Weird-creature Ping-pong tree sponge.

Weird creature of the day is the so-called "ping-pong tree sponge":
Chlondrocladia lampadiglobus, which was featured in the November/December Issue of American Scientist, but, according to wikipedia, discovered back in 2006, by Jean Vacelet. This bizarre creature is carnivorous, as are all the sponges in the genus Chlondrocladia, which is a very unusual adaptation in sponges, which are generally filter feeders. In a recent paper, Prof. Vacelet and colleague Michelle Kelly, suggested that this carnivorous feeding habit had evolved in this group of deep sea sponges in response to the "difficult conditions of [their] deep sea environment".


http://madethere.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/mbari_chondrocladia_72.jpg

The American Scientist article was called "An Empire Lacking Food" ( volume 98 number 6, pages 470-477). There is a blog-post with a photo of the pingpong tree sponge on the American Scientist website [here], although there is an error in the post (bioluminescence is very common in sea creatures, especially, deep sea ones, but it is not really "the norm", as the article says).

Link of the day- Baby Bats rescued from Australian floods

Picture by Luke Marsden/Newspix / Rex Features. For full article and more pictures, see The Sun newspaper.

If you thought Bats weren't cute, think again-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/Green/3337211/Baby-bats-are-Australian-flood-orphans.html

Science Update- Unexplained mass wildlife deaths

Red-winged Black bird,image by Alan D. Wilson of naturespicsonline.com. (This image has a creative commons 2.5 licence- for details, click [here])

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful!

Today's links are definitely weird, rather than beautiful.

In recent days there have been 3 separate incidents of mass wildlife deaths that are as yet not fully explained.

The first was [this story] about the mysterious death of more than 1000 Red-winged blackbirds(Agelaius phoeniceus) on New Year's Eve in Beebe, Arkansas. The birds apparently fell, dead, from the sky over the small town in White County.

You can find more details online here-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110102/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_dead_birds_arkansas

and here-

http://www.examiner.com/political-spin-in-national/dead-birds-beebe-arkansas-break-record-for-single-kill

The second was a similar, also unexplained, instance of around 500 birds- mostly blackbirds and other small to medium sized birds- falling from the sky in Louisiana, around 30 miles from Baton Rouge and around 300 miles from Beebe, Arkinsas.
The full story is online here-
http://abcnews.go.com/US/bird-deaths-louisiana-911-calls-released-arkansas-blackbird/story?id=12544093

The third was the finding of two million (mostly juvenile) dead fish off the coast of Maryland. The most likely explanation for this event is currently considered to be that the fish were killed by "heat shock" caused by the rapid and large temperature changes over the past few weeks. For more details, see-
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20110105/twl-two-million-fish-found-dead-in-maryl-3fd0ae9.html

Antshrikes, Seals and African Solar Panels

Barred Antshrike, Thamnophilus doliatus by Brazilian photographer Dario Sanches. This picture has a creative commons attribution licence - you can find details of that [here].

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful and Happy New Year!

First beautiful item of the day today is the wonderful bird above- the Barred Antshrike, which is a central and South American species, found from Mexico, right down to Northern Argentina. The bird shown above is a male: the females are redder in colour, like this-



This picture is also by Mr Dario Sanches. You can find details of the image licence (also Creative commons 2.0) [here].

The barred antshrike is an insectivorous creature, eating ants and other insects and arachnids, plus occasional lizards and/or berries- you can find out more about it [here]

Sticking with the "beautiful" theme, second link of the day today is this seal photograph c/o stumbleupon.com-
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1o6F6m/www.clarin.com/diario/2006/10/19/um/fotos/morsa3.jpg

Finally, today's third picture link I have for you is... not exactly beautiful, but certainly pretty amazing- baby crocodiles from babyanimalz.com-
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1XA6MK/www.babyanimalz.com/

There has been no shortage of scientific stories in the media, either, lately.
The International Herald Tribune published this story on the International Marine Census earlier today-
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/science/04scibks.html?_r=1&ref=science

Essentially, it talks about the publication last year of a census of known marine life- including some of the odder beings on this planet. Several of the pictures have been published before, but if you haven't seen them, they are worth a look.

Meanwhile, this article, by Eleanor Rosenthal (also in the International Herald Tribune)looks at the growth of renewable energy in Africa- notably the use of solar panels in Kenya; undoubtedly a very positive application of science.

A Cure for AIDS?

http://scienceray.com/biology/a-cure-for-aids/

Turkeys, Silver Firs and Cultivating Christmas Trees

Poinsettia leaves changing colour to their characteristic Winter-red (image by V. Neblik)

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful

In honour of the rapid approach of Christmas,today's link is to one of the American wildlife site - eNature 's Field guides- to the Wild turkey- an indisputably weird creature-
http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?recnum=BD0171

The second link is to Wikipedia's entry on Chritsmas Tree Cultivation.... I am beginning to wonder if there are, in fact, any topics for which there is not a wikipedia entry.

Today's final link is to this factsheet from Borealforest.org on the "original Christmas tree" - the Silver fir, Abies alba.

Links of the week- The Beauty of Earth from Satelites and the wonders of the Brain

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

First link of the day today is to this review of the new book "Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century" by Carl Edward Schoonover. As the book and reveiwer (Ian Sample of The Observer) explain, trying to depict the amazing and strange world of the human mind has been the preoccupation of some of the greatest human minds for centuries. In recent years, new insights from PET and MRI scanning technologies have brought us insights that our forebears could only envy. The future should be very interesting indeed....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/nov/28/human-brain-pictures-neural-connections

Second link-of-the-day is from the Observer's weekday sister paper, The Guardian- this stunning set of satelite images of the Earth, appropriately entitled "Our Technicolour dream world"-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gallery/2010/nov/21/landsat-satellite-images