National Geographic has this pic of some absolutely tiny little frogs. They are Solomon Island tree frogs and are “among the few frog or amphibian species to skip the tadpole phase and emerge as mini-adults.”

Very cute little things.

National Geographic reports on an astonishing fossil that has been unearthed recently. “The extraordinarily preserved hadrosaur, or duck-billed dino, still had much of its tissues and bones intact, encased in an envelope of skin”.

The dinosaur died in a “perfect soup” of chemicals allowing for the amazing preservation of its tissue after 67 million years. The paleontologists are all very excited about the information that they can get from this specimen. And it was found by a teenager!

This image above shows the preserved scales of the dino’s skin.

When I’m sitting at Ocean Basket in Sea Point munching on some fresh hake I find it strange to think that until very recently that individual fish was swimming in the sea. A lot of the fish we eat was born in the wild, grew up in the wild, avoided predators in the wild, but was eventually hauled out of the wild by a fisherman.

The problem is that unsustainable numbers of fish are being pulled out of the wild. Long ago unsustainable hunting on land caused wild reserves of land animals to collapse. Now we must farm animals like cows for food in dedicated industries, but the wild populations of many species have been decimated.

If you agree that this is a great pity, then you should realise that the same thing is busy happening in the world’s oceans. Across the globe fish populations are being mercilessly hunted towards extinction. National Geographic has this article about overfishing and specifically the damage being done to Mediterranean Tuna populations.

From the article:

• “The world’s oceans are a shadow of what they once were. With a few notable exceptions, such as well-managed fisheries in Alaska, Iceland, and New Zealand, the number of fish swimming the seas is a fraction of what it was a century ago.”
• “In the Mediterranean, 12 species of shark are commercially extinct, and swordfish there, which should grow as thick as a telephone pole, are now caught as juveniles and eaten when no bigger than a baseball bat.”
• “Would it be different if, as one conservationist fantasized, the fish wailed as we lifted them out of the water in nets?”

The problem is that because nobody owns the ocean’s fish reserves so it pays everyone to go nuts. There is no incentive for any one person to fish carefully if he knows that nobody else will. This kind of problem is known as a tragedy of the commons and can be quite tricky to solve.

So overfishing continues unabated and fish reserves are getting hammered. The article contrasts two catches at a particular tuna fishing spot in the Mediterranean:

• “In 1864, Favignana’s fishermen took a record 14,020 bluefin, averaging 425 pounds (190 kilograms). Last year, very few fish were caught—about 100, averaging 65 pounds (30 kilograms)”

Another thing about overfishing that really gets to me is the waste. In the photo below the fisherman is holding everything that he will keep – the rest goes overboard!

I grew up in Knysna where we have a beautiful estuary (we call it the lagoon). I am told that 50 years ago there were many large fish living in the lagoon. Now people hardly ever catch fish in the lagoon, and when they do they are small. What a pity…

National Geographic has this short story of a minke whale that got confused and swam 1,600km 1,300km up the Amazon. The 12 ton whale eventually got stuck on a sandbar and now scientists are trying to get it to swim back out. Amazing.

Update: The whale was eventually found dead in the river at least 15 days after entering fresh water.

National Geographic has a cool photo gallery showing the first year in the life of a young leopard cub, Legadema. It’s a nicely done gallery with some really interesting pictures. This one shows the mother leopard scrambling to prevent the cub from falling out of a tall tree.

There are some other interesting pics, but this little story was particularly interesting. The young leopard managed to kill an adult female baboon. However, when she found that there was a young baby hanging onto the baboon, she was gentle with it. She “groomed it and gently carried it to safer branches higher in the tree”. There they snuggled up for the night, but by morning the baby had died.

Hippos kill more people in Africa than any other wild animal – they are mean buggers when you bump into them out of water. The problem is that they move quite far from the water in order to graze at night.

I was recently sent an email with a couple of pictures of a close encounter with a hippo. This guy appears to have reacted fast enough to save his skin.

I recently read an article in National Geographic about Death Valley in the states. There is a place called Racetrack Playa where rocks move across the landscape leaving tracks in the mud. Some of the stones are really big, but nobody has ever seen one move.

There isn’t a real consensus, but it seems like winds are able to move these (sometimes huge) rocks across the mud. It must be a really strange place – all these rocks with their tracks across the mud.

Wikipedia has a pretty detailed article on it all.

New Scientist has the graphic below showing the amount of water required in order to grow some common crops. For instance, growing 1kg of coffee requires a massive 20,000 litres of water!

Everyone always says that the appendix is pointless. They reckon that it’s a left over organ that used to have a purpose.

New Scientist reports:

• Previous research has shown that the appendix is actually recently evolved so it must have a purpose.
• They reckon the purpose is to keep a stash of good “gut bacteria” which could otherwise be “lost to bouts of diarrhoea.”
• The theory is that people who have no appendix are OK because they live in the rich world and are “unlikely to get extreme diarrhoeal diseases like, say, cholera.”

In fact:

• “Fully 6% of people in industrialised countries have had the thing out, but appendicitis is relatively rare in poor countries. Perhaps this is due to differences in diet, with more roughage making for generally healthier guts?”