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New Species, New Descriptions, Science Stuff

Post by Lisbeth »

Chinese scientists discover spider species that breastfeed their babies

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with REUTERS 04/12/2018 - 06:18

Chinese scientists have discovered a spider species that feeds their babies with milk as mammals, this marks the first time humans discovered invertebrates breastfeeding and nursing their offspring.

Breastfeeding is a unique animal behaviour to mammals, including humans. This type of spider, commonly known as big ant spider, discovered with “breastfeeding behaviour”, belongs to Myrmarachne of Salticidae, which is a spider species widely distributed in the tropical and subtropical regions of East and Southeast Asia.

“Spider babies which just hatched out climb up on spider moms’ bellies, to eat a kind of liquid (secreted by spider moms), which was tested to be milk containing four times the protein of cow’s milk. We call it spider milk,” said Chen Zhanqi, post doctor, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Researchers found after long-term observation that the newly hatched spider babies feed themselves entirely with the milk in the first 20 days after birth.

The study also found that spider babies don’t leave their mothers after weaning, and continue to stay with them in nests, even after they grow up.

“I think that it will change the way we look at invertebrates, spiders, insects which we haven’t really thought capable of this complex maternal behavior. They are all completely new, and this is something we didn’t know before,” Richard Corlett, editor, periodical Biological Conservation said.

Experts believe that this breakthrough discovery has extremely important significance for the research on revolution of breastfeeding behavior for contemporary animals.


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Re: Chinese scientists discover spider species that breastfeed their babies

Post by Flutterby »

:shock:


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Re: Chinese scientists discover spider species that breastfeed their babies

Post by Alf »

Maybe they should open their eyes wider -O-


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Re: Chinese scientists discover spider species that breastfeed their babies

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Are you being lacist?


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Re: Chinese scientists discover spider species that breastfeed their babies

Post by Mel »

I'm not a huge fan of spiders, but this is exciting O:V


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Crabs

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Size does matter, at least when it comes to some hermit crabs, who appear to have evolved longer members so they can stay in their shells to protect their homes during sex.



Hermit crabs appear to have evolved longer members so they can stay in their shells to protect their homes during sex | © AFP | JACQUES DEMARTHON


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by Sara HUSSEIN
Tokyo (AFP) | 16 January 2019 0:12

The so-called “private parts for public property” theory posited by the research published on Wednesday tackles the question of how penis size relates to home size, for crabs anyway.

Crabs that live in shells face the risk that interlopers will try to steal their homes while they are otherwise distracted by mating.

That risk is even more pronounced for certain types of hermit crabs, who “remodel” their shells by removing some internal structures.

The renovations make the shells more spacious and desirable, but also more difficult to cling onto, particularly in the throes of passion.

As a result, Mark Laidre, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Dartmouth University, began exploring whether the crabs most vulnerable to theft might have evolved longer penises “to facilitate safe sex”.

“In theory, longer penises could enable individuals to reach out to sexual partners while simultaneously maintaining a safe grip on their property with the rest of their body, thus safeguarding property against thieves while having sex,” Laidre wrote in the study in Royal Society Open Science.

To test the theory, Laidre set about the unenviable task of measuring members — specifically, seeing how the penises of 328 specimens of various types of hermit crab stacked up.

If his theory was correct, he expected to find that crabs with the remodelled and most covetable shells would have the longest penises, while those with unmodified shells would have slightly shorter ones, and hermit crabs with no shells would be the least generously endowed of all.

He also wanted to rule out other possibilities, including that penis length was based on whether crabs were land or sea-based, or correlated with their overall body size.

And after a series of intimate examinations of museum specimens, Laidre found the results bore out his theory.

The hermit crab with the largest penis relative to body size was the Coenobita species, the only one occupying the remodelled and more vulnerable shell homes.

Crabs with unremodelled homes presented the next longest penises, while those who shed their shells as adults were found to have the shortest of all three types.

“All other hypotheses for these penis size patterns came up short,” Laidre wrote.

And the crabs might not be the only ones, with Laidre positing that the theory could apply to other animals “including those with valuable but non-portable property.”

© 2019 AFP


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Re: Crabs

Post by Alf »

Interesting =O: =O:


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Re: Crabs

Post by okie »

Hmmmm.....I wonder , do the have the b.... to match :-?
Or are they shrunken into their shells :shock:


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Re: Crabs

Post by Flutterby »

We have a hermit crab in our marine tank and this actually reminded me that we have to find it a bigger shell!! ..0.. We got it when it was very small and it's gone through about 5 shells already! It's quite amazing, we just throw a new shell into the tank and within a couple of hours the crab finds it and moves house! ^Q^


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Re: Crabs

Post by Richprins »

..0..

Did you get some new fish after the last lot were Eskommed, Flutts?


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