How fast is the fastest backflip? 368 turns in one second! | Natural Trumpet

Welcome to the 65th issue of the Nature Trumpet column. In the past two weeks, we have collected some natural news and research worth reading:

1) Fungus manipulates the brain and turns flies into "zombies"

2) Bats have glowing leg hairs, which may be used for communication

3) A bug a few millimeters in size can do the world’s fastest backflip

4) A humpback whale entangled in fishing gear was finally rescued

5) The tracker on the shark went into another shark’s stomach

6) California condors are dying from lead poisoning

Flies are controlled by the brain

When you see a fly lying motionless on the windowsill with a circle of white spores around it - it is very likely that it has been controlled by the fungus and turned into a "zombie"!

Flies infected with Entomophthora muscae | Filippo Castellucci

A fungus called Mycoplasma parasitizes flies. One subspecies is specific to house flies, while another is specific to fruit flies.

While the host is still alive, they will use up the nutrients in the host in about a week, and eventually manipulate the host's brain. The flies that have become "zombies" stick to plants or windows and die, but they still emit the smell of healthy flies, attracting their own kind to mate . The fungal spores take the opportunity to infect other flies, turning them into zombies as well. This infection strategy can turn 60% to 80% of the flies in a space into "zombies."

An infected fly dies clinging to a window, surrounded by released spores | Sten Porse

How do fungi accomplish this feat of manipulating the brain? Recently, scientists have successfully mapped the genome of the fungus that parasitizes fruit flies and found the key gene.

The genome of the fungus is 25 times larger than that of most other fungi, and contains genes that allow them to produce enzymes that break down chitin , thus breaking down the insect's hard outer shell. In addition, they have genes that encode light-sensitive proteins that can tell time from the outside light, so they can manipulate flies precisely at dusk - when humidity is higher and their spores spread more easily.

Scientists collect flies infected with Mycobacterium spp. in a cowshed | Anja Wynns

Scientists believe that we can learn from the fungus to design innovative biological pest control methods , such as developing a fungus-based insecticide that only attacks a certain type of pest while leaving bees and other beneficial insects unharmed.

The leg hair will glow

Bats have glowing leg hairs!

That's it. The Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis) | Ann Froschauer / USFWS

The Mexican free-tailed bat is one of the most abundant mammals in North America, with an ultra-fast flight speed of over 160 km/h. A recent new study found that their feet have long, white bristles that emit a faint fluorescence under ultraviolet light.

Under ultraviolet light, the hair on their legs glows | References [2]

The discovery was accidental. The scientists were studying a completely different topic - they caught some bats and released them to another habitat 30 kilometers away to see if they would move back and forth between the two habitats. In order to identify the artificially released bats, they sprinkled them with a powder that glows under ultraviolet light.

The experiment was ultimately unsuccessful, but they unexpectedly discovered that bats' feet actually glow under ultraviolet light .

Their leg hair usually looks white | US Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters

What is the use of glowing foot hair? This needs further research. Scientists speculate that bats can see each other's glowing foot hair, and they may be able to communicate through foot hair at night.

Fastest Backflip

A tiny insect, only a few millimeters in size, can perform the fastest backflip in the world .

This is a ball-shaped springtail called Dicyrtomina minuta. They have six legs and are very small. They neither bite nor fly. But they are world-class jumping masters - when predators approach, they will jump away at a speed that the naked eye cannot catch , as if they evaporated on the spot.

Looks pretty unique | AJC1 / Wikimedia Commons

Recently, scientists discovered that this ball-shaped springtail can jump to a height of more than 60 times its body height in the blink of an eye (beating 100% of the world's pole vaulters). What's more amazing is that they can do backflips while jumping up, and the speed of their rotation in the air is amazing, reaching up to 368 rotations per second !

Super Backflip | Adrian Smith

The speed of the spherical springtail's backflip is so fast that the human eye cannot keep up, and even recording it is a problem. If you use an ordinary camera to shoot, the springtail will only flash in one frame and then disappear. Scientists have to use an ultra-high-speed camera that can shoot 40,000 frames per second to capture the entire process of their backflips and calculate their rotation speed.

They also found that the "launch" of the ball springtail is limited in angle, and they usually jump upwards or backwards, but cannot jump forward . This shows that high-speed backflips are mainly a way to escape predators, after all, jumping forward is equivalent to walking into a trap.

The whole process of the spherical springtail backflip | Adrian Smith

Do spherical springtails have super strong legs to do backflips? In fact, they don't use legs at all to jump, but use a fork-like structure folded under their belly . When jumping, the fork-like structure pushes against the ground, giving the springtails an upward acceleration, allowing them to perform a disappearing trick in front of predators.

Humpback whale rescued

Recently, a juvenile humpback whale became entangled in fishing nets and buoys in Sydney Harbour.

Entangled humpback whale calf | References [4]

Fortunately, a whale watching boat spotted the humpback whale in distress and immediately contacted a wildlife rescue team. The rescue team took an inflatable boat and found the whale with the help of a helicopter and a drone, fixed it with equipment, and then tried to clear the ropes entangled in it. After several hours of effort, the humpback whale was finally rescued and returned to the open sea.

Rescue in progress | References [4]

The humpback whale went through a 22-hour ordeal from being discovered to being rescued. But the rescue workers believed that the humpback whale may have been entangled earlier, and its breathing sounded very tired during the rescue. If it had not been discovered in time, it might have faced a more terrible fate.

Almost every month there are news reports of whales being entangled in fishing gear. Even if the lucky ones can escape on their own or meet human rescue teams, the fishing gear will still leave them with permanent pain . However, there are countless unfortunate whales who are entangled in fishing gear and tortured to death. Their pain and huge bodies sink into the deep sea together and will never be known.

In July, another humpback whale was also entangled in fishing gear. It had been entangled for at least 3-6 months, with severe damage to its tail fin and a large number of whale lice on its body. | NOAA

Shark eats another shark's tracker

A tracker that was installed on a porbeagle recently appeared in the stomach of a great white shark.

The porbeagle is a large shark that lives mainly in the open ocean. It is usually 2.5 meters long and weighs up to 135 kilograms. Previously, researchers put a tracker on a pregnant porbeagle to study its range and movement patterns. The tracker can report the shark's geographic location, activity depth and surrounding temperature through satellite signals.

A porbeagle shark (Lamna nasus) with a tracker | James Sulikowski

In the first five months, everything was working fine. According to the tracker, the porbeagle shark hunted at a depth of 100 to 800 meters in the ocean every day, and moved south from Cape Cod to the Bermuda Triangle. But after five months, something strange happened: the shark seemed to be still active in the same depth range, but the ambient temperature was about 5 degrees Celsius higher, even at a depth of several hundred meters.

The researchers speculated that the tracker may have ended up in the stomach of another shark . In other words, their subject was eaten!

Porbeagle shark returns to ocean with tracker | Jon Dodd

Based on the range of activities, the researchers believe that the culprit was a great white shark . The good news is that although the research subject was eaten and the tracker was also in the stomach of the great white shark, they still successfully published the paper - just with a different topic. This is the first time that a predator-prey relationship between large sharks has been discovered.

The prime suspect, the great white shark | Sharkcrew / Wikimedia Commons

Porbeagle sharks have always been considered one of the top predators in the ocean, but they are unexpectedly also preyed upon by their relatives, the great white sharks. This is not good news for the porbeagle shark population - due to overfishing, the number of porbeagle sharks has dropped a lot and has been listed as a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This unexpected incident also makes us realize that the interactions between large marine predators may be much more complicated than we previously understood.

Lead poisoning in California condors

California condors are dying in droves from lead poisoning.

California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) | Pacific Southwest Region US Fish and Wildlife Service

The California condor is the largest bird in North America. Due to habitat destruction and illegal hunting, they were nearly extinct. It was not until 1987 that the United States launched the California condor recovery plan, capturing and keeping the remaining 20 California condors in the wild . As their numbers gradually grew, they were released back into the wild. By the end of 2022, there were 561 California condors in the world, of which 347 lived in the wild.

Recently, a special California condor unfortunately passed away. It was the 1,000th hatched in the California Condor Recovery Program. It was born and raised in the wild and was named 1K. In 2022, 1K was treated for lead poisoning and was released back into the wild. This year, it suffered from lead poisoning for the second time and did not survive. Even more unfortunately, 1K's parents also died of lead poisoning. Its sister 1111 is the last surviving member of the family, but she has also been affected by lead poisoning and is still receiving treatment.

1K to be treated for lead poisoning in 2022 | Sierra Martin

Lead is commonly found in ammunition used to hunt large animals. California condors are scavengers, and a lead-contaminated carcass can affect up to 20 condors and other scavengers . Biologists involved in the recovery program found that 90% of California condors in the wild were exposed to lead, and among the 253 condors whose causes of death were determined, the rate of lead poisoning was as high as 49.8%.

X-rays show large amounts of lead fragments in the stomach of a California condor | Sierra Martin

References

[1] https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/92863

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42991-024-00441-3

[3] https://academic.oup.com/iob/article/6/1/obae029/7742965

[4] https://phys.org/news/2024-08-humpback-whale-freed-sydney-harbour.html

[5] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2024.1406973/full

[6] https://phys.org/news/2024-09-california-condors-zion-national-dies.html

Author: Cat Tun

Editor: Mai Mai