'Male' Octopus Hatches 10,000 Teensy Babies in Surprise Birth

By Brandon Specktor, Senior Writer | November 5, 2018 12:37pm ET

Sit back, clear your mind, and let this imagery sink in: "buckets and buckets and buckets full of tiny octopi."

That's what Devin Dumont — curator of the UGA Marine Education Center and Aquarium in Savannah, Georgia — said he found when he showed up to work last Tuesday, according to an interview with local news site Savannah Morning News.

"I noticed this cloud of moving dots and I realized, 'Oh my God... There are babies. There are babies everywhere,'" Dumont told Savannah Morning News. "I immediately started scooping them out and putting them in buckets."

Octavius, the aquarium's sole octopus resident, had apparently given birth to a brood of tens of thousands of tiny, confetti-size babiesovernight. When Dumont found the brood swirling like a blizzard in Octavius' tank, he was surprised for a few reasons. [Photos: Ghostly Dumbo Octopus Dances In the Deep Sea]

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Giraffe babies inherit spot patterns from their mothers

Date:  October 2, 2018

Source:  Penn State

Some features of a giraffe's spot pattern are passed on from mother to baby, according to a new study led by researchers from Penn State. The study also reveals that survival of young giraffes is related to spot pattern, which may help provide camouflage from predators. The new study, published October 2 in the journal PeerJ, confirms a 49-year-old hypothesis about the inheritance of giraffe spots and highlights a new toolset that can be used to study the markings of wild animals.

"Giraffe spot patterns are complex and can be quite different among individuals, but we don't really know their purpose in the wild," said Derek E. Lee, associate research professor at Penn State and first author of the paper. "Complex markings can help animals evade predators, regulate their temperature, or recognize family or individuals, all of which can affect their ability to survive and reproduce. In this study, we analyzed survival records and photos of spots of Masai giraffes, and show that spot patterns do affect juvenile survival and are heritable -- they are passed from mom to baby."

Giraffe skin color is uniformly dark gray, but their spots are highly variable in color and shape, ranging from nearly round with very smooth edges to elliptical with jagged or lobed edges. Spot patterns do not change as an animal ages, which allows researchers to identify individuals based on their unique patterns.

This study revealed that newborn giraffes with larger spots and irregularly shaped spots also had increased survival during the first few months of life. This increased survival could reflect better camouflage of these young giraffes, but it also could be related to other survival-enhancing factors, such as temperature regulation or visual communication.

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Baby marmosets learn to ‘talk’ just like we do

By Virginia Morell May. 25, 2017 , 12:00 PM

Baby marmosets learn to make their calls by trying to repeat their parents’ vocalizations, scientists report today in Current Biology. Humans were thought to be the only primate with vocal learning—the ability to hear a sound and repeat it, considered essential for speech. When our infants babble, they make apparently random sounds, which adults respond to with words or other sounds; the more this happens, the faster the baby learns to talk.

To find out whether marmosets (Callithrix jacchus, pictured) do something similar, scientists played recordings of parental calls during a daily 30-minute session to three sets of newborn marmoset twins until they were 2 months old (roughly equivalent to a 2-year-old human). Baby marmosets make noisy guttural cries; adults respond with soft “phee” contact calls (listen to their calls below).

The baby that consistently heard its parents respond to its cries learned to make the adult “phee” sound much faster than did its twin, the team found. It’s not yet known if this ability is limited to the marmosets; if so, the difference may be due to the highly social lives of these animals, where, like us, multiple relatives help care for babies. 

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Babies With Pets Not Dogged by Colds: Study

MONDAY, July 9 (HealthDay News) -- Babies who live with dogs and cats during their first year of life may be less susceptible to respiratory infections, such as the common cold, according to new research.

The study of nearly 400 children found that dogs were especially protective, and the babies who lived with dogs during their first year were about one-third more likely to be healthy during their first year, compared to babies who didn't have a pet in the home. Babies with dogs in the home were 44 percent less likely to develop an ear infection, and 29 percent less likely to need antibiotics than their petless peers.

"Children who had dog contacts at home were healthier and had less frequent ear infections and needed fewer courses of antibiotics than children who had no dog contacts," said the study's lead author, Dr. Eija Bergroth, a pediatrician who worked at Kuopio University Hospital, in Finland, at the time of the study.

Bergroth also noted that "cat contacts did not seem to have as strong of an impact on infection frequency in multivariate analysis as the dog contacts."

Results of the study, released online July 9, will be published in the August print issue of Pediatrics.

Previous research on pets in the home has suggested that animals, and dogs in particular, may provide some protection against the development of asthma and allergies. But, other studies have found that household pets may increase the number of respiratory infections in children, according to background information in the study.

To get a better idea of the impact of pets on a child's health, Bergroth and her colleagues reviewed data from a study of 208 children whose mothers were recruited during their last trimester of pregnancy. The mothers were from rural areas in Austria, Finland, France, Germany and Switzerland.

The study also included data from 216 mothers living in rural or suburban areas in Finland, who gave birth at Kuopio University Hospital in Finland. After excluding children with incomplete information, researchers looked at data from 397 children overall.

During the first year of life, 72 percent of the children experienced a fever, 40 percent had an ear infection, 97 percent had a runny nose, 84 percent had a cough and 32 percent wheezed at some point. Almost half of the children were given antibiotics at least once during their first year of life, according to the study.

Read on:  http://news.yahoo.com/babies-pets-not-dogged-colds-study-130410640.html%3b_ylt=AjEQblS1a04t05vjzDPnKet4hMgF%3b_ylu=X3oDMTRhcWZkM2FmBG1pdANUb3BTdG9yeSBTY2llbmNlU0YgQW5pbWFsUGV0c1NTRgRwa2cDYmU2NGNhMGQtMjRlYi0zZWMzLWI3N2YtYWYwNTZlYjM2YTRiBHBvcwMxBHNlYwN0b3Bfc3RvcnkEdmVyA2ExOTRkOWUxLWM5YzYtMTFlMS1iM2VlLWEzZGY0OWQ1NjZkMg--%3b_ylg=X3oDMTI0MmNvNGRoBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANzY2llbmNlfGFuaW1hbHNhbmRwZXRzBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z%3b_ylv=3