Spiders Cover Roadside with Web

Spiders have always creep people out with their long legs and fangs. But imagine driving down a common looking road only to find millions of spiders taking over the area.

 A whole army of spiders looking for shelter away from the floods in Hikurangi, New Zealand, flied to a portion of the Jordan Valley Road. The area turned white as the spiders spun their webs over the trees and ground. Ben Smith a resident of the Hikurangi Swamp area says that this strange phenomenon happens every year. The Hikurangi area is known to experience flood during the last few weeks of autumn and the spiders would stay near the Jordan Valley Road for about 2-3 weeks. Smith added that when the water rises, the spiders really have no other place to go. They do start dispersing as the water recedes into the swamp areas.

Ross Johnson, biosecurity officer for New Zealand’s Northern RegionalCouncil said that the baby moneyspiders are the main culprits of the spider takeover. During the late autumn and early winter weeks, the spiderlings would each make a long strand of silk. They use these to get drifted off by the winds and get transported to long distances away from the water.

Everything gets covered in silk when the spiders start moving up to higher ground. The spiders could cover trees, gates, even tractors with a thin blanket of their silk. These spiders are also capable of making different kinds of silk. The ballooning silk they produce is different compared to the ones they normally make to build their webs.

Parent Presence Affects Birds Choices in Mates

Same-sex mates is not only a human thing, some animals are also known to have same-sex partners, especially amongst those who stick to one mates.

A new research showed that male Zebra Finches that were raised by their father alone were more prone to have chosen a male partner. Zebra Finches actually stay together with a lifelong partner and mate with them exclusively. However, in cases where only the male specimen is left to care for their young, the young bird tends to choose another male for his lifelong partner when it grows older.

The study’s researchers looked at how mate choices for both female and male Zebra Finches that was raised without the adult female were like. Of the subjects that formed bonds with other birds, 75% of the male birds paired with another male bird. However, the study did show that this doesn’t carry over to female specimens. None of the females chose to have a same sex partner.

In the animal world, the sexual imprinting is very common. This is when a youngling learns features and behaviors from adult individuals and use what they learned when choosing their mates during adulthood.

Male zebra finches that are raised in a father-only environment choose to pair with the same sex is likely the effect of the young bird’s “imprinting" on the father bird. This gives researchers a new angle on how Zebra Finches actually choose their lifelong mates and what factors could influence them on whom to choose as a partner.

A Beautiful Web of Poison Extends A New Strand

I just got back yesterday from the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution. It took place in a big hotel on the outskirts of Norman, Oklahoma, during a windy heat wave that felt like the Hair Dryer of the Gods. It had been a few years since I had last been to an SSE meeting, and I was struck by how genomic everything has gotten. No matter how obscure the species scientists are studying, they seem to have outrageous heaps of DNA sequence to analyze. A few years ago, they would have been content with a few scraps. Fortunately, SSE hasn’t turned its back on good old natural history. There were lots of fascinating discoveries on offer, about species that I had assumed had been studied to death. My favorite was a talk about the rough-skinned newt, the most ridiculously poisonous animal in America.

The scientific tale of the rough-skinned newt begins five decades ago, with a story about three dead hunters in Oregon. Reportedly, the bodies of the hunters were discovered around a camp fire. They showed no signs of injury, and nothing had been stolen. The only strange thing about the scene was the coffee pot. Curled up inside was a newt.

In the 1960s, a biologist named Butch Brodie got curious about the story. The newt in the coffee pot–known as the rough-skinned newt–has a dull brown back, but when it is disturbed, it bends its head backward like a contortionist to reveal an orange belly as bright as candy corn. Bright colors are common among poisonous animals. It’s a signal that says, in effect, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave me alone.” Brodie wondered if the newts were toxic, too.

Toxic, it turns out, doesn’t do the newts justice. They are little death machines. The newts produce a chemical in their skin called tetrodotoxin, or TTX for short, that’s made by other poisonous animals like pufferfish. Locking onto sodium channels on the surface of neurons, TTX blocks signals in the nervous system, leading to a quick death. In fact, TTX is 10,000 times deadlier than cyanide. While we may never know for sure what killed those three Oregon hunters, we do know that a single rough-skinned newt could have easily produced enough TTX to kill them, and have plenty of poison left over to kill dozens more.

Now, if the whole idea of evolution makes you uneasy, you might react by saying, “That couldn’t possibly have evolved.” Experience has shown that this is not a wise thing to say. Brodie said something different: the most plausible explanation for a ridiculously poisonous animal is that it is locked in a coevolutionary arms race with a ridiculously well-defended predator. Another biologist mentioned to him that he’d seen garter snakes dining on rough-skinned newts, and so Brodie investigated. He discovered that garter snakes in rough-skinned newt territory have evolved peculiar shape to the receptors on their neurons that TTX would normally grab.

The coevolution of newts and snakes became a family business. Brodie’s son, Edmund, grew up catching newts, and today he’s a biologist at the University of Virginia. Father and son and colleagues have discovered that snakes have independently evolved the same mutations to their receptors in some populations, while evolving other mutations with the same effect in other populations. They’ve also found that both newts and snakes pay a cost for their weaponry. The newts put in a lot of energy into making TTX that could be directed to growing and making baby newts. The evolved receptors in garter snakes don’t just protect them from TTX; they also leave the snakes slower than vulnerable snakes. They’ve studied newts and snakes up and down the west coast of North America and found a huge range of TTX potency and resistance. That’s what you’d expect from a coevolutionary process in which local populations are adapting to each other in different environments, with different costs and benefits to escalating the fight.

This story is so irresistible that I’ve written about it twice: first, ten years ago in Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea,, and then in updated form last year in The Tangled Bank. I figured that the Brodies et al had pretty much discovered all there was to know about these creatures. But in Oklahoma, I discovered that they had missed what is arguably the coolest part of the whole story.

Think about it: you’re a female newt, you’ve fended off attackers with a staggering amounts of poison in your skin, and now you want to pass on your genes to your descendants. You lay a heap of eggs in a pond, and what happens? A bunch of pond creatures come rushing in and have a feast of amphibian caviar.

What could you possibly do to ensure at least some of your offspring survived? Well, you have an awful lot of TTX in your system. You have enough of the stuff to give your eggs a parting gift to help them out there in the cruel, predator-infested world. Make your eggs poisonous.

That is exactly what female newts do. In fact, they load their eggs with TTX. To figure out if this poison provided a defense against predators, the Brodies and their students traveled to a group of ponds in central Oregon that are home to thousands of rough-skinned newts apiece. They collected dragonflies and other aquatic predators from the ponds and put them in buckets filled with newt eggs, along with muck from the pond bottoms. The scientists found that almost none of the predators would touch the newt eggs. Since these predators eat plenty of eggs of other species, this result shows that TTX does indeed help the newt eggs survive.

But there was one exception. Caddisfly larvae turned out to relish the newt eggs. In fact, the caddisflies actually grew bigger if they were supplied with newt eggs and pond muck than with pond muck alone. And yet the Brodies and their students estimate that there’s enough TTX in one newt egg to kill somewhere between 500 and 3700 caddisflies.

You know where this is going. At the evolution meeting, one of their students, Brian Gall, described feeding newt skin to caddisflies both from the central Oregon ponds and from ponds elsewhere without newts. The newt-free caddisflies would happily munch on newt skin from which all the TTX was removed. But if there was more than a trace TTX in the skin, they refused to eat. The caddisflies that fed on newt eggs, on the other hand, would eat the most toxic skin Gall could provide.

It appears that the caddisflies have evolved much like the garter snakes. In ponds where rough-skinned newts lived, the caddisflies have evolved defenses against TTX. In fact, Gall reported, the caddisflies appear to put the snakes to shame. Evolved snakes are 34 times more resistant to TTX than vulnerable ones. The caddisflies have increased their resistance 175 times.

It’s not clear whether the caddisflies and the newts are truly co-evolving, however. The Brodies will have to find out whether adding extra TTX to eggs increases their survival in the presence of caddisflies. Another intriguing possibility arises from their discovery that the caddisflies actually harbor some of the TTX they eat in their tissues for weeks after eating the eggs. Perhaps the caddisflies are stealing the poison to protect themselves, as happens in monarch butterflies eating toxic milkweed.

In other words, this wonderfully deadly story isn’t over yet.

[For more information, see this new paper in Can. J. Zool., and Understanding Evolution, an educational web site. Ed Brodie tells much of the story pre-caddisfly in a chapter of the new book, In The Light of Evolution (full disclosure: I wrote a chapter in it, too, which you can read as a pdf here)]

Source: Here

Dogs become Friendlier with more Oxytocin

Dogs have always been known to be really loving and social animals. In the wild, they live in packs and domestic dogs have carried on this trait. We notice them getting along with other dogs and animals, especially if they are not the only pet living in the house. They also approach other dogs that they meet in the street or at the park and get to know them.

In a recent study, it’s been found that oxytocin can actually cause them to show a stronger bonding and socializing behavior with other dogs and people. The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the experimenters say that the findings of their research doesn’t impact dogs alone, but it could also be applied to all kinds of mammals.

Oxytocin is a natural hormone found in mammals that impacts our behavior. Because of its effects, this hormone is commonly called as the “love” hormone. Amongst humans, a high level is commonly see when we are sexually aroused. It also caused people to become less antagonistic and more social. The study more or less showed that oxytocin has the same effect on dogs.

The researchers took 16 pet dogs with their owners, divided them to groups and misted oxytocin on one of the groups. The dogs misted with oxytocin acted differently compared to the other dogs. They showed more noticeable bonding behavior with their owners. They sniffed and pawed more and try to hold eye contact longer.

Strange Underwater Blob from Oil RigExplained

Like all strange deep sea creatures that are given light, this strange animal was seen in a video taken at an oil rig somewhere in the Mexican gulf. We’ve only explored about 5% of the world’s oceans, so strange creatures are always being spotted by underwater cameras, especially when they go down to very deep depths. However, the creature seen at the oil rig is actually not that new of a discovery.

What looked like a moving whale placenta was actually a rare deep-sea jellyfish that was noted in 1967 by F.S. Russell, a marine biologist. The jellyfish is called the Deepstaria Enigmatica and resembles a blob that floats along the water. Not a lot is known about these jellyfishes, mostly because they stay in very deep parts of the ocean and they’re very difficult to study in the wild.

The Deepstaria Enigmatica actually looks like a helpless sheet of fabric that depends on the water’s movement. However, later in the video, it showed that the jellyfish had large gonads or sex organs, which is strange for jellyfishes. Another thing that we can notice on the video is what looks like a net. This is said to be the Deepstaria’s nerve network that’s connected to its digestive system. As it floats along the water, prey ends up getting tangled inside their large, fabric-like bell. It then wraps its bell around it and stings it to death.

So this deep-sea monster isn’t really that much of a monster after all.

Giant Shark gets eaten by a Bigger Giant Shark

Researchers in Australia are now looking for a “mysterious giant sea monster” that ate a 9 foot long great white shark. They had previously planted a tracking device on the 9 foot great white to monitor its behavior, vital statistics and swimming patters. However, a few weeks ago, the 9 foot shark’s tracking device ended up on shore.

The researchers also noticed something strange. Analysis from the tracker showed that the shark suddenly experienced a rapid rise in temperature. It also swiftly dove down to 580-meters or 1,900 feet under the waves. Scientists explained that the sudden rise of 30 degrees from the shark’s original temperature is because it entered a different animal’s digestive system. The unexpected dive could also be described as the larger animal’s descent to the deep. After the shark disappeared, the tracking device was found about two and a half miles from the area where the great white was tagged.

Dave Riggs, a documentaryfilmmaker for "Hunt for the Super Predator", said that he was blown away with the data taken from the shark’s tracking device. Everyone started asking who, or what, could have caused the 9 foot shark to disappear. The answer is pretty simple. Naturally, smaller fishes get eaten by bigger fishes. According to the researchers, larger sharks were seen around the area where the shark disappeared. The also added that these sharks are so big that they could have easily eaten another great white shark and they’re also able to swim down to depths monitored by the tracker.

The High-Flying Ant With a Bite Like a Bear Trap

There’s an invasive species conquering new territory in the southeastern United States. It has gnarly jaws, a formidable sting, and the ability to launch itself into the air like a bottle rocket. These insects are known as trap-jaw ants, and they could be heading to a backyard near you.

Most trap-jaw ants belong to the genus Odontomachus, named for their mandibles, or mouthparts, which are capable of opening 180 degrees.

“They look like little hammerhead sharks walking around,” said D. Magdalena Sorger.

Sorger has been studying these curious insects as part of her PhD research at North Carolina State University. She published a review of the trap-ant species living in the United States with co-authors Joe MacGown, Brendon Boudinot, and Mark Deyrup in the May issue of Zootaxa.

When Ants Go Marching

There are four species of trap-jaw ants native to the United States. Sorger and her co-authors were interested in the spread of an invasive and particularly aggressive species from South America called Odontomachus haematodus.

This species has apparently been living in North America for about 50 years, but new surveys show O. haematodus is on the move and now common across numerous states on the Gulf Coast.

What changed over the last half century? Sorger said the population might have been building up before it spread out, or perhaps changes to the climate provided conditions better suited to the species’ success.

Meet the Neighbors

You might think an ant with massive mandibles would be clumsy, but scientists have found that the trap-jaw ant’s bite is among the fastest known movements in the animal kingdom.

“Trap-jaw ants have little sensory hairs on the inside of their jaws,” said Sheila Patek, a biologist who studies the evolutionary mechanics of movements at Duke University. Patek explained that these hairs are linked directly to the muscles that hold the jaw open. “So they can fire those latch muscles even faster than their brain can process.”

Jumping Ants? Sort Of.

Grabbing and stunning prey aren’t the only things those mandibles are good for. When threatened, trap-jaw ants fire their bite against the ground with so much force that it hurls them into the air like popcorn out of a frying pan.

When a whole army of trap-jaw ants does this at once, Patek says it can get a little scary.

“The next thing you know you have this ant flying through the air that you can’t even see, it’s moving so fast, with a big stinger on the end of its abdomen,” she said. “It is really nerve-racking working with them.”

Source: Here

Wolves Might Use Their Eyes to Talk to Each Other

It’s no secret that wolves, foxes, and dogs are highly social animals. But beyond all the wagging, pawing and yipping we like to try to interpret, canids may have yet another way to communicate. New research hints at the possibility that dogs and their ilk could be sending each other signals with their eyes.

A team of Japanese researchers looked at pictures of nearly every canid species and found that those with highly social pack and hunting behaviors were more likely to have easily-visible eyes. They then watched some of those species interact in zoos and concluded that those with eyes that were easier to see were more likely to be social. The results were published in a study in PLoS One on June 11.

“What this study shows is that there’s a correlation between facial markings and sociality and the need to communicate,” said zoologist Patricia McConnell of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a dog behavior researcher who was not involved in the study.

The scientists organized 25 different wild canid species according to their facial features (using around a dozen photos of individuals from each species) into three groups and then looked to previous research to characterize the social behavior of each group.

Source: Here

Tiny frogs host an illusion on their backs

Would you recognize a stop sign if it was a different shape, though still red and white? Probably, though there might be a bit of a delay. After all, your brain has long been trained to expect a red-and-white octagon to mean “stop.”

The animal and plant world also uses colorful signals. And it would make sense if a species always used the same pattern to signal the same thing — like how we can identify western black widows by the distinctive red hourglass found on the adult spiders’ back. But that doesn’t always happen. Even with really important signals, such as the ones that tell a predator, “Don’t eat me — I’m poisonous.”

Consider the dyeing dart frog (Dendrobates tinctorius), which is found in lowland forests of the Guianas and Brazil. The backs of the 5-centimeter-long frogs are covered with a yellow-and-black pattern, which warns of its poisonous nature. But that pattern isn’t the same from frog to frog. Some are decorated with an elongated pattern; others have more complex, sometimes interrupted patterns.

The difference in patterns should make it harder for predators to recognize the warning signal. So why is there such variety? Because the patterns aren’t always viewed on a static frog, and the different ways that the frogs move affects how predators see the amphibians, according to a study published June 18 in Biology Letters.

Bibiana Rojas of Deakin University in Geelong, Australia, and colleagues studied the frogs in a nature reserve in French Guiana from February to July 2011. They found 25 female and 14 male frogs, following each for two hours from about 2.5 meters away, where the frog wouldn’t notice a scientist. As a frog moved, a researcher would follow, recording how far it went and in what direction. Each frog was then photographed.

Sixty-four percent of the frogs appeared to move randomly. The remaining 36 percent, though, kept to a single direction. These frogs also moved around three times faster than their random-moving brethren.

The frogs’ color patterns split into the same two groups: Random movers had more interrupted patterns. Directional frogs tended to have more elongated coloring.

A frog’s movement affects what a potential predator sees. For the directional frogs, “this pattern–movement combination might create the illusion of a static pattern or a pattern with a greatly reduced speed that affects predators’ abilities to track the trajectory of moving individuals and predict their attack angle,” the researchers write. “This may be more pronounced when movements occur at a higher speed and over longer segments, as in these frogs.”

The random- and slow-moving frogs may get a different benefit from their patterning: “Interrupted patterns may be visually disruptive or cryptic at a distance, and the combination of disruptive patterns and slower movements, or alternating movement and freezing, might be advantageous for the avoidance of motion-oriented predators,” the researchers note.

Since both combinations of pattern and movement can be of benefit to the frogs, natural selection is unlikely to weed out one or the other.

Source: Here

Foxes with Giant Ears

When we think of something small with bat-like ears, a fox would probably be the last thing that comes to our mind. Fennec foxes, which are the smallest kind of foxes in the world, might have ears like bats but they look far from the night-dwelling creature. In fact, many people love these foxes because they look adorable.

They’re commonly found in the Sahara desert and areas in the northern part of Africa, but they’ve been exported to different places all over the world. Some of them even make it as pets for exotic pet lovers. These foxes are nocturnal by nature, which they need since they live in such a harsh environment which can get pretty hot during the day. A few physical adaptations have also helped these little mammals to make the most of their desert environment.

Their large ears can measure to about 6 inches long and makes up a good percent of their total body length. These ears actually help radiate their body heat, keeping them cool during the day. But at night when the temperature drops, their long, thick fur helps them keep warm. Even their tiny paws are hairy so they act like little shoes that protect their feet from the really hot sand. Like most foxes, they dig dens and live underground.

Fennec foxes are social animals that live in small groups, usually consisting of ten individuals. The male specimens mark their territories with urine, telling other foxes to stay out. They feed on insects, reptiles, eggs and smaller mammals like rodents, but they’re also known to forage on plants.

Giant Spider Trapped in Car’s Headlights

Spiders are probably the most feared insects around. Recently, a photo of a giant spider went viral when a Reddit user posted a scary photo of a giant spider trapped inside his car’s headlights. The horrified Reddituser jokingly commented that he was going to set fire to his car but other scared him by saying that it could have been an exoskeleton since spiders molt and it could be somewhere inside his car.

There’s no news on what happened to the trapped spider or what kind of spider it was. However, it could have been a huntsman spider. These giant Sparassidae are usually seen in Australia however there are species found in other places such as India, Japan, the Philippines, China and tropical areas of the United States like Hawaii and Florida and areas near it such as Puerto Rico. They’re also called wood spiders, cane spiders and lizard-eating spiders, these spiders can basically thrive anywhere as long as it’s not too cold during winter and there are areas where there’s a lot of trees or wood that they can live in.

Adult huntsman spiders, although able to spin webs, don’t build them. Instead, what they do to survive is forage and hunt for food, hence their name. They mostly feed on insects, but their diet isn’t restricted to them. They occasionally eat small lizards and even birds. They commonly live in tree barks where they spend most of their time hunting, but there are times that they wander off to homes and even cars, which is properly why one got stuck in the headlights.

Dual Gendered Animals – Stage but Beautiful

Every now and then nature loses its way and strange things begin to happen to how organisms naturally develop. Take for example the phenomenon bilateral gynandromorphs. This basically turns the specimen half female and half male.

This condition seldom happens, but it’s not unique to a certain species. This happens amongst crustaceans, insects and even birds, however, there hasn’t been a bilateral gynandromorphs case recorded for humans. This strange happening is also said to happen differently to the groups of organisms affected by it.

Amongst insects, bilateral gynandromorphs is easily understood. If an insect has two X chromosomes, it’s a female. Naturally, a male specimen would have XY chromosomes, however, embryos that lose the Y chromosome still turns into what appears like a male specimen. Bilateralgynandromorphs happens when two sperms enter the female’s egg at the same time. One sperm fuses together with the egg’s nucleus and prepares to develop a female specimen. Since the other sperm develops with an incomplete pair of chromosomes in the egg, both a female and male insect develops in one body.

As for birds, it’s said that this happens when two different embryos combine together during the early stages of development, basically opposite of what happens with identical twins. Another theory says that this happens when the bird’s sex chromosomes don’t separate when the cells first divide. Others also suggest that it happens while the egg is still forming. The egg could accidentally be containing two chromosomes rather than just one.

However it happens, specimens that went through this strange development error end up looking very peculiar, with bodies that contain half male characteristics and half female characteristics.

Clownfish’s Strange Ability to Transform

Since Disney released their hit movie “Finding Nemo”, almost every kid in the TV-watching world knows that a Clownfish is. Anemone Clownfish (Amphiprionocellaris), also called common clownfish are the stripy orange fishes that we commonly see living in coral reefs found in the tropical waters surrounding Australia and Asia.

What makes these fishes special is that they develop a interdependentrelationship with different kinds of sea anemones like Stichodactylamertensii, Stichodactyla gigantean,and Heteractismagnifica. Clownfishes stay in these anemones for shelter. The fishes also protect these anemones from harm. Clownfishes are covered in a special mucus that keeps them immune from the sting other fishes would feel when they come too close to an anemones.

Another strange thing about these fishes is that they all started off as male specimens. All the 28 anemonefishand clownfish species listed under the genus Amphiprion are protandrous hermaphrodites. All of them develop as males, complete with male reproductive organs, then change into females later on in their lives. Females are very aggressive and dominate, controlling males and preventing the development of other female specimens in the group. This explains why inbreeding pairs of Clowfishes, females are bigger.

Adult male and female Clownfishes live together along with their non-reproductivefishlets in a single anemone. However, when the female partner dies, the male would change to female. The larger of the juvenile fishes turn into male, and then he would dominate all the other juveniles. This whole system of sex changes is known as sequential hermaphroditism.

Asian Unicorn Spotted

Like a ghost that wanders through the thick forests of Vietnam and Laos, the Saola, which looks like a mixture between an antelope and an ox, has baffled researchers and zoologist for years. This creature has kept itself hidden for so long that the last footage of it was taken more than a decade ago.

Dubbed as the “Asian unicorn”, the Saola actually has two horns. It’s called a unicorn because it’s rarely ever seen. Cameras placed all over the forest of the Annamite Mountains by the World Wildlife Fund, together with the Vietnamese government, finally got a few shots of the animal. According to Van Ngoc Thinh, WWF country director for Vietnam, they were in disbelief when they saw the photos.

This rare species was discovered during the early 1990. They’re said to live in the areas that separate Vietnam and Laos. The discovery of the Saola was a first in more than half a century. Most newly discovered animals were small, but the Saola actually has the size of a large ox. Although it’s secretive nature has given it a funny nickname, it also has given reserchers a hard time to get any information about its population members and even its basic biology. According to WWF director of species protectionBarney Long, conservationists have a difficult time protecting the Saola’s population because they don’t really know where these animals live.

It’s said that there are around 250 to 300Saolain the wild. It currently is on the IUCN Red List, however this still does not stop hunters from killing this rare creature.

Spikey Egg-Laying Mammals

All the different kinds on mammals share a lot of common traits. They’re warm blooded, have 7 cervical vertebrae, breathe air, have hair and give milk to their young to feed on. Almost all mammals, when giving birth, produce a live young. However, there are certain species that step out of this trait.

Monotreme, which is the order where Echidnas and Platypuses are found, actually lay eggs. Another particular trait that these mammals have that makes them different is that they secrete milk and store them in packets for their young. Both of these egg-laying animals are found in New Guinea and Australia.

Echidnas are probably the least known of the only two egg-laying mammals. Also known as the spiny anteaters, Echidnas would spend hours looking for termites and ants to eat on the forest floor. As adults, they uses their long tongues to pull out and collect those little insects, but they do have teeth which they don’t have much use for.

Their teeth are actually more useful to them as babies. As they develop in their eggs, a special tooth comes out which helps them to break out of the egg’s shell. Once they get out of the egg, they can then feed off their mother though milk packets since the tooth can make feeding time painful for the mother.

She carries the baby, called a puggle, around with her inside her pouch for around 45-55 days. By this time, the puggle would have started to develop its spines, so she needs to place it safely inside a burrow and continues to take care of it for a few more months.

Flying Mobula Rays caught on Tape

Sometimes, there are rare events that happen in the wild which get caught on tape. A school of Mobula rays were seen near the coast of the North Mexican Baja area. These rays are commonly seen in this area but what makes this school unusual is the number individual rays in it.

There were thousands of these rays that gathered into a giant school. Why they all decided to gather is still a mystery. However, while these rays were being filmed, they started to act strangely. Apparently, these animals don’t only look like they’re flying when swimming under the ocean, they actually flap their fins and propel out the water. The rays flew out of the water for a few feet and dive back.

Mobula sting rays (Mobulamunkiana), also known as devil rays, are known to stay near the eastern pacific and the Californian gulf area. They can grow to about 2 meters in length, from wing to wing. Even though these rays are seen in big schools, they are tagged as a near threatened because of their high catch rate and low reproductive levels. Large schools, which are usually migratory ones, usually swim near areas where fishermen fish. Fishermen information about the specie is very limited to the areas around the California Gulf and Mexico which makes it more difficult to track the number of rays that are actually catch. Thankfully, these rays are now being protected by wildlife groups to make sure that they keep reducing and that we see other Mobula sting rays in the future.

Giant Cat Takes Out Giant Lizard

Wild animals would do anything to survive, even take down another animal that’s usually bigger than they are to eat and even going into elements that they’re not really known to like.

Cat owners would agree that felines are just not big fans of water. However, the jaguars found in Brazil’s Pantanal Wetlands are actually quite fond of taking a cool dip into the pools and rivers. They’ve adapted to swimming very silently, catching fish and other prey in the water or by the banks and taking them away to eat in private. Jaguars run rampant in these areas and they feed on around 85 different species of animals.

A clip from National Geographic showed an astonishing footage of one of these big cats as it snuck behind a caiman, which are related to alligators, and pouncing on it. It then bites down on the caiman, targeting its central nervous system, and carries it away.

Traditionally, Camians are the ones who stay hidden and attack their pray by elevating their heads just slightly above the water’s surface and staking them. However, the roles are turned upside-down in this circumstance. Although the jaguar’s distinct spotted coat wasn’t really giving it any help in camouflaging against the riverbank, it’s extremely quiet and flexible moves helped it minimize the sound of splashing noises while it swam across the river to get closer to the caiman.

Although the caiman was about the same size as the jaguar, it did overpower and used its strong jaws to paralyze it.

Fishes with Human Teeth

The sea is known to have a few strange and crazy looking animals living in the deep. It’s not really a big shock to find strange and unknown animals from the ocean since we’ve only explored a fraction of it. But it’s not only the ocean that has these strange species. We can also find peculiar ones in rivers and lakes.

The Pacu fish is a common fish species that can be found in major rivers in South America. These fishes are actually related to the more well-known piranhas that lurk in the Amazon’s rivers. Many people mistake these fishes as Piranhas since they look very alike, but what makes these fishes unique is their row of human-like teeth.

They swim rampantly in the Orinoco and Amazon River systems in the Amazonian lowlands, but some of have been reported to have swum as far off as Papua New Guinea. Another major difference between Pacus and Piranhas is their diet. Piranhas are carnivorous while Pacus are omnivorous. In fact, they prefer to munch on vegetation. Their flat, square teeth help them munch on seeds and nuts that fall into the river from the plants in the riverbanks.

Some time ago, these fishes became controversial, being called “testicle-biters”, since they apparently left some Papua New Guineamen castrated. But these reports were confirmed as falls and the natural behavior of these fishes don’t really fit into the incident so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about when you’re in the water with them.

Researchers discover new species of wolf snake in Cambodia, name it after an Australian zoo

A new species of wolf snake has been discovered in the forests of the Cardamom Mountains of southeast Cambodia. The species is described in the current issue of the journal Zootaxa.

Lycodon zoosvictoriae is named after Zoos Victoria, a conservation group based in Parkville, Australia that has provided support to Fauna & Flora International (FFI), whose researchers — along with herpetologists from Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Germany — made the discovery.

Lycodon zoosvictoriae is a cryptic species that is thought to be both arboreal and terrestrial. Like other wolf snakes, the species is characterized by long, large teeth in the front of their mouth. Lycodon zoosvictoriae measures only 40 cm (16 inches) and likely hunts small lizards and frogs.

The authors, led by Neang Thy of FFI, say the species is likely endemic to the Cardamoms, a range that rises to more than 1,500 meters and houses some of the highest levels of biodiversity in the Indo-China region, which has suffered from large-scale forest loss.

Source: Here

Monkey Rider

Wasp Has Its Own Zinc-Tipped Drill Bit

A parasitic fig wasp comes naturally equipped with a zinc-tipped "drill bit," according to new research.

The useful tool-like system, complete with teeth for boring, is used to drill holes in hard, unripe fruit, according to the paper, which is published in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Namrata Gundiah from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and graduate student Laksminath Kundanati made the surprising discovery while studying the parasitic fig wasp Apocryta westwoodi grandi.

Using scanning electron microscopy to take a high-resolution look at the insects' ovipositors, the researchers discovered that the end of these long, narrow appendages was made out of zinc.

"Zinc mainly increases the hardness, which will affect the wear resistance of the drill bits," explained Gundiah.

Source: Here