensic entomologist wirrrn.

But I must warn you, Caustic Soda explores some horrible subjects every week, many of them natural history-related. Flesh-eating maggots isn't even close to the most ghastly.

wtf_nature @ 2012-02-12T15:18:00

2012-02-13T02:08:40Z

this is a pelican spider & i have nothing more to add beyond this:
"wtf, nature. nature, wtf."

Well, the locals would find interstellar travel relatively simple...

2012-02-09T04:04:05Z

from Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer

"In the race to find the weirdest planet orbiting another star, we may have a front runner: GJ 667Cc, a super-Earth orbiting one star in a triple system that’s actually relatively closeby. And oh yeah: it just so happens to be in just the right spot to be potentially inhabitable!"

And GJ 667 is only 22 light years away - and GJ 667Cc is only one of four suspected planets in the system!

Giant amphipods!!!!

2012-02-03T10:33:38Z

A huge crustacean has been found lurking 7km down in the waters off the coast of New Zealand.

The creature - called a supergiant - is a type of amphipod, which are normally around 2-3cm long.

But these beasts, discovered in the Kermadec Trench, were more than 10 times bigger: the largest found measured in at 34cm.

Alan Jamieson, from the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab, said: "It's a bit like finding a foot-long cockroach."

"I stopped and thought: 'What on Earth was that?' This amphipod was far bigger than I ever thought possible."

Continue reading the main story

The strange animals were found using a large metal trap, which had been equipped with a camera, housed in sapphire glass to keep it safe from the high pressures of the deep sea.

Seven specimens were caught in the trap and nine were captured on film by the team from the University of Aberdeen, in Scotland, and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), in New Zealand.

The largest specimen brought back up to the ship measured 28cm in length, while the biggest spotted on camera was 34cm-long.

'Conspicuous animal'

Amphipods have been found living in large numbers at the very bottom of ocean trenches, deep, narrow valleys in the sea floor that can plunge down to nearly 11km.

The creatures are small, but extremely active, and seem to thrive in this place where the pressure is one thousand times greater than at sea level.

Amphipods found elsewhere in the deep are usually just 2-3cm in length

The name "supergiant" was first coined after large specimens were caught in the 1980s off the coast of Hawaii.

They have been since being seen in the Antarctic, where they grew up to 10cm, but these are now dwarfed by this latest find.

"For such a large and conspicuous animal to go unnoticed for so long is just testament to how little we know about life in New Zealand's most deep and unique habitat."

Over the last few years, scientists have been surprised by the life that is found in ocean trenches.

These deep-sea spots were once thought to be barren; too dark, cold and with too much pressure for anything to survive.

But researchers have found a wealth of life in the deepest of the deep.

As well as swarms of amphipods, they have uncovered shrimp-like creatures called isopods and snailfish that live 7,700m down.

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16834913

"damn, nature, you scary"

2012-01-30T19:33:34Z

"The nature trail was closed due to falling Bunya Pines. We found this one and realised why."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_bidwillii