Science

A study has revealed that some small carnivorous marsupials in Northern Australia instinctively know how to avoid being poisoned by cane toads.

The University of Sydney’s Dr Jonathan Webb and his team have found that red-cheeked dunnarts from the Kimberley in Western Australia are naturally wary of cane toads — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The tropical forest in Papua New Guinea is a noisy place at night, filled with the calls from all sorts of living things: frogs, birds and insects, including especially loud cicadas. One particular call –— a high-pitched, cricketlike tink-tink-tink — caught the attention of herpetologist Christopher Austin and his graduate student Eric Rittmeyer.

Together, they tried to locate the noisemaker, which they assumed was an insect. Four times, they attempted to hone in on the source of the calls, but each time they failed to find the creature in leaf litter on the forest floor. On the fifth try, they grabbed the dead leaves and dropped them in a clear plastic bag. Then, back at camp, they went through and began checking each of the hundreds of leaves they had picked up.

A tiny animal hopped off one of the leaves. This miniature frog, now dubbed Paedophryne amanuensis, has taken over the title of smallest vertebrate, an animal with a backbone. Though they discovered the frog in 2009, only now have they described their finding in a scientific journal — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Philcoxia couldn’t look more unassuming. I’s a small herb that lives in Brazil’s Campos Rupestres region, a sparse plateau of rocky outcrops and white sands. All you’d see of it are a handful of twigs sticking out from the grains, topped with small purple flowers and even smaller leaves. You wouldn’t think that it’s the type of plant that can kill animals.

To find Philcoxia’s grisly secret, Caio Pereira had to look underground. The plant biologist from Unicamp, Brazil, found that the plant traps and digests tiny worms with sticky underground leaves — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Rhinos are one of the heaviest land animals but one thing puzzles scientists: how do they carry this weight on their stumpy little feet?

Now a team from the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) is trying to find out.

Rhinos at Colchester Zoo have been trained to walk across a hi-tech track that is packed full of sensors.

This will allow the researchers to measure the pressure and forces in the rhinos’ feet to reveal how the weight is distributed — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A giant Galapagos tortoise believed extinct for 150 years probably still exists, say scientists.

Chelonoidis elephantopus lived on the island of Floreana, and was heavily hunted, especially by whalers who visited the Galapagos to re-stock.

A Yale University team found hybrid tortoises on another island, Isabela, that appear to have C. elephantopus as one of their parents.

Some hybrids are only 15 years old, so their parents are likely to be alive — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Parasitic flies that turn honeybees into night-flying zombies could provide another clue to cracking the mystery of colony collapse disorder.

Since 2007, thousands of hives in the US have been decimated as bees inexplicably go missing overnight. The best explanation so far is that multiple stresses, perhaps parasitic mites, viruses or pesticides, combine to tip the bees over the edge.

John Hafernik of San Francisco State University in California and colleagues discovered that hosting Apocephalus borealis, a parasitic fly found throughout North America, makes bees fly around in a disoriented way at night, when they normally roost in the hive, before killing them — via redwolf.newsvine.com