Image via Scienceblogs

A snail doesn’t really conjure up images of danger and death unless that snail happens to be the cone snail. This is a snail that is like a tank. In place of a gun turret, it has a giant (for its size) hypodermic needle that fires like a harpoon and can kill just about anything. That’s right, including any pesky humans that might try to pick it up for inspection or collection.

It’s only the big boys of all cone snail species that can bring down a human, but would you really want to test to see if the cone snail you have is classified as big? Cone snails can be found around the globe most anywhere where there are warm, tropical waters. Not a whole lot is known about their biology. Most research has chosen to focus on what the cone snail can provide for humans, which turns out to be quite a lot.

One of over 300 species of Cone Snail
Image: Richard Ling

To start with the bad (if you’re the cone snail that is), it turns out that cone snails have very beautiful shells. This means that they are highly prized by collectors. Also, in a strange twist of fate for one cone snail species, the geographic cone snail, its shell is one of the most sought after even though it is thought to be the most deadly species. Take a look at this awesome youtube video of a cone snail snagging some prey (try not to be distracted by the narration voice).

The more valuable characteristic a cone snail can offer humans is its venom. This is also probably bad for the cone snail because it’s likely to die in the name of science but at least it’s a better cause than simply shell collecting. A cone snail’s venom has hundreds of toxins in it. One happens to be a pain killer that can be 1,000 times more effective than morphine yet is non-addictive. There’s even a cone snail-derived painkiller on the market right now, going under the name of Prialt.

Pretty but Deadly
Image: GregTheBusker

Nature has a wonderful ability to provide everything we need if we just take the time to look for it. Oftentimes something completely deadly can be turned into something that ultimately heals. We just have to take the time to watch and study rather than take and develop.

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Image via purpleslinky

Lowland streaked tenrecs not only have a funny name, they’re also loved by many because of their appearance, which seems to be a cross between a hedgehog and an oversized bee. But these small mammals have another interesting feature: apart from no tail, the males also have no scrotum. Why? Read on to find out…

Tenrecs or more precisely Tenrecidae belong to a family of mammals native to Madagascar and parts of Africa. The diverse members of this species evolved in parallel with and may resemble hedgehogs, opossums, shrews, mice or otters but are actually most closely related to other African mammals like golden moles and sengis (elephant shrews). Their common ancestry with animals in the Afrotheria group like aardvarks, hyraxes (shrewmice), sea cows and even elephants was not recognised until the 1990s.

Who are you calling a hedgehog? – young lowland streaked tenrec:

Image: cliff1066

One feature they even share with birds, reptiles and amphibians is the common anus and urogenital tract, unusual for placental mammals. Another fact that often amuses those studying these little critters is that their body temperature is low enough to not require a scrotum to cool their sperms as is common in most mammals, including the human kind.

See, no tail:

Image: Andrew Shimmin & Medair

Lowland Streaked Tenrecs (Hemicentetes semispinosus) show a distinct two-tone colour of black with yellowish stripes said to camouflage them while foraging for food in their tropical rainforest habitat. The stripes run along their backs with a distinct ring of spiky yellow bristles around their heads. The coarse fur with barbed spines reminds of that of a hedgehog and both known Hemicentetes species have barbed detachable quills that they use as a defense mechanism and to protect their woolly bellies. Several of these quills rubbed produces a high-pitched sound that is hypothesized to be a source of communication among tenrecs.

Bad hair day:

Image via dimijianimages

Lowland streaked tenrecs are small mammals, growing up to 20 cm (8 in) in length and reaching a weight of 275 g (0.6 lb). They are social animals that live in groups of 15 or more. Their diet consists mainly of worms and grubs that they sniff out using their excellent sense of smell and sensitive whiskers.

We’ll leave you with a long but cute video of baby tenrec antics:

Sources: 1, 2, 3

All images courtesy of Mick E. Talbot

With Halloween just around the corner, we’d like to leave scary witches and willowy ghosts aside for just one minute and focus on one helpful critter that might get forgotten otherwise. After ridding crops of plant lice and scale insects, the Halloween lady beetle (Harmonia axyridis) invades homes in October where it prepares for its well deserved hibernation. Before that long period of inactivity, it likes to stretch its wings a bit. That’s probably an understatement – wing acrobatics is more like it.

Orange-coloured Halloween lady beetles are also called Pumpkin ladybirds:

Lady bugs or ladybirds belong to the Coccinellidae family of beetles and the Halloween lady beetle, at around 7-8 mm, is one of the larger lady bug varieties. It is a native of eastern Asia and was already introduced in North America in 1916 and in Europe in 2001 as an environmentally friendly way of dealing with crop pests, especially aphids a.k.a. plant lice. Because of the lady bug’s tendency to overwinter indoors, it is considered a nuisance by some but it shouldn’t be forgotten that in many countries, visiting ladybirds are considered good luck. That their spots indicate their age is a myth however.

Here she goes, stretching her colourful wing covers and wings to the max:

Oh, wait, there’s a bit more length in there:

… and not to forget the cool somersault:

Here’s a closer look at the delicate wings, peeking out from under the sturdy wing covers:

Did you miss the first sequence of acrobatics? Well, here’s another one, this time by the Adalia bipunctata or two-spot ladybird:

Here’s what Adalia usually looks like:

And here she’s getting ready to stretch:

And once again that amazing stretch with somersault:

Her friend, also of the Coleoptera family, seems to be laughing:

Just looking at these tiny acrobats makes one smile – even skeptics not believing in the good luck myth have to admit that temporary happiness is not to be discredited.

With special thanks to Flickr user Mick E. Talbot for sharing his stunning series of lady bugs!

Sources: 1, 2, 3

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Is anyone looking?
Image: Jon Law

The tropical citrus root weevil or sugarcane root stalk borer weevil (Diaprepes abbreviatus) is a pest accidentally introduced to the state of Florida in 1964. Since 2005, it’s also been spotted in California not only devouring citrus, avocado and potato roots, but also engaging in some cunning mating behaviour. Here are the facts.

The lesser of two weevils:

Image: Mohamed Shaaz

A female root weevil is by no means lazy. She can lay up to 5,000 eggs that she carefully deposits in clusters on various leaves. She then folds the leaves and glues them together, waiting for the larvae to emerge and wreak havoc. Yes, it is the kid larva that does much more damage than the adult weevil that just nibbles on the foliage.

Root stalkers in the making, neatly piled up:

Image: David Hall

Thousands of weevil larvae fall from the leaves to the ground where they burrow down to the roots of the host plant that doesn’t really stand a chance. The little weevils feed on the host plant for months, depriving it of water and nutrients and making it vulnerable to infection.

Some like it hot – diaprepes females don’t produce eggs if it’s less than 59F:

Image: rwsphoto

How does this all tie in to lesbian bug love and insect mating behaviour? Well, to produce such strong offspring that can take over a whole plant, the female weevil needs to ensure that she mates with a strong male. Therefore she applies a tactic meant to weed out weak males: She mounts another female weevil in what is clearly a copy of weevil mating behaviour, all the while looking over her shoulder to see the reaction of the males that are watching.

The root of all weevil:

Image: Keith Weller

Puny males apparently will not be able to watch this display of female bug affection and run off, leaving the sought-after strong males with the good genes that can stomach this behaviour. There you go, survival of the fittest! All to produce even better, stronger root stalk borer weevil offspring. We wonder which kinky mating behaviour they might come up with next. We’ll stay tuned…

Sources: 1, 2

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Image via Guzer

Some animals put us to shame with their tongues and what they can do with them. No teenaged first French kiss nerves for any of the creatures featured here. The muscle in our mouths used to manipulate food for chewing and swallowing is also of course the primary organ of taste. Yet while our animal counterparts can’t use their tongues for its other main function in humans – speech – many creatures put them to other uses that might leave you tongue-tied.

On the tip of its gluey tongue: Chameleon

Image via Animals Kingdom

The chameleon possesses a prehensile tongue adapted for rapidly striking prey that strays within striking distance. This remarkably long tongue can be twice the chameleon’s own body length and extends out faster than the human eye can follow, hitting prey in about 30 thousandths of a second. Usain Bolt, keep dreaming. The tip of this elastic tongue is a muscular, club-like structure covered in thick mucus that forms a suction cup. Once the tip sticks to a prey insect, the tongue is quickly drawn back into the mouth. Gulp.

Not tongue in cheek about eating ants: Anteater

Image: TamanduaGirl

If you thought the chameleon had a big tongue, check out the giant anteater’s, which can reach two feet (60 cm) in length. The anteater coats its tongue in sticky saliva during feeding, allowing it to ensnare ants, and can rapidly flick its tongue from its mouth up to 150 times per minute. After breaking into insect colonies and tree trunks using their long sharp claws, anteaters employ their tongues to collect eggs, larvae and adult insects, a few thousand of which they can guzzle in just minutes. Om nom nom nom nom.

Sniffing with a forked tongue: Snake

Image: moosebite

Instead of using their tongues to munch on prey, snakes use them to sniff prey out. Smell is a snake’s means of tracking its victims: its forked tongue is used to collect airborne particles that are then passed onto special organs in the mouth for analysis. It all sounds very scientific. The fork in the tongue gives the snake a sort of directional sense of both smell and taste, and by constantly keeping its tongue in motion, snakes can determine the presence of other animals in their local environment. S’nifty.

Not biting its tough old tongue: Giraffe

Image: Bob Jagendorf

Another beast with a beast of a tongue, the giraffe can extend its 18 inch (45 cm) mouth muscle to clean off bugs from its face or to feed. The specially adapted tongue is extremely tough to cope with the vicious tree thorns that are part of the giraffe’s diet. When removed from their natural environment and kept in captivity, giraffes show abnormal behaviours due to instinctive tendencies towards suckling the milk of their mothers – hence their excessive tongue lolling and licking of nearby objects. Awww.

Cat got your tongue: Housecat

Image: maytevidri

Cats use their tongues to clean their bodies, and seem to do a much better job of it than dogs, which use theirs for the same purpose. The rows of hooked, backwards-facing spines on a cat’s tongue known as papillae act like the bristles of a hairbrush to help clean and detangle fur, so that licking means grooming. This probably makes a cat’s tongue far more vital to its wellbeing than ours are to us. When was the last time you used your tongue for that just-stepped-out-of-the-salon look? Don’t answer that.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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Pi’ilani Heiau, Maui (Hawaii)
Photo ­- Blumenberg Associates LLC

Heiau are Polynesian temples whose size can range from small, slightly elevated platforms to huge, multi-terraced, rectangular structures. Structures that could be built upon the flat platform surface included oracle towers, taboo houses, drum houses, altars and hale (huts) where the king and high priest could live if an important ritual occasion so required. Heiau were ’specialized’: each was dedicated to one or a few closely related deities, and their specific rituals and ceremonies. The larger the heiau, the more important were its gods and ceremonies.

Hawaiians built heiau without using mortar. Rocks large and small were precisely shaped where necessary and then carefully fitted together. The largest heiau were multi-terraced and often had several small buildings on their flat top surface. On rare occasions, the king and high priest would occupy their heiau for several weeks.

Pi’ilani Heiau, Maui” (Hawaii)
Photo ­- Blumenberg Associates LLC

Luakini heiau were the most spectacular heiau because they were devoted to human sacrifice, a rare ceremony that might be conducted by the king and high priest in preparation for an important war, or to bring an end to famine or a disease epidemic. Luakini heiau were dedicated to the Sun and War God Kuka’ilimoku (Ku). The most powerful gods were nourished by the most mythically important food and offerings. Across time and history, the most potent offerings to the gods were human beings. The operational metaphor is the sacrifice of the worshiper who is the being that completes the god. Each heiau concentrated ritual/sacred energy – mana. Each heiau became a ‘powerful’ locus, a focal point where mythic power could achieve highest density and then be accessed by human beings via the appropriate rituals.

The largest heiau in Hawaii and in all of Polynesia is the Pi’ilani Heiau at the east end of Maui. It is now situated within the 472 acre Kahanu National Botanical Garden on the outskirts of Hana, the largest town in East Maui. Made of lava rock, Pi’ilani Heiau is a huge, multi-terraced platform that is 450′ long and built out from a cliff face. Construction may have begun in the early 13th century, which predates the arrival of Tahitians into the Hawaiian Islands. The grand scale and largest dimensions of the Pi’ilani Heiau are attributed to King Pi’ilani, a West Maui chief who had united the people of Maui around 1570. He built many coastal fishponds and taro terraces in the Hana region.

Pi’ilani Heiau, Maui (Hawaii) / early Hawaiian Christian burials
Photo ­- Blumenberg Associates LLC

Later, over the course of many decades, the Pi’ilani heiau fell into disuse, was abandoned and not maintained. When the Japanese archeologist, Yosihiko Sinoto began the restoration, some walls had tumbled down and thick vegetation had overgrown much of the site. Starting in 1974, Sinoto’s extraordinary efforts took 25 years to restore this huge heaiu. He has also identified and catalyzed the restoration of several marae (heiau) in French Polynesia, the Marquesas Islands (homeland of the first Polynesians who chose to permanently settle the Hawaiian Islands) and Easter Island. A pop music tribute to Sinoto titled “Taote Sinoto,” first aired in 1987 and still plays on Tahitian radio.

“Once Upon A Time, Long, Long Ago,” the ‘world’ was a sacred landscape. The Dreamtime was everywhere, the Ancestors walked every land and their lives concentrated sacred power at important times and localities. History has moved forward, but this timeless reality cannot die because it is a mythic truth. Pi’ilani Heaiu, towering above a meadow and beautiful botanical garden reminds us that the gods are not dead and have not disappeared. Perhaps some day we can once again hear them ‘talk story’ with our deified ancestors and renew the universal mythic center that binds us to the sacred.

Sources -

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 8

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Blue Whale / Life Size
Photo ­ WDCS

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society have an extraordinary photograph online: a life size image of a Blue Whale. You can travel leisurely over the entire leviathan for as long as your dreams allow.

Adult Blue Whales grow to over 100′ long, weigh up to 170 metric tons, and may live to 150 years. Nothing this big ever lived on land. The largest dinosaur was the plant eating Argentinosaurus that lived in South America during the Middle Cretaceous. Argentinosaurus grew to 110′ long and weighed up to 100 metric tons.

Recent observations that the Blue Whale might be staging a comeback from what many experts judged to be certain extinction have been reported in EG, see Source #4. Today, go to the WDCS web site, and be held spellbound!

Sources -
1, 2, 3, 4

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Alexandra Roberts

Like a creative flourish from God’s paintbrush, they are a dash of colour on the high seas, bringing both beauty and death wherever they go. Largely ignored by science for decades – outside of the Far East they’re not commonly eaten, and so of little commercial interest – these poorly-understood creatures have recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Unexplained swarms of these enigmatic invertebrates have been causing trouble in Hawaii, Spain and Northern Ireland. Scientists have begun asking questions about jellyfish, and the answers may just undermine what we think we know about the origins of diversity on earth…

Matteo Tarenghi

Jellies and comb jellies have recently reminded us that almost anything we think we know about evolution is apt to be overturned at a moments’ notice. Creation ’scientists’ must be rejoicing. Comb-jellies (like the one below) are not true jellyfish, as they lack stinging cells. They’re members of the group ctenophora. But even true jellyfish continue to muddy our simple, logical ideas about evolutionary succession.

Courtesy: National Science Foundation

See, according to their morphology, jellyfish are simple animals. They’ve no ‘front’ end, so they function perfectly well from any angle. They lack the central layer of embryonic tissue found in higher animals that develops into muscles, but they do have rudimentary eyes and nervous systems. In the traditional evolutionary tree, these features place them neatly between sponges and bilaterans (creatures with a front and back, like us). Later, when animals became bilateral, they were able to develop specific organs for different parts of the body, and this gave rise to the incredible increase in diversity known as the ‘Cambrian explosion’. But when things fit together that neatly, you know it’s too good to be true.

Christopher Chan

It turns out that jellyfish are more complex than was previously thought. They do in fact possess the genes that program for a front-to-back axis, they simply don’t utilize them. Either that, or these genes are being used to specialize their brains in some incredibly subtle way. This may mean that cnidarians (the group that includes jellyfish) are in fact descended from more complex, bilateral animals, and secondarily adopted their simpler shape! So while a common ancestor of cnidarians did plug the link between sponges and bilaterans (and there are ideas about what that animal may have been), the cnidarians themselves have continued to evolve until they became the jellyfish we know today.

Kyle Tsui

For us humans, the most unsettling part is that these genes are the same as those present in all vertebrates. So some of the ‘advances’ usually attributed to vertebrate body form may in fact be much older…

This comb jelly is a new species found recently off the coast of Tasmania. Copyright Martin George, QVMAG. Used with Permission.

However these findings are interpreted, we can no longer accept that cnidarians are an evolutionary relic. They are in fact highly evolved to take advantage of their habitat and the ‘higher’ animals within it, as their ability to kill all kinds of vertebrates (including humans) demonstrates. Soft-bodied animals don’t leave fossils easily, and their exact phylogeny is always controversial. The terrifying truth about jellyfish is that they mess up our established ideas about evolution, and show us how much we have left to learn.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4.

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Image: Martin_Heigan

The biodiversity on this planet is just astounding. Even with loss of habitat and the threat to flora and fauna, there is still so much to uncover and appreciate. Here we’ve gathered just a few interesting specimens of plants and fungi for you to discover. Some are more common while others are super strange, and to make things even more interesting for you, they all resemble animals and human body parts. Enjoy!

Mushroom Zombie Hand

Image: ORIMATH

This mushroom – thought to be a specimen of Clathrus archeri, or “Devil’s Fingers” – takes the cake for being the strangest and creepiest specimen of a fungus looking like something else. It looks like a cold, dead hand reaching out to pull the rest of the zombie body out of the earth. Those even look like tattered sleeves down by the wrists of the hands!

Buddha’s Hand

Image: kaldari

This yellow fruit is named Buddha’s hand because its fruit is divided into what look like many, many fingers of a hand. This particular image makes it look like a big mop of clown hair and could even be reminiscent of Medusa’s snake-y locks. Found in Asia, the Buddha’s Hand has a thick peel and little flesh. It is used by the Japanese and Chinese to scent rooms because of its strong citrus smell; in Western cooking, it’s prized for its zest.

Starfish Out of Water

Image: Martin_Heigan

Endemic to Namibia, the Stapelia flavopurpurea flower looks like a bright starfish with a strange protrusion coming out of its middle. Most members of the Stapelia genus of flowers smell like rotting meat to attract pollinators, with the Stapelia flavopurpurea standing as the exception with its beeswax scent.

Eyeballs

Image: quinn.anya

This plant looks pretty creepy, almost alien-like, with what look like multiple eyes poking out and staring every which way.

Jaws

Image: petrichor

These jaws look pretty intimidating to us alright! The name, Faucaria tigrina, is derived from the Latin word fauces meaning animal mouth and tigrina meaning tiger. No wonder it’s nicknamed “Tigers Jaws”!

Cactus Brain

Image: .Robert.

Aside from its hairy greenness, this cactus looks very much like a human brain.

Happy Face

Image: Martin_Heigan

Sometimes timing is everything. The photographer of this great shot found the sun hitting this Ceropegia monteroiae flower just so, to create a smiling face with eyes slightly shaded by what look like long, lovely lashes.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

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Image: photographyfun

Snails are creatures that provoke quite extreme reactions in humans: often either disgust or culinary desires. But these slimy creatures actually deserve our respect as they can do what humans will never achieve – walk on water! And we’re talking its liquid form here, not ice. Let’s how these amazing creatures manage such a feat.

Though we mostly make the acquaintance of land snails in our gardens and parks, don’t be fooled, as marine snails are far more common and can be found anywhere from freshwater ponds to brackish water to the abyssal depths of the ocean. The whole class of Gastropoda that includes snails and slugs is second only to insects when it comes to diversity.

A water snail in its element:

Image via MSNBC

For the longest time, snails walking on water seemed almost miraculous even to scientists but a study in last fall’s issue of the Physics of Fluids journal shed some light on the matter. After reviewing video material of water snails, the scientists, led by Eric Lauga of the University of California, San Diego, came to the conclusion that the snail’s ability to create small rippling movements with its foot causes the traction it needs to move across the slippery surface. It’s similar to humans walking on ice.

A water snail walking on water, upside down!

Image via Mr. Barlow

Explains Dr. Lauga: “The snails’ ability to move depends on water’s tendency for its surface to resist disturbance. Water ‘wants’ to stay flat.” The snail’s ripples create similar ripples on the water’s surface that generate a downward force as the water tries to calm itself. But the water’s ripples need to have the right size so that the snail doesn’t slip as would be the case with ripples that are too small. Big ripples would prevent the snail from grabbing them.

Black marine snails hanging upside down:

Image: David Hu & Brian Chan

The insights these propulsion possibilities provide will not lead to inventions humans can use immediately, such as water-walking shoes (each shoe would have to be several times larger than a football field to distribute our weight). Theoretically, however, the possibilities are endless.

What’s more, the first slimy steps were already taken a few years ago: Mechanical engineer Anette Hosoi and her team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology created RoboSnail, a battery-powered imitation.

Not pretty, but we get the idea – RoboSnail:

Image via MIT

Speculates Dr. Lauga:

“It would be really interesting to build small-scale robotic versions of these snails to see if our understanding of their locomotion is correct and if we can recreate it… In my wildest dreams I can see James Bond releasing robotic snails on water to spy on his enemies.”

Now that’s a thought! So next time you encounter a snail, show it some respect. Because, as this last picture shows, they’re one cool species that can do amazing things.

Land snail scaling a blade of grass:

Image: Sean Mack

Source: 1, 2, 3, 4

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