Epaulette soldierfish (Myripristis kuntee) males with parasitic isopods stuck to their heads actually have an increased chance of mating with a female. For some strange reason, female soldierfish are more likely to choose to mate with a male if he is carrying an isopod on his head.

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“Shark-tooth weapons once used for warfare in the Central Pacific suggest that two extinct shark species used to populate the area, a new study says.

Joshua Drew from Columbia University in New York and colleagues from the Field Museum in Chicago scoured natural history museums for the spiky swords, as well as clubs, daggers, lances and spears. The teeth lashed to this sword with coconut fibers and human hair offer evidence of past ecosystems, before written records….”

“‘Had we never done this work, nobody would have ever known that these things ever existed there. It had been erased from our collective memories that these sharks once plied these waters,’ said Drew. 

‘I just wanted to do something cool and different,’ said Drew, now at Columbia University. ‘I just wanted to go down and look at really cool stuff. We were just going to see what was there.’”

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19-Year-Old Student Develops Ocean Cleanup Array That Could Remove 7,250,000 Tons of Plastic From the World’s Oceans

Belonging to the subclass Branchiura, members of the family Argulidae are commonly called fish lice. Their mouth parts are modified for sucking, enabling these parasites to feed on marine or freshwater fishes. A fish infested by them may get fungal infections or even die. Fish lice have a cephalothorax (the head fused with the first thoracic segment), a three-segmented thorax, and a two-lobed abdomen. Pictured is Argulus foliaceus, belonging to the largest genus in the family.

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The picture on top is a male strepsipteran, a type of parasitic insect. So why are there arrows in the second picture pointing to a wasp’s butt? Those little black bumps that the arrows are pointing to are the grub-like female strepsipterans, which use bees, wasps, and other bugs as their hosts. The females never leave their host; eggs hatch while still inside the female and exit her through a passage in the mother’s body that allows them to be deposited on flowers to await their own hosts. There are 8 families and approximately 580 species in this order, all of which undergo complete metamorphosis.

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Pictured is an artist’s rendition of the animal that is believed to be the common ancestor of all mammals (including humans). After an extensive six-year study, it has been discovered that this animal is at the top of the mammalian tree of life. It thrived shortly after the demise of non-avian dinosaurs and the knowledge of its existence has ruled out a previous hypothesis that there were a number of placental mammals prior to the extinction of 70% of the planet’s species (including non-avian dinosaurs).
Outside of this discovery, the study is also helping inform scientists about how mammals have historically adapted to climate change; this knowledge can help us understand how to address the rapid climate change currently facing the planet.

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Remoras, also known as shark suckers, are a family of eight species of fish that have sucker disks positioned above their heads that let them attach to moving objects to hitch a ride. They attach to sharks, turtles, ships, divers, and just about anything they can latch onto. Scientists have now discovered that the sucker disks of remoras are actually highly modified dorsal fins that expands during their development.

(Photo © Dave Johnson)(Source)

The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is the world’s heaviest lizard, on average weighing as much as an adult human. When kept in captivity, Komodo dragons can reach double that weight. They can smell a decaying animal from as far as 5 km away (using their tongues to “taste” the air in a fashion similar to snakes), but they more commonly hunt using ambush techniques to take down live prey. These reptiles have a wide array of prey foods, including their own young. For this reason, juveniles spend a lot of their time in trees to avoid being lunch. Though they tend to be solitary animals as adults, groups of Komodo dragons can be found at a single kill. Their saliva is rich in toxic bacteria, which scientists used to believe was used to poison their prey and intensify the bite wounds; however, it has been more recently discovered that Komodo dragons produce a toxin that stuns their prey and keeps its blood from clotting.

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Champsosaurus is a genus of gharial-like reptiles that lived as recently as the mid Eocene. Many species of Champsosaurus only grew to about 1.5 m in length, but the largest species reached up to 3.5 m. It is believed to have swam similar to modern-day crocodiles and marine iguanas, hunting in swamps and rivers.

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