Amphibian and semi-aquatic aren't the same thing. Frogs are amphibians because they start as gilled tadpoles and turn into hoppy lungy frogs. Turtles are not amphibians because they hatch as a turtle, live as a turtle, and die as a turtle. It's turtles all the way down.
Just like the Texas Barking Spider. Legless, eyeless, yet incredibly fast and tricky. They sound and smell exactly like my farts, but it definitely wasn't me. It was the Texas Barking Spider.
We're basically some of the last megafauna. There's smaller prey that is an easier target for them with less risk to them personally. Predators generally avoid prey that can injure them. It sounds like the Indigenous people already had some experience around these creatures that was shared to the researchers and I am sure the researchers took great pains as to normalise their presence and not make them feel cornered or threatened. This species is about ten times older than us, being hyper aggressive and violent is a really bad trait for survival, generally. "Survival of the fittest" gets really misconstrewed.
Interesting read. Last fatal attack in Norway was in 1964, but they stay far away from human settlements. As you hike you see them, there's information boards telling you stay at least 100m away from them, though some tourists think it's Disney land and push that limit pretty far.
While diving under the ice in McMurdo Sound, some of the team came across giant Antarctic sea spiders that appeared to be mating. So, they gently collected the animals and transferred them to observation tanks to figure out how the heck these enigmatic creatures procreate.
This hits on a lot of things I've been thinking about lately, thank you for posting it. I would love more stories about successful species and the way they see the world.
Every species is simultaneously facing two types of evolutionary pressure: pressure to adapt to best exploit its niche, and pressure to prevent everything else from adapting to exploit it.
The best strategy to deal with the second type of pressure is to proactively keep changing any attributes not constrained by the first type of pressure.
Five new spooky-looking species of millipede have been discovered, one of which belongs to a totally unknown group of critters.
The new species, which resemble something out of a sci-fi movie, were found in the forest litter of Tanzania's remote Udzungwa Mountains, according to a new paper in the European Journal of Taxonomy.
Millipedes are actually not insects, but something called diplopods, and are defined by their elongated bodies and plentiful legs.
This discovery was made during an expedition meant to examine how forests in the area were being affected by logging and other disturbances, and how woody vines may be taking over the region, driven by warmer temperatures.
These discoveries, including the millipedes, are hoped to highlight the sheer amount of undiscovered diversity lurking in forests around the world.
He said unearthing the new genus and species of millipedes highlighted the huge amount of discovery remaining in tropical forests.
The original article contains 492 words, the summary contains 150 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
A giraffe named Benito has started a 50-hour road trip to leave behind the cold and loneliness of Mexico’s northern border city of Ciudad Juárez to find warmth – and maybe a mate – in his new home 2,000km (1,200 miles) to the south.
Jealousy forced him to leave his home at a zoo in the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa; he was taken last year to a city-run park in Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Texas, to lead a life alone.
With temperatures in Ciudad Juárez reaching as low as 39F (4C) on Monday, Benito set off in a crate strapped to the back of a flat-bed truck.
Residents gathered to say goodbye late Sunday in Ciudad Juárez as a crane lifted the container holding the giraffe onto the truck in preparation for the journey.
Benito is being transported across Mexico to Africam Safari park in central Puebla state where the low temperatures are about 20 degrees warmer than in Ciudad Juárez.
Environmental groups had voiced strong complaints about conditions faced by Benito at the city-run Central Park zoo in Ciudad Juárez, where weather in the summer is brutally hot and temperatures plunge during the winter.
The original article contains 486 words, the summary contains 198 words. Saved 59%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Biodiversity
Top