Plants and Animals

Last week, residents of Dzerzhinsk, Russia, spotted in a dazzling sight as a bright blue dog wandered the streets near an abandoned chemical plant. Users took to twitter to share pictures of Striking Mind, which quickly went viral through social media. The dogs first posted on the Russian social media site VK.com before becoming more prevalent on Twitter.

While this may seem like a sci-fi, radiation-induced mutation, there are explanations that are more tragic. The dogs appeared to be living in the surrounding area under stress that come contact with toxic chemicals leaked from a nearby factory. Previously owned by Orgsteklo, which went bankrupt in 2015, the factory is a complex part of an abandoned building that produces plexiglass and hydrocyanic acid. Possibly the dogs came in contact with the copper sulfate used in the production, which has a pale-blue color, killing their fur in the process.

“Homeless dogs are rampant across the region. Presumably, they found some chemical residue in a building – copper sulfate, for example, had rolled into it. Several years ago, I heard, noticed that some dogs painted in some unnatural colors. They found something no one controlled them. I cannot afford to disinfect homeless animals and their disinfection, “Andrea Mislivets, manager of Plexiglas Bankruptcy in Dzerzhinskoye, told Rhea Novosti in the newsletter.

Authorities in the Dzerzhinskoye region have had some discussions with Orgsteklo, who owns the complex so they can detain the dog to ensure their well-being. These chemicals can pose a serious risk to their health, so either ingestion or euthanasia needed to stop this cruelty. One week after the first report, animal welfare respondents gathered the dog and gave it a shelter. Experts believe that these chemicals will damage the dogs ’skin, but after testing by veterinary staff, all seven dogs were in good health. In even better news, two of the dogs have found a home, according to Rhea Novosti on Twitter.

Only the latest painted dogs not found. The phenomenon of the presence of mysterious colors in isolated dogs has revealed more than once in the past years, especially the bright blue dogs of 2017 in Mumbai.

A local company was spreading the colors in the Kasandi River, showing a local outrage that 11 stray dogs had painted. After a brief investigation, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board shut down the plant to prevent further pollution.

The new study, published in the Journal of Behavioral Ecology, is the first systematic analysis of wolf’s aggressive behavior, and the results reveal an overall lack of insight into these intelligent predators and dangerous perceptions among beavers. As part of the growing work of the Voyager Wolf project, this new study shows how they reject long-held assumptions about wolf hunting, showing that they have more strategies in their arsenal than letting go and exhausting their prey.

Although pack hunting of large animals such as mauve and bison is common in winter, wolves hunt beavers themselves in the dense boreal forests of North America and Eurasia, depending on the availability of food in the summer. As shown in the video below, beavers do not have the best eyesight when looking for wolf-in-waiting, but an animal that spends so little time on the ground is still not an easy kill. So, how do wolves do it?

More than 15,000 hours of field research and 962 predictive events attempted, after which the team had their answers. Of the total number of successful beaver hunters (214), 89-94 percent of the attack sites were downwind, which meant that beaver wolves had a very thin chance to smell. Beavers lack the vision they create with their noses and ears, and previous studies have shown that they use scents to keep (ornamental) eyes for predators. Although most observations did not put beavers on the menu, it understood that most wolves were terrified of their prey. In an email to IFLScience, the paper’s lead author, Dr. Thomas Gable, said, “We suspect that wolves never encounter beavers in most of these amazing endeavors.” “It is challenging to predict when the beavers will be on the ground at any given time and we suspect that wolves often waited in the territories and never came near the beaver.”

When hunting beavers, it seems that wolf patience hailed as a virtue that many people wait anywhere from four to 12 hours for a beaver to appear, and one determined wolf waits an incredible 30 hours. However, when it comes to this particular breed of prey, success is not simple as an element of surprise.  “While beavers may seem like easy prey to catch and kill, it’s far from the truth,” said Gabel, “with strong bites and sharp teeth. Not to mention, beavers rarely move away from the water, explained All Gable, which is probably the second largest contributor to a large number of failed offensive attempts.

In winter, these beavers may rely on a protective layer of ice to protect them from wolves, but in summer, they represent complementary feeding that wolves can land without the rest of the pack. Having access to small animals like beavers and deer means, they do not need so much backup and hunting alone provides more nutrition than group efforts. Wolf gable studies spend more time hunting alone than packs. This proves that the benefits of being responsible for your food supply outweigh the cost of sharing your catch with others, but the results of this cost-benefit-analysis will vary with the seasons.

In many ways, cancer is a disease of chance. Certain habits – such as smoking and substance abuse – or genetic predisposition will increase that chance, but every time a cell replicated, something goes wrong, causing the cells to regenerate out of control and turn into cancer. Therefore, it seems logical that two things would increase the chances of cancer: the number of replicating cells, i.e. the size of the organism; And how long the organism survives, which provides more replicas to be surprised. However, if that is the case, why do not elephants get cancer all the time?

In a new study published in the journal Life, scientists have discovered that elephants – and possibly other large terrestrial mammals – have shut down the entire arsenal of tumor-suppressing genes in developing tumor cells. Copies of these genes found in greater numbers than in other animals and may develop alongside their giant bodies to keep the species growing. The authors now believe that the secrecy of the new cancer therapy may lie in the genomes of larger animals.

“By determining how large, long-term species evolved better ways to combat cancer, we can learn something new about how evolution works and hopefully find ways to use that knowledge to inspire new cancer treatments,” says Post Doctoral researcher Juan Manuel Vazquez. The University of California, Berkeley said in a statement. 

The study involves exploring the genomes of elephants in search of tumor-suppressing genes, with additional copies to discover what could enhance their protection. Previous research has highlighted that elephants mimicked a well-known and important tumor suppressor gene TP53, which prevents cells from uncontrolled division. For further research, the researchers wanted to examine whether it was part of an isolated or broad evolutionary trend in TP53.

 “Is the trend normal? Alternatively, is the trend specific for a gene? We found that this is common: elephants have lots and lots and many extra copies of tumor suppressor genes, and they all probably contribute something to cancer prevention says Vincent Lynch, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Buffalo.

Interestingly, elephants are not the only ones with innate defenses against cancer. Other aphrodisiacs (including Elephant Crew, aardvarks, and Dugong) appear to have extra copies of the tumor suppressor gene. Despite being relatives of elephants, many of these animals are very small, implying that the imitations originated before or during the evolution of the giant body.  However, the elephants certainly came to the top. Across the Proboscidea (African shrub elephant, Asian elephant and African forest elephant) genomes they examined, researchers identified 12 unique rich pathways directly linked to cancer. These found only in large-bodied mammals, probably helping their boy development.

Unfortunately, excess copies of some tumor-suppressing genes can also be harmful to the animal, representing a variety of evolutionary businesses. They may protect against cancer, with increased expression of TP53 in rats being associated with a variety of other diseases, such as premenstrual syndrome. Researchers believe that this does not happen in elephants because ducks are under adequate gene control to prevent excessive expression, preventing negative effects.

If you are unfamiliar with centipedes, one thing you should know about them is that they are like hell. Fantastic, complex creatures sure, but a mobile ruler with poison and a mood does not make the moon a friend.  As expert hunters, they really wake up every day and choose violence, killing prey up to 15 times their weight (TW, if you like rats, do not click this link). Their venom is so effective that some Venezuelan centipedes can catch and kill much larger flying bats than they kill.

A new study published in the journal Nature Communications now reveals that something more interesting about centipede venom that is simply more effective than Dr. Ronald Jenner, an expert at the Natural History Museum in London, and Dr. from the University of Oslo and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. A genetic analysis of the toxin, led by a colleague of Dr Eivind Undheim, revealed for the first time that it contained weapons in the form of toxic proteins borrowed from bacteria and fungi.

The surprising discovery came as part of a larger study where Jenner and Undheim were looking to see if the protein in the centipede gene would have evolved anywhere in the tree of life outside the arthropods, a kind of fun critique of centipedes that centipedes sit firmly within. To be sure, they found evidence of several proteins of centimeter germs originating between bacteria and fungi, revealing their firearm as a cocktail of genetic information of completely unrelated species.

This type of interdisciplinary business occurs through an event called “horizontal gene transfer” and facilitates the movement of genetic material between distant organisms. This differs from vertical gene transfer, which is a more common movement of genetic material from ancestor to descendant. “This discovery is remarkable,” Jenner said in a statement emailed to IFLScience.

Although it seemed a bit late in the game that we had discovered such significant information about a poison that we had known for a while, when it was not dangerous to focus on the subject of toxic research, it was a species of centimeters low priority people have. This may have changed, now that it has finally published as a poster species for horizontal gene transfer. That said, we would still recommend giving these beauties spacious berths in the field.

Depending on your persuasion, images of spiders will affect or frighten the prey in a relatively comparative way in terms of size (hunters vs. potential anyone remember?). Spider silk is famously strong, but most of us also have to fight to pull a bison out of a nylon rope up to a steep slope, so how will the little spider do it?

New research published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface has solved this puzzle by studying the lifting power of two different species of Theridiidae spiders: Steatoda paykulliana and Steatodatriangulosa. Seeing the web slingers in action, they realized that these tiny engineers were able to lift the prey to an inevitable height by creating a pulley system made of many threads called the tangled web.

Co-authors Gabriel Greco and Nicola M. Pugno placed a spider and a cockroach (Blaptica dubia) in a plastic box-the-Thunderdome and recorded the next play. The box covered with black paper to make it easier for the camera to pick up what was happening with the spider’s light silk string. Researchers say this is the first time the spider-lifting process has studied, and the novel’s method has revealed some interesting silk-cutting techniques.

The first step was to gather the prey in a shell style by wrapping the shells around them so that they would not feel stingy as soon as the heavy lifting process was over. The spiders then released a slightly different kind of silk that comes from the main amputee gland and can use as an elastic band or as an extension. From the recordings it known that the spiders began to create a web extending to a high place near the right of the spider, they only used this special silk, which was pre-stretched to attach to the prey.

Then the hive, which saw spiders move more and more stretched threads as they saw the web running up and down the web. As they were numbered, the elastic potential of the stretched threads was able to gain the same lift when the elastic band released back to its smaller size. The mechanism is similar to that seen in old school elevator shifts, and it was easier for the spider to lift its prey with each additional thread. The battle once considered when the cockroach became the highest point on the web near the spider’s web.

“3DED family spiders show a strange behavior when they prey on extremely large prey,” the study authors wrote. Understanding the mechanics of silk use is an important way of research for the invention of novel technologies and materials, but in general as a way to better understand the evolution of silk spinners. The researchers said their findings “provide further evidence for the strong role of silk in the evolution of spiders, especially how spiders can use it as an external tool to overcome their muscle limitations and catch prey with large masses, such as 50 times the spider’s mass.”

The skillful workmanship of the silk displayed by these tiny spiders does not work hard, but demonstrates the transformative power of working skills. If only the heroes of The Gigantic Turnip had known that.

Large amounts of methane in cattle and sheep dung (and occasionally cattle) represent one of the biggest threats to climate stability. Despite living on a similar diet, kangaroos and many other marsupials produce far less than this heat-wasting gas, but scientists rarely know why. The University of Queensland has launched a new program to find the underlying cause of this issue, although they currently have more questions than answers.

An organism involved in a certainty does not produce methane on its own instead, the microorganisms in their (and ours) courage break down food and produce methane in the process. Contrary to popular belief, methane production in the gut is not from bacteria, but a separate domain of unicellular organisms known as archaea. The adventures of kangaroos have also captured by archaea, yet for some reason, they produce fatally less methane when they turn the grass into nutrients when the host can absorb them.

Professor Mark Morrison and Dr. Paul Evans were part of a team that wanted to identify why some archaea produce so much more methane than others do, Morrison said in a statement. It can help to find ways to mitigate and positively affect climate change.” 

Humans have their own archaea, but our diet is so different from cattle that it is not surprising that most of us are too light in gas production. Dr. Evans summarizes the issue of marsupial archaea to IFLScience in such a way that we do not know how little methane a kangaroo produces from an equal amount of food. “It’s somewhere in the tithe and in an undetectable amount,” Evans said.

If anything, the opposite can expected. Australian grasses are of lower quality than other continents due to the arid climate and poor soils, but Marsupial archaea does not resort to high methane production for the processing of this rough material. Interestingly, although intestinal archaea differs among the native marsupial species, what methane producers do seems to be more matches regardless of diet. Evans said many things are undiscovered, but the kangaroos have “some similarities to Wombats and sugar gliders”, although they prefer roots and nectar to grass. As far as Evans knows, no one has tried to give a cow a kangaroo- poo enema (or vice versa) to see how each animal carries the other’s germs in the climb. The results will probably be catastrophic, but it may be appropriate to adapt more slowly to the marsupial arch in the cavity.

Some have suggested kangaroo farming for meat as an alternative, an idea that has created a rare coalition of beef farmers and animal rights activists against it. Evans does not want to tell IFLScience, he does not want to draw on the merits of the concept; “I think it’s going to be very difficult. They’re wild animals, hard for pets.”

When you think of plants, the word “carnivore” does not immediately come to mind, but there are some bloody specimens among the bizarre and wonderful botanical species of the world. In addition, tell me wrong). If you are a fan of these leaf killers, there is very bad news, a study published in the Journal of Global Ecology and Conservation warns that a quarter of carnivorous plants may be at risk of extinction Criminals deterioration of ethnocentric habitat and environmental change.

One of the needs of the story of how plants created flavors for blood, plants in nutrient-poor regions adapted to fill a new niche by crawling on insects and animals instead of soil-based nutrients. Unfortunately, muscle plants get in trouble, if the situation changes abruptly leaving very little in the way of backup nutrition if one day all the animals leave. Researchers write it as poetry, “harmful to anthropogenic degradation and destruction of ecosystems”, heavy burden for hungry trees.

Their fragile existence means that the muscular vegetation often leaves first when humanity calls for a development in their neighborhood and reduces biodiversity – and their fear is not just a change in land use. Environmental processes such as eutrophication (a process that protects oxygen from the aquatic environment, which usually driven by a nutritious kitchen from agriculture) are also a death knell for many carnivorous plant species.

“Many of the world’s 860 species of CPs are found in wetland habitats, representing some of the world’s cleanest and heaviest degraded ecosystems,” the study authors wrote. “Global diversity hotspots for CPs are similarly located in most of the cleanest and most disrupted regions of the planet – southwestern Australia, Southeast Asia, Mediterranean Europe, the Middle East Brazil and the Southeastern United States.”

The ultimate nail in the coffin of this species is that the increasing climate changes associated with global warming (such as high temperatures and little water) will not allow their muscular plants to return to a situation where they can survive anywhere.  Considering all this harmful information, in this study the researchers made the first systematic assessment of the state of conservation and the threat to carnivorous plants around the world. The huge project looked at 860 species from 18 genres, resulting in ten recommendations on how to preserve the species.

The results make for serious lessons, including scoring about 30 percent of the species between inferior-threat and critically endangered. Threats included agriculture and aquaculture, energy production and mining, and climate change, with about a quarter of all species affected by three or more threat categories.

“The complex and specialized environmental requirements of CPs, combined with their multifaceted threats, make it difficult to preserve and recover even in challenging recoverable areas,” the researchers wrote. “Despite significant conservation efforts in many areas and greater awareness of their environmental needs, as the number of vulnerable, endangered and endangered carnivore tree species continues to grow, it is clear that this unique conservation requires a paradigm shift in our approach to clear long-term conservation success.

The massive lockdown caused by the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 had many unexpected effects on birds, including air pollution and even the sound of earthquakes on planet Earth. Many have tweeted that #Earth is keen to shed light on the return of wildlife to the once ethno-noisy region (although not all of this has proven true).

While the benefits to nature were not as extensive as they could have been properly, it was probably unexpected that some wild animals could pay less good rent without shaking tourists to roam their homes. A new study published in the Journal of Biological Conservation found that this was the case with a beach colony on the Swedish island of Stora Karlsö in the Baltic Sea. The white-tailed agglomerate (Haliaeetus albicilla) grew sevenfold in the region, not far from the general frustration of Uria aalge.

Although agglomerates do not directly predict moors in their thousands in this region, long-term marine observations show that they had a significant impact on the breeding success of these birds. 

The lockdown gives researchers a rare opportunity to gain a better idea of ​​the impact humans have on ecosystems. Interestingly, their findings had a “guardian” effect on the beach colonies of tourists in this region of the world. When they left, the increased presence of white-tailed eagles – which is usually annoying by people – Moore’s productivity is down 26 percent compared to the long-term average.

“One of the emerging lessons of conserving more than a hundred biodiversity is that humans are an integral part of most ecosystems,” the study authors wrote. “Based on our findings, we suggest that human presence can be used as a strategic measure to protect beach colonies, and that a socio-ecosystem approach is essential for long-term success in managing protected areas.”

It is not always in the preservation that human intervention considered a good thing, but researchers believe that this study could prove an interesting consideration for other fields.

“Future field studies will reveal that the return of tourists to Lockdown Island after Covid-19 will ‘normalize’ the situation in the Moore colony or if anthropause have permanently shifted the behavior of eagles to long-term threats to breeding marines,” they concluded. “If the return of tourists improves the condition of the seabirds, we suggest that we could apply the presence of humans in other regions to mediate the disturbance of the suggestion.

They trained rats, bees and even dolphins to snatch landmines, but scientists are now turning their attention to more potential bomb-detecting allies: spinach.

Already famous for its health benefits, the couch could soon add more years to people’s lives to uncover hidden explosives and avoid casualties. This is thanks to the work of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who used a technique called vascular infusion to introduce carbon nanotubes into plant leaves. 

These nanotubes specifically designed to interact with a chemical compound known as nitroaromatics used in explosive devices. In their experiment – which described in the journal Nature Materials – the researchers focused on a nitroaromatics called picric acid.

As the acid is absorbed from the groundwater by the roots of the plant, it transferred to the mesophyll layer at the base of the leaf, where most photosynthesis occurs and where nanotubes wait to detect it.

When the researchers lit a laser on these nanotubes, they emitted a fluorescent signal to indicate that nitroaromatics had detected. This signal can seen using an infrared camera, which warns scientists via email.

The integration of electronic systems into plants has called “plant nanotubes”, and study co-author Michael Strano described his team’s approach as “an innovative demonstration of how we have overcome barriers to plant/ human communication.”

Initially, research done to see if wild plants could be bioengineered to detect explosives, but scientists now believe that nanotech can be taken further, where it is still in the field, to warn researchers about plant contamination and other Potential environmental problems.

Overall, it takes about 10 minutes for nitroaromatics to reach the leaves of a tree after being pulled from the groundwater, and some animals may be able to extract explosive chemicals more quickly, Strano said, adding that “plants are very good chemical analysts.”

“They have an extensive root network in the soil, constantly sampling groundwater and finding ways to get self-power to transport that water to the leaves,” he said. When this process is exacerbated, there is less pain, suffering, and confusion.

Howler monkeys are a noisy bunch, and their deep holler vocalization (which seems to be associated with small testicles) can travel extraordinary distances through the canopy. New research published in the Journal of Animal Behavior has revealed another way for these roaring monkeys to adapt perfectly to the life of the rainforest, as they have found that Howler has incredible navigation skills. Not only did they remember the location of their favorite food (and when they were in season) they knew important locations to remind neighboring soldiers to call out alerts outside their territory.

The study, led by Oxford Brooks University, looked at black holler monkeys (Alouatta pigra) in the south-south Planck National Park. After analyzing nearly 3,000 hours of field observations, the researchers found that these monkeys were deliberately looking for ripe fruit trees. Researchers have revealed that monkeys on targets indicate that they have enjoyed these fruits in the past and are able to guess when they will found.

Fruits are a valuable product in this environment. Rain haulers have many mature leaves in their diet, which is effective because they are everywhere but they have high concentrations of toxins and tannins, which are not ideal in large quantities. To get ahead of their fruit-loving competitors, the monkeys select a few handfuls of trees with easy ripening cycles to remember and return to them when they are good to eat.

“Spider monkeys are traditionally considered more sophisticated than howler monkeys in terms of their local skills,” said Dr. Evolutionary Anthropologist. Miguel de Guinea says,
in an email to Oxford Brooks University IFLScience. “This is because the spider monkeys are very indifferent and the diet of the holler monkeys is largely made up of leaves: it is very difficult to identify the fruits on the top of the rainforests fruit (because they are the smallest). For the first time, I found that holler monkeys remember where and when to find the fruits of their cognitive skills with spider monkeys. “

In addition to cashing in on a few premium products, the study found that the Hollers were going through long rainforests through the rainforest until they reached a stage where they clashed with neighboring troops. Even in the absence of competitors, monkeys seen returning to these spots loudly, marking their territorial boundaries with higher warnings. Although violence rarely caused by the collision of a holler troupe, deciding whether they can continue to inspect the fruit trees of their choice to win or lose such a battle is at risk while protecting your patch.

The next step in this group is to work on establishing the best tools for use when studying individual primate species in the natural environment, hopefully this will reveal new insights into the evolution of primate spatial knowledge.

Guinea writes, “Perhaps visible, black holler monkeys are able to adapt the structure of these route networks over time, taking into account not only the cost of travel to certain areas, but also the most useful set of communication between relevant places.”  “I am working with a team of experts to create a set of multiple approaches to comparing primate cognitive skills in population and field locations working with Sari Van Bell and Dr. Carlin Public Opinion (co-authors of this study).

Although multiple primate groups currently tracked in the wild, most of their data not analyzed or limited to descriptive metrics. Our goal is to provide a set of tools for creating a clear framework for the evolution of primitive spatial knowledge using naturalistic observations. “