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The baby komodo in the picture is a product of a virgin birth, this baby komodo dragon is one of five hatchlings that had made their appearance at the Chester Zoo in England this week.

Their mother, Flora, never had a mate and instead it reproduced asexually. This is the second recorded incidence of asexual reproduction in a female komodo dragon, the other birth took place in April 2006 at the London Zoo. Two more of Flora’s eggs are yet to hatch.

The interesting element of such a birth is that the offspring’s of such virgin births are all male, because of the genetics involved in self-fertilization in lizards.

Flaring gills give this species its name, this frilled shark is swimming at Japan’s Awashima Marine Park. These frilled sharks are very rare and live many thousands of feet under the water and thus sighting them is not easy.

Spotted by a fisher on January 21, this 5.3-foot (160-centimeter) shark was transferred to the marine park, where it was placed in a seawater pool.

“We think it may have come to the surface because it was sick, or else it was weakened because it was in shallow waters,” a park official told the Reuters news service.

But the real reason for its coming tot the surface may never be known, because it died just hours after it was caught.

A very new species (mammal) has been discovered in the forests of Peru. This is a large rodent that has been called a handsome novelty by its finders. It looks similar to a squirrel and also a spiny rat put together.

This is a nocturnal tree climbing rodent that has long fur, and a broad blocky head, and a thickly furred tail. It has a blackish crest of fur on its crown, nape and shoulders that give it a different appearance.

This new species, has been named Isothrix barbarabrownae, which were found by an international team of field researchers in Manu National Park and Biosphere Reserve around the eastern slope of the Andes Mountains in southern Peru. The Manu has many species of mammals and birds than any equivalently sized area in the world, experts claim.

“Preliminary DNA analyses suggest that its nearest relatives, all restricted to the lowlands, may have arisen from Andean ancestors,” says Bruce Patterson, curator of mammals at The Field Museum in Chicago, US, who was involved in the study. “The newly discovered species casts a striking new light on the evolution of an entire group of arboreal rodents.”

There is no fully formed or generally accepted scientific theory on ball lightning, mainly because it is so rare, and even if it occurs its for such a short span that it cannot be studied. It generally has a lifetime of less than five seconds.These balls have been reported to melt glass windows, burn objects, and sometimes even kill people. There have been many theories have been proposed to explain this phenomenon.

John Abrahamson and James Dinniss, of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, first proposed the ball-lightning theory that lies behind Pavão’s research. The pair suggested that when lightning strikes a surface, like the Earth’s silica-rich soil, a vapor is formed. This silicon vapor may condense into particles that combine with oxygen in the air to slowly burn with the chemical energy of oxidation.

Pavão and Paiva have spent two years testing the theory with a simple experiment. They used electrodes to shock silicon wafers with enough electricity to create a silicon vapor. Most of the artificial orbs lasted two to five seconds, but at least one has survived as long as eight seconds—approximating natural ball lightning and far exceeding previous efforts to create the phenomenon in the lab.

Ball lightning expert Graham K. Hubler, a physicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C, called the work “very promising.” “The eight seconds is extraordinary and bodes well for a possible explanation for many ball-lightning events,” he said.

Abrahamson, the New Zealand scientist, agrees. “Their balls are of sufficient duration and size to enter the mainstream of ball lightning seen in nature,” Abrahamson said. “Also the balls have sufficient properties similar to those in nature to be convincing ball lightning.”

Other Sources of the Phenomenon?

Abrahamson added that other materials besides silicon can also cause ball lightning, though none of them have been successfully tested. “Our theory includes many materials, such as aluminum and iron metals, which appear to be the sources of some balls seen in nature,” he said.

Some sightings of the ball lightning have occurred in or around airplanes, Abrahamson explained, which suggests that aluminum in the aircraft could also have caused the phenomenon. If these materials can produce ball lightning, he said, the phenomenon may occur after lightning strikes power poles, electrical fittings, roof materials, and other objects.

In fact, Abrahamson suggested, conventional lightning may not be the only energy source for the curious orbs. “It could be smaller atmospheric discharges or even friction heating from earthquakes—balls have been seen coming from an active fault,” he said.

The MSC Napoli, a 68,000-ton (62,000-metric-ton) container ship, has already spilt around 220 tons (200 metric tons) of light fuel oil from it’s engine room, creating a five-mile-long slick on the sea surface just off the southwest coast of the United Kingdom.

The Napoli was sliced open on January 18 during a heavy storm, and initial efforts to tow the ship to Portland Harbor were stymied by severe structural damage. So the British Maritime and Coastguard Agency decided to beach the ship in Lyme Bay, part a wildlife-rich area near Sidmouth in Devon. The salvage crews are working around the clock to remove containers and pump oil off the ship.

The most pressing concern is the ship’s 3,900-ton (3,500-metric-ton) store of heavy fuel oil, used to drive the boat. “If this leaks out, then it will be a very serious incident,” said a spokesperson from the country’s Environment Agency.

Wild Life Endangered

The location’s 95 miles (153 kilometers) of coastline is home to rich and varied flora and fauna. If the oil reaches the shore, then it could threaten some rare species like the pink seafan (a coral) and specialized niche environments such as the maerl beds.

Marine biologist Robin Crump added that “heavy fuel oil has a smothering effect, killing creatures like limpets and barnacles.”

The Environment Agency has been taking water and shellfish samples from the entire stretch of coast and will be monitoring the effects of the pollution carefully over the coming days and weeks. If the heavy oil does leak, then previous experience indicates that wildlife could be affected for a number of years.

“It depends on the type of oil and the weather conditions, but it will probably take between five and ten years to recover,” Crump said.

Toxin’s

In addition to the oil hazard, around 200 of the ship’s 2,323 containers have fallen overboard. About 160 of the containers are said to contain hazardous material like pesticides and insecticides. Two of these, containing perfume and battery acid, were among those that plunged into the sea.

“This has increased the environmental damage by creating lots of litter and damage, making the clean-up operation much more difficult,” said Sophia Exelby from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

Complex Operation

Many experts also fear that poor weather will hamper the delicate heavy-oil recovery operation, which is expected to last around a week.

“The cold weather means that the oil has a treacle-like consistency and has to be warmed up before it can be pumped off,” said Farooq Mulla, a spokesperson for the Environment Agency.

The process of removing the ships containers and the oil that is containes in them is a tedious process. This whole process could take around an year to be complete.

They might be small, spiky, and spineless, but they’re still part of our family. The California purple urchins and we have more than 7,000 genes in common, which makes them close cousins to humans.

This unexpectedly discovery of connection between the humans and sea urchins that are part of the few invertebrates seen on the branch of the evolutionary tree. This conclusion has been arrived at after a recent sequencing of the sea urchin genome.

Gary Wessel is a biology professor at the Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Sea Urchin Genome Sequencing Consortium. He had used the marine animals for decades as models to study human processes like fertilization and embryo development.

“We’ve already learned an enormous amount from the sea urchin, from something as basic as how identical twins form to in vitro fertilization procedures,” Wessel said in a university press release.
“With a complete map of the urchin’s DNA, we can now learn more quickly and easily how each process works during development.”

The results of the genetic sequencing also revealed some surprises for Wessel: The eyeless urchins can actually see! The Genes that are associated with vision are active in the urchins’ tube feet, suggesting that their limbs can actually sense light.

“Nobody would’ve predicted that sea urchins have such a robust gene set for visual perception,” Wessel said. “I’ve been looking at these organisms for 31 years—and now I know they were looking back at me.”