Pink pineapple! Can I eat it? Is it delicious? Can I afford it? | Nature Trumpet

Welcome to the 43rd issue of the Nature Trumpet column. In the past half month, we have collected the following interesting and fun natural news and research:

1) A stray dog, a ranger on the beach

2) If you hide food in front of a dog, it will be stolen in no time.

3) A tortoise beetle with a retractable anus that uses poop as armor

4) This tiny egg-eating snake can open its mouth more powerfully than a python

5) Scientists have developed a pink pineapple

6) Birds that steal coffee beans produce bird poop coffee

Some dogs are saving turtles

Recently, a stray dog ​​was featured in the academic journal "Plos ONE" because it was the savior of sea turtles.

The dog, named Dory, was found and adopted on a highway. After several months of training, she became a qualified detection dog, whose mission was to search for turtle eggs on an 8-kilometer-long beach .

Once she finds a turtle's nest, Dolly will sit down to signal her location. | References [1]

Finding turtle eggs helps scientists analyze the nesting habits and current population status of turtles, thereby protecting endangered turtles. However, turtle eggs are not easy for humans to find . Sometimes female turtles may make a feint and crawl onto the beach, but return to the water without laying eggs; even if they successfully lay eggs, they will deliberately mess up large areas of sand in order to hide the nest, leaving people with only guesses as to where the eggs are.

This beach is a nesting ground for loggerhead, leatherback and green sea turtles. Pictured is a loggerhead sea turtle nest | Cape Hatteras National Seashore

But Dolly is good at finding turtle eggs. During the peak nesting season, Dolly and a group of turtle-loving human volunteers started a friendly competition, and Dolly won overwhelmingly - she found 560 turtle nests , while the humans only found 256. Moreover, only 5.7% of the time did Dolly's dig sites contain no eggs, while 14.8% of the dig sites found by human volunteers did not contain eggs.

After several years of work, Dolly the Beach Ranger has now retired and is living a happy family life. In the future, more dogs will inherit her mantle.

Some dogs are stealing food

When hiding food, remember to keep it away from your dog—otherwise he might sneak away.

Recently, scientists have discovered that dogs and wolves can remember where food is hidden by observation, and then take the food away when people are not paying attention . Eight dogs and nine wolves participated in the experiment, some of which saw the whole process of humans hiding food, while others did not. The results showed that as long as the dogs and wolves saw the process of hiding food, they could find food faster and walked a shorter distance when searching for food.

I saw it all, hehe | Nicole Qowens / Wikimedia Commons

Dogs and wolves are both animals with a super sense of smell, but this experiment shows that they also have excellent observational spatial memory - finding food is not just based on smell, spatial memory allows them to steal food faster.

Regardless of whether they saw the process of hiding the food or not, wolves found food faster than dogs . However, scientists believe that this does not mean that dogs are dumber than wolves - previous studies have shown that although dogs are domesticated from wolves, their cognitive abilities are no different from their wild ancestors. As for why wolves are faster, perhaps wolves have a stronger motivation to find food, or are more persistent.

Wolves: We are all trained in the wild | Christian Mehlführer / Wikimedia Commons

Retractable anus

Tortoise beetle larvae carry around a homemade shield made from their own feces and old skin .

The production of dung shields is inseparable from a special structure of the tortoise beetle larvae - the retractable anus . Their anus can extend from the body, fix the excreted dung on the protruding structure of the tail, and pile it up to serve as a shield; when they shed their skin, the shed exoskeleton can also be recycled as a shield. Different species of tortoise beetles have different preferences. Some species only like to use dung, some only use shed skin, and some accept everything, mixing dung and old skin to make a shield.

The larva of the tortoise beetle Cassida sphaerula Boheman, with a huge shield of feces on its back | Reference [3]

Since the larvae of tortoise beetles can continuously produce new raw materials by pooping, if the poop shield is damaged, it can be easily repaired - just fill the hole with new poop . Some researchers deliberately took away their poop shields (tortoise beetles: ? Give me back my poop!), so they will make new shields non-stop as soon as they poop.

The long extended part on the upper left is the extended anus. | Reference [3]

The poop shield is not only a physical defense, but also a visual trick . Passing predators see the tortoise beetle and think it is just an ordinary pile of bird poop, so the tortoise beetle can escape. There is also a theory that the poop shield can also help the tortoise beetle reduce water loss . Besides the fact that carrying poop everywhere is a bit heavy, it really kills three birds with one stone.

In fact, the dung shield has been with the tortoise beetles since they were born, because the mother tortoise beetle will cover her eggs with dung to protect her children. Fortunately, the tortoise beetles do not need to live with dung for their entire lives. When they pupate and become adults, they can transform from ugly ducklings into white swans, using their bright exoskeletons as armor and completely eliminating the dung shield.

Adult form of a tortoise beetle, Cassida vibex | Gilles San Martin / Wikimedia Commons

Big Mouth Egg-Eating Snake

This thin little snake has a mouth that is even more powerful than that of a Burmese python.

Looks a bit choking | BCJayne

It is the Gans egg-eating snake (Dasypeltis gansi). Scientists have measured their mouth opening ability - an egg-eating snake with a head only 1 cm wide can fit a 5 cm diameter cylinder in its mouth. The Burmese python is famous for swallowing a deer in one breath, but proportionally, the egg-eating snake has a stronger mouth opening ability . If the weight is the same, it can theoretically swallow twice the weight of prey as the Burmese python.

Burmese pythons can swallow deer heavier than themselves | Conservancy Of Southwest Florida

This super mouth-opening ability comes from the soft tissue between the left and right ends of their lower jaw . This piece of soft tissue is very elastic, just like yoga pants, which can instantly double the mouth opening area of ​​the egg-eating snake.

Scientists: Try a thicker cylinder. Egg-eating snake: Are you polite? | BC JAYNE

As the name suggests, Gans' egg-eating snakes are experts at eating eggs. In order to better eat eggs, they almost don't even have teeth, so that they won't puncture the eggs when swallowing them, causing the egg liquid to splash everywhere. After swallowing the eggs, they will use their spines to break the eggs and then spit out the eggshells .

The biggest advantage of eating eggs is that the eggs will not escape or resist. So, other snakes do not eat eggs as their staple food, is it because they do not want to eat them? In fact, it is because their mouths are not wide enough, and it is very difficult to swallow eggs. They can only eat eggs occasionally, and usually choose slender prey (such as mice).

Full video of a little snake swallowing bird eggs｜BCJayne

Pink pineapple

Scientists have developed a pink pineapple!

This pineapple, named "pink glow", grows in Costa Rica and looks the same as a normal pineapple, but the flesh is tender pink . The pink color is not the result of farmers adding extra pigments, but comes from the lycopene naturally produced in pineapples (this substance is also the reason why watermelon flesh is pink).

Pink Pineapple | Matt Taylor

Generally speaking, during the ripening process of pineapples, lycopene is converted into β-carotene by enzymes, making the flesh yellow. After 16 years of research and cultivation, scientists used RNA interference technology to inhibit the action of lycopene β-cyclase. In this way, lycopene cannot be converted into β-carotene, but accumulates in the flesh , eventually making the flesh red.

Pink pineapples have now been patented, and only a US food company has the right to sell them. Each pineapple is sold online for as much as $29 to $39 . Everyone is curious about pink pineapples, and even at a high price, they are still in short supply. The company has also launched another pineapple called "honeyglow," which has a golden skin and a super sweet taste.

"Honey Glow" Pineapple | mesubim

Bird poop coffee

A large bird eats coffee cherries in a Brazilian coffee plantation, and its droppings turn into the world's rarest coffee .

Yaku bird on the tree | Fazenda Camoncim

This is the Penelope obscura, known locally as the jacu bird . Initially, they were the enemy of farmers because they not only stole coffee berries, but were also very shrewd and picky , always eating the best quality and ripest ones. The plantation owner made countless calls to the environmental protection department, but the environmental protection department was helpless and could only propose to release a predator to suppress the jacu bird.

The owner of the plantation decided to try his luck and see if he could find the best coffee beans in the guano of the yaku bird. As a result, he unexpectedly harvested a new product - guano coffee . After two years of repeated experiments, he found the best way to deal with guano: after collecting guano, farmers dry, clean and freeze the intact coffee beans for 2 to 3 months, and then make fresh guano coffee when they receive orders.

A supervisor inspects Yaku bird droppings that contain coffee beans | Fazenda Camoncim

After fermentation in the animal's digestive tract, guano coffee has a unique flavor, with a fruity and sour taste and almost no caffeine. Yaku birds only eat ripe coffee berries, and guano coffee production is scarce, so it sells for thousands of dollars per kilogram as soon as it is put on the market . Yaku birds have also transformed themselves from plantation pests to good partners of farmers.

Yakut bird feeding freely | modern farmer

The Yakut can select the best coffee beans, spread the seeds of coffee, and is a qualified harvest announcer - wherever it flies to start a meal, it means that the coffee beans in this garden are ready to be harvested. Indonesia's cat feces coffee has a bad reputation because of the abuse of civet cats; but in this Brazilian plantation, there is no cage or coercion , the Yakut roams freely, and humans and birds live in harmony and benefit each other.

Easter egg: Golden unknown creature

The American Ocean Expedition Team discovered a mysterious golden sphere on the seabed. No one knows what it is. Scientists have confirmed that it comes from a living thing, which may be an egg of an unknown species or a sponge. We will know the final answer after laboratory analysis.

Mysterious golden spheres | NOAA Ocean Exploration, Seascape Alaska

References

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290740

[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290547

[3] https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/102600/

[4] https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jzo.13102

[5] https://patents.google.com/patent/USPP25763

[6] https://phys.org/news/2023-09-rear-pheasant-brazil-coffee.html

[7] https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/rivers-oceans/team-egg-or-team-sponge-scientists-divided-over-identity-of-mysterious-golden-orb-from-bottom-of-ocean

Author: Cat Tun

Editor: Mai Mai

This article comes from GuokrNature (ID: GuokrNature)