Ecology & Zoology

Redheads are dangerous to human men but in wild boars, red hair means a danger to themselves.  New research has found that boars with more reddish hair tend to have higher levels of oxidative stress; damage that occurs as toxins from cell respiration build up. The researchers suggest it is because the process of producing reddish pigment eats up a valuable antioxidant that would otherwise be fighting the free radicals that lead to oxidative stress. Most of the pigment in animal skin and hair is produced by chemicals called melanins. There are two kinds of melanins: eumelanin, which…

Southern dumpling squid are tuckered out by sex. So say Australian researchers Franklin et al. in the journal Biology Letters. Sure, it's salacious science, but so what?Dumpling squid: they are frisky. Photo by Mark Norman, published in Biology Letters. Here's the thing. Sex is a costly proposition (see what I did there?). It takes time, energy, and resources, and sometimes, if you're the unfortunate victim of sexual cannibalism, it can even take your life. The evolution of sexual strategies is a constant balancing of costs and benefits (the primary benefit, of course, being to…

'Got less milk?" is unlikely to resonate with consumers in the heartland, but it may be so, says a new projection. The group behind the model found that a possible decline in milk production due to climate change will vary across the U.S., since there are significant differences in humidity and will be impacted by how much the temperature swings between night and day across the country. The humidity and hot nights make the Southeast the most unfriendly place in the US for dairy cows right now. That's not new, scientists and obviously farmers have long known about and studied the impact of…

Spaceflight is tough on humans, due to weightlessness and radiation exposure. But if it bothers the nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, they aren't talking. Researchers writing in Nature Scientific Reports say they were interested in seeing how C. elegans reacts to living in space because it was the first multicellular life form to have its full genetic structure mapped. They found the astronaut worms showed less toxic proteins in their muscles than if they had stayed on Earth. Further investigation revealed that seven genes were less active in space; living on the Space Station led…

Crocodiles and humans are natural competitors. In all our history they have been there, silently waiting in the waters of our shared world, and only in our most recent history have we had the wisdom to see their worth, magnificence and need for protection. Now, in northern Australia, we come once again into conflict with these ancient and awesome predators over who shall use the water and the resources that lay there. Will our wisdom win out? The saltwater crocodile is the largest surviving species of crocodilian. Animals of over 2000 pounds are not considered extraordinary. They live in an…

"That's something you don't see every day, Chauncey.""What's that, Edgar?""A man eating a whole live squid mere weeks after news reports that eating whole squid can lead to mouth insemination." "But in this case, Edgar, that's not a concern. You see, those are juvenile market squid (Doryteuthis opalescens). Much too young to have functional spermatophores.""All right, Chauncey, but there's another major risk to consider.""What's that, Edgar?""Popular outrage when squid are perceived to be tortured for entertainment.""But in this case, Edgar, that squid probably died very quickly. One bite to…

Many people have an uncomfortable feeling about snakes and the bigger they are the more uncomfortable the people become. So when people are watching a TV show, on a channel that is supposedly a nature/fact channel, and they begin to describe the take over of North America by giant pythons loosed in Florida, and headed for all states north, many people become upset.Newspapers print articles about giant snakes eating babies and attacking people as they walk in the fields. Other TV specials appear about how numerous and dangerous these snakes are, and they are coming after you, so people are…

The fun folks of Nerd Nite San Francisco invited me to straighten out all the hilarious squid sperm news with a mini-talk last Wednesday. I was honored! Nerd Nite SF: Squid Spermatophore mini-talk by Danna Staaf, 6/20/12 from nerdniteSF on Vimeo. (The other talks that night were fantastic--did you know some high school students engineered a bacterium to heal concrete?--and will also be posted online soon.)

You'd think European waters would be pretty well documented by now but nature always has surprises. Uroptychus cartesi is a crab in the 5-7 cm (including claws) size range that has been found at nearly a mile deep in the underwater mountains facing the Galician coast - Spain.  Also intriguing: Its closest relative is in the Caribbean Sea. During one of the expeditions of the research campaign INDEMARES that studies the Banco de Galicia underwater mountain, a team of scientists captured the new species of crab. Uroptychus cartesi belongs to a family called the Chirostylidae…

Honestly, media. *polishes obnoxious academic spectacles* Is it really that difficult to comprehend the difference between "inseminate" and "impregnate"? On Thursday I reported that a woman's mouth had been inseminated by a squid she was eating. To be specific, squid spermatophores (packages of sperm) implanted themselves into her mucus membranes, and had to be removed by a doctor. Several sources have now erroneously reported that a woman was impregnated by a squid she was eating, and found baby squid in her mouth. Truth is strange--but this is fiction. "Impregnate" (in reproduction,…