One of its favorite prey is the Arizona bark scorpion (Centruroides sculpturatus) — whose venom is potent enough to kill humans.

To get around this, the southern grasshopper mouse reduces the venom's effects by shutting down the chemical channel that transmits the pain signal to the brain when that particular venom is present. This means they are essentially numb to the pain — although researchers still don't know why the toxin isn't lethal to them.

My spotify has turned into nature noisebox. I swear by nature recordings for focus with ADHD.

Plants react to and communicate with their environment in sometimes surprising ways that enhance their survival in changing conditions. Does this constitute intelligence? Can you have intelligence without a brain? What do we owe plants? Maybe a little overlong and meandering but important piece. It's a decade old so I wonder how the research has developed since then.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/10399931

Naturalists have found a very rare type of truffle living in a Scottish forestry plantation which is being cut down so a natural Atlantic rainforest can grow in its place.

The discovery of the globally rare fungus near Creagan in the west Highlands has thrown up a paradox: the work to remove the non-native Sitka spruce, to allow rewilding by native trees, means the truffle will be lost.

Chamonixia caespitosa, a type of truffle normally found in the Alps and Scandinavia, has only been recorded once before in the UK, in north Wales, seven years ago. Inedible to humans, it has a symbiotic relationship specific to this species of spruce. When it ripens, its white fruit turns a mottled blue in contact with the air.

The naturalists involved are puzzled about how it arrived in Scotland; it is very unusual for fungus spores to travel to the UK on the wind, and the UK’s Sitka plantations were grown from seeds originally imported from Canada.

The tiny moles are covered in silky, golden fur and spend very little time above ground, although they do occasionally surface in wet and cool weather, according to Animal Diversity Web. But, the majority of the time, these tubular-shaped marsupials move through the sand up to 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) below the surface using their heads and excavator-like clawed hands.

Abstract

While the impacts of black (Rattus rattus) and brown (Rattus norvegicus) rats on human society are well documented—including the spread of disease, broad-scale environmental destruction, and billions spent annually on animal control—little is known about their ecology and behavior in urban areas due to the challenges of studying animals in city environments. We use isotopic and ZooMS analysis of archaeological (1550s–1900 CE) rat remains from eastern North America to provide a large-scale framework for species arrival, interspecific competition, and dietary ecology. Brown rats arrived earlier than expected and rapidly outcompeted black rats in coastal urban areas. This replacement happened despite evidence that the two species occupy different trophic positions. Findings include the earliest molecularly confirmed brown rat in the Americas and show a deep ecological structure to how rats exploit human-structured areas, with implications for understanding urban zoonosis, rat management, and ecosystem planning as well as broader themes of rat dispersal, phylogeny, evolutionary ecology, and climate impacts.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/18481281

Over the next four years, the oVert team will CT scan 20,000 fluid-preserved specimens from U.S. museum collections, producing high-resolution anatomical data for more than 80 percent of vertebrate genera.

These digital images and 3D mesh files will be open for exploration, download and 3D printing on MorphoSource, an open-access online database. These new media will provide unprecedented global access to valuable specimens in museum collections and enhance the research value of existing data-rich specimens in iDigBio.

oVert is a multi-institutional project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JALuBzGvV3g

Some images from the site:

A colorized CT scan of a Burmese horned toad, Brachytarsophrys carinensis, showing the skeleton and mineralized skin. Florida Museum of Natural History image by Ed Stanley

Digitizing specimens through CT scanning makes it easier for museums to share their rare and important specimens. This is the holotype of the rough-footed mud turtle, Kinosternon hirtepes, from the Florida Museum herpetology collection. Florida Museum of Natural History image by Ed Stanley