- The Mystery of the Singing Mice | Science
- …Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell, a [behavioral ecologist]…
…heard something unusual, something loud. …the four-note song of what would prove to be a deer mouse. Played back at slow speed, it sounded a little like the wooing song of a whale, a plaintive rise and fall.
…Her research and that of others suggest that some songs are produced only by males or only by females. There are even greater differences from one species to the next… Some species’ songs get more complex as a mouse grows older…
…each species perceives the world in a unique way… Bacteria call to each other with chemicals. … Ants see polarized light. Turtles navigate using the earth’s magnetic field. Birds see ultraviolet markings on flowers … Most of these different worlds are little understood because of the narrow reach of our own perceptions. Kalcounis-Rueppell hears music in the dark, but as a species we still fumble around.
- Man discovers a new life-form at a South African truck stop | Scientific American
- …a fossil that looked like a cross between two different kinds of animals. It had the wrong mix of parts. It was–he would come to convince himself–a single individual of an entirely new order of beasts.
An order is one of the big categories of life, a big branch on evolution's tree. …
When more than three quarters of all species of animals are not yet named, it is hard to know which ones to get excited about finding. …
Most days we forget about the grandness of the living world. …we gloss over what remains to be discovered. …Discoveries are possible everywhere.
…recently…it was discovered that mice sing to each other. …it was discovered that clouds are filled with bacteria. What else remains to be known? Nearly everything.
- Ant Rafts Repel Water Like Gore-Tex | Wired: Science • by Lisa Grossman
- In the first serious study of the physics of fire-ant rafts, researchers have described how the insects form floating, waterproof islands…
Mlot’s team collected thousands of fire ants…by roadsides in Atlanta, where the stinging pests are an invasive species. …clumps of ants take on the consistency of soft playdough. Ant masses flow like honey or ketchup, and can be described using equations usually found in fluid dynamics…
Roboticist Seth Goldstein…suggests that groups of small robots forming antlike rafts could be used to explore sewer lines or waterlogged caves. McClurkin even floated the idea, so to speak, of cleaning oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico.
[This is fascinating and kind of awesome, but also ANT HARM LIKE WHOA. -L]
[My bookmarks live at delicious.com/camryl. In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. Also, signal boosts are awesome! --L.]
The Of interest (Tue, Apr 26th, 11am) by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.