Silk Slippers. We've known that tartantulas, like other spiders, make silk from organs called spinnerets, found on their abdomens. Now, scientists have discovered they also make silk from spigots on their legs! The silk tarantulas make with their legs helps them to stick better to surfaces as they walk. We're still not certain if other spiders do this, or whether the silk tarantulas make with their legs is the same kind they make with their spinnerets. Zebra tarantulas were used for the study. For the full story, see here, as well as the current issue of Nature.
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Walking Sharks. Dozens of new kinds of sea life have been discovered off the cost of Papua, Indonesia in an area known as the "Coral Triangle." One of the new animals is an epaulette shark that "walks" on its fins! In walking on its fins, the shark resembles some of the early fish who came onto land in the time before the dinosaurs and eventually evolved into more complicated types of life. For the complete story, see here.
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Birds of a Feather. A missing link between primitive bird ancestors and modern birds has been found in a remote China lakebed. Similar to today's loons, Gansus yumenensis had dark brown feathers and webbed toes, was the size of a pigeon, and ate fish, which it caught through diving. It lived in flocks (a dozen Gansus were found together). The fossils of Gansus are 110 million years old (earlier fossils of bird ancestors were 99 million years old). For the full story, see here.
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Sssssneaky. Scientists have discovered a new species of snake (genus Enhydrus) in the heart of the Borneo jungle that's able to blend in with its surroundings by changing the color of its skin, just like a chameleon! The one and a half foot long, poisonous river snake is normally a shiny reddish-brown color. When placed in a bucket by a scientist, the snake turned the same color as the container, almost completely white, within minutes. For the complete story, see here.
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How to Boil Water. For the first time, scientists have captured on film an active arc volcano on the ocean's floor. Arc volcanoes appear near trenches formed when one plate of the earth's crust slips under another, releasing magma (super-hot liquid rock). They are the type of undersea volcanoes that can form islands. The arc volcano in this picture (named Northwest Rota-1) is located in the deep ocean off the coast of the Northern Mariana Islands (lcoated in the South Pacific Ocean, these are near Guam and are a U.S. Territory). The picture was taken by a remote-controlled submarine. For the full story, see here.
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Too Legit to Quit. In the Coral Sea (which includes the Great Barrier Reef, east of Australia), French scientists have discovered alive a creature we thought became extinct millions of years ago. 5-inch long neoglyphea neocaledonica looks like something "halfway between a shrimp and a mud lobster." For the complete story, see here.
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Spaced out. We've made many new discoveries in outer space over the past year. We used to think the brightest star in the sky (next to our sun), the North Star, was a single star. Now we know it is three! We also used to believe there were nine planets in our solar system. Now we believe there are ten! The tenth planet, which isn't yet named, is located beyond Pluto, the furthest planet of the original nine from the sun. We've also found new moons around some of the planets in our solar system, and expect to find more. And, we're finding new planets outside our solar system all the time (we're up to over 180). Plus, we've learned that our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a companion galaxy that travels with us in space. For more information on astronomical discoveries, Parents and Teachers, see Universe Today.
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Hot, hot, hot. In February, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico made a superheated gas in their lab that is hotter than the sun. The gas was hotter than 3.6 billion degrees farenheit. Our sun's core averages only 27 million degrees farenheit. That's the hottest temperature ever achieved on earth! Parents, read more here. Learn more about the sun here.
