Leopard Seal Flaunts Nurturing Side

If you love animals, you might want to consider getting a job as a wildlife photographer. You get to go to different places to take pictures of exotic animals in their natural habitat, and you get to live your dream.

Part of the job description? Being around exotic and dangerous animals, which explains why many wildlife photographers are still scared even if they love doing their jobs . But dangerous as some wild animals may be, you still hear of unexpected things that leave you in awe.

In 2006, wildlife photographer Paul Nicklen was documenting the notorious leopard seal for a National Geographic story, am experience in Antarctica that will stay with him forever. This experience recently resurfaced on the net and went viral.

The leopard seal is one of the top predators in the Antarctic Circle. They mainly prey on fish and penguins, but their powerful mouth and razor sharp teeth can do a lot of damage. As Paul narrates his experience, he mentions how vulnerable and helpless you become when you get into the water with these predators. The leopard seal that Paul was taking pictures of was particularly a big specimen, which made him even more nervous.

However, not only it not attack, the seal started to become “nurturing” towards Paul. According to him, the seal seemed to have thought that he was a “useless predator” and it even started to catch penguins and bringing them back to Paul’s camera, thinking that it was his mouth.

Photos of this remarkable encounter are available on National Geographic. 

520-Million-Year-Old Sea Creature Pulled Off A ‘Major’ Evolutionary Feat To Become ‘Top’ Predator [PHOTO]

An ancient sea creature that lived on Earth about 520 million years ago had bizarre facial appendages that it used to filter food from the ocean.

Known as Tamisiocaris, the marine animals lived during a period known as the “Cambrian Explosion,” when major animal groups suddenly appeared. The new findings, published in Nature, cite evidence that the animals evolved into filter feeders that transformed their grasping appendages into filters that could trap organisms in the water like a net.

"Tamisiocaris would have been a sweep net feeder, collecting particles in the fine mesh formed when it curled its appendage up against its mouth," Martin Stein of the University of Copenhagen said in a statement. "This is a rare instance when you can actually say something concrete about the feeding ecology of these types of ancient creatures with some confidence."

Source: Here

Cute Otter Eats Powerful Gator?

Recovering from the python eating crocodile sensation, here's another jaw-dropping photo encounter of an otter eating an alligator.

These "otterly delicious" photos were shot back in 2011 by a visitor of Florida's Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge, named Geoff Walsh.

The refuge posted the photos less than a month ago on their Facebook page, which draws attention to animal enthusiasts and and the snake expert, Terry Phillip who then commented: "Man, that's a bold and hungry otter! Very cool."

How is this possible? Click here for the National Geographic Experts' Explanation.

Wolves Play Important Role in Yellowstone Park Ecology

In nature, taking away one detail from the natural ecology of an area can shift the balance of the whole ecosystem. This is what happened when the wolves that naturally roam the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming United States, were taken out. However, when the wolves were re-introduced after 70 years of absence, the ecology in Yellowstone dramatically changed.

Since the wolves were not around, the population of deer began to grow out of control. Although human intervention was already used to regulate the deer population, it still wasn’t enough. They had grazed a huge amount of the park’s vegetation. In 1995, wolves were taken to the park and this changed the behaviors of the deer. They then started to avoid certain areas in the park like valleys and gorges which in turn, helped the vegetation to re-grow. In a span of less than a decade, the trees became taller, bare spots of lands became forest of willow, aspen and cottonwood which attracted other animals.

The regrowth of the vegetation triggered other species to come back and repopulate faster such as beavers and wild birds. Population of other animals in the park like bears started to become larger, mainly because of the availability of food.

This amazing effect is called the trophic cascade. This is an ecological process that begins on the top of the food chain and affects everything below it. Re-introducing the wolves gave the park a chance to regenerate and give life and homes to hundreds of species of animals and plants. 

Crows solve Aesop's fable puzzles, offer clues to cognition

(Reuters) - A species of crow native to islands east of Australia has long wowed scientists with its intelligence, and now it has shown it can solve at least one puzzle as well as the average 7-year-old child, scientists reported on Wednesday.

Like other research on the cognitive abilities of nonhuman animals, the study sheds light on the evolution of intelligence and whether disparate cognitive capacities develop in lockstep or at radically different rates between species. The results suggest that an understanding of cause and effect evolved fairly early.
Source: Here

Crows Reason Like Young Children

Crows and their relatives — ravens, jays, magpies, and rooks — are famous in folklore and myth for their intelligence as well as their enigmatic stare. Current science can explain and provide evidence that suggest crows can think and reason like a young child, a new study finds. Based on Aesop’s fable The Crow and the Pitcher, researchers from the University of Auckland tested New Caledonian crows’ understanding of water displacement and how to use this to solve a problem. In the fable, a crow drops pebbles into a pitcher that is half-filled with water. It continues to drop pebbles until the water level is high enough for the crow to drink. Likewise, the experiment required the crows to do the same to get a reward, which is a piece of meat attached to a floating cork.

Researchers put six New Caledonian crows through six different experiments that involved water displacement. After the birds were given a week of training, they passed four of the tests, which include dropping stones into a water-filled tube rather than a sand-filled one, dropping sinking objects instead of floating ones, dropping things into a tube that has a higher water level than a lower one, and using solid things instead of hollow ones.

Source: Here

Goats are apparently smarter than anyone thought

Researchers found that goats can learn to solve complicated tasks quickly and can remember the solutions they’ve learned for 10 months or more.
The State Column, Justin Beach | March 26, 2014

Science is having to constantly reevaluate how we look at animal intelligence. Recent evidence has shown that crows, pigs and dogs, for example, are even more intelligent than previously believed.

Most recently, researchers at Queen Mary University of London have found that goats can learn to solve complicated tasks quickly and can remember the solutions they’ve learned for 10 months or more. Scientists believe that this may explain the animal’s ability to adapt to harsh environments.

Source: Here

First Oahu geese in centuries making new home

KAHUKU, Hawaii (AP) — A pair of endangered Hawaiian geese that have hatched goslings and settled on Oahu's north shore were likely on their way back to Kauai from the Big Island when they stopped in Kahuku, a federal biologist said Wednesday.

The nene pair was taken from Kauai to the Big Island within the last two years as part of a program to move geese away from lagoons next to the Lihue airport, said Annie Marshall, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff biologist.

They are the first Hawaiian geese to make a home on Oahu since at least the 1700s, nesting at the James Campbell National Wildlife Refuge.

Another pair of nene was spotted at Makapuu on Oahu's south shore, but didn't stay.

There were just 30 of the geese in the 1950s when biologists began breeding them in captivity to save the population. Now there are more than 2,000 on Kauai, Maui and the Big Island.

"We were hoping, as recovery progressed, that eventually there would be nene on all the main islands where they used to occur," Marshall said. "It's a little sooner than we thought it would happen but it's all part of recovery."

Source: Here

The last of the woolly mammoths may have suffered serious birth defects, say scientists

Fossils of mammoths found near the North Sea and dating to the late Pleistocene, about 12,000 years ago, frequently sported extra ribs along their neck vertebrae. Though harmless on their own, these cervical ribs are often signs of development gone awry. A 2006 study of extra cervical ribs in humans published in the journal Evolution found that about 78 percent of fetuses with cervical ribs die before birth; 86 percent of fetuses that develop with these extra ribs won't make it to their first birthday.

The mammoth rib study began with the discovery of three neck vertebrae in the North Sea during a construction project in the Rotterdam Harbor. Two out of the three vertebrae showed signs that ribs had once been attached: smooth surfaces where bones once joined and a lack of normal openings for blood vessels and nerves. [Image Gallery: Stunning Mammoth Bones Unearthed]

Source: Here

Wolves Changed Yellowstone Park Ecology

In nature, taking away one detail from the natural ecology of an area can shift the balance of the whole ecosystem. This is what happened when the wolves that naturally roam the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming United States, were taken out. However, when the wolves were re-introduced after 70 years of absence, the ecology in Yellowstone dramatically changed.

Since the wolves were not around, the population of deer began to grow out of control. Although human intervention was already used to regulate the deer population, it still wasn’t enough. They had grazed a huge amount of the park’s vegetation. In 1995, wolves were taken to the park and this changed the behaviors of the deer. They then started to avoid certain areas in the park like valleys and gorges which in turn, helped the vegetation to re-grow. In a span of less than a decade, the trees became taller, bare spots of lands became forest of willow, aspen and cottonwood which attracted other animals.

The regrowth of the vegetation triggered other species to come back and repopulate faster such as beavers and wild birds. Population of other animals in the park like bears started to become larger, mainly because of the availability of food.

This amazing effect is called the trophic cascade. This is an ecological process that begins on the top of the food chain and affects everything below it. Re-introducing the wolves gave the park a chance to regenerate and give life and homes to hundreds of species of animals and plants. 

Two fossils of pre-historic sea turtle limb brought together

In one of the first such success two fossils of pre-historic sea turtle limb brought together. While one part was found in mid-eighties, the other was found less than two years ago.

This is one of the most amazing incidents reported by palaeontologist in a long time. Two parts of the broken arm of a sea turtle were found and joined with the difference of around 200 years.

Source: Here

Tibetan Mastiff sold at $2 Million in China

AFP - The Tibetan Mastiff sold to a property developer at 12 million Yuan or $1.9 million is said to be the most expensive dog sale ever.

The one-year old golden-haired mastiff was said to be found at the "luxury pet" fair in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

Read here for more information, especially before buying a Tibetan mastiff.

Climate Change Blamed for Smaller Salamanders

The global climate change has been blamed for yet another mishap, and that is salamanders in the Appalachian Mountains shrinking, researchers say.

Research from the past few years has been showing more and more that our warmer planet may cause some species of plants and animals to grow to be a smaller size. The salamander, already a creature under distress, seems to have decreased in size in the past 30 years, particularly in areas where the climate has gotten drier and hotter.

“This is one of the largest and fastest rates of change ever recorded in any animal,” Karen Lips, a University of Maryland biologist and author of the new paper, said in a release. “We don’t know exactly how or why it’s happening, but our data show it is clearly correlated with climate change.”

Source: Here

Leopard Seal Shows Soft Side

If you love animals, you might want to consider getting a job as a wildlife photographer. You get to go to different places to take pictures of exotic animals in their natural habitat, and you get to live your dream.

Part of the job description? Being around exotic and dangerous animals, which explains why many wildlife photographers are still scared even if they love doing their jobs. But dangerous as some wild animals may be, you still hear of unexpected things that leave you in awe.

In 2006, wildlife photographer Paul Nicklen was documenting the notorious leopard seal for a National Geographic story, an experience in Antarctica that will stay with him forever. This experience recently resurfaced on the net and went viral.

The leopard seal is one of the top predators in the Antarctic Circle. They mainly prey on fish and penguins, but their powerful mouth and razor sharp teeth can do a lot of damage. As Paul narrates his experience, he mentions how vulnerable and helpless you become when you get into the water with these predators. The leopard seal that Paul was taking pictures of was particularly a big specimen, which made him even more nervous.

However, not only did it not attack, the seal started to become “nurturing” toward Paul. According to him, the seal seemed to have thought that he was a “useless predator” and it even started to catch penguins and bringing them back to Paul’s camera, thinking that it was his mouth.

Photos of this remarkable encounter are available on National Geographic. 

Vengeful Taxonomy: Your Chance to Name a New Species of Cockroach

We’ve recently discovered a new species of cockroach in the genus Xestoblatta. It’s dirty, it’s ugly, it’s smelly, and it needs a name.

As part of our campaign to fund a project about how tropical landscapes drive evolution, we are offering the opportunity for anyone with enough cash to name this new species. Why would you want to name a down-and-dirty insect like that? Because it’s the most low-down and dirty of them all!

Source: Here

Cat Furniture

How much do you love your cat as to buy him/her a furniture from Goldtatze?

Goldtatze (Gold Paw) is a German company that creates ceiling-window-wall furniture for your felines. These are not just ordinary cat furniture mind you, these are made to give a heavenly home to your cat and give owners more free space.

Check here for more.

New praying mantis species discovered

Nineteen new species of a tree-living praying mantis family have been discovered, tripling the group’s diversity at a stroke.

The bark mantises (Liturgusa Saussure) from Central and South America were found in tropical forests and among specimens kept in museums.

Many of the newly described species are known only from a few specimens collected before 1950 from locations now heavily impacted by agriculture or urban development.

“Based on this study, we can predict that mantis groups with similar habitat specialisation in Africa, Asia and Australia will also be far more diverse than what is currently known,” said Dr Gavin Svenson, curator of invertebrate zoology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in the US.

Source: Here

Island of Horses in Maryland

Getaways to exotic islands and beautiful beaches are dream vacations for most of us. We’d usually expect to see unusual animals and fishes in these islands, but would you visit one populated by wild horses?

Assateague Island, found somewhere near Virginia and Maryland, is a 60-km long beach destination frequented by many tourists during the summer. However, you can expect to see more than just sand and sea in this small island, as there are about 300 feral horses roaming freely around the island. These horses are so used to seeing humans that they would just walk in to any crowded beach and campsites.

The horses would even sunbathe together with people on the beaches. They do have a tendency to rummage through baskets and coolers looking for food though, but the tourists don’t really mind them and would just shoo them away.

It’s said that these horses came from a Spanish ship which was transporting horses and sank near the island around 400 years ago. The horses swam to shore and populated the island since. Due to the overpopulation of the horses, the whole herd is divided into half and some of them are auctioned off every year.

The island was made into a national park during the 60’s. The northern side belongs to the state of Maryland, which includes a majority of the Assateague State Park and Assateague Island National Seashore. The southern area is under Virginia and has the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.

Giant pythons have 'homing instinct'

Giant Burmese pythons have map and compass senses which help them travel "home" over vast distances, scientists have been surprised to discover.

Pythons captured and relocated in Florida's Everglades - where they are an invasive species - returned 23 miles (36km) to their original start point.

It is the first evidence that snakes may share a similar magnetic compass to other reptiles, such as sea turtles.

The findings are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
Continue reading the main story   
“Start Quote

    If pythons can do this, all snakes can do it - rattlesnakes, vipers, the lot”

Dr Stephen Secor University of Alabama

The Burmese python (Python bivittatus) is one of the largest snakes in the world. The biggest specimen ever caught measured more than 17ft (5m) and weighed 164lb (74kg).

Source: Here

Study shows some cuckoo birds may actually help their hosts

 (Phys.org) —A team of researchers in Spain has found that at least one species of cuckoo bird may actually help its nest-mates survive. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes how in studying the great spotted cuckoo, they found that crow hatchlings were actually more successful due to the presence of an uninvited bird.

Most everyone knows that cuckoo birds are the ultimate free-loaders. Mothers lay their eggs in the nests of birds of different species, leaving them to raise their young for them. What many may not realize however, is that different kinds of cuckoo birds behave differently when they hatch. Some famously push all the other eggs out of the nest, leaving themselves as the sole survivor and beneficiary. Other's however, don't do that, instead, they leave the other chicks alone and share in food the mother brings, acting as an adopted sibling, of sorts. At first glance it would appear that the host birds gain no benefit from this arrangement, but upon closer inspection, that assumption has been proved wrong.

Source: Here

Cute and Funny Pandas

Pandas are just adorable creatures. Here are some photos as evidence.

Researchers discover fish with a previously unknown type of eye

The University of Tübingen's Institute of Anatomy has discovered a fish with a previously unknown type of eye. The aptly-named glasshead barreleye lives at depths of 800 to 1000 meters. It has a cylindrical eye pointing upwards to see prey, predators or potential mates silhouetted against the gloomy light above. But the eye also has a mirror-like second retina which can detect bioluminescent flashes created by deep-sea denizens to the sides and below, reports Professor Hans-Joachim Wagner in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Professor Wagner examined an 18cm long glasshead barreleye, rhynchohyalus natalensis, caught in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, as part of an international research project. The results were unexpected – reflector eyes are usually only found in invertebrates, such as mollusks and crustaceans, although one other vertebrate, the deep-sea brownsnout spookfish or dolichopteryx longipes, also uses a combination of reflective and refractive lenses in its eyes. The light coming from below is focused onto a second retina by a curved mirror composed of many layers of small reflective plates made of guanine crystals, giving the fish a much bigger field of vision.

Source: Here

Owl Monkeys Rate Among the Animal World's Best Mates and Fathers

The wide-eyed, smiley-faced male Azara’s owl monkeys of Argentina are among the most faithful mates and best fathers in the world, according to a study that also found a strong link between fidelity and the quality of child care in 15 mammalian species.

Researchers have known that the owl monkeys stick together, but they could not be certain that the males were always the fathers of the children they so devotedly cared for. Studies with birds and other species have shown that fathers often unwittingly care for offspring that are not theirs.

Source: Here

Weird ‘chicken from hell’ dinosaur discovered

 Scientists have discovered a weird sharp-clawed bird-like dinosaur that roamed the Earth with the dreaded T-rex 66 million years ago and is being described as a “chicken from hell”.

The beaked dinosaur, Anzu wyliei, was almost 5 feet tall at the hip, measured 11.5 feet long and weighed up to 300 kg and had very sharp claws.

“It was a giant raptor, but with a chicken-like head and presumably feathers. The animal stood about 10 feet tall, so it would be scary as well as absurd to encounter,” said Emma Schachner from the University of Utah, a co-author of study.

“We jokingly call this thing the ‘chicken from hell,’ and I think that’s pretty appropriate,” said Matt Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, the study’s lead author.

Three partial skeletons of the dinosaur — almost making up a full skeleton — were excavated from the uppermost level of the Hell Creek rock formation in North and South Dakota — a formation known for abundant fossils of Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops.

Anzu is also “one of the youngest oviraptorosaurs known, meaning it lived very close to the dinosaur extinction event” blamed on an asteroid striking Earth 65 million years ago, Schachner said.

The researchers believe Anzu, with large sharp claws, was an omnivore, eating vegetation, small animals and perhaps eggs while living on a wet floodplain. The dinosaur apparently got into some scrapes.

“Two of the specimens display evidence of pathology. One appears to have a broken and healed rib, and the other has evidence of some sort of trauma to a toe,” Schachner said.

Having a nearly complete skeleton of Anzu wyliei sheds light on a category of oviraptorosaur theropod dinosaurs named caenagnathids, which have been known for a century, but only from limited fossil evidence.

Like many “new” dinosaurs, Anzu wyliei fossils were discovered some years ago, and it took more time for researchers to study the fossils and write and publish a formal scientific description.

The finding was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Source: Here

The Black Dragonfish

Idiacanthus atlanticus or commonly known as the black dragonfish, are long and slender fish with bodies that look like an eel. 

If you wonder what it looks like, just imagine the scary monster fish found in the animation, "Finding Nemo." Which one? The one located deep, deep down (2,000 meters) in the dark waters of the ocean, that emits light to stealthily attack its prey, which is another fish.

Not only is this creature odd-looking, but the sexual difference is also strange. Females are up to 40 centimeters long, have chin barbels, and have very long, scary-looking teeth that beats the piranha's. While the males are just 5 centimeters short, have no teeth and no chin barbels, and are brown in color. 

The larvae are even more unbelievable, the bodies are yellow in color  with eyes that extend like arms holding their eyeballs to see in all directions.

The black dragonfish can produce their own light through photophores that extend from the lower to upper surfaces of their bodies, also present on the lower portion of their eyes and at the edge of their barbels. This bioluminescent capability gives them immense advantage of never getting hungry deep below.

Read more here.

Biologist spotted Troll-haired Bug

A mystery bug with hairs that stand like fiber optics or a lot prefer to call it, troll hairs, has been spotted and photographed by Trond Larsen. 

It is still unsure if this planthopper has already been part of the species classification in Biology. 

According to Larsen, this bug moves very quickly that it's almost impossible to capture it for identification. It's also hard to tell from the picture itself because this bug is still in the nymph stage, she added. 

Like most insects, the pupa or nymph phases can look very different from their adult versions, making this bug still categorized in the "nameless" section.


Click here for full details.

Most beautiful of pigeons to be freed into the wild

MANILA, Philippines—Five Nicobar pigeons, considered among the most beautiful in the pigeon family but now in threatened numbers, will be released back into the wild this week after six years of rehabilitation at the environment department’s Wildlife Rescue Center in Quezon City, officials said on Tuesday.

The birds—three females and two males—will again fly freely at the world-famous Apo Reef Natural Park (ARNP) in the Sulu Sea, according to the Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

Source: Here