Fuddland
It’s been quite a week for Really Quite Interesting Discoveries About Animals. In case you’ve missed them:
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Bees cook invading wasps to death by surrounding them in a heat-generating ball.
To see what margin of safety the bees have, Tan and his research colleagues presented tethered wasps to six colonies each of native Asian bees and European bees. At each nest, worker bees engulfed the wasp immediately. Within 5 minutes, the center of a typical bee ball had reached 45°C.
[via Gordon]
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Images of a live adult giant squid have been recorded for the first time at its natural hunting depth.
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Gorillas use sticks to test the depth of the water in a pool before crossing it.
In the first case, we had a female crossing a pool; and this female has crossed this pool by using a detached stick and testing the water depth, and trying to use it as a walking stick.
The second case saw another female gorilla pick up the trunk of a dead shrub and use it to lean on while dredging for food in a swamp. She then placed the trunk down on the swampy ground and used it as a bridge.
Kind of puts that whole us-going-to-the-moon thing into perspective, eh fellow humans?
Comments
em | 2005 / 10 / 01 – 20:24
wow - a wasp compost heap! - but wouldn’t it be somewhat quicker to just gang up and sacrifice one bee to sting the wasp? I’m sure the wasp would have a fair crack at them with the old rear end…..
David | 2005 / 10 / 01 – 21:05
Re #1: Careful. It’s a small evolutionary leap from the notion of sacrifice to organised religion, and before you know it the bees will be off on crusades, converting the entire insect nation to Beetianity, leaving no time to make delicious honey for your toast. ;)
Sherri | 2005 / 10 / 03 – 00:57
Bees cooking a wasp to death with body heat.
Sometimes, riding a crowded subway in the scorching heat of summer makes me feel like a wasp.
felicity | 2005 / 10 / 07 – 11:58
i’m wandering exactly how they ‘tethered’ a wasp in the first place? and did they have the wasps full understanding that it was about to embark on a suicide mission?
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