14 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The vent glow and "blind" shrimp In 1988, when the research submersible Alvin was exploring those remarkable hydrothermal vents or "black smokers." Its CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) camera detected a ghostly glow emanating from the vents. Since this mineral-laden water gushing from these cracks in the deep-sea floor exits at 350 -400 C, the simplest explanation of the vent glow is that is is simply thermal radiation from the hot fluid. Indeed, color filters on the camera recorded a spectrum close to that of a 350 C plume. But the deep-sea shrimp camped around the vents have raised second thoughts. The shrimp, only a few inches long, live in the perpetual darkness of the miles-deep vents. They do not need and do not have ordinary eyes. Rather, they sport a mysterious organ on their backs that is connected to their brains by a nerve-fiber bundle much like an optic nerve. This organ is packed with the same light-sensitive pigments found in the eyes of surface creatures. Despite its unusual location on the shrimp, it is an "eye" of sorts. But of what use is it in the Stygian abysses? To find, perhaps, vent glows that betray the presence of chemosynthetic food sources. If this is so, the shrimps' optical organ, which is most sensitive in the blue-green portion of the spectrum, is ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 39: May-Jun 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Shrimp trains are a'coming In March's "Gallery" pages of Discover, several incredibly colored and patterned shrimp stun the eyes of the reader. Some of these shrimp put the gaudiest butterflies and birds to shame. We won't stop here to dwell on why some shrimp are so colorful while others are so tasty. The anomaly at hand is buried in the caption describing the red-andwhite striped peppermint shrimp, which decorates the Great Barrier Reef. It turns out that this shrimp, like the Atlantic spiny lobster, sometimes joins up with others of its species to form long moving trains or chains of animals. This behavior remains very puzzling to biologists. (Anonymous; "Shrimp You Won't Find in Your Cocktail," Discover, 6:55, March 1985.) Comment. Do shrimp belong with the insects? Yes, they are all arthropods. From Science Frontiers #39, MAY-JUN 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects High Social Order In A New Order When divers explore the coral reefs off the coast of Belize, they hear a an underwater sound like frying bacon. This sound emanates from the snapping claws of Synalpheus regalis , popularly called snapping shrimp. These diminutive crustaceans live in colonies in the channels of sponges. The individual shrimp in these sponge-sheltered colonies are not all alike. The noise-makers are the "soldier" caste, which wield big "fighting claws." The "workers" that care for the young lack the large claws. All of the young shrimp are produced by a single "queen" shrimp, who is substantially larger than the soldiers and workers. The snapping shrimp social order sounds a lot like that found in bee hives and termite mounds. The snapping shrimp are, in fact, "eusocial" like the social insects. They are the only known eusocial members of the Order Crustacea . Eusociality is considered to be at the apex of animal social organization. What forces have fostered its development in three diverse groups -- insects, mammals (the naked mole-rats), and now the crustaceans? How did the different castes evolve, especially the sterile castes? It must have taken a lot of random mutations to develop such greatly different body forms in a coordinated way such that colonies were continuously viable! Obviously, we have a lot to learn about these snapping shrimp. Are new colonies ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Glow Below Is there such a thing as sunless photosynthesis? Did photosynthesis evolve at the earth's surface or deep in the oceans near hydrothermal vents? Such questions are engendered by the strength of the mysterious glow that emanates from these deep-sea vents. It is at these cracks in the ocean floor that very hot, mineralladen water gushes forth, and where colonies of bizarre tube worms, blind shrimp, and hyperthermophilic (high temperature-loving) bacteria thrive. (For details, see SF#60 or p. 238 in Science Frontiers, the book) The first anomaly is the strength of the glow itself. It is not all thermal radiation emitted by the 350 C water spewing forth from the vents; in fact, it is 19 times more intense than expected from theory. Something else is contributing energy, but no one knows what it is so far. The unexpected intensity of the vent glows also asks some provocative questions of the biologists: Is the glow strong enough to sup port photosynthesis? Quite likely, seems to be the answer. Are life forms in the vicinity of the vents employing photosynthesis? We don't know yet, but some bacteria do photosynthesize. Might not life and perhaps photo synthesis, too, have originated at the vents rather than on the planet's surface? This is an attractive possi bility, because very early in the earth's history the surface was ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology The 50,000-year-old americans of pedra furada The zuni enigma The american discovery of europe! Astronomy The earth: a doubly charmed planet Cosmic soot and organic asteroids Biology Fossil feathers fly Is caddy a mammal? The uniqueness of human adolescence Animals attack human technological infrastructure Late survival of mammoths Geology Whence the earth's pulse? Giant impact-wave deposit along u.s . east coast Geophysics The vent glow and "blind" shrimp Amazons in the sky The bottle-green icebergs of antarctica Psychology Alien abuctions: were they, are they real? Calculating prodigies, gnats, and smart weapons ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Something big down there!Off Bermuda, while working large traps at depths between 1,000 and 2,000 fathoms, fishermen proclaim that some huge sea creature has been breaking heavy lines and towing fishing boats about. Some of these deep-sea traps measure 6 x 6 x 3 feet and are used to catch large shrimp (about 1 foot long) and crabs (2 feet, claw to claw). Something down there grabs these traps and refuses to let go. A giant octopus is believed to be the culprit. (Anonymous; "Giant Octopus Blamed for Deep Sea Fishing Disruptions," ISC Newsletter, 4:1 , Autumn 1986. ISC = International Society for Cryptozoology.) From Science Frontiers #47, SEP-OCT 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 39: May-Jun 1985 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology East Bay Wall Photographs The Hambleton Hill Neolithic Fortress Astronomy Mysterious Spate of Sky Flashes Exorcising the Hidden Mass Hold Everything: it May Be A Nonproblem The Message of Aluminum-26 Saturn's Rings May Be Young Biology Upside-down Animals How Animals Might Get Inverted Shrimp Trains Are A'coming Geology Status of Archaeopteryx Up in the Air! The Coming Revolution in Planetology Deeper Mysteries Bone Bed Discovered in Florida Geophysics Recipe for Dust Devils The Tsunami Tune Lde Problem Still Unsolved Falls of All Sorts of Things Psychology Pk parties: real or surreal? It's Easier to Hypnotize Right-handers Chemistry & Physics Anomalous Anomalons Forbidden Matter ...
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... numbers of pits and furrows in the shallow sands. The pits range from 1-10 meters in length, 0.5 -7 meters in width, and 0.1 -0 .4 meters in depth. No known geological processes seem responsible. Farther east, in Nor-ton Sound, methane eruptions from buried organic matter do blow out circular craters; but the elongated pits investigated by Nelson and Johnson are gouged in sand considered too permeable for gas-crater formation. Rather surprisingly, the gray whale has become suspect as a pit excavator. They feed in the area of the pits; and the pits, before enlargement by currents, are just the size of the whales' mouths. The whales apparently dredge up sediment and, with their baleen, strain out amphipods (shrimp-like crustaceans) from the sand. The coexisting narrow furrows turn out to be the work of walruses digging for clams. (Nelson, C. Hans, and Johnson, Kirk R.; "Whales and Walruses as Tillers of the Sea Floor," Scientific American, 256:112, February 1987.) Comment. The whale tale seems a reasonable explanation of the pits described by Nelson and Johnson, but how far in time and space can it be stretched? Whales do frequent the North Sea, but we do not know whether they or methane eruptions excavate the many craters observed there. As for the much larger Carolina Bays, which exist by the thousands in sandy, coastal terrain, who can say without further study. The Carolina Bays, like the whale- ...
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... Frontiers ONLINE No. 138: NOV-DEC 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Remarkable Animal Talents And Capabilities Looking backward with genital photoreceptors. Photoreceptors are sensitive to light but do not produce images. They are found in many groups of animals. Even humans possess photoreceptors besides their eyes; specifically, in the pineal gland and, perhaps, the knees. (SF#116, SF#117) The pineal gland (our "third eye") may have registered photons at some stage in our evolution, but it is now useless or adapted to other purposes. The arthropods, however, still find photoreceptors useful. Crayfish have them on their abdomens, where they initiate an escape response when illuminated. Additionally, the blind shrimp that collect around the glowing deep-sea vents have photoreceptors perched on their backs, presumably to guide them to their prey located around the luminous vents. Recently, the Japanese yellow swallowtail butterflies were discovered to sport photoreceptors on their genitalia. These I are used during mating to confirm the position of the female's ovipositor.(Arikawa, Kentaro; "Hindsight of Butterflies," BioScience, 51:219, 2001.) Barn-Owl auditory neurons multiple signals. Barn Owls can locate rustling mice in the dark with high precision. They discern their prey by sound rather than light. To achieve the high accuracy needed to home in on small rodents in the black of night, their ears are slightly offset so that they can draw a bead by using microsecond time-of ...
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... Platypus Bill An Electrical Probe The bill of the duck-billed platypus has always looked kind of dumb -- as if Nature flushed with her success with polar bears (below) got careless when designing the platypus! How ignorant we were of Nature's genius. The platypus didn't borrow its snout from ducks but rather from the electric fishes. "That evolutionary enigma, the duckbilled platypus, has more than its egglaying to distinguish it from other mammals. It now appears that in common with some species of fish and amphibians, it can detect weak electric fields (of a few hundred microvolts or less). Not only that, but it uses its electric sense to locate its prey, picking up the tiny electrical signals passing between nerves and muscles in the tail of a shrimp." (Anonymous; "The Battery-Operated Duck-Billed Platypus," New Scientist, p. 25, February 13, 1986.) Reference. Mammal electrosensitivity is cataloged under BMO8 in Biological Anomalies: Mammals II. This catalog is described here . From Science Frontiers #45, MAY-JUN 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... British Columbia, follow an underwater fault formed by the junction of the Juan de Fuca and the Pacific tectonic plates...John Delaney, leader of the expedition, described the glow as a 'flame-like light' that seems to emanate from the super-heated water emerging from the thermal vents, 2200 meters below the surface...'The source of the light is still unclear,' said Joe Cann, a geologist from the University of Newcastle in Britain. The scientists suspect that the water itself is glowing." The water temperature is so high -- 350 C -- that bioluminescence is unlikely. The presence of the glow does, however, imply that photosynthesis is still possible in these sunless depths. Life forms do congregate around these vents. A curious shrimp found in the area where the glow was noted is eyeless but does possess photoreceptors on its back! (Dayton, Sylvia; "The Underwater Light Fantastic," New Scientist, p. 32, August 25, 1988. Also: Anonymous; "Mystery Glow Emanates from Ocean Bottom," Albuquerque Tribune, August 18, 1988. Cr. D. Eccles.) From Science Frontiers #60, NOV-DEC 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 67: Jan-Feb 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Really-deep rivers "Ecologists studying rivers have discovered a vast subterranean world filled with dozens of previously unknown species of worms, shrimp, insects and microscopic organisms that live in the groundwater below the stream channel and sometimes for miles on each side." The quotation above once again evokes the concept of "crevicular structure" in the crust. The crevicular world is that immense, unappreciated maze of underground space created by cracks in the rocks, solution channels, permeable gravels, and so on. In the article reviewed here, a crevicular realm has been discovered underneath river beds. But this is just a special case of a subterranean world found many places beneath the surface -- even under the continental shelves. The surface waters we see are just (to use an aquatic metaphor) the tip of the iceberg! Sub-river life lives far under the beds of the great Alaskan rivers and even small desert streams in Arizona. Preliminary exploration has shown that fluid-and life-filled crevicular structure exists at least 30 feet under river beds and may extend several miles to either side. For example, water wells drilled two miles from the Flathead River, in Montana, yield immature stoneflies. J. Stanford, Director of Montana's Flathead Lake Biological Station states, "We have basically enlarged the concept of what a river is." He and his colleagues have found at least a dozen new species in the crevicular ...
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... animals plus 1085 plants. Over 1000 of these species of life are found nowhere else. The sediments de-posited on the lake floor are of astounding thickness. Bedrock lies 7 kilometers below the lake surface in some spots. With a maximum depth of 1637 meters, we find by subtraction places where more than 5 kilometers of sediment have collected. The diversity of Baikal's life is remarkable in itself, but there are two aspects of it that approach the anomalous: (1 ) Baikal's seals are 1000 kilometers of so from salt water. How did they get there and when? (2 ) Hydrothermal-vent communities have been discovered at a depth of about 400 meters in the northern part of the lake. These communities contain sponges, bacterial mats, snails, transparent shrimp, and fish; some of which are new to science. Baikal's thermal vents are the only ones known in freshwater lakes. Their rela tion to saltwater vent communities has not yet been explored. (Stewart, John Massey; "Baikal's Hidden Depths," New Scientist, p. 42, June 23, 1990. Also: Monastersky, R.; "Life Blooms on Floor of Deep Siberian Lake," Science News, 138:103, 1990.) Comment. Despite its inland position, the suspicion develops that Baikal was connected to the oceans in recent geological times. From Science Frontiers #72, NOV-DEC 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... or from deep within the crust is still debated. Here, geophysics merges with biology. Recently, a group of researchers discovered a large (540 square meters) patch of chemosynthetic mussels in a brine-filled pockmark, at a depth of 650 meters, off the Louisiana coast. The mussels grew in a ring around the concentrated brine. The mussels harbor symbionts which consume the methane still seeping up through the brine from a salt diapir (a massive fingerlike intrusion 500 meters below the brine pool. The origin of some diapirs is not well-understood.) The mussels get the oxygen they require from the ordinary seawater covering the dense brine. Like the biological communities surrounding the "black smokers" and other ocean-floor seeps, the brine-filled pockmark community includes several species of shrimp, crabs, and tube worms. We have here another example of the astounding ability of lifeforms to take advantage of unusual, even bizarre niches. (MacDonald, I. Rosman, et al; "Chemosynthetic Mussels at a BrineFilled Pockmark in the Northern Gulf of Mexico," Science, 248:1096, 1990.) Comment. Such examples of life's adaptability are so common one hesitates to label them as anomalous. Yet, one wonders how and why life acquired this property. Is the human urge to go to the planets a genetically derived extension of this urge to colonize new terri tories. From Science Frontiers #73, JAN-FEB 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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