Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Old WhaleA 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago.
Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3 1/2-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale’s age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.
“No other finding has been this precise,” said John Bockstoce, an adjunct curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Calculating a whale’s age can be difficult, and is usually gauged by amino acids in the eye lenses. It’s rare to find one that has lived more than a century, but experts say the oldest were close to 200 years old.
I didn’t know whales got that old. It’s a shame someone killed it.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Amazing Mimic BirdIt can mimic damn near anything. Wow.
Friday, June 01, 2007
FriendsWednesday, May 30, 2007
Dolphin AccentsDolphins living off the coast of Wales whistle, bark and groan in a different dialect from dolphins off the western coast of Ireland, scientists have discovered.
Different physical environments might have contributed to the mammals developing distinctive sets of vocalizations or “dialects”, said Simon Berrow from the Shannon Dolphin and Wildlife Foundation.
Berrow supervised a master’s thesis by student Ronan Hickey at University of Wales, Bangor, who analyzed 1,882 whistles from the dolphins in the Shannon estuary and bottlenose dolphins in Cardigan Bay in Wales.
I wonder if Irish dolphins have a bit of the blarney about them.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Nature Vs HumanWednesday, May 23, 2007
The Deep, Deep Sea
In case you missed it, Time did a story with pics of deep ocean creatures. This one is called a “Dumbo Octopus”. He looks funny from the side, too.
And to think, there are thousands, probably millions of creatures we still haven’t discovered. We discover new creatures all the time.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
When Turtles Attack!
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Sea Flower
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Bust Out the Cell PhonesA swarm of bees clustered outside the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center shut down the emergency room Monday, as officials waited for a beekeeper to come vacuum up the 7,000 insects.
Although no one was stung, the Little Rock emergency room still decided to be closed for ambulance traffic.
“We’ll take walk-ins, but ambulances are being diverted to other hospitals,” UAMS spokeswoman Andrea Peel said.
Doctors did not see any patients with bee stings, but emergency room physician Dr. Delaney Kinchen said it was an important precaution to close the ER while clearing out the bees.
“I’ve been stung thousands of times and never had any problems, but I know people who’ve been stung twice and almost died,” he said.
But I thought all the bees were dying. Could it be that story is just more media crated nonsense? Like, you know, man-made global warming.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Ants
Continuing with our bug posts of the day, a scientist poured some plaster into an ant mound and dug out the casting. What it reveals is the amazing structure of the ant colony. Fascinating.
