Drinking water with your butt? I didn’t expect you to be such a beetle…｜Nature Trumpet

Welcome to the Nature Trumpet column. In the past two weeks, we have collected the following natural news and research worth noting:

1) Drinking water with your butt, I didn’t expect you to be such a beetle

2) You play dead to woo a mate. I didn't expect you to be such a spider.

3) What do mammoth meatballs taste like?

4) Water bears make another great contribution

5) Plants scream when they feel pain

6) The art of mountain lion hunting: leaving some leftovers

Beetle drinks water with its butt

Beetles can go their entire lives without drinking water with their mouths, because – they can “drink water” with their butts!

Scientists recently discovered that the red flour beetle opens its anus and uses its rectum to absorb water from the humid air . The secret lies in a unique cell in the beetle's rectum that expresses a protein called NHA1 in large quantities, which pumps salt into the kidneys. Water will permeate to areas with higher salt concentrations, and can then enter the body from the rectum.

Tribolium castaneum | Wikimedia Commons

Beetles can not only absorb water from the air, but also absorb water from food very efficiently, which allows them to survive on food with only 1-2% water content. When scientists observed under a microscope, they found that the feces of red flour beetles were completely dry , and all the water was absorbed by the intestines.

Cross-section of a beetle's intestine. The magenta in the middle is completely dried feces, the gray surrounding is the intestine, and the purple is the Malpighian tubules | Kenneth Veland Halberg

Now, one-fifth of the animal species on Earth are beetles, which cause up to 25% of food production losses. For example, the rice weevil, which we are familiar with, can survive in extremely dry granaries. But traditional pesticides not only kill beetles, but also kill other beneficial insects by mistake and have an impact on the environment. Scientists hope that studying how beetles absorb water with their rectums can help design pesticides tailored for beetles , while removing beetles and protecting beneficial insects such as bees.

Female spider feigns death to court mate

"How to find a mate" is a problem faced by many species. Some female spiders have found a magical way - pretending to be dead.

Many spiders have the habit of cannibalism. After mating, males who don't escape quickly enough will become a big meal for females. For males, mating means a life-or-death adventure , so they will always hesitate and will not easily choose to mate.

A female Laotian giant huntsman spider (Heteropoda maxima) eats a male. | Smartcam / Wikimedia Commons

Recently, scientists have discovered that female spiny spiders enter a state of suspended animation during mating - their legs are tightly curled up and their entire body is motionless. The study found that this is spontaneous female pretending to be dead, not caused by male anesthesia; females can freely control the duration of suspended animation, and they will wake up immediately once mating is over.

A: A female Aterigena aculeata in a resting state; B: A female Aterigena aculeata in a state of suspended animation | Reference [2]

Scientists believe that females may pretend to be dead to attract males so that they don't have to worry about being eaten after mating. This is also a way for females to select mates: females will only use the trick of pretending to be dead on males they think are the best , increasing the chances of the other party taking the bait; as for those males they don't like, they don't have to bother pretending to be dead, and males will naturally run away for fear of being eaten.

Mammoth Meatballs

You must have eaten beef meatballs and fish meatballs, but have you heard of mammoth meatballs?

Recently, an Australian company called Vow used the genetic sequence of the extinct mammoth to make a 400-gram mammoth meatball .

Mammoth Meatballs | Vow

However, strictly speaking, this meatball is not mainly made of mammoth meat . The maker used the mammoth's myoglobin DNA sequence to create the "mammoth flavor", then filled in the gaps with the DNA information of existing African elephants, and then put it into sheep stem cells. In a laboratory environment, these sheep cells continue to proliferate, and when they grow to about 20 billion cells, they can be made into large meatballs.

After the meatballs are made, they are first baked and then burnt with a blowtorch to create a charred outer layer - but the next step is not to eat them, but to glaze them and send them to a museum in Amsterdam for display . Although people present said that it smelled a unique aroma, like the aroma of crocodile meat, no one knows what the so-called "mammoth meatballs" taste like, and the company has no plans to put them into commercial production.

Reconstruction of a mammoth | Mauricio Antón / Wikimedia Commons

The company that makes this meatball stated that the current mammoth meatball is not made for consumption, but the real purpose is to increase everyone's attention to artificial meat . At present, the global demand for meat is increasing. If we can make edible meat through cell culture in the laboratory, we can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions caused by traditional animal husbandry and truly achieve sustainability and renewability.

Water bears make a difference

The magical animal tardigrade has made great contributions again recently!

Water bears, also known as tardigrades, have extraordinary survival abilities. Under various extreme environmental conditions, they will dehydrate and enter a state of suspended animation, thus surviving in extreme environments ranging from -200°C to 150°C. Scientists have recently discovered that the proteins in water bears can also be used in medicine, allowing drugs that originally needed to be refrigerated to be stored at room temperature .

Tardigrades under an electron microscope | Goldstein lab

Scientists extracted two substances from a water bear called Hypsibius exemplaris: trehalose and CAHS protein, and added them to coagulation factor VIII for the treatment of hemophilia A.

Coagulation factor VIII originally needs to be refrigerated, but with these two substances from tardigrades - especially CAHS, coagulation factor VIII can be stored at room temperature and remain stable, and even withstand adverse conditions such as repeated dehydration, extreme high temperatures and long-term dryness .

Vaccines shipped under cold chain to Mozambique | GiveWell / Wikimedia Commons

This discovery could allow many people to get life-saving drugs . In remote areas where the cold chain is not well developed and refrigeration conditions are limited, it is difficult to supply and use drugs that require refrigeration; but with the tardigrade protein, patients living in remote areas can also obtain and use these drugs for a long time.

In addition to the medical field, this discovery brings another possibility - perhaps one day in the future, we will no longer need to rely so much on cold chain technology, and from drugs, food to other biological molecules, we can extend the shelf life without relying on low temperature.

Plants Scream

When dehydrated or injured, many plants make loud "screams" - but the frequency of the sound is too high for the human ear to perceive directly.

Researchers use microphones to record the sounds made by a variety of plants, including cacti | Tel Aviv University

The researchers set up microphones and recorded the sounds of a variety of plants, including tomatoes, tobacco, cacti, and grapes.

These plants are quite quiet when healthy, but when they are dehydrated or injured , they will frequently produce 40 to 80 kHz ultrasonic waves, and even "call" dozens of times an hour. The volume of this sound is quite considerable and can still be detected at a distance of 3 to 5 meters.

The principle of the plant's "scream" is not yet clear, but it may be related to the generation and collapse of small bubbles in the vascular system. Researchers believe that these sounds may be heard by animals such as insects and may also be sensed by other plants , but its specific impact is still unknown. Monitoring the sounds may also help humans better understand the health of plants.

The Hunting Art of the Mountain Lion

Mountain lions have an ingenious hunting strategy that allows them to "plant" next year's prey, a study finds.

After catching their prey, mountain lions do not eat them completely, but leave about 2/3 of the total weight of the prey . A dozen mountain lions can produce more than 100,000 kilograms of carrion each year, which is almost the weight of a blue whale.

Mountain lion eating a deer | National Park Service from USA / Wikimedia Commons

Not only does this carrion become a buffet for scavengers, it also "fertilizes" the soil, allowing it to deposit more nitrogen and other valuable nutrients, improving the nutrient composition of the soil and the growth of plants. The average lifespan of a mountain lion is nine years, and it can create about 482 patches of nutrient-rich soil in its lifetime.

The cougars’ food, ungulates, prefer foods rich in nitrogen, so they are likely to be attracted to these sites with carrion . In other words, the cougars use the leftover prey to “fertilize” the land, so that they can catch new prey in the future, and the leftover carrion can continue to nourish the soil, forming a perfect cycle.

Cougar | Bas Lammers

Through hunting and leftover carrion, mountain lions maintain close relationships with 485 species, affecting soil nutrients and plant growth, invertebrate species and distribution, and the composition of scavenger communities. It can be said that they play an important role in the ecosystem of the entire Western Hemisphere. However, mountain lions are currently affected by habitat loss, illegal hunting and disease, and their numbers are still declining.

References

[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2217084120

[2] https://academic.oup.com/cz/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cz/zoad010/7081690

[3] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-massive-meatball-was-made-with-woolly-mammoth-dna-180981908/

[4] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31586-9

[5] https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)00262-3

[6] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-023-01630-0

Author: Cat Tun, Window Knocking Rain

Editor: Mai Mai

This article comes from GuokrNature (ID: GuokrNature)