letter from SPAIN:rabbits

I made it right up into Spain, and rabbit meat is a delicacy.
It was actually here in Spain was the place where rabbits evolved!
That may be why many of the top predators in the region such as the Iberian lynx and the Spanish imperial eagle eat mostly rabbit.

THERMODYNAMICS RUINED RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES

Thermodynamics tells us that in each step energy passes through it will end with less energy than before.
So as petroleum passes from each step of the energy process it losses some of the energy it had.
The sun's rays pass through space some energy is lost into the surrounding area.Then in the atmosphere some more energy is borrowed.When it touches a solar panel the process to get the energy makes it loose a even more of the energy missing.
The reason that solar panels haven´t become popular is because panels aren't cheap to implant and aren't very efficient.
Wind may be a more efficient way of getting the sun's energy by the vibrating molecules that have trapped the heat of the incoming light and radiation.

letter from MADAGASCAR,lemurs

With some flights I made it to Madagascar to seek out the top find, lemurs, in particular Sifaka lemurs, witch jump from branch to branch and move in a very fun and impressive way.
They have the amazing hability to climb in thin and spiny branches.

letter from BHUTAN:tigers

I made it from Russia to the southern Himalayas in the mountainous region of Bhutan.These country is full of villages, most of them have pictures of tigers, but no one expected that tigers lived that high in the mountains, as it seemed that they couldn't be able to hunt enough to maintain themselves.
But research shows that tigers have been living in this mountains and even thriving, as poaching in those regions is rare tigers survive in greater numbers.

letter from RUSSIA, bears

I still don't know how I made it through Russia's roads,But I sure seen a hole lot of bears!there are polar bears and brown bears in this region.
The biggest enemy of the bear is the wolf, that competes for the same food and resources.
Never get close to a brown bear, they will defend their territory no matter what the cost.

PLANT CHAT

Plants seem completely useless at sensing their surroundings and avoiding danger.But that is anything but true.
When  a plants leaves are eaten some chemicals get attached to other plants, that triggers the production of toxins so they escape danger.
Plants can contact even in total isolation from each other, sharing chemicals and nutrients by beneficial fungal routes that connect them together underground.
Some plants even attract parasitic wasp to put their eggs into the invading caterpillars in them.
Some plants use those same chemicals to mimic the leafs of the plants they parasite on.

If we did anything with the new communication media is clear, we took a leaf from their book.

FLUORESCENT SUNSCREEN

Coral has many threats these days:warmer waters,more pollution,acidic seas...
But one of the least known is probably to much sunlight, as it contains dangerous UV light that damages DNA that may cause serous problems.
To deal with this corals have a weapon.At night coral shines by biofluorescence that absorbs the sunlight of the day and shows the same light at night with a lower wavelength than before.Research has shown that coral that biofluoreses more is more resilient to sunligth and UV rays,just like a natural fluorescent sunscreen.

LIFE, MUCH SOONER THAN WE THOUGTH

British geologists looking for the first life on earth looked for complex shelled animals like trilobites and amonites,but today we know that we came from simple unicellular organisms that appeared around 4000 million years, just after the great bombardment, a period of continuous asteroid hits that gave the earth liquid water that mixed with the magmatic iron from the volcanic surface as earth cooled.Today research shows that the first bacteria and viruses where evolving during this formative period, when the earth started forming its oceans each big impact could make the earth inhabitable. There are some theories to explain this, for instance the Panspermia Theory that suggests that life developed or have evolved some time in space to survive.
To make life you don't need just water and some basic elements,you also need minerals from the earth that where dissolved by magmatic rocks and ocean volcanic vents.

Life came from rocks, maybe we should stop treating soil as dirt.

JELLYFISH,MASTERS OF SURVIVAL

Today global warming is threatning many of our most important marine food sources and fisheries.
But there is a creature that is thriving in this conditions, the jellyfish. They can be bigger than a blue whale, survive the pressure of the deepest oceans, shine without wasting heat and feed on anything.
Jellyfish don't have a brain or heart or even senses.But jellyfish have a light sensitive cells that help them know when to feed and hide.With that and other unicelular purposes such as venomous stings jellyfish became the masters of survival without having extreme biological changes like legs or eyes or an specialised skin organ.Now the jellyfish rule the world, and if we don't stop putting our oceans to the edge, we must learn to live with them.

FARMER ANTS HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGTH

Ants are tiny societies that look similar to our own.Ants make chemical trails as roads, have specific jobs and even have war.But ants can't copy things as complex as farming,or can they?
Leafcutfer ants suggest so.The ants harvest leafs and other plant matter to feed a fungus that they need to live.

A little bit north other more common species of ant raise aphids that when they end feeding they produce a sugary liquid full of energy.But there's a problem, aphids are hunted by the tenacious larvae and adult form of the ladybird, so ants defend the herd from any incoming ladybird attack.

HOW A FISH HELP VOLTA CREATE THE FIRST BATTERY?

How do electric animals even exist?Well, we are one of them.Our movement is carried as electric impulses throughout the body.
Electric eels for instance have some cells called electrolytes that when activated produce 15V that are dispersed outward from his head.His body is isolated from the electricity he produces.
Creatures like these may have inspired the first battery.
Volta piled up electrodes of both positive and negative charges,one of them produces electrons and the other one looses them.When there is a electrolyte conductor an electrical current is produced, nearly equal to the electric producing eels in the amazon.

Letter from POLAND:weasels

If you go to Poland there are some animals that stand out like elk or wolfs.
But sooner or later you will encounter a weasel somewhere:in the post,in the woods, in the economic system...
Weasels are in the Mustelid family,also called the weasel family that includes stoats,badgers,otters,skunks...
They're the apex predators of the plains.Hunting rabbits three times their own size.

With sharp claws, weasels.

THE FROG AND THE TORTOISE

There are around 205 endangered species of mammals, but nearly all species of amphibians are endangered.How many specimens are of the Rabb's fringed-limbed tree frog for instance...
Just one in captivity, nothing else.A fungus eradicate them all in Panamá.

In the Galapagos islands some years ago an species of giant tortoise went extinct when his last specimen died in 2012, it was called lonesome George.

WHAT CREATURE IS HIDING IN THIS OAK TUMOR?

When you thought that cancer couldn't get any worse.Oak trees could be dominated among the most tumorous trees on earth.The cooperate is a tiny swarm of many species of parasitic wasps that use the oak tree to shelter their larvae inside.Wasps do this by infecting the oak tree with chemicals  that force the tree to create a bumpy tumor full of nutrients for the larvae to feed on.Some wasps infect the larvae of other wasps that have infected the tree so their larvae can feed of the other's wasps body.

WATER HAS MEMORY?

The human brain is around 70 to 80% water.
But what about water having brain itself?
No, water will not win a pop quiz or memorise a book, but it will repeat actions it did before.
Water has the same memory as skin:if you burn in a certain part of your body and then when your skin has healed its exposed to those same conditions it will burn in a similar way, as if the skin copied passed actions for nothing if only to harm itself.Skin has some cells that resemble neurons that produce melanin that protects the skin from burning from ultraviolet light.Some of those cells may be responsible for skin´s memory,But water?
We still don´t know, but it seems that the water´s strange ability may be applied to snowflake formation, that may explain way there are no two identical snowflakes... ever.

HOW WE GAVE OUR PERMANENT MARK TO THE EARTH´S CRUST

Our oficial geologic time is called the Eocene, a very irregular period of hot and cold years.But today we are in a long intermission that seems to be here to stay.Geologist now call these era the Anthropocene, "the age of man".When should it begin?Experts say that for a period to transpass to another period there must be a radical change everywhere in the world at once. Geologist say that could be the great acceleration, when the population of the world, the devices made and the species going extinct all increased.  Geology is a very hardy science, no one expected that our impact could be transferred into the solid sediments of the earth. Geologist have even found sediments of air particles made artificially sinking and sedimenting in the bottom of the ocean!

ETHICS OF MUSEUMS:Why are people worried?

People say that museums (natural history) are  obsessive collections of animals and plants that contributes to their extinction.Today that isn´t true.

There was a time long, long ago when collectors where allowed to collect 2 elephants per person(too many elephants per person).That is irresponsible, killing a slow reproducing species in such a rate could make the hole species disappear.Today most big mammal collections are made of animals dead in the roads and smaller animals, if endangered will not be obsessively collected.

Museums need many specimens because...

Ex 1:If you just had a male you can´t study the female and if you just had a female you can´t study the male.

Ex 2:If you don´t have enough specimens from different times you don´t if it has different diseases or if immunity has been developing.

Actually museums are a way of preserving what has been lost and what we´re loosing.

WEIRD WAYS TREES MAKE IT RAIN

We consider trees magical, that they are hiding us something magical that we crave to discover.And they actually did.
Trees can actually make it rain.Trees like conifers produce spores that fly over the wind, produces allergies and works as a congregation point for water molecules to condense and form clouds that will fall as snow and rain.
There´s a say in Hawaii that says the rain follows the forest,But how could that be?All the plants on earth leave water vapor into the air after use.Pine forests do this slowly to save water while rainforests do it lighting fast that doesn´t let time to the clouds to get to anywhere else before getting to heavy and be forced to fall as rain.
The next time you see a tree, you are seeing a wonder that even we fully understand.

THE FORGOTTEN BREATHERS OF THE WORLD

We normally consider plants the living things that give us the oxygen we breathe, but the true breathers live in great colonies of green microscopic photosynthetic microbes called plankton.
Plankton is the food source that makes the base for most underwater ecosystems and also produces around 80% of the world´s oxygen.
The richest places in biodiversity are the poorest in species population. Plankton can maintain a great feeding frenzy for months that can hold whales, sea birds, sharks, dolphins and us.
But in the recent years some data tell us that plankton production has decreased about 40%.
Plankton also helps turning carbon into limestone and preventing climate change.
These creature have been always helping us breathe, eat, grow, evolve.The rising temperatures,pollution and dead zones are killing the photosynthetic bacteria that composes plankton. If we loose them, we may loose everything we´ve ever known.

WEIRD DELICACIES FROM THE NATURAL WORLD

You are what you eat, some foods are eaten like chips in some places and in others the same foods are disgusting just seeing them.Insects for instance are very productive and contain fibres and proteins and also other nutrients that makes more than half of the world´s malnutrition in humans around the world.
Other foods like rabbit in countries like Spain are considered as gross in the United States as dogs being eaten in China for us or some European countries eating cows for Indians.
In some countries like Bhutan there is a billion-dollar industry on a caterpillar that has been infected with a fungus.Some towns eat it with a very strong alcoholic drink.

No matter where do you live, what do you like and dislike, the culinary status of each country isn´t weirder or more usual,Should we let what we cook separate us or should we understand that...
Nature gave us the menu, we are the ones that choose witch one to pay for.

SHOULD WE GET RID OF MOSQUITOES?

Mosquitoes are a group of annoying group of flies that are known to suck blood.Actually all the species of mosquitoes don´t suck blood from humans.Mosquitoes don´t eat blood, they eat nectar.Just female mosquitoes suck blood to make their eggs.
The problem is that our blood has many pathogens, and that has lead to many trials to kill mosquitoes with genetics, making unfertilised males so they can´t have babies.
But there´s another non so harmful way of getting rid of their diseases.In Africa geneticists are making immunity in mosquito swarms so they can´t infect malaria instead of killing them and destroying the hole ecosystem.

BACTERIA IN CLOUDS CAN RUIN YOUR WEATHER

We know that bacteria are everywhere:in the soil, on the water, in the air.But what about clouds?That big condensed blob of water thousands of miles above the ground may be filled with bacteria that use the cloud probably as a locomotion mechanism to fall to new lands and oceans.
The fact is that is a simbiosis with the clouds.Water molecules need a minimal congregation of themselves to condense into droplets and eventually clouds.Physics tells us that a droplet´s odds of getting bigger are much lower that its odds of getting smaller.So drops need some extra mass that they get from dust, spores and bacterium.So more microscopic possible drop nuclei means more condensation witch means more clouds witch means more possible rain clouds and of them is more probable that a rain cloud can fall in your street.

FACTS THAT MAKE VENOM AWESOME!!

1.Venom is a molecule that we all have in our bodies, its a protein as any other.
Genetic mutations made the venom appear in saliva, the creature that had venom could kill more prey and faster.With time the venom became deadlier and isolated from the tissue so the animal didn´t poisoned himself.

2.Scientists made a evolutionary tree with venom DNA and discovered that the ancestor of all snakes was venomous.The most recent families of snakes have lost their venomous past and have become constrictors.

3.Venom DNA is one of the most rapidly evolving DNA.This is necessary because resistance to venom can happen in many ways.For instance:Honey badgers have antibodies that make them inmune and mongooses and hedgehogs have control of muscle contraction so the venom that paralices the muscle and stops all muscle function doesn´t work on them.

4.Venom and Poison are chemicals with the function of destroying the body´s functions.Poison is used for defence, the animals that use poison insert it in the body by touch or taste(poisonous).Venom is used for killing your prey, the animals that use venom have to inject it into the blood stream(venomous).

LARGE PREDATORS and PREY, YOU CAN´T HAVE ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER

New scientific papers show that 24 of the 31 largest carnivores are in decline and 17 have confided to less than half of their original range.
There are many reasons why this is happening,but one of the most obvious ones is the decline of their prey.
William J. Ripple (An ecologist in Oregon State University)has a PhD student called Christopher Wolf  started gathering data and published a paper that 5 of the 17 largest predators have large proportions of their possible prey is threatened.
This paper is hoped to give more attention to prey depletion.
Even more, they found that just 7% of the prey ranges overlapped with protected areas.

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SLIME MOLDS: THE EDGE OF BEING INTELLIGENT

Slime molds can have many different shapes and sizes.
The slime molds that you can see with the naked eye are basically big cells formed by millions of nuclei that move through nearly any serfaus for food.The incredible thing of this slime molds is that they can solve mazes.Although they leave sent marks were they´ve been they don´t have any brain so they can´t memorise.Even then they can know what are the easiest path to food discarding the other paths.They have even run complex subway maps.

Another species of mold is unicelular. When one of them starts to create an irresistible sent, it attracts others to do the same thing that makes the sent even stronger until the mass gets big enough to create a microscopic trunk with the new generation of slime molds in the top that will fall as spores to plentiful food.

These complex maxing ability and complex social behaviour was never thought on creatures like slime molds, but even without a brain, nature can solve the maze.

URBAN EVOLUTION

Life´s empire rules all the heavens.
Life can make  a living anywhere, we usually expect life to live in very rich places (talking about nutrients,food,water and energy), but life itself has told us that it started in inhospitable places like volcanic vents or isolated lagoons exposed to radiation from the sun.
Today some creatures like the tard
igrades  can live in the edge of erupting volcanoes  or the deepest of oceans,They can even survive the deadly conditions in space!
Our cities may seem inhospitable, but they´re as ruff as any other environment,natural selection helps creatures adapt to the environment as they need too. Our cities have changed during 5,000 years, but simple changes in behaviour can happen in thousands of years.dogs have evolved for 10,000 years and diversified in many shapes and characteristics.The city pigeon evolved as we invented agriculture and created towns, cities and civilisations.

Cities, as any other environment isn´t a paradise for wildlife, but it isn´t a dead zone either.
The problem with cities is that when an organism looses its habitat it can evolve or go extinct, and with just months its hard even for creatures like bugs to adapt well to cities, and go extinct.
If we learn how to make this metal laboratory share its space with the other habitats, maybe there is a chance that we could make a better future for all of us.

SPCA MAKES A RECORD NUMBER OF ANIMALS RESCUED AND RELEASED IN SCOTLAND

The SPCA released 4,651 wild animals in 2015 compared to 1,881 in 2010.
This is partly because of the charity´s 3.5 billion pounds relocation National Wildlife Rescue Centre in Fishcross in 2012.That has helped the charity deal with more wild animals and even a wider range of species:from injured foxes to birds of prey.
They also invested money in increasing the size and capabilities of the rescue team so they can respond to a greater  number of call-outs and deal with them efficiently. 

MOSQUITO JUMPING VAMPIRE SPIDERS

These spider is called the vampire spider and for good reason.It feeds on blood but it doesn´t get it from a host, it cacthes female mosquitoes with a belly full of blood. New research shows that vampire spiders seak out the blood full belly and the antennae of the mosquito.
The consuming of blood also releases a smell that is irresistible to the opposite sex, so it also could have a sexual behaviour,( similar to cosmetics with animal pheromones).