Randy Steel is no detective, but he may have solved a peculiar holiday mystery. More than 500 bulbs have gone missing this month from the City Park light display in Twin Falls. Officials say they’re not sure who is taking the lights, or why. Steel says he’s a victim, too. The culprits have struck his house, unscrewing light bulbs and dashing away, sometimes in broad daylight. So far, police have done nothing. But that doesn’t surprise Steel. I know who is taking ’em,
he said. It’s squirrels
Researchers in a remote Indonesian jungle have discovered a giant rat that is about five times the size of a typical city rat and a tiny possum
A Tasmanian cat has used up at least one life learning that it’s not all right to attack native wildlife. Usually, Jelly the cat kills birds. But when Jelly bit a snake, the snake bit back, twisting itself around the cat’s neck like a necklace
Scientists conducting tests on two tasmanian devils have found one from Tasmania’s west coast resistant to the devil facial tumour disease. The facial tumour disease is found across about 60 per cent of the state, and has killed up to 90 per cent of some populations. The devil is now listed as an endangered species
Paleontologists discovered a giant fossilised claw that once belonged to an 2.5m long sea scorpion. The University of Bristol scientists uncovered the claw near Prum, Germany. It’s approximately 400 million years old
The Georgia Institute of Technology is working on the theory that honeybees can give us hints about how to improve the speed and efficiency of Internet servers. Honeybees somehow manage to efficiently collect a lot of nectar with limited resources and no central command. Such swarm intelligence of these amazingly organized bees can also be used to improve the efficiency of Internet servers faced with similar challenges — via Slashdot
A paleontologist has discovered a 110 million-year-old dinosaur that had a mouth that worked like a vacuum cleaner, hundreds of tiny teeth and nearly translucent skull
Scientists say the colugo, which looks like a cross between a bat and a squirrel, is the last surviving example of a group of mammals called dermopterans. After our fellow primates — apes, monkeys and lemurs — dermopterans apparently share the most genetic markers with us
Miniature cameras have given scientists a rare glimpse into how New Caledonian crows behave in the wild. The birds are renowned for their sophisticated tool-using ability, but until now, observing them in their natural habitat has proven difficult. But specially designed crow-cams
fitted to the birds’ tails have shed light on the creatures, recording some tool-use never seen before
A Toronto-led team of researchers has found a way to use stem cells derived from skin to treat spinal cord injuries in rats. The finding lends promise to the idea that stem cells could one day be used to heal spinal cord injuries in humans, helping thousands of Canadians to walk again. Injured rats injected with skin-derived stem cells regained mobility and had better walking co-ordination, according to the study published yesterday in the Journal of Neuroscience. The skin-derived stem cells, injected directly into the injured rats’ spinal cords, were able to survive in their new location and set off a flurry of activity, helping to heal the cavity in the cord
Scientists at UC Davis have discovered that some eels have an extra set of jaws deep in their throats that launch forward into their mouths to help pull prey in. It looks like a funny pair of forceps with curved sharp teeth,
said evolutionary biologist Rita Mehta, lead author of the research. Before the discovery, scientists thought that all aquatic predators swallowed their prey using suction. By dropping the lower jaw and creating a flow of water into their mouths, they draw in the prey. The two species of moray eels studied by Mehta and functional morphologist Peter Wainwright are the first examples of an alternative feeding method
Scientists have suspected that the three known domains of life — eukaryotes, bacteria, and archaea — branched off and went their separate ways around three billion years ago. But pinning down the time of that split has been an elusive task. Now, a team of scientists present direct evidence that the three domains of life coexisted at least as long as 2.7 billion years ago. The discovery came from chemical examination of shale samples, loaded with oily lipid remains of archaea found in a deep Canadian gold mine near Timmins, Ontario, about 400 miles north of Toronto
National Geographic is reporting on a deep-sea expedition in the North Atlantic where a team of 31 scientists have discovered new and rare marine animals, including a Jewel Squid (Histioteuthis) and Glass Squid — via Squid
Mutant frogs with gold skin and red eyes were reportedly found by school children in Shimanto, Japan. They’re now on display at the Shimanto River Gakuyukan science centre. According to a centre spokesperson who says the golden specimens are highly unusual, the 2.4cm amphibians appear to be black-spotted pond frogs whose skin turned gold because of an albino mutation that prevents the formation of pigment cells — Boing Boing
Oregon Health & Science University researchers have figured out how to turn a mouse into a factory for human liver cells that can be used to test how pharmaceuticals are metabolised. The technique could soon become the gold standard not only for examining drug metabolism in the liver, which helps scientists determine a drug’s toxicity, but also can be used as a platform for testing new therapies against infectious diseases that attack the liver, such as hepatitis C and malaria
A two-year-old cat has become a telltale sign of death at a Rhode Island nursing home, curling up beside dying patients in their final few hours. Dr David Dosa, a geriatrician at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Providence, detailed the phenomenon Thursday in a brief essay titled A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat
. Since he arrived at the centre two years ago, Oscar has been at the side of 25 patients who have died — via Darren Barefoot
From some Iranian newspaper via the BBC via the Washington Post, dubiously sourced, definitely implausible, but please let this be true: A few weeks ago, 14 squirrels equipped with espionage systems of foreign intelligence services were captured by [Iranian] intelligence forces along the country’s borders. These trained squirrels, each of which weighed just over 700 grams, were released on the borders of the country for intelligence and espionage purposes. According to the announcement made by Iranian intelligence officials, alert police officials caught these squirrels before they could carry out any task
— via Boing Boing
Jumbo squid that can grow up to 7 feet long and weigh more than 110 pounds is invading central California waters and preying on local anchovy, hake and other commercial fish populations, according to a study published Tuesday. An aggressive predator, the Humboldt squid — or Dosidicus gigas — can change its eating habits to consume the food supply favored by tuna and sharks, its closest competitors
The remarkable adhesive abilities of geckos and mussels have been combined to create a super-sticky material. Unlike other adhesives inspired by the nimble reptiles, geckel
can attach to both wet and dry surfaces. Its staying power comes from coating fibrous silicone, similar in structure to a gecko’s foot, with a polymer that mimics the glue
used by mussels
Dingoes should be reintroduced into large tracts of Australian sheep grazing country to control feral animals that would otherwise threaten native fauna, a wildlife expert says. Professor Chris Dickman, of the Institute of Wildlife Research at the University of Sydney, also says it may be time to consider pulling down the dingo fence that was built in the 1880s to keep dingoes from livestock in south-east Australia. He says Australians, particularly the livestock farming community, need to rethink their attitude towards the country’s native dog
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