cafecuriosity

Kit Kat Snaps

  If you're a big cat fan and like them rare and little seen, then the Acinonyx jubatus hecki - the Saharan Cheetah is for you. Only about 250 of the graceful cats roam the Sahara desert and vast savannas of Algeria, Niger, Mail, Bukina-Faso and Togo. Naturally, scientists got all het up when four of the graceful felines were immortalized in camera traps set by a combined team fromZoological Society of London, Office du Parc Nationale de l'Ahaggar and the Universite de Bejaia.  http://www.wcs.org/353624/wcs_seeing_spots_in_the_sahara  Image: Farid Belbachir/ZSL/OPNA, Wildlife Conservation Society

Across India By Frog!

What do you get when you combine an Indian and a Belgian biologist? Answer - a frog finding frenzy in the leafy forests of India's Western Ghats region! Proving that instant gratification doesn't come easy in the frog world, biologists Biju and Bossuyt spent 10 long years of field studies in the Ghat. From 2005 through to 2008, Biju and Bossuyt have added 18 new species to India's frog tally.

This month they published their discovery of 12 new frog species! In the process, they rediscovered the Travancore bullfrong (Philautus travancoricus) previously considered lost to science, having not been sighted for over 100 years. The Ghats, renowned for their biological diversity are under threat from clearing for plantations and housing.   http://www.linnean.org/index.php?id=428   Image: 1. Philautus akroparallagi, 2. New species, S. Bihu, www.frogindia.org

Cancer's Delayed Fuze

If anyone doubts how history continues to haunt us, you only have to consider the fate of the tropical Isla de Vieques off Puerto Rico. Twenty one miles long and 5 miles wide, it was once part of the Spanish Virgin Islands. In 1948 the U.S. navy arrived and nicked 70% of the island. In 1977 the Navy scuttled the hulk of the former USS Killen, a WWII Fletcher class destroyer. The Killen had been used as a guided missile target ship from 1961 - 1969. Indeed the area was used as a What wasn't well known was the Killen was also a target in Operation Hardtack a series of nuclear bomb tests carried out in the Pacific in 1958.

Frog Safe Haven Found In Columbia

While CafeCuriosity has been off exploring what triggers tourists' curiosity, an expedition to Columbia's Tacarcuna area of the Darian (a biological 'hot spot') near the Panama border has found curiosities of its own. Better known for its notoriously anti-curiosity drug cartels and endemic violence, the wild Darian region proved to harbor 10 amphibian species believed to be new to science

Mighty Oak Falls

Is this an echo of the UK finance sector? A 250-year-old Lucombe oak toppled over last weekend and died of old age. First planted in the 1760's by William Lucombe, the oak was the centerpiece of Phear Park in Exmouth. With a mighty girth of 26ft (rivalling some banker's expense accounts), it was the biggest of its kind in the world. The echoes of the finance sector do not end there, East Devon district gardeners now have to clean up the mess and decide what to do with the shattered trunk! Like the banking foiasco, the size of the problem dwarfs the human scale! All is not lost however acorns from the oak were collected last year. One of the oak's germinated protegy may yet replace it. If only the banking sector proves to be as easy to revive! Image: APEX, www.exmouthjournal.co.uk

Goosing Dasornis emuinus

Growing up on the family farm, my mortal enemies were the geese that lorded over all other denizens of our dam. Belligerent, bad tempered and always ready to chase me down the drive to our farm house, those geese and I were locked in eternal combat (its no coincidence that Christmas was my favourite time of the year because we culled the flock!). Happily I didn't have to contend with Dasornis emuinus, a 50 million year old relative of our modern geese the size of a light aircraft! Dasornis emuinus once roamed the skies over what became South East England borne aloft by its 5 metre wingspan and grasping its prey with a beak lined with bony teeth. Now those could have given you a nasty nip!   http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121422201/abstract   Image: Dasornis emuinus, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum

Sandstorms Helping the Atlantic to Bloom

One of the benefits of relocating to a new and unfamiliar country is the change in perspective that comes with the physical move. Living in Dubai, you become accustomed to sand storms. However I didn't appreciate the interplay between those Saharan sand storms and the Atlantic Ocean. Just to demonstrate that everything connects, the Atlantic Ocean had been seen as an 'ocean desert', lacking the iron, nitrogen and phosphorous nutrients required for cyanobacteria to do their thing. Nitrogen is available from the atmosphere but there is little dissolved iron present in the surface ocean and almost no phosphorous. However, those sandstorms spread across the Atlantic bringing with them the missing iron and phosphorous trace elements. What was once thought of as a wet desert actually supports thriving populations of  cyanobacteria. Next time I'm cursing the sand storms, I may just pause to appreciate the web of connections linking the Gulf with Africa, Europe and the Atlantic Ocean!   http://www.liv.ac.uk/news/press_releases/2008/07/saharan-dust-storms.htm   Image: 1 & 2. View of Atlantic from deck of research vessel, 3. Saharan sand storm, iStockphoto, Christian Peeters

Taking the Plunge in Brazil's Abrolhos

It's a gloomy time to be a marine biologist if you specialize in coral reefs. Coral bleaching, ocean acidification and increasing UV levels are contributing to prognostications of a dismal future for reef lovers. A ray of sunshine peeped through this gloom recently, when biologists discovered Brazil's Abrolhos Bank was a much more extensive reef network than had been previously suspected. Extending between fifteen and two hundred kilometers off the coast of Brazil's Bahai state, the reefs plunge from 20 meters down to 73 meters and are teeming with sea life. The reefs are biological hotspots, recording population densities 30 times higher than the better known shallow reefs. In one stroke, researchers have doubled the size of the South Atlantic's reef structure. Ironically, the reefs have survived mainly because no-one knew they were there, which is just as well as many of the fish, mollusks and soft corals are only found on the Abrolhos shelf. Question is, will the reefs still be there in twenty years time, or will global warming, coastal development, offshore drilling and over-fishing overwhelm them?   http://www.conservation.org/newsroom/pressreleases/Pages/New-Reefs-in-Brazil.aspx   Image: 1. Black grouper, Mycteroperca bonaci, Abrolhos Bank, Brazil, RB Francini-Fiho, 2. Dog snapper, Lutjanus jocu, Abrolhos Bank, Brazil, RB Francini-Fiho.

Frequency Hopping Frogs

Just when you think you know a bit about frogs, along comes China's concave-eared torrent frog Odorrana tormota to confound us! This little frog lives near noisy springs in central China. Like Felix the Cat, Odorrana tormota has a bag of tricks - if the background noise generated by rushing water drowns out the calls of prospective mates or rivals, it can modulate its ears to pick up different high frequency or ultrasonic frequencies at will, making it the only animal with this ability. Odorrana tormota does this by opening and closing its Eustachian tubes (tubes connecting the middle ear to the pharynx) varying their sensitivity to high frequency and ultrasounds. This will be quite annoying to textbook authors on frog anatomy who categorize frog Eustachian tubes as being permanently open. Using this acute hearing, male Odorrana tormota can localize sound and home in on females with an error of less than 1 percent! My wife was exultant - at last, a male that actually listens!   http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/08/0721frogears.html   Image: The concave-eared torrent frog Odorrana tormota, Albert Feng

Oops It Was Us (47,000 Years Ago)

It is amazing how serendipity can re-shape scientific theory. After decades of arguing over whether human hunting or climate change was responsible for driving the world's megafawna into extinction, one island bobbed literally in the eye of the hurricane. Tasmania once boasted a thriving zoo of marsupials resembling; leopards, rhinos, ground sloths, and a brace of short and long-faced kangaroos that browsed the lush vegetation like antelopes. Humans had been absolved of culpability for their demise mainly because the megafawna was thought to have died out before hunters were able to cross the land bridge from mainland Australia (approx 43,000 years ago). No longer! A group of cavers exploring a network of caves under Mt Cripps in north-west Tasmania stumbled serendipitously over skeletons of Tasmania's megafawna species. Alas, these remains showed some species were wandering Tasmania's misty forests 2,000 years after human hunters found their way onto the island. Given the climate was relatively stable around that time, human over-hunting has been fingered for their demise. 

PS. It's all Darwin's fault! Ever since Darwin discovered the remains of giant sloths in South America in the 1830's, debate has raged over whether human hunting or climate change was the driving force behind the mass extinctions.

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/newsprehistoric.shtml   Image: 1. Artist's reconstruction of Palorchestes azael, a ground sloth like marsupial weighing 500 kg, University of Exeter, 2. Skull of Palorchestes azael, University of Exeter