Vampires, no reflection

Vampires, those mystical human looking creatures, that kill their pray by sucking their blood have been studied for centuries and described differently in myths, legends, books of all sorts and even movies. Even though vampire fans have observed recurring traits described in most of those stories as being really quick, really strong but also males having a beard, females not wearing lots of make up. And that would be because vampires don't have a reflection. That is one of the trait inherited that makes them such a dangerous predator. But scientifically speaking, how is it possible that their reflection does not show up in places such as windows? First one should know the difference between a polarized light and a non natural . A natural light is a light that goes in no specific direction, it goes everywhere as normal daylight. A polarized light is the result of two perpendicular natural light, that forms a light that is concentrated in one specific direction. We have discovered while studying light that if a light arrives on a window already polarized the reflection is greatly diminished. If the vampires had cells that had the capacity two direct the light sent back at them, exactly like the sepia officinalis, then their reflection would barely be.

Pants variety grew, Animal Variety Died

A long, long time ago, actually about 100 000 000 years ago, during the Cretaceous era, suddenly a great variety of plants started appearing. Until now scientists thought that would also have increased the mammal variety of specie as it would have increased their survival chances. But actually a new study shows that animal variety declined during the great angiosperm radiation of mid-Cretaceous period. A former high school biology teacher, Grossnickle, was the first one to make this discovery. He wrote a paper on this subject called  "Mammal disparity decreases during the Cretaceous angiosperm radiation,". Here is an abstract of it:

Fossil discoveries over the past 30 years have radically transformed traditional views of Mesozoic mammal evolution. In addition, recent research provides a more detailed account of the Cretaceous diversification of flowering plants. Here, we examine patterns of morphological disparity and functional morphology associated with diet in early mammals. Two analyses were performed: (i) an examination of diversity based on functional dental type rather than higher-level taxonomy, and (ii) a morphometric analysis of jaws, which made use of modern analogues, to assess changes in mammalian morphological and dietary disparity. Results demonstrate a decline in diversity of molar types during the mid-Cretaceous as abundances of triconodonts, symmetrodonts, docodonts and eupantotherians diminished. Multituberculates experience a turnover in functional molar types during the mid-Cretaceous and a shift towards plant-dominated diets during the late Late Cretaceous. Although therians undergo a taxonomic expansion coinciding with the angiosperm radiation, they display small body sizes and a low level of morphological disparity, suggesting an evolutionary shift favouring small insectivores. It is concluded that during the mid-Cretaceous, the period of rapid angiosperm radiation, mammals experienced both a decrease in morphological disparity and a functional shift in dietary morphology that were probably related to changing ecosystems.

 Grosspeckle discovered that it is true that the great increase of food did increase the amount the number of mammals on earth but also decreased the variety of mammal species, leaving almost only small, insect eating, animals.  Most of his research was made by studying the jaws of different mammals of this time period. He also noticed that the animals with quite small jaws and bodies, were the ones that did the best during this time period, we think that those were the ancestors of the therians (also ancestor of the humans).

Animal News

New Wet suit:

Australia is very famous for its many shark attacks on surfers. In general thee surfers' wet suits never protected them from sharks and sometimes even attracted sharks since it made surfers look like seals. But the Australians have come up with a simple yet very efficient answer. They have designed a stripped wet suit. In nature, usually, animals with black and white stripes indicates that they are poisonous. These suits have been tested on humans and they worked incredibly well, the sharks wouldn't even get close to it!

An incredible memory! :

The planarian warms have an incredible capability to regrow any body part, including the brain! This is because their body  is stuffed with a huge amount of stem cells. But searchers from Tuft university discovered something something even more incredible: after being decapitated they are able to regrow a brain with all of its memory! The searchers suspect that this is possible because the memory was copied in some of the stem cells.

Titi Monkey

Titi Monkeys' Song

 This magnificent specie of monkey developed  an incredible adaptation. Biologist from the University of St.Andrews and of the University of Neuchatel have this specie for years.  They have discovered that these monkeys emit different pitch cries to indicate different type of predators and their emplacement. Christiane Casar and her team from the university of St.Andrews have tried different experiments. First they placed a stuffed Caracara (one of their predator) in a tree, that made the monkeys make a  A pitch calls. Later  the placed a stuffed Oncilla on the ground, that made the monkeys that saw it make a B pitch calls. When they switch the position of the stiffed animals around and the monkeys caracara was on the ground, the monkeys started with at least four A calls before adding B calls into the mix. If the oncilla was in a tree, the monkeys made one A call before switching to a couple of B calls. They are the fist specie of New World monkeys that developed this survival technique.
And that is how singing saves species ;)

New specie 2013: Olinguito

 It has been 35 years since we had dicovered a new carnivor specie in the Western hemisphere. But this summer, an animal that most could describe as "the cutest looking carnivore ever!" has been identified. It's name is the Olinguito. Dr Helgen. curator of mammals at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, has studied over 60000 Olinguito remains. Some of those remains were discovered hundreds of yeas ago but only now were they correctly identified thanks to the new DNA identifying techniques.By studying those animals and their traits scientist were able to figure out which type of habbitate they evolved to live in and therefore were Olinguitos come from:
 

 Looking at those adorable meat and fruit eating animals make us think about how vast our planet is and how much we have yet to discover. How many species live in our days that we do not know about?

Evolution

EVOLUTION

 

Charles Darwin was 22 when he went on a boat trip around the world as a naturalist. At that time it was 1831 and in England Church was a very important, God created everything around you as it is and that is all we had to know. But while going on that trip Charles found weird looking, giant bones, shells on mountains, and animal looking bones looking like animals existing but much bigger. When he came back from his trip Charles was so amazed with all he saw that he started studying extremely hard on what he had found, and tried to find answers to all those questions floating in his mind. This is how he had the idea of the Theory of Evolution. The Theory of Evolution explains many things. The first thing that it explains is that species evolve with time to adapt with their changing environment, for the survival of the specie.  This theory states that all species come from a same common specie, as we now think are bacteria. It is like a tree, it starts with a common specie, a common trunk, and then branches of in different adaptations of those species and on and on. Some branches stop but some continue. That is caused by Natural Selection, only the species that can adapt to their environment are  able to survive. Also all animals compete to stay alive, the one that is the slowest or has a bad camouflage gets eaten by a predator, the predator that doesn't hunt well doesn't eat. Evolution happen in a specie over a long period of time. Sometimes alleles are mutated during Miosis. Most of the time does small mutation are useless, minor, but sometimes it helps a specie survive and it is passed on through generation and generations, creating a new specie. Here is a simple video to help you understand how it works.

Sciency Superheros

TERMINATOR:
In a few seconds the face of Terminator 1000, in Terminator 2 , which was shot by a air compressed gun, just goes back together. But would it be possible ? Well it would be possible on some miniature spheres on the top of the skin hold a bit of a liquid that is filled with a chemical that reacts with the material and recovers the whole and soldifies. The only inconvenient is that it only works once it is not a reusable material. But what does it have to do with real life? If scientist where able to make this type of mini spheres with a real cicatrising liquid, they would make a great pouder that could make you face look perfectly smooth and with a great tint.