Genetically Blind Huntsman Spider found in Laos Cave

Genetically Blind Huntsman Spider found in Laos Cave

| Author: Peter Del Bosque
Founder of Socialeaf, Peter's bio can be found by clicking on this Google+ link.

With over 1000 different species of the huntsman spider, living in both tropical and temperate regions, they are generally in close proximity to humans. They can be found in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australia, and many of you may have had an encounter with these impressive spiders on one or several occasions.  Although these spiders can be rather large where some have a leg-span that can reach between 250-300mm (10-12in), and look very intimidating, they aren’t known to aggressively attack humans as does the Brazilian Wandering Spider (also called the Banana Spider).

The specific huntsman spider in question is the Sinopoda scurion. Its name ‘scurion’ comes from a popular Swiss based company called ‘Scurion’ who makes cave headlamps. It was found in a cave near the well-known Xe Bang Fai cave in Laos by Peter Jäger who heads the arachnology department at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt. Dr. Jäger made mention of other cave dwelling huntsman spiders that had been discovered before , but all had been found with both pigment in their exoskeleton and several pairs of eyes ranging from 1-4 pair. To find a huntsman spider with no pigment and no eyes was groundbreaking.

Dr. Jäger believes that finding this particular blind huntsman spider can help us to better understand how the species can adjust to a dark cave setting. We would be able to calculate the time it takes for this process to occur. Furthermore, since this blind huntsman spider is only found in a tiny area, it can also help scientists and researchers determine the extent of habitat loss by both tourism and land exploitation practices.

For more interesting articles, check out the links below.

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· A Zebrafish Falls In Love With A Robot Fish… Aww

· Pitcher Plants: New Insight On How They Assassinate

· Tiny Red Shrimp Could Hold The Answer For A Long Life

A Zebrafish Falls in Love with a Robot Fish… Aww

A Zebrafish Falls in Love with a Robot Fish… Aww

 

 

| Author: Peter Del Bosque

Founder of Socialeaf, Peter's bio can be found by clicking on this Google+ link.

 

The Zebrafish, also known by their scientific name as Danio reri, a member of the minnow family, is a tropical freshwater fish that can be found in freshwater streams in the southeastern Himalayas and is commonly sold as an aquatic pet in pet stores everywhere. Their horizontal black and white stripe pattern is the characteristic that have given the Zebrafish their name.

Like all fishes, Zebrafish use certain cues to interact and communicate with other fish of their own kind.  These certain cues are often body gestures such as fin movement patterns, tail speed, and full body movements. It’s difficult to understand the complexity at which fish use body gestures to communicate, however, you can better understand how this form of communication works by simply observing a school of fish such as mackerel or sardines. The fish are capable of communicating instantaneously through body language. Schools of fish can turn on a dime or dive in an instant from predators. They aren’t verbally communicating and they sure aren’t making facial expressions. They’re reading patterns in body movement at a rapid pace. Body language communication can also be used to ward off predators, to attract a mate, or to intimidate a rival of the same species.

In a recent study scientists at the Polytechnic Institute of New York decided to try to understand fish communication more in depth with the help of a robot fish. The team built the robotic fish based on what characteristics they already knew were interesting and attractive to Zebrafish.

The fish was built having an enlarged belly, (which by the way is attractive to both sexes of the Zebrafish), and having a tail fin, also called a caudal fin, which could be manipulated electronically to wiggle just like another Zebrafish. To further enhance the looks of the robot fish, the robot fish was painted to have zebra stripes, a yellow head and large eyes.

To test the effectiveness of their robotic fish, the scientists put together an aquarium large enough to accommodate the size of the robot fish and then placed a clear acrylic panel to separate the robot from the living Zebrafish. When the scientists introduced the live Zebrafish to the robotic Zebrafish, the naturally curious Zebrafish inspected the robot fish. However, when the scientists manipulated the robot’s  body movements, they were surprised to find out that a rapidly beating tail attracted the fish whereas a slower moving tail caused the curious Zebrafish to lose interest.

So, what does this all mean to us and science? Well, it’s difficult to say how accurate this test was and how significant the findings are. There seems to be too many factors involved to make any real sense of the observation. For one thing, fisherman often use fishing lures as a means to attract fish, whether the lure is brightly colored, ugly looking, or a simple rubber worm, shaking the lure will often draw enough attention for the fish to strike. Also, with a barrier of plexiglass, it is hard to determine how the fish will ultimately respond. Once the Zebrafish bump into the plexiglass, they can’t interact with the robot fish and so there is no chance of studying their natural behavior.

This study has revealed important information about the behavior of fish and the way they communicate but it would be interesting to see what would happen if there was no plexiglass shield and if the robotic fish was the same size as the Zebrafish. Only time will tell once more tests have been made.

If you found this article interesting, please leave a thoughtful comment down below and make sure to share this article with others.

 

 

For more interesting articles, click on the links below.

· Smalleye Pygmy Shark has a Cloaking Device

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Pitcher Plants: New Insights on How They Assassinate

Pitcher Plants: New Insights on How They Assassinate

 

 

| Author: Peter Del Bosque

Founder of Socialeaf, Peter's bio can be found by clicking on this Google+ link.

 

The beautiful but deadly pitcher plant is an evolutionary marvel to the plant world. Living in harsh conditions with inadequate nutrients, the pitcher plant and other types of carnivorous plant species have been undeniably successful at harnessing valuable nutrients through, let’s just say, unorthodox means.

There are several types of pitcher plants which are considered to be either ‘Old World’ or ‘New World’ Both of these types of pitcher plants can be found in South America , North America and southwestern Australia.

The ‘Old World’ Pitcher plants are generally found high in the rain forest canopies. These plants are vine like and at the end of their long tendrils have a pitcher trap.

The ‘New World’ pitcher plants can be found in South America and North America and are restricted to living on the ground on marshy terrain.

In either case, the pitcher plants are beautiful assassins that use a variety of techniques to lure unsuspecting insect victims to an early grave. Their techniques include sweet nectar, floral fragrance, and enticingly visual leaf patterns and colors.

Once the pitcher plant has lured its victim, how does it retain them? How can an immobile plant secure an insect with the drive to live? Well, it uses a variety of methods to both secure and confuse its prey to utter exhaustion until it dies.

More specifically, in a recent report from Science Magazine, the South American Pitcher plant know to the scientific community as Heliamphora nutans, contains a vast amount of microscopic hair-like structures pointing downward from the throat toward the belly of the pitcher plant. These tiny hair-like structures are said to become very slippery when wet. Now, with that said, the likelihood of this carpet of hair-like structures becoming wet in a swamp or rainforest has got to be astronomical. As you might guess, whenever insects such as flies or ants try to ascend down the throat of the pitcher plant, they quickly begin to slide down as soon as they enter this zone.

Now, that’s all fine and dandy but plant biologist Ulrike Bauer from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom along with his colleagues decided to find out how and why some ants are able to escape the pitcher plant trap and some aren’t.

Unfortunately the pitcher plant Heliamphora nutans is only found in a very remote, highly inaccessible, native location, in the highest plateaus of southeastern Venezuela. With this obstacle, Bauer and his team resorted to studying specimens of this specific pitcher plant from a collection at the London’s Royal Botanic Gardens.

During preliminary observations, they found that if the pitcher plant had a dry surface, only 29% of the ants fell in whereas if the pitcher plants surface was wet, 88% of ants fell to their doom. This observation allowed Bauer and his team to identify two factors at work. The first factor was the ant’s ability to hold on to the top portion of the pitcher and the second factor was the plants ability to become highly slippery when its surface becomes wet.

Bauer and his team decided to find out how effective the ants natural adhesive foot pads were in maintaining a foot hold on the pitcher plants leafy wall. In one trial, Bauer and his team carefully removed foot pads off of ants and observed their ability to adhere to the wall of a dry pitcher plant. The results found that the ants could not maintain their foothold on either a dry or wet pitcher plant despite what area of the plant they were on whether they were in the area with or without hairs. On the other hand, it was found that ants with their natural footpads intact had a greater chance of holding on to the hairless part of the wall of a dry pitcher plant but had little ability to adhere to the wall with or without hair of a wet pitcher plant.

Undoubtedly the pitcher plant has successfully evolved the ability to undermine the ant’s ability to adhere to surfaces using its foot pads, but likewise, the ant has evolved the ability to counteract the pitcher plants sneaky trap under dry conditions.

Now, during this study, Bauer and his team wondered why the ants secondary gripping tool, it’s claws, were ineffective at rescuing the ants from their perilous fate. Well, it seems the pitcher plant’s hair-like structures help create an ungraspable surface where the claws are utterly useless at helping the ant climb back out.

In short, ants have two sets of gripping tools, (foot pads and claws) and, pitcher plants have two ways to counter these tools, (a slippery leaf surface and tiny ungraspable hairs pointing downward into ‘the belly of the beast.’

 

 

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For further interesting articles, check these out…

· Tiny Scorpion Species Found in Death Valley with UV Light

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· New Primate Species Found to be Poisonous

· Tiny Red Shrimp could hold the answer for a long life

Tiny Red Shrimp could hold the answer for a long life

Tiny Red Shrimp could hold the answer for a long life

 

 

| Author: Peter Del Bosque

Founder of Socialeaf, Peter's bio can be found by clicking on this Google+ link.

 

The cute little red shrimp, also known by science as the Halocaridina rubra and known to Hawaiians as ʻōpaeʻula, is quite an interesting shrimp. It hails from the Hawaiian Islands and can be found in water pools created by depressions in lava. These pools are known as Anchialine pools and are considered by scientists as an extreme habitat. What is meant by extreme is that the pools’ chemistry and climate is constantly fluctuating. First of all, the water’s salinity levels can vary from mild to extreme in one day. Also, since these pools are shallow, water temperature levels can easily raise and lower depending on the time of day. Also, since the pools are relatively shallow, UV rays from the sun bombard all life forms living in the pools for hours until the sun sets at the end of the day. There is no doubt that these pools are extreme habitats, so for an animal such as the tiny red shrimp to be able to survive is these conditions is nothing short of amazing.

So you might be asking yourself, how could such a vibrant, survivalist of an animal become an endangered species? Well, it has a lot to do with the human society in which it cohabitates with.

For many generations, Hawaiian fisherman have been using the tiny red shrimp as bait. Although this impacted shrimp populations, they were used sparingly as a natural resource and not highly exploited.

Another connection the shrimp have with people lies in Hawaiian folklore. Hawaiian people have had a high level of regard for the tiny red shrimp for many generations. So much that Hawaiian people have made up folktales about these cute creatures. There’s a Hawaiian story called “The Legend of Waianapanapa” The story is about a Hawaiian princess named Popoalaea who fled from her cruel husband, Chief Kakae. She hid from her husband inside a cave near the edge of the sea. There, her servant fanned her with a royal feather. Her husband saw the feather in the water’s reflection which gave away her secret hiding place. Filled with rage, Chief Kakae murdered her on the spot. Since then, it is said that at certain times of the year when these shrimp bloom in the pools, it is actually a reminder of the tragedy of the slain princess.

Another connection to humans are that these tiny shrimp are quickly becoming popular pets. What’s interesting about having these shrimp as aquatic pets is that you never have to clean their tank and you never have to feed them. They literally make the most of their surroundings.  The catch is that the shrimp need to be placed in sunlight for them to be able to sustain their life.  This newfound pet has put another dent in natural red shrimp populations, but has not been nearly as damaging as human development. With so many new homes being built on Hawaiian shorelines, many of these pools have been filled in or bulldozed to create magnificent dwelling places for many of Hawaiian’s wealthier inhabitants. It is no wonder why these tiny creatures that are confined to tiny Anchialine pools are facing extinction.

There is however, an effort to preserve this valuable animal and the secrets it holds. The person at the forefront of the tiny red shrimp research is a molecular biologist by the name of Scott Santos from the University of Auburn. He said, in a recent interview with the National Science Foundation that, the rare ability for this shrimp to survive extreme environments could be advantageous to how we live our lives. He suggests that we should do everything in our power to protect this valuable species, because of what we can learn from this shrimp. He believes this shrimp contains secrets for enhancing the welfare of human life.

 

 

For more interesting articles please visit…

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Porcupine Quill Inspiration for Modern Medicine

Porcupine Quill Inspiration for Modern Medicine

 

 

| Author: Peter Del Bosque

Founder of Socialeaf, Peter's bio can be found by clicking on this Google+ link.

 

The porcupine may not necessarily be the fastest animal on 4 paws, or the most cunning, but they certainly shouldn’t be tangled with. Most predators avoid these mighty bundles of fur and spines for fear that their face will be impaled upon by their gruesomely long spines. There are plenty of folktales about how porcupines got their quills and how they can be used to defend themselves, like the African folktale about the porcupine and the Jackal but,  despite the folklore that surrounds these beautiful creatures, there is one thing for certain, they have amazing quill architecture.

The quills aren’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill, needle-like spines. They have a secret. They are unique in that they can enter fleshy tissue quickly and easily however, pulling a quill out that has entered the skin is another story.

The quill is a sharp needle like hair that contains a tiny barb at the end of it. Each of these barbs are like very sharp razor blades. They are so sharp that when a barb is pushed against flesh, it slices easily through without struggle, sort of like when a fish bites down on a barbed fishhook. Its point looks almost like a checkmark and can’t be pulled out easily once it’s imbedded. If and when a quill is pulled, it will rip the tender flesh from where the hair-like barbs are anchored.

Recently Dr.Karp at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in colaboration with researchers at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have found a new way to put the quill technology to some good use.

Some of Dr. Karp's more popular discoveries include the use of spiderwebs as a gentle adhesive for premature babies. He is also the inventor of a Jellyfish tentacle inspired DNA chain that is used to filter out tumor cells from a patients blood.

First of all, there has always been a need for a proper surgical adhesion methods in emergency situations and researchers think quill technology could be the answer.  In the past, there have been a variety of inventions to help bind fleshy tissue to fleshy tissue. For example, surgical bandages, Band-Aids, staples, glue, string stitches and Velcro. Although there are a variety of products that can be used to help mend flesh wounds.

The basic idea is that a patch can be created with biodegradable quills that can painlessly puncture into the fleshy area that needs to be covered. Since the quills will be biodegradable, there would be no need to pull the patch off after the wound heals. The patch will simply fall off on its own.

Despite the great potential of this medical technology, researches have yet to create a viable model of the quill adhesive that will biodegrade at the proper time and that will be easier to remove in case it was placed on the wrong spot in error.

 

 

New Primate Species Found to be Poisonous

New Primate Species Found to be Poisonous

 

 

| Author: Peter Del Bosque

Founder of Socialeaf, Peter's bio can be found by clicking on this Google+ link.

 

Now, we must first understand the difference between an organism that is poisonous versus one that is venomous. The difference is that it has everything to do in the way the toxic chemical is distributed.

For example, if the only way an organism’s toxic chemical can enter you blood stream is through ingestion, inhalation, or skin contact, then the organism is considered poisonous. Some examples of poisonous organisms are, puffer fish, hemlock, hyacinth, poison dart frogs, and Monarch butterflies to name a few.

If the organisms’ toxic chemical is directly injected into you via teeth, spines, stingers or nematocycsts (stinging cells), then the organisms is considered venomous. Some examples of venomous organisms are Box Jellyfish, Black Widow spiders (including the Brown widow and Red widow spiders), the blue ringed octopus, and the stone fish.

With that said, let’s explore how the Slow Loris uses its toxicity.

First of all it is a highly unpredictable animal with needle like teeth on their lower jaw. The Slow Loris uses these teeth to inflict a highly painful bite. This bite although painful, can’t actually be used to inject venom into the victim.  Its teeth however, can be used as a tool to make puncture wounds into the victim to help transfer a toxic chemical it produces on the insides of its elbows. The Slow Loris licks the chemical from these arm glands into its mouth where it mixes the toxic chemical with its saliva to create a sort of toxic soup that can be used to infect a bite puncture wound.

So, now that we know the difference between poisonous organisms versus venomous organisms, we can safely come to the conclusion that the Bornean Slow Loris is in fact poisonous and not venomous.

While many animals are poisonous or venomous, there are relatively very few that are mammals.

Here is a list of mammals that are venomous, the Cuban Solenodon, the platypus, shrews, the European Mole and the Vampire Bat.

Here’s a list of poisonous mammals, the Slow Loris, the Hedgehog, and the African Crested Rat.

 

The rather unusual branch of the primate order who just so happen to be poisonous are the cute little Slow Loris.

There are 8 known species of these adorable looking animals.

· Bengal slow loris (N. bengalensis)

· Bornean slow loris (N. menagensis)

· Javan slow loris (N. javanicus)

· Pygmy slow loris (N. pygmaeus)

· Sunda slow loris (N. coucang)

· N. bancanus

· N. borneanus

· N. kayan

These particular species look rather similar however they can be distinguished according to DNA analysis, geographic location and color patterns on their fur. It’s curious to think of how similar the Loris’s physical characteristics are to sloths. They are similar to sloths in that they are slow, have small heads and have legs that are equal in length to their arms.  You must also be very careful in dealing with these animals because despite their meek appearance, Loris’ have very sharp needle like teeth whereas sloth have long razor sharp claws.

The slow Loris species can be found only in Asian territory, from South Asia to South East Asia. More specifically they can be found in Bangladesh, the Philippines, parts of China, the island of Java, Laos, Vietnam, and Singapore to name a few. They are certainly scattered in and around these geographic locations and unfortunately due to their close proximity to human civilization they are becoming  highly threatened.

Their numbers are drastically falling because as local human population increases, the demand for human habitable territory stretches into the pristine forests. Vast areas of land where these nocturnal creatures reside are being decimated to accommodate human dwellings. The Loris have little to no chance of escaping “progress” Their meek size and their slow moving abilities are no match for log cutters and bulldozers. To further pour salt into their wound, many Asian Shamans and healers use the Slow Loris for their ancient medicine.

In Borneo, some tribes believe that Loris’s act like a heavenly gatekeeper for each person who dies. They believe a Loris will be waiting to welcome them into the gates of heaven.

Also Loris’s are being used in traditional rituals to help with magic. People who believe in this practice will use the body of a Loris dead or alive, to bury somewhere near or around their house or someone else’s to be used either as a good luck charm or a curse.

If the Slow Loris and it’s 7 other Loris cousins are to remain on this earth for us to love and enjoy, we must be vigilant in our efforts to protect their habitats from further destruction.  We must find ways to help educate the native people who cohabitate with these cute animals about the importance of protecting them. Of course it’s not an easy effort, but you can start by informing everyone you know. Make sure to share this article with friends, family and organizations that need to learn about the plight of the Slow Loris. Also you can contact and donate time or money to organizations that work directly with protecting these creatures.

Here are some important resources for you to consider.

· The Wild Animal Rescue Foundation of Thailand

· The Little Fireface Project by Anna Nekaris

· International Animal Rescue

· The International Primate Protection League