Humans’ ability to easily distinguish among many faces and recognize people they know goes way, way back, say researchers reporting online on June 25th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. That assertion stems from new evidence that, like us, rhesus monkeys tell their friends from foes by picking up on the precise layout of facial features.
“We found that monkeys looking at faces perceive an illusion, the Thatcher effect, that humans experience,” said Robert Hampton of Emory University’s Department of Psychology and Yerkes National Primate Research Center. “This powerful perceptual effect shows that face perception depends on detection of the relations among features in a face, not just on detection of the collection of individual features.”
The discovery means that primates have probably perceived faces in essentially the same way for 30 million years or more, he said.
The Thatcher effect refers to the impaired ability to recognize changes in the relations among features in upside-down versus right-side-up faces. (The phenomenon is so named because it was first shown with the image of Margaret Thatcher.) In demonstrating the effect, scientists manipulate the image of a face so that the eyes and mouth are upside down relative to the rest of the face.
“Surprisingly,” Hampton said, “when the image of a face so modified is presented upside down, most people do not think it looks particularly odd. But when viewed right-side up, it looks awful.” It shows that when we look at faces normally, we are especially sensitive to the relations among features. When faces are upside down, however, we process the image more as a collection of features, with less emphasis on their relations to one another.
In the current study, Hampton and his colleagues showed monkeys pictures of monkey faces until they became “bored,” as indicated by a loss of interest in the images. They then showed them digitally manipulated faces, with the eyes and mouth upside down relative to the rest of the face. When the manipulated faces were shown upright, the monkeys took notice and began studying the pictures again. In contrast, upside-down faces held no new interest and the monkeys continued to ignore them as if nothing were amiss.
The findings offer the first demonstration that a non-human primate species shows the Thatcher effect. “This direct evidence of configural face perception in monkeys, collected under testing conditions that closely parallel those used with humans, indicates that perceptual mechanisms for individual recognition have been conserved through primate cognitive evolution,” the researchers said.
"Beware: exploding lungs" is not a sign one would expect to see at a wind farm. But a new study suggests this is the main reason bats die in large numbers around wind turbines.
The risk that wind turbines pose to birds is well known and has dogged debates over wind energy. In fact, several studies have suggested the risk to bats is greater. In May 2007, the US National Research Council published the results of a survey of US wind farms showing that two bat species accounted for 60% of winged animals killed. Migrating birds, meanwhile, appear to steer clear of the turbines.
Why bats – who echolocate moving objects – are killed by turbines has remained a mystery until now. The research council thought the high-frequency noise from the turbines’ gears and blades could be disrupting the bats’ echolocation systems.
In fact, a new study shows that the moving blades cause a drop in pressure that makes the delicate lungs of bats suddenly expand, bursting the tissue’s blood vessels. This is known as a barotrauma, and is well-known to scuba divers.
"While searching for bat carcasses under wind turbines, we noticed that many of the carcasses had no external injuries or no visible cause of death," says Erin Baerwald of the University of Calgary in Canada. Internal injuries
Baerwald and colleagues collected 188 dead bats from wind farms across southern Alberta, and determined their cause of death. They found that 90% of the bats had signs of internal haemorrhaging, but only half showed any signs of direct contact with the windmill blades. Only 8% had signs of external injuries but no internal injuries.
The movement of wind-turbine blades creates a vortex of lower air pressure around the blade tips similar to the vortex at the tip of aeroplane wings. Others have suggested that this could be lethal to bats, but until now no-one had carried out necropsies to verify the theory.
Baerwald and her colleagues believe that birds do not suffer the same fate as bats – the majority of birds are killed by direct contact with the blades – because their lungs are more rigid than those of bats and therefore more resistant to sudden changes in pressure.
Bats eat nocturnal insects including agricultural pests, so if wind turbines affected their population levels, this could affect the rest of the local ecosystems. And the effects could even be international. "The species being killed are migrants," says Baerwald. "If bats are killed in Canada that could have consequences for ecosystems as far away as Mexico." Windy day
One solution could be to increase the minimum wind speed needed to set the blades in motion. Most bats are more active in low wind.
The study was funded by a number of bat conservation groups together with energy companies with a financial interest in wind energy, such as Shell Canada and Alberta Wind Energy.
Here is a little video of the Cuttlefish and its flamboyent colours
This species is well worth highlighting for its beauty and rarity. They are highly prized on a divers must see list. Distribution, central indo region, southern Philippines to Northern Australia.
Once discovered, instead of leaving the area they will usually stay in the same place for some months so revisiting is possible. Rather than seeing this species swimming they prefer to walk the substrate on two front tentacles and two skin flaps located on the underbelly, this is clearly illustrated within our field guide images. Look for the sandy appearance on the "walking" front tentacles and the underbelly skin flaps, this is where the creature makes contact with the substrate.
They are active in daylight hours and their coloration is generally brown to match the substrate (darker in Indonesia due to darker sand).
They show flamboyant displays of red, yellow, white and pink chevrons that move up and down their bodies pulsating in a mesmerizing rhythm. Like other cuttlefish they produce instant colour changes.
Their elaborate coloration may indicate a poisonous bite like its cousin the Blue Ringed Octopus.
Their maximum size is approx. 10cm. Imperial Partner Shrimps live a symbiotic relationship with many creatures including cuttlefish for more information please visit our Marine Biology Crustacean page.
University of Florida College of Pharmacy researchers have
discovered a marine compound off the coast of Key Largo that inhibits
cancer cell growth in laboratory tests, a finding they hope will fuel
the development of new drugs to better battle the disease.
The
UF-patented compound, largazole, is derived from cyanobacteria that
grow on coral reefs. Researchers, who described results from early
studies today (Aug. 7) at an international natural products scientific
meeting in Athens, Greece, say it is one of the most promising they’ve
found since the college’s marine natural products laboratory was
established three years ago.
An initial set of papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society
also has garnered the attention of other scientists, and the lab is
racing to complete additional research. The molecule’s natural chemical
structure and ability to inhibit cancer cell growth were first
described in the journal in February and the laboratory synthesis and
description of the molecular basis for its anticancer activity appeared
July 2.
"It’s exciting because we’ve found a compound in
nature that may one day surpass a currently marketed drug or could
become the structural template for rationally designed drugs with
improved selectivity," said Hendrik Luesch, Ph.D., an assistant
professor in UF’s department of medicinal chemistry and the study’s
principal investigator.
Largazole, discovered and named by
Luesch for its Florida location and structural features, seeks out a
family of enzymes called histone deacetylase, or HDAC. Overactivity of
certain HDACs has been associated with several cancers such as prostate
and colon tumors, and inhibiting HDACs can activate tumor-suppressor
genes that have been silenced in these cancers.
Although
scientists have been probing the depths of the ocean for marine
products since the early 1960s, many pharmaceutical companies lost
interest before researchers could deliver useful compounds because
natural products were considered too costly and time-consuming to
research and develop.
Many common medications, from pain
relievers to cholesterol-reducing statins, stem from natural products
that grow on the earth, but there is literally an ocean of compounds
yet to be discovered in our seas. Only 14 marine natural products
developed are in clinical trials today, Luesch said, and one drug
recently approved in Europe is the first-ever marine-derived anticancer
agent.
"Marine study is in its infancy," said William Fenical,
Ph.D., a distinguished professor of oceanography and pharmaceutical
sciences at the University of California, San Diego. "The ocean is a
genetically distinct environment and the single, most diverse source of
new molecules to be discovered."
The history of pharmacy
traces its roots back thousands of years to plants growing on Earth’s
continents, used by ancient civilizations for medicinal purposes,
Fenical added. Yet only in the past 30 years have scientists begun to
explore the organisms in Earth’s oceans, he said. Fewer than 30 labs
exist worldwide and research dollars have only become available in the
past 15 years.
HDACs are already targeted by a drug approved
for cutaneous T-cell lymphoma manufactured by the global pharmaceutical
company Merck & Co. Inc. However, UF’s compound does not inhibit
all HDACs equally, meaning a largazole-based drug might result in
improved therapies and fewer side effects, Luesch said.
Since
2006, Luesch and his team of researchers have screened cyanobacteria
provided by collaborator Valerie Paul, Ph.D., head scientist at the
Smithsonian Marine Station in Fort Pierce. They check the samples for
toxic activity against cancer cells and last year encountered one
exceptionally potent extract — the one that ultimately yielded
largazole.
To conduct further biological testing on the
compound, Luesch and his team have been collaborating with Jiyong Hong,
an assistant professor in the department of chemistry at Duke
University, to replicate its natural structure and its actions in the
laboratory.
Luesch said that within the next few months he plans to study whether largazole reduces or prevents tumor growth in mice.
Luesch has several other antitumor natural products from Atlantic and Pacific cyanobacteria in the pipeline.
"We
have only scratched the surface of the chemical diversity in the
ocean," Luesch said. "The opportunities for marine drug discovery are
spectacular."
A little eight-legged pickpocket that darts around acacia trees could be the first known vegetarian
spider.
Bagheera kiplingi belongs among the big-eyed, athletic predators in the family of jumping spiders and gets its name from a panther in a Rudyard Kipling story. Yet a population of these spiders in Mexico mostly eats bits of the acacia trees, says Christopher Meehan of Villanova University in Pennsylvania.
A few other spider species do taste vegetable matter now and then, says Yael Lubin of Ben-Gurion University in Sede Boqer, Israel. Male crab spiders that spend their brief mating-oriented adult lives sitting on flowers will sip nectar for a little energy boost. And some baby spiders eat spores that have stuck to a web. But on hearing about spiders specializing in stealing vegetarian food, “I was absolutely floored,” Lubin says.
These arachnid herbivores are no wimps. “The tree is full of biting, vicious ant guards,” Meehan said during the 12th International Behavioral Ecology Congress meeting August 9 through 15 at Cornell University. The little spider spends its life dodging patrols of ants and stealing their (vegetarian) lunches.
Acacia trees and their resident ants have become a textbook example of a mutually beneficial partnership. Tree thorns grow swollen bases the right size to shelter ants. Glands at the base of the leaves ooze nectar, far from flowers but just at the spot to offer refreshment for ants. Acacia leaflet tips sprout nubbins of protein and fat suitable for ant snacks.
Certain ant species take full advantage of these comforts and defend their home trees against all comers. In the course of their vigilance, the ants get rid of caterpillars and other invaders that might chew on the tree.
Meehan says the spiders manage to dodge the ants, perching on leaf tips and nesting in mature leaves, which aren’t as heavily patrolled as other tree parts.
Ecologists have studied the partnership for years, but “people who look at ant acacias — they look at the ants,” Lubin says. “It took the eyes of a student naturalist to see this.”
That fresh observer was Meehan, who, along with his Villanova colleague Robert Curry, noticed the spiders dining on the leafy snacks of acacias in Mexico. In videos of 140 spider meals, the researchers counted 136 acacia protein-fat snacks with a few nectar sips. On four occasions the spiders did turn to meat as they tugged away ant larvae from a passing nursemaid and ate the youngsters.
In Costa Rica, the spiders also steal ant food, though to a lesser extent, according to observations from Eric Olson of Brandeis University. He independently discovered the spiders eating tree snacks in Costa Rica in 2001 and is working with the Villanova team on a report on the species.
Those meat moments don’t happen often, according to studies done in collaboration with Matt Reudink and others of Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. The team checked spider tissue for the heavier form of nitrogen, N15, which becomes more concentrated as animals eat animals that have eaten other animals.
That carnivore signal does not show up in the acacia-tree spiders, which carry a relatively light concentration of N15, one that is typical of plant-eaters, according to the team’s data. He also found that the concentration of the heavier form of carbon, C13, also looks typical for a vegetarian.
Long a problem in the western U.S., the New Zealand mud snail
currently inhabits four of the five Great Lakes and is spreading into
rivers and tributaries, according to a Penn State team of researchers.
These tiny creatures out-compete native snails and insects, but are not
good fish food replacements for the native species.
"These snails have an operculum, a door that closes the
shell," says Edward P. Levri, associate professor of biology at Penn
State’s Altoona Campus. "They can be out of the water for longer than
other snails and when fed to fish, they are not digested and sometimes
come out alive. This has a potential to alter the salmon and trout
fisheries because they alter the food chain."
The New Zealand mud snail grows to a maximum of a quarter of
an inch and is more normally a sixteenth to an eighth of an inch in
length. The hard shell is capable of sealing off the soft animal from
outside influences. In New Zealand, the snails reproduce asexually,
resulting in identical clones, or sexually. However, in invaded areas,
asexual cloning is the only mode of reproduction.
This mud snail spread to England as early as 1850 and Europe
in the late 1800s. It is found in Japan, but when the snail arrived
there is unknown. The first mud snail found in the U.S. was in 1987 in
the Snake River, Idaho, but the species did not appear in the east
until 1991 in Lake Ontario. The western and eastern U.S. populations
are separate episodes of introduction, because they represent different
clones; in each case, only one snail needed to be introduced to begin
the invasion. The snails in the Great Lakes region appear to be the
same as one clone found in Europe.
"In the western U.S., this species is of special concern
largely because of their ability to modify ecosystems," Levri told
attendees today (Aug. at the Ecological Society of America’s annual
meeting in Milwaukee.
The snails in western streams alter the nitrogen and carbon
cycling. They are primarily grazers and detritus eaters with very wide
food preferences. In some places in streams in Yellowstone National
Park, they reach population densities of 323 individuals per square
inch. Levri, working with undergraduates Warren J. Jacoby, Shane J.
Lunen, Ashley A. Kelly and Thomas A. Ladson, found that densities in
the Great Lakes are not anywhere near that in the West.
"In our most recent survey, we were lucky if we found a few
hundred per square meter," says Levri. "In Lake Erie they are not very
abundant, but it is unclear what they are doing 100 feet below the
surface."
In New Zealand, the mud snails are not a problem because of
native trematodes — flukes — that infect the snails and controls
their population and reproduction. Some people have suggested that
those who want to control the snail introduce this trematode to the
U.S. to control the snails.
"There are two problems with introducing these trematodes,"
says Levri. "The first is that any introduction of a nonnative species
can cause worse problems than they were expected to cure. The second is
that these flukes have a multiple-host life cycle, infecting ducks that
are apparently not affected before infecting the snails. This might
work in the west where the snails are in shallow water, but no duck is
going to dive 100 feet to get snails."
Levri and his team found that in Lake Ontario, the densities
of the snails peak between 50 and 82 feet and they were rarely found in
water less than 16 feet.
"What we can do is limit their expansion," says Levri. "That
means that recreational water users must be very careful moving from
one place to another. We advise anglers to freeze waders and fishing
gear, or use Formula 409 or something like that to kill the snails."
He notes that signs are beginning to mark areas in New York where the snail is found to warn people to clean their gear.
The
Penn State researcher warns that the snails are difficult to control,
noting "I have frozen them for 12 hours at a time and about 50 percent
of them survive."
Deep in the hinterlands of the Republic of the Congo lies a secret ape paradise that is home to 125,000 western lowland gorillas, researchers announced today.
The findings, if confirmed, would more than double the world’s estimated population of gorillas.
Western lowland gorillas are a subspecies classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Their numbers have been devastated in recent years by illegal hunting for bush meat and the spread of the Ebola virus. Just last year scientists projected the animals’ population could fall as low as 50,000 by 2011.
Now those predictions may have to be dramatically reworked to incorporate findings released today by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
A first ever ape census in northern Congo found 73,000 of the gorillas in that country’s Ntokou-Pikounda region and 52,000 more in the Ndoki-Likouala area.
The Ndoki population includes an obscure group of nearly 6,000 gorillas living in close quarters in isolated swamps near Lac Télé.
"We knew there were apes there, we just had no idea how many," said WCS’s Emma Stokes, one of the lead researchers in the two-year project.
The gorillas have thrived thanks to their remoteness from human settlements, food-rich habitats, and two decades of conservation efforts in one of the world’s poorest countries, Stokes said.
Shy, But Plentiful
Lowland gorillas are more common than their mountain cousins. The animals are found in tropical forests and swamps in Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.
Each group of lowland gorillas has a range of about 7.7 square miles
(20 square kilometers), and the animals build the nests to sleep in
each night before moving on in the morning.
The census work involved crossing hundreds of miles to count
nests, then loading data into a mathematical model that estimated the
number of gorillas living within a defined area.
In the 17,400-square-mile (28,000-square-kilometer)
Ndoki-Likouala region, for example, the nest census found an estimated
population density of 1.65 gorillas per square kilometer (equal to
about 0.3 square mile).
This means that about 46,200 western lowland gorillas likely
live in the area, which runs west of the Sangha River to the border of
the Central African Republic.
An additional 6,000 gorillas reside in the region’s 646-square-mile
(1,040-square-kilometer) Batanga swamps. These wetlands, which are
inaccessible to humans for more than half the year, house an estimated
five to six apes per square kilometer.
"That’s the highest density I’ve seen," Stokes said, adding
that the data suggest Ndoki-Likouala is the subspecies’ "largest
remaining stronghold."
The discovery "shows that conservation in the Republic of Congo is working," said WCS president Steven Sanderson.
Almost half the surveyed area lies within officially protected
zones or inside timber concessions where logging companies have banned
transport of protected animals and weapons on their roads.
Researchers hope the latest census will encourage the
government of Congo to establish a new national park in the
Ntokou-Pikounda region.
The census was presented today at the International Primatological
Society conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, and some of the data will
appear in an upcoming issue of the conservation journal Oryx.
Perils of Counting Apes
Several experts greeted the survey findings with a mix of excitement and caution.
"If these new gorilla census figures are confirmed by further surveys,
it would be the most exciting ape conservation news in years," said
Craig Stanford of the Jane Goodall Research Center at the University of
Southern California.
"Nest census data are notorious for varying from one method to
the next, however, and I think we should be cautious before assuming
the world’s known gorilla population has just doubled."
Nesting data were among the factors used in a 2007 IUCN
population assessment that placed the western lowland gorilla on the
organization’s Red List of Threatened Species.
IUCN estimated the gorillas had declined by more than 60 percent over
the past 25 years, and its scientists projected the apes’ population
could fall to 50,000 as the deadly Ebola virus penetrated deeper into
their habitat.
That report came with a caveat about the reliability of nest counts:
"Technical problems with the conversion of ape nest density to
estimates of gorilla density preclude a rigorous estimate of range-wide
gorilla abundance."
Peter Walsh of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, led the 2007 IUCN assessment. He
repeated those concerns when he learned of WCS’s findings in northern
Congo.
"It is not that I think that the numbers are necessarily too high,"
Walsh said. "It is just that I do not trust the assumptions made by the
estimation models that are being used."
Nature’s Secrets
John Oates, professor emeritus of anthropology at Hunter College
in New York, noted that "what does seem clear is that there are still
plenty of western gorillas in northern Congo."
He remains cautious, however, about whether the new research should signal a change in status for the great apes.
In addition to habitat loss and hunting, in recent years Ebola
has ravaged gorilla habitats bordering the Ntokou-Pikounda survey area,
killing 60 percent of the apes in nearby Odzala National Park.
While WCS’s Stokes said her survey found "no evidence of Ebola
in Ntokou-Pikounda, our general philosophy is Ebola can hit anywhere,
anytime."
And with a 90 percent mortality rate among infected gorillas,
Stokes thinks the animals deserve all the protection they can get.
In general, the WCS findings demonstrate that our intensely observed
planet still has its biological secrets, added Richard Bergl, curator
of research at the North Carolina Zoo.
"It is extraordinary that in this day and age," he said, "there
could be a population of a hundred thousand or more gorillas that were
essentially unknown to science."
It has long been debated whether dinosaurs were part of the
‘Terrestrial Revolution’ that occurred some 100 million years ago
during the Cretaceous when birds, mammals, flowering plants, insects
and reptiles all underwent a rapid expansion.
An international study, led by the University of Bristol, shows
that during their last 50 million years of existence, dinosaurs were
not expanding as actively as had been previously thought and that the
apparent explosion of dinosaur diversity may be largely explained by
sampling bias.
The team produced a ‘supertree’ of dinosaurs, showing the most
likely pattern of evolution for 440 of the 600 known species of
dinosaur. "Supertrees are very large family trees made using
sophisticated computer techniques that carefully stitch together
several smaller trees which were previously produced by experts on the
various subgroups”, explained lead author Graeme Lloyd.
“Our supertree summarises the efforts of two decades of research by
hundreds of dinosaur workers from across the globe and allows to look
for unusual patterns across the whole of dinosaurs for the first time."
It is the most comprehensive picture ever produced of how dinosaurs
evolved. The results are published today (23 July) in the Proceedings
of the Royal Society B.
Professor Mike Benton from Bristol University said: "It’s not
complete, but it’s the most detailed and comprehensive single
evolutionary tree produced for dinosaurs, and indeed for almost any
other group.
"Up until now, most studies of the evolution of dinosaurs were not
tested numerically against an accurate and comprehensive database. We
hope our study will mark the first of a new wave of such thorough,
quantitative studies in palaeontology."
The new study uses statistical techniques to distinguish unusually
high rates of diversification from normal rates. The results show that
all the bursts of diversification happened in the first fifty million
years of the evolution of dinosaurs. Later expansions were not
distinguishable from normal rates. This suggests dinosaurs did not take
advantage of the new food supplies available during the Cretaceous
Terrestrial Revolution – such as flowering plants, lizards, snakes,
birds and mammals.
The work was done using the High Performance Computing facilities
of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. It was based on a
combination of 155 published dinosaur ‘trees’ and took approximately
5,000 hours of calculation time.
The key focus was to see whether dinosaurs had been part of a
major phase of evolution on land – the Cretaceous Terrestrial
Revolution (between 125–80 million years ago) – when many new groups of
plants and animals expanded rapidly. During this time, the flowering
plants and social insects arose and became more and more common. Many
backboned animals also expanded to take advantage of the new sources of
food.
No-take marine reserves, in which fishing is completely banned, can
lead to very rapid comebacks of the fish species most prized by
commercial and recreational fisheries, reveals a new study of
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef published in the June 24th issue of
Current Biology.
The researchers found in most cases that coral trout–the major
targets of commercial and recreational hook-and-line fisheries in
Australia–bounced back in no-take reserves compared to fished sites in
two years or less.
" We were surprised that we documented increases in coral trout
density of 31% to 68% in such a short time," said study author Garry
Russ of James Cook University in Queensland. "Others have seen such
rapid increases in smaller-scale studies, usually at one or a few small
reserves. The big surprise was that we detected a consistent, rapid
increase in multiple large reserves spread over 1000 km offshore and
700 km inshore. This represents a positive and unprecedented response
to reserve protection."
The new findings come from a joint study by scientists from James
Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park generates AU$5.8 billion
annually from tourism and fisheries, the researchers said. In mid-2004,
the Australian Government rezoned the park, placing more than 20% of
each of 70 bioregions within it into the world’s largest network of
no-take marine reserves, covering more than 100,000 km.
The move sparked intense community interest and affected
livelihoods, making monitoring of the new reserve network’s effects
imperative, the authors noted. In the new study, the teams used
underwater visual census to survey reef organisms in new coral reef
reserves and in control areas that remained open to fishing before and
again 1.5 to 2 years after the reserves were put into place.
They found that the coral trout numbers were significantly higher in
no-take reserves than in sites that remained open to fishing in four of
five offshore regions and two of three inshore regions of the Great
Barrier Reef.
The findings are probably due to decreased fishing mortality inside
the new reserves, rather than increased fishing outside, they said. In
inshore areas, where most recreational fishing occurs, the data showed
increases in coral trout density inside reserves rather than decreases
in adjacent fished areas after rezoning.
"Although preliminary, our results provide an encouraging message
that bold political steps to protect biodiversity can produce rapid,
positive results for exploited species at ecosystem scales," Russ said.
"The people of Australia got what they wanted: more protection for an
Australian icon. And it will help to boost tourism even more. It is an
important lesson for the entire world."
GIVEN their size, you might assume they had all been found by
now. But scientists believe the world’s oceans are still hiding
giant underwater creatures which have yet to be discovered.
Marine ecologists have predicted there could be as many as 18
unknown species, with body lengths greater than 1.8 metres, still
swimming in the great expanses of unexplored sea.
Using statistical modelling, they measured the rate at which new
large sea creatures have been discovered since 1830 and found that
the rate of discovery is still going strong, with new species being
found every year.
Most recently scientists found a new species of jellyfish that
is more than 3.5 metres long off the south coast of New Zealand,
along with star fish up to a metre wide.
The first full-sized carcass of a colossal squid, a deep-sea
monster four metres long, was revealed for the first time earlier
this year.
Dr Charles Paxton, a fisheries statistician at the University of
St Andrews, Scotland, said: "There are plenty of places these
creatures could be hiding.
"They may spend their lives in the middle layers of the oceans
and never surface or be in the deep sea canyons yet to be visited,
and new discoveries are being made all the time under the Arctic
ice cap."
But for anyone hoping the results could mean that the Loch Ness
Monster could still be found lurking in the depths of the famous
Scottish loch, Dr Paxton has disappointing news.
He has carried out similar analysis for freshwater species and
concluded that mankind has discovered all the large freshwater
creatures there are to be found.
"There are small creatures being discovered all the time, but to
find species that are more than two metres in length is very rare,"
he said. "Normally you would expect the rate of discovery of
species in a habitat to level off when there are no more to be
found, but with large sea creatures, the rates are still to level
out, which suggests we have not found them all yet.
"Sadly for Nessie hunters, I don’t think there is anything
hiding in the lochs and lakes of the world any more."
He said that often legends about mythical sea creatures could be
explained by real life monsters of the deep. "A lot of the mythical
sea creatures such as the Kraken and sea serpents can be explained
by sightings of sea creatures and mammals that are already
known."
Although humans have been travelling on the oceans for thousands
of years, scientists’ knowledge of life beneath the waves is still
extremely limited. Most species are only discovered when they are
washed ashore or dredged up by fishing boats.
at the Ecological Society of America’s annual
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