It is a typical example of a wild-caught crab (Lybia leptochelis) holding an anemone in each claw. Textured like scrumptious tempura and barely 2 centimeters (0.7 inches) huge, the Lybia boxer crab would appear reasonably ill-suited to survival – and that’s why they wield a pair of sea anemone cudgels. Bar-Ilan University graduate college students Yisrael Schnytzer, Yaniv Giman and two other colleagues had the identical query, and investigated the matter for a new research printed in the journal PeerJ. The researchers collected boxer crabs from the south shore of the Red Sea in Eilat, Israel, and identified the weaponized anemones as belonging to the genus Alicia, seemingly a newly recorded species. But the place do they snag these fancy bioweapons? But once they seemed around for wild examples of the Alicia sea anemone, nothing turned up. Theft, after all. Just as an unarmed Bruce Lee may swipe a pair of nunchucks from an adversary, so too does an unarmed boxer crab wrestle an anemone away from one of its fellow instrument customers.
You’ll be able to see footage of that behavior in action in this New Scientist YouTube clip. After which things get even more amazing. The ensuing fragments then regenerate over the course of several days into two distinct clones. Let’s see Bruce Lee do that. Schnytzer and Giman aren’t any strangers to the mystery of crab boxing. As the researchers discovered in a pair of experiments, an one-weaponed boxer crab will split its remaining anemone into two fragments. They use them to catch meals and defend themselves, but additionally they starve the anemone enough to regulate their size. Now, the researchers’ newest examine reveals the crab’s manipulation goes past symbiont tool use. The two biologists beforehand worked on a 2013 research printed within the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, which revealed the boxer crab’s bonsai-like treatment of their claw-clutched bioweapons. Molecular fingerprinting of anemone pairs taken from wild crabs revealed much more identical clone weapons, suggesting the follow is widespread. The state of affairs wouldn’t be in contrast to the domesticated fungi of leaf-cutter ants. Given the obvious absence of wild Alicia sea anemones and the boxer crabs’ expertise for inducing clonal reproduction, we’re left with a tantalizing question: Are there any free-living Alicia left, or does the species continue as a purely cultivated weapon species? Schnytzer say that the cultivation explanation is possible. “Bottom line, my guess is they exist however are in all probability very uncommon,” Schnytzer informed HowStuffWorks by e mail. Regardless, the researchers’ findings provide us with a seemingly unique example of one animal inducing the asexual reproduction of one other – and for instrument use! Humans could claim the honors to bioweapon supremacy for the second, however the boxer crabs are prepared to assert the prize simply as soon as we wipe ourselves out with a mishandled plague virus or two.
Such a crystal-clear ice is product of water free of other contaminants and a sluggish freezing course of. The phenomenon has change into a draw for vacationers and photographers. The ice varieties in the Sea of Okhotsk, a physique of water between Hokkaido and the Kamchatcka Peninsula in Russia. Winter doesn’t at all times have to be a time to remain indoors, and the region celebrates its frosty identity. Japan’s northern coastal metropolis of Monbetsu even has a complete museum dedicated to the phenomenon, complete with a room whose temperature is a gradual minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20 levels Celsius), where guests can touch actual sea ice. Local cities throw an annual ice festival that includes big ice sculptures, and vacationers can even take cruises in icebreaker ships outfitted with large drills to take a look at the drift ice – and any cute seals which may happen by. Modern ice climbing dates again to 1908, when a climber named Oscar Eckenstein designed toothed claws, referred to as crampons, that fit onto his boots; earlier than then, anybody who wished to climb ice surfaces had to carve handholds and footholds into strong ice.
The northern beaches of Hokkaido experience an annual visit from crystal-clear “jewellery ice” that washes up onshore. Every winter, beaches in northern Japan experience a novel phenomenon when chunks of crystal clear ice wash up on their shores. The mouth of the Tokachi River is the one place on the planet identified to supply ice like this, ocean physicist Peter Wadhams not too long ago informed the Canada Times, though he identified that other clear ice exists in glaciers and fjords in Chile and Canada. Often known as “jewel” or “jewelry ice” and “Tokachi River ice,” the ice types when salt-free water from the Tokachi River on Hokkaido, the second-largest and northernmost of Japan’s important islands, meets sub-zero temperatures, salty seawater and ocean tides. One factor in ice’s opacity is the amount of air bubbles trapped within the frozen water, and this jewel-like ice – which may glow purple or orange when sunlight hits it at completely different times of day – has very few.