Animal World

Bugs were a lot bigger more than 250 million years ago -- millipedes longer than a human leg, dragonflies with wing spans like hawks -- and now a question that has long puzzled scientists has been explained. The reason there are no humongous insects now is because of a bottleneck that occurs in insects' air pipes as they grow larger. They were able to surmount the problem in the Paleozoic Era thanks to a high-oxygen atmosphere.Insects aren't like animals with backbones and deliver oxygen to their tissues directly and bloodlessly through a network of dead-end tracheal tubes. In bigger insects, this mode of oxygen transport becomes less efficient, butno one has been exactly sure why.Alex Kaiser of Midwestern University and his colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory and Arizona State University delved deeper by shining X-rays on four living beetle species, ranging in body mass by a factor of 1,000.

This allowed the team to measure the exact dimensions of the beetles' tracheal tubes.Kaiser and collegues discovered the air passageways that lead from the body core to the legs turn out to be bottlenecks that limit how much oxygen can be delivered to the extremities, Kaiser said. The team also examined the passageways that lead from the body core to the head. "We were surprised to find that the effect is most pronounced in the orifices leading to the legs, where more and more of the space is taken up bytracheal tubes in larger species," he said. Kaiser and Argonne biologist Jake Socha also used the results to predict the largest size of currently living beetles. If data on the air passageways to the head were used as a limiting factor, they predicted a crazy-large, foot-long beetle, while the leg data predicted a beetle that matches the size of today's largest living beetle, Titaneus giganteus. The research is detailed in the Aug. 7 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

View: Full Article | Source: Xinhuanet

For years there have been sightings around the British isles of large predatory cats such as panthers, animals that should not be living in the country and that have been nicknamed "alien big cats" - but what, if anything, isthe government doing about it ? "Nick Redfern: Now and again, I get asked if government agencies take an interest in reports of strange creatures roaming the countryside – in much the same way that, for many years, official departents have investigated other forms of anomalous phenomena, suchas UFOs.

Well, the answer is “Yes,” there have indeed been such studies undertaken. " View: Full Article | Source: Mania.com

A photographer has succeeded in taking a picture of a rare white stag, an animal that has long been associated with mythology and featured in stories and legends from King Arthur to the Chronicles of Narnia."White stags have longbeen associated with mythology and legend, an elusive yet magnificent beast.

King Arthur was left frustrated by his attempts to capture one, as were the Kings and Queens of Narnia, who chased the creature through the woods and found themselves tumbling out of a wardrobe."

View: Full Article | Source: Daily Mail News story suggestionby: Still Waters

Studies have shown that despite having tiny brains the size of a pinhead insects possess several impressive mental capabilities from the ability to count and categorize objects to theability to recognize human faces."Insects may have tiny brains, but they can perform some seriously impressive feats of mental gymnastics.

According to a growing number of studies, some insects can count, categorize objects, even recognize human faces —all with brains the size of pinheads. "

View: Full Article | Source: MSNBC