Evolution and communication

Unique hedgehog-like mammals have been filmed using their quills to communicate.

A BBC film crew captured footage of the streaked tenrecs in the eastern rainforests of Madagascar.By rubbing together specialised quills on their backs, the tenrecs made high pitch ultrasound calls to each other in the forest undergrowth.The lowland streaked tenrec (Hemicentetes semispinosus) resembles both a hedgehog and a shrew with black and yellow stripes, and is found only in Madagascar.

Scientists have theorised that tenrecs could also be using high pitched calls to echolocate in the dark forest, finding their way with sound rather than sight in a similar way to bats.The film crew were also hoping to record evidence of a particularly bizarre audio behaviour, unique to streaked tenrecs.
In the 1960s, streaked tenrecs were found to communicate using specialised quills on their backs, rubbing them together to make high pitch ultrasound calls.The rich diversity of tenrecs on is explained by scientists as evidence of the Darwinian theory of "adaptive radiation". They propose that the tenrecs evolved from a single ancestor 60 million years ago, possibly a mammal that floated across the sea from mainland Africa. With no other mammals on the island at the time, the different species of tenrecs are thought to have evolved into a diverse family as they adapted to Madagascar's wide variety of environments, free from competition.

Read rest see video here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9392000/9392070.stm

This of course will get cryptozoologists thinking about how some cryptids might communicate. Isn’t evolution fantastic?

Mammals of Madagascar: A Complete Guide 

Madagascar Wildlife 3rd (Bradt Travel Guide. Madagascar Wildlife) 

The Natural History of Madagascar 

Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Madagascar 

Bigfoot search to start Saturday

Massive Bigfoot Search Gains Momentum

Fox Charlotte Feb 8, 2011

TROY,NC- About an hour east of Charlotte, Troy, NC has a population of just over 3000, residents say everyone knows their neighbor. That was until super bowl Sunday when someone spotted a hairy beast.  "Sasquatch, Bigfoot, in Florida they call it the skunk ape, in the Appalachians and in parts of Tennessee and Kentucky it's known as the Wollybooger," says John Pate. Whatever you call it, residents say they have proof it exists with pictures of 17 inch footprints. "When I came out the stretch between the prints is 10 to 12 feet, you know that's a pretty big stretch," said Leonard Braley. Strides that are too big to be a human says the B.F.R.O. or the Bigfoot Field Research Organization. "Every state, except Hawaii, has had some type of Sasquatch/ Bigfoot sighting," said John Pate who is an investigator with the B.F.R.O. and is certain between 3 and 6 thousand big foot creatures exist in North America. "They are very very intelligent they have great eyesight they have great hearing and they know how to survive," said Pate. He says they often communicate by knocking on wood. Bigfoot also reportedly eats plants and meat and throws rocks at campers. One hundred fifty people showed up at a planning meeting Tuesday night where Pate and others organized a grid search. That search will happen on Saturday.

Read rest here and see video: http://www.foxcharlotte.com/news/top-stories/Massive-Bigfoot-Search-Gains-Momentum-115613379.html

Russian Yeti hunt in the news

 Tea party with the Yeti?

Alexei Chernichenko Feb 6, 2011 12:50 Moscow Time

Enthusiasts in the Russian Siberian region of Kuzbass continue to search the region’s remote areas for the Yeti in a drive that was earlier endorsed by Kuzbass Governor Aman Tuleyev. He jokingly announced the payment of one million rubles to a person who he said will be able to bring the ape-like cryptid to the governor’s residence so that the three could have a tea together. The announcement came in the wake of the establishment of the Yeti Day in Kuzbass. For their part, local business people were quick to capitalize on the Yeti boom by opening a fancy restaurant in the Gornaya Shoriya mountains, thought to be Yeti’s habitat. The restaurant includes the Abominable Snowman’s personal chill-out room, where the owners said he will “really enjoy himself.”The Yeti boom kicked off in Kuzbass in 2010 after unverified information about the Yeti allegedly being spotted by local hunters in taiga near the Gornaya Shoriya Mountains. The news immediately hit the headlines, with readers especially amazed with the photograph of the Yeti’s alleged footprint. Experts remained downbeat about the news, which was understandably hailed by PR agencies and tour operators. A number of monuments to the Yeti has been installed across Kuzbass since then, and Russia’s special presidential envoy to Siberia traveled to a cave where the Yeti was ostentatiously tracked down. No traces of the Yeti were discovered at the time.Even so, many in Kuzbass still hope against hope that Aman Tuleyev will be lucky to finally see the Yeti coming to his place for a tea party. Echoing them is Igor Burtsev, a Moscow-based Yeti expert, who argues that that the information about Yeti is first of all music to businessmen’s ears.

See video and read rest here :http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/02/06/43049104.html

Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti 

Bhutanese Tales of the Yeti. 

My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery 

Travels in Siberia 

The Reindeer People: Living With Animals and Spirits in Siberia 

Untouched lake to be explored for unknown life forms

Russia poised to breach mysterious Antarctic lake

By Alissa de Carbonnel

MOSCOW | Fri Feb 4, 2011 7:34pm GMT
MOSCOW (Reuters) - For 15 million years, an icebound lake has remained sealed deep beneath Antarctica's frozen crust, possibly hiding prehistoric or unknown life. Now Russian scientists are on the brink of piercing through to its secrets."There's only a bit left to go," Alexei Turkeyev, chief of the Russian polar Vostok Station, told Reuters by satellite phone. His team has drilled for weeks in a race to reach the lake, 3,750 meters (12,000 ft) beneath the polar ice cap, before the end of the brief Antarctic summer.It was here that the coldest temperature ever found on Earth -- minus 89.2 Celsius (minus 128.6 Fahrenheit) -- was recorded.With the rapid onset of winter, scientists will be forced to leave on the last flight out for this season, on Feb 6."It's minus 40 (Celsius) outside," Turkeyev said. "But whatever, we're working. We're feeling good. There's only 5 meters left until we get to the lake so it'll all be very soon."Scientists suspect the lake's depths will reveal new life forms, show how the planet was before the ice age and how life evolved. It could offer a glimpse at what conditions for life exist in the similar extremes of Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa."It's like exploring an alien planet where no one has been before. We don't know what we'll find," said Valery Lukin of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in St Petersburg, which oversees the expedition.
Experts say the ice sheet acts like a duvet, trapping in the Earth's geothermal heat and preventing the lakes from freezing.Sediment from the lake could take scientists back millions of years to tropical prehistoric times, the AARI's Lukin said.Lake Vostok, about the size of Lake Baikal in Siberia, is the largest, deepest and most isolated of Antarctica's 150 subglacial lakes. It is supersaturated with oxygen, resembling no other known environment on Earth.

Read rest here :

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/us-russia-antarctica-lake-idUKTRE7135MB20110204

Evolutionary discoveries and freaks of nature

 Frogs re-evolved "lost" bottom teeth after more than 200 million years, according to new research. By Ella Davies Earth News reporter

Tree-dwelling Gastrotheca guentheri are the only frogs with teeth on both their upper and lower jaw.  The reappearance of these lower teeth after such a long time fuels debate about whether complex traits are lost in evolution or if they can resurface. Scientists suggest this new evidence identifies a "loophole" in previous theories.

The species Gastrotheca guentheri is even more unusual, being the only known frog to have teeth on its lower jaw. Dr John Wiens led a team of scientists from Stony Brook University, New York to investigate this exceptional feature. Their findings are reported in the journal Evolution.

Read rest with pics here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9365000/9365076.stm

A two-headed albino snake is the star attraction drawing the crowds to one of everyone's favourite events of the year - the exhibition of natural world oddballs in Switzerland.The Basel show features all manner of weird and wonderful animals, from mammals to marsupials.But it seems the one area everyone is drawn to this year is the reptiles house - which, this month, is the home of the world's most unusual snake, Mince.This twin-credible freak of nature is an albino garter snake which boasts two heads - making it look even more intimidating than normal.He is the only two-headed albino snake in the world, according to its owner Tom Beser, who also claims he could command offers well into five figures to buy the animal.'There are eight of these two headed snakes in the world, albino and normal. But this is the only snake which is both two headed and albino,' he said.

Read more and pics here : http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/854455-two-headed-albino-snake-is-star-of-natures-oddballs-show#ixzz1CsqoMWNj

ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2011) — Triceratops and Torosaurus have long been considered the kings of the horned dinosaurs. But a new discovery traces the giants' family tree further back in time, when a newly discovered species appears to have reigned long before its more well-known descendants, making it the earliest known member of its family. Longrich was searching through scientific papers when he came across a description of a partial skeleton of a dinosaur discovered in New Mexico in 1941. The skeleton went untouched until 1995, when it was finally prepared and identified incorrectly as Pentaceratops, a species common to the area. When the missing part of its frill -- the signature feature of the horned dinosaurs -- was reconstructed for display in the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, it was modeled after Pentaceratops.

"When I looked at the skeleton more closely, I realized it was just too different from the other known Pentaceratops to be a member of the species," Longrich said, adding that the specimen's size indicated that it likely weighed about twice as much as adult Pentaceratops. The new species is very similar to Triceratops, but with a thinner frill, longer nose and slightly bigger horns, Longrich said.Instead, Longrich believes that Titanoceratops is the ancestor of both Triceratops and Torosaurus, and that the latter two split several millions years after Titanoceratops evolved. "This skeleton is exactly what you would expect their ancestor to look like," he said.Titanoceratops was probably only around for about a million years, according to Longrich, while the triceratopsian family existed for a total of about 10 million years and roamed beyond the American southwest into other parts of the country and as far north as Canada.

read rest and pics here : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110131133404.htm

Nicholas R. Longrich. Titanoceratops ouranous, a giant horned dinosaur from the Late Campanian of New Mexico. Cretaceous Research, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.cretres.2010.12.007