NOT ALL OF US ARE BLESSED WITH DAVID ATTENBOROUGH’S khaki pants and keen botanical acumen. Luckily, our Plants & Animals chapter is here to keep you informed about the latest, most important, and downright piss-yourself-hilarious developments from the scientific study of the natural world.
No one’s quite sure how life got started on Earth, though there are plenty of theories. The “RNA world” hypothesis, for example, says that life spontaneously emerged from RNA—a molecule a bit like DNA—which is capable of both storing the genes that encode life and making copies of itself. There are other ideas. Some scientists even believe in a concept known as “panspermia,” which says that life on Earth may have actually begun elsewhere in the universe and was then transported to our planet inside comets and asteroids. There is certainly evidence that microbes can survive the harsh vacuum of space for extended periods.
What scientists do more or less agree on is how those primitive early organisms grew and developed into the diverse plethora of complex living things that our planet is teeming with today. In 1859, Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution by natural selection. Its core premise is that species adapt to their environment. Random mutations creep in from one generation to the next, some of which make a species better able to thrive in its surroundings—and these ultimate-survivor organisms are then more likely to pass the beneficial traits down to their offspring. Rinse and repeat.
But the environment is the key. Put some bugs in the desert and they’ll evolve into new forms of life that are suited to the arid conditions. Chuck the same bugs in the ocean and, after many generations, very different life-forms will emerge.
One controversial consequence of this is that modern humans are now thought to have descended from primates, our closest living relatives being chimpanzees and their cousins, bonobos. We became a species in our own right, Homo sapiens, in Africa several hundred thousand years ago, before migrating to the rest of the world.
I say “controversial,” though that only applies if you believe that human beings miraculously popped up one day in the Garden of Eden. “Primate change deniers,” or creationists, as they’re more generally known, believe that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and that life here was fashioned in seven days by a bearded man on a cloud—despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary in the fossil record. (Well, just to be clear, there’s actually nothing in the fossil record to indicate that God, if he does exist, isn’t a bearded man—though there’s also nothing to suggest that he exists in the first place.)
Evolution is still driving the development of species today. Although, in the case of human beings, we’re altering our environment and our bodies at a much faster pace than natural adaptation can keep up with. One consequence of this is that some traits we’ve evolved are now woefully mismatched to the environment we’ve created for ourselves. For example, our natural cravings for calorie-rich, sugary, and fatty foods, which evolved at a time when these commodities were scarce, now do us very few favors in the modern age of plenty. Indeed, they have created an obesity epidemic. Futurists have suggested that we could turn the situation on its head, using technologies such as genetic modification and nanotech to take control and steer our own evolutionary path, tailoring our species to become “transhuman.”
For now, though, we’ll have to make do with mother nature, which is both beautiful and cruel. Coming up, we report on the shocking “Chimp civil war” that broke out between two rival factions of chimpanzees living in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Observed and documented by naturalist Jane Goodall, the war was brutally violent, and didn’t stop until one side had completely eradicated the other. More proof, as if it were needed, that humans and great apes really are cut from the same cloth.
You can also find out about the smallest dinosaur footprints, dating from about 110 million years ago and measuring just half an inch (1 cm) across, found in South Korea. And check out the discovery that spiders actually nurse their young with milk (a trait previously thought to be almost exclusive to mammals).
Of course, there’s also the usual grab bag of “human interest” stories. Wondering why your hangovers are getting worse? It could just be that evolution is cranking up the symptoms to warn us off the booze and thus guard us from its long-term health effects. Survival of the fittest and all that. Though perhaps it’s for the best—other research is suggesting that the majority of coffee plants could be heading for extinction. Catch up on both stories here.
Have you ever seen wombat doo-doo? If you have, you’ll know that it’s rather unusual for the simple reason that it’s cubic in shape. Apparently, this allows the wombat to stack its poo up and thus mark its territory on the slopes where it lives—without the poo rolling away. Clever, eh? Recently, scientists embarked on a landmark study of wombat bowels to figure out exactly how they achieve this remarkable feat.
So, from now on, should you ever happen upon a wombat pulling a strained face reminiscent of a crooning boy-band singer trying to shit a small car… you’ll know why.
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BRUTAL CHIMPANZEE WAR WAS LIKELY DRIVEN BY POWER, AMBITION, AND JEALOUSY
by Josh Davis
WHEN A NEW LEADER WAS CROWNED, IT WAS HOPED that the community would settle down and peace would prevail. But two younger pretenders had other ideas, their lofty ambitions luring them to try to seize power for themselves. The resulting fracture in the group led to years of brutal warfare, during which raids were conducted, ambushes set, and no one was above murder.
No, that’s not a plot outline from Game of Thrones, but an account of the only known fully documented chimpanzee civil war. The conflict became known as the Four-Year War of Gombe—proof, if it was needed, that chimps and humans are two of a kind. A study has reexamined the episodes that led up to the war, to figure out what sparked it.
The events were recorded by English primatologist Jane Goodall after a decade of watching the community of chimps at Gombe National Park, in Tanzania, at a time when chimpanzees were still thought to be peaceful, forest-living apes. Between the years of 1974 and 1978, she observed the extreme violence that erupted as the one community seemingly split and the apes waged a savage war. What she witnessed truly disturbed her.
“Often when I woke in the night, horrific pictures sprang unbidden to my mind—Satan [one of the apes], cupping his hand below Sniff’s chin to drink the blood that welled from a great wound on his face.… Jomeo tearing a strip of skin from Dé’s thigh; Figan, charging and hitting, again and again, the stricken, quivering body of Goliath, one of his childhood heroes,” Goodall wrote in her memoir.
But the cause of the war has always been up for debate. Was it a natural event that was occurring independently of Goodall, who was simply observing the apes, or was it sparked by the feeding station that she had set up in the forest?
After digitizing all of Goodall’s original field notes from her time at Gombe and then sifting through them, a US team of researchers built up an impressively detailed picture of the social interactions and friendships between the chimps, and mapped how these changed. They published their results in 2018 in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
They found that the seeds for the conflict had been present for some years. While at the end of the 1960s, all males were intermingling quite happily, by 1971, fractures in the community were beginning to emerge. The northern and southern males were starting to spend less time with each other, and encounters were becoming increasingly aggressive.
Within a year, the two sides had become distinct, with the chimpanzees staying and socializing only within their own groups, a full two years before the fighting spilled over into all-out warfare. The researchers suspect that the divide occurred after an ape called Humphrey became the alpha male, something the southern males Charlie and Hugh disagreed with.
Over the next four years, and a campaign of skirmishes, violence, and kidnapping, Humphrey and his northern community killed every single male in the southern group and took over their territory, as well as the only three surviving females. In fact, this latest study shows that it was likely the limited number of mature females in the forest at the time that precipitated the conflict.
The researchers suggest that—not unlike the behavior we see in some human communities today—the infighting among the males was largely driven by ambition, jealousy, and the desire for power. As such, it would likely have occurred with or without Goodall being there.
51
EVOLUTION COULD DESTROY OUR ABILITY TO TOLERATE ALCOHOL
by Rosie McCall
RECENT STUDIES HAVE SHOWN THAT WE ARE STILL evolving. Natural selection picks out genes that make each new generation of humans stronger and fitter than the last, and better equipped to survive in its environment.
Research published in Nature Ecology and Evolution suggests we could even be evolving a gene that diminishes our tolerance for alcohol.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed the genomes of some 2,500 people from 26 populations across four continents, using data collected by the 1000 Genomes Project, an international collaboration to study human genetic diversity. The team then looked for specific genetic traits that appear in disparate populations. They might find, for example, that a particular set of mutations has occurred in populations located in parts of both Africa and Asia. For this to have happened, the mutation must have emerged independently in these two different populations and persisted.
Interestingly, one such emerging group of mutations were modifications to the genes controlling alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), which could change how our bodies process alcohol. ADH is the enzyme that breaks down alcohol, which it does by metabolizing it into a compound called acetaldehyde. This toxic chemical is responsible for your hangover the morning after a night out. Fortunately, the body is able to turn this nasty stuff into the non-toxic substance acetate relatively quickly, and we feel better after a day or so.
However, evolution could be finding a way to curb humanity’s love of alcohol by creating new variants of ADH that affect our tolerance for booze and our body’s ability to process acetaldehyde. Essentially, it means we would feel ill after just a small amount of drink.
So far, these genes have only been detected in East Asia and West Africa, but time will tell how far they spread.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism estimates that, each year in the US, 88,000 people die from alcohol-related causes. By imbuing humans with an aversion to alcohol, evolution may actually be boosting our survival chances in an altogether unexpected way.
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DON’T THINK ARACHNIDS ARE LOVING? THIS SPIDER NURSES ITS YOUNG WITH MILKY LIQUID
by Madison Dapcevich
DESPITE THEIR CREEPY, CRAWLY APPEARANCE, SOME species of spiders make for exceptionally caring parents. Even more impressive, Toxeus magnus, a species of jumping spider, nurses its young much as mammals do, feeding its spiderlings nutritious milk packed with four times the amount of protein found in cow’s milk, according to a study published in November 2018 in the journal Science.
Surprised? You’re not alone. Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences first became interested in the odd behavior of Toxeus magnus when they noticed that the spiders nest in the same way ants do, creating a space to shelter several spiders at a time.
“It’s a puzzling observation for a species assumed to be non-colonial,” said study author Chen Zhanqi, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in a statement. “It’s possible that the jumping spider might provide either prolonged maternal care or delayed dispersal. We decided to test it.”
The mother spider wasn’t seen to bring food back to the nest, but her babies continued to grow. So, the team did what any responsible scientist would do and grabbed a few microscopes. Upon closer observation, they could see droplets of nutritious fluid “leaking from the mother’s epigastric furrow”—a specially designed sexual organ found on the abdomen. Mom would deposit these milk droplets on the nest, where her babies could then come and suck them up. After the first week, she stopped depositing the droplets and instead allowed the spiderlings to suck directly from her. When researchers blocked milk production, the spiders stopped developing and died, showing their “complete dependence on the milk supply.”
This behavior was observed both in a laboratory and a field setting, and lasted until the spiders were at least 20 days old (at which point they are able to feed themselves) and generally until the spiders had reached their sub-adult stage at around 40 days. During this time, Mom was also seen taking care of the nest and helping her babies to shed their exoskeletons.
When given both maternal care and milk, more than three-quarters of the hatched offspring survived to adulthood and reached a normal body size. Though Mom treated all her babes the same, she only allowed her daughters to return to the nest after reaching sexual maturity. Adult sons were attacked if they tried to come home, probably to reduce the likelihood of inbreeding.
Lactation is a defining characteristic of mammals—and there are only a few known cases of it in other classes of the animal kingdom. The researchers hypothesize that arachnids most likely evolved the ability to lactate in response to predation risk, uncertain food access, and as a way to survive in harsh living environments.
“Our findings demonstrate that mammal-like milk provisioning and parental care for sexually mature offspring have also evolved in invertebrates,” said Chen. “We anticipate that our findings will encourage a reevaluation of the evolution of lactation and extended parental care and their occurrences across the animal kingdom.”
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A SCIENTIST HAS BEEN EATEN ALIVE BY A CROCODILE
by Tom Hale
A SCIENTIST WAS EATEN ALIVE BY A CROCODILE IN JANUARY 2019 after falling into an enclosure at a research facility in Indonesia.
The body of Deasy Tuwo, a 44-year-old woman, was found on the morning of January 11, 2019 in an outside pool at CV Yosiki Laboratory in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Police say a 17-foot-long (5-meter-long) crocodile leapt up against the wall of the enclosure during feeding time and grabbed the researcher, pulling her into the pool and eating parts of her body.
“We were curious when we looked at the crocodile pool. There was a floating object; it was Deasy’s body,” said Erling Rumengan, a colleague of Deasy, according to the UK newspaper the Mirror.
“She was the head of the lab. A quiet person. We’re confused about how this has happened,” said another colleague.
The fate of the crocodile is unknown, however, photographs from the scene show the animal tied to a truck by a huge crowd of people. Local media reports claim the croc was being transported to a wildlife center in Bitung district for tests to be carried out on its stomach contents. Only half of the scientist’s remains were found in its enclosure.
Crocodile attacks are often fatal. Worldwide, crocodiles are estimated to kill about 1,000 humans per year. Most of these deaths are caused by the Nile crocodile and the saltwater crocodile, largely because these species live near human populations.
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THE “REVERSE ZOMBIE” TICK IS SPREADING AROUND AMERICA, CAUSING A STRANGE CONDITION AS IT GOES
by James Felton
A RARE BREED OF TICK THAT CAN CAUSE EVERYTHING from intense itchiness and stomach cramping to difficulty breathing and even death has been spreading across the USA. The tick is also spreading something far stranger as it goes: an allergy to meat.
The lone star tick, aka the “reverse zombie” tick, makes you shy away from meat, rather than craving it (as a bite from a zombie might). One bite from the tick, in fact, and you can develop a life-threatening allergy to a sugar molecule found in red meat.
Once you’ve been bitten, your immune system can become triggered by the presence of galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose (alpha gal) and go into overdrive—meaning the next time you eat meat from a mammal that produces this sugar (e.g., pork and beef), you may find yourself breaking out in massive hives or going into anaphylactic shock.
The condition was only recently discovered in 2004 when immunologist Thomas Platts-Mills found that a group of cancer patients were all suffering from the same symptoms, Wired reports.
The patients were all on the same drug—Cetuximab—but those living in the southeastern USA were 10 times more likely to report symptoms such as itching, swelling, and low blood pressure. This was quite strange, as you wouldn’t expect symptoms to be so area-specific.
Platts-Mills began to investigate the blood of the symptomatic patients, and found antibodies for alpha gal—the sugar found in meat. Cetuximab is full of the sugar, as it is derived from genetically modified mice. Eventually, he discovered that 80 percent of the allergic patients also reported having been bitten by a tick. Platts-Mills has since shown that bites from the lone star tick lead to a 20-fold increase in alpha gal antibodies. Researchers are now trying to figure out why saliva from the ticks causes the immune system to attack alpha gal as a foreign body.
“There’s a lot we don’t know about the allergy,” Dave Neitzel, an epidemiologist with the Minnesota Department of Health, told the Herald Review. Some people who get bitten by the ticks don’t develop the allergy at all.
“There’s something really special about this tick,” Jeff Wilson, an asthma, allergy, and immunology fellow in Platts-Mills’s group, told Wired. “Just a few bites and you can render anyone really, really allergic.”
While the team investigates why the tick causes a meat allergy, the only way to protect yourself is to use bug repellent in areas where the lone star tick dwells.
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THIS IS WHAT EATING PEOPLE DOES TO THE HUMAN BODY
by Tom Hale
CANNIBALISM IS ONE OF THE DARKEST TABOOS IN MANY cultures. But beyond the social stigma of eating fellow humans, the practice brings with it a strange, and fascinating, danger.
In 1961, a young Australian medical researcher called Michael Alpers headed to the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, inspired to merge his two passions of medicine and adventure. Here, he began to investigate a mysterious condition suffered by the Fore people, a scarcely touched tribe that lived deep in the mountains and practiced cannibalism.
“The body was eaten out of love as well as for gastronomic appreciation,” Alpers wrote in one of his academic texts about the Fore people.
They called the condition “kuru.” Every year, kuru would kill up to 200 members of the tribe, sometimes in startling circumstances. Starting with tremors and an impaired ability to work, sufferers went on to develop a total loss of bodily function, depression, and often emotional instability, which sometimes exhibited itself as hysterical laughter. When word of the disease spread to the West, the media sensationally dubbed it the “laughing death.”
The Fore people believed it was a terrible curse, but Alpers wanted to find a more scientific explanation. Curiously, the condition did not appear to be caused by a virus, bacteria, fungus, or parasite. Equally strange, it was only women and children who fell sick.
This made the researchers begin to wonder: Perhaps it had something to do with the Fore’s funerary ritual of cannibalism. The practice involved only the women and children eating the brains, while the men would just eat the flesh.
By 1966, Alpers and a team of other scientists were starting to catch on to the fact that kuru was caused by so-called “prions.” This discovery paved the way for Baruch S. Blumberg and D. Carleton Gajdusek to sweep up a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for “their discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases.”
Prions are proteins that have become twisted and turned to the “dark side.” These infectious agents lose their functions and acquire the ability to turn other normal proteins into prions, too, thereby becoming infectious.
Some of the more infamous diseases caused by prions are BSE, aka “mad cow disease,” and its human equivalent variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD)—two degenerative brain disorders that share an uncanny resemblance to kuru. It’s believed that BSE is most likely the result of cows eating nervous system tissue of other cows that has been recycled into feed.
So, eating human brains might not always be the best of ideas, even before you get into the whole array of blood-borne illnesses that you could contract. However, here’s where the story takes a turn. A study published in Nature in 2015 found that the Fore people who regularly ate brains had developed a resistance to prion diseases, a discovery that is now helping scientists understand degenerative brain diseases, such as mad cow disease, vCJD, and some cases of dementia.
What doesn’t kill you, it seems, really does make you stronger.
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Mountain Gorillas Are No Longer “Critically Endangered” after a Successful Conservation Effort
by Jonathan O’Callaghan
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced in 2018 that they were updating the status of mountain gorillas from “Critically Endangered” to simply “Endangered,” after a campaign to bring them back from the edge of extinction had increased the number of these animals in the wild to more than 1,000.
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Zoo Creates World’s First Reptile Swim-Gym to Fight Snake Obesity
by Stephen Luntz
No one likes a flabby snake. So Melbourne Zoo has found a way to keep its reptiles buff with the creation of a water gym that zoo officials think is the first in the world. The basic setup is a watery version of a treadmill, with the flow rate adjustable to suit the pace of the animal.
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WHY DO MEN HAVE NIPPLES?
by Rosie McCall
TO PUT IT BLUNTLY, CERTAIN THINGS IN LIFE ARE UTTERLY pointless—pet rocks, for instance. See also: shoe umbrellas, goldfish walkers, diet water, and… male nipples.
In fact, the very existence of male nipples is such a conundrum that “Why do men have nipples?” racked up an average of 22,000 monthly Google searches in 2016. It appears that we are just as clueless as Erasmus Darwin (grandfather to Charles), who pondered the very same question back in the 18th century.
However, while there might not be a purpose as such, there is a biological reason why men have nipples. And it all comes down to embryonic development in the womb.
In the first few weeks after conception, the male and female embryo follow the exact same developmental path. It is not until the sixth to seventh week of gestation that reproductive organs start to develop and the fetus begins to differentiate by sex.
Specifically, this is when a gene called SRY starts to take effect. The SRY gene is basically an instruction manual for the production of the “sex-determining region Y protein,” which initiates the development of the testes in male fetuses. Once these have formed—at around the nine-week mark—the male body starts to generate testosterone and the fetus begins to display more and more sex-specific biological characteristics.
But by this point, it is too late. At least as far as nipples are concerned, because the mammary glands begin to develop in the very first few weeks of gestation and before the SRY gene has had a chance to kick in. This means that while male nipples may be smaller than female nipples, they do still exist.
Admittedly, this doesn’t explain why men have retained such a seemingly useless body part—if it’s biologically useless, why haven’t they evolved to go without?
It could be that male nipples do serve a purpose, just one that we don’t quite understand yet. That purpose could be sexual (like women, many men can enjoy nipple stimulation) or social (though extremely uncommon in most societies today, men in the Aka Pygmy tribe in central Africa are known to nurse their babies). Or, perhaps, even biological. There are cases of men lactating, though this is usually in response to starvation or hormone imbalances and is very, very rare. That is to say, if it happens to you, get it checked out ASAP.
The most likely explanation, scientists say, is that male nipples aren’t detrimental in any way, so removing them just isn’t a priority, evolutionarily speaking. Like wisdom teeth, the appendix, and Darwin’s point (the vestigial remnant of the pointed primate ear that some people have), the male nipple is just another quirk of evolution that we’re stuck with.
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WHALES BECAME REALLY STRESSED DURING WORLD WAR II, STUDY SHOWS
by Jonathan O’Callaghan
RESEARCHERS HAVE USED A RATHER INTRIGUING METHOD to find out what makes whales stressed, and—surprise, surprise—it looks like we’re to blame.
In a study published in the journal Nature Communications in November 2018, a team led by Baylor University in Texas analyzed the earwax of fin, humpback, and blue whales living in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans between 1870 and 2016. These species are all “baleen whales,” distinguished by the double blowhole on the tops of their heads, and this is the first study to look at stress over time in these creatures.
Earwax accumulates in whales, forming a plug of material that preserves a chemical record of each animal’s life. Analyzing it layer by layer, the researchers were able to measure the concentration of cortisol—which is a stress-response hormone—and determine how it had changed with time. And this enabled them to match up the whales’ stress levels with key moments in history.
Amazingly, the researchers were able to show that cortisol levels were at their highest in the 1960s, when whaling was at its peak—and up to 150,000 of the animals were “harvested.” The animals were also highly stressed during periods of increased whaling in the 1920s and 1930s.
But cortisol levels were also found to increase during World War II. Despite whaling activities actually declining during the conflict, the researchers believe that the war itself could have caused the whales to become stressed.
“The stressors associated with activities specific to World War II may supplant the stressors associated with industrial whaling for baleen whales,” Dr. Sascha Usenko, one of the study’s co-authors, said in a statement.
“We surmised that wartime activities, such as underwater detonation, naval battles including ships, planes, and submarines, as well as increased vessel numbers, contributed to increased cortisol concentrations during this period of reduced whaling.”
Whale cortisol levels reached their lowest point in the mid-1970s, when whaling decreased to reportedly zero in the Northern Hemisphere. However, they have increased steadily from then to the present day, suggesting that other stresses, perhaps including climate change, may be playing a part.
“While the generated stress profile spans nearly 150 years, we show that these whales experienced survivor stress,” said Dr. Stephen Trumble, the study’s lead author, in a statement. “Exposure to the indirect effects of whaling, including ship noise, ship proximity, and constant harassment, results in elevated stress hormones in whales.”
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Majority of Coffee Species Threatened with Extinction
by Rachel Baxter
According to a 2019 study from the UK’s Royal Botanic Gardens (RBC), Kew, 60 percent of wild coffee species are threatened with extinction, as a result of climate change. Although we get our coffee from cultivated crops, we rely on wild coffee plants to sustain them through cross-pollination.
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Cats Are Not Inherently Antisocial Creatures. It’s Just You
by Rosie McCall
Researchers at Oregon State University recruited 46 cats to see how well they coped with human company. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the animals preferred spending time with people who were enthusiastic and attentive, as opposed to those who ignored them. The research was published in the journal Behavioral Processes in 2019.
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WORLD’S SMALLEST DINOSAUR FOOTPRINTS FOUND, MEASURING LESS THAN HALF AN INCH
by Katy Evans
THE WORLD’S SMALLEST DINOSAUR FOOTPRINTS HAVE been found in South Korea, measuring a tiny 0.4 inch (1 cm) long, making this unknown species of raptor the size of a sparrow.
The tiny footprints date back to around 110 million years ago, when dinosaurs shared the Earth with both mammals and birds. The tracks were found in a dried lake bed in Jinju City, South Korea, which has yielded an abundance of other Cretaceous-period creatures, from birds and pterosaurs to crocodilians and mammals.
“These new tracks are just 0.4 inch (1 cm) in length, which means the dinosaur that made them was an animal you could have easily held in your hand,” said Dr. Anthony Romilio of the University of Queensland in a statement. “They are the world’s smallest dinosaur tracks.”
With their characteristic three-clawed shape, the new footprints were immediately identified as those of a raptor—a bird-like, carnivorous, theropod dinosaur, made famous by its oversize depiction in the Jurassic Park movies. The researchers, however, are unsure of the particular species, or even if they were adults or juveniles.
“We do have tiny raptors known from fossil bones from China. Fossil bones of diminutive adult raptors called Microraptor were about the size of crows, with feet about 1 inch (2.5 cm) long,” Dr. Romilio told IFLScience. “Even though Microraptor was very small (by dinosaur standards) it was still too large for our 0.4-inch (1-cm) tiny South Korean tracks. So perhaps this favors the tracks being made by baby raptors.”
The species has been assigned to a new “dromaeosaurid ichnogenus,” dubbed Dromaeosauriformipes rarus, which means “rare footprints made by a member of the raptor family known as dromaeosaurs.” Dromaeosaurids are a family of small- to medium-sized, feathered therapods. And ichnogenera, which means “footprint group,” are any genus that is only known through trace fossils, such as fossilized footprints, rather than actual remains.
Dr. Romilio has created a reconstruction of what Dromaeosauriformipes may have looked like. “I have covered them in downy feathers, with bold horizontal striping to be highly visible to each other, and maybe to be easily recognizable by a possible parent raptor,” he explained, adding that this is very much a best guess, and by no means ironclad. The work was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
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VERY GOOD PUPPY DIGS UP 13,000-YEAR-OLD MAMMOTH FOSSIL IN ITS OWNER’S BACKYARD
by Aliyah Kovner
In September 2018, a Labrador retriever named Scout dug up a 13,000-year-old fossilized woolly mammoth tooth.
As reported by the Seattle-based outlet Komo News, owner Kirk Lacewell noticed that Scout was carrying something around in his mouth after he dug a shallow hole in the fenced backyard, on Whidbey Island, Washington.
After washing and drying Scout’s find, Lacewell realized that it looked a lot like a bone. He sent pictures to paleontologists at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum, where the scientists quickly agreed that the object was a mammoth tooth and estimated its age at around 13,000 years.
Whidbey Island was home to a large population of woolly mammoths before the species went extinct at the end of the last ice age, approximately 11,000 years ago.
Lacewell has put the tooth on his living room mantle, a place of honor that is conveniently out of the dog’s reach.
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WE NOW KNOW HOW WOMBATS PRODUCE THEIR UNIQUE CUBIC POOS
by Stephen Luntz
LIKE OTHER HERBIVORES, WOMBATS POOP A LOT, BUT unlike any other known species, their droppings are almost cubic, the size and shape of dice. Biologists have long had an explanation for why they do this, but most recently they have also figured out how the wombat digestive tract achieves this defecatory feat.
Any trait exhibited by one animal species alone among all the millions on Earth is interesting. The shape of wombat droppings is thought to help the animals mark their territory, by allowing them to produce tall piles that don’t roll down the often steep hillsides of their habitat.
However, many other species use dung to mark their territory, and have never come up with this useful adaptation, for the simple reason that it isn’t easy to construct a digestive system that produces cubic, rather than broadly cylindrical shapes. However, the wombat’s secret has finally been cracked and presented at the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics 2018 conference, held in Atlanta, Georgia.
The work was led by Dr. Patricia Yang of the Georgia Institute of Technology. “The first thing that drove me to this is that I have never seen anything this weird in biology,” Yang said in a statement. “I didn’t even believe it was true at the beginning. I Googled it and saw a lot about cube-shaped wombat poop, but I was skeptical.”
So Yang, who studies fluid dynamics within the body, did the appropriately scientific thing. She obtained wombats’ digestive systems (from animals killed by cars) and inflated their intestines. The widespread assumption that wombat anuses must be square has long been debunked, and Yang also contradicted the previous theory that the cubic shape is formed at the top of the intestine.
Instead, the contents of the wombat’s stomach come down the gut in a semi-liquid state, only to solidify in the last 8 percent of the intestine. Here, alternating rigid and flexible stretches of the intestine walls apply very different strains to the incipient stools, making corners and edges, and producing the characteristic cubic shapes.
Curiosity-inspired research always attracts charges of wasting taxpayer funds, but Yang thinks there could be a practical payoff. “We currently have only two methods to manufacture cubes: we mold it, or we cut it. Now we have this third method,” she said. Whether replica wombat intestines will prove advantageous in manufacturing, however, remains to be seen.
One thing Yang hasn’t investigated yet is the question of just how painful the whole process is for wombats, who are constantly shitting out small bricks.
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Step Aside Knickers, There’s an Even Bigger Cow in Town Called Dozer
by Jonathan O’Callaghan
Knickers, Australia’s giant 6.4-foot-tall (1.95-meter) cow that made news headlines in 2018 has now been beaten by an even bigger cow from Canada. Called Dozer, this bovine measures in at 6.5 feet (1.98 meters). However, both of them fall short of the record, held by an Italian ox called Bellino, which measures 6.8 feet (2.07 meters).
