Plant 15 anti-hunger trees and you won't have to worry about food for a year | Nature Trumpet

Welcome to the 32nd issue of the Nature Trumpet column. In the past half month, we have collected these noteworthy natural news and research:

1) Because of the warming climate, the snowshoe hare has no time to change its clothes

2) The "anti-hunger tree" blooms. It looks like a banana but can be used to make bread.

3) The 30,000-year-old fur ball turned out to be a squirrel mummy

4) The genius Asian elephant learned to peel a banana with its trunk

5) A mycologist who studies fungi that infect plants

6) Breaking the record, scientists discovered the deepest deep-sea fish

The white-shoe hare has no time to change clothes

Because of global warming, the snowshoe hare has delayed its winter molting , which greatly increases their risk of being preyed on.

Brown snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) in summer | Walter Siegmund / Wikimedia Commons

Snowshoe hares live in North America. They are brown in the summer, but in the winter, they put on white "fur jackets" to hide in the snow and avoid being discovered by predators. Their hind feet are large, and even the soles of their feet are covered with thick fur, just like snow boots, which can prevent their feet from sinking into the snow and freezing in the snow - this is why they are called snowshoe hares.

White boots hare in white for winter | Alice Kenney

Generally speaking, it takes a month for the snowshoe hare to change from brown fur to white fur, so the timing of the molting is very critical . If it starts too early and puts on white clothes before the snow, it will be completely exposed to predators; vice versa, if it starts too late, it will still be swaggering in the snow wearing a brown coat, which is simply saying to the predator: "Come and catch me!"

A snowshoe hare that turns white before the snow falls (Predator: Thank You for Listening) | Lance Goodwin

However, in recent years, as Canada's weather has warmed and snowfall has decreased, snowshoe hares have begun to lose track of when to change their clothes. In the fall, the high temperatures make them decide to wait; this wait comes in winter, when the snow is already thick, but they haven't had time to change into white clothes, exposing themselves to predators .

Researchers say that in winter, almost all animals in the northern forest eat white-shoe hares. If the number of white-shoe hares that survive the winter decreases, it will affect their reproduction in the following summer, thus affecting the entire forest food web.

The Anti-Hunger Tree Blossoms

The " Anti-Hunger Tree " has blossomed for the first time at Kew Gardens in the UK.

Ensete ventricosum (Anti-Hunger Tree) in bloom | Sebastian Kettley, RBG Kew

The anti-hunger tree comes from Ethiopia and is also called the Ethiopian banana. Although it is a relative of the banana, its fruit is very different from the bananas we usually see - its fruit is full of large, black seeds, which are completely inedible. Ethiopians do not eat the fruit, but they scrape the pseudostem of the plant into starch, mix it with yeast, and ferment it, and finally process it into a food called kocho, which looks like bread .

kocho | worancha.com

The anti-hunger tree is not in vain. They are highly resistant to drought and disease, and are the main source of nutrition for more than 20 million people in drought-prone Ethiopia. Fifteen trees up to 10 meters tall can provide a person with food for a whole year . For Ethiopians, the anti-hunger tree is like a fixed asset, a reliable source of food even when other crops fail and food is scarce.

Researcher Dr James Borrel with the tree when it was young | James Borrell, RBG Kew

The anti-hunger tree that bloomed in Kew Gardens this time arrived at Kew Gardens in 2019. At that time, it was still a "baby", not even 30 cm tall. But two years later, it has grown large enough to be moved into the permanent display area, and even become the most important character in the display area, attracting visitors with its towering leaves.

However, the Anti-Hunger Tree only bears fruit once in its lifetime, and although this tree is blooming for the first time, it means that it is about to reach the end of its life . When the flowering period is over, the gardener will replace it with a new specimen to continue standing in Kew Gardens.

Squirrel Mummy

This 30,000-year-old ball of fur is actually a squirrel mummy !

Maoqiu Benqiu | Government of Yukon

This hairball was found by miners in Canada while working. At first, no one knew what it was. It looked like a mixture of fur and claws. Recently, scientists discovered a tail mixed in the hairball and realized that it was a mummified Arctic ground squirrel - it looked like a ball because it was hibernating when it died.

X-ray of a squirrel mummy | Government of Yukon

Scientists did not intend to untie the hair ball for fear of damaging the specimen. They used X-rays to examine its interior - and surprisingly, even after 30,000 years, the squirrel's internal skeleton was still well preserved and looked similar to a living squirrel rolled into a ball.

Arctic ground squirrel (Urocitellus parryii) | National Park Service, Alaska Region / Wikimedia Commons

Arctic ground squirrels still live on Earth today. They spend several months of each year in hibernation, and their body temperature drops to almost freezing during hibernation . They are very unique among most mammals, which maintain a constant body temperature year-round. When hibernating, Arctic ground squirrels hide in underground burrows and curl themselves up into a ball, almost exactly like this mummy.

Next, this fur ball will be exhibited in a museum to show everyone a hibernation spanning 30,000 years.

Elephant peeling banana

Recently, an elephant learned to peel a banana using his trunk!

Pang Pha, an Asian elephant living at Berlin Zoo, was first discovered by its keepers to be able to peel bananas - when handed to it, it would place the banana on the ground with its trunk, then quickly peel off the skin and throw it aside before stuffing the flesh into its mouth .

Pang Pha has his own set of experience when it comes to bananas: if you give it a yellow or green banana, it will not peel it but put it directly into its mouth; if it is a whole brown, overripe banana, it has no desire to eat it and will directly refuse it; but if it is a yellow banana with brown spots , it will peel it and only eat the flesh inside.

It is almost unheard of for an elephant to peel a banana, and none of the other Asian elephants living with Pang Pha could do it. The keepers did not teach Pang Pha how to do it, but only peeled the bananas for him and fed them to him. The researchers analyzed that perhaps Pang Pha found that bananas with brown spots tasted better when peeled, and by observing the keepers' actions, he figured out a way to do it.

For an animal without flexible fingers, learning to peel a banana is a milestone achievement . Once again, elephants' cognitive abilities and ability to manipulate objects have surpassed people's previous imagination.

Mycologist infected with fungus

A recently published case report reported an unprecedented infection event.

This is even a bit puzzling - this fungus called Leymus purpurogenus has previously only been found to infect plants and cause silver leaf disease in plants, but has never been found to infect humans; but this time, it infected humans, and the infected person was a mycologist who may have been infected at work.

Chondrostereum purpureum | Henk Monster / Wikimedia Commons

The mycologist was often exposed to decaying materials, mushrooms and other plant fungi in his research. Three months before he saw the doctor, he found that he had difficulty swallowing, frequent coughing, hoarseness, and repeated inflammation of the throat. A CT scan showed pus on the right side of his organ, and after sampling, hyphae were found in it. After DNA sequencing, the hospital finally determined that the infected fungus was actually purple tough leather fungus.

Mycelium found after sampling | Soma Dutta, Ujjwayini Ray/Medical Mycology Case Reports

Fortunately, this disease is not a terminal illness. After taking broad-spectrum antifungal drugs for two months, the unfortunate mycologist finally recovered. After a two-year follow-up monitoring, the hospital found that he had recovered well and there was no sign of recurrence.

For plant fungi, human body temperature is too high, making it difficult for them to survive, and coupled with the attack of the immune system, it is almost impossible for them to survive. What is the specific mechanism that allows this plant fungus to "cross the border" and infect humans, whether other people are likely to be infected, and how to treat after infection, all require further research.

The deepest deep sea fish

Scientists have discovered the deepest deep-sea fish ever found - a lionfish that lives at a depth of more than 8,000 meters.

Lionfish photographed at a depth of 7,500-8,200 meters in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench | University of Western Australia

Last September, in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench south of Japan, scientists photographed two lionfish at a depth of 8,336 meters . They belong to the genus Pseudoliparis, but the specific species is unknown. This is the deepest deep-sea fish ever recorded.

A few days later, at a depth of 8,022 meters, scientists caught two P. belyaevi, the first time fish were caught at a depth of more than 8,000 meters. These deep-sea fish have no scales, their bodies are covered with a gelatinous outer layer, and they have no swim bladders , which allows them to adapt to the extremely high-pressure deep-sea environment.

A lionfish at a depth of 8,336 meters. This is a juvenile fish. Usually, juvenile lionfish live in deeper waters. University of Western Australia

Scientists have discovered that there are few fish living in the waters over 8,000 meters deep in the Mariana Trench, but deep-sea fish are quite abundant in the waters around Japan. Some people used to think that it was difficult for fish to live in the seas over 8,200 meters deep; but as research deepens, deep-sea fish continue to break the limits of human imagination .

References

[1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2022.1421

[2] https://phys.org/news/2023-04-enset-ethiopia-remarkable-tree-hunger.html

[3] https://www.livescience.com/30000-year-old-fur-ball-hidden-canadian-permafrost-actually-mummified-squirrel

[4] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)00266-X

[5] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211753923000106

[6] https://www.uwa.edu.au/news/Article/2023/April/Scientists-break-new-record-after-finding-worlds-deepest-fish

Author: Maotun, Mai Mai

Editor: Mai Mai

Image credit: Sebastian Kettley, RBG Kew