#Are Crocodiles Secret Fruit-Lovers? Seed dispersal by animals is important for plants to help them occupy new areas of land.
Usually bugs birds or intrepid kittens do that job. Now we can add crocodiles to that list.
A new study reviewed the diets of crocodiles and showed that 13 of 18 species ate fruit of some sort and a wide variety of plants.
Using animals as a method of seed dispersal is actually a useful form of mutualism âÂ#Âthe plants get to spread their genes
and animals get a healthy snack. In other reptiles seed dispersal is a well-known activity
although not as well understood as for insects mammals birds and even in snakes. The recent study published in the Journal of Zoology shows that for crocodiles almost a quarter of the fruits consumed were of the âÂ#Âoefleshyã¢Â# kind.
However none of the recordings were of direct observations of fruit eating so exactly how
or why they did is still a bit of a mystery. Most of the evidence come from dissection of crocodiles'stomachs and their faeces.
So there is some chance that these crocodiles are indirect eaters of fruit who feast on fruit-eating animals.
But direct observations (see video) have been made many times to believe that they might actually like eating fruits.
Why do it? First researchers that crocodiles learnt this behaviour from alligators in captivity. But the review makes note of observations in the wild.
Perhaps it is similar to why dinosaurs consumed stones (gastroliths) to help with grinding food in their stomachs
and get a tasty treat in the process. The energy values of fruits are pretty high
so consumption could be for a nutritional benefit. Perhaps this odd phenomenon might help in part explain why crocodiles are such successful animals.
If meat was ever in short supply they had the capacity to diversify and track down other food sources from vegetation and grasses.
The study reveals something interesting about the way scientists might operate. Crocodiles are obligate carnivores âÂ#Âtheir primary diet is meat âÂ#Âand as such fruits are classed often as anomalous food items
when found in their stomach and not considered in a physiological context. This mainstream view may have led to the ignorance that feeding on fruits could help their diet and energy balances.
That the review study picked up so many independent instances of crocodiles feeding on fruit and having ingested seeds is solid evidence for this.
Hey@Popsci is the#mysteryanimal a baboon? And then I might say if you think that's a baboon perhaps you are the baboon!
But probably not because this is a positive environment and all guesses are welcome and also this is not a very common animal so guess whatever you want!
The first person to get it right wins! We'll retweet the answer from@Popsci and also update this post
Your dumb kids who thought that was a baboon! Update: And the winner is...@Tarabethidaho who correctly guessed that this creature is a cuscus!
Cuscuses are marsupials native to the far northeastern corner of Australia as well as New guinea and a few other islands stretching as far as Sulawesi.
Cuscus is applied the word to a few species of possum in this area as opposed to the more common possums native to the rest of Australasia like the brushtail possum.
This one in particular is spotted a common cuscus which is found throughout that small cuscus range.
Other cuscuses like the Sulawesi bear cuscus are limited to particular islands. It's about the size of a big housecat and lives in the dense foliage of trees from rainforests to hardwood forests to eucalyptus forests.
It has an opposable thumb and a prehensile tail making it a very good climber
but it moves pretty slowly so it's often confused for a sloth or a loris.
It is very fluffy! Hi cuscus! I will name is'Adorable 'and love it and hug it
and take very good care of it! SQUISH! Hug! Hug g
#How Robo-Bees Could Save America's Crops Something is killing off up to half of America's bees--terrible news for bees
Their wings mimic those of a fly flapping when pulled by a special ceramic that contracts
and insect resistance and add a boatload of money to the cost of growing them.
and we'll have ROBOT KILLER BEES everywhere. This idea is similar to the Pet Rock.
I saw the half worm lol l
#5 Reasons To Celebrate Colobus Daythe colobi are a group of Old world monkeys (meaning from Africa
or Asia) that are widespread throughout Africa. They are better than Christopher Columbus for the following reasons. 1. Amazing Jumpersthe various species of colobus monkey--there are about five distinct species some with subspecies--are probably the most arboreal of all African monkeys.
They live in rainforests and cloud forests and can leap absurdly long distances. It's not uncommon to see colobus monkeys leaping 20 feet from tree to tree.
These aren't big monkeys; that's the equivalent of a weak bad-jumping human leaping about 50 feet from a standstill.
I could not find any documentation of Christopher Columbus's jumping ability which indicates to
me that he was not as good a jumper as a colobus monkey. 2. Great Tailscolobus monkeys have very long tails with delightful poofs at the end of them.
The best-known colobus monkey the mantled guereza (also called the Abyssinian black-and-white colobus) has an enormous poof sometimes taking up most of the length of the tail like a big white bottlebrush.
The mantled guereza uses the tail we think for balance as it jumps back and forth amongst the trees.
Christopher Columbus was tailless like the rest of his species 3. Super Stylishcolobus monkeys have cool beards;
the mantled guereza has dignified a and well-trimmed white beard that contrasts beautifully with its black undercoat bright white tail and long white western-inspired fringes.
The western red colobus has great bushy mutton-chops and a calico-patterned coat of bright rust white and black.
Christopher Columbus on the other hand wears unflatteringly baggy pilgrim-nun clothes and has no beard. 4. Sustainable Dietscolobus monkeys are almost exclusively leaf-eaters filling an important niche in the tops of the African forest.
Most dense forests have lots of leaves and fruits that are poisonous or indigestible to most animals;
think of the eucalyptus of Australia or the bamboo forests of China. The colobus monkeys eat this abundant food
and are able to digest it thanks to gut bacteria that ferments and breaks down the plant product.
This is unusual for a primate; gut bacteria of this sort is associated more often with ruminants like cows.
But there are no cows in the upper rainforest! And colobi are seed important dispersal vectors in their habitat.
His voyage also included livestock beginning a legacy that would lead to the extermination of many native animals in the New world through predation
or overcompetition for resources. 5. Overcoming Adversitycolobus monkeys have very small stumps instead of thumbs unique among primates.
The evolutionary theory is that the thumb was irrelevant to the semi-brachiation mode of transport (swinging through trees) that the colobus uses;
if you look at the king of brachiation the gibbon you can see that its thumb is very far from its fingers and its mostly irrelevant for moving around.
The colobus uses its fingers like a hook to grab onto and swing from branches.
Not good enough Chris. You have been bested by a monkey a
#The latest outbreak of measles in the U s a preventable disease that the Western hemisphere eradicated decades ago thanks to vaccines has been traced to a megachurch in Texas. The church's senior pastor Terri Pearsons had criticized previously vaccines USA Today reports.
The Eagle Mountain International Church in Newark Texas released a statement for its members on August 15 the day after the Tarrant County Public health Department informed the church that one of its missionaries who traveled to a country where measles is had still endemic brought the virus
Eagle Mountain International Church may offer some great spiritual guidance I wouldn't know but I wouldn't take my health advice from there.
In 165-Million-Year-Old Fossil Evidence That Fur Predates Mammals By Shaunacy Ferro Posted on 8. 13.2013 4 Comments 8. 13.2013 at 05:
If you open your stupid trap again I'm going to simply reply with one your worthless posts insulting someone in the same way.
Old dogs can learn new tricks. Do not try and bend the spoon. That is impossible.
and Drug Administration is asking veterinary drug companies to voluntarily agree to make it illegal to feed healthy animals some antibiotics.
and other animals people eat. The move is meant to reduce the amount of antibiotics farmers feed to food animals.
âÂ#Âoewith these changes there will be fewer approved uses for animal antibiotics and the remaining uses will be under tighter controlã¢Â# Michael Taylor the FDA s deputy commissioner for foods
Nachman and other critics worry farmers and farming companies will simply switch from saying the medicines are for making animals grow to saying they're for preventing illness in animals.
On many farms animals eat low doses of antibiotics mixed into their food either to make them grow faster
It's not clear exactly why low-dose antibiotics fatten animals up although one study done in mice hints that it's got something to do with changes to the animals'gut microbes.
Farmers and farming companies don t need prescriptions from veterinarians to get drugged feeds; they get them from feed stores.
but leave behind so-called superbugs that are able survive a round of antibiotics. The low doses used to promote growth are especially prone to leaving superbugs behind.
Eventually the resistant microbes come out of the animals uhh other ends and from there may spread to crops as fertilizer get carried around by birds
and eventually make it to people. Multiply this by millions of farm animals and years of antibiotic use and you eventually breed large populations of superbugs.
Getting farms to stop using antibiotics unnecessarily would be a major step toward slowing the evolution of superbugs.
The argument now is whether the FDA s new program actually does this. Critics worry that farms will continue to use antibiotics widely
while complying with the FDA's request to the letter. This blog post from National Resources Defense Council lawyer Avinash Kar summarizes that argument.
but unless these veterinarians believe these uses are creating a public health problem they have no incentive to do thatã¢Â# says Steven Roach a program director for public health at the Food Animal Concerns Trust a farm animal welfare
#China's Cockroach Farms Are A Glimpse Into Our Protein Futureyou've heard the arguments.
Insects are cheap to grow easy on the environment and high in protein and minerals.
The United nations has been urging people in Western countries to eat insects for years. Well should that venerable organization succeed perhaps the resulting farms will look something like this.
China always the forefront of the future has been undergoing a cockroach farm boom the Los angeles times reports.
and the largest producer has estimated an 10 million insects in six farms. Cosmetics companies and traditional Chinese medicine manufacturers buy the insects for their protein and cellulose the Times reports.
Farmers also promote them as feed for fish and traditional livestock and as a treat for people.
and a video of cockroach farms and farmers including a photo of Shandong Insect Industry Association head Liu Yusheng tucking into a plate of fried cockroaches.
Male rhinoceros beetles grow huge unwieldy horns half the length of their body that they use to fight for females.
Ribbon-tailed birds of paradise produce outlandish plumage to attract a mate. Darwin was bothered by such traits
since his theory of evolution couldn't completely explain them (The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail
So why is sex nearly universal across animals plants and fungi? Shouldn't natural selection favor animals that forgo draining displays
and genetic roulette and simply clone themselves? Yes and no. Many animals do clone themselves; certain sea anemones can bud identical twins from the sides of their bodies.
Aphids bees and ants can reproduce asexually. Virgin births sometimes occur among hammerhead sharks turkeys boa constrictors and komodo dragons.
But nearly all animals engage in sex at some point in their lives. Biologists say that the benefits of sex come from the genetic rearrangements that occur during meiosis the special cell division that produces eggs and sperm.
During meiosis combinations of the parents'genes are broken up and reconfigured into novel arrangements in the resulting sperm and egg cells creating new gene combinations that might be advantageous.
Shouldn't natural selection favor animals that forgo draining displays and genetic roulette and simply clone themselves?
One animal however has done just fine without any sex at all. Bdelloid rotifers can be found in most freshwater ponds measure a few tenths of a millimeter long contain only about 1000 cells
and have been chaste for roughly 80 million years. The nearly 400 described species of bdelloids prove that the group is respectably diverse yet no one has seen ever a male.
Bdelloids lay unfertilized eggs that grow to be fully fertile daughters. What's the secret?
Harvard university biology professor Matthew Meselson and his lab have spent the past several years investigating bdelloids'molecular genetics.
among animals. Recently Meselson and Gladyshev made an even more amazing discovery: Bdelloids have foreign DNA from bacteria and fungi in their chromosomes
since his theory of evolution couldn t completely explain them (âÂ#Âoethe sight of a feather in a peacock s tail
The tail is what female like so they breed more with birds that have that tail.
Thus women are controlling the evolution of the species based on their preferences.@@Neotechniyes but the point is why do species
I'd love an animal that grew a ty-dye set of feathers. There are some justifications for it;
therefore peacocks that can maintain such a display basically say: Look at me. Even with diminished immunity I can maintain this beautiful exterior.
but that just improves the method of selection from the same group of flamboyent animals.
It still doesn't seem like a sufficient explanation for why species with less-demanding females don't overcome these inefficient animals.@
I think complex animals (not 1000-cell whatchamacallits) need to select mates based on what they perceive to be desirable traits.
There's also the nematode worm if you're looking to find bizarre ways of having sex (at least
Birds for instance could use it as a place to nest. And after a few decades the plastic will decompose.
what-be a habitat for birds or...I mean for that kind of build time machine & human) wouldn't it just be far more effective to oh
#The World's Fastest Dog Vs. The World's Fastest Cat Video The cheetah the world's fastest land animal can race up to 75 mph for short bursts.
The greyhound is the fastest canid and the second-fastest land animal with a peak speed of about 43 mph.
Cool facts! Now let's watch them run in super slow motion. Note that while cheetahs and greyhounds are very very different animals they've independently evolved to have very similar running styles.
Both animals use what's called a rotary gallop in which the leg hitting the ground moves in a circle:
front left leg then front right then hind right then hind left. This is the natural running style of dogs cats and some ungulates like deer and elk but different than that of horses
(which are built for endurance rather than sprinting speed). They also have a similar two-phase gait:
in the first the body is elongated parallel to the ground with both pairs of legs extended also parallel to the ground.
and the animal in slow motion looks like it's flying. Then there's the compression phase in which the front and hind legs actually overlap underneath the animal
and the spine is crunched up getting ready to pound the ground and push forward. It's a pretty amazing video of some pretty amazing animals. via Digg Note that
while cheetahs and greyhounds are very very different animals they've independently evolved...to clarify...
are greyhounds a naturally selected evolved species or are bred they selectively breed of dog? I thought the second fastest land animal was the pronghorn antelopethe pronghorn is the second fastest land animal
and the African wild dog is the fastest canid. Unless you are referring to rate of acceleration...To be pedantic its not even the 3rd fastest land animal.
After the Pronghorn antelope the Blue Wildebeest Lion Springbok Grant's Gazelle Tohomson's Gazelle and even the Quarter horse have all been clocked faster than 43 mph...
I am under the impression that the Saluki is actually as fast or faster than a Greyhound.
A Greyhound is a sprinter-good for short distances. A Saluki is used to hunt Gazelle and is good for distance.
I believe they are the most ancient dog breed and not manmade-as is the Greyhound.
They also have a spine like a Cheetah. It would be MOST interesting to time a Saluki for distance
and running style compared to a Cheetah. I think the results would be much more impressive.
Would anyone be up to prove a point and see if this is true or not? Just curious!
I can tell you the dog looks a lot scarier when he's chasing you. The dog appears much better armed
when it actually gets there. I didn't get to hear the audio but did they address why the greyhound bobs his head?
Almost looks like he's swinging it like a weight to propel himself faster. The cheetah doesn't do that.
The Greyhound is the fastest sprinter but the Saluki wins over a longer course. Afghans Salukis and Borzois were used to hunt tigers.
They hunted as male female pairs. The female moved in and as the tiger lunged exposing its jugular the male attacked d
#Scan Reveals If Your Civet Poo Coffee Really Comes From Civet Poo When you pay $150 to $230 for a pound of exotic coffee you want to know it's the real deal.
Now a team of chemists say they've developed a way to verify that beans labeled as civet coffee are authentic.
What is civet coffee and what makes it so expensive? Normally coffee farmers and processors pick the berries from their coffee trees remove the fruits'flesh from their seeds ferment the seeds
and then wash dry and roast the seeds. For civet coffee a cute Southeast Asian forest creature called the Asian palm civet helps out with some of these steps.
Civets selectively eat the best ripe coffee berries and their digestive tracts strip the fruit from the beans.
The civets then excrete the beans which civet coffee farmers gather wash ferment and roast.
Regular little Santa's helpers civets are! So. Civet coffee also known by its Indonesian name Kopi Luwak needs to be gathered by hand from civet poop making it rare
and labor-intensive to produce. That explains its priceã¢Â# as well as some coffee sellers'inclination to try to market non-civet-processed coffee as Kopi Luwak
or to cut true Kopi Luwak with regular coffee. Those scams inspired a team of Japanese
and Indonesian researchers to come up with a way to chemically distinguish regular coffee from civet coffee.
The researchers analyzed Kopi Luwak that they produced (presumably with civets in lab) as well as commercially sold Kopi Luwak and commercially sold regular coffee beans from different regions in Indonesia.
They used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry both techniques that tell chemists what molecules appear in a sample to conduct a metabolomic analysis of the coffees.
They found that digested coffee beans had significantly different levels of certain acids than non-digested beans.
Perhaps the gastric juices and the microbes in the civet digestive system give beans a distinctive acid profile the researchers wrote in a paper they published in July in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
The detectable differences were great enough that they could distinguish a 50-50 mix of Kopi Luwak and regular coffee from 100 percent Kopi Luwak the researchers report.
This is the first time anyone has been able to determine what chemicals to look for when distinguishing Kopi Luwak from regular coffee the researchers wrote.
Their technique could work alone or in conjunction with the imperfect methods with which experts identify Kopi Luwak now by its color and smell.
Oh thank you thank you thank you Popsci on explaining exactly what is civet coffee is so I will never buy it in the future!!!
Starz-You were already buying it at over $150 a pound!?!No coffee is worth that price no matter how tasty
-even if you were using pure feral cat cream which is awesome. What to know how awesome?
Go milk some feral cats (the more feral the better) to learn from experience that delight that can be learned
and found in no other way. Oakspar77777 I like coffee and often try knew coffees.
I never bought this in the past and with this new information have no intention either. More importantly have milked you a feral cat yet?
Once you do post picture of the bliss that follows aquiring such a delightful cream u
#FYI: What Would Happen If I Ate Nothing but Meat? You might get scurvy like a pirate.
That said some groups of people have survived even thrived on an animal-only diet. Research suggests that traditionally the Inuit ate any number of meats including seal whale caribou and fish.
But they rarely if ever ate plant fiber. The key to their success says Harriet Kuhnlein the founding director of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples'Nutrition
and Environment at Mcgill University in Montreal was eating every part of the animal and you have to eat some of it raw.
For greens Kuhnlein adds traditional Inuit ate the stomach contents of caribou and deer. Historically they were quite healthy she says;
That is why lions (and every other carnivore on the planet) do just fine. You are what you eat and
(and the problem is usually over ingestation with most animals hence the owl pellet and the hairball).
however as worms tend to be an issue (as they are for most animal species including humans over most of the planet).
hence why we don't have all molars like horses do or all incisors like dogs.
Perhaps you should cruise on back over to Fox Nation? My fathers neighbor died from the Atkins diet.
I'm not eating the whole animal. It's not that I don't like vegetables; I love them.
while the backyard trash pile behind a Flordia trailerpark is reabsorbed almost yearly (though decomp rust and racoon).(
They're just a cabal making fat-cat bucks looking to protect their income of major dough.
and coral is beneficial to other species (note that the era where cartiledge fish like sharks developed was a high free carbon era
I see a host of new posters that got sucked into this dumb shit like mosquitoes who saw a light in the far off distance.
D49now who's the mosquito? If drilling to the center of the Earth were as easy is putting 5 tons in the space of the area of a teaspoon...
Ã0. 8 mm/yr. By the way 1. 7 mm a year works out to 6. 7 inches of sea level rise every 100 years. http://ibis
even if it means less land for the rattlesnakes. Starz Your concern seems to be with the way the magnetic field in space affects that of the core
âÂ#Âoea number of independent analyses have identified tropospheric changes that appear to be associated with the solar cycle (van Loon and Shea 2000;
and helps some animals migrate and it may be a lot more fragile and febrile than one might think.
and the oil industry uses readings from the field to guide drills. In nature animals which use the field could be confused mightily-birds bees
and some fish all use the field for navigation. So do sea turtles whose long lives
which can easily exceed a hundred years means a single generation could feel the effects. Birds may be able to cope
because studies have shown they have backup systems that rely on stars and landmarks including roads and power lines to find their way around.
the brain-eating amoeba. Found mostly in warm freshwater lakes rivers and hotsprings Naegleria fowleri can travel up a person's nose
Common in Africa Asia and Latin america adult Taenia solium tapeworms can live inside the human intestinal tract producing eggs that its human host then expels fecally.
As an eye-opening feature in Discover describes the eggs can get swept up by pigs as the animals forage for food.
Someone contaminates food with tapeworm eggs bound for a pig's stomach. The tapeworm eggs hatch but instead of developing into an adult tapeworm in the intestines they burrow into the bloodstream as would normally occur in a pig.
In a human they often end up in the brain forming cysts that cause a disease called neurocysticercosis.
When it infects a rat its makes its host abnormally unafraid of cat urine upping the rodent's chances of getting eaten by a cat
On the bright side for pet lovers cat ownership doesn't seem to be a predictor of infection.
The threadlike Loa loa is an eye worm but when it comes to parasites crawling around in your body that's too close to the brain for comfort.
Infection stems from the bite of deer and mango flies that live in rainforests and swamps.
Having a worm crawling around in your body can cause itching (and what one medical dictionary calls a creeping sensation in the tissues) inflammation damage to the nervous system and the retina.
Probably the most frightening is the M. Bop more commonly known as Hanson's Ear Worm.
BRAIN PARASITES Flea and tick (bugs) killer too! Hi DE (food grade) enthusiasts lovers and researchers!
I wanted to title this Thank God For Fleas! but Corrie Ten Boom beat me to it!
If it wasn't for fleas I never would have been here to tell you that DE saved my life!!!
In the middle of the night my dogs were itching and scratching I couldn't find fleas
so I Googled What rids mites...And webside after website came up talking about DE.
As I read...kills mites fleas bed bugs insects parasites<PARASITES! OMG!!!I am a groomer
and breeder of expensive (show quality) Miniature schnauzers (my last sold for $1500. 00) I accidently itched my left tear duct with dog feces on finger!
2-1/2 days later I got the first migraine ever and was in the left eye!(
I thought I'd get Pink Eye! No doctor would treat me thought I was lying only wanting drugs forced
and an MRI showed a 7mm ball (nest of worms) by then (after months of suffering) still they refused a parasitic killer and
migraines vomitings brain on fire too eyes seeing flourescent eye turned 7mm nest ER visits temp at 95 etc.
I also mixed some in peanut butter for the dogs daily dose<they love bite my fingers with it!
(I always knew there was probably a liver fluke there both these organs were attacked with about 8 bites in a row durring my horrible ordeal with the 2006-2008 parasite problem.
but in truth it was called a nest of worms! Why do doctors refuse to believe there is a thing called microorganisms and parasites (germs worms fungus bacteria yeast insects etc.
and that we humans are perfect hosts (warm moist dark wealthy food source soft smelly etc.?
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