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Few fish are famed
for their parenting skills. Most species leave their freshly
hatched fry to fend for themselves, but not Discus Fish.
Scientists from Plymouth University finds that Discus fish
parent their young like mammalian mothers.
During the first
three days after hatching, the fry remain attached to the cone
where the parents laid their eggs, absorbing the yolk and
gaining strength until all the fry are able to swim
independently. Then they leave the cone en masse and begin
feeding on mucus that their parents secrete over their bodies
until they are big enough to forage for themselves.
In the breeding
colony that was set up, the fry would feed from one parent for
about 10 minutes until the parent expertly ‘flicked’ the shoal
over to its
partner to continue feeding. The parents
diligently fed their young for 2 weeks but in the third week the
parents behaviour changed as they started swimming away from
their young for brief periods, they were beginning to wean their
offspring, similar to the behaviour seen in mammals and birds.
By the fourth week the parents were actively swimming away from
their brood.
An international team of primatologists have
discovered a new species of monkey in northern
Myanmar (formerly Burma) when carrying out a
Hoolock Gibbon Status Review in early 2010. It has been named
Rhinopithicus strykeri,
it is a species of snub-nosed
monkey with an upturned nose.
Local hunters had reported the presence of a
monkey species with prominent lips and wide upturned nostrils,
and sightings were reported from the eastern Himalayas to the
northeastern Kachin state, leading the team to conduct field
 surveys
which led to the discovery of a small population of a new
species displaying characteristics unlike any other snub-nosed
species previously described.
While the species is new to science, the
local people know it well, and call it mey nwoah (monkey with an
upturned face), and say that it is easy to find when it is
raining because rainwater gets into the upturned noses causing
the monkeys to sneeze, although on rainy days they tend to sit
around with their heads tucked between their knees.
A new population of another snub-nosed monkey,
thought to be extinct, called
Rhinopithicus avunculus,
has been found in a remote
forested area in northern Vietnam. This exciting find provides
new hope for the monkey’s future. The find came about after a
team from Fauna & Flora International (FFI) had interviewed
communities near the Chinese border last
year, it emerged that villagers had sighted the strange looking
monkeys after seeing rare footage of them that FFI had supplied
to a national television network
NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or
WISE sees an explosion of Infrared light. When massive stars die
they explode in tremendous blasts, called supernova which send
out shock waves. The shock waves sweep up and heat surrounding
gas and dust, creating supernova remnants like the one pictured
in this image.
There were only three reports of Bottlenose
Dolphins during December, a pod of 4 off Sennen on the 15th, 8
off The Mount on the 22nd and 5 off Godrevy on the 31st. The
only report of Common Dolphins was of about 25 off Sennen on the
11th.
There was also a single report of a Grey Seal
off Pendennis Point on the 22nd. There were 10 Reports of
Harbour Porpoises, one was of 3 seen off Gunwalloe Church Cove
on the 5th, and all he rest were seen between Jubilee Pool and
Cape Cornwall.
December is the month that dead Trigger fish
begin to strand on Cornish beaches for some unknown reason, and
it occurred again this December with 33 being found on Porth
Kidney Beach. There were also reports of hundreds of Goose
Barnacles being stranded around Cornish Beaches
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