Scientists Capture One of the World’s Rarest Big Cats on Film

by Jeremy Hance

Less than a hundred kilometers from the bustling metropolis of Jakarta, scientists have captured incredible photos of one of the world’s most endangered big cats: the Javan leopard (Panthera pardus melas). Taken by a research project in Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park, the photos show the magnificent animal relaxing in dense primary rainforest. Scientists believe that fewer than 250 mature Javan leopard survive, and the population may be down to 100…

(read more: MongaBay)              (photos: Age Kridalaksana/CIFOR)

Unfussy Female Poison Frogs Just Go For Closest Male

by Ed Yong

A female strawberry poison frog faces an abundance of choice when it comes time to breed. The forest floor is full of bright red males trying to attract her with their songs, and wrestling with other males to defend their territories. She could pick a suitor based on his size or health. She could weigh up the quality of his territory. She could judge him on the depth, volume or length of his croaking, any of which could indicate how strong he is.

Or she could just mate with the first male she finds.

That, rather anticlimactically, is exactly what happens. For all the effort that males put into attracting a partner, the only factor that seems to matter to the females is who’s nearest. And according to Ivonne Meuche from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hanover, this strategy makes perfect sense for these frogs.

The strawberry poison frog (Oophaga pumilio) has become something of a celebrity among scientists studying frog behaviour. It’s easy to find because of its bright colours and tendency to hop about in the day. And it has lots of sex. On average, a female will only go for 4 to 5 days between partners…

(read more: Not Exactly Rocket Science - National Geo.)

(photos: T - Dendrotoine85: B - Geoff Gallice)

Cup corals (Desmophyllum) grow around an anemone on a mud-covered ledge. During the Deepwater Canyons 2013 expedition, scientists collected cup coral specimens to help them understand the factors that influence the distribution of this species and perhaps even solve the mystery of differences observed between the deep and shallow populations. Learn more: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/13midatlantic/logs/may17/may17.html (via: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research) View high resolution

Cup corals (Desmophyllum) grow around an anemone on a mud-covered ledge. During the Deepwater Canyons 2013 expedition, scientists collected cup coral specimens to help them understand the factors that influence the distribution of this species and perhaps even solve the mystery of differences observed between the deep and shallow populations.

Learn more: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/13midatlantic/logs/may17/may17.html

(via: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research)

I’ll just leave this quote from writer Salman Rushdie right over here… (via: The Richard Dawkins Fdn. for Reason and Science) View high resolution

I’ll just leave this quote from writer Salman Rushdie right over here…

(via: The Richard Dawkins Fdn. for Reason and Science)

Goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara) … can grow as big as a Volkswagen and live more than 35 years! But as slow and curious swimmers in shallow water, they are easy prey for fishermen. After nearing extinction, a catch ban helped them recover. Now, Florida is considering reopening the fishery and we believe it’s too soon. Take a moment to help this iconic Florida fish return to full abundance by taking this public opinion survey. Your voice can help make the difference… http://ocean.ly/13tLwaj (via: Ocean Conservancy) View high resolution

Goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara)

… can grow as big as a Volkswagen and live more than 35 years! But as slow and curious swimmers in shallow water, they are easy prey for fishermen.

After nearing extinction, a catch ban helped them recover. Now, Florida is considering reopening the fishery and we believe it’s too soon. Take a moment to help this iconic Florida fish return to full abundance by taking this public opinion survey. Your voice can help make the difference… http://ocean.ly/13tLwaj

(via: Ocean Conservancy)

Roseate Spoonbills (Platalea ajaja) near Harlingen, South TX, USA. No matter how many times one sees it, giant pink birds taking off is always a thrill. photo by M. Fuller (via: Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival) View high resolution

Roseate Spoonbills (Platalea ajaja) near Harlingen, South TX, USA. No matter how many times one sees it, giant pink birds taking off is always a thrill.

photo by M. Fuller

(via: Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival)

Why Most Snails Do Coil to the Right? by Jennifer Carpenter When plucking a snail from the beach you’d be lucky to snag a left-coiling shell.That’s because only 5% of all snails are “lefties,” new research shows. Shell enthusiasts have long marveled at the lack of sinistral (left-coiling) snails among their collections, especially when other shelled mollusks, such as clams and the now-extinct ammonites—nautiluslike creatures that sported dozens of tentacles inside spiraled shells—are just as likely to be left- as right-coiling. Now, in the largest survey of its kind, researchers inspected more than 55,000 snail species—representing two-thirds of all gastropods—to reveal that left-coiling has arisen more than 100 times, and yet few of the species that have made the switch have been particularly successful. In the rare cases where left-coiling took off, it was almost always on land, the team reported here in a presentation last week at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Zoologists. The researchers don’t know why sinistrality is so rare underwater, but the most likely explanation, they say, is that unlike land snails that tend to hang around where they hatch out, the microscopic young of sea snails are carried on ocean currents that make the chance of meeting and reproducing with another left-coiling nest-mate slim. Without such a meeting, the left-coiling lineage goes extinct. (via: Science NEWS/AAAS)                            (photo: Yang Hao) View high resolution

Why Most Snails Do Coil to the Right?

by Jennifer Carpenter

When plucking a snail from the beach you’d be lucky to snag a left-coiling shell.That’s because only 5% of all snails are “lefties,” new research shows. Shell enthusiasts have long marveled at the lack of sinistral (left-coiling) snails among their collections, especially when other shelled mollusks, such as clams and the now-extinct ammonites—nautiluslike creatures that sported dozens of tentacles inside spiraled shells—are just as likely to be left- as right-coiling.

Now, in the largest survey of its kind, researchers inspected more than 55,000 snail species—representing two-thirds of all gastropods—to reveal that left-coiling has arisen more than 100 times, and yet few of the species that have made the switch have been particularly successful. In the rare cases where left-coiling took off, it was almost always on land, the team reported here in a presentation last week at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Zoologists.

The researchers don’t know why sinistrality is so rare underwater, but the most likely explanation, they say, is that unlike land snails that tend to hang around where they hatch out, the microscopic young of sea snails are carried on ocean currents that make the chance of meeting and reproducing with another left-coiling nest-mate slim. Without such a meeting, the left-coiling lineage goes extinct.

(via: Science NEWS/AAAS)                            (photo: Yang Hao)

Why Do Penguins Fly Not? by Traci Watson Long, long ago, O Best Beloved, the ancestor of the penguins could soar through the air. So why did the penguin give up flight? Rudyard Kipling never wrote a Just So story with an answer, but now scientists have one: The penguin doesn’t fly because it would rather swim. A new study of murres, penguinlike seabirds that retain the ability to take wing, shows just how costly and inefficient it is to be both a diver and a flyer. The new findings back the long-held hypothesis that penguins gave up the heavens more than 70 million years ago to become kings of the waves. “This study contributes a lot by putting hard numbers on the energy costs of moving through both the aerial and aquatic realms,” writes Daniel Ksepka of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who studies penguin evolution and was not involved with the research, in an e-mail… (read more: Science News/AAAS)  (photo: Kyle H. Elliott; (inset) Samuel Blanc) View high resolution

Why Do Penguins Fly Not?

by Traci Watson

Long, long ago, O Best Beloved, the ancestor of the penguins could soar through the air. So why did the penguin give up flight? Rudyard Kipling never wrote a Just So story with an answer, but now scientists have one: The penguin doesn’t fly because it would rather swim.

A new study of murres, penguinlike seabirds that retain the ability to take wing, shows just how costly and inefficient it is to be both a diver and a flyer. The new findings back the long-held hypothesis that penguins gave up the heavens more than 70 million years ago to become kings of the waves.

“This study contributes a lot by putting hard numbers on the energy costs of moving through both the aerial and aquatic realms,” writes Daniel Ksepka of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who studies penguin evolution and was not involved with the research, in an e-mail…

(read more: Science News/AAAS) 

(photo: Kyle H. Elliott; (inset) Samuel Blanc)

Scissor-tailed Flycatchers (Tyrannus forficatus) Female Scissor-tailed Flycatchers select males  to pair with, based on the male’s ornate tail plumes. Males will perform elaborate aerial courtship displays to females, showing off their tails, to try to encourage her to mate. Longer tail feathers are more energetically costly to grow and maintain, so a male with very long tail feathers must therefore be in top physical shape. Males with longer feathers are typically snatched up sooner than those with shorter tails. Scissor-tailed Flycatchers are kingbirds, members of the flycatcher genus Tyrannus, along with the closely-related Fork-tailed Flycatcher. photo by Ken Slade - TexasEagle | Flickr (via: Peterson’s Field Guides) View high resolution

Scissor-tailed Flycatchers (Tyrannus forficatus)

Female Scissor-tailed Flycatchers select males  to pair with, based on the male’s ornate tail plumes. Males will perform elaborate aerial courtship displays to females, showing off their tails, to try to encourage her to mate. Longer tail feathers are more energetically costly to grow and maintain, so a male with very long tail feathers must therefore be in top physical shape. Males with longer feathers are typically snatched up sooner than those with shorter tails. Scissor-tailed Flycatchers are kingbirds, members of the flycatcher genus Tyrannus, along with the closely-related Fork-tailed Flycatcher.

photo by Ken Slade - TexasEagle | Flickr

(via: Peterson’s Field Guides)

2headedsnake:

Richard Barnes

Images from the ‘Murmur’ series, 2005

Flocks of european starlings flying above Rome and its suburbs.

(Reblogged from blackkittenclan)

blackkittenclan:

OSCILLATE

from Daniel Sierra on Vimeo.

For his MFA Computer Art Thesis at School of Visual Arts in NYC, Daniel Sierra explored and visualized “waveform patterns that evolve from the fundamental sine wave to more complex patterns, creating a mesmerizing audio-visual experience in which sight and sound work in unison to capture the viewer’s attention.” It sure worked on us. Watch the video after the jump…

The animation was done purely in Houdini.

(via)

(Reblogged from blackkittenclan)
rorschachx: Moor frogs (Rana arvalis) temporarily turning blue at the Ljubljana Marshes, Slovenia. It is thought that males turn blue during the mating season so they can quickly distinguish males from females among the dense frog populations  image by Luka Esenko View high resolution

rorschachx:

Moor frogs (Rana arvalis) temporarily turning blue at the Ljubljana Marshes, Slovenia.

It is thought that males turn blue during the mating season so they can quickly distinguish males from females among the dense frog populations 

image by Luka Esenko

(Reblogged from karlayst)
Sea Turtles on the South Texas Coast 20 sea turtle nests have so far been found on South Padre Island and Boca Chica Beach! The first nest is estimated to hatch the week of June 9th. For more information about attending a public sea turtle hatchling release… visit:  www.seaturtleinc.org or  https://www.facebook.com/SeaTurtleConservation (Photo: Kemp’s ridley sea turtle hatchlings released into the Gulf of Mexico, South Padre Island, summer of 2006) (via: Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge) View high resolution

Sea Turtles on the South Texas Coast

20 sea turtle nests have so far been found on South Padre Island and Boca Chica Beach! The first nest is estimated to hatch the week of June 9th. For more information about attending a public sea turtle hatchling release…

visit:  www.seaturtleinc.org or 

https://www.facebook.com/SeaTurtleConservation

(Photo: Kemp’s ridley sea turtle hatchlings released into the Gulf of Mexico, South Padre Island, summer of 2006)

(via: Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge)

The monkeylike face of a goby fish peers out from the center of a coral labyrinth. The fish depends on the coral for its home, and, in turn, often cleans smothering algae from the coral. This image was accepted into the Art of Science 2013 competition at Princeton University. Photo: Chhaya Werner, Princeton Univ. Art of Science Competition (via: Live Science) View high resolution

The monkeylike face of a goby fish peers out from the center of a coral labyrinth. The fish depends on the coral for its home, and, in turn, often cleans smothering algae from the coral. This image was accepted into the Art of Science 2013 competition at Princeton University.

Photo: Chhaya Werner, Princeton Univ. Art of Science Competition

(via: Live Science)

Evolution shapes new rules for ant behavior Stanford Biologist Deborah M. Gordon’s decades-long study of the collective behavior of harvester ant colonies has provided a rare real-time look at natural selection at work. by Bjorn Carey In ancient Greece, the city-states that waited until their own harvest was in before attacking and destroying a rival community’s crops often experienced better long-term success. It turns out that ant colonies that show similar selectivity when gathering food yield a similar result. The latest findings from Stanford biology Professor Deborah M. Gordon’s long-term study of harvester ants reveal that the colonies that restrain their foraging except in prime conditions also experience improved rates of reproductive success. Importantly, the study provides the first evidence of natural selection shaping collective behavior, said Gordon, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment… (read more: Stanford University)                        (image: NSF) View high resolution

Evolution shapes new rules for ant behavior

Stanford Biologist Deborah M. Gordon’s decades-long study of the collective behavior of harvester ant colonies has provided a rare real-time look at natural selection at work.

by Bjorn Carey

In ancient Greece, the city-states that waited until their own harvest was in before attacking and destroying a rival community’s crops often experienced better long-term success.

It turns out that ant colonies that show similar selectivity when gathering food yield a similar result. The latest findings from Stanford biology Professor Deborah M. Gordon’s long-term study of harvester ants reveal that the colonies that restrain their foraging except in prime conditions also experience improved rates of reproductive success.

Importantly, the study provides the first evidence of natural selection shaping collective behavior, said Gordon, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment…

(read more: Stanford University)                        (image: NSF)