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Octopus

26 Apr
The octopus is a cephalopod that inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. Octopuses are characterized by their eight arms, usually with sucker cups on them. They are highly intelligent, but have a very short life span.
Octopus

Octopus

Cephalopods:

Cephalopods are invertebrates. Their inside organs are protected by a mantle, which consists of a thick covering of skin and muscle. Cephalopod means “head foot.” Other cephalopods include squids, cuttlefishes and chambered nautiluses.

Anatomy:

Octopuses have a soft body and eight arms. Each arm has two rows of suction cups. An octopus uses its mantle to breathe. It has ‘mantle slits’ behind the eyes. It draws in water through the slits into the mantle. Two gills remove the oxygen from the water, then the slits close and the water is released through a tube called the “siphon.”

Moving About:

Octopuses use their mantle to swim. They tighten all the mantle muscles at once, squeezing a blast of water from the siphon, causing the octopus to launch forward. It can control its speed by controlling the force of the water. They can also control the direction they go. Some octopuses also use their arms to crawl across the ocean floor.

Diet and Digestion:

Octopuses eat many different kinds of sea creatures. They like oysters and clams. They use their suction cups to pull the shells apart and get the food inside. They also like lobsters and crabs. Octopuses have a sharp beak. They use it to break through an animal’s shell. Then it kills the animal with poison that the octopus makes in its mouth.

Reproduction:

The octopus mother lays thousands of eggs. She guards them for weeks. When the baby octopuses are born, the eggs burst open and the tiny octopuses swim out. The mother octopus will die soon after her eggs hatch. She will never see her babies again. Many babies will be eaten by fish, birds or other creatures.

Defending Themselves:

Octopuses face many dangers in the sea, but they do have ways of protecting themselves:

  • Camouflage – They have special coloring to help them blend in with their surroundings.
  • Hiding – The octopus can change colors which can confuse their enemies. They can also hide in holes in the rocks.
  • Ink cloud – The octopus squirts a dark, inky liquid into the water and then swims away to safety.
 
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Panther

25 Apr

A black panther is a large black cat. Black panthers are melanistic colour variants of several species of larger cat. Wild black panthers in Latin America are black jaguars (Panthera onca), in Asia and Africa black leopards (Panthera pardus), and in North America may be black jaguars or possibly black cougars (Puma concolor – although this has not been proven to have a black variant), or smaller cats.

Black panthers are also reported as cryptids in areas such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, and for these (if they do exist) the species is not known. Captive black panthers may be black jaguars, or more commonly black leopards. Black panthers have sometimes been regarded as forming different species from their normally-colored relatives.

The name “panther” is often limited to the black variants of the species, but is also used to refer to those which are normally-colored for the species (tawny or spotted), or to white color variants: white panthers.

Black Panther

Black Panther

 
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Giant ‘meat-eating’ plant found

07 Apr
The newly discovered giant pitcher (Nepenthes attenboroughii)

The newly discovered giant pitcher (Nepenthes attenboroughii)

A new species of giant carnivorous plant has been discovered in the highlands of the central Philippines.

The pitcher plant is among the largest of all pitchers and is so big that it can catch rats as well as insects in its leafy trap.

During the same expedition, botanists also came across strange pink ferns and blue mushrooms they could not identify.

The botanists have named the pitcher plant after British natural history broadcaster David Attenborough.

They published details of the discovery in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society earlier this year.

Word that this new species of pitcher plant existed initially came from two Christian missionaries who in 2000 attempted to scale Mount Victoria, a rarely visited peak in central Palawan in the Philippines.

With little preparation, the missionaries attempted to climb the mountain but became lost for 13 days before being rescued from the slopes.

On their return, they described seeing a large carnivorous pitcher plant.

That pricked the interest of natural history explorer Stewart McPherson of Red Fern Natural History Productions based in Poole, Dorset, UK and independent botanist Alastair Robinson, formerly of the University of Cambridge, UK and Volker Heinrich, of Bukidnon Province, the Philippines.

Nepenthes attenboroughii

Big enough to drown a rat

All three are pitcher plant experts, having travelled to remote locations in the search for new species.

So in 2007, they set off on a two-month expedition to the Philippines, which included an attempt at scaling Mount Victoria to find this exotic new plant.

Accompanied by three guides, the team hiked through lowland forest, finding large stands of a pitcher plant known to science called Nepenthes philippinensis, as well as strange pink ferns and blue mushrooms which they could not identify.

As they closed in on the summit, the forest thinned until eventually they were walking among scrub and large boulders

“At around 1,600 metres above sea level, we suddenly saw one great pitcher plant, then a second, then many more,” McPherson recounts.

“It was immediately apparent that the plant we had found was not a known species.”

Mount Victoria, Philippines

The summit of Mount Victoria appears through the clouds

Pitcher plants are carnivorous. Carnivorous plants come in many forms, and are known to have independently evolved at least six separate times. While some have sticky surfaces that act like flypaper, others like the Venus fly trap are snap traps, closing their leaves around their prey.

Pitchers create tube-like leaf structures into which insects and other small animals tumble and become trapped.

The team has placed type specimens of the new species in the herbarium of the Palawan State University, and have named the plant Nepenthes attenboroughii after broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough.

“The plant is among the largest of all carnivorous plant species and produces spectacular traps as large as other species which catch not only insects, but also rodents as large as rats,” says McPherson.

Blue fungi found on the slopes of Mount Victoria, Philippines

Unidentified blue fungi

The pitcher plant does not appear to grow in large numbers, but McPherson hopes the remote, inaccessible mountain-top location, which has only been climbed a handful of times, will help prevent poachers from reaching it.

During the expedition, the team also encountered another pitcher, Nepenthes deaniana, which had not been seen in the wild for 100 years. The only known existing specimens of the species were lost in a herbarium fire in 1945.

On the way down the mountain, the team also came across a striking new species of sundew, a type of sticky trap plant, which they are in the process of formally describing.

Thought to be a member of the genus Drosera, the sundew produces striking large, semi-erect leaves which form a globe of blood red foliage.

 
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‘Extinct’ tiny shrew rediscovered

07 Apr

A tiny species of shrew has been rediscovered in the wild, more than a century after first being described.

An adult male Nelson's small-eared shrew, alive and well

An adult male Nelson's small-eared shrew, alive and well

In 1894, a handful of specimens of the Nelson’s small-eared shrew were collected in southern Mexico.

But the shrew was never seen again, and was considered by many experts to already be extinct.

That was until two researchers found three shrews in a small patch of forest, a find that is reported in the journal Mammalian Biology.

The Nelson’s small-eared shrew (Cryptotis nelsoni) is named after the man who first discovered it.

In 1894, Edward Nelson and Edward Goldman collected 12 specimens some 4,800 feet up the slopes of the San Martín Tuxtla volcano in Veracruz, Mexico.

A year later, the creature was formally described for science, and the specimens were stored away in the drawers of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, US.

In Mexico, the shrews are very poorly known, even by the people who co-exist with these beautiful animals
Mammaologist Lazaro Guevara, who rediscovered the species

That was the last time the shrew was seen alive for 109 years.

The biology of the shrew has remained a mystery. It was even believed to have become extinct because it had gone unrecorded so so long.

That changed when two mammalogists based in Mexico decided to look for it.

Fernando Cervantes of the National Autonomous University of Mexico teamed up with Lazaro Guevara of the University of Veracruz in Mexico.

In 2004, they set off for the forest slopes of the San Martín Tuxtla volcano to search for the long-lost shrew.

The skull of an adult female Nelson’s small-eared shrew

Setting 100 pitfall traps a night for four nights, they eventually caught three shrews – one adult male, one juvenile male and an adult female.

Since then, the researchers have been validating their find.

“We have reviewed [all the] papers about Cryptotis. We visited several biological collections and museums,” says Guevara.

“A recent study on the mammalian diversity of Sierra de Santa Martha, Veracruz, did not record the presence of C. nelsoni. Therefore, we believe that no more specimens exist.”

The shrews are tiny, measuring less than 10cm from nose to tail. They have sooty brown fur, which is darker than a related shrew species C. mexicana. It also has a larger and heavier, but flatter skull than its relative.

The researchers found the animals scurrying around a patch of cloud forest, that local people know as “dwarf forest” due to its small trees.

“We know very little about its behaviour,” says Guevara.

He says that after 100 years or more, it was acceptable to think that the Nelson’s small-eared shrew had gone extinct, especially as shrews tend to be overlooked by many scientists.

The surviving shrews are still so scarce that they must be considered critically endangered, say the researchers.

The volcano upon which they live erupted in 1793, destroying all the vegetation around the crater. Despite this eruption, the shrew managed to survive.

But so few now exist that any small change to their habitat could prove disastrous, says Guevara.

“A small habitat alteration may cause changes in the population that may lead to their extinction,” he says.

Subsistence crops and livestock are reared in the region, “and any conservation plan needs to involve communities, government and schools to promote the dissemination of the importance of this species,” says Guevara.

“In Mexico, the shrews are very poorly known, even by the people who coexist with these beautiful animals.”

Guevara explains that, when they started their search they knew that the last record of the species was from 1894. “We thought it was very important research,” he says. “We thought that was risky but high value for wildlife conservation. So, we travelled to find it. When we found it, we (were) very pleased.”

 
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Giant lizard species discovered in the Philippines

07 Apr
A close look at the giant Varanus bitatawa

A close look at the giant Varanus bitatawa

A new species of giant lizard has been discovered in the Philippines.

The 2m-long reptile is a monitor lizard, the group to which the world’s longest and largest lizards belong.

The monitor, described as spectacular by the scientists who found it, lives in forests covering the Sierra Madre mountains in the north of the country.

The striking reptile has bright yellow, blue and green skin, and survives on a diet of just fruit, yet until now it has escaped the eyes of biologists.

“It is an incredible animal,” says Dr Rafe Brown, one of the scientists who describe the new lizard in the journal Biology Letters.

In the journal, the researchers describe how rare it is to find such a large terrestrial animal new to science.

The discovery of the lizard, they say, is of a similar importance to two other large species of so-called “mega-fauna” discovered in recent years: the kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji), a new genus of monkey found in Africa, and the saola, a Vietnamese forest bovid (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis).

The giant lizard is actually well known to resident Agta and Ilongot tribespeople living in the forests of northern Luzon Island.

The tribespeople regularly hunt the lizard for its meat, a vital source of protein.

Yet scientists were unaware of its existence.

That was until Dr Brown and an international team of colleagues from the US, Philippines and The Netherlands surveyed a series of lizard specimens preserved in museums both within the US and Philippines.

Within these specimens they identified the new species on the basis of its body size, scales, colouration and DNA.

With a main body length approaching 1m, with an additional 1m-long tail, the lizard has dark skin covered by golden yellow spots and flecks.

Its legs are mainly yellow, and its tail striped black and yellow.

In some pictures, the animal also looks to have green or blue scales.

The new species, which is called Varanus bitatawa, is thought to survive on a diet of fruit, making it one of just three species of fruit-eating monitor lizards in the world.

Monitor lizards include the world’s most massive lizard, the Komodo dragon (V. komodoensis), which can reach up to 3m-long and weigh up to 90kg.

While not as massive, other species of monitor, such as the Crocodile monitor or Salvadori’s monitor (Varanus salvadorii) of New Guinea, can also reach similar lengths.

Secretive creature

Why the new massive lizard has remained undiscovered by scientists until now is a mystery, especially as many biologists work in the northern Philippines.

The researchers say it may be because the lizard is naturally reclusive, being a highly secretive animal that never leaves the forest or crosses open country.

It could also be because few scientific expeditions have characterised the reptiles living in the Sierra Madre forests.

The new species of monitor lives at least 150km away from its nearest relative, another lizard called V. olivaceus, which also lives in trees and eats fruit.

 
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Shar-pei wrinkles explained by dog geneticists

13 Jan

Just how did the Shar-pei get its famous wrinkled appearance?

Wrinkled Dog

Wrinkled Dog

Scientists who have analysed the genetics of 10 pedigree dog breeds believe they now have the answer.

Their research identifies 155 distinct locations in the animals’ genetic code that could play a role in giving breeds their distinctive appearances.

In the Shar-pei, the team found differences in a gene known as HAS2 which makes an enzyme known to be important in the production of skin.

“There was probably a mutation that arose in that gene that led to a really wrinkly puppy and a breeder said, ‘hey, that looks interesting, I’m going to try to selectively breed this trait and make more of these dogs’,” explained Joshua Akey from the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, US.

Small differences

The pedigree dog has become a fascination – and a remarkably useful research tool – for geneticists.

The domestication of the grey wolf more than 10,000 years ago, and the selective breeding that followed, has resulted in more than 400 breeds – each with a distinctive physique, coat colour and temperament.
Labrador (BBC)
The study compared the genetics of 10 pure-bred dog groups.

These discrete populations give scientists the opportunity to compare and contrast the genetics of the different groups, making it easier to find the causes of specific traits.

“Man’s best friend” is helping scientists locate the faulty genes that cause disease in both dogs and humans, as well giving a useful insight into how evolution works at a molecular level.

Dr Akey and colleagues studied 32 wrinkled and 18 smooth-coated Shar-peis and compared a specific stretch of their DNA with that of other breeds.

The team found four small, but significant, differences in the genetics of the two skin types of the Shar-pei versus the other breeds. These single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), as they are called, were located in the HAS2 gene.

New targets

“HAS2 makes hyaluronic acid synthase 2, and it’s an enzyme that makes hyaluronic acid, and that’s one of the principal constituents of the skin,” explained Dr Akey.

“There are rare human cases where there are mutations that lead to really severe wrinkling in humans, too.

“So, that suggested it was a good candidate to look at; and sure enough, when we sequenced it we saw that that gene explained wrinkling in Shar-peis,” he told BBC News.
As well as giving insights into the Shar-pei, the research has also identified a raft of other locations in the dog genome that can now be investigated further to understand better why pedigree animals look the way they do.

“The thing that excites me most about our study is that in the last five years, five genes have been identified that contribute to this vast diversity in dog breeds,” said Dr Akey.

“So our study found all five of those genes and then we found 150 new targets to explore. It’s a powerful approach to look at the genetic legacy of selective breeding.”

Dr Akey and colleagues report their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

 
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Author

19 Dec
Me

Me

hello visitors,

As you might know , my name is Inthira Sathees.

I am also planning to update this blog often, so check it often or subscribe here.

I hope you enjoy and I will keep up to date with the abnormal nature incidents. As well as regular interesting nature information.

I couldn’t Update my blog recently because i was working hard to rank 1 in my class. I DID IT!!

Hope you enjoy it, thanks for visiting inthu.co.uk. Please leave comments .

 
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Polar Bear and Grizzly Brown bear GOT TOGETHER

31 Oct

I read in BBC that a Polar Bear and a Grizzly bear was put in a zoo together, and they made babies. And the babies were brownish whitish.

What do you get when you cross a polar bear and a grizzly bear

Scientists can now answer the question, following the first study of a polar bear/grizzly bear hybrid.

Only one hybrid bear has ever been seen in the wild, so the study evaluated two hybrid bears kept in captivity, which are among 17 such bears known to exist.

Read more on : http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8321000/8321102.stm

 
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