You’ll never guess what this is an electron micrograph of
But really. You don’t stand a chance. Once you’re done fooling yourself by believing otherwise, click the external image box below to find out the answer. Then be sure to pass it on and stump your followers!
Birds teach passwords to their unborn chicks to detect impostors
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might remember a post about cuckoos and brood parasitism. Basically, cuckoo mothers lay eggs in other birds’ nests, and when the cuckoos hatch, they kick out the other hatchlings and take all the food for themselves. For the mothers of the non-cuckoo species, it’s not so simple to detect the impostors because the eggs are elaborately colored to almost perfectly mimic those of the host species. That mothers can’t tell which eggs are impostors is a serious problem, because it means her offspring die and she thus can’t pass on her genes.
At least some species have come up with an ingenious solution: they teach their young a password, while they are still in the egg, which the young will repeat after being born to prove that they’re the real deal.
She kept 15 nests under constant audio surveillance, and discovered that fairy-wrens call to their unhatched chicks, using a two-second trill with 19 separate elements to it. They call once every four minutes while sitting on their eggs, starting on the 9th day of incubation and carrying on for a week until the eggs hatch.
When Colombelli-Negrel recorded the chicks after they hatched, she heard that their begging call included a single unique note lifted from mum’s incubation call. This note varies a lot between different fairy-wren broods. It’s their version of a surname, a signature of identity that unites a family. The females even teach these calls to their partners, by using them in their own begging calls when the males return to the nest with food.
These signature calls aren’t innate. The chicks’ calls more precisely matched those of their mother if she sang more frequently while she was incubating. And when Colombelli-Negrel swapped some eggs between different clutches, she found that the chicks made signature calls that matches those of their foster parents rather than those of their biological ones. It’s something they learn while still in their eggs.
When a cuckoo chick emerges, the parent can tell that it’s an impostor and can abandon the nest to form a new brood without wasting energy on the cuckoo. What an amazing adaptation! These sorts of stories are absolutely incredible to me, and they really demonstrate the awesome power of evolution.
A male Darwin’s frog with a vocal pouch full of tadpoles. He carries them around until they develop into froglets and hop out of his mouth. (Natural World - BBC)
Funny sounding chemical compound names.
Geeksaresexy.net have a list of their top 10 chemical compounds with immature jokes for names.
There’s Arsole (pictured), which is ring shaped and is likely to be ‘moderately’ aromatic. Also making the top 10 is Cummingtonite, which is a mineral originally discovered in Cummington, Massachusetts.
Check out the full list here.
Real mature, internet.
(via 8bitfuture)
Rapid DNA sequencing used to halt MRSA outbreak
As the mighty power of evolution and the excessive use of antibiotics have made drug-resistant superbugs, such as MRSA, a major problems for health professionals, one hospital in Cambridge, England think it has a potential solution. When 12 newborn babies came down with MRSA, researchers decided to sequence each different MRSA infection to see if they were each individual outbreaks or if they were related. In fact, all of the cases of MRSA were related, pointing to a common source. After a lull of two months, another patient came down with MRSA, and the hospital began to suspect that one of its employees was a carrier. After testing the entire staff, the infected employee was identified and treated. This approach, taking advantage of rapid technology improvements that have made DNA sequencing easier and cheaper, could be rolled out at hospitals around the world to stop hospital-borne infections in their tracks.
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giant-pancakes asked: Hello! On your echidna post you used the platypus as an example of marsupial, but platypuses are monotremes.
Corrected. Thanks!
Beau, the echidna puggle
What’s an echidna puggle? Really freakin’ adorable, obviously. But what is an echidna, you may ask? Echidnas are monotremes, which are one of the three types of mammals, alongside marsupials (like koalas and platypuses) and placentals (us!). Monotremes lay eggs, and their urinary, defecatory, and reproductive systems all converge on the same whole in their cloaca (hence the name monotreme, meaning ‘single opening’). This echidna puggle is named Beau, and he was rescued by members of the Taronga Zoo in Australia. Be sure to check out the adorable video here and click through the image for more pictures.
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Weak rivets may have been at fault for Titanic sinking
A mixture of science and historical research may have shed new light on the cause of the sinking of the Titanic more than 100 years ago. The shipbuilder commissioned to build the ship was also simultaneously constructing two other massive ships. As such, they were constantly running out of rivets - iron bolts that kept the hull together - and competent riveters. Minutes from the company meetings show that executives scrambled to find rivets from less familiar, lower quality foundries. Armed with this information, scientists decided to test the rivets recovered from the Titanic wreckage. They found many of the rivets were riddled with impurities known as slag, which make the iron more brittle and prone to fracture. When the Titanic crashed into an iceberg, many of these rivets ruptured and allowed the unsinkable craft to go down after just 2 hours and 40 minutes.
“Double squid-burger, please!”
That’s what Burger King customers will soon be saying, at least in Japan (presumably they will say it in Japanese and not English). That’s because the fast-food chain is, for a limited time, offering a burger with a black, ‘bamboo charcoal’ bun and ketchup colored with squid ink. Would you order one?
Researchers discover “transgender” bellbird in New Zealand
Biologists at the Zealandia eco-sanctuary in New Zealand have spotted a bellbird that exhibits features and behaviour of both male and female members of the species.
The bird hatched in early 2011, and DNA testing then showed it as female, but since then its development has been rather different to normal female bellbirds.
Normally, female bellbirds have a white feather pattern but the chick bean to show signs of the dark plumage normally seen on male birds. It also began to behave in a masculine way, not flitting between flowers like a female bellbird but instead moving with purpose, ready to defend its territory.
The bird’s calls are unusual too. It makes both male calls and the distinctive “chup chup” normally heard from females, but the latter are louder and more frequent that is normal.
Zealandia conservation officer Erin Jeneway told New Zealand’s Dominion Post, “There’s something we can’t pin down. We haven’t seen anything like this before.”
