Nature

What Did Dinosaurs Sound Like?

~ Cheryl

You may think that, short of a time machine, there’s no way we can answer that question. But perhaps not. A team of scientists based at the University of Florida and Oklahoma State University have been studying the communication sounds made by a wide range of different animals, and they have produced some startling conclusions.

Our results indicate that, for all species, basic features of acoustic communication are primarily controlled by individual metabolism, which in turn varies predictably with body size and temperature. So, when the calls are adjusted for an animal’s size and temperature, they even sound alike.

And that’s true even when comparing creatures with non-vocal means of noise production, such as crickets.

So maybe we can predict what dinosaurs would have sounded like (assuming we can agree on whether they were warm-blooded or not). Amazing stuff, science.

The Giant Rat of Papua New Guinea

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Lost world tales seem a bit silly in these days of Google Earth. Don’t we know every last corner of this little planet of ours? Apparently not. A team of scientists working in the rain forests of Papua New Guinea have discovered a whole new ecosystem with at least 40 new species of animals, including a fanged frog and a giant rat. They have a BBC film crew with them and a documentary series will be aired starting tomorrow. In the meantime you can get a brief look at one of the stars of the show, a rat the size of most cats, on the BBC web site.

Who Needs Males Anyway?

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

Not us, says Mycocepurus smithii. These bold little ants manage perfectly well without any males of the species, according to researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and Brazil. And being ants they certainly don’t have any problem reproducing. Goodness knows how they do it, the article doesn’t explain, but as long as they are happy that’s OK by me.

Everyone’s At It

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

The fundies keep telling us that homosexual behavior is bad because it is “unnatural”. Just how unnatural is it? Well, according to new research from UC Davis, most species of animals exhibit some form of same-sex coupling. Details here.

300 Million Years of Tool Use

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Jeremiah Tolbert has been having a good day on teh intrawebs. He has produced this excellent analysis of what went wrong PR-wise for Amazon over the weekend, but he also tweeted referencing a very interesting post on National Geographic.

Most people will, I suspect, view the use of discarded shells by hermit crabs as something other than “tool use”, because we humans don’t like to think other animals can be smart. But it is smart on the part of the crabs. It definitely helps them survive. And it is fascinating to find out that other marine animals may have been doing similar things 300 million years ago.

New Hope for Taz

~ Cheryl

Here’s a bit of good news for the day. As some of you may know, that lovable psychopath, the Tasmanian Devil, has been staring extinction in the face thanks to a contagious cancer that has been decimating the population. Well according to Nature scientists studying the problem have identified a genetic marker that is common to animals that have resisted the disease, and they hope this can be used to build a breeding population that will save the species. It is too early yet to know if this will work, but it certainly sounds quite hopeful. The world would be a poorer place without Taz.

Octopus v Shark

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

One of the oceanography web sites that I follow has just posted a top ten of marine invertebrate videos. You can see them all here, but I’ve chosen just one to share with my tentacle-loving friends. Giant octopus v shark – who would win? Nah, not even close. Don’t watch this if you are nervous about tentacled monstrosities, or if you are fond of sharks.

Italian Sea Snails Go Macho

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

Most of the stories we see in the news about “sex change chemicals” in the environment focus on male animals turning into females, with the blame often being placed on the use of contraceptives by human women. But all sorts of things can happen in the weird and wonderful world of biology. Here is a story to redress the balance.

Murex is a genus of carnivorous sea snails with impressively spiny shells. Different species are found in many places in the world, but the Mediterranean varieties are particularly famous for being the source of Tyrian Purple, the expensive dye that was beloved of Roman emperors and other potentates of ancient times. While the snails are no longer harvested to make dye, they are still eaten by people around the Mediterranean. Sicily was noted for its fisheries, until now.

According to a study by Italy’s Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA in Italian), populations of Murex around the Sicilian coast face extinction because all of the female snails have turned into males. The culprit is apparently a chemical called TBT which used to be used in anti-fouling paints. It was banned in 2001, but has yet to be totally phased out. A report in an Italian newspaper explains:

The exact mechanism behind the transexual molluscs is still being studied. A handful of Italian researchers are at the cutting edge. One of them, Antonio Terlizzi of Lecce University, explained that TBT boosts the production of testosterone in the female murexes, making them sterile and eventually turning them into males.

”It’s a little bit like all those women shot-putters with moustaches you used to see a few years ago,” he said.

Um, quite. So eating Sicilian sea snails might not be a good idea right now.

Evolution in Action

~ Cheryl

Via Jay Lake I find this:

Long legs and skittish behavior are recently evolved traits that allow fence lizards in the southeastern U.S. to co-exist with lethal and invasive fire ants, according to a new study.

See the whole article here. By “recently” they mean “in the last 100 years”. That’s pretty quick going for evolution.

Red in Tooth and Spore

~ Cheryl

The “Jungles” episode of Planet Earth has been the most gripping yet. The segment on cordyceps fungi shows that nothing Jeff VanderMeer has come up with in any way underestimates the bizarre abilities of our mushroom rivals for control of the planet. Thankfully they are currently engaged in an ongoing and seemingly endless war against our other principal rivals, the ants.

However, the film of the chimp war, and its cannibal aftermath, was for me one of the most dramatic and disturbing things I have seen on a wildlife program to date. Chimps are disturbingly like humans, in way too many aspects of our behavior.

The Christmas Post

~ Cheryl

Other people seem to be writing about presents, so I guess I should too. Not that there is a lot to write about. I’m not part of a big present-giving culture. My mother, who obviously knows me too well, always gives me money to spend on clothes in the sales.

Still, I did get some lovely, and very unique, jewelry from Kevin’s family. Gigi gave me some chocolate (which I am eating) and Rina gave me some shower stuff (which I shall be using). Kevin very cleverly bought me a subscription to Culture magazine. He also got me the Planet Earth DVD set, and I have been working my way through them, one a day, during the holiday. Thus far the verdict is that the script is pretty silly, but the photography is absolutely awesome.

Christmas dinner will be chicken curry. My excuse is that it is for health reasons, but actually it is because I have some chook left in the fridge and it needs cooking before it goes off. Once it is cooked I can start experimenting with recipes from the new Nigella book.

The other thing I should be doing is listening to the Boxing Day Test from Melbourne, but this year ABC have only got rights to stream the commentary inside Australia, so in the absence of a proxy server I’m limited to following the game on CricInfo. Punter seems to have everything under control, but I see Katich has just got himself out. Could be a close game.

Dinosaurs Make Comeback

~ Cheryl

We all know the story about dinosaurs dying out because wicked little furry things ate their eggs, right? Well that got played out in miniature in New Zealand when Europeans arrived bringing rats. The tuatara, small lizard species believed to have changed little since the time of the dinosaurs, was almost wiped out by the furry egg thieves. Thankfully some survived on remote islands, and now it seems they are beginning to re-colonize the mainland.