"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.

Via National Geographic

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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.”

Read the rest in Guardian

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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.

Read the rest on AFP

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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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SDO's Ultraviolet Sun, NASA

More than three months after being hurled into orbit, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is snapping some breathtaking images of the Sun, the first of which NASA released this afternoon. The mission designers have to be happy with them: the pics capture huge looping prominences lashing out from the surface and the kinds of massive explosions one might expect from a giant, churning ball of cosmic gas.

A prominence eruption, NASA

Video of a prominence eruption

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmm3J0WAres

Multi-temperature imagery of an eruption

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xaJnDTcJZc

More images and video on NASA SDO
SDO on YouTube

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Lizard with double penis, Varanus Bitatawa

The secretive but brightly-coloured beast, a monitor lizard, is a close cousin of the Komodo Dragon of Indonesia. Unlike the fearsome Dragon, it is not a carnivore, nor does it feast on rotting meat. Instead, it is entirely peaceable and tucks into fruit.

Read the rest in The Telegraph

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The ash column assumes the shape of a plinian eruption.
Eyafallajökull, Iceland

Via SwissEduc

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Source: BBC

With their awkward, lumbering gait, elephants moving at high speed are not the most graceful of animals – but are they walking or running?

Now scientists believe they have an answer: new research confirms that they do both – at the same time.

By observing elephants moving across a hi-tech track, the team found the hefty creatures run with their front legs but walk with their back legs.

Read the rest on BBC News

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU8PId_6xec

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