To see if a whale’s libido is going full-throttle, grab a pair of nylons and head to the ocean, reports the New Scientist:
For the first time, testosterone and progesterone—two key hormones that signal whether whales are pregnant, lactating or in the mood to mate—have been extracted from whales’ lung mucus, captured in nylon stockings dangled from a pole over their blowholes as they surface to breathe.
This method could allow scientists to study whales without having to slaughter them, and could be used to simply give them a pregnancy test to try to learn why some species aren’t breeding, say the authors of the study.
Humans aren’t the only ones who enjoy a game of soccer (or football, depending on where you’re from). A new video has surfaced showing dolphins “kicking” around a ball—only the ball, in this case, is a jellyfish.
A team of marine biologists were astonished to see a dolphin swim under a jellyfish and with a quick flick of its tail shoot it out of the water. The bottlenose dolphins were caught on video performing the strange activity off the Welsh coastline. One dolphin was able to flip the jellyfish six feet up in the air.
There’s a mysterious black goo floating off the Alaskan coast, and no one is quite sure what it is. A helicopter flying over the area spotted a strand of the dark stuff, which is easily visible on the bright white ice floating in the Arctic Ocean, and followed it for 15 miles.
“[The goo is] certainly biological,” [Terry] Hasenauer [of the Coast Guard] said. “It’s definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter…. It’s definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism.”
“It’s pitch black when it hits ice and it kind of discolors the ice and hangs off of it,” [an official with the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department] said. He saw some jellyfish tangled up in the stuff, and someone turned in what was left of a dead goose – just bones and feathers – to the borough’s wildlife department.”
It’s hard enough for us humans to fight for a mate. But for the now-extinct mussel-like creatures known as ostracods, which lived on Earth about 100 million years ago, “getting in” was only part of the battle.
That’s where giant sperm comes in: Females copulated with multiple males, so it was up for the sperm themselves to duke it out inside of the female’s body. New research based on microfossils of these ancient creatures, led by Dr. Renate Matzke-Karasz in Munich, shows that a male’s sperm may have been even larger than the animal itself. And ostracods aren’t the only animals to produce mega-sperm, according to Reuters:
Giant sperm are still around today. A human sperm, for example, would have to be 40 meters long to measure up against a fruit fly’s. The insect is only a few millimeters in size but can produce 6 cm-long (2.5 inch) coiled sperm.
Scientists may have been celebrating the new administration since before Obama entered the Oval Office, but he is now an official recipient of one of the greatest honors in science: A species has been named after him. Caloplaca obamae, a newly-discovered lichen species, was found on California’s Santa Rosa Island during a 2007 survey of lichen diversity. Kerry Knudsen, lichen curator at the University of California, found and collected samples of the species during the final weeks of Obama’s campaign, so the lichen expert named the plant “to show my appreciation for the president’s support of science and science education.”
• Surfing may become a more earth-friendly sport, with boards made from at least 50 percent renewable materials reducing the use of petroleum, traditionally the primary component in surfboards.
• By discovering the gene that helps convert carbohydrate into fat in the liver, researchers may have inched closer to developing a genetic equivalent of the Atkins diet.
• In good news for endangered species, conservationists have developed a way to use 3-D imaging to track tiger populations—and then, in bad news for an already-extinct species, a celebrated paleontologist who discovered the world’s best-preserved dinosaur will now plead guilty for stealing dinosaur bones from federal land.
After observing that captive black tiger prawns tend to mate far less than their counterparts in the wild, Gay Marsden, a researcher at Queensland University of Technology, set up infrared cameras to see if she could determine a reason for the discrepancy. For two months, she watched how prawns behave in captivity and made one major discovery: Unlike prawns in the wild—or even wild-born prawns who are then moved into captivity—the ones under her surveillance were simply not into sex.
Like the shrimp industry, prawn populations are facing increasing environmental threats, and the aquaculture industry would rather breed prawns in captivity than in the wild, where they are vulnerable to disease. Wild prawns breed prolifically, but because they are often kept in high-density ponds, an entire population can be wiped out by a single virus. Captive-born prawns’ lack of interest in sex, then, poses a serious problem for business. (more…)
As if cow burps weren’t enough to worry about as the earth’s atmosphere heats up, scientists have now discovered that aquatic animal belches might be another source of greenhouse gas emissions.
When nitrate is present in water, worms, mussels, freshwater snails and other underwater creatures emit nitrous oxide as a by-product of digestion. The animals obtain their food from soil, which contains bacteria that survive “surprisingly well” in the gut and are thought to convert nitrate in the water into nitrous oxide gas.
While nitrous oxide is known for its use as dentists’ laughing gas, it’s also 310 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Earthworms also emit the gas because of soil rich in both nitrogen and the microbes that convert it, but the new study illustrates that marine mammals may be pumping it out as well.
Researchers in Monterey Bay have released pictures of the first Macropinna microstoma to be found with its “soft transparent dome” intact. The six-inch “barreleye” fish lives more than 2,000 feet below sea level and spends most of its time motionless, but has eyes that can rotate within its head, allowing it to see whatever is directly above it.
Humans might be the only species that actually choose to go under the knife to have their sex changed. But sometimes gender switches are a semi-regular occurrence in other species. In Colorado, fish are changing sex at rapid rates, reportedly due to the estrogen dribbling into Boulder’s Wastewater that’s concentrated enough to turn males into females.
Now, we can add sea coral to the list of organisms that are changing sex as a response to environmental factors: Israeli scientists report that Japanese corals change their sex to survive the pressures of climate change.
Zoologist Yossi Loya from Tel Aviv University discovered that female mushroom coral becomes male when the ocean floor gets too hot. Even a shift in a few degrees in temperature can be detrimental to coral, causing it to bleach and even die. In order to cope with the added stress of climate change, female corals adapt by changing their gender.
To see if a whale’s libido is going full-throttle, grab a pair of nylons and head to the ocean, reports the New Scientist:
There’s a mysterious black goo floating off the Alaskan coast, and no one is quite sure what it is. A helicopter flying over the area spotted a strand of the dark stuff, which is easily visible on the bright white ice floating in the Arctic Ocean, and followed it for 15 miles.
It’s hard enough for us humans to fight for a mate. But for the now-extinct mussel-like creatures known as ostracods, which lived on Earth about 100 million years ago, “getting in” was only part of the battle.
Scientists may have been celebrating the new administration since before Obama entered the Oval Office, but he is now an official recipient of one of the greatest honors in science: A 
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