Unexplored Planet

Scientists have described approximately 1.7 million species, but that is only a small fraction of total life on Earth. Each year approximately 15,000 new species are documented. This blog offers a glimpse of some of the curious, amazing and mind-boggling creatures that share our planet. Follow @mo_brouillette

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Who is the best dad in the animal kingdom?

Seahorses! These dedicated dads carry a pregnancy after the female deposits the eggs into his brood pouch.

“Seahorses are syngnathid fishes — the only animal family in which males, not females, carry their young. In seahorse sex, the female deposits her eggs into a "brood pouch" on the male's stomach, where he fertilizes them. The expectant dad then carries the eggs in this pouch during the 24-day gestation period until he gives birth, using abdominal contractions to expel the live young, which are then on their own to survive.”

Read more here.

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How do chameleons change color?

From Live Science:

“The chameleon's uncanny ability to change color has long mystified people, but now the lizard's secret is out: Chameleons can rapidly change color by adjusting a layer of special cells nestled within their skin, a new study finds.

Unlike other animals that change color, such as the squid and octopus,chameleons do not modify their hues by accumulating or dispersing pigments within their skin cells, the researchers found. Instead, the lizards rely on structural changes that affect how light reflects off their skin, the researchers said.”

Read more here.

Photo source here.

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Flower Hat Jelly

From Wikipedia:

The flower hat jelly (Olindias formosa) is a species of jellyfish occurring in the West Pacific off southern Japan. Characterized by lustrous tentacles that coil and adhere to its rim when not in use, the flower hat jelly's bell is translucent and pinstriped with opaque bands, making it easily recognizable. The flower hat jelly can grow to be about 15 cm (6 in) in diameter. It lives around 4–6 months. Its diet consists mostly of small fish, which are caught with the tentacles. Its sting is painful, but is not deadly to humans. It is powerful enough to leave a rash.

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Lace Bug Line Up

These beautiful specimens are generally considered to be pests in the garden, introduced accidentally from Japan years ago. They are striking insects nonetheless, with their intricate wings resembling stain glass windows. 

Photo credit:

Oregon Department of Agriculture

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Dolphins squeal with delight

If you are familiar with the antics of Flipper or the charismatic creatures at Seaworld, this research is probably not going to shock you, but for Sam Ridgeway, a researcher who has spent decades studying these animals, it validates a suspicion he has had for years. 

During the numerous experiments he conducted on dolphin behavior, Ridgeway often noticed that his animals seemed to emit little cries after receiving a treat. These cries sounded remarkably similar to a child's squeal, which prompted him to name them "victory squeals." Scientists liken these sounds to a bat's feeding buzz, which is a series of echolocation pulses used to locate and capture prey. Dolphins and whales have their own version of a feeding buzz, increasing their squeals as they hone in on a meal. Unlike bats however, they don't stop when the meal is over. Ridgeway suspects that the timing of their cries signals an emotional expression.

In order to support this hypothesis, he analyzed decades of research looking to find a correlation between the timing of the squeal and the release of dopamine, which signals pleasure in the brain. In terrestrial animals, who have well established dopamine reward systems, it takes about 100-200 ms after a reward for dopamine to be released. Ridgeway postulated that if the delay between the reward and the victory squeal was longer than the dopamine release timing, then the cries could indicate emotion.  His careful analysis showed that dolphins emit a victory squeal on average 150 ms after a reward, and whales an average of 250 ms. "We think we have demonstrated that it [the victory squeal] has emotional content," he said about the results.

His research will be published in the Journal of Experimental Biology today, August 13, 2014. To read more see the original research:

http://jeb.biologists.org/content/217/16/2815.2

Video credit: US Navy

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Psychedelic Comb Jellies

From Monterey Bay Aquarium:

"Comb jellies are beautiful, oval-shaped animals with eight rows of tiny comblike plates that they beat to move themselves through the water. As they swim, the comb rows diffract light to produce a shimmering, rainbow effect. Voracious predators on other jellies, some can expand their stomachs to hold prey nearly half their own size.

Jellies are simple creatures with few specialized organs. Most jellies can detect chemical traces in the water that allow them to locate food, and many are equipped with a gravity-sensitive structure, called a statocyst, that gives them a sense of up and down in the water."

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Veined Octopus

"The veined or "coconut" octopus will pick up anything at its disposal to make a home on the road. This includes old cans, bottles, boots, shells and yes—coconuts. The veined octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) is found in Indo-Pacific waters, has a fist-sized body and lives to be a year old. Common prey items include crustaceans and small fishes."

From Monterey Bay Aquarium

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Bioluminescent Ocean

This amazing photo was captured in Barra de Valizas in Uruguay. It is one of the best places in the world to view the night sky. On this particularly dark night, bioluminescent organisms were lighting up the ocean. Photograph by Fefo Bouvier, see his website here.

From National Geographic:

"Bioluminescence is light produced by a chemical reactionwithin a living organism. Bioluminescence is a type ofchemiluminescence, which is simply the term for a chemical reaction where light is produced. (Bioluminescence is chemiluminescence that takes place inside a living organism.) 

Bioluminescence is a "cold light." Cold light means less than 20% of the light generates thermal radiation, or heat.

Most bioluminescent organisms are found in the ocean. These bioluminescent marine species include fish, bacteria, and jellies. Some bioluminescent organisms, including fireflies and fungi, are found on land. There are almost no bioluminescent organisms native to freshwater habitats."

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What do Barrel Jellyfish And Supercomputers Have in Common?

From Discovery News:

“To locate the best possible meal in the vast waters of its marine habitat, the barrel jellyfish (Rhizostoma octopus) uses a strategy most commonly associated with the world’s fastest supercomputers — an approach known as fast simulated annealing.

For mathematicians, fast simulated annealing is an algorithm, implemented by a supercomputer, which can find optimal solutions to complex problems in a relatively short amount of time. For jellyfish, fast simulated annealing is a highly evolved search strategy categorized by a series of predictable movements that bring the jelly closer and closer to large numbers of plankton, its preferred prey.”

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The Deadly Lion's Mane Jellyfish

From Life of Sea:

"Lion's Mane Jellyfish is the largest jellyfish in the world. Giant Jellyfish or Winter Jellyfish are other name of this creature. The range is limited to the cold, boreal waters of the Arctic, North Atlantic and North Pacific Ocean, but rarely found farther south than 42 ° north latitude. Similar jellyfish, which can be the same species known to inhabit waters nearAustralia and New Zealand."

These are deadly jellies. Their stings can cause anaphylactic shock, which is rare for a jellyfish sting. 

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Comb Jellies: One of the oldest creatures on earth

DNA analysis reveals that comb jellies, ctenophores, actually pre-date the emergence of sponges, even though they are more complex organisms.

"Ctenophores swim through the sea with iridescent cilia, and snare prey with sticky tentacles. They have nerves, muscles, tissue layers and light sensors, all of which sponges lack."

Read more here.

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Aye Aye Aye

"The Aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a strepsirrhine native to Madagascar that combines rodent-like teeth with a long, thin middle finger to fill the same ecological niche as a woodpecker. It is the world's largest nocturnal primate, and is characterized by its unique method of finding food; it taps on trees to find grubs, then gnaws holes in the wood and inserts its elongated middle finger to pull the grubs out.

Daubentonia is the only genus in the family Daubentoniidae and infraorder Chiromyiformes. The Aye-aye is the only extant member of the genus (although it is currently an endangered species); a second species (Daubentonia robusta) was exterminated over the last few centuries."

More here

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How Do Spiders Spin Silk?

From Science Daily:

“Spider silk is an impressive material; lightweight and stretchy yet stronger than steel. But the challenge that spiders face to produce this substance is even more formidable. Silk proteins, called spidroins, must convert from a soluble form to solid fibers at ambient temperatures, with water as a solvent, and at high speed. How do spiders achieve this astounding feat? New research shows how the silk formation process is regulated.”

Spidroins consist of 3,500 amino acids that get converted into silk in the spiders spinning duct. Scientists have recently uncovered the mechanism by which this process takes place, and have named it the “’lock and trigger’ model for spider silk formation, in which gradual pairing up of the N-terminal domains locks spidroins into a network of many protein molecules, while the changes of structure in the C-terminal domains could trigger the rapid polymerization of spidroins into fibers”

All of this takes place under the influence of a dramatic pH gradient in the spiders spinning duct, which fosters the rapid polymerization of these proteins.

To learn more, take a look at the original research paper here.

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The Toxic Garden

This is the seed of Cynoglossum officinale or Gypsy Flower Seeds, also called Hound's tongue.

From http://www.thepoisongarden.co.uk:

"The toxic components are pyrrolizidine alkaloids called cynoglossine, consolidine, echinatine and heliosupine. Prolonged ingestion of pyrrolizidine alkaloids leads to liver damage and eventual failure and the plant is more a threat to farm stock than humans.

The smell of the plant resembles dogs' urine so travellers would put some in their shoes to ward off dogs as they walked along.

The 16th century book entitled ‘the boke of secretes of Albertus Magnus of the vertues of Herbes, Stones and certaine beastes’, says that hound’s tongue attached to a dog’s neck where he cannot reach it with his mouth will lead the dog to turn in circles until he falls down dead. The author insists that ‘this has been proved in our tyme’.

Rabbits are supposed to be able to eat the plant without harm and, until myxomatosis reduced the rabbit population, they kept it in check. Since the liver damage it causes may be a long time in appearing it is by no means certain that it is completely harmless to rabbits.

In the 16th century, the roasted root were used as a suppository to cure haemorrhoids. The juice of the boiled leaves mixed with pigs’ grease, used as an ointment, prevents hair loss."

Read more here.

Photo courtesy of Csaba Pinter, winner of the Nikon Small World competition

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Invasive Species Alert: Rusty Crayfish

I saw this on a recent trip to Jamaica State Park in southern Vermont. I am not sure what species it is, but it looks very similar to the infamous Rusty Crayfish, native of the Ohio River Valley. This little guy looks harmless but is stirring up some serious silt in the rivers of Vermont and New Hampshire. I personally like watching it walk backwards.

According to Northern Woodlands Magazine:

"The rusty crayfish, Orconectes rusticus, has hitchhiked as far as Ontario, New Mexico, and Maryland, and is now found in more than a dozen states, including every New England state but Rhode Island. Having first been recorded in Vermont in the 1970s, Matthews says that it is now “widely distributed in the Connecticut River and its tributaries and is dominant in the White River.” It is also found in Lake Morey in Fairlee and in Lake Carmi in northwestern Vermont.

“Only three species of crayfish are native to Vermont,” says Matthews, “but another five species have been introduced. In 2010, for the first time, the big water crayfish (Cambarus robustus) appeared in the White River. This crayfish species appears to have been introduced very recently, which suggests that people are still moving crayfish around and releasing them in the water. Therefore, the threat of the spread of rusty crayfish, as well as potential for other invasive introductions, continues to be high.”

Once a plant or animal is removed from its indigenous habitat and dropped into a new environment, it escapes the normal checks that keep it in balance with its surroundings. Most such species don’t survive in the new location, but those that do can create an ensuing “invasion” whose effects range from a slightly skewed food chain to the complete elimination of some native species.”

For more info see the article:

http://northernwoodlands.org/outside_story/article/big-bold-and-rusty-invasive-crayfish-has-claws

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The secret life of oceans

These single-celled protozoa, called radiolarian, reside in all the world’s oceans.

Photo courtesy of Kurt Buck

From www.radiolaria.org:

"Radiolarians are part of the marine plankton. They occur in all oceans, including shallow seas, bays, fjords, etc., but almost invariably at salinities above 30 parts per thousand (slightly lower than normal marine values). They are most abundant in the upper few hundred meters of the open oceans, but have been reported at all depths, including deep trenches of the Pacific, with different species often inhabiting different depth horizons. Surface and subsurface geographic distributions of species are influenced by ocean climatic variables, with biogeographic provinces characteristically mirroring surface and subsurface water masses."

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Gecko Feet

Photo courtesy of the National Science Foundation http://tinyurl.com/lsl62n5

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