Carnivore canines evolved to kill and eat prey, study finds miragenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miragenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Monash University
An international study led by Monash University scientists has found that giant centipedes, growing up to 23 cm long, are predators of seabirds, suggesting that the arthropod has a key role to play in ecosystem dynamics.
The discovery, based on research on Philip Island, Norfolk Island, is outlined today in the American Naturalist.
Lead author of the study, professional ecologist and PhD candidate Luke Halpin at the Monash University School of Biological Sciences said the research revealed a novel result.
“There is evidence that large centipedes around the world consume vertebrate animals, but this is the first time that centipedes have been implicated as a major, natural predator of seabirds,” Luke said.
Fairy-wrens calculate their benefits when coming to aid others threatened by predators miragenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miragenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Monash University
An international research team led by Monash University has demonstrated that cooling temperatures and glacial cycles over the past 15 million years were essential for an explosion in terrestrial animal diversity throughout the Antarctic region.
Often considered inhospitable, the Antarctic boasts surprising species diversity within many animal groups. Until now, this has been mostly reported for marine life, with a legacy of extinction the prevailing narrative for Antarctic terrestrial animals.
Challenging this, the new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS) uses cutting-edge genomic techniques to show that beetles on islands surrounding the Antarctic diversified in remarkable synchrony with the surrounding marine life, specifically as the climate cooled.
Monash University
New research is using high-resolution 3D scanning to reveal patterns in the design of snake fangs, showing that these needle-like teeth are shaped to match the snake’s preferred prey.
Venomous snakes are notorious for their deadly needle-like fangs. These unusual teeth have a tunnel on the inside that runs down the entire length, just like a medical syringe. The venom is thus truly injected when snakes bite into their victims.
But before this venom can be delivered, these fangs first have to puncture their prey. This requires them to be sharp, but not so pointed that they become fragile and break when the tip hits the surface of their food. This is important because not all foods are the same: while rats and mice have soft skin, lizards have scales, and crabs have hard shells.