Stories tagged New Zealand
Ta-ta tuatara?
in Diversity of Organisms, The Water Cycle, Weather and Climate, and Biological Populations Change Over Time
Going, going, gone?: Will global warming doom the tuatara?
Courtesy Andrew_mrt1976
The tuatara looks like a lizard, but it ain’t. It actually split off from the lizard family tree some 200 million years ago, frolicked with the dinosaurs, and is considered a “living fossil.”
How much longer it will go on living is a matter of some debate. Restricted to a few small islands off New Zealand, the tuatara has long been classified as a vulnerable species. But some researchers feel it faces a new threat: global warming.
Many reptile reproductive systems are tuned to temperature. If the weather is warm, a male hatches. If the climate is cold, the egg produces a female. Some researchers fear that warming temperatures will lead to nothing but male tuataras within 75 years, ending the species’ 200-million-year run.
Most of the article is hidden behind a subscription wall, so I don’t know if the researchers ever get around to explaining how the tuatara survived the much, much warmer temperatures of the Mesozoic, and the much, much cooler temperatures of the Ice Ages, without going extinct then, too. But I’m sure it’s a beautiful explanation, though.
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The face of the enemy: Know it well. They wait, biding their time, building up the strength of their numbers, and of their horrible, secret weapon of doom!
Courtesy foxypar4
That’s sheep farts to you and me, and apparently it’s a major problem. There are over one billion sheep in the world. They spend their day, standing in the meadow, gamboling playfully, watching Sam, the big shaggy cartoon sheep dog, foil the ingenious but inevitably futile efforts of Ralph, the wolf who looks suspiciously like a coyote.
And eating. Grass is what sheep eat. Unfortunately, they can’t digest it. Instead, they have little tiny microbes in their stomachs (four stomachs per sheep) that break down the plant fiber for them.
Unfortunately, microbes are rude little creatures, emitting methane gas with every mouthful and nary an “excuse me” to be heard. The methane builds up inside the ovine until it escapes in the form of sheep farts. (And, seriously, if you ever have a chance to write an essay that can justifiably include the phrase “sheep farts,” then you should seize the opportunity and use the term just as often as you possibly can.)
Anyway, the methane (a.k.a. sheep farts) gets into the atmosphere where, some would have it, it will trap heat and warm the globe and eventually destroy civilization as we know it. This may or may not be a bad thing, but I personally would hate to see my home destroyed just because of sheep farts.
Fortunately some researchers in New Zealand have come to our rescue. These plucky kiwis are tackling the sheep fart menace head-on, trying to develop a vaccination that will improve the microbes’ table manners. An anxious world holds its breath – partly in anticipation of the coming breakthrough in sheep fart technology, but mostly in response to the sheep farts themselves.
We’ve done our best here on Science Buzz to dispel the myths of sharks gobbling up surfers and other ocean goers. Now here comes this story from New Zealand (doesn’t all the weird stuff seem to happen there?) about one surfer’s really bad day.
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