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All in The Natural World
Arachnologists from the University of Western Australia have discovered two new species of trapdoor spiders in northern Australia, a first for the area. The arachnids – Kwonkan fluctellus and K. nemoralis – make their debut in the Australian Journal of Taxonomy.
Scientists have discovered a huge sea bug – a “supergiant” over a foot long weighing more than two pounds. Its head resembles the helmet worn by Darth Vader in Star Wars, so the biologists naturally named the new species “vaderi.”
Photographer Milko Marchetti happened upon a squirrel in a public park in Ravenna, Italy, so he snapped a shot of the rodent halfway in (or out) of a hole in a tree. “This photo had an effect on me and made me smile a lot in that moment that I clicked the button,” he says. “I knew I had to enter it into the competition.”
It’s been nearly 40 years since killer whales off the west coast of North America were spotted wearing dead salmon on their heads. No one knows why this whacky trend began or why it ended, but we do know it’s back.
There are plenty of anecdotes about animals getting squiffy on fermented fruits in the wild, but we tend to think of these drunken episodes as rare and accidental. New research, which appears in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, challenges this assumption.
When it comes to power naps, the chinstrap penguin is king. Researchers in Antarctica have determined that the species will doze off for four seconds per nap, up to 10,000 times a day. Their study appears in the journal Science.
Scientists in Peru discovered a new species of snake in the Andes Mountains, which they promptly named after a movie star whose most famous character happens to hate snakes: Tachymenoides harrisonfordi.
The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles has been trapping hapless wildlife in its sticky, deadly asphalt for tens of thousands of years. The latest victims are a flock of Canada geese that got sucked in; most of the birds perished, but two are clinging to life.
Scientists have revived roundworms – nematodes – that were buried in Siberian permafrost for 46,000 years. The tiny creatures survived their big sleep in a state of suspended animation called cryptobiosis, a survival tactic deployed by nematodes, tardigrades, and rotifers.
Urban architecture often uses bird-unfriendly materials – spiky wires and nails, e.g., on ledges, statues, and elsewhere – to discourage birds from nesting and pooping on human structures. It mostly works, but now some clever crows and magpies have been removing the anti-bird bits and are using them to build their nests.
The grand prize winner in Audubon’s annual photography contest is remarkable for its banality: a pair of rock pigeons, one of the most common birds on the planet.
The Oregon Zoo’s condor-breeding program deploys a devious method to monitor conditions in the critically endangered birds’ nests. When an egg is laid, the scientists swap it with a hi-tech fake, a 3D-printed “egg” packed with sensors.
There are only a few hundred pink iguanas on Earth, and all of them live on the slopes of Wolf Volcano in the Galápagos. Now rangers from the Galápagos Conservancy and national park have spotted nesting sites and hatchlings of this critically endangered species for the first time.
Researchers at the University of Adelaide have at long last discovered the female snake clitoris, which was long believed to not exist. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The white ibis has a bad rap in Australia, where it is called “bin chicken” for its propensity to root through garbage. (Also “tip turkey,” “dumpster chook,” and “rubbish raptor.”) Now the bird is winning over its critics because it has developed a particular skill set: draining the hated cane toad of its poison.
The National Park Service’s Halloween-night message started with a couple of “toad-ally terrifying” bad puns, then it got serious. “As we say with most things you come across in a national park, whether it be a banana slug, unfamiliar mushroom, or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night, please refrain from licking,” the agency posted on Facebook.
Drone photographer Jess Wohling captured a most unusual image off the coast of Western Australia last week: an adult southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) swimming alongside a juvenile humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae).
Scientists are deploying all manner of tech to listen to (and even interpret) the sounds of wildlife. Will drones, artificial intelligence, and digital recorders lead us to “a zoological version of Google Translate”?
Researchers from Queen Mary University of London have taught bumblebees to roll little wooden balls around for no discernible reason, which makes bumblebees the first insects known to engage in “play.”
Observing the natural world every day is a task that is always educational, often wondrous, and sometimes a little gross. Case in point, an article published this week in the Journal of Zoology: “A review of nose picking in primates with new evidence of its occurrence in Daubentonia madagascariensis.”
