Study probes elephants’ suction skill
AFP, PARIS
Elephants are known to use versatile trunks to grab objects big and small, drink great draughts and sniff out water kilometers away, but their proboscis can also switch to vacuum mode to eat, with suction power ranging from faint to ferocious, researchers said yesterday.
A team from the Georgia Institute of Technology observed the world’s largest land mammal suck up rutabaga, draw chia seeds out of water and pick up large tortilla chips without breaking them, the scientists reported in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Up to now, it was thought that only fish exhibited this kind of suction prowess.
Killer flies divebomb towards their prey but often lose control in the air and miss their target, a new study shows.
A team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge filmed the species with cameras as it tried to catch prey in transparent tanks in the lab.
The species, Coenosia attenuata, can reach accelerations of more than 3g when aerial diving to catch their prey, they discovered.
But at such high speeds they often miss because they can t correct their course and end up having to awkwardly recalibrate in mid-air.
Incredibly, the species, which is native to Southern Europe, travels five times faster than a falcon, despite reaching 0.1 inch in length.
Climate change will make outbreaks of West Nile virus more likely in the UK within the next 20-30 years, a new study has found. A new scientific model shows the risk of the mosquito-borne pathogen spreading to the country will increase as temperatures rise.
Steve Lindsay
There are already places where homes are built on stilts, to avoid seasonal floods. A new study, however, suggests that doing so may also significantly reduce the risk of being bitten by malaria-carrying mosquitos.
According to Britain s Durham University, approximately 80 percent of malaria-causing mosquito bites within Africa occur indoors at night. Additionally, although mosquitos are known to fly up to about 8 meters (25 ft) above the ground, they typically stay much lower. With these facts in mind, scientists from the university collaborated with colleagues from the Royal Danish Academy to build four experimental huts in The Gambia.
Over the course of 40 days, two men slept in each hut every night, under separate mosquito nets. Additionally, each week one hut remained on the soil, while the other three were raised so that their floors were respectively 1, 2 and 3 meters (3.3, 6.6 and 9.9 ft) above the ground. Different huts were set at different levels every wee
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