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"City of Gonads" Jellyfish Discovered
Sporting a reproductive “skyline,” a new species of jellyfish is like nothing else known under the sea, a new study says.
Shaped like flying saucers, both males and females of the new jellyfish have gonads on the outsides of their bodies, unlike any of the approximately 3,000 other jellyfish species known to science.
Gonads are the reproductive glands that produce sperm in males and eggs in females.
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The “alarming” rate at which species are being lost could have a severe effect on humanity, conservationists warned today. Targets set eight years ago by governments to reduce biodiversity loss by 2010 have not been met, experts confirmed at a UN meeting in Nairobi, Kenya.
The third Global Biodiversity Outlook report said loss of wildlife and habitats could harm food sources and industry, and exacerbate climate change through rising emissions.
Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said: “Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world: the truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of 6 billion [people], heading to over 9 billion by 2050. Business as usual is no longer an option if we are to avoid irreversible damage to the life-support systems of our planet.”
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Satellite view
Photo of the dam
A Canadian ecologist has discovered the world’s largest beaver dam in a remote area of northern Alberta, an animal-made structure so large it is visible from space.
Researcher Jean Thie said Wednesday he used satellite imagery and Google Earth software to locate the dam, which is about 850 metres (2,800 feet) long on the southern edge of Wood Buffalo National Park.
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Gulf oil spill. Source: BBC
US coastguard says 5,000 barrels a day of oil are spewing from a well beneath site of the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.
Five times more oil a day than previously believed is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico from the blown-out well of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, the US coastguard has said. Coastguard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) experts now estimate that 5,000 barrels a day of oil are spilling into the gulf – far more than the previous estimate of 1,000 barrels a day. Robot submarines have so far failed to shut off the flow, 1,500m (5,000ft) below the surface, but the coastguard said a test burn on an isolated area of the spill was successful.
Watch the video on Guardian
10 animals at risk from the spill
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