The cat's out of the bag—at least for a woman caught smuggling a live, two-month-old, druggedtigercub in a suitcase full of toys (pictured) atBangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport on Sunday.
The 31-year-old Thai national, whose identity has not been revealed by Thai authorities, was scheduled to board aMahan Airflight to Iran. But when she was seen struggling with a large bag at check-in, airport officials decided to x-ray her luggage.
The x-rays revealed the tranquilized tiger cub among stuffed-tiger toys, according to a statement released Thursday byTRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network. (Relatedvideo:"Tiger Trade Slashes Big Cats' Numbers.")
Officials are investigating whether the cub was wild caught or captive-bred, as well as where the woman intended to bring the tiger.
A Sumatran tiger faces a camera trap head on in Kerinci Seblat National Park, on theIndonesianisland of Sumatra (seemap), in a May 2007 photo.
One of the last havens for the Sumatran tiger—listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)—the park was the site of a camera-trap survey from 2004 to 2009, one of the most extensive such projects ever conducted, conservationists say. (See moretiger pictures.)
Indonesia's two other tiger subspecies—the Bali tiger and Javan tiger—are both extinct, and there is"grave potential for history to repeat itself"with the Sumatran tiger, which is illegally hunted on the island, Linkie said. (Take a big cats quiz.)
But there's hope, he added—FFI has set up five anti-poaching teams across the national park.
In the battle forbugs, wolf spiders are outwittingcarnivorous plants, according to the first study to show members of the plant and animal kingdoms competing for prey.
In parts of Florida and southern Georgia, two species of wolf spider eat the same insects as the pink sundew—a type of carnivorous plant.
Sundews catch bugs using a sticky mucilage on the tips of their leaves. The small plants then release digestive enzymes, which begin to process the trapped animals, leaving only their exoskeletons behind.
Sosippus floridanusspiders, meanwhile, build funnel webs slightly off the ground, at the same height as the sundews. And a wandering wolf spider species,Rabidosa rabida, actively hunts for the same insects the sundews tend to trap. (Seespider web pictures.)
In the field the team saw that, whenS. floridanusis in close quarters with the sundew, the spiders build larger webs farther away from the plants, presumably to snare more meals than the sundews' leaves.
This led the team to suspect that the spiders were hurting the plants via competition.
Laboratory experiments with the hunting spiderR. rabidalater confirmed that the presence of spiders can deprive the plants of bugs—and thus vital nutrients.
The plants become weaker overall, producing smaller leaves and fewer seeds, according to study co-authorJason Rohr, an ecologist at the University of South Florida.
Overall, the discovery contradicts a long-held assumption that competition for food mostly occurs among closely related taxa, or categories of organisms, he said.
"We have pretty convincing evidence that you get competition between very distantly related taxa."
Spider-Plant Study an"Interesting Twist"
Aaron Ellison, a Harvard University ecologist who studies carnivorous plants, said the study isn't necessarily surprising. For instance, it's well known that many types of plants compete with microbes for nutrients in the soil.
"In that sense, the results fall right in line with what we expect to happen when organisms share resources and resources are limited,"Ellison said. (Seepictures of killer plants.)
But the study does add"another interesting twist to how organisms interact,"he said, adding that it's"a constant challenge to those of us who work with carnivorous plants to demonstrate that what we do has generality beyond these really weird plants."
As for study co-author Rohr and colleagues, they're moving on to bigger things: seeing if the presence of toads, which eat the same insects as the spiders and plants, affects the spider-sundew interaction.
It's"very possible,"Rohr added, that similar plant-animal rivalry exists worldwide.
The 2005 to 2006 trapping season, which runs from November 20 to March 31, yielded 168,843 nutria tails. The 2009 to 2010 season, by contrast, set a record: 445,963 nutria tails, according to state figures. Trappers hunt the rodents for money and discard their carcasses.
"The amount of animals harvested this past year is a result of economics in the area,"said Edmond Mouton, who heads theNutria Control Programwith the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in New Iberia.
Simply put, more out-of-work residents are out trapping the rodents, which are native toSouth Americabut were introduced to the U.S. as a fur species in the late 19th century.
"They established several populations elsewhere, and some of the populations that were decimated… slowly became re-established,"Mouton said."It is a fairly resilient species and able to handle such catastrophes."
Nutria only compound the problem by eating wetland grasses, which exposes the soils to erosion from the ebb and flow of the tides, Mouton said. Marshes that get converted to open water are"unrecoverable,"he said.
For every mile (1.6 kilometers) of coastal wetlands lost, storm surges increase by about a foot (0.3 meter), he noted.
Also unknown is the ultimate impact of the 2010Gulf of Mexico oil spillon wetlands."There is concern that {the oil spill} could exacerbate the already dire coastal-erosion issues in Louisiana,"Chris Macaluso, public information director for theCoastal Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana, told National Geographic News in May.
Harvesting the 15-pound (7-kilogram) nutria—which are widespread throughout the Gulf states—is one way humans can prevent wetland damage, the wildlife-and-fisheries agency's Mouton said.
To cull the Louisiana nutria population, wildlife managers implemented a program in 2002 that paid trappers four dollars for every nutria caught. (The fee increased to five dollars after Katrina.) (Read about alien invaders inNational Geographicmagazine.)
Since the program started, the amount of nutria-damaged wetlands has declined from more than a hundred thousand acres (40,450 hectares) to 8,475 acres (3,430 hectares), according to program statistics. (Seepictures of Louisiana's wetlands.)
"Not only has the number of acres been reduced but also the severity of damage,"Mouton said.
In an average year, trappers kill about 300,000 nutriain Louisiana.
"The only year they were down was post Rita and Katrina, and that stands to reason,"Mouton said."A lot of individuals that harvest nutria live along coastal areas, and they were impacted as well by the storms."
A newfound, pea-size frog,Microhyla nepenthicola,sits on the tip of a pencil.
One of the smallest frogs in the world, the species was spotted inside and around pitcher plants in Malaysian rain forests on the island ofBorneo (map), which is divided amongBrunei,Indonesia, andMalaysia.
The new species was announced Wednesday, but the frogs have been hiding in plain view for more than a century.
"I saw some specimens in museum collections that are over a hundred years old,"co-discoverer Indraneil Das said in a statement.
"Scientists presumably thought they were juveniles of other species,"said Das, a herpetologist atUniversiti Malaysia Sarawakin Malaysia."But it turns out they are adults of this newly discovered microspecies."
It may be ashot in the dark, but freezing sperm is one of the last chances to save the hellbender,North America's biggest salamander, conservationists say.
Hellbenders—also known as snot otters and devil dogs—have dwindled throughout their range, which once encompassed streams from northeasternArkansastoNew York.
The 2.5-foot-long (0.7-meter-long)amphibianshave declined by 80 to 90 percent in most of their traditional watersheds in recent decades, and now haunt only isolated pockets of southern Appalachia (seemap), said Dale McGinnity, curator of reptiles atNashville Zoo.
All of the states in the hellbender's range have listed the animal as a"species of special concern,"and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently reviewing whether to add the hellbender to the federal endangered species list, McGinnity said.
The reasons for their decline is unknown, but it's likely environmental contaminants such as pesticides are harming the creatures via their highly permeable skin, he said.
To make matters worse, hellbenders don't seem to be breeding at all in the wild, he said, possibly because human-made pollutants containing synthetic hormones are damaging the amphibians' reproductive systems.
As a result, there are apparently no young wild hellbenders in existence, only aged individuals—the amphibians likely live between 30 and 80 years, McGinnity said.
The hellbender's decline spurred an international team to collect sperm from some captive salamanders in September 2009 for cryopreservation, a common zoo practice that freezes sperm without damaging its cell membranes.
Though several zoos have put a"great deal of effort"into breeding the amphibians in captivity, none has been particularly successful, McGinnity added. It's unclear why they're tough to breed, but it may be that it's hard to replicate the exact temperatures of their home streams.
"For the first time, sperm was collected from a living salamander, cryopreserved, and brought back to life,"said McGinnity, who is involved in the sperm-preservation effort with colleagues from Belgium's Antwerp Zoo and Michigan State University.
A sort of"insurance policy"against extinction, the sperm will enable scientists to manage hellbender breeding, according to team memberDalen Agnew,a reproductive pathologist at Michigan State University.
For instance, scientists can use the stored sperm to crossbreed individuals, he said, to ensure that wild hellbenders are genetically diverse, he said. Genetic diversity is important because if closely related salamanders breed, their inbred offspring will be weaker and more susceptible to disease.
Despite their hellish monikers, the"big, flaccid creatures"are actually"very mellow,"Agnew said.
This docile nature certainly helps scientists collect salamander sperm, which is"milked"out of a hellbender by rubbing it between the front legs and tail, said Nashville Zoo's McGinnity.
During mating season, no such coaxing is needed.
"Just by picking the animal up, {sperm} will come pouring out of the animal. ... You need to be ready,"the Michigan State's Agnew said.
Agnew also found that the hellbender sperm cell—like those of other amphibian species—boasts a ribbon of tissue encircling the tail. Magnified 40 times, it"almost looks like a corkscrew spinning,"Agnew said.
So far Agnew and colleagues used a unique"recipe"of preservation ingredients to keep hellbender sperm viable for six months—ideally, the sperm could be stored for hundreds of years.
Snot Otters Unchanged Since Dinosaur Days
Hellbenders haven't changed much since dinosaurs ruled the world, which puts the amphibians in nearly a class of their own, Nashville Zoo's McGinnity noted.
Phorusrhacids have been extinct for millions of years, yet the so-calledterror birdsjust got a bit more frightening.
The flightless birds stood up to ten feet (three meters) tall and had hook-beaked heads the size of horse heads. Now a new study has apparently deciphered how the birds used those fearsome skulls—employing a fighting style like that of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali.
Researchers used CT scans of terror-bird skulls and biomechanical computer models to conclude that the birds likely used a speedy, graceful, strike-and-retreat style, killing their prey with a succession of punishing, hatchet-like blows.
The technique probably landed the birds a top ranking in the food chain of prehistoricSouth America, according to the study, published August 18 in the journalPLoS ONE.
"South America was a strange and different place back then,"said paleontologistLawrence Witmerof the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine.
"It was an island continent and had been so since around the time of the dinosaurs, so there was a lot of evolution that took place in its own microcosm,"said Witmer, who co-authored the new study.
After rising about 60 million years ago, terror birds evolved into at least 18 species, all of which disappeared by about two to three million years ago, around the time North and South America collided.
Because no living animals like the phorusrhacids exist today, terror bird behavior is something of a mystery.
Terror Bird Floated Like a Butterfly, Stung Like a Bee
To unlock clues to the terror-bird lifestyle, the international team looked to specimens ofAndalgalornis,a 4.5-foot-tall (1.4-meter-tall) terror bird that lived in northwesternArgentinasome six million years ago. (Related:"Largest 'Terror Bird' Fossil Found in Argentina.")
The scientists used CT scans to examine the architecture of the skull from the inside out, finding a structure far more rigid than that seen in most birds.
The data were used to create engineering-based, 3-D computer models, which revealed the stresses created when the digital skull was put through a series of biting, thrashing, and shaking movements.
Anatomy and biomechanics pointed to the same behaviors—those of an"outside fighter,"Witmer said.
"This animal had a hatchet-like skull that was very strong and rigid when being driven straight down into prey but was weak from side to side,"he explained.
"Consequently these animals weren't sluggers. They couldn't grapple with prey, couldn't handle those twisting movements.
"So these things were more like a Muhammad Ali, dancing around, using their speed and surgically precise jabs with that hatchet-like skull coming straight down over and over again,"he said."That's how they killed their prey."
Terror Bird: Latter-DayT. Rex
This system likely proved extremely effective—at least for some tens of millions of years—because the birds appear to have chopped their way to a rarefied role.
"The conventional dinosaurs went extinct,"Witmer added."But these terror birds were like avian dinosaurs which in many ways filled the ecological niche that predatory dinosaurs filled.
"T. rexwas a large, head-dominated, bipedal predator, and that's kind of what we're talking about with these terror birds—though both the birds and their prey were smaller than animals of the dinosaur era."
A new species of monkey with a red, bushy beard (pictured) has been discovered in theColombiansection of the Amazon rain forest, conservationists announced today.
A scientist first glimpsedCallicebus caquetensis—a type of titi monkey—in the 1960s. But political strife in the southern Caquetá Province (seemap) kept scientists away until 2008, when an expedition finally confirmed the bearded monkey as a new species. (See"New Monkey Species Found in Remote Amazon.")
The cat-size primate is"fascinating"because it mates for life, an unusual trait among monkeys, said expedition leaderThomas Defler, a primatologist at the National University of Colombia in Bogotá. Pairs are often spotted sitting on branches with their tails intertwined.
A typical Caquetá titi couple has a baby every year, and the father handles most of the infant's care, other than nursing, Defler noted. It's unknown why the dad does most of the work, but there's likely an evolutionary advantage, he said. (See morepictures of devoted animal dads.)
Last seen in 1989,Costa Rica's golden toad (pictured) is perhaps the most famous of the"lostamphibians"—virtually extinct animals that may be eking out an existence in a few scattered hideouts, conservationists say.
The toad—which likely disappeared due to a combination of drought and thedeadly chytrid fungus—is one of ten species that scientists most hope to rediscover during an unprecedented global search for"extinct"amphibians launched today. The ten were chosen for their"particular scientific or aesthetic value,” according to project leader Robin Moore, ofConservation International.
Led by Conservation International and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'sAmphibian Specialist Group, the effort will seek out a hundred such species but invest mostly in ten species of high scientific and aesthetic value.
The new project comes amid a steady decline in worldwide amphibian species, 30 percent of which are threatened with extinction, according to Conservation International. (Read aboutvanishing amphibiansinNational Geographicmagazine.)
Jason Rohr, a University of South Florida ecologist not involved in the project, applauds its goals.
"But I also discourageanyone from interpreting any new discovery of these species as previous scientific error or evidence that the particular species, or amphibians in general, have not 'croaked,'"he said by email.
"While a few remaining individuals or isolated populations is certainly better than a complete extinctions, this would unfortunately be a small victory considering the catastrophic, global loss of amphibians."
One ofNorth America's most common bats will go extinct in the northeastern U.S. within two decades if a deadly disease continues to spread unchecked, scientists warn in a new study. And other bat species—including the rare Indiana bat—may soon follow suit.
The condition makes bats restless and disturbs their winter hibernation. Instead of sleeping peacefully, infected bats burn up their fat reserves, causing them to die at a staggering rate—almost 75 percent a year in affected colonies, research shows.
So far the syndrome is known to infect nine hibernating bat species, including the widespread and well-studied little brown bat. (Listen to bat calls.)
BiologistWinifred Frickand colleagues collected bat population data gathered over the past three decades from nearly two dozen hibernation sites in five states, and ran the data through population models.
Their analysis showed that little brown bat populations crashed when white-nose syndrome appeared in North America—perhaps introduced from Europe or another distant locale.
"We also found that if mortality continues the way we've seen it, the regional population of this bat ... will basically be gone from the landscape in 16 to 20 years,"said Frick, of Boston University and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
During 2010 infected bats were found as far south and west asTennesseeandOklahoma(see a U.S. map). The fungus has also spread north to the Canadian provinces ofQuebecandOntario.
"This is quickly becoming a continental scale problem,"Frick said."We're not surprised by this, but we are distressed by it."
And, as the ailment gets a foothold in more places, it's impacting more bat species.
"We chose little brown {bats} because we had really good data, and because they were a very common and abundant species,"Frick explained.
"But it's reasonable to assume that other hibernating species will face similar dangers, because the fungus grows in the hibernation sites. And some of those species, like the Indiana bat, are already endangered species."
There is no cure for the syndrome, though scientists are searching for ways to combat the disease.
Bat Extinctions Could Affect People, Too
Though the situation looks bleak for bats, humans also have cause for concern, Frick said. That's because the flyingmammalseat a lot of insects—such as mosquitoes—that damage crops, spread disease, and generally pester people.
Don't worry—oysterherpes isn't a new side effect of eating"the food of love."
The incurable, deadly virus is, however, alarming fishing communities inEurope, where oyster herpes seems to be spreading—and could go on spreading as seas continue to warm, experts say.
In July lab testing of farmed oysters detected the first knownUnited Kingdomcases of herpes in the shellfish. The virus has already killed between 20 to 100 percent of breeding Pacific oysters in some French beds in 2008, 2009, and 2010, according to theFrench Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea(Ifremer).
The reason for oyster herpes's emergence in Pacific oysters off England remains a mystery, thoughglobal warmingmay have played a part, experts speculate.
A new strain namedOstreid herpesvirus 1 (OsHV-1)μvar (mew-var),the virus remains dormant until water temperatures exceed 16 C {61 degrees F}, which U.K. waters reach in the height of summer, according to Kevin Denham of the British government'sFish Health Inspectorate.
With that in mind, Tristan Renault, director of Ifremer's genetic and pathology lab, said that global warming"could be an explanation of the appearance of this particular type of the virus."
Though all herpes strains are DNA-based viruses, herpes, which infects everything from cows to clams to monkeys, comes in a wide variety of species, each with their own unique set of symptoms. Among humans, perhaps the best known forms are theHerpes simplexviruses, which are spread through close contact and can manifest themselves as oral and genital blisters.
Ostreidherpes viruses are known to affect not only oysters but also clams, scallops, and other mollusks, according to Renault.
The New Oyster Herpes
Herpes-infected shellfish aren't new to science, but in 2008—the first year a huge increase in mortality rates was detected inFrance—Ifremer detected a new variation of the virus.
Like the other strains of herpes that affect mollusks,OsHV-1μvarattacks young oysters during breeding season, when the mollusks' bodies are so focused on producing sperm and eggs that the oysters have no energy to maintain an immune system, Renault said.
ButOsHV-1μvaris"more virulent than strains we identified before,"Renault said, adding that the virus is so efficient at killing its hosts that it can wipe out 80 percent of the oysters in a bed within a week.
That death rate is the only outward sign something's wrong, he added, because a oyster herpes have no visible symptoms, and diagnosis is possible only through lab testing.
Though oyster herpes can't be transmitted to humans, it does threaten the fishing industry, since dead oysters are unsafe for eating—and that's exactly what worries oyster harvesters such asSeasalter Shellfish.
Based in the southeastern English city of Whitstable, where oysters have been harvested for centuries, Seasalter this summer became the first company to discover the herpes-ravaged oysters in the U.K.
The finding prompted an investigation by the Fish Health Inspectorate, which detected the virus and learned that Seasalter had employed equipment previously used in France to refurbish oyster beds.
"We were told it had been out of the water for a number of years,"Denham said."Nevertheless there's still a possibility"that the virus could have traveled from infected French beds via the gear. Possible culprits also include other reused equipment or water transferred from an infected area.
To keep the U.K. oyster-herpes outbreak from spreading, the British government has banned the shipping of oysters out of affected areas, most of which, like Whitstable, are around the mouth of the River Thames in southeastern England.
No matter what measures are taken, Denham said, oyster herpes is going to be tough to kick. Even if all the infected Pacific oysters are removed from oyster farms, wild Pacific oysters will still be present in surrounding waters, perhaps acting as"a reservoir for infection."
It's unlikely, though, thatOsHV-1μvarwould end up inU.S.oyster beds, Renault said, because the United States doesn't typically import oysters from Europe.
But a less virulent, herpes-like virus has been detected in farmed oysters offCalifornia. If sea temperatures continue to rise, he said, perhapsμvaror something like it could emerge in U.S. waters too.
Some dinosaurs, a new study suggests, knew very different crocs from today's reptiles—including a newfound fossil crocodile that might seem to have been designed by committee. (Seepictures of the prehistoric"cat crocodile.")
According to the study, the cat-sizePakasuchus kapilimaihad relatively long legs and a nose similar to adog's. Perhaps weirdest of all,Pakasuchus—literally,"cat crocodile"—hadmammal-like teeth that gave the crocodile a power previously unknown amongreptiles: the ability to chew.
As a result, the 105-million-year-old crocodile, researchers say, was something of a stand-in for mammals in the mammal-poor, long-gone southern supercontinent of Gondwana, which included thePakasuchusfossil site in what's nowTanzania.
According to lead study authorPatrick O'Connor,Pakasuchus's"legs were longer and more slender than what you think of for modern crocodiles ... and it had a little more of an upright stance,"the Ohio University paleontologist said.
Living among dinosaurs, the fossil crocodile—technically a crocodyliform—was also lankier and had fewer of the bony plates that armor modern crocodiles.
And unlike inmodern crocodiles—which have nostrils positioned on the tops of their heads, for breathing while swimming—the nose ofPakasuchuswas located at the tip of its snout, canine style.
"It was not like the crocodiles we know today, which are submerged much of the time. It was up, moving around on the land,"said O'Connor, who received aNational Geographic Society/Waitt Grantfor this project. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)
Modern crocodiles have fairly undifferentiated, conical teeth specialized for a bite-and-gulp feeding style. ButPakasuchushad teeth resembling mammals' canines, premolars, and interlocking molars, says the study, to be published in tomorrow's issue of the journalNature.
In addition, the lower jaw ofPakasuchuscould slide back and forth."Crocodiles alive today don't have a major sliding component to their jaw,"O'Connor explained."It's just a hinged joint that allows the jaw to move up and down."
Taken together, the crocodile's unique dentition and sliding jaw suggestPakasuchuswas able to chew and grind its food, a trait previously thought to be unique to mammals.
"Chewing is a mammalian characteristic, almost by definition,"O'Connor said.
"Most people who do functional anatomy or paleontology reserve the term for mammals only,"he said. Other animal groups are generally thought to lack the necessary anatomical features and coordinated muscle activity required for complex chewing, he added.
Pakasuchuswas almost certainly capable of chewing, agreedZhe-Xi Luo, a paleontologist and early-mammal expert at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
"We used to think that it was not possible for crocodiles to really chew their food,"said Luo, who was not involved in the research."But {this study} shows that, yes, they could."
Crocodile Was Mammal Proxy in Land of Reptiles?
Pakasuchuslikely fed on small lizards, insects, and the few primitive mammals that existed in Gondwana at the time. The animal's unique dentition may have allowed the fossil crocodile to occupy ecological niches filled by mammals in other parts of the world, the study says.
"This small-bodied animal occupied a dramatically different feeding niche than do modern crocodilians"study co-author Nancy Stevens, also of Ohio University, said in a statement. The crocodilian order includes crocodiles, alligators, caimans, gavials, and related extinct forms.
Pakasuchusbelonged to a reptile family calledthe notosuchians, or"southern crocodiles."For this group, differentiated teeth may have been the key to success, said Steve Salisbury, a paleontologist at theUniversity of Queenslandin Australia.
Increasingly, fossil discoveries in former areas of Gondwana are revealing that the notosuchians boasted a very diverse range of species, said Salisbury, who also did not participate in thePakasuchus-fossil research.
If it turns out that mammal-like teeth were typical among other notosuchians,"it may have opened up new opportunities that weren't possible with more simplified dentition,"he added.
Salisbury adds that the discovery ofPakasuchuswill likely prompt many scientists to go back and reexamine their fossil collections.
"Isolated teeth that people previously assumed belonged to mammals,"he said,"may in fact belong to crocodiles."
The newfound, cat-size crocodilePakasuchus kapilimai(illustrated) hadmammal-like teeth that helped give the fossil crocodile a power previously unknown amongreptiles: the ability to chew.
One key to that ability is that the 105-million-year-old crocodile's lower jaw could slide back and forth (inset).
"Crocodiles alive today don't have a major sliding component to their jaw,"said lead study authorPatrick O'Connor, an Ohio University paleontologist."It's just a hinged joint that allows the jaw to move up and down."
For thousands of years humans have changed the sizes, shapes, colors, and coats ofdogsthrough selective breeding. Now it seems we've actually reordered many breeds' brains in the process
A new brain-imaging study examined 11 carcasses from 11 different dog breeds, both long-snouted, such as the greyhound and Jack Russel terrier, and short-snouted, such as the mastiff and pug.
The team found that the brains of many short-snouted breeds have rotated forward by as much as 15 degrees.
Furthermore, in these breeds the brain region for smell, called the olfactory bulb, has drifted downward toward the base of the skull, perhaps significantly altering the dogs' all-important source of smell, researchers say.
Since the first wolf was domesticated an estimated 12,000 years ago,"selective breeding has produced a lot of {anatomical} variation, but probably the most dramatic is in terms of skull shape,"said study co-authorMichael Valenzuela, a neuroscientist at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
"Dogs are very unique in having such a massive diversity of skull shapes,"Valenzuela added,"more than any other species really."
Dog Brain Changes Equal Changed Behavior?
It's unclear whether the brain rotation and olfactory bulb movement of short-snouted, or brachycephalic, dogs has affected their ability to smell, but Valenzuela and his colleagues note that short-snouted dogs are usually not used for scent work.
"We think of dogs living in a world of smell—but this finding strongly suggests that one dog's world of smell may be very different to another's,"study co-author Paul McGreevy of the University of Sydney said in a statement.
One way the brain changes could have changed the dogs' olfactory sense is by affecting a pathway in the brain called the rostral migratory stream, or RMS, the team speculates. Other studies have suggested the RMS is important for a normal sense of smell.
"The RMS starts very deep in the middle of the brain and traces a very predictable path to the olfactory bulb,"study co-author Valenzuela told National Geographic News.
"Since the olfactory bulb has moved in brachycephalic dogs, you'd expect to see a change in the course of the RMS, or it may be disregulated"and dysfunctional, he added.
Investigating these potential RMS deviations, the authors write, would"be of intense interest for future research."
Valenzuela's team plans to undertake at least some of that future research and hope to uncover whether—or how—breeding-based brain changes have changed the sense of smell in dogs."It is a fascinating question that our group will be looking into more."
Australia's"terrifying"dragonfish (pictured) uses its many fangs—which even stud its tongue—to hook hard-to-find prey in the cold, dark depths, scientists say.
The banana-size fish is one of tens of thousands of both known and new species included in a new inventory released today by theCensus of Marine Life, a decade-longocean-exploration project.
The first-of-its-kind"roll call"of marine species from 25 diverse ocean regions is a prelude to the census's final summary of up to 230,000 species to be released October 4, census scientists say.
To create the inventory—published Monday in the journalPloS One—scientists combined years of census data with previous research on the richness of ocean species. Species counts in each of the 25 areas ranged from 2,600 to 33,000, with an average of about 10,750 per region. Altogether census scientists found more than a hundred thousand species in the 25 regions.
"This inventory was urgently needed for two reasons,"report lead authorMark Costello, of the Leigh Marine Laboratory at New Zealand's University of Auckland, said in a statement.
First, not knowing what species ply the oceans"impairs society's ability to discover and describe new species,"Costello said.
The research may also serve as a base line, helping scientists to track future extinctions:"Marine species have suffered major declines—in some cases 90 percent losses—due to human activities and may be heading for extinction—as happened to many species on land."
An unidentified purple octopus (pictured) is one of 11 potentially new species found this month during a deep-sea expedition off Canada's Atlantic coast, scientists say.
Still at sea, a team of Canadian and Spanish researchers is using a remotely operated vehicle calledROPOSfor dives offNewfoundlandwith a maximum depth of about 9,800 feet (3,000 meters).
The 20-day expedition aims to uncover relationships between cold-watercoraland other bottom-dwelling creatures in a pristine yet"alien"environment, according to theresearchers' blog.
"It's been really spectacular,"Ellen Kenchington, research scientist with the Fisheries Department of Canada—one of the organizations involved in the project—told Canada'sCTV Newswebsite.
"It's really changing our perception of the diversity that's out there. ... We're seeing new species in deeper waters."
On a July 10 fishing trip inGeorgianreaches of the Okefenokee Swamp, Ray Cason found his way blocked by what looked to him like analligatorfeeding frenzy.
Hundreds of alligators packed a roughly 30-foot-wide (9-meter-wide) stretch of canal, jumping over and snapping at each other—all of it caught on a video (watch below) that went viral Wednesday viaYouTube,Facebook,CNN, and other media.
Alligator"Feeding Frenzy"Video
"I ain't never seen so many gators in my life!"someone can be heard exclaiming in the video, which Cason, 39, posted on YouTube after his foray into 420,000-acre (170,000-hectare)Stephen C. Foster State Parkoutside the town of Fargo.
Georgia state wildlife biologist Greg Nelms agreed, telling CNN,"I've never seen footage like that before."Such"cooperative feeding"by alligators—a true feeding frenzy is more chaotic—is seen every three or four years in the area, Nelms added.
In general, though, it's not uncommon forAmerican alligators, which can grow to about 15 feet (4.6 meters) long, to engage in cooperative feeding, herpetologistKenneth Kryskotold National Geographic News.
"There could be multiple reasons"for the swarm seen in the viral video, said Krysko, of the University of Florida."But they're usually known to congregate when they're breeding as well as when they're feeding."
Since American alligators breed in spring and the"feeding frenzy"video was shot in July, predation is the most likely reason for the Okefenokee gator swarm.
An alligator feeding frenzy tends to occur when the reptiles, fishing in evaporating pools or captive enclosures, engage in a violent free-for-all. The gators clash violently over food and block smaller rivals from feeding,according to the University of Floridawebsite.
Cooperative feeding, by contrast, is pretty much what it sounds like.
Alligators"face into the current and arrange themselves side-by-side in a row across the flow of water"—the better to catch a flood of fish squeezed into a bottleneck in a free-flowing channel, the university site says.
That's apparently just what happened in the Stephen C. Foster State Park canal in the video, where mudfish, or bowfins—common prey for Okefenokee alligators—are said to have been particularly plentiful on July 10.
Other hallmarks of cooperative feeding by alligators: Fighting over prey is relatively rare, and the feeding is so intense that humans and other interlopers are often ignored.
Low water can make alligator congregations more likely too, by forcing fish to stream, en masse, toward deeper water, Krysko said.
In the alligator"feeding frenzy"video, alligators can be seen jumping over one another and attacking each other, presumably while competing for food. Cason estimated there were about 300 alligators gathered.
There was"a lot of noise and a lot of splashing,"Cason told local television news station News4Jax.
"I just eased through them and went fishing"—perhaps not the wisest decision, according to the University of Florida's Krysko.
Though Krysko said the alligators were probably not abnormally dangerous during the congregation, he said Cason put himself in danger of falling into the congregation—and risked harming the alligators with his boat.
American alligators"are a protected species,"said Kysko, referring to protections afforded by the U.S. Endangered Species Act, even though the species is no longer listed as endangered by the U.S. government."No one would be allowed to do that if they were manatees, and manatees are protected as well."
Blair Hayman, a biologist withFlorida'sAlligator Management Program, though, didn't see anything wrong with the fisher motoring through the alligator swarm.
"It doesn't appear that he is doing anything,"she said."He's just boating at normal speed. Typically {alligator} harassment would be if he were poking {an alligator} with a stick or intentionally touching or otherwise disturbing him."
