Stag beetle battles: How ungainly jaws bite so hard

By Victoria GillScience reporter, BBC News

Lead researcher Jana Goyens explains what the study has discovered

Researchers have staged stag beetle battles to solve the mystery of how the male beetles bite so hard.

The extreme length of the beetles' jaws should make it difficult for them to produce a forceful bite.

As well as measuring the bite forces that the beetles could produce, the scientists, from Antwerp University, filmed stag beetle fights to assess their biting power.

The findings are reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Stag beetles do not use their impressive jaws to eat, as you might expect, but rather to attract females and to fight and wrestle with other males over territory.

"They seem very ferocious," Jana Goyens, from the University of Antwerp, who led the study, told BBC News.

"But long [jaws] should not be very efficient when it comes to transferring very large bite forces - it would seem from a mechanical point of view that they would not bite forcefully."

Continued

Giant rat: Swedes agog at 'Ratzilla' in Stockholm

The appearance of a massive rat in a Stockholm family's kitchen has made headlines in Sweden, where it is being dubbed "Ratzilla".

Measuring 40cm (nearly 16in) plus tail, the creature terrified the family in Solna district.

Pest controllers finally killed the intruder using an oversized trap.

Even the family cat had refused to enter the kitchen while the giant rat was in residence, father Erik Korsas told BBC News.

It appears that it reached the kitchen via a ventilation pipe, having gnawed its way through cement and wood.

After devouring food leftovers under the sink, the creature feasted on a "Swedish smorgasbord" of waste in the bin, according to Mr Korsas.

The women of the house - mother Signe and daughters Dana and Erica, 17 and 15 respectively - took fright but his sons, 13-year-old Justus and six-year-old Laurentius, eventually proved themselves as genuine rat-hunters, he said.

It was the boys who investigated after the trap was sprung and the injured animal crawled away. It was they who brought him tools to help establish that it was well and truly dead.

Justus wielded the iPad which captured his father posing with the dead intruder.

continued

Indian rhinoceroses: Reproductive tract tumors reduce female fertility in early stages

Date:

March 26, 2014

Source:

Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. (FVB)

Summary:

Reproduction of the Indian rhinoceros faces greater difficulties than was previously recognized. Researchers discovered that benign vaginal and cervical tumors cause infertility even in young females. This substantially affects breeding success in zoological gardens.

Continued

Ecologists learn lessons from the 'ghosts of megafauna'

By Mark Kinver

Environment reporter, BBC News

Scientists have been assessing the ecological consequences of a megafauna-depleted world and what, if anything, should be done about it.

Researchers discussed whether the loss of big beasts contributed to regional and global system changes, such as Arctic warming and more wildfires.

Megafauna (animals with a mass of 44kg or more) once dominated but disappeared in an ecological "blink of an eye".

The global scientific gathering was held at the University of Oxford, UK.

Co-organiser Yadvinder Malhi, professor of ecosystem science at the university's Environmental Change Institute, said the conference was "unique" as it brought together many disciplines that would not normally meet during their day-to-day work.

Read more

Climate changes put the freeze on elephant seal births

By Pauline Askin

SYDNEY (Reuters) - More ice means fewer elephant seal pups, according to Australian scientists studying breeding colonies on Macquarie Island near Antarctica and atmospheric changes in the region that have affected the feeding grounds.

"When there's more sea ice the population is likely to go down and in years when there's less sea ice the population is likely to go up," John van den Hoff, a marine biologist at the Australian Antarctic Division, told Reuters.

"When there's extra sea ice the seals can't access the continental shelf as readily as when there's either an average or lesser amount of sea ice."

The causes are due to climate variability linked to a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, not climate change, said van den Hoff, a lead researcher on a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Read more