ZNAK SAGITE — više od fantastike — edicija, časopis, knjižara...

http://youtu.be/bSG3kPa-jOU

http://www.snopes.com/photos/supernatural/mermaids.asp

Massive 'ocean' discovered towards Earth's core

Quote
A reservoir of water three times the volume of all the oceans has been discovered deep beneath the Earth's surface. The finding could help explain where Earth's seas came from.


The water is hidden inside a blue rock called ringwoodite that lies 700 kilometres underground in the mantle, the layer of hot rock between Earth's surface and its core.

Nema razloga da takve vode nema i duboko pod Marsovom korom.

Bljjeeearghhh: ova vrsta ose gradi svoju kuću od - mrtvih mrava:

Newfound Wasp Literally Has Skeletons in Its Closet

Quote

A newly discovered wasp has been keeping a gruesome secret: It stuffs ant corpses into the walls of its home.

As far as scientists know, the behavior is unique in the animal kingdom. The new creature has been named Deuteragenia ossarium, or the "bone-house wasp," after the historical ossuaries piled high with human skeletons found in monasteries or graveyards.

"It was a totally unexpected discovery," said Michael Staab, a researcher at the University of Freiburg in Germany. [Zombie Animals: 5 Real-Life Cases of Body-Snatching]

Skeletons in the closet

Staab had been studying the homemaking habits of cavity-nesting wasps in eastern China, and he and his colleagues had set up trap nests in the Gutianshan National Nature Reserve, a subtropical evergreen forest in the Yangtze River Basin that's home to steep cliffs and animals like clouded leopards and Asian black bears.

Cavity-nesting wasps may live in self-made holes or pre-existing tunnels in plants or pieces of wood. These cavities typically contain several brood cells — the wasp equivalent of a single hexagon in a beeswax comb — which are separated by thin walls made of bits of plant, resin or soil. Scientists have even found bits of insects in the mix.

But when Staab's team collected the trap nests, they found something unusual: In 73 of the nests, the researchers discovered an outer cell packed with the whole bodies of dead ants. The species behind the corpse houses was a spider-hunting wasp previously unknown to science. The findings were detailed today (July 2) in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

A smelly shield

Staab said he was puzzled by the discovery until he considered the location of the carcass-filled cells. The dead ants were always found in an outer vestibular cell, a chamber built by a female wasp to close the nest after she lays eggs.

Wasp architects may favor dead ants as a building material because of the way their carcasses smell, Staab and his team suspect. Scents on the ants' bodies, even in death, might offer camouflage or protection from predators — a red flag to stay away — as many ants are fierce defenders of their nests, the researchers wrote. The ant most commonly found in walls of wasp homes was Pachycondyla astuta, an aggressive ant species with a mean sting that's abundant in the region.

Because the brood cells are where the wasps' larvae live, this strategy may help ensure the survival of their young.

Staab said he and his colleagues never directly observed the wasps building one of their bone houses, nor did they see the wasps kill ants to turn them into "bricks."

"However, due to the very good condition of all ant specimens in the ant chambers, we assume that the wasp must actively hunt the ants and not collect dead ants from the refuse piles of ant colonies," Staab told Live Science in an email.

Other wasps — especially parasitic ones — resort to similarly grisly measures to protect their offspring. The parasitic wasp Dinocampus coccinellae, for example, hijacks ladybug bodies, turning its victims into zombie slaves that keep predators away from its larvae. And elsewhere in the animal world, other creatures — even snakes — have taken advantage of the bad reputation of ants to survive. A 2009 study in the journal Insectes Sociaux described how banded cat-eyed snakes lay their eggs in the fungus-filled chambers of aggressive leaf-cutter ants to keep their reptilian babies safe before they hatch.

не знам дал је право или лажно ал је грозно

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhzFh_hs5Oc#!

Toliko je grozno da ću do kraja dana imati utisak da nešto gamiže po meni  Plus, naravno, ZNAO sam da ne treba da klikćem na ovo, ali, eto... đavo perverznosti...

није баш чудно али је ретко





а на овом линку можете да чујете и звук

Fejsbuk video nije dostupan, ali tu je Jutjub

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUREX8aFbMs

радио је јутрос    фала мац

    Neeeeeeeee!

Fisherman 'flummoxed' by 'mutant' sea creature

Quote
SENTOSA, Singapore, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- A Singapore fisherman is trying to identify an unusual sea creature he reeled in with up to 100 tentacle-like appendages.
Ong Han Boon, 54, said he caught the strange creature while fishing for  lunch recently on the island of Sentosa and he was "completely  flummoxed" by the animal he found on the other end of his line.
"I've had quite a few odd things from come out of the ocean but I have never  seen anything like this before in my life. It had all these arms waving  around," Boon told The Mirror.
He said the creature had up to 100 tentacle-like appendages and "looked like an alien or some kind of mutant."
Boon said he is hoping online experts will help him identify the sea beast.
"I've asked all my friends and none of them know and all my internet searches have not turned up anything that looks like this," he said. "So, if no  one can't identify it then I guess I'm right -- it's either an alien or  I've discovered a new species of mutant sea creature. That would not  surprise me with all the pollution they put in the water nowadays."

Bizarre 'alien' sea creature caught off Singapore

AAAAAAAAAA, NEEEEEEEEEEEE
Goliath Encounter: Puppy-Sized Spider Surprises Scientist in Rainforest

 



Wildlife decline may lead to 'empty landscape'

QuotePopulations of some of the world's largest wild animals are dwindling, raising the threat of an "empty landscape", say scientists.
About 60% of giant herbivores - plant-eaters - including rhinos, elephants and gorillas, are at risk of extinction, according to research.
Analysis of 74 herbivore species, published in Science Advances, blamed poaching and habitat loss.
A previous study of large carnivores showed similar declines.
Prof William Ripple, of Oregon State University, led the research looking at herbivores weighing over 100kg, from the reindeer up to the African elephant.
"This is the first time anyone has analysed all of these species as a whole," he said.
"The process of declining animals is causing an empty landscape in the forest, savannah, grasslands and desert."


Prof David Macdonald, of Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, was among the team of 15 international scientists.
"The big carnivores, like the charismatic big cats or wolves, face horrendous problems from direct persecution, over-hunting and habitat loss, but our new study adds another nail to their coffin - the empty larder," he said.
"It's no use having habitat if there's nothing left to eat in it."
According to the research, the decline is being driven by a number of factors including habitat loss, hunting for meat or body parts, and competition for food and resources with livestock.
With rhinoceros horn worth more than gold, diamonds or cocaine on illegal markets, rhinos could be extinct in the wild within 20 years in Africa, said the researchers.
The consequences of large wild herbivore decline include:

   
• Loss of habitat: for example, elephants maintain forest clearings by trampling vegetation

   
• Effects on the food chain: large predators such as lions, leopards, and hyena rely on large herbivores for food

   
• Seed dispersal: large herbivores eat seeds which are carried over long distances

   
• Impact on humans: an estimated one billion people rely on wild meat for subsistence while the loss of iconic herbivores will have a negative impact on tourism

The biggest losses are in South East Asia, India and Africa.
Europe and North America have already lost most of their large herbivores in a previous wave of extinctions.

najbolje sto impakt na hjumane je turisticke prirode,zaista jadni mi, jebo ja onoga koji je ovo napiso...

Što, kako je trebalo da piše?

Quote from: mac on 05-05-2015, 13:19:14
Što, kako je trebalo da piše?

usrasmo pola planete, i  najveci problem je  turizam?
...jel me ti malko zajebavas,,,,?

Da smo svi razumni ljudi onda planeta nikad ne bi ni bila usrana (mada nije to baš tako katastrofično). Pošto nismo svi razumni onda je potrebno sa nama razgovarati kao sa decom, stavljajući nam pred oči samo ono što nas se direktno tiče. Sve države vole turizam, to je ubedljivo najčistija industrija. Kad državniku kažeš da će turizam da mu padne on se smrzne u fotelji. Kao kad malom detetu kažeš da večeras ne idete kod bake jer joj nešto nije dobro. Dete ne razmišlja o tome što baki nije dobro, nego o svim propuštenim kolačima te večeri.

ne znam, meni cijeli taj clanak nekako suspektan. ali zadnja recenica budi nadu da ce i ostale zemje ex-eu i us putem progresa kad rijese taj problem.

Ja tu rečenicu drugačije čitam. Prvi njen deo kaže da se približno jedna milijarda ljudi oslanja na lov kako bi se prehranila, a u tom tonu onda ja čitam i tu referencu na turizam - smanjenje gustine faune u tim krajevima  vodi smanjenju turističkog interesovanja što opet vodi smanjenju izvora prihoda za lokalno stanovništvo koje od toga živi.

kaze tko? gospon imperijalista koji kultivirase svoje okruzenje pa bi se povremeno spustio do bijede nadisati svjezeg zraka. sto ne razvije prashumu na svom otoku?
globalizacija, uniformizam, plz za sve.

Još malo pa Džresik park: ženke sabljarki testerača proizvode djecu iako se ne pare sa mužjacima:



Sawfish escape extinction through 'virgin births', scientists discover

QuoteA virgin birth is normally taken as a sign of divine intervention, but the phenomenon may be more common than we thought - at least in certain fish species.
Scientists have discovered that female sawfish appear to be routinely reproducing without any male input through an alternative form of reproduction known as parthenogenesis.
Asexual reproduction had been observed previously in various sharks, snakes and fish in captivity, when zookeepers were surprised to discover pregnant females that had not had any recent contact with males. But until now so-called "virgin births" were assumed to be incredibly rare and had never been observed in vertebrates in the wild.
Gregg Poulakis of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, who led the fieldwork in the study, said: "There was a general feeling that vertebrate parthenogenesis was a curiosity that didn't usually lead to viable offspring."
In the latest study, DNA fingerprinting showed that about 3% of a sawfish population in Florida appeared to have been created through female-only reproduction, suggesting that parthenogenesis may play an important role in the survival of certain critically endangered species.
Although reproducing in this way depletes the genetic diversity of a population, it could help maintain numbers during critical periods, perhaps serving as a "bridging" strategy to get through a population bottleneck.
The smalltooth sawfish is a member of the ray family, distinguished by its studded saw-shaped nose-extension, which it uses to attack smaller fish. The fish, which grow to several metres in length, are found in southern Florida and have been driven close to extinction due to overfishing and habitat loss. The global population is thought to be around 1% of its level in 1900.
"We were conducting routine DNA fingerprinting of the sawfish found in this area in order to see if relatives were often reproducing with relatives due to their small population size," said Andrew Fields, who led the study at Stony Brook University in New York. "What the DNA fingerprints told us was altogether more surprising: female sawfish are sometimes reproducing without even mating."
During normal reproduction, the female egg cell matures and ejects half its chromosomes through a series of cell divisions, leaving a single set of chromosomes to combine with the single set that the sperm brings along. The resultant offspring end up with two sets of chromosomes in each of their cells, with half the genetic material coming from each parent.

In parthenogenesis, however, the mature egg is fertilised by a sister cell, known as a polar body, that contains an identical set of chromosomes. This means that while the resultant offspring will still have two sets chromosomes in each cell, the genes on each will be exactly the same.
AdvertisementIn the study, published in Current Biology, the researchers captured 190 sawfish and in each case analysed 16 sites on the genome that were known to contain short sequences that are repeated multiple times in succession.
The same technique, known as Short Tandem Repeats, is used in human paternity testing: since half your genetic material comes from your father, the number of repeats on half of your chromosomes should match up with the number of repeats seen on his.


When applied to the sawfish, the paternity-style test revealed that some of the fish lacked a biological father altogether.
In these cases, the number of repeats on each chromosome was identical at each of the 16 sites, which could only be explained if they had inherited the entirety of their genetic material from their mother.
The survey identified two fish with different mothers, which both appeared to have been born through parthenogenesis, and a further five fish, which all shared the same mother.
Until now, scientists assumed that having two mirror image sets of genes would normally lead to serious health problems or be fatal, since it leaves individuals without any backup in the case of genetic flaws. Surprisingly, though, the seven parthenogens appeared to be in perfect health.

Dr Warren Booth, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Tulsa, who previously discovered an instance of parthenogenesis in snakes, said: "This is basically a very extreme form of inbreeding. Most people think of inbreeding as bad, but it could be helpful in purging deleterious mutations from a population."
However, he added that it would also lead to populations losing genetic diversity, which is essential for a species to remain resilient to new threats.
All of the "virgin birth" fish were female, and the scientists believe that only female fish could be produced through this method since sawfish sex is determined through an XX/XY chromosome system similar to that of humans. Despite this, the population appeared to have a roughly 50:50 balance of male and female fish.
The researchers have not yet established whether the offspring were fertile themselves, but are tracking the population to investigate further. "It takes a very long time for sawfish to reach sexual maturity, so it could be up to ten years until we find out," said Fields.
The authors are now trawling through publicly available genetic databases of other species to investigate whether parthenogenesis may be happening more widely.

To nije weird. Bipolna reprodukcija je evoluciono starija od polne. Postoji mnogo vrsta koje po potrebi promene pol, što znači da starija formula ume da se pojavi. Imao sam akvarijumske ribice koje su do jednog uzrasta muške, a kasnije se transformišu u ženske. I sawfish nisu sabljarke, nego testerače.

Aha, testerače. Valja. Ispravićemo!!!!!!


I ne kažem ja da je ovo nečuven fenomen (kao i to menjanje pola koje pominješ), ali je, onako weird-ish. Mislim, nisam hteo da otvaram nov topik koji bi se zvao "Nature is interesting" samo zbog ovog posta 

I onda da perfektno nadovežemo i ovaj Gardijanov članak: kada nauka uspe da seksualni kontakt izbaci iz formule ljudske reprodukcije tako da to postane udobno, videćemo značajne socijalne promene:


Why sex could be history

QuoteFrom artificial wombs to men and women being able to reproduce entirely alone, Aarathi Prasad says science is rewriting the rules of sex and human reproduction. What would that mean for our ideas of family and parenthood?   

Over tea at her north London home, Aarathi Prasad is talking calmly, coolly, about reproduction. But not sex. Specifically not sex. Her subject is technologies that would take intercourse out of the reproductive equation, advances that could challenge everything we know about family and the relationship between men and women. Their potential is summed up in the final paragraphs of her new book, Like a Virgin: How Science is Redesigning the Rules of Sex.
Here she describes the "ultimate solo parent" of the future. This woman can use her own stem cells and an artificial Y chromosome to produce healthy new eggs and sperm at any age, is capable of reproducing entirely alone by making one of her eggs behave like a pseudo-sperm that can be used to fertilise herself, and has no need to carry the embryo in her own body. Instead it gestates in an artificial womb, which acts as a highly evolved incubator. The same field of technology would enable gay couples to have children created from both their DNA, and make it just as easy for a man to become a single parent as a woman.
Prasad writes that this would be "the great biological and social equaliser" before adding that the question isn't if it will happen, but when. She is softly spoken and thoughtful, and our conversation circles around chromosomes, DNA and IVF, before returning repeatedly to the artificial womb, the potential of which seems to grow and shift the more we discuss it. If we could grow embryos outside the body, it would change women's life choices entirely. We wouldn't have to worry about when to have children – between this advance and eggs created from stem cells, it would be possible at any age. Men and women could have an equal role in parenting, right from conception. Of all the current reproductive possibilities, it is this potential advance that could be most revolutionary – and perhaps the most troubling too.
The decision to write Like a Virgin grew from Prasad's own desire to have children. She was brought up in Trinidad, then London, with her parents and brother, and dreamed of having a large family. In her mid-20s, while finishing a PhD in cancer genetics, she had a daughter, Tara, but her relationship with Tara's father ended during the pregnancy. By the time she was 30 her hopes for a big brood were faltering. Her mother had experienced menopause quite early, and she suspected she might too.


"I remember waking up one Saturday morning, on a bed with my daughter in my mum's loft, thinking, well, if some animals can have babies without males, why can't humans? So many women are like me, in their 30s, we do want our careers ... and we're looking for the right partner. And then you get older and it looks less likely to happen."
Prasad had studied male infertility and other aspects of developmental biology; she decided to find out more about her choices and what was going on at the cutting edge of reproductive science. Her book takes a broad, historical look at the notion of reproduction without sex, moving from ancient stories of virgin birth to a 16th-century experiment involving semen being placed in a glass tube and buried in horse manure, in the hope it might grow into a small, transparent homunculus. (It didn't.)
But the book is most extraordinary when it considers the future of reproduction without sex. Along with the artificial womb, the other possible advance Prasad finds most exciting is the potential to create healthy, new young eggs from our stem cells. There have been studies conducted on animals, she says, in which bone marrow from a female has been used to generate eggs.
"You can also take bone marrow from men, to generate sperm, and you can generate eggs from men too, which is quite interesting. It's not magic," she adds. It's because men have an X and a Y chromosome, while women, having two X chromosomes, are more limited in this respect. However, an embryo could still be created that mixed the DNA of two females, a process that has been tried successfully in mice. In 2004, Kaguya the mouse was born without a father. She was created by "constructing an egg out of material from one mature egg, and one immature egg," Prasad writes. Manipulation of DNA essentially allowed the scientists to use an egg's chromosomes as if they had come from a sperm.
This area of technology would allow a woman to procreate alone too, using two of her own eggs, an idea Prasad laughs off as megalomaniacal when we discuss it initially. "I wouldn't see a woman creating a baby out of herself. I mean, maybe they would. Maybe Lady Gaga would, some maverick."
The child wouldn't be a clone, she notes, because, "every time you create an egg there's a shuffling of the DNA, which is why siblings don't tend to look the same."
But surely for people who want to reproduce and don't have a partner, going it alone might not be prompted by narcissism – more by their confidence in their own DNA and family medical history, versus that of an unknown donor?
"I can see that happening," says Prasad, "and it might sound weird, but is it? I think the real question is, is the baby going to be healthy? If the answer to that is yes, and the mother is able to look after it, then who are we to say?"
Artificial wombs would challenge social attitudes too, perhaps even more profoundly. These have long been a staple of science fiction, but they have also been created and used in reality – although for sharks rather than humans. Prasad writes about the team of scientists who, in 2008, developed an artificial womb to try to halt the decline of the grey nurse shark. Each female shark of this variety has two wombs, and while dozens of embryos are produced in each of their pregnancies, only the strongest two survive, one in each womb.
This is because the shark foetuses nourish themselves through cannibalism, eating their potential siblings. The outcome is that the female sharks produce only two pups every two years. In addressing this problem, scientists have gestated wobbegong embryos (wobbegongs are similar to grey nurses, but not endangered), for increasingly long periods in an artificial womb, with great success. They hope, soon, to gestate one from conception.
Scientists in Japan and the US are working to find out whether a similar device could be used for humans, and the noted reproductive researcher Hung-Ching Liu has said that having a child in the laboratory is her final goal. As Prasad writes, Liu has "already managed to grow the lining for a human womb, using a sort of scaffolding over which cells, cultured from a woman's womb, could multiply ... When it was tested using fertilised eggs left over from IVF cycles, the eggs implanted in it, at six days, just as they would in a real womb."
Liu's experiment had to end eight days after implantation, Prasad explains, because researchers are not allowed to grow human foetuses for more than 14 days in the lab.
There are therefore regulatory and ethical as well as technological barriers to overcome in many of these reproductive advances, but when I ask Prasad whether she thinks we'll see artificial wombs used by humans in her lifetime, she is positive. "If my lifetime was another 40 years, yes," she says.
If babies are gestated outside the human body, it would immediately disrupt all our notions about who should be the primary parent, and about male and female roles as a whole. "It would get away from that question of mother and father," says Prasad, "and instead become: what is a parent?"
In Like a Virgin, Prasad describes some of the ethical dilemmas that might result, exploring, for instance, the bond between a pregnant woman and her baby. This is often considered sacred and essential, but she sees it differently. Watching a child grow from a tiny cluster of cells, right through to birth, might result in a bond that was equally special, she suggests.
Researching the book, Prasad visited a neonatal unit in Hackney, east London, where she saw very premature babies in incubators. The experience felt voyeuristic, she says, because "you're looking into this womb, this box, and thinking, I shouldn't be able to see that. But it's just so beautiful to see this doll-like creature growing."
She compares this with the scans pregnant women have – that moment they're first able to "see" their child. When a woman has a scan at 12 weeks, "Your stomach is completely flat, there's no sign of the pregnancy except the test you've taken. And then there's this beautiful, perfectly formed child [on the screen] and you're in tears. That's bonding. Feeling the baby inside you can be too, but sometimes it's really hard for the mother ... This whole concept of the perfection of maternal bonding – it's not like that. There's no ideal. And I don't think that having a child in a place that's not in your body is necessarily bad for bonding."
In fact, she says, it could be good because it would be impossible to get pregnant like this accidentally "and, secondly, the womb can be a bad place for babies." She mentions smoking, drinking and drug use, and adds: "This whole idea of nature being fantastic – it's not. We can learn from it, but we can also improve on it. And there are situations where it's not healthy, and babies would be better off outside."
That's true in some cases, but what about positive influences in the womb, the influence a healthy, happy mother has on a growing foetus? Prasad believes it would be possible to replicate these too. "If a baby was growing in a box from beginning until end, and you knew what those influences are, you could manipulate them. The signals that make a person happy are because of certain chemicals they're producing in their brain, dictated by their genes, dictated maybe by one of their parents being like that. But it's a chemical signal, and those are completely replicable in an artificial situation.
"I mean, we are machines, after all. We have all these ethical and social over-layers, but the body is a machine."
Continuing in this vein, Prasad says a "hardcore, serious mother" whose child was gestating in an artificial womb could be injected "with stuff to make her produce milk by the time the baby is born, so she is expressing certain hormones that we know are related to maternal bonding. You could recreate all that. There is a pathway of knock-on effects when your body realises an egg has been fertilised: your periods stop and there's a cascade of hormones. You could still do all that."
Not that it would necessarily be the woman who would breastfeed. Someone pointed out to Prasad that men can produce milk too: "They've got mammary glands, and I haven't looked into this, but say that was possible, then you're really asking who is the mother, and who is the father? If you unhinge all of these things from their very basis, you'd have to rethink who does what."
Given that men and women would have an equal chance to bond with the baby during gestation, there would be more potential than ever for parenting to be fully shared. So does all this spell the end of sex? Are we about to start reproducing in entirely new ways?
Prasad says she doesn't think these technologies will be used by everyone. "The people who are interested in it are those who have problems in having babies". But it's not hard to imagine artificial wombs, for instance, being used more broadly. If there was a viable, entirely healthy alternative, would women necessarily choose to go through pregnancy?
We're some way from finding out.
Prasad recognises that many people find these ideas and technologies enormously problematic, but takes a scientist's view. She points out that there was criticism when spectacles were first invented, with some saying the advance went against nature. "There are a lot of things animals do that we can't," she says, "like flying and camouflage, and we've adapted, through technology ... It's funny when people say something is natural, or not. Compared with what? Compared with when? It's this vanity of humans to think of themselves as special, as being at the height of evolution. We're not. We're obviously still adapting."
There has been uproar over reproductive technologies before, she notes. In the late 1970s, when Lesley Brown was pregnant with the world's first "test tube" baby the intense media interest forced her into hiding. "With the first IVF there was an outcry, and then people say, 'Well, if it helps people who are childless ...'"
Prasad shrugs. "One of the fertility scientists I was speaking to said that every time there's a press story about eggs and sperm being created, his phone doesn't stop ringing. So there are all these people who are high-falutin', and will talk about the ethics and the morals. And then there are people who are infertile who will just pick up the phone and say 'can you help me?'"
Like a Virgin: How Science is Redesigning the Rules of Sex is published by Oneworld on 23 August, £12.99. To order a copy for £10.39, including free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846

Kad to stigne svi će biti Isusi. Ali, stvarno! Seks je fatalno opasan za sadašnju viziju sveta. Kad jebu ne rade. Sve stane osim porno industrije.

Da bar jebu iz dobre namere, reprodukcije radi, nego to pola njih radi iz zabave

A ja mislio da je to greh samo u hrišćanstvu.

Zabava je greh kod svakog sredovečnog čoveka, kada se u nju upuštaju mlađi 

An octopus has been captured on film exhibiting one of the most remarkable (and amusing) examples of tool usage in the animal kingdom. Footage shows the eight-limbed animal literally walking along the ocean floor carrying two halves of a broken coconut shell beneath his arms, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

But this tentacled one knows exactly what he's doing.

http://youtu.be/zaE-LwDowcU

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/absurd-creature-of-the-week-weta/?mbid=social_fb

Some Intriguing New Hints About What Ant Consciousness Is Really Like

This pink octopus is so cute that scientists might name it 'adorabilis'

Stanford researcher declares that the sixth mass extinction is here

Quote
There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity's existence.
That is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.
"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," Ehrlich said.
Although most well known for his positions on human population, Ehrlich has done extensive work on extinctions going back to his 1981 book, Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species. He has long tied his work on coevolution, on racial, gender and economic justice, and on nuclear winter with the issue of wildlife populations and species loss.
There is general agreement among scientists that extinction rates have reached levels unparalleled since the dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago. However, some have challenged the theory, believing earlier estimates rested on assumptions that overestimated the crisis.
The new study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that even with extremely conservative estimates, species are disappearing up to about 100 times faster than the normal rate between mass extinctions, known as the background rate.
"If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said lead author Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autónoma de México.
Conservative approach Using fossil records and extinction counts from a range of records, the researchers compared a highly conservative estimate of current extinctions with a background rate estimate twice as high as those widely used in previous analyses. This way, they brought the two estimates – current extinction rate and average background or going-on-all-the-time extinction rate – as close to each other as possible.
Focusing on vertebrates, the group for which the most reliable modern and fossil data exist, the researchers asked whether even the lowest estimates of the difference between background and contemporary extinction rates still justify the conclusion that people are precipitating "a global spasm of biodiversity loss." The answer: a definitive yes."We emphasize that our calculations very likely underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis, because our aim was to place a realistic lower bound on humanity's impact on biodiversity," the researchers write.
To history's steady drumbeat, a human population growing in numbers, per capita consumption and economic inequity has altered or destroyed natural habitats. The long list of impacts includes:

   
• Land clearing for farming, logging and settlement
• Introduction of invasive species
• Carbon emissions that drive climate change and ocean acidification
• Toxins that alter and poison ecosystems

Now, the specter of extinction hangs over about 41 percent of all amphibian species and 26 percent of all mammals, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which maintains an authoritative list of threatened and extinct species.
"There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead," Ehrlich said.
As species disappear, so do crucial ecosystem services such as honeybees' crop pollination and wetlands' water purification. At the current rate of species loss, people will lose many biodiversity benefits within three generations, the study's authors write. "We are sawing off the limb that we are sitting on," Ehrlich said.
Hope for the future Despite the gloomy outlook, there is a meaningful way forward, according to Ehrlich and his colleagues. "Avoiding a true sixth mass extinction will require rapid, greatly intensified efforts to conserve already threatened species, and to alleviate pressures on their populations – notably habitat loss, over-exploitation for economic gain and climate change," the study's authors write.
In the meantime, the researchers hope their work will inform conservation efforts, the maintenance of ecosystem services and public policy.
Co-authors on the paper include Anthony D. Barnosky of the University of California at Berkeley, Andrés García of Universidad Autónoma de México, Robert M. Pringle of Princeton University and Todd M. Palmer of the University of Florida.
Media Contact Paul Ehrlich, Biology: (650) 723-3171, pre@stanford.edu

Prvo Stratfor, pa Stanford. Opet Indijanci skupljaju drva za potpalu. Biće oštra zima.

http://youtu.be/0e3t18rrjOA

Quote
A real life sharkcano? Ocean engineer Brennan Phillips led a team to the remote Solomon Islands in search of hydrothermal activity. They found plenty of activity—including sharks in a submarine volcano. The main peak of the volcano, called Kavachi, was not erupting during their expedition, so they were able to drop instruments, including a deep-sea camera, into the crater. The footage revealed hammerheads and silky sharks living inside, seemingly unaffected by the hostile temperatures and acidity.

Phillips said, "You never know what you're going to find. Especially when you are working deep underwater. The deeper you go, the stranger it gets." They knew they would see interesting geology but weren't sure about the biology. "No one has ever looked in the deep sea there, period. No one's been out to anywhere in the Solomon Islands and gone deeper than a few hundred meters or deeper than a scuba diver has gone, really. So we were very excited. We thought there was a lot of potential."

Normally, the deep-sea cameras are programmed to film underwater for several hours. The team felt like that was a bit too risky inside a submarine volcano, so the camera was only at the bottom of the crater for an hour. The footage has to be downloaded and reviewed after the camera returns to the surface. As Phillips explained, "One of the videos from inside the main caldera of Kavachi shows some jellyfish hanging out. They seem to be there naturally. And then we see some snappers and some small fish ... and then sharks start coming after the camera. Sharks are cool in their own right—all of them are—but a hammerhead is particularly neat looking. And they're in there, in numbers, inside the volcano! Now I want to spend years trying to study that and why that is the case."

The National Geographic Society/Waitt Grants Program supported the expedition.

Read more about Brennan's research in the Solomon Islands:  http://goo.gl/Jpbs52

Join us online to see more from National Geographic Explorers! :
Facebook: https://goo.gl/JiPVsU
Twitter: https://goo.gl/xeQ3SE

Bizarre fish species, ancient volcanoes discovered off Australia







U redu je, Australijo. Znamo kad smo nepoželjni 

Australian Animals That Won't Kill You, Ranked

...али она мучена ајкулица чији зуби не могу да пробију људску кожу

Mene je kod nje još više privuklo to kako joj izgledaju jaja. Pa ono dok izležeš, takoreći rodiš mečku 

Scientists Eagerly Await Rare Birth of 'Baby Dragons' in Slovenian Cave

Quote

In a Slovenian cave only accessible by an underground train, scientists are eagerly awaiting the rare hatching of more than 57 "baby dragon" eggs.
The "baby dragons" aren't really dragons, but olms -- ancient, blind salamanders that resemble the mythological creature, according to biologist Sašo Weldt, who studies the amphibians at Postojna Cave in Slovenia.
Though olms have existed for at least 15 million years, Slovenians first documented seeing them in the middle of the 17th century, when they apparently washed up from underground rivers after heavy rains, Weldt told ABC News.
"People had never seen it and didn't know what it was," he said. "During the winter time, clouds of fog often rose from the cave, so they came up with stories of a dragon breathing fire from the cave, and they thought the olms were its babies."
Though olms don't breathe fire nor grow to gargantuan sizes, they do have several "unusual attributes and features" that make them quite fascinating creatures, Weldt said.
"They're believed to be able to live 100 years or longer, and they can survive without food for up to 10 years," he explained. "They have transparent white skin that also covers their eyes, but they don't need to see. They have incredible sense of smell and hearing and can detect detect light and electrical or magnetic fields."
Weldt added that female olms only reproduce once every six to seven years. The rare birth of olms has only been witnessed in labs, but for the first time, the public may be able to view a hatching at the Postojna Cave, where Weldt works, he said.
The first time eggs were found in the cave was in 2013, Weldt explained, but he said that they were unfortunately eaten before any could be born.
In January a tour guide noticed a new olm egg. Now, there are over 57.
"This time, we've removed all the other olms to make sure [the eggs] don't get eaten again," Weldt said. "We're hopeful for a successful birth."
He added that the cave's scientists have set up cameras that use infrared light to capture the "Mama Dragon" and her little ones, so that cave visitors can keep tabs on them as well.
"Everything seems to be going according to plan, and we're really, really excited," he said. "We just had a scientist from Uganada and America come to see the olms. It's a great moment to be working and studying the olms and the cave right now."
If all goes well, the "baby dragons" could be born within three to four months, Weldt said.

Newly discovered plastic-eating bacteria could help clean up plastic waste around the world

QuoteJapanese researchers recently discovered a microorganism that literally eats plastic. The bacterium, now named Ideonella sakaiensis, has been proven to completely break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a common type of plastic used in bottles and other containers. That type of plastic makes up a huge proportion of all the plastic waste in the world, particularly in the ocean, and now, scientists are investigating whether the hungry little bug can be used to recycle plastic and reduce pollution.


The bacterium uses a pair of enzymes to break down PET and turn it into a food source – much the same as the way other animals' bodies (including humans) use enzymes to break down other types of food. Problem is, it takes up to six weeks for the bacterium to completely breakdown a small, low-grade sample of PET. If they were able to 'eat' higher quality plastics, it would take much, much longer. Microbiologist Kohei Oda of the Kyoto Institute of Technology co-authored the study published this week in the journal Science, and he told PBS NewsHour he was "very surprised to find microorganisms that degrade PET" because the plastic has always been thought to be non-biodegradable.


Researchers found the bacterium because they were searching for it. During a study of 250 PET samples collected from recycling facilities in Osaka, Japan, the scientists were looking for clues to explain how the plastics broke down over time. Of the samples showing more advanced signs of degradation, researchers discovered I. sakaiensis and have been studying it in a lab setting.
PET reportedly has the highest recycling rate of all plastics, yet nearly half the plastic products produced with PET are not recycled. PET is common in single-use water bottles, but also in other food packaging like clear salad containers, peanut butter jars, and potato chip bags. Other scientists studying plastic degradation are paying attention, as this breakthrough may be the first step in a long journey to addressing the huge problem of ocean plastic. With remedial efforts like the Ocean Cleanup Array close to launch, it seems there may be hope after all for eventually recycling some of the plastic waste cluttering up the environment.

Nije da i do sada nismo sumnjali, ali evo i dokaza da nas bog sve kolektivno mrzi:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adactylidium

Scientists Uncover Array of Strange Animals in Cave That Has Been Sealed Off for 5.5 Million Years 

Quote
Scientists have found a whole new world hidden inside a cave that has been sealed for about 5.5 million years. The cave and its residents could provide scientists with answers to questions about global warming and the formation of life on Earth.
These interesting creatures call the Movile Cave in Romania their home. It was sealed when a sheet of limestone collapsed onto the opening. The cave wasn't discovered until 1986 when Romanian workers were testing the surrounding ground as a potential power plant site.
 

Super cool -> The bizarre beasts living in Romania's poison cave

https://t.co/GtfOHJq9he via @BBC pic.twitter.com/CgDid3vcZK
— Dustin Main (@dustinmain) May 12, 2016

 
Access to the cave is restricted. Less than 100 people have entered it. One of the reasons for this is that the journey itself is dangerous. BBC explained:

To enter, you must first lower yourself by rope 20m down a narrow shaft dug into the ground. The only light is from your helmet, which bounces around the walls as you descend.
You must then climb down through narrow limestone tunnels coated in an ochre clay, in pitch darkness and temperatures of 25 °C.  These paths eventually open out into a central cavern containing a lake.

Microbiologist Rich Boden, who is currently at the University of Plymouth in the UK, made the journey in 2010.
"It's pretty warm, and very humid so it feels warmer than it is, and of course with a boiler suit and helmet on that doesn't help," Boden told BBC.
"The pool of warm, sulphidic water stinks of rotting eggs or burnt rubber when you disturb it as hydrogen sulphide is given off."
The environment inside Movile Cave is very inhospitable. The lake gives off carbon dioxide as well as hydrogen sulphide, BBC reported. The air inside the cave contains 10 percent oxygen compared to the 20 percent we are used to. Visitors can only stay down there for 5 or 6 hours before their "kidneys pack in."
 

A woodlouse, living in a poison-filled, sunlight-free cave in Romania

https://t.co/Q8Ax4jhkBu #besidesus pic.twitter.com/JQ3bKQlQCN
— David Schoppik (@schoppik) May 12, 2016 
Due to this unusual environment, the animals that live in the cave have developed interesting traits. Thirty-three of the 48 species identified are unique to the cave.
Many of the species have no eyes because they have no need for them in the dark cave. Most of them are translucent, making them look particularly strange. And many have adapted to grow extra-long antennas or other appendages to find their way in the darkness, according to BBC.
Other mysteries surround the cave as well. One spider species, scientists say, is related to a spider found in the Canary Islands some 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) away. The cave also received no radiation from the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986, even though soils and lakes surrounding the cave had traces of radiation, according to a 1996 study. From that study, scientists have determined the water in the lake doesn't come from above, like most caves, but from below.
Scientists are also interested in studying bacteria in the cave and its ability to oxidize methane and carbon dioxide, which are two greenhouse gases that contribute the most to global warming. Researchers hope by studying the bacteria they can figure out a way to remove the gases from the atmosphere.

Bizarna pojava na Antarktiku: Zašto se foke pare s pingvinima?

QuoteNa jednom udaljenom, nenaseljenom ostrvu na Antarktiku, naučnici su primetili da foke pokušavaju da stupe u seksualne odnose s pingvinima, piše BBC.
Ova pojava desila se više nego jednom, a 'protagonisti' su bili različiti, tako da su naučnici odlučili da ovu neobičnu pojavu zabeleže na video-snimku i objave detalje u magazinu "Polarna biologija".

Neobično seksualno ponašanje foka nije ih mnogo iznenadilo, s obzirom na to da je još 2006. primećeno da jedna foka na ostrvu Marion pokušava da se pari s kraljevskim pingvinom.

U to vreme, postojale su teorije da je takvo ponašanje posledica seksualne frustracije ili neiskustva mlade foke, da je možda reč o agresivnom, predatorskom ponašanju ili da je igra jednostavno prerasla u seksualni čin.

Međutim, novi detalji, objavljeni u studiji "Multiple occurrences of king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) sexual harassment by Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella)", i dalje iznenađuju stručnjake.

Nakon 2006. dogodila su se još tri slučaja nasrtaja mladih mužjaka foke na pingvine nepoznatog pola.

Kod sva četiri incidenta zabeležen je isti obrazac. Foka bi svaki put pojurila pingvina, uhvatila ga i zajahala. Zatim bi nekoliko puta pokušala da se pari, a svaki pokušaj trajao bi oko pet minuta, sa pauzama između.

I mužjaci i ženke pingvina pare se putem otvora zvanog kloaka i smatra se da su foke u pojedinim slučajevima zapravo uspele da izvrše penetraciju.

U tri slučaja, foke su pustile pingvine, ali u poslednjem je foka ubila pingvina i pojela ga.

To nije čudno, s obzirom na to da foke na ovom ostrvu često love pingvine i jedu ih.

Ovi incidenti su jedini zabeležen slučaj pokušaja parenja foka s pripadnicima druge biološke klase, odnosno u ovom slučaju pokušaj sisara da stupi u seksualne odnose sa pticom.

Iako još nema odgovora na pitanje zašto se to dešava, naučnici sumnjaju da je reč o naučenom obrascu ponašanja.

"Foke imaju kapacitet za učenje, što su već ispoljile prilikom traganja za hranom", rekao je Niko de Brajan iz Instituta za istraživanje sisara na Univerzitetu u Pretoriji u Južnoafričkoj Republici.

To znači da mužjaci mogu da vide kako drugi mužjak pokušava da se pari s pingvinima, a zatim i sami pokušaju to da izvedu. To bi ujedno objasnilo zašto je broj ovog tipa incidenata u porastu i zašto je ograničen na ostrvo Marion.

"A možda je zaista reč o seksualnoj frustraciji, s obzirom na nalet hormona u toku sezone parenja. S druge strane, šanse da mladi mužjak pogrešno prepozna pingvina kao ženku foke su vrlo male. Zaista je teško reći koji je pravi uzrok ovakvog ponašanja", zaključio je Brajan.

Ne pare se. Ako nasilje nije normalno.

Are some wolves being 'redomesticated' into dogs?

Can peoples be redomesticated into humans?

  Parasite that turns ants into actual zombies is even more terrifying than scientists thought 

not really zombies, živi su ti mravi
i premda odavno znamo da paraziti mogu da utiču na ponašanje domaćina (najbolji primer: ljudi i kandida), ovaj deo (iz rada koji su objavili) je fascinantan:

QuoteThe fungus takes the form of hyphal bodies that connect to form fungal networks, and it is also present as filamentous mycelia that invade ant muscle fibers. The connections between hyphal bodies indicate that individual fungal cells communicate with each other and suggest that collective behavior may be an important strategy for this fungal parasite. We speculate that the resulting networks may aid in nutrient transport and formation of the structures that will later emerge from the host's body to continue the parasite's lifecycle.

Take a trip to the depths of the world's biggest underwater sinkhole