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Space geckos seen playing in zero-g
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in Brief Chimps are smart about road crossing
Vampire squid takes a rest during reproduction IT’S a tough life deep in the ocean, so you can’t really blame the vampire squid for taking a break. All other species of soft-bodied cephalopod studied so far produce their offspring in one glorious bout of reproduction, usually just before they die. But not the vampire squid. This sinister-looking creature feeds on zooplankton and decaying organic material in its struggle to survive up to 3000 metres deep. Henk-Jan Hoving at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, and his team dissected 43 female squid captured in tow nets off the coast
of southern California. They found 20 adults that had released some eggs, but still had immature egg cells available for future spawning. One squid had released at least 3800 eggs, judging by her empty follicles, but still had around 6500 left. Based on the number of eggs the team observed ripening together in batches, they estimated the squid release about 100 eggs at a time – suggesting this female had already undergone at least 38 bouts of spawning, and could have gone on for another 65 (Current Biology, doi.org/3vm). This could be an adaptation to their cold, low-energy life in the deep ocean. “By reproducing in multiple cycles, it may allow vampire squid to make use of its low-calorie food source,” says Hoving.
Space geckos seen playing in zero g SOMETIMES a little less gravity is all it takes to cut loose. For a group of geckos on a Russian spacefaring mission, the extra lift of zero g appears to have been all they needed to engage in a bit of unprecedented tomfoolery. The 15 “geckonauts” took off in April 2013 on board the uncrewed Bion-M1 satellite. One gecko wriggled free of its coloured identification collar before take-
off, and the collar spent the 30 days of orbital flight floating around its enclosure. On-board cameras captured the geckos – which did not float because of their sticky skin – nudging the collar around with their noses (Journal of Ethology, doi.org/3qb). It’s a highly unusual display of play in a reptile, says herpetologist Gordon Burghardt of the University of Tennessee in
Knoxville, who was not part of the study. He had previously argued that reptiles rarely play because most have to fend for themselves from birth, and – being coldblooded – have little surplus energy for activities that don’t immediately affect their survival. He has also suggested that environments where reptiles need to burn less energy might give them enough juice to fool around. You can hardly blame him for not thinking of geckos in space.
SCREEECH! Bang! It’s the sound we all dread when crossing busy roads. Now it turns out that wild chimps learn to respect roads, adopting the same cautious drills as humans, including looking both ways to check for traffic. Marie Cibot of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, and her team analysed 20 instances of wild chimps crossing a busy road in Sebitoli in Uganda. They watched 122 chimps cross a highway used by 90 vehicles an hour, many speeding at 70 to 100 kilometres per hour. Ninety-two per cent of them looked right, left or both ways before or during crossing, and 57 per cent ran across (American Journal of Primatology, doi.org/3sf). “Road infrastructure is spreading throughout Africa,” says Cibot. “Studying chimpanzee adaptation represents a way to reduce the risk of collisions.”
Stars throw out carbon in a flurry WHEN cosmic carbon leaves home, it may move in a real rush, according to the first sighting of a star spewing it into space. Ageing stars build elements like carbon in their core. These are eventually shed when stars throw off their surface layers, but no one knew exactly how the elements move outwards from the core. Lizette Guzman-Ramirez of the European Southern Observatory and colleagues looked at a gas cloud around an older sunlike star. They found an outer oxygenrich layer around a carbon-rich one. By modelling how the gap between the layers evolved, they calculated the star took 1000 years to dredge up its carbon (arxiv. org/1504.03349) – equivalent to 40 minutes in a human lifetime. 25 April 2015 | NewScientist | 19
in Brief Chimps are smart about road crossing
Vampire squid takes a rest during reproduction IT’S a tough life deep in the ocean, so you can’t really blame the vampire squid for taking a break. All other species of soft-bodied cephalopod studied so far produce their offspring in one glorious bout of reproduction, usually just before they die. But not the vampire squid. This sinister-looking creature feeds on zooplankton and decaying organic material in its struggle to survive up to 3000 metres deep. Henk-Jan Hoving at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, and his team dissected 43 female squid captured in tow nets off the coast
of southern California. They found 20 adults that had released some eggs, but still had immature egg cells available for future spawning. One squid had released at least 3800 eggs, judging by her empty follicles, but still had around 6500 left. Based on the number of eggs the team observed ripening together in batches, they estimated the squid release about 100 eggs at a time – suggesting this female had already undergone at least 38 bouts of spawning, and could have gone on for another 65 (Current Biology, doi.org/3vm). This could be an adaptation to their cold, low-energy life in the deep ocean. “By reproducing in multiple cycles, it may allow vampire squid to make use of its low-calorie food source,” says Hoving.
Space geckos seen playing in zero g SOMETIMES a little less gravity is all it takes to cut loose. For a group of geckos on a Russian spacefaring mission, the extra lift of zero g appears to have been all they needed to engage in a bit of unprecedented tomfoolery. The 15 “geckonauts” took off in April 2013 on board the uncrewed Bion-M1 satellite. One gecko wriggled free of its coloured identification collar before take-
off, and the collar spent the 30 days of orbital flight floating around its enclosure. On-board cameras captured the geckos – which did not float because of their sticky skin – nudging the collar around with their noses (Journal of Ethology, doi.org/3qb). It’s a highly unusual display of play in a reptile, says herpetologist Gordon Burghardt of the University of Tennessee in
Knoxville, who was not part of the study. He had previously argued that reptiles rarely play because most have to fend for themselves from birth, and – being coldblooded – have little surplus energy for activities that don’t immediately affect their survival. He has also suggested that environments where reptiles need to burn less energy might give them enough juice to fool around. You can hardly blame him for not thinking of geckos in space.
SCREEECH! Bang! It’s the sound we all dread when crossing busy roads. Now it turns out that wild chimps learn to respect roads, adopting the same cautious drills as humans, including looking both ways to check for traffic. Marie Cibot of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, and her team analysed 20 instances of wild chimps crossing a busy road in Sebitoli in Uganda. They watched 122 chimps cross a highway used by 90 vehicles an hour, many speeding at 70 to 100 kilometres per hour. Ninety-two per cent of them looked right, left or both ways before or during crossing, and 57 per cent ran across (American Journal of Primatology, doi.org/3sf). “Road infrastructure is spreading throughout Africa,” says Cibot. “Studying chimpanzee adaptation represents a way to reduce the risk of collisions.”
Stars throw out carbon in a flurry WHEN cosmic carbon leaves home, it may move in a real rush, according to the first sighting of a star spewing it into space. Ageing stars build elements like carbon in their core. These are eventually shed when stars throw off their surface layers, but no one knew exactly how the elements move outwards from the core. Lizette Guzman-Ramirez of the European Southern Observatory and colleagues looked at a gas cloud around an older sunlike star. They found an outer oxygenrich layer around a carbon-rich one. By modelling how the gap between the layers evolved, they calculated the star took 1000 years to dredge up its carbon (arxiv. org/1504.03349) – equivalent to 40 minutes in a human lifetime. 25 April 2015 | NewScientist | 19