Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki is an Australian science communicator with an amazing talent for concatenating subjects with a free-associative style. Just watch his whirlwind lecture full of interesting and eccentric facts and learn…
The Sun is the most influential celestial object for life as we know it. Understanding and predicting its behavior is essential for our existence. Plants are green because our Sun is a red star. However in the early days of life this relationship was quite different. The young Earth was spinning much faster and the days were 8 hours long. The Sun was less bright and cooler. The early photosynthesizing organisms were purple to maximize light harvesting in liquid environment. […]
You can watch the gradual color change in this Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) from green to brown over 4 mins. Summer of 2011 was drier than usual in Athens, GA. Annual rainfall (37.11 inches) was lower than the 1981-2010 average (46.66 inches). The month of July was particularly hot. Average monthly temperature was 81.9 F (above 1895-2012 average of 80.0 F). Reptiles in such conditions have a rather fast metabolism and burn calories fast. This female lizard was a […]
Here you see a series of short observations recorded by Jürgen Otto documenting the mating dances of Australian peacock spiders (for full scientific names of the spiders please see a list at the bottom of this post). Peacock spiders are another astonishing example of variation of the same theme in nature: “males display, females choose”. Mating displays have always been an attractive topic. A biological explanation for such behavior is given in a short animated documentary by the Cornell University […]
A mating aggregation of a Mediterranean polychete worm (Hermodice carunculata). External fertilization is one of the early ancestral ways to produce offspring. Here an underwater explorer based in Fethiye has recorded a spawning aggregation of the Mediterranean polychete worm (Hermodice carunculata). External fertilization is rather costly. Internal fertilization has evolved numerous times as a result of this. One of the most striking example is the Coelecanth with many specimen containing embryos. Egg production requires more resources compared to sperm. Females […]
The mosquito-transmitted disease malaria is killing around 600.000 people every year world wide alone. The year 2010 was a record peak with 1.2 million deaths. Mosquitos transmit so many diseases that they are arguably the most dangerous animals on Earth. They even act as vectors in transmitting parasites including the Human bot fly. Mosquitoes are a family of small, midge-like flies: the Culicidae. Although a few species are harmless or even useful to humanity, most are a nuisance because they […]
Lonesome George was the last male individual of the Pinta Island tortoise. He sadly passed away in his corral at the Charles Darwin Research Station in Galápagos Islands on the morning of June 24 2012. He died from natural causes. Lonesome George became a worldwide icon of conservation. Efforts to breed him at the Galápagos National Park and Charles Darwin Research Station concluded with no success. Thus he became “a living dead” member of his species doomed for extinction. Lonesome […]
Scientists have a few hypotheses but no theory has yet emerged about a significant bio-geological event that happened fifty-five million years ago. What we know for sure was that there was a sudden, enormous influx of carbon that has dissolved in the ocean and atmosphere. As atmospheric CO2 content increased, the average global surface temperature rose 5°C to 9°C (9°F to 16°F). This global warming event is called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) and lasted for 170,000 years. Events triggered […]
The Archerfish posseses one of the most complex feeding behavior among fishes. Complex feeding behaviors involving proto-tool use are common among marine fishes. Scientists have noticed such behavior in many wrasses, in black spotted tuskfish, (Choerodon schoenleinii) from the Great Barrier Reef; in yellowhead wrasses (Halichoeres garnoti) off the coast of Florida; and in a sixbar wrasse (Thalassoma hardwicke) in an aquarium setting. For instance, wrasses crunch sea urchins against corals and use anvils to smash food into more gulpable […]
The news that a black spotted tuskfish, Choerodon schoenleinii, (Valenciennes, 1839) was observed using a tool made the hearts of ethologists race. Here you can see a few recorded examples of the behavior from different locations and species belonging to the same genus within the wrasse family. As the story goes the behavior was first observed by Scott Gardner in Australia. On November 12th 2006, Mr. Gardner did an 18-m dive in the Keppel region of the southern Great Barrier […]
Why all calico cats are female? In all mammals sex is genetically determined by X and Y chromosomes. In Humans females carry two X chromosomes (XX). Males carry both X and Y chromosomes (XY). The mammalian Y chromosome has began to evolve from the X chromosome at about 170 million years ago. For some strange genetic recombinational quirk that happened in the ancestor of all mammals Y chromosomes lost their ability to exchange information with X. Currently, more than 95% […]
Kon-Tiki was a legendary expedition that was carried out in 1947 by Norvegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl. The expedition tested a hypothesis whether Pacific Islands could have been colonized from Americas and thus wanted to demonstrate that waterways were not barriers but means of transportation and gene flow for human populations. Peopling of the Pacific is a fascinating story. The Polynesians were without question the greatest open ocean voyagers in the human history. They built double-hulled canoes and traveled over the […]
Drew Berry introduces us to the fascinating world of molecules. Since the invention of X-ray crystallography our depth of understanding the molecular nature of things have skyrocketed. Year 2012 marked the centennial of the discovery of X-ray chrystallography by the Australian physicist William Lawrence Bragg who shared the Nobel Prize with his father in 1915. The technique was so powerful that since its discovery, it generated 28 Nobel Prizes including the discovery of DNA. the famous X-ray chrystallographical image #51 […]
We humans rarely have punch ups with each other to decide who will mate. However, an anole lizards life is frequently interrupted by brawls. Neil Losin is an evolutionary biologist from UCLA who studies aggressive behavior among anole lizards. Anole lizards not only have punch ups among each other (intraspecific aggression) but they also have such interactions with other species (interspecific aggression). This is when things get even more interesting. In less than 10 minutes this documentary outlines the research […]
With its retina punishing feather colors this is a spectacular solo mating dance performed by a male bowerbird advertising his male qualities. The independent dilation and contraction of the pupils is a striking part of the choreography at the beginning of the performance. In Humans male brains perceive dilated eyes as a signal for sexual readiness of females. Seeing the exaggerated form here should make us curious about our “inner reptile” since birds and mammals have evolved from independent reptilian […]
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