Discovery News: Born Animal

Mother's Day Gift to Consider by May 1

With a donation of $50 or $100 to the World Wildlife Fund by the end of May 1 Eastern time, you can adopt a wild animal of your choosing for your mother, who will then receive a fun package before Mother's Day that includes an adoption certificate, a Happy Mother's Day bag and a soft, plush toy version of the animal you pick for her. The selection of critters is quite large, diverse and surprisingly eclectic- including blue-footed boobies, hellbender salamanders, meerkats, anaconda snakes and much more. Which animal might best suit your mom? Take a look here and see. The money will go to a very good cause and the cool gift package will help to brighten your mother's special day.

Colossal Squid Organized Chaos

As you might have heard, scientists at The Museum of New Zealand have just thawed out an extremely rare colossal squid, which they are hurriedly analyzing now. Imagine if you defrosted a fish and then had to study its every nook and cranny before it rotted right before your eyes and nose. That's what these frantic researchers are up against now. The squid, accidentally captured by fishermen in early 2007, was shoved into the vessel's freezer and has been frozen ever since. It likely represents a number of animal kingdom firsts:

It's the world's largest known colossal squid and could measure over 30 feet in length. (It needs to thaw more before accurate measures can be taken.)

It has the largest eyes of any animal, with each eye about the size of a basketball.

It could be the only animal with built-in searchlights, as a light organ was detected right above its eyes.

It's the best preserved specimen of its kind in any collection worldwide.

It'll probably be the only colossal squid of its kind to ever go on public exhibit. A giant formalin/water-filled tank is already in the works.

The atmosphere in the laboratory where they're studying the squid is unusual, to say the least. Picture multiple scientists all intensely focused on this enormous creature, which is laid out on a sort of trough contraption. The room absolutely reeks of fish. (It's a cephalopod, but fish is what comes to mind.) Members of the media are running around all over the place. There's only one fixed computer in the room that is forever busy. Organized squid chaos!

It was a miracle that I got the project's director, Carol Diebel, to sit down for an interview, which you'll be able to read soon at Discovery News. Diebel, natural environment director at The Museum of New Zealand, which locals call Te Papa, was a picture of cool control amidst the harried research. She's doing a remarkable job. The star of the show is by default, however, that enormous squid.  (Credit for the photos goes to Te Papa.)

Imagine having that eye staring back at you.


These tooth-like hooks can swivel and sink into full-grown whales.

Bombadier Beetle Blasts Attackers

This month's issue of Physics World, one of my fave science magazines, features a great story about bombadier beetles. For anyone who has ever felt like an underdog, the bombadier beetle should inspire courage and hope. This tiny bug looks sort of like a cute little striped grasshopper. When threatened, however, it sprays a blast of hot, toxic liquid on its would-be attacker, which usually looks very grossed out and runs for its life, as I'll show you in a minute.

Scientists are now paying attention to the efficiency of the beetle's ejection system, since the bug can aim the spray in any direction, including over its head, at a distance of up to 20 centimeters. To make a very long story short, one of the secrets has to do with "flash evaporation," which happens when pressurized water heats to a certain temperature before the temperature is suddenly reduced. In future, flash evaporation, and other techniques learned from the bombadier beetle, could be applied to drug-delivery devices, fuel injection systems in cars and fire extinguishers.

I just wish I could replace my pepper spray on solo hikes with carrying one of these instead. (Note the utterly disgusted look on the frog's face at the end.)

The Great Australia Shark Count

How many sharks are in the waters off of Australia? The definitive number will probably never be known but, based on a community shark count taking place there now, many of the toothsome fish call Oz home. Here's how the numbers stack up thus far:

Species                                    # Counted      
Wobbegong Shark                    903

Grey Nurse Shark                    733    

Port Jackson Shark                  519   

Grey Reef Shark                      498    

Whitetip Reef Shark                431   

Whalers (several species)       356    

Other                                       334    

Blacktip Reef Shark                 153    

Tiger Shark                               64    

Seven Gill Shark                        18    

Great White Shark                     13

And here are the Aussie state shark rankings:

State                                     # Counted    

New South Wales                   2720   

Queensland                           1506    

Western Australia                  181    

Victoria                                 77    

South Australia                     26    

Northern Territory                 9    

Tasmania                               2  

One of the take home messages is that if you want to see a shark in the wild, you'd do well to visit New South Wales. If you're reading this from Australia, or if a trip there is on your horizon, you can notify the authorities of shark sightings and actively participate in the ongoing count. You can do so by logging in right here.

In the meantime, check out the below video, which features some up close great white footage towards the middle, and an interview at the end with great white shark attack survivor Rodney Fox, who invented the shark cage featured in this clip.
    

T. Rex Couldn't Smell Itself?

Hot off the press is news that Tyrannosaurus rex had a terrible sense of smell.

A team of dino experts from the Royal Tyrrell Museum, the University of Calgary and Johns Hopkins  University made the determination after studying bones around where organs responsible for T. rex's sense of smell would've been. They believe these organs for sniffing were restricted to a part of the brain that would've been the size of a strawberry.

To continue with the fruit analogy, other researchers previously thought this smell-processing region of the brain in the dinosaur was about the size of a grapefruit.

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But forget the grapefruit, because they were likely incorrect.

This means carnivorous T. rex had a sense of smell that was more akin to what crocodiles and birds possess today. It also might shoot down the theory that T. rex was a scavenger that sniffed out rotting carcasses. Old meat obviously stinks, so scavengers usually have keen sniffers. So what and how did the dinosaur really eat? Hopefully future research will reveal more about the life of this still-enigmatic large predator. At least we know bad breath must have never been much of a problem. A good thing, considering recreations like the following:

A Neanderthal Tooth and Other Images from This Week's News

Sometimes we can't use all of the photographs obtained during research for stories at Discovery News, so I'd like to share a few of them with you from this week. Let's begin with a big, dirty and worn down Neanderthal tooth.
(credit: Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Teresa Steele)

The tooth, shown from different angles, is a Neanderthal upper right premolar. Based on carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis of the tooth, this individual mostly ate red meat during its lifetime. Steele and her colleagues determined the meat came from ancient, and now extinct, species of bison and aurochs—relatives to today's modern cattle. In essence, it was steak, and other beef cuts, at every meal for Neanderthals.

To completely change the subject, let's move on to Hungarian Mudi dogs, which barked their way to research fame in the first study to ever prove dogs understand the barks of other dogs. Believe it or not, canine experts previously theorized that dogs barked just for us, since adult wolves tend not to bark. Domestication did bring out the bark in mutts, but they seem to get their lingo as well as, if not better than, we do. Dog expert Peter Pongracz took these gorgeous shots in his own tulip-filled garden.

Angel

Chili

Fecske

Their fur reminds me of...
 

Then there was our recent story about how China's terracotta army was covered with beaten egg, found in paint that once covered the army's thousands of soldier, chariot and horse figurines. Imagine what went through the minds of local farmers in Shaanxi Province, China, who, in 1974, discovered the enormous mausoleum containing the figures.

Finally, scientists are starting to pay more attention to the thousands of seashells encased inside the walls of Egypt's pyramids. These shells include nummulites, marine organisms that lived millions of years ago and whose relatives are still around today. If you cut them in half and look at them from the top, they form a perfect spiral, as the below image illustrates.

Mathematicians, such as Fibonacci, studied such fossils in the Middle Ages. The perfect, natural order of the shells inspired later architects and artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci. An argument could therefore be made that a simple marine organism played a role in some of the world's most famous artistic creations.

But look for the nummulites, some of which are visible to the naked eye, should you ever visit the monuments of ancient Egypt. You might spot fossils for ancient relatives of sand dollars, squid and sea urchins too.

(Cheops)

Insects Use Plants as Telephones

Dirt-dwelling insects might seem to have little contact with the above ground world, but Dutch ecologist Roxina Soler found out they're not unlike a person who has a cell phone forever stuck to his or her ear. Subterranean herbivorous insects issue chemical warning signals through plant leaves to tell "listening" bugs that this turf is taken. Get lost. Usually the other bugs take heed of the warning. If not, they're probably in for toxic tummy upset or worse.

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This system works fine except for one deadly glitch. Like a party line, other insects can snoop on the happenings. Such a party line listener is the parasitic wasp, one of nature's most devious creatures. These wasps are drawn to the chemical cues, which signal that insect activity is going on at the plant. They then deposit their eggs onto unaware hosts. This is one guest you wouldn't want, as the below video shows.

See Lizards in Motion

How you, and other animals, eat affects how you move, according to a new Ohio University study that focused on lizard biomechanics. Here's one of our demonstrator lizards for today:

Doctoral student Eric McElroy and his team determined that lizards get their prey in two basic different ways. The first method involves sitting and waiting. Sort of the lizard version of eating at a restaurant, except the food either flies or crawls by, forcing the lizard to run like heck for it. Check out this video, and be sure not to blink. This lizard is fast!

The other basic method is more like a hunter-gatherer approach. Lizards that use this technique move constantly, but fairly slowly. While all lizards have the ability to run, these foraging reptiles evolved a meandering gait, which you can see here.

“The most interesting aspect of this research is that it demonstrates a clear link between animal behavior and functional morphology. It’s quite amazing and surprising that the behavioral diversity that everyone knows about and is inspired by is grounded in form, function and physiology,” McElroy said.

So the next time you see a lizard move, be it a skink, iguana or other type, you can predict how it hunts by watching it move. Regular runners sit and wait for their chow until the moment of opportunity strikes, while walkers forage.

I'll leave you with one last photo of one of the study test subjects. Like an Olympic athlete, this skink shows it's on the mark and ready for action.

Listen to Dog Barks and Test Your Canine Comprehension Skills

On this Earth Day I'd like to demonstrate to you how all of us possess a "Dr. Dolittle"-type ability to understand basic emotions communicated by other species. Dogs are the easiest to try this out on, since canines have lived with us for thousands of years and have sort of figured us humans out, just as we have learned more about them. Now keep in mind that some people are more in tune with their inner Dr. Dolittle than others.

For the below quiz, you will listen to numbered dog sounds. Your task is to match the sound with the correct letter, which corresponds to the dog that made the sound and a particular circumstance. You'll be hearing:
A. a border collie yelping after its owner accidentally stepped on its paw
B. a disturbed Rottweiler growl-barking
C. a cairn terrier barking after being bothered
D. a frustrated, barking basset hound that wanted to run away but stuck around because it desired a nearby, tempting treat snack
E. a 4-month-old Labrador puppy crying
F. a Staffordshire terrier whimpering a greeting to its owner
G. a border collie that likes to sing and howl to music (Believe me, no one will get this one wrong.)

Are you ready? Here we go...

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

The recordings were made by Anna M. Taylor of the University of Sussex for her Vocal Dog Project. Quiz answers appear at the bottom of this post. No cheating!

1-B, 2-A, 3-D, 4-F, 5-G, 6-C, 7-E

View Monster Fish-Lizard Here and In Person

The Nordic region's largest Mesozoic predator, the ichthyosaur, has made its public debut. The 39-feet-long fish-lizard is now on display for the first time. You can see it at Tromsø University Museum in Northern Norway, but here's a sneak peek.

The above image illustrates a relative of the monstrous Norwegian creature, which likely represents a new, as-of-yet unnamed, species. The Ichthyosauria were a large group of marine reptiles that roamed the world's oceans. The recently discovered specimen dates to 240 million years ago, so it is one of the more primitive ones from the Triassic. Based on what's known about its body structure, it undulated like an eel, using its four large flippers for steering and maneuvering. It probably ate squid-like cephalopods, fish and smaller reptiles. A bunch of cephalopod tentacle hooklet remains were still in the mammal's gut area, suggesting the ancient ancestors of squid and octopuses were its fave foods. The researchers believe this individual died suddenly, either from disease or just old age.

Its remains, shown here in situ at Botneheia Formation at Sauriedalen, Svalbard, lack the head and tail, which eroded away over time. (Note the shovel at the right. Archeology offers a good work out!)
Photo: Odile Wallenrath, Tromsø University Museum

And here's a map that provides a better idea of where the site is located. Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The island group is halfway between Norway and the North Pole. The red dot marks the spot where the ichthyosaur was found.

(Copyright: Norwegian Polar Institute)

Fans of the video game Half Life might recognize the below scene. No sound here, but you wouldn't have heard the guy screaming underwater anyway. For more info about real ichthyosaurs, check out the Ichthyosaur Page.