Earth ChangesS


Bug

Slave ants keep a taste for revenge

Forget Spartacus - you need look no further than an ant colony for a slave mutiny.

Some ant species raid colonies of smaller species, killing the queen, scaring away worker ants and stealing larvae. Kidnapped larvae grow up as slaves.

Susanne Foitzik of the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, has evidence the slaves have evolved an unusual weapon in the fight for survival: mutiny.

Bizarro Earth

Canada: Manitoba's ice age

Ice jams wreaked havoc on riverside communities north of Selkirk early yesterday, destroying homes and forcing evacuations.

Rapidly rising flood waters along the Red River forced several residents and emergency responders onto the tops of homes and vehicles to await rescue in Breezy Point and the Rural Municipality of St. Clements.

Bizarro Earth

Seismologist deems California quakes 'curious'

U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Susan Hough says the recent small earthquakes in California's China Hills are curious incidents.

Hough said the series of minor earthquakes, which included three small tremors during the weekend, are outside the norm in relation to seismological activity, The Orange County (Calif.) Register said Sunday.

It's curious in the sense that it's one of those sequences that doesn't fit neatly into a well recognized mold, Hough said. If it's a swarm then it certainly isn't a typical one -- not that we understand what a swarm is, or why they happen!

Better Earth

Driller thriller: Antarctica's tumultuous past revealed

The midnight sun hangs low in the sky on this November evening. A plain of flat ice sweeps in all directions and mountains rise in the distance. Perched on the sea ice is a massive, teepee-shaped tent. A mechanised rumble emanates from within.


Inside the tent, men in hard hats tend a rotating shaft of steel. This drill turns day and night through 8 metres of sea ice covering the surface of McMurdo Sound, off the coast of Antarctica, and through 400 metres of water beneath it and into the seabed.

Comment: See also: US Military research site shows Arctic ice thickening over last 12 months


Info

Sunbird learns to hover for sweet reward

Dogs might be resistant, but it turns out you can teach an old bird new tricks. An African bird has learned to hover so that it can collect nectar from flowers, just as hummingbirds do in the Americas. The bird has an unlikely trainer: an invasive South American plant that has made its way to South Africa.


Ambulance

US: High winds kill 2, knock out power in Southeast

High winds are causing power outages for parts of the Southeast and are responsible for the death of a teen in Tennessee and another person in Atlanta.

An Etowah teenager has been killed when a strong gust of wind blew a tree onto his family's home.

McMinn County Sheriff's Detective Jerry Wilson said the 18-year-old was still in bed when a tree fell onto the house around 6 a.m. ET Monday and a limb penetrated it, killing him.

Better Earth

U.S. Military research site shows Arctic ice thickening over last 12 months

US MIL Arctic buoy locations
© Cold Regions Research and Engineering LaboratoryUS MIL Arctic buoy locations

The WUWT Arctic Ice Thickness Survey has been conducted from the comfort of a warm living room over the last half hour, without sponsors, excessive CO2 emissions or hypothermia. The data is collected from the US military web site. All of the active military buoys show significant thickening ice over the past six months to a year, as at right.
Catlin Arctic Survey Team position
Location of Catlin team relative to buoy 2008D and the North Pole

Bizarro Earth

El Salvador: Earthquake Magnitude 4.6

Image
© USGS
Date/Time:

* Monday, April 13, 2009 at 00:33:20 UTC

* Sunday, April 12, 2009 at 06:33:20 PM at epicenter

Location 13.548°N, 88.511°W

Depth 188.4 km (117.1 miles)

Distances 40 km (25 miles) WNW of San Miguel, El Salvador

75 km (50 miles) ESE of SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador

120 km (75 miles) ESE of Santa Ana, El Salvador

1305 km (810 miles) ESE of MEXICO CITY, D.F., Mexico

Attention

'Britain's Beach Litter Worst Since Records Began' Say Conservationists

Image
Britain's beaches are more littered than at any time since records began, according to a report published today by the Marine Conservation Society.

An average of 2,195 pieces were found for every kilometer cleaned in the society's Beachwatch project last year, more than two items per meter and more than double the amount found in the first clean-up in 1994.

The amount of plastic rubbish found had tripled in the same time and made up about 60 per cent of the waste recovered, said Emma Snowdon, the project's coordinator.

South West England was the worst affected area, with almost 5,000 pieces of litter on every kilometer of beach. Almost 40 per cent of the litter was discarded by beach users.

Better Earth

New orangutan population found in Indonesia

Black Orangutan
© Associated Press Photo/The Nature Conservancy, HOn this undated photo released by The Nature Conservancy, an orangutan of a newly found population is seen in Sangkulirang forest on Borneo island, Indonesia. Conservationists have discovered a new population of orangutans in a remote, mountainous corner of Indonesia, perhaps as many as 2,000, giving a rare boost to one of the world's most critically endangered great apes.
Jakarta - Conservationists have discovered a new population of orangutans in a remote, mountainous corner of Indonesia - perhaps as many as 2,000 - giving a rare boost to one of the world's most endangered great apes.

A team surveying forests nestled between jagged, limestone cliffs on the eastern edge of Borneo island counted 219 orangutan nests, indicating a "substantial" number of the animals, said Erik Meijaard, a senior ecologist at the U.S.-based The Nature Conservancy.

"We can't say for sure how many," he said, but even the most cautious estimate would indicate "several hundred at least, maybe 1,000 or 2,000 even."

The team also encountered an adult male, which angrily threw branches as they tried to take photos, and a mother and child.