A very MindRomp biological sciences thread

[MSG]

Cool https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www....045097%3famp=1

The findings suggest that the scutoid is nature’s preferred solution for creating stable, curved tissue.

"The shape came as a surprise!" Buceta said. "We then discovered that this shape didn’t even have a name in math."

[Majiffy]

Squiggly weird thing - professor, probably

[borealis]

...and then your butt falls off - or... "flying salt shakers of death"

Bright side - you were likely high all the time because the fungus that ate your butt (and a lot of other organs) was loaded with psilocybin.

oH yes, and an amphetamine too.

"Despite their horrific injuries, males become hyperactive and hypersexual. They frenetically try to mate with anything they can find, including with other males. They'll even mimic the wing-flicking signals of females to lure males toward them. None of this does them any good-their genitals have either been devoured by the fungus or have fallen off with the rest of their butts."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...ts/566324/?utm

[Majiffy]

I'm heavily conflicted here because psilocybin and amphetamines but then no genitals so

[borealis]

Turns out cougars are not total loners, they have a complex society based on the male's territory, and within the boundaries the females share food and develop friendships.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/...-cats-animals

[Majiffy]

I'm willing to help some lonely cougars with a feeling of accompaniment

[borealis]

That kind of attitude is at least partly how mr.b. ended up married to me.

[borealis]

Landrace of corn grown by communities in southern Mexico for hundreds of years have symbiotic relationship with a nitrogen fixing bacteria that lives in a gel produced by fingerlike rootlets growing on the corn stems. The corn gets 26 to 82% of its nitrogen needs from this partnership.

This trait has not been observed in grasses before, but turns our to be present in corn's ancestor, teosinte.

Paper:

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology...l.pbio.2006352

Article:

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/...off/958401002

[MSG]

https://www.bbcearth.com/blog/?artic...es-to-have-sex

The plight of the North Atlantic right whale, a species with just 450 individuals left in its population, just got even worse.

After a disastrous 2017, in which at least 17 North Atlantic right whale deaths were recorded, it has emerged that no newborn calves have been sighted since.

...

Although a few fishing ropes might not seem like a big deal to some, they are surprisingly heavy, tough pieces of material. And when wrapped around a whale’s body, they cause significant mobility issues and increase drag when swimming through the water.

Recently, whale rescuers have been trying to disentangle a well known female North Atlantic right whale, nicknamed Kleenex, that had been entangled for at least four years.

Michael Moore at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has studied the long-term effects of such episodes.

“For a female right whale, what can you give up if you’re running out of energy? The answer is you don’t get pregnant,” he says.

Moore and other whale scientists generally agree: the most significant boost we can give to this species is to reduce the likelihood of entanglements, get out of their way, and hope that they have enough energy to breed.

[borealis]

We in Nova Scotia have been working on it:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-...king-1.4815867

The article really overstates the objections of fishermen, though - most fishers have been very positive about protecting the whales and are just as horrified as everyone else regarding the 17 deaths last year.

Also, NS and NB fishermen have been making huge efforts for the past 9 years to retrieve 'ghost fishing' gear:

Fishermen use custom grapples to haul up the heavy snarls.
She said they consider it a challenge to find and remove the ghost gear from the ocean — not just because it helps protect the whales and save their own gear from getting tangled, but also because it can go on to serve a new purpose.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-b...undy-1.4757121

[oblivion]

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/a...ammals-animals

Wondiwoi tree kangaroo



Last recorded sighting by scientists in 1928 prior to this year.

[MSG]

Nice!

The tenkile* is one of the species discovered by Tim Flannery who gets a mention in that article.



https://www.tenkile.com/tenkile-tree-kangaroo.html

*ten-key-lay

[Zeluvia]

Originally Posted by MSG

https://www.bbcearth.com/blog/?artic...es-to-have-sex

I remember seeing one of these when we were out on the Ocean with my dad. My brother and I took pictures of it (fighting over the camera cause we were like 10 and 8) and then had to ...get this...WAIT FOR THEM TO BE DEVELOPED before going to ...AN ENCYCLOPEDIA at the LIBRARY to figure out what kind of whale it was.


So I won't forget what kind it was.


I hope they make it.

[Zeluvia]

Oh yeah it hung around our little boat and looked at us and even seemed to pose for pictures. It was pretty cool.

[Zeluvia]

Originally Posted by MSG

Nice!

The tenkile* is one of the species discovered by Tim Flannery who gets a mention in that article.



https://www.tenkile.com/tenkile-tree-kangaroo.html

*ten-key-lay

Drop Bear

[borealis]

Little ogre -


(these things have been discovered before but not really studied)

Canadian researchers have discovered a new kind of organism that's so different from other living things that it doesn't fit into the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, or any other kingdom used to classify known organisms.
Two species of the microscopic organisms, called hemimastigotes, were found in dirt collected on a whim during a hike in Nova Scotia by Dalhousie University graduate student Yana Eglit.

A genetic analysis shows they're more different from other organisms than animals and fungi (which are in different kingdoms) are from each other, representing a completely new part of the tree of life, Eglit and her colleagues report this week in the journal Nature.
"They represent a major branch… that we didn't know we were missing," said Dalhousie biology professor Alastair Simpson, Eglit's supervisor and co-author of the new study.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/h...gdom-1.4715823

[MSG]

On-brand post https://amp.theguardian.com/science/...-wombat-faeces

“Wombat intestines have periodic stiffness, meaning stiff-soft-stiff-soft, along the circumference to form cubical faeces,” Yang said.

[gib]

why the fudge would their plops come out as cubes after all that?

[nostrum]

yes, something doesn't add up

msg what do you know tell us tell us

[borealis]

Originally Posted by gib

why the fudge would their plops come out as cubes after all that?

My mother used to get a kind of very cheap Bridge Mix candy that included chocolate covered fudge cubes that looked, now I've seen it, remarkably like wombat poo cubes.

Maybe that's a fudging clue.

[MondoVman]

Sexy narrator voice, hissing and visual tactile proof. What else could one need?

[MSG]

gib, stop acting like Algis and rtf article

Why the pudgy marsupials might benefit from six-faced faeces is generally agreed upon: wombats mark their territorial borders with fragrant piles of poo and the larger the piles the better. With die-shaped dung, wombats boost the odds that their droppings, deposited near burrow entrances, prominent rocks, raised ground and logs, will not roll away. That, at least, is the thinking.

[MSG]

Originally Posted by MSG

https://www.victorharbortimes.com.au...eturned-to-sa

Good news

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-...ction/10593932

"That's pretty amazing considering they must have started [breeding] almost within days of being released at these completely new sites," Mr Hedger said.

[Zeluvia]

I will see your breeding birds and raise you


SPIDER MILK !!


https://www.newscientist.com/article...han-cows-milk

So Chen and his colleagues put mother spiders under the microscope and gently squeezed their abdomens. A few droplets of a creamy white fluid came out, something that looked very similar to human or other mammalian milk. Analysis found the milk-like liquid contains fat – and about four times as much protein as cow’s milk

gently squeezed their abdomens

[gib]

looked very similar to


hey i can make milk