amazing news from the natural world

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/animals-grieving-peccaries-death-mourning/

Accounts of death rituals have been written for a variety of animals, including elephants, primates, dolphins, and birds such as ravens. Elephants, for instance, have been seen standing over a deceased herd member for days, rocking back and forth, and pulling the lifeless body in what some experts believe is an expression of grief. (Related: "Whales Mourn Their Dead, Just Like Us.")

But no one had ever observed a death response in any of the three peccary species, which live throughout the Americas and tend to travel in herds of varying size.

In the videos, the peccaries pay close attention to the body, nuzzling, biting, sniffing, and staring at it. They slept next to the carcass, and even tried to lift it by wedging their snouts under the body and pushing upward.

And when a pack of coyotes approached their fallen peer, the herd chased them away. “It really surprised me that they would stand up to the coyotes,” says de Kort, noting the peccaries were outnumbered. (Learn if crows hold "funerals" for their dead.)

On the tenth day, the coyotes finally demolished the rotting remains, and that’s when the herd stopped visiting. De Kort and Altrichter described the series of intriguing events in a paper published December 5 in the journal Ethology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JItIsHwxpY

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/127-million-year-old-baby-bird-fossil-sheds-light-on-avian-evolution/

ooh

if birds didn't exist, God would have had to invent them

Less than 5 centimeters!

chicks be little

Ah yes

sorry not news [but yes new to me]

'Orchis simia' known as the Monkey Orchid pic.twitter.com/Ntcv2Ulyd5

— 41 Strange (@41Strange) April 13, 2018

whoa!

that is cool. i'm gonna grouse a little and just say i'm generally not into the 41 strange aesthetic.

i posted this in an octopus thread but i thought this piece was amazing:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n17/amia-srinivasan/the-sucker-the-sucker

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/crow-necrophilia/565442/

Ugh I never get nauseated from reading but I just did. Birds are fucking disgusting animals

So fucking gross my god

I thought that was fascinating!

ed yong is great & has basically made a career out of providing content worthy of this thread

^^^^

Rare microbes lead scientists to discover new branch on the tree of life

A new kingdom?!?

This map shows GPS-tracked wolves in six different packs around Voyageurs National Park. The wolf packs clearly avoid each other's territory. Source: https://t.co/uGP3GJILVU pic.twitter.com/CLpYyrDCri

— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) December 8, 2018

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/little-aphids-ride-big-ones-to-safety/

https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/E42AE5D0-2280-4209-935703C518E48C21_source.jpg?w=590&h=800&15C4002E-B7F4-411F-99336373318D1E70

Big aphids have little aphids upon their backs to ride 'em

https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-self-aware-fish-raises-doubts-about-a-cognitive-test-20181212/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akE2Sgg8hI8

Cat passing mirror test

ALERT ALERT

https://dcist.com/story/18/12/17/after-bloodbath-the-national-zoos-naked-mole-rats-finally-choose-their-queen/

2-3 new babies that you can possibly catch right now on the webcam!

https://nationalzoo.si.edu/webcams/naked-mole-rat-cam

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

Visible birdsong in the cold. Photo by Mikhail Kalinin. pic.twitter.com/KvXOkK6ghl

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) January 12, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/science/mice-singing-language-brain.html

High in the mountains of Central America lives a little known creature called Alston’s singing mouse. This rodent, which spends its life scuttling around the floor of the cloud forest, may not seem like it has much to tell us about ourselves.

But the mouse produces remarkable songs, and researchers have discovered some profound similarities to our own conversations. This ability may be linked evolutionarily to the ancient roots of human language.

there's a video!

So the researchers began probing the brains of the mice, searching for the neurons that led them to be “polite” raconteurs.

In one experiment, the researchers cooled down patches of mouse brain by a few degrees, slowing the neurons. One patch in the mouse cortex is essential for controlling their singing, the scientists found. If this section is cooled, the mouse sings extended songs, adding on extra notes.

Great gray shrikes impale their victims on spikes & even imitate the calls of other birds to lure them into striking distance! pic.twitter.com/7uSTCxDgdp

— A Book of Rather Strange Animals OUT NOW!!! (@StrangeAnimaIs) March 25, 2019

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/virophages-are-viruses-only-infect-other-viruses/586153/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/science/underwater-beetles-breathe-skin.html

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb9bpm/this-bird-went-extinct-and-then-evolved-into-existence-again

just saw that!! so wild.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/insect-metamorphosis-evolution/

Biologists have not definitively determined how or why some insects began to hatch in a larval form, but Lynn Riddiford and James Truman, formerly of the University of Washington in Seattle, have constructed one of the most comprehensive theories. They point out that insects that mature through incomplete metamorphosis pass through a brief stage of life before becoming nymphs—the pro-nymphal stage, in which insects look and behave differently from their true nymphal forms. Some insects transition from pro-nymphs to nymphs while still in the egg; others remain pro-nymphs for anywhere from mere minutes to a few days after hatching.

Perhaps this pro-nymphal stage, Riddiford and Truman suggest, evolved into the larval stage of complete metamorphosis. Perhaps 280 million years ago, through a chance mutation, some pro-nymphs failed to absorb all the yolk in their eggs, leaving a precious resource unused. In response to this unfavorable situation, some pro-nymphs gained a new talent: the ability to actively feed, to slurp up the extra yolk, while still inside the egg. If such pro-nymphs emerged from their eggs before they reached the nymphal stage, they would have been able to continue feeding themselves in the outside world. Over the generations, these infant insects may have remained in a protracted pro-nymphal stage for longer and longer periods of time, growing wormier all the while and specializing in diets that differed from those of their adult selves—consuming fruits and leaves, rather than nectar or other smaller insects. Eventually these prepubescent pro-nymphs became full-fledged larvae that resembled modern caterpillars. In this way, the larval stage of complete metamorphosis corresponds to the pro-nymphal stage of incomplete metamorphosis. The pupal stage arose later as a kind of condensed nymphal phase that catapulted the wriggly larvae into their sexually active winged adult forms.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-leaps-long-assumed-to-be-instantaneous-take-time-20190605/

https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/132404/recently-discovered-rock-eating-worm-key-third-temple/

riiiight

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/science/koala-retrovirus-evolution.html

Scientists have trained rats to drive tiny cars to collect food. Kelly Lambert at @urichmond says, “I do believe that rats are smarter than most people perceive them to be, and that most animals are smarter in unique ways than we think." https://t.co/6mwPqtHfvs pic.twitter.com/07w2p1wq43

— New Scientist (@newscientist) October 24, 2019

The diving bell spider lives almost entirely under water: when submerged, an air bubble is trapped by hydrophobic hairs on its abdomen. Here it catches a shrimp and places it in an air bubble to devour it https://t.co/uAKYwvQVmR [source of the gif: https://t.co/C3I3ZMyll2] pic.twitter.com/FgPDmKvIxG

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 30, 2019

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/humpback-whales-south-atlantic-have-recovered-near-extinction

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/science/leopard-lion-adoption.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/02/27/science/27TB-LEOPARDADOPTION1/27TB-LEOPARDADOPTION1-superJumbo.jpg

https://www.facebook.com/groups/bug.identification/permalink/3201476323312053/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24632881-200-weird-caterpillar-uses-its-old-heads-to-make-an-elaborate-hat/

Cool. My 10 yo had seen that in a science encyclopedia

waht

https://www.wired.com/story/a-bizarre-form-of-water-may-exist-all-over-the-universe/

Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come From All Around to Watch

here's a thread for comrade burrito to post all the masturbating orangutans

a bizarre form of water all over my keyboard

Scientists discover new organ in the throat

https://www.livescience.com/platypuses-glow-uv-light.html

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/J29hZbBGEePokbrTdRYCEi-1024-80.jpg

Top 5 critter now top 3 imo.

so cool

A+ platypus

^

Mordy returning to celebrate Biden's win with a biofluorescent platypus is an A+ move imo

Don't forget the apposite poem.

I have already privately offered him my full approbation

Leaf Sheep: The Only Animal That Can Photosynthesize

Fungus full of psychedelic drugs could cause Indiana Brood X cicadas' butts to fall off

“It’s this gender-bending, death-zombie fungus,” Lill said.

“Imagine if, after a lifetime underground, you only had a few glorious weeks to live in the sun, eat and mate,” she said. “And then your butt fell off.”

a coyote and a badger use a culvert as a wildlife crossing to pass under a busy California highway together,, the first time this type of behavior has been captured. I love how the coyote waited for the badger. pic.twitter.com/olbQgdje5d

— Köksal Akın (@newworlddd555) June 12, 2021

New species of ancient four-legged whale discovered in Egypt

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/BECD/production/_120254884_yile5nm8-1.jpg

:O

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/when-beetle-gets-eaten-frog-it-forces-its-way-out-back-door-180975484/