New Mammal Species

New Mammal Species

A new mammal, possibly a carnivore, has been sighted in the central forests of Borneo. The local people, on looking at the images said the new animal was unfamiliar to them, and it from the few pictures, researchers have also remarked it does look something new. The forests in South East Asia are under growing pressure from logging and trade in palm-oil. The story is remarkable in that finding a new mammalian species is actually quite unusual. A camera trap, relying on infra-red beams across a forest path, captured the animal. There are only two images, one from the front, and another from the back. Dr. Nick Isaac from the institute of zoology in London remarked that it might be a viverrid, related to mongoose and civets. The picture shows a red furry red creature, about the size of a mongoose, with a long muscular tail. The long tail may indicate that it spends a lot of time in the trees. It is not likely to be a lemur (though some may say it does look like one), as they are mostly confined to the island of Madagascar. The idea that it spends a lot of time in the trees may be responsible for the fact that it has not been seen before, but now, with shrinking forests and the population pressures encroaching onto rapidly clearing forest land may lead to more sightings in the future. The WWF has accused the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia (which share the parts of Borneo), of encouraging loss of the native forests in support of palm oil plantations. Once again, the new mammal, a new species, nameless yet, has exposed to us what still may still be inside the jungles, and what all we may stand to loose in face of reckless development.

2004’s Red list, prepared by The World Conservation Union, showed shows that 15,589 species - 7,266 animals and 8,323 plants and lichens - are either Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable. It is an increase of more than 3,000 from 2003.

Though the discvery of the new mammal is exciting, such discoveries have been quite regular ,though few, in the past few years. A new species of monkey was discovered in 2004 in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, and called the Arunachal Macaque. It is a comparatively large primate, with a short tail. Although the monkey was new to science, it was well known to the local people as “mun zala” or the “deep-forest monkey”. It was also interesting in that the last macaque species was discovered way back in 1903.

In another case, a new species of dolphin, the first in over 30 years was discovered in Australia. In Madagascar, two new species of lemur were found this year too. This was really remarkable, lemurs are the most endangered of all primates. They are found exclusively on Madagascar. One of these species is called the Giant Mouse Lemur or “Mirza zaza”. It is the size of a squirrel and has a thick bushy tail. The other species is the Mouse Lemur, a lemur the size of a mouse. A really cute looking lemur if you ever saw one!

Elephant Moods

A new study has found that older Asian bull elephants produce a complex chemical cocktail which the younger males do not produce. This chemical secretion actually helps them appear more attractive to females than their younger competition. Well, the older bulls do know how to keep their females attracted to them this way…hmmm, don’t think older humans have any of such stuff, but I bet they would be ready to pay heavily if such a thing could work for them. There’s a commercial research prospect for you.

There is a time in a male elephant’s life (once every year ) in which it becomes rather aggressive. This period is called musth. A musth elephant is primed to mate, and fights other bull elephants, attacks other animals, and may destroy inanimate objects in its way. Musth bulls produce a distinctive low-frequency vocalization, the musth rumble, have thick secretions from their temporal glands (the duct from the temporal gland opens between the eye and the ear), and continuously dribble urine. Testosterone levels are at a peak in musth males and probably regulate this extreme form of reproductive behavior.

So, all bull elephants enter this musth period, and all produce secretions of the sex pheromone frontalin . It is a component of a dark, oily substance produced in this period from a temporal gland on each side of its head about midway between the eye and the ear. This frontalin can be of two types, or enantiomers. These two types of frontalin molecules are mirror images of each other. Both types are produced, but it is the ratio of the enantiomers that is important. Young males produce a very biased cocktail, favoring one enantiomer over the other, almost completely, and this cocktail smells rather honey like. The older ones however, produce a balanced secretion, where each enantiomer is present in equal amount. But this secretion has a rather foul smell. This change in secretion happens to a bull elephant usually when he is over 30 years old. Ovulating female elephants are extremely attracted by this balancing act of the older bulls, while the competition, the younger bulls get psyched out and may even run for it.

Want to hear an how elephant sounds in musth? You can go to http://www.elephantvoices.org/ and look at this excellent site. It has a large number of fantastic elephant sounds and fabulous pictures of elephants.

Frontalin is not new to biologists, and is actually much better known in insects. In 1969, W. Ginzer first isolated frontalin from the beetle Dendroctonus frontalis Zimmermann, and from which it gets its name. It plays an important role as volatile signal in sytems of chemical communication among many insect species. This beetle is a destructive pest to pine forests in the southeastern United States. Attracted by secretions from pine trees, female beetles aggregate. Here they start to produce frontalin (along with other chemicals), and this attracts thousands and thousands of males and female beetles to the site.

Narwhal Sensor

Credit: http://www.studentsonice.com/arctic2004/assets/images/narwhale.jpg

The narwhal (Monodon monoceros) is actually a "toothed whale". And only the males have these tusks. But unlike other whales, narwhals have no dorsal fin. What’s a dorsal fin you say? Its that big fin on the back of fishes, like the one on a shark’s back which you can see sticking out of water as it swims just below the surface. This whale inhabits ice covered Arctic seas, and only rarely wandering into temperate waters, and so the loss of the dorsal fin may have had something to do with it getting in the way when the whale was completely under ice. These chappies are heavy really, males weigh about 1.6 tons while females are on the lighter side, only 0.9 tonnes or so. But it’s the tusk which is the most striking feature of narwhales, and it can be upto 8 feet long ! that’s taller than most tall basketball players. But what good is such a long tooth you may ask? It has been a difficult question no doubt. Nature works in secret ways, and its takes time for us to come to come to see the light of how things may have come about. But before we see why its easier to see what. And what has been found is that the tooth is actually a sensor. (remember Ampullae of Lorenzini?). It helps the whales test the water quality. So this big antenna protruding in front of the narwhal is actually continuously telling the whale loads of stuff about the surrounding water, like water temperature, pressure, and salinity. This entire tooth is covered with a very delicate, thin membrane which in innervated by nearly 10 million nerve connections, which means it is extremely sensitive. It is a unique biological adaptation, one that is not yet completely understood. Why does a narwhal need such a fantastic sensor? Male narwhales ususually rub their tusks together and no doubt this must be a somewhat unique sensation. It may also be that the tooth serves the in the matter of social dominance among the males, as females do not seem to suffer any survival problems with the lack of this tusk.

In medieval times narwhal tusks have been sold to unsuspecting buyers who were convinced these were horns of unicorns, and had magical properties. The reality that these were whale’s teeth, had it become known would have certainly reduced their prices which was at least their weight in gold.

Volcanic Eruption

Mount Belinda, located on the Montagu island in South Sandwich Islands in the Atlantic is spewing its guts these days. The South Sandwich Islands are situated approximately between the southern tip of South America and mainland Antarctica. What’s so special is that eruptions on ice sheets are exceedingly rare. The island is quite close to the Antarctic land mass, covered completely by ice and snow, glaciers extend over the land and form steep vertical cliffs where they meet the ocean, and is home to a large population of chinstrap penguins.

The picture shows clearly why they are called chinstrap as they have a thin curved line of black feathers running under the chin. Of the several penguin species, they are one of the most common penguins in the world actually. Most of us are used to seeing chinstrapless-penguins normally I think. Well back to the eruption, it was first noticed on November 30, 2005 and we have already some really breathtaking pictures from satellite. Volcano experts are understandably absolutely thrilled….

"I'd give my right arm to be down there now," says John Smellie, a volcano expert at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK. "It's very rare that we get to make direct observations of eruptions under ice sheets."

This is a satellite picture of the island (Image Courtesy NASA Earth Observatory), taken in 2004. Belinda has been showing signs of activity since 2001.

Woman Smart, Man Smarter

Researchers Dr. Paul Irwing and Prof. Richard Lynn in UK have recently concluded and published a large scale study of gender differences w.r.t intelligence. They gave IQ tests to 80,000 people and a further group of 20,000. Fairly large numbers. They concluded that men were, on an average, 5 points ahead of women on the IQ scale. Moreover, this difference increased with increasing scores. The study is published in the British Journal of Psychology.

The study involved different age groups, and interestingly, up to the age of 14, no difference in IQ could be measured between girls and boys. The difference emerges in adulthood, and kept getting wider and wider as higher IQ scores were compared. For instance, twice as many men than women had an IQ score of 125. At the score of 155 however, there were 5.5 times men than women.


Several reactions to this news were observed. Some (females) wanted to rubbish the comparison altogether, saying the discussion is inherently divisive and politically incorrect, while others (the males) were happy to hear this information, and glad that they were getting the right kind of positive media exposure. General questions like are these tests still biased for western audiences, gender-differences, also cropped up, as did several reasons for why females are lagging behind in the test, one interesting one being they don’t really push themselves too hard for such a test anyway, while men would be falling over each other trying to outdo everyone else… (makes sense I think). Also, it was felt we live in a male-driven world, it is the men who are given the chance to achieve more, and are less prone to repetitive tasks. Some people remarked that a group of males devised a test, which was given by males, evaluated by males, and concluded by males that males were more intelligent. There were some charming confessions by people who said they had scored high in their IQ tests when they were small but had done so many stupid things lately they suspected the tests to have anything to do with intelligence at all. Suspicions were also cast on the journal editor (probably a male himself). Another point was that was raised was that why are women psychologists not running around trying to prove women are smarter than men ? Why is it only the males ? A rather wry observation by a female was “granted there are more exceptionally clever men than women, but there are also more exceptionally stupid men than women too”.

I wonder what Harry Belafonte (singer of Man Smart, Woman Smarter) would say to all this?

Life after 100

Most people will never live to that age. The average age in the developed world being around 75. However, there a few populations in the world where living up to 100, is actually rather common. Sardinia, (Those who don’t know where it is click here), is a small island in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Italy. The routine line during a toast is..”May you live to be a 100 years!”. According to Emma Bird, in Growing Healthy in Sardinia, "five of the world’s 40 oldest people live in Sardinia and some 135 people per million live to see their 100th birthday, while the western average is nearer 75."

Whatever have these people been doing ? Outliving normal people by more than 20 odd years at least ?

Most are shepherds on the move, active throughout their lives, and eating meat and cheese and drinking red wine regularly. Staying purposeful and active is important.
However, they are a slim people, not overindulging in food, as for a long life everything must be "Normalissima!" This is also interesting as calorie restriction has been found by scientists to be a contributer to longer lifespans. What scientists have found now, these people have known for years.

Killer gas to Clean fuel

Carbon monoxide + steaming hot water = hydrogen

What a nice way to produce wonderful fuel! It may become reality with the sequencing of the genome of a strange microbe (Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans Z-2901) that lives in boiling hot springs of the volcanic Kunashir island in Russia. It possesses upto five different carbon monoxide dehydrogenases, while most other species found so far have only a single one. This really should be a microbe to look out for in the future.

The Circle of Genomes

Biology has increasingly become an information science, and the complexity of information is on the rise. Ten years ago, the genome sequence of the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae, sequenced by TIGR, led by Craig Venter, in a then audacious move, cut sequencing costs by half (50 cents a base) and developed technology and drove the project along with computational biologists. It took 13 months for the sequencing alone and 30 hours for the TIGR Assembler software to assemble the 24,000 DNA fragments . Another genome, that of Mycoplasma genitalium, the smallest bacterial genome, was produced in 8 months. These were remarkable achievements of that time, and gave impetus to the thought process of completing the human genome itself, which was eventually published in the year 2001, in a dramatic neck to neck race between the public consortium and Celera Genomics. (publications in Nature and Science)I remember very well the feverish excitement among scientists om the subject of the human genome and its implications. It was everywhere, it was inescapable, and it was breathtaking. How Celera was going to charge for access to the annotation of the genome was widely publicized and how the talk of every search which a researcher made in their database would be monitored for scientific leverage was a concern that was shared by the cautious. But its hard to say how much of this was well founded and how much leverage ( if any ) did Celera's scientists gain. An explosion of public and private databases on the human genome has flourished since then, and the boom that was loud and resounding then has somewhat fizzled out, as increasingly we found that the sequence was not the answer to all questions. This however, does not lessen the importance of the sequence, which is a prime example of one the most invaluable biological resources produced by a world wide collaborative scientific effort. It has taught us many things, importantly, an appreciation of scale in biology.However, sequencing efforts are getting better, to put it mildly. A latest publication in Nature demonstrates a brand new method of sequencing - pyrosequencing. The developers, in order to show the effectiveness of the approach, chose the historic Mycoplasma genitalium (originally sequenced by TIGR in 8 months) and finished the sequencing (96% coverage, 99.96% accuracy) in a single 4 hour run. Breathtaking you say ? And what is the next goal ? What do you think ?

Ghost Footprints

A foot and an ancient footprint. Photo from the Mexican Footprints media section

Currently it is believed that humans entered the Americas only about 11,500 years ago. Much research has gone into the topic. And the book The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey by Spencer Wells, discusses and explains the varied human migrations that have occurred in human history. Now, a foot of contention has arisen (as happens now and again in research. A study of an interesting set of footprint like ancient impressions Pueblo, Mexico, has hinted that these may be nearly 40,000 years old. Not to be outdone in any way, another team has dismissed 40,000 years as a date and purports 1.3 million years as the more reasonable one. But the contention is, if they are really that old footprints, what explanations do we have for all the other research we have done ? But even more, are they really footprints ? Can you tell ?

Look here for the complete gallery

Ancient Wings

Scientists have believed that Archaeopteryx (“Ancient Wing”) had a “perching toe” (just like birds), which helped them to grasp branches of trees. However, a new extremely well preserved fossil of Archaeopteryx from Thermopolis, has been found to have no perching toe at all. This limestone encased fossil also has one of the best-preserved skulls of all specimens ever found. However, it is the feet that are the centre of attraction as all previous fossils had rather shriveled up feet, but not this Thermopolis specimen. The feet, have a thumb-like extension from the side of the foot rather than from the back. So the ancient winged fellers might not have been exactly swooping from the skies on their meals, but rather furtively scouring around and over bushes in pursuit of their natural motives.

Crazy Chameleons

They are certainly one of the most captivating creatures to look at. Can change color at will, and become pretty much invisible (without the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter). The transformation is eerie indeed. There’s more, they can move both eyes independently of each other. It has a long sticky tongue,that shoots out within a split second to grab the unsuspecting prey. It hides in the trees and leaves and waits patiently for the prey to get within shooting length, which is about twice the length of its body

Largest frogs

The Goliath Frog

by far the largest frog on the planet. Can measure upto 1 foot! that's right, nearly 12 inches... and if you measure the legs as well, the combined length of the entire animal may be upto (or even) more than 2 feet!. A perfect nightmare for frogophobiacs! You might never see one actually in your life time though, unless you decide a trip to coastal Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea in western Africa.

Click here for some images

Shark stuff

Two-thirds of a shark's brain is dedicated to smell, amazing! isn't it ? In addition to the smell stuff, they have these really cool electrical vibration detectors called the "ampullae of Lorenzini", which help the shark detect electrical and magnetic fields generated by the prey, and the ocean floor. Apparently it also helps in navigation.

Click here to read about Nicole (Kidman), the great white shark who is on record for the longest recorded journey in human or shark history...

what a terribly long way to swim...

Random Biology

Biology is an exciting study. There is an infinite amount of diversity of life on this planet. One can never run out of surprises. I'll try to share some interesting bits of information on this blog. You may find them interesting. Please feel free to post if you have interesting tidbits that you would like to share.