Nature is wild

utdalltheway said:
That’s the best bird songs/sounds I’ve ever heard. Unbelievable!
So much so that it sounds fake, right?
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There are plenty of other videos about the same species showing similar feats. It's really quite something. But it's not even completely unique. Meet the bowerbird, who is almost as good. I'm not going to spoil it, just watch the whole thing (not even a minute long):

 
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utdalltheway said:
Brilliant!
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If you have Netflix, Dancing With Birds is a good watch. The lengths that some male birds go to to get noticed by females is extraordinary. This little clip is actually the end of one segment: the vertical structure you see behind the bird (with those thingies hanging from it) was all built by him as well. Not nature being wild, I guess, but certainly remarkable. :)

In general, though, I find that the wildest things are happening among insects and in the sea. Especially in the sea, since those creatures are often further removed from us. Here is the so-called immortal jellyfish (turritopsis dohrnii):

Turritopsis_dohrnii.jpg


Why 'immortal'? Because it is (at least potentially). Here is Wikipedia's description (link):
Like most other hydrozoans, T. dohrnii begin their life as tiny, free-swimming larvae known as planulae. As a planula settles down, it gives rise to a colony of polyps that are attached to the sea floor. All the polyps and jellyfish arising from a single planula are genetically identical clones. The polyps form into an extensively branched form, which is not commonly seen in most jellyfish. Jellyfish, also known as medusae, then bud off these polyps and continue their life in a free-swimming form, eventually becoming sexually mature. When sexually mature, they have been known to prey on other jellyfish species at a rapid pace. If the T. dohrnii jellyfish is exposed to environmental stress, physical assault, or is sick or old, it can revert to the polyp stage, forming a new polyp colony. It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation, which alters the differentiated state of the cells and transforms them into new types of cells.

Theoretically, this process can go on indefinitely, effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal, although in practice individuals can still die. In nature, most Turritopsis dohrnii are likely to succumb to predation or disease in the medusa stage without reverting to the polyp form.
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hungrywing said:
You might like this.
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Amazing - thanks!

Cheimoon said:
There are plenty of other videos about the same species showing similar feats. It's really quite something. But it's not even completely unique. Meet the bowerbird, who is almost as good. I'm not going to spoil it, just watch the whole thing (not even a minute long):

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The children playing sound is actually incredible.
 
The Corinthian said:
When whales reach their end of their life and sink to the ocean bed, they provide the basis for an intelligent ocean ecosystem

When whales die and sink to the ocean floor, their carcass provide nutrients and sustain the ecosystem that exists on the ocean floor. This is called whale fall. It's fascinating.



https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/whale-fall.html



The above video is one of the stages of whale fall, and you can see the carcass teeming with other life.

They revisited the same location a year later - shown below:

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Sorta related to my first post, but whales are the Earth's natural way to fight climate change. We've ruined this opportunity somewhat with the whaling industry where some experts say there's 60-90% less whales than there were 100 years ago.

How whales help cool the Earth
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210119-why-saving-whales-can-help-fight-climate-change

When whales die, they sink to the ocean floor – and all the carbon that is stored in their enormous bodies is transferred from surface waters to the deep sea, where it remains for centuries or more.

In the 2010 study, scientists found that before industrial whaling, populations of whales (excluding sperm whales) would have sunk between 190,000 to 1.9 million tonnes of carbon per year to the bottom of the ocean – that's the equivalent of taking between 40,000 and 410,000 cars off the road each year. But when the carcass is prevented from sinking to the seabed – instead, the whale is killed and processed – that carbon is released into the atmosphere.

Andrew Pershing, a marine scientist at the University of Maine and an author of that study, estimates that over the course of the 20th Century whaling added about 70 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. "This is a lot, but 15 million cars do this in a single year. The US currently has 236 million cars," he says.

But whales are not only valuable in death. The tides of excrement that these mammals produce are also surprisingly relevant to the climate.

Whales feed in the deep ocean, then return to the surface to breathe and poo. Their iron-rich faeces creates the perfect growing conditions for phytoplankton. These creatures may be microscopic, but, taken together, phytoplankton have an enormous influence on the planet's atmosphere, capturing an estimated 40% of all CO2 produced – four times the amount captured by the Amazon rainforest.
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I'd encourage you to read the full article as it's very interesting.

There's this article too, which goes into the whaling industry in a bit more detail.

Nature’s Solution to Climate Change
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/12/natures-solution-to-climate-change-chami.htm

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How about transparent creatures! Here is the glass octopus (Vitreledonella richardi) that lives in the deep sea. It is almost completely colourless except for its internal organs and colour-producing cells (chromatophores), which you can see here as yellow dots. Transparency is just such an infinitely weird subject to me - and this is not even the only transparent species.

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Some more detail: https://www.livescience.com/rare-glass-octopus-sighting.html
 
One of the greatest mysteries remaining is how eels reproduce. It's baffled scientists and scholars for millennia...even Aristotle was curious.



Eels – Why Does No One Know Where These Weird Fish Come From?
Have you ever heard of Eels? Yeah, we’re talking about the really weird snake-like fish that sometimes electrocute people. Sidebar, electric eels actually aren’t even eels. They’re a totally different kind of fish, it’s a misnomer. Even if you cast out the infamous electric eel, the fish are incredibly odd because no one knows where they come from. These sea creatures lack reproductive organs of any kind. Their lack of obvious reproductive organs has enshrouded eels for thousands of years. Some of history’s greatest minds have tried to solve the mystery. Scientists believe they know the lifecycle of the eel today, but people have believed to know the whole story before. This is the story of the incredibly strange eel.
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https://tilln.com/season-4/eels-why-does-no-one-know-where-these-weird-fish-come-from/
 
Fingeredmouse said:
This is a fascinating subject but I'm completely distracted by the article describing eels as invertebrates!
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Did you mean this bit...

French zoologist Yves Delage is most known for his work in the study of invertebrates, but also famous for discoveries relating to the ear canal and a rather speculative claim regarding the Turin Shroud.

I don't think it's saying eels are invertebrates, but that the zoologist in question is most known for his work with invertebrates.
 
The Corinthian said:
Did you mean this bit...

French zoologist Yves Delage is most known for his work in the study of invertebrates, but also famous for discoveries relating to the ear canal and a rather speculative claim regarding the Turin Shroud.

I don't think it's saying eels are invertebrates, but that the zoologist in question is most known for his work with invertebrates.
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No, the bit where it says:

He vowed he would not return from his expedition until he discovered the birthplace and lifecycle of the illustrious invertebrate.
 
Fingeredmouse said:
No, the bit where it says:

He vowed he would not return from his expedition until he discovered the birthplace and lifecycle of the illustrious invertebrate.
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Ah right - that's a big error!
 
I don't know if this really qualifies as wild, but I would say that the idea of a turtle catching a bird to eat is at the least pretty bizarre. OK, it's a young bird that can't fly yet, but it's still much quicker than a supposedly herbivorous turtle. Watch this (or not, if you don't like seeing birds being decapitated):



The video was recorded as a research project that produced this article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221009179?via=ihub. Here is its abstract:
Tortoises (land turtles) are familiar animals and are generally assumed to be strict herbivores. Their ecological roles are most obvious in giant tortoise species which, due to their size and local abundance, play major roles as keystone species and ecosystem engineers. In the Galápagos and Seychelles islands these species are known to play major roles as the islands’ largest herbivores, with exceptionally high biomass and consuming up to 11% of primary production. In addition they act as ecosystem engineers, dispersing seeds, breaking vegetation and eroding rocks. However, as slow-moving poikilotherms most people assume their behaviour to be simple. Here we present video evidence of a Seychelles giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) attacking a tern chick and pursuing it along a log. Finally the tortoise killed the chick and was observed to eat it. Other tortoises in the same area have been seen making similar attacks, although those were not fully documented. We believe that the exceptional combination of a tree-nesting tern colony with a resident giant tortoise population has created conditions leading to systematic hunting of birds by several individual tortoises; an entirely novel behavioural strategy for any tortoise species.
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Cheimoon said:
I don't know if this really qualifies as wild, but I would say that the idea of a turtle catching a bird to eat is at the least pretty bizarre. OK, it's young bird that can't fly yet, but it's still much quicker than a supposedly herbivorous turtle. Watch this (or not, if you don't like seeing birds being decapitated):



The video was recorded as a research project that produced this article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221009179?via=ihub. Here is its abstract:
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If you’ve ever had to detach a fishing hook from a giant snapping turtle, then you’d know they’re capable of any sort of evil.
 
Cheimoon said:
I don't know if this really qualifies as wild, but I would say that the idea of a turtle catching a bird to eat is at the least pretty bizarre. OK, it's young bird that can't fly yet, but it's still much quicker than a supposedly herbivorous turtle. Watch this (or not, if you don't like seeing birds being decapitated):



The video was recorded as a research project that produced this article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221009179?via=ihub. Here is its abstract:
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I know it’s the circle of life, but that video made me very sad!
 
Organic Potatoes said:
If you’ve ever had to detach a fishing hook from a giant snapping turtle, then you’d know they’re capable of any sort of evil.
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Yeah, snapping turtles are crazy! Crazy quick too, with the snapping. I didn't actually think of those when I wrote this, and you're right that they are omnivores; but those giant turtles from Seychelles in the video are known as herbivores, so for them this is really surprising. They also don't have quickness of snapping turtles. As you can see, they just amble over, and only manage to catch the young bird because it doesn't know what to do anymore once it has reached the end of that log it's on.

Snapper turtles are definitely wild, so that also merits a little video:

 
These are not fungi:

slime1.jpg


They are myxomycetes, i.e., slime molds, to be precise Fuligo septica, also known charmingly as 'dog vomit slime mold'. (Now that's a nice username or tag!) They look vaguely weird, but are actually rather really weird, and also quite amazing. I was reading about them in this article. In summary, it is...
...a creature that begins life as a microscopic amoeba and ends it as a vibrant splotch that produces spores, and for all the time in between, it is a single cell that can grow as large as a bath mat, has no brain, no sense of sight or smell, but can solve mazes, learn patterns, keep time, and pass down the wisdom of generations.
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To get a couple of key bits, this describes its life cycle:
Like fungi, myxomycetes begin their lives as spores, but when a myxomycete spore germinates and cracks open, a microscopic amoeba slithers out. The amoeba bends and extends one edge of its cell to pull itself along, occasionally consuming bacteria and yeast and algae, occasionally dividing to clone and multiply itself. If saturated with water, the amoeba can grow a kind of tail that whips around to propel itself; on dry land the tail retracts and disappears. When the amoeba encounters another amoeba with whom it is genetically compatible, the two fuse, joining chromosomes and nuclei, and the newly fused nucleus begins dividing and redividing as the creature oozes along the forest floor, or on the underside of decaying logs, or between damp leaves, hunting its microscopic prey, drawing each morsel inside its gooey plasmodium, growing ever larger, until at the end of its life, it transforms into an aethalia, a “fruiting body” that might be spongelike in some species, or like a hardened calcium deposit in others, or, as with Stemonitis axifera, grows into hundreds of delicate rust-colored stalks. As it transitions into this irreversible state, the normally unicellular myxomycete divides itself into countless spores, which it releases to be carried elsewhere by the wind, and if conditions are favorable, some of them will germinate and the cycle will begin again.
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The adaptability of the amoebe form is quite amazing. But this is where it gets really wild:
Throughout their lives, myxomycetes only ever exist as a single cell, inside which the cytoplasm always flows—out to its extremities, back to the center. When it encounters something it likes, such as oatmeal, the cytoplasm pulsates more quickly. If it finds something it dislikes, like salt, quinine, bright light, cold, or caffeine, it pulsates more slowly and moves its cytoplasm away (though it can choose to overcome these preferences if it means survival). In one remarkable study published in Science, Japanese researchers created a model of the Tokyo metropolitan area using oat flakes to represent population centers, and found that Physarum polycephalum configured itself into a near replica of the famously intuitive Tokyo rail system. In another experiment, scientists blasted a specimen with cold air at regular intervals, and found that it learned to expect the blast, and would retract in anticipation. It can solve mazes in pursuit of a single oat flake, and later, can recall the path it took to reach it. More remarkable still, a slime mold can grow indefinitely in its plasmodial stage. As long as it has an adequate food supply and is comfortable in its environment, it doesn’t age and it doesn’t die.
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There are a couple of more cool pictures in the article - and more information, of course.
 
Bacteria exist on the edge of thermodynamic life in an ecosystem I'd never heard of (miles underground) using an energy source I didn't know about (radiolysis). It may have a bearing on how life evolved here, and whether it exists elsewhere.

"New work suggests that the radiolytic splitting of water supports giant subsurface ecosystems of life on Earth — and could do it elsewhere, too."
https://www.quantamagazine.org/radi...underground-and-inside-other-worlds-20210524/

also...
"The calculations were in line with earlier theoretical work by members of the team who in 2015 tried to estimate the lowest amount of power needed for life, based on the premise that even deeply dormant cells must repair random damage to their essential molecules to survive. They found that for individual cells, this power minimum hovers around a zeptowatt, or 10−21 watts. That is roughly the power required to lift one-thousandth of a grain of salt one nanometer once a day. (For reference, a human body uses on average about 100 watts, the power of a reading light.) The new model suggests that cells living in sub-seafloor sediments are drawing only slightly more power than that."
https://www.quantamagazine.org/zombie-microbes-redefine-lifes-energy-limits-20200812/
 
Counterfactual said:
Bacteria exist on the edge of thermodynamic life in an ecosystem I'd never heard of (miles underground) using an energy source I didn't know about (radiolysis). It may have a bearing on how life evolved here, and whether it exists elsewhere.

"New work suggests that the radiolytic splitting of water supports giant subsurface ecosystems of life on Earth — and could do it elsewhere, too."
https://www.quantamagazine.org/radi...underground-and-inside-other-worlds-20210524/

also...
"The calculations were in line with earlier theoretical work by members of the team who in 2015 tried to estimate the lowest amount of power needed for life, based on the premise that even deeply dormant cells must repair random damage to their essential molecules to survive. They found that for individual cells, this power minimum hovers around a zeptowatt, or 10−21 watts. That is roughly the power required to lift one-thousandth of a grain of salt one nanometer once a day. (For reference, a human body uses on average about 100 watts, the power of a reading light.) The new model suggests that cells living in sub-seafloor sediments are drawing only slightly more power than that."
https://www.quantamagazine.org/zombie-microbes-redefine-lifes-energy-limits-20200812/
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That's amazing stuff. It's basically an alternative way of sustaining life to what's commonly assumed - and given the assumed abundance of such life on Earth, it really widens the possibilities for extraterrestrial life.
 
Cheimoon said:
These are not fungi:

slime1.jpg


They are myxomycetes, i.e., slime molds, to be precise Fuligo septica, also known charmingly as 'dog vomit slime mold'. (Now that's a nice username or tag!) They look vaguely weird, but are actually rather really weird, and also quite amazing. I was reading about them in this article. In summary, it is...

To get a couple of key bits, this describes its life cycle:

The adaptability of the amoebe form is quite amazing. But this is where it gets really wild:

There are a couple of more cool pictures in the article - and more information, of course.
Click to expand...
We are living on an alien planet
 
Cheimoon said:
These are not fungi:

slime1.jpg


They are myxomycetes, i.e., slime molds, to be precise Fuligo septica, also known charmingly as 'dog vomit slime mold'. (Now that's a nice username or tag!) They look vaguely weird, but are actually rather really weird, and also quite amazing. I was reading about them in this article. In summary, it is...

To get a couple of key bits, this describes its life cycle:

The adaptability of the amoebe form is quite amazing. But this is where it gets really wild:

There are a couple of more cool pictures in the article - and more information, of course.
Click to expand...
This is actually ridiculous.
 
When dung beetles are rolling their balls of poop home, they're using celestial bodies to navigate.

Technology allowed science people to discover that prarie dog barks, which "pretty much all sound the same", are actually individual 'words/phrases' and that said animals could invent new barks and teach the community.

Dolphins buzz pregnant women to see what the baby looks like and possibly to see if it's a boy/girl.
 
Cheimoon said:
These are not fungi:

slime1.jpg


They are myxomycetes, i.e., slime molds, to be precise Fuligo septica, also known charmingly as 'dog vomit slime mold'. (Now that's a nice username or tag!) They look vaguely weird, but are actually rather really weird, and also quite amazing. I was reading about them in this article. In summary, it is...

To get a couple of key bits, this describes its life cycle:

The adaptability of the amoebe form is quite amazing. But this is where it gets really wild:

There are a couple of more cool pictures in the article - and more information, of course.
Click to expand...
This sounds prime for an AI simulation..
 
3,000 year old green blobs found in the Andes? Sounds right for this thread...

Yareta, The 3,000 Years Old Plant
These rocks on the highlands of the Andes looks like they are covered with moss. Actually, they are a type of flowing plant known as Yareta and it lives in colonies which can be thousands of years old.

Yareta (Azorella compacta), also known as "Llareta" in Spanish, is a flowering plant that belongs to the family Apiaceae. It grows in the cold Puna grasslands of the Andes in Peru, Bolivia, northern Chile, and western Argentina at altitudes between 3,200 and 4,500 meters, where the wind blows unceasingly and the cold cracks even granite. To survive the extreme conditions, Yareta grows in packs so dense that its stems can take the weight of a human. The plant keeps close to the ground in order to retain as much heat in as possible. This also helps to resist the powerful high altitude wind, which would tear up the roots of any plant. To prevents moisture loss through evaporation the Yareta has wax covered leaves.
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yareta-8%25255B6%25255D.jpg


yareta-11%25255B2%25255D.jpg


yareta-7%25255B2%25255D.jpg


yareta-10%25255B2%25255D.jpg


https://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/05/yareta-3000-years-old-plant.html
 
Cheimoon said:
I don't know if this really qualifies as wild, but I would say that the idea of a turtle catching a bird to eat is at the least pretty bizarre. OK, it's young bird that can't fly yet, but it's still much quicker than a supposedly herbivorous turtle. Watch this (or not, if you don't like seeing birds being decapitated):



The video was recorded as a research project that produced this article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221009179?via=ihub. Here is its abstract:
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I lived in Seychelles for 4 years. Those giant tortoise can be vicious.

There was a place near us that used to keep them in the same coop as chickens, but had to stop because the chickens kept getting killed.

Turns out the tortoises would stand up tall over chicken feed, lifting their bellies for hours at a time. They'd wait until a chicken crept underneath them to get at the food and then flop down and crush them.
 
diarm said:
I lived in Seychelles for 4 years. Those giant tortoise can be vicious.

There was a place near us that used to keep them in the same coop as chickens, but had to stop because the chickens kept getting killed.

Turns out the tortoises would stand up tall over chicken feed, lifting their bellies for hours at a time. They'd wait until a chicken crept underneath them to get at the food and then flop down and crush them.
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And eat them, I imagine. That's pretty clever. Gotta do something when you're slow but huge!

Those researchers might be interested in a video of that btw.
 
Cheimoon said:
And eat them, I imagine. That's pretty clever. Gotta do something when you're slow but huge!

Those researchers might be interested in a video of that btw.
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Very true. I'll text the lady who owned the restaurant and share the link.
 
diarm said:
I lived in Seychelles for 4 years. Those giant tortoise can be vicious.

There was a place near us that used to keep them in the same coop as chickens, but had to stop because the chickens kept getting killed.

Turns out the tortoises would stand up tall over chicken feed, lifting their bellies for hours at a time. They'd wait until a chicken crept underneath them to get at the food and then flop down and crush them.
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That's incredible. The planning required there is not insignificant.
 
Getting back to talking birds, I found out today that musk ducks (and Australian species) can do this trick as well if taught sounds as hatclings. Here's one mimicking the sound of a door slamming and saying 'you bloody fool' to impress The Ladies:



From the article (link):
Audio clips of 4-year-old Ripper, a male musk duck hand-raised on a nature reserve without other musk ducks. In the clips, Ripper waddles and splashes around speaking swear words when acting aggressively and imitating a slamming door sound when trying to attract females.
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Baby Shark Born in All-Female Tank Could Be The First 'Virgin Birth' For Its Species


Scientists say a rare shark "virgin birth" may be the first of its kind after a baby shark was born in an all-female tank in an Italian aquarium.

The baby smoothhound shark, named Ispera, which means hope in Sardianian, was born at the Acquario di Cala Gonone in Sardinia, Italy, according to Italian outlet AGI.

Its mother had spent ten years living in a tank with one other female, the outlet said, and scientists suspect the newborn could be the first documented case of shark parthenogenesis in that species.

Parthenogenesis is a rare phenomenon where an egg develops into an embryo without being fertilized by a sperm.

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-baby...rn-but-the-mother-lived-in-an-all-female-tank
 
PosterImage_TongueParasite.jpg


A member of the family Cymothoidae, the tiny Cymothoa exigua, or tongue eating louse, enters its victim through the gills. Once inside, the female latches onto the base of the fish’s tongue, while the male attaches behind her or on the gills. Through her front claws, she sucks the fish’s blood, which causes the tongue to die and drop off. She will then re-attach, this time to the tongue stub, effectively becoming its replacement. With an eww factor of 10, the fish can and will use the parasite as if it were its natural tongue.

 
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