The BBC captured this rare timelapse video of Antarctic creatures feeding on a fallen seal carcass. Its estimated that they see this kind of bounty just once every ten years or so, and the critters have taken the opportunity to swarm the body, picking it down to its skeleton. Several species of worms from the phylum Nemertea use their sometimes venomous proboscises to pierce the seal's flesh, while starfish attach themselves to the carcass, pushing their stomachs out through their mouths to feed. Sea urchins and sea spiders, the latter of which can grow up to 30cm across, also flourish here, with no crabs and few fish.

Be warned, the video below contains graphic images of these animals feeding, but it's also fascinating to watch them pick apart a rare, meaty find.

Monster worm and sea star frenzy [BBC]

Along with dolphins, California sea lions have been part of the US Navy's Marine Mammal Program, which employs animals for a wide range of military purposes, for decades. They have long been used to retrieve objects lost or fired underwater, but, in the last few years, the Navy has placed sea lions on more active duty, employing them as sentries for military ships and piers. The animals can apprehend and detain divers, who could be enemy combatants or saboteurs, by placing a special clamp around the divers' legs attached to a line. Once the diver has been immobilized, human operatives can then reel the diver in. Their training in object retrieval has also made them ideal agents for locating and identifying underwater mines.

There are currently just 28 sea lions in the Navy's ranks (along with 80 bottlenose dolphins and a Beluga whale), but one team is about to get a permanent posting. The Navy has just announced that a team of sea lions will defend the Kitsap-Bangor base in Washington State, patrolling for divers, looking for explosives, and participating in naval exercises.

But how long will it be before the sea lions team up with the dolphins and use all that military training to overthrow their human masters?

US use sea lions in terrorism fight [Telegraph via Popular Science]

Researchers from Brazil's TAMAR Project, a sea turtle conservation group, found the dead fish floating near the surface off the Bahia Coast. Although the researchers initially believed they had discovered an entirely new species off fish, ichthyologists believe this odd creature belongs to the Jellynose family of fishes, although no Jellynose has ever been spotted near Brazil. Because of their limited muscle mass, the bodies of the Jellynose are largely gelatinous, and can grow to about six feet in length and up to 100 pounds.

Bizarre Gelatinous Fish Found in Brazil [National Geographic]

Also on the list of newly discovered species is the tiger-striped pitviper (Cryptelytrops honsonensis). It's a snake that's around a half meter long and yellow with a complex zig-zag pattern on its body. The new species include 100 plants, 14 amphibians, 18 reptiles, 28 fish, one bird, and two mammals. The report was mostly centered on how climate change is threatening the habitats of these species.

The fanged frog, though, is the highlight of the report. It's been classified as Limnonectes megastomias, and it's MO is to wait in Thailand's streams and attack when a bird comes near. The scientists also discovered that the males of the species use these fangs in combat, sometimes scarring or even dismembering their opponents. Looks like we may be seeing a global plague of frogs with fangs creeping up on us...

Fanged Frog and Other Bizarre Species Discovered [LiveScience]

In 1967, Desmond Morris wrote The Naked Ape, a book that described human beings in terms of their similarities with and differences from other apes. In The Human Animal, Morris travels all over the world to examine human culture and behavior, and look for commonalities, or at least common roots across the species. Part one is below (male and female nudity ahead) and the entire documentary is available on Google Video.

[The Human Animal via Metafilter]

Naturalists have known for well over a century that the ribbed newt is capable of exposing its sharply pointed ribs when threatened, but it is only recently that zoologists at the University of Vienna have looked into the mechanism by which the creature protects itself. Using x-ray imaging, the zoologists have determined that the newt is able to move its rib cage while keeping the rest of its body still, creating enough pressure for the newt to pierce its own skin, so that the ribs can be used as a weapon against would-be predators.

Much like the X-Men mutant Wolverine, the ribbed newt is able to pop its bones back inside its body and quickly heal the skin after an attack, but this amphibian has an extra feature Logan doesn't. When stressed, it secrets a highly toxic poison, which coats the points of the rib bones as they pierce the skin. Thus, the ribs can deliver a quick shot of poison to any animal that tries to grab the newt, leaving the attacker to retreat in great pain.

Bizarre newt uses ribs as weapons [BBC via Reddit]

It's built out of the leg of a human-sized wetsuit and customized just for Ralph (the wetsuited penguin is named Ralph). He might have to wear the wetsuit for another two or three weeks, while his feathers grow back in.

Apparently, Ralph's penguin brethren didn't recognize him at first, but once the others got used to the strange suit, he was welcomed back into the tribe. I can understand their hesitation; with his wetsuit on, cute little Ralph looks like a hyper-evolved penguin from the future, here to either uplift his feathered brethren or enslave them.

Bald penguin gets sunburn wetsuit (with video) [BBC News]

Muhlenberg College ornithologist Daniel Klem Jr. has been investigating the bird-window problem for decades, and he has found that highly reflective windows account for between 100 million and a billion bird deaths a year. That means that windows kill more birds in a year than windmills, cats, and cell phone towers. Combined.

This shocking data led Audubon Pennsylvania's outreach coordinator Keith Russell to do some of his own research at Temple University. His results were just as grim, but there is hope: Russel found the most deadly buildings on Temple's campus, and the university is taking steps to save some bird lives.

Apparently, all it takes to save these feathered friends is to use "fritted" glass, or glass with evenly spaced frosted areas. The frosted bits give birds visual cues that alert them they are flying into a hard surface, not through empty air. Companies are also experimenting with treated UV glass that only the birds will see as being any different.

I never realized that birds hitting windows was such a huge danger in the bird community. Here's a whole flickr set of images of the smudges left behind by some serious bird crashes. All of a sudden I feel like demanding a solution to a problem I didn't even realize existed this morning. io9'ers Against Bird Collisions!

Glass-walled buildings can mean death for birds, killing 1 to 5 percent of them a year [via Physorg]

(CC image by finna dat on flickr)

The tiny Chlamydomonas cells use biological and chemical cues to control how their little swimming legs (which are actually flagella) move. The algae can beat their flagella in two gears: either in sync or out of sync. The in-sync motion pushes the little specks forward, but the out-of-sync motion can make the algae turn.

Scientists are calling the two flagella on these cells "coupled oscillators." Their motion is affected not only by the cell's individual chemical makeup, but by the motion of the fluid in which the algae is swimming.

The team, which is from Cambridge University, hopes that what they have learned about the algae's flagella will teach us about some larger, more human processes. The algae's flagella are pretty similar to the cilia on many cells that are very important in so many human processes.

Synchronized Swimming Of Algae [via ScienceDaily]

(Image: algae frantically spinning its flagella, from University of Cambridge)

Georgia Tech physicist Daniel Goldman and his team observed the sandfish as they swam through sand, using X-rays and tiny sensors placed in the sand that measured how grains were displaced as the lizards moved through them. One thing they discovered right away was that the sandfish were indeed "swimming" - they tucked their legs up next to their bodies and moved in an undulatory wave like fish through water. Another interesting finding was that the lizards could go slightly faster in tightly-packed sand, as long as they varied the frequency of the wave created by the movement of their bodies. Their work is published today in Science.

Says Goldman:

When started above the surface, the animals dive into the sand within a half second. Once below the surface, they no longer use their limbs for propulsion — instead, they move forward by propagating a traveling wave down their bodies like a snake . . . The large amplitude waves over the entire body are unlike the kinematics of other undulatory swimming organisms that are the same size as the sandfish, like eels, which propagate waves that start with a small amplitude that gets larger toward the tail . . . The results demonstrate that burrowing and swimming in complex media like sand can have intricacy similar to that of movement in air or water, and that organisms can exploit the solid and fluid-like properties of these media to move effectively within them.

There are implications for this research that go beyond understanding how lizards move through sand. Goldman and his team think it could help roboticists in designing rescue bots that could worm their way through collapsed rubble. It would also be useful for creating surveillance robots that can swim invisibly under sand, tracking enemy locations or even recording conversations that take place outdoors in sandy regions.

via Science and Georgia Tech

Professor Tim Coulson, of the Imperial College London's Life Sciences Department, sums up what exactly is happening to sheep evolution on this island:

In the past, only the big, healthy sheep and large lambs that had piled on weight in their first summer could survive the harsh winters on Hirta. But now, due to climate change, grass for food is available for more months of the year, and survival conditions are not so challenging - even the slower growing sheep have a chance of making it, and this means smaller individuals are becoming increasingly prevalent in the population.

In a study reported in the journal Science, the research team also blames something called the "young mum effect." Since ewes are giving birth at younger ages, they produce smaller offspring.

This effect explains why the sheep are not getting bigger over time, but the study suggests that climate change is the main culprit for the shrinking sheep. On the upside, smaller sheep also means cuter sheep pictures on the internet!

Climate change and the mystery of the shrinking sheep [via EurekaAlert]
The Dynamics of Phenotypic Change and the Shrinking Sheep of St. Kilda [via Science]

Not only that, but scientists have found jellyfish weighing up to 440 pounds.

Human runoff has created a nutrient-rich environment for these giant jellies, and overfishing has reduced their competition in the oceans. And now these giants are taking over, able to tear through fishing nets and decimate local fishing populations.

A "giant jellyfish" invasion sounds like something even Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo would scoff at, but the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization has conjectured that this boom in jellyfish population and size could lead to them becoming the next kings of the ocean. The largest is called the Nomura, and it can grow to almost seven feet in diameter. Maybe we should put the coast guard on kaiju watch. Just in case.

Monster Jellyfish [Discovery]

Image credit: Yomiuri Shibun/AFP/Getty Images

Sarah Durant, a zoologist based in London, worked with the Office du Parc National de l'Ahaggar (OPNA) to track the endangered creatures. The group placed cameras throughout a 2800-square kilometer area in the Sahara which snap photos when they detect motion. It's a technique called a "camera trap survey," and it's been used quite frequently in recent years to track human-shy creatures such as the Saharan cheetah.


Because these cheetahs have distinctive spot patterns, Durant and her group were able to say that they'd gotten images of four separate Saharan cheetahs. Like other cheetahs, these big cats are lanky, fast runners who tend to live alone.

Durant told New Scientist, "Virtually nothing is known about the population." The camera trap survey may reveal more in coming months.

via New Scientist and BBC News

A few years ago, Wisconsin Zoological Museum worker Paula Holahan opened some cabinets that hadn't been touched for decades. Inside, she found several boxes of delicate glass replicas of ocean life, including this Argonauta argo. Some were crumbling, and all needed to be cleaned. Fascinated by the artistry involved in their creation, Holahan embarked on a quest to find out who had made them and what they were for.


It turned out these pieces, like this model of an Actineria Hemprichi, sold in the late 19th century by Ward's Natural Science Establishment, a company still operating today. Stamps in the wooden bases of some of the glass creatures revealed them as the work of German glassmakers Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, a father and son who started out making glass eyes and graduated to scientific models of sea creatures in the 1880s. Holahan combed through the museum's records and discovered that a zoology professor ordered the collection in the mid-1880s as a teaching aid for biology students at the University of Wisconsin.

Here's another of their creations, a model of Spongodes Celosia. According to University of Wisconsin-Madison News:

The Blaschkas were commissioned by museums to create glass models that would capture the exotic species' fanciful shapes and vivid colors. Other models were sold for exhibit or instruction at universities or even as elegant knickknacks for private homes.

"These were highly in demand. The living animals were often so minuscule and delicate, [models were] an ideal way to demonstrate what they looked like," says Holahan.

Working from illustrations or live or preserved specimens, the Blaschka craftsmen meticulously reproduced the spikes, polyps, and suckers of their aquatic subjects. They preserved an impressive degree of scientific accuracy, even modeling the tiniest creatures at 600- to 1,000-times actual size to show fine detail, Holahan says.

The Blaschkas pioneered many of their techniques and developed original formulas for their glasses, glues, and colored enamels. They experimented with methods, sometimes using internal wires for support and other times painstakingly gluing on individual spines and tentacles.

These delicate, now-restored glass creatures are a clear example of how art, science, and craft can merge beautifully.

SOURCES:

Design Museum (with many more images)

University of Wisconsin-Madison News

According to a recent report from the National Science Foundation, it's time for us to figure out exactly what might be going on with these slimy-bodied invertebrates:

In recent years, massive blooms of stinging jellyfish and jellyfish-like creatures have overrun some of the world’s most important fisheries and tourist destinations—even transforming large swaths of them into veritable jellytoriums. The result: injuries (sometimes serious) to water enthusiasts and even occasional deaths.

Jellyfish swarms have also damaged fisheries, fish farms, seabed mining operations, desalination plants and large ships. And proving that jellyfish can be political animals, knots of jellyfish have done the work of anti-nuclear activists: they have disabled nuclear power plants by clogging intake pipes.

In short, since the 1980s, worldwide jellyfish blooms have caused hundreds of millions—or perhaps even billions—of dollars in losses. Worldwide reports of massive jellyfish blooms are triggering speculation that jellyfish swarms are increasing because of human activities. But are they?

The report presents a swarm locations map, showing areas where scientists or journalists have identified sharp rises in the number of jellyfish present. That list includes Australia, the Mediterranean, Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf Coast, the Bering Sea, Hawaii, the Black Sea, the waters around Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and even the coast of Namibia. NSF claims that environmental stress is to blame for these swarms, so we can add "giant jelly armies" to the list of disasters caused by global climate change.

The important question is: How much of this happens to be our fault? In a chart of all possible stresses that might affect our gloopy sea neighbors, the report pinpoints these five: invasions of non-native jellyfish, pollution, climate change, over-harvesting of fish, and dams. Humans are to blame for at least four of these. Whoops.

To make up for the havoc we may have wreaked on the ecosystem of these jellies (and to avoid getting Irukandji syndrome from a venemous horde of Australian box jellyfish, say), humans must get a handle on the causes of and solutions to this abnormal swarm activity. This NSF report is a good start.

Special Report: Jellyfish Gone Wild [National Science Foundation]

Pacific sea nettle jellyfish image from Wikimedia Commons.

The jellyfish-like hydrozoan, Turritopsis dohrnii survives through a phoenix-like ability. When faced with a food shortage or environmental danger, the T. dohrnii collapses into a blob and starts its lifecycle all over again. Not only have researchers deemed the organism “nearly immortal,” this phoenix property has enabled the T. dohrnii to spread to oceans all across the globe. Passing ships frequently swallow up the hydrozoa in their ballasts, triggering the rejuvenation process. Thus, an adult hydrozoan that has already reproduced could be swallowed up and dropped off elsewhere to restart its lifecycle and reproduce all over again.

Thus far, researchers have not found that the T. dohrnii, which can be identified only through genetic testing, have upset any of the ecosystems they have invaded. But the predatory creatures seem to be the perfect alien invaders: difficult to detect, patient, and successful in the face of adversity.

[Science News via Universe Today]

After poring over hours of videotaped footage of bonobos communicating with humans, Pedersen determined that the creatures do two human-like things when they talk. First, they take turns: The bonobo waits for the human to stop talking before it tries to communicate. Second, they use language to get what they want. In one case Pedersen studied, a bonobo repeatedly asked to be picked up when she was around a dog she disliked. Eventually, she talked her human companion into picking her up, thus taking her out of the orbit of the annoying dog.

Great Ape Trust bonobo research director William Fields said he's excited about Pedersen's work, and that there's more research like it to come:

These papers will eventually be assembled in a larger volume to look at issues in the development of forgiveness and other cultural dimensions of the apes' lives.

OK I'm ready for chimps that use sign language and bonobos that communicate with objects. But I'm not really ready for apes to have "forgiveness and other cultural dimensions." I'm cool with unforgiving apes, as long as they are supergiant and beat the crap out of dinosaurs.

Linguistic Tools [via Science Daily]