inkycircus

How to avoid being lunch

THE STUDY ISN'T ABOUT ATLAS MOTHS BUT I COULDN'T RESIST THE PIC. (PHOTO: TRIJNE)

In the good ole natural selection race, he who adapts best survives. Take for example a butterfly's fancy wing spots that are meant to look like scary eyes. It's a clever tactic. Moths have evolved a similarly cunning method of evading capture and certain death, which was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

Some moths make noises and some don't, but doctoral student Jesse Barber from Wake Forest University has noticed that there is more of a motive than mere musicality to the moth's sounds. Bats eat moths, and prefer the taste of some to others. This study used three types of moth, two nice-tasting, and one nasty-tasting, and offered them to bats. The unappetizing moths made noises as they flew, and the bats soon learned that noise=yuk. So when offered a selection of more delicious moths the bats avoided the noisy ones and scoffed the silent ones. The tasty, noisy moths live to flutter another day, and descent with modification marches on. Go Darwin.

In space no-one can hear you scream

We depend on the Sun for life, but it an unpredictable master. Every now and again it flings out bundles of joy known as Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), which can do an awful lot of damage when they slam into our vulnerable little planet. The CMEs can produce magnetic storms that could have the power to knock our gadget-heavy lifestyle back into the dark ages. Most of the CMEs aren't anything like that powerful, in fact they happen reasonably often and usually don't do that damage. But they can do some damage, including messing with our satellites and electrical transmission lines. Which is why it's interesting news that a team at SOHO (The Solar and Heloispheric Observatory) have discovered that the really big ones are preceded by radio 'screams' from the Sun. Here's how it works:

Strong CME shocks accelerate electrons in the solar wind, which in turn produce the radio signal. The same strong shock must also accelerate atomic nuclei in the solar wind, which produce the radiation storm.

The radio signal moves at the speed of light, but the particles lag behind. So we can 'hear' the scream and know that the CME isn't far behind. The article from the European Space Agency explains how the early warning system could be helpful (and has a nice clear explanation of the phenomenon) - if astronauts are showboating around on the outside of spacecrafts they could be told to get inside rightaway to be protected from the extra radiation. Handy indeed. But seeing as how the Sun is quite big and we are quite small, if a big ejection is on the way it's not like we can say 'Umbrellas up! CME a-coming' just yet...

PHOTO: ETAC

My great-aunt was a shark you know

I CAN DEFINITELY SEE THE FAMILY RESEMBLANCE... (PHOTO:NATASHAW)
I was on a trip in South America once, and was trying to spell my name to a ticket agent to buy a bus ticket. The poor woman got a bit confused in the hustle and bustle, and got my name wrong, writing down "Katie Jaws" on my ticket. Turns out she was prescient, because I am related to sharks. Well, according to ABC News Australia we all are actually.

Long ago in the ancient mists of time (450 million years ago to be exact), we shared a relative with our toothy friends. The elephant shark has some genes that are nearly identical to ours, meaning we have more in common with it than we do with other species closer to us on the evolutionary tree. We also have genes in common with mice and dogs, but that's not so suprising since we're all mammals. But we do have at least two things in common with sharks, so it does make sense these traits or characteristics would be expressed in our genes. For one, a shark's immune system is similar to ours, as sharks have all four types of white blood cells that humans have. The other thing we have in common with sharks is sex. Fish that should be closer to us on the evolutionary tree abstain from sex, preferring to keep fertilisation tidily outside the body. Sharks don't do this, and in case you hadn't noticed, neither do we.

Will we ever post about things that aren't fuzzy again??

Probably not.

I've been primed to love white lions ever since getting hooked on Osamu Tezuka's "Kimba the White Lion" manga series (which I'm convinced Disney soooooo ripped off in The Lion King. More here). 

So when I was recently confronted with the adorable sight of four white lion cubs recently born to the Jurques Zoological Park in France, I was immediately incapacitated.

These pale puffs aren't albinos. Instead they carry the recessive "chinchilla mutation" that only crops up when both parents carry it. This means that when zoos deliberately try and breed white lions, they face the danger of falling into the pit of an inbreeding depression - which is what happened with white tigers. Still, this marshmallow of a creature might persist only in captivity. Wild white lions were first recorded in 1928 but the mutation that causes their blanching seems to have been lost in the wild since.

Pet Allergy Saga Part: XIVIIII

(PHOTO: Hajor)

So you know how I am all allergic to everything warm and snuggly and pet-like? And that I love animals more than people? How my first word was "cat" and before I even spoke I used to point at dogs from my pram and pant like a puppy in hopes my mother would take me over to see them?

Well the world is getting a lot better for the likes of me. There's non-shedding dogs like poodles (we have one), hairless cats like the Sphinx or the Devon Rex (that's next). And of course the genetically engineered Allerca cats - at only $4,000 pop (I'm saving).

And now there's another animal to add to my growing menagerie of IgE neutral pets. The Mexican hairless dog, Xoloitzcuintles or xolos for short. These wee dudes are anything new, however. They date back to the Aztecs (or so they say) where the dogs were believed to be sacred. For example, holding a pup to your belly could supposedly cure cramps. And in dire medical situation, you could even eat one.

They might be a bit shiny, but really, I think I'd rather snuggle it than barbecue it.

Fiddling with the food chain

Is is ok to kill a shark to save a seal? Not an easy decision to make. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration thinks it's ok, and is currently seeking permission from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources to kill 10 sharks in the coming year. The seal in question is the Hawaiian Monk Seal, and the shark is the Galapagos Shark.

The justification for the plan is that the monk seal is classified as endangered (IUCN - Hawaiian Monk Seals) and the sharks are not. They've asked for and got permission to do this before, so they clearly think it's a good way to protect the few seals that are left.

The sharks don't give an arse for the IUCN red list, or the fact that we meddlesome humans think that Monk Seals are cute and worthy of protection. We see an endangered species, they see lunch. Protecting endangered species is never a straightforward task, because the animals are never killed 'just because'. If a poacher has killed an elephant, he's not done it just to be mean. He's done it because the ivory is obscenely valuable and he can make a large amount of money from it. If we stop him, his livelihood is gone. And in stepping in to protect a disappearing species, you sometimes have to take extreme steps, like sacrificing one group of animals for another.

However, the shark is classified as near-threatened (IUCN - Galapagos Shark) meaning it is not vulnerable now but is likely to be in the near future. I would therefore hope that anyone making decisions like this has the mantra Beware The Cane Toad echoing their heads the whole time as an example of when we can get it wrong. We as a species do not have a particularly good track record in meddling with the natural world. But with that in mind, it is possible to get it right, and hopefully the NOAA will manage to do just that for the seals.

(PHOTO: PKEMP)

Lock up your scooters

 There's an orangutan on the loose. Mopeds in a Taiwan zoo faced a grizzly fate when a 150kg beast escaped from his cage and went on the rampage. The animal got a brief taste of freedom before the zoo keepers faced him with "weapons and shields", tranquilised him and returned him to his cage. The video of the great escapee (complete with truly spectacular orange fringed fur) can be found at BBC News, or, with less commentary but available to viewers across the pond, at local news station wkyc.com. Fringe or no fringe, he can stay away from my scooter thank you very much...

ONE DAY SOON, FREEDOM SHALL BE MINE. MWA HA HA. (PHOTO: IMAGE00139)

Hugh Hefner's bunnies in danger!!!

The Lower Keys Marsh Rabbit's numbers are dwindling, as they fail to live up to their reproductive stereotype, to the imagined shame of their namesake Hugh Hefner.

Yes that's right. The same man that is known for dawdling in the playboy mansion with babes aplenty funded some research in the 1980s that ID'd a subspecies of rabbit that dwells in the Florida Keys. Hence its latin name Sylvilagus palustris hefneri.

The grey and white-tailed bunny was put on the endangered species list in 1990 but it's numbers have plummeted in recent years. In the past two years alone, its numbers have dropped by half.

But wildlife officials are going to trap stray and feral cats this week in a bid to boost the Hefbunnies numbers.

Seriously, where IS that walrus?

A while back, I wrote about a project that planned to track walruses as they make their whiskery way around Greenland. When I mentioned the project, the BBC hadn't yet got its dedicated web area going. They have now, but have sadly lost contact with all but one of the walruses.

However, the sole representative of the walrus satellite party is still pottering about and can still be tracked via the BBC map here. She is known as Walrus 2 (not a very imaginative name) and is, at present, chilling out on the east coast of Canada. A very fine choice of holiday destination, I'm sure you will agree. Go check it out.

(PHOTO: CHOLIN)

Number one child

FAMILIES. CAN'T LIVE WITH EM, CANT LIVE WITHOUT EM. (PHOTO: AVALORE)
Families disagree a lot, that's what makes them fun. They are also unequal, with every family member being treated differently. Whether this is positive or negative rather depends on the family. Much as every parent would wish to be and try to be impartial and fair, it is simply impossible to treat all your children the same. I would lay money on the fact the most oft-spoken sentence in a family with more than one child is "It isn't FAIR".

I am a younger sibling, and I know for a fact that my older brother thought I got away with murder. He got to stay up late? So did I. He started getting pocket money? So did I. Very unfair. But it was the way that I used to provoke him until he hit me then go crying to mum, who would then of course take my side because I was smaller and a girl, that really broke his spirit and destroyed any faith he ever had in his parents.

Naturally, I just thought I was getting my revenge because he was older and got to do everything first. Naturally, he thought it was yet another example of how much our parents preferred me to him. And there's the key point. Whatever real or imagined imbalance in the way we were treated, we didn't agree about it. (We do now, as he still thinks they liked me better and I agree with him. Kidding). According to a study of family dynamics done in Illinois, that disagreement is pretty common. But in the families which communicated the best, any real or imagined imbalance was less of a problem. The moral of the story is that families should talk more, which is always a good idea. Of course the idea of teenaged siblings who communicate well with each other is about as likely as a low-flying pig, so this is a lesson for parents more than children. If you have to treat your children differently, for example with extra time or help, make sure the other kid knows why. It's basic psychology but it makes so much sense.

PS - If you need a good way to open communication with your family, why not try one of these little gizmos from Popgadget?

Here's the Eurekalert press release.