Aussie photographer discovers ‘new species' hidden on backyard tree
An eagle-eyed photographer has made two remarkable discoveries after zooming in on a rainforest tree that sprung up in his backyard. David White was initially captivated by a crab spider that was smaller than his thumbnail and had perfectly camouflaged itself against the mottled trunk.
But then he noticed a second creature that was even more difficult to see, and has now sparked excitement from experts overseas. One is almost certain it's an entirely new species.
'It was so tiny, you wouldn't believe how small it is, no bigger than two millimetres,' David told Yahoo News. 'I'm pretty old, but I could just make out a bit of movement on the tree at nighttime.'
David has delighted in photographing the elusive creatures that live around his home, which sits on the edge of the Daintree Rainforest. Rotting logs, tight crevices in bark and high branches all provide homes for insects and spiders that most people go their entire lives without ever noticing.
'There's a whole world in front of our eyes that you don't really see unless you get really close,' David said.
'It's a bit of fun. It's like Pokémon Go,' he quipped in reference to the online augmented reality game in which users search for mystical animals.
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By day, David is a professional tour guide, who takes tourists on adventures down the Daintree River to see large crocodiles. But it's at night that he turns his attention to the world of hidden insects.
He has uploaded dozens of images of his unique finds to iNaturalist, a global social networking site where hobbyists and professionals share locations and pictures of plants and animals. In his home suburb of Wonga Beach in Queensland, there are over 3,300 listings, but globally there are over 10 million.
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A leading grasshopper expert, living half a world away in Croatia, believes this second creature David photographed on the tree trunk could be a new species.
Speaking with Yahoo News via email, Dr Josip Skejo from the University of Zagreb explained the grasshopper appears to be from a genus of tiny grasshoppers called Echopraxia, but it has significant differences from other known grasshoppers.
"As we have reviewed all known specimens of Echopraxia in the Queensland Museum, we have never seen a specimen with this combination of morphological characters. The most special trait is the long pronotum, the large structure behind the head that covers the whole body in Tetrigidae, while in other grasshoppers it is restricted to the neck region," he said.
"This new species lives together with recently described Echopraxia cooki and according to David's observations, it seems to be much rarer than E. cooki."
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CNN
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Astronomy show accidentally reveals unseen structure in our solar system
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'I should know my data better, after years of working with it.' The existence of the Oort Cloud was first proposed in 1950 by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, who imagined it as a shell of icy bodies swirling around the sun from up to 1.5 light-years away. The cloud is the most distant region in our solar system, stretching as much as halfway to the next star, according to NASA. It's composed of leftovers from the making of our solar system, which were scattered in every direction by the planets after they formed. That means many of the icy bodies in the Oort Cloud don't share the same orbital plane as the solar system itself but travel at various inclinations, which is why the Oort Cloud is pictured as a sphere. If one of those icy bodies gets flung inward toward the sun, the heat starts vaporizing some of the material in the body, creating a tail — and what we call a comet. 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an hour ago
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Invasive ants with potentially fatal sting found across Southeast. Are they in Louisiana?
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Walking around New York listening to the demo of 'Everybody Laughs' was so joyous, because it made me feel like we're all the same – we all laugh, cry and sing. The thing about David that resonates with a lot of people is that he's in on the joke. He gets the absurdity of it all, and all of these personal observations are his perspective on it.' Byrne said there are 'more story songs than usual' on the new album, tracks he describes as 'mini-narratives based on personal experience including 'She Explains Things to Me,' 'A Door Called No,' 'My Apartment Is My Friend' and 'I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party.' The 'jaunty' song with Paramore's Williams, 'What Is the Reason For It?,' is focused on codifying 'love in a way logic can rarely accomplish.' 'Does it do something useful?/ Nobody understands,' goes one line from the song. 'I suspected that intimate orchestral arrangements would bring out the emotion I sense is there in these songs,' Byrne said. 'It's something that folks don't always hear in my work, but this time for sure I thought it was there. At the same time, I also see myself as someone who aspires to be accessible. I imagined that Kid Harpoon would help with that, as well as being a set of trusted ears, since there was a lot going on. People think of producers as people who mainly make a record sound good, and Kid Harpoon did that, but he was also aware of how important the storytelling is.' The collaboration with St. Vincent comes more than a decade after the two musicians teamed up for the 2012 album Love This Giant. Among the other contributors to the LP are American Utopia percussionist Mauro Refosco, who has toured and recorded with Byrne for more than three decades. 'At my age, at least for me, there's a 'don't give a s–t about what people think' attitude that kicks in,' Byrne said. 'I can step outside my comfort zone with the knowledge that I kind of know who I am by now and sort of know what I'm doing. That said, every new set of songs, every song even, is a new adventure. There's always a bit of, 'how do I work this?' I've found that not every collaboration works, but often when they do, it's because I'm able to clearly impart what it is I'm trying to do. They hopefully get that, and as a result, we're now joined together heading to the same unknown place.' Byrne will hit the road with a new live show featuring a 13-person troupe of musicians and dancers to support the album on a world tour slated to kick off on Sept. 14 at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Providence, R.I. Watch the 'Everybody Laughs' video and check out the Who Is the Sky? tracklist and Byrne's 2025-2026 tour dates below. track list: 'Everybody Laughs' 'When We Are Singing' 'My Apartment Is My Friend' 'A Door Called No' 'What Is the Reason for It?' 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