Antarctic marine bonanza

What’s happening in the Antarctic? Researchers are looking at seabed changes that result from global warming.

The researchers catalogued about 1,000 species in an area of the Antarctic seabed where warming temperatures are believed to have caused the collapse of overlying ice shelves, affecting the marine life below.

“This is virgin geography,” said expedition member Gauthier Chapelle. “If we don’t find out what this area is like now following the collapse of the ice shelf, and what species are there, we won’t have any basis to know in 20 years’ time what has changed and how global warming has altered the marine ecosystem.”

Here’s what’s cool: lots of photos of these creatures.

[Read more…]

Ducks with 6 limbs are not caused by genetic changes!

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Cool: here’s a duck with four hindlimbs.

I have to gripe about the description, though:

A rare mutation has left eight-day-old Stumpy with two extra legs behind the two he moves around on. … The mutation is rare but cases have been recorded across the world.

No, no, no. This is almost certainly not the result of a mutation, and it’s one of my pet peeves when the media makes this wrong assumption, that every change in a newborn is the product of a genetic change. This is the result of a developmental error, not a genetic one, most likely caused by a fusion of two embryos in a single egg.

(via Apostropher)

“Shark after shark descends on the rotting flesh”

That’s a line in this video describing the scene when the South African police tow a beached whale carcass offshore—you can guess what it all looks like, if you’d rather not watch.

It just gets better, though. After the great white sharks have gorged themselves and are lolling about, the announcer declares that they have spotted the “tell-tale aspect of a large sexually aroused male”…

(via Byzantium’s Shores)