ScienceShots: March 2009

• Ouch! Think twice before ordering the crab legs. New research shows that crustaceans feel and remember pain. While previous studies have shown that the animals have an instinctual aversion to harm, a crab's reaction to pain may be more pensive, researchers report in the 27 March issue of Animal Behaviour. After receiving small electric shocks, hermit crabs living in higher-quality shells were less likely to evacuate their homes than those living in more mediocre real estate, suggesting the crustaceans were evaluating the level of pain they felt. In addition, crabs who had been zapped before were quicker to abandon their home for a new one than those who hadn't, indicating that the crustaceans remember being hurt. (Photo: Bob Elwood)
• Veteran. Researchers have found the world's oldest known coral in deep waters off the coast of Hawaii. Using radiocarbon measurements, scientists estimate that Leiopathes glaberrima is about 4,265 years old. That makes it about twice as old as others in its species, but not quite as ancient as the world's oldest tree, a 4800-year-old bristlecone pine in California. It takes about 200 years for Leiopathes to grow 1 millimeter, the team reports online 23 March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That slow growth rate, the authors say, highlights the need to protect deep-sea ecosystems from damaging activities, such as bottom trawling and commercial harvesting for jewelry. (Image courtesy of NOAA's Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory)
• Grudge match. Imagine two prize bulls circling each other in a barnyard full of chickens. That's an approximation of the commotion going on inside NGC 6240, the remnants of two galaxies that have collided and whose supermassive black holes are preparing to butt heads. This combined image, taken in infrared and optical light by the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, shows gigantic clouds of dust (red) and gas (blue), as well as far-flung stars, all thrown about by the immense gravity of the titans bearing down for their final struggle. Astronomers calculate they will crash together within a few million years, a wink of an eye astronomically. The observations should help scientists define the Milky Way's own fate, when it collides with the Andromeda Galaxy in about 5 billion years. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI-ESA)
• Dueling duets. If there's trouble at home, you can hear it in the duet between male and female Peruvian warbling antbirds (Hypocnemis peruviana). When the pair times their tunes' rhythms precisely, the song is a strong signal of the birds' cooperation. But if a female hears a single gal in the bushes, she will sing over her mate's notes, effectively jamming his tune. The male, in turn, stops singing, skips a few notes and starts again, as if to confuse his mate. You can hear the conflict here. The first two segments are a typical duet; the second two are a female jam and a male trying to avoid that jam, respectively. (Photo: Joe Tobias)
• Tiny predator. Researchers have discovered the smallest non-avian dinosaur known to North America. Named Hespernychus elizabethae, the 75-million-year-old carnivore was about half the size of a house cat and came equipped with razor-sharp claws, one of which was shaped like a sickle (Hesperonychus means "western claw"). The creature prowled the swamps and forests of western Canada on its two legs in search of insects, small mammals, and the hatchlings of other dinosaurs, scientists report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers were initially duped by Hespernychus's small claws, which made the animal look like a juvenile, but fused hip bones--an indication of adulthood--confirmed its full-grown size. Until now, the smallest North American non-avian dinosaur was believed to be about the size of a wolf. (Image: ©2009 Nick Longrich)
• Burning skies. That bright orange streak across the night sky isn't a shooting star. It and the other orange dots in this picture--an image of the universe compiled from 3 months of observations by the Large Area Telescope aboard NASA's Fermi spacecraft--are gamma rays, the most intense energy form known. Some 150-million times more intense than visible light, gamma-rays result from only extreme cosmic events, such as flares from supermassive black holes, the creation of pulsars (the burned-out remnants of collapsed giant stars), or pairs of giant stars or black holes tugging at each other in tight orbits. Generally, gamma-ray bursts are short-lived phenomena, but as this image shows, they're also relatively common, both within and outside the Milky Way galaxy. (Image: NASA/DoE/Fermi LAT Collaboration)
• Thar she blows! How do you assess a whale's sex drive? There's no easy way to take a blood sample, so scientists have resorted to finding feces--a tricky task itself, especially in the Southern Ocean, where conditions make spotting whale poop all but impossible. Enter blowholes: All whales have to come to the surface to breathe, and in an upcoming issue of Marine Mammal Science, researchers report success using lung mucus exhaled through the spout to assess testosterone and progesterone levels. The scientists collected the samples on a piece of nylon stocking attached to a long carbon-fiber pole, which they held over the blowholes of humpback and North Atlantic right whales. According to the authors, by making it easier to sample individual whales repeatedly, the technique could help build a better picture of their reproductive health. (Photo: Regina Campbell-Malone/WHOI)
• Reinventing the tooth. Carp-like fishes lost their teeth 50 million years ago, but one species found a way to get them back. The jaws of Danionella dracula, aptly named after the vampire, have sharp tooth-shaped projections that look and function just like real teeth, except they're made of jaw bone that lacks pulp and enamel. Males even sport a pair of impressive fangs used for fighting and display. The new species, described in the 11 March issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, is only 16 millimeters long and was discovered living in a small stream in northern Myanmar. (Photo: Ralf Britz)
• Deep. Three explorers have found a giant new species of carnivorous pitcher plant atop a lone mountain on the Philippine island of Palawan. Coined Nepenthes attenboroughii after the British broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough, the plant's giant cavity spans up to 30 centimeters in length and 16 centimeters in width, making it the largest of its kind to be found in 150 years. The pitcher is filled with a milky, viscous fluid overlain by water that traps curious insects lured by the plant's vibrant colors and nectar. The researchers, who describe the species in the February issue of the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, estimate that there may only be a few hundred N. attenboroughii left, and that illegal horticultural trade and mining activities could easily wipe the species out. (Photo: Robinson et al., Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society (2009))
• Mysterious past. What do Mercury's insides say about how it formed? The solar system's innermost planet contains an anomalously large iron core that makes up some 70% of its total mass. One theory posits that Mercury materialized as is, while another speculates that the planet was once much larger--and that it suffered a catastrophic blow early in its history that left the core behind. The first ever spectral signature of minerals from the planet's searing hot surface, reported in an upcoming issue of Planetary and Space Science, suggests that the former theory is correct. Readings taken using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii reveal a number of mineral compounds, including olivine, pyroxene, and potassium feldspar--all of which indicate that Mercury may simply have formed in an extremely iron-rich part of the early solar nebula. (Photo: Mariner 10/Astrogeology Team/USGS)
• Loners. Long-necked sauropod dinosaurs may not have been the gregarious tree-grazing titans often depicted in movies and artwork. Rather than living in herds, some sauropods like Alamosaurus were probably solitary creatures that only banded together briefly while young. Researchers report in an upcoming issue of the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology that two well-preserved dino mass graves in Montana and west Texas consist entirely of juveniles. The young animals were likely victims of drought, and the absence of older sauropods in their party suggests they weren't under any parental care. The team speculates that some sauropods instinctively struck out on their own when grown to better feed their enormous appetites. (Image: Karen Carr Studio, Inc.)
• Tamed. People living on the steppes of Central Asia several thousands of years ago were likely the first to domesticate wild horses, but proving that hasn't been easy. Now a research team studying the Botai culture that lived in Northern Kazakhstan 5500 years ago has uncovered ancient horse bones that more closely resemble those of Bronze age domestic horses than wild ones. Some of the Botai horse skulls also have marks indicating the animals were bridled. The real clincher, however--published 6 March in Science and first reported by our news team last year--was Botai pottery fragments showing residues of fermented mare's milk. People in Northern Kazakhstan still drink this unusual beverage, and domestication researchers amusedly note no one would be brave enough to milk a wild horse. (Image courtesy of Alan K. Outram)
• Getting clever. Researchers have long known that chimpanzees poke sticks into termites' nests to collect dinner. Now, innovative chimps in the Republic of Congo have made this tool even better: they fray the ends of the "brush stick" to improve their catch, researchers report in the 4 March issue of Biology Letters. Excerpts from over 3 years of remote video recordings reveal the chimps deliberately running the stick though their teeth to create a "paint brush" tip prior to fishing for termites. Though the reasoning isn't entirely clear, the trick works: The new-and-improved stick gathers over 18 times more termites than a blunt stick. (Photo: Biology Letters, C. Sanz, J. Call, D. Morgan)
• Climate change culprit. Between 0.15-1.5% of a potent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere comes from an unlikely source: the guts of tiny aquatic invertebrates. When these creatures feed off of bottom sediments and suspended food particles, they ingest bacteria. The bacteria usually use oxygen to help them break down and process their food, but when they are subjected to oxygen-poor conditions in the invertebrate's belly, they turn to nitrate. The result: nitrous oxide--a greenhouse gas with 310 times the warming effect of CO₂. The invertebrates need nitrate-rich waters to spur the process. However, so managing the two big nitrate polluters--fertilizer and sewage runoff--would help to decrease the creatures' emissions, the researchers report online 2 March in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Photo: Christian Lott (MPI Bremen/HYDRA))
• Egghead. The oldest fossilized brain ever found belongs to a fish. Scientists using the super-bright x-rays of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, examined a fossilized skull of an iniopterygian, a fish with a major underbite related to sharks and ratfish, that lived 300 million years ago. They noticed an odd structure inside and took a closer look. What emerged: The fish's brain (yellow, at left). The scientists suggest in their paper, published online 2 March in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that oxygen-free conditions may have led to the highly unusual preservation of the soft organ. (Image: PNAS/Philippe Janvier)

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