"10 Strange Species Discovered Last Year"
Wired Science (May 26, 2009)
"Every year, biologists brave the world’s deserts, jungles and industrial ecosystems looking for new species.
"And what wonderful things they find. It turns out that the real world is totally like the internet: If you look hard enough, you can find just about anything. This year, scientists found caffeine-less coffee plants, tiny seahorses and a 23-inch long bug that looks like a branch, not to mention a strange white slug no one had ever described that was found in a Welsh garden...."
One of my favorites is Opisthostoma vermiculum - a Malaysian gastropod with a shell that coils on four axes. Most coil around three.
Another is a bacteria that teaches a strange lesson in biodiversity. To keep this new species alive, we'll have to keep manufacturing hairspray. Microbacterium hatanonis's habitat is - I'm not making this up - inside hairspray.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Top 10 Most-Viewed Posts
-
(from INKCINCT Cartoons, used w/o permission) I very seldom copy an entire post in this blog, but trying to describe this cartoon would have...
-
" Coconut crab " AbsoluteAstronomy.com " The coconut crab, Birgus latro, is the largest land-living arthropod in the world an...
-
Ploak.com Article Directory " Your one-stop source for free articles. Do you need contents to add to your web site? Or articles for use...
-
" How to Think Like an Interior Designer " Jaime Derringer, via Shelpterpop (July 29, 2010) " It takes a unique mind to perfe...
-
Before anything else, repeating from an earlier post: Google has launched a 'people finder' for Japan, in Japanese, English, Korea...
-
Update (October 11, 2010) Another article about Reaction Engines Ltd.'s Skylon: " Airplanes in Space? " Irene Klotz, Space ...
-
" Stan Lee Unveils 3 New Superheroes at Comic-Con " Underwire, Wired (July 22, 2010) " A time traveler, an unwitting heir to ...
-
" Hellgrammite (Dobsonfly Larvae) (Corydalus cornutus) " Texas Parks and Wildlife " Other Names " Eastern Dobsonfly ...
-
" 'Lost City' of Tanis Found, but Often Forgotten " Brian Handwerk, Mysteries of the Ancient World, National Geographic (...
-
Whether you call it trafficking in persons, human trafficking, or slavery, buying and selling people isn't nice. And, in quite a few cou...
WebSTAT
2 comments:
I just read that the Crazy ants are the current big thread to biodiversity, isn't it funny? is it cause they are crazy or due to other reasons?
Liked the hairspray bacteria, nature is very creative.
Mariana Soffer,
As you said, "nature is very creative." Given what we know about what life on Earth has been through during the last billion years, I can't take the 'delicate natural balance' arguments very seriously.
Post a Comment