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
an hour ago
- CNN
Astronomy show accidentally reveals unseen structure in our solar system
An accidental discovery might change how we think about one of the most mysterious structures in our solar system. The Oort Cloud, a large expanse of icy bodies revolving around the sun at a distance 1,000 times greater than the orbit of Neptune, is widely thought to be spherical — although it has never been directly observed. But during the preproduction of a show titled 'Encounters in the Milky Way,' which debuted Monday at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, a projection on the planetarium's dome revealed something strange within the Oort Cloud: a spiral. The curators were testing out a scene in September that includes a detailed view of Earth's celestial neighborhood — from the sun to the solar system's outer edges — and were surprised when they saw the structure, which looked coincidentally similar to a spiral galaxy such as our own. 'We hit play on the scene, and immediately we saw it. It was just there,' recalled Jackie Faherty, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History and the curator of the show. 'I was confused and thought that was super weird. I didn't know if it was an artifact, I didn't know if it was real.' To investigate, Faherty got in touch with David Nesvorny, an institute scientist with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and the Oort Cloud expert who had provided scientific data for the scene. 'We didn't create it — David did,' Faherty said. 'This is David's simulation, and it's grounded in physics. It has a totally good physical explanation for why it should be there.' At first, Nesvorny suspected artifacts — abnormalities or distortions in the data visualization — but once he looked at his data, he confirmed the presence of the spiral and eventually published a scientific paper about the discovery in April in The Astrophysical Journal. 'Weird way to discover things,' he said. '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. 'Every now and again, some of these icy bodies come into the inner solar system, and we can see the orbit that they're on,' Faherty said. 'And they're on these really crazy, long orbits. It can take them millions of years to go around the sun. And when they come in, they help us understand how far away they may have come from.' The problem with trying to imagine what the Oort Cloud looks like is that scientists have never seen it, even though we are technically surrounded by it. That's because the bodies that make it up are small — fewer than 60 miles (97 kilometers) in diameter — and even though they potentially number in the trillions, they are far away, making observations with telescopes difficult. The spiral was hiding in Nesvorny's data because he had never thought of visualizing it three-dimensionally. 'I never looked at it in Cartesian coordinates — I didn't have a good reason to do so,' he said. 'But once you do that, it's obvious. It's there.' To confirm the findings, Nesvorny used one of the most powerful computers in the world, NASA's Pleiades Supercomputer, to run simulations that took weeks to complete. 'I thought, maybe just this particular simulation (I gave the planetarium) is showing it, and all the other simulations with other stellar encounters, other parameters, will not show it, in which case it wouldn't be so interesting,' he said. 'But all the simulations, all the models I have, show the spiral.' The reason it's there, he said, is that objects in the Oort Cloud are far away enough from the sun's gravity that they also start being affected by the galactic tide — the gravitational field of our galaxy, exerted by the stars and the dark matter in it. This field is acting on the small bodies and comets in the Oort Cloud by twisting their orbital planes to create a spiral. The spiral, Nesvorny added, is in the inner part of the Oort Cloud, the closest to us, and he still believes that the outer portion is spherical or shell-shaped. The problem of observing the Oort Cloud remains, even though the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a powerful telescope that recently came online in Chile, could offer a hand by discovering and observing individual icy bodies in the cloud. However, according to Nesvorny, the telescope will likely discover dozens of these bodies — not the hundreds that would be required to produce a meaningful visualization of the spiral. The spiral theory helps to illuminate the dynamics of our solar system, according to Faherty. 'If you're going to come up with a theory of how solar systems evolve, you should take into account the kind of shapes you might have in their structure,' she said. 'Maybe comets helped deliver water to Earth. Maybe the building blocks of life could be out there in the Oort Cloud, so if you want to talk about the potential building blocks of life that surround our solar system, you need to understand its shape.' It's a 'dream,' she added, to be able to present science so recent in a show aimed at the general public. 'I truly believe that the planetarium, the dome itself, is a research tool,' Faherty said. 'I like to say that this is science that hasn't had time to reach your textbook yet.' The spiral finding is a wonderful example of just how much we can learn through visualizing the universe in new ways, said Malena Rice, an assistant professor of astronomy at Yale University who did not participate in the study. 'This result reshapes our mental image of our home solar system, while also providing a new sense for what extrasolar systems' Oort clouds may look like,' Rice added. 'It unites our models of the solar system with what we know about the broader galaxy, placing it into context as a dynamic system. We are not static, and we are not isolated — our solar system is shaped by its broader ecosystem, and the Oort spiral exemplifies that.' While the paper is interesting, it is almost entirely theoretical, as it is based on numerical simulations of the interactions between the sun's gravity and the gravitational pull of the rest of the Milky Way galaxy's motion, said Edward Gomez, an astrophysicist and honorary lecturer at Cardiff University in the UK. He also was not involved with the study. 'Long period comets enter the inner solar system at a range of angles, which the authors try to model using their spiral arm idea,' Gomez said in an email. 'What they are proposing could be true, but it could also be modelled by other shapes of the Oort cloud or physical processes. How to test this is their major issue, because only a handful of potential Oort cloud objects are known about.' Confirming the findings will be a challenge, noted Simon Portegies Zwart, a professor of numerical star dynamics at Leiden University in the Netherlands who was not part of the team behind the research. 'It is interesting that they found the spiral, (but) it seems unlikely that we are going to witness (it) in the foreseeable future,' he said. With luck, he added, the Vera Rubin observatory will detect a few hundred inner Oort Cloud objects, but the spiral would only be visible if many more are found: 'It therefore seems unlikely to be a clearly detectable structure.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Invasive ants with potentially fatal sting found across Southeast. Are they in Louisiana?
Asian needle ants are an invasive species that are continuing to spread throughout the U.S., and these ants can now be found in over a dozen states. The venomous ants, which are native to China, Japan and the Koreas, have a sting that can potentially be deadly. While Asian needle ants were first discovered in the U.S. in 1932, the ants have been on the move and are now being found throughout the Southeast and other regions. When Asian needle ants sting, the venom it injects could be life threatening in some cases. Individuals who experience allergic reactions to bee and ant stings are particularly vulnerable and could go into anaphylactic shock after being stung, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The ants will reach their peak numbers in July and August, although, they can be hard to spot, as they are incredibly small and blend in well with their surroundings. Oftentimes, stings occur when someone unknowingly disturbs them, such as while gardening or moving objects they might be underneath like wood or mulch, USA Today reported. When stung by an Asian needle ant, it can feel like somebody inserting a needle directly into your flesh and, if the ant's venom triggers an allergic reaction, it can lead to difficulty breathing, swelling and can be fatal. The ants are becoming more and more widespread, but they are mostly being found in areas with hardwood trees and undisturbed forest areas, where they nest under logs, stones and leaf litter. In residential areas, they can be found under mulch, pavers and landscape timbers, says the U.S. Forest Service. Asian needle ants were first discovered in Georgia, and they are still predominantly found within the Southeast, however, the ants have been expanding their reach northward and westward. Currently, there have been no official sightings of Asian needle ants in Louisiana, but they have been found in the nearby states of Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Therefore, it's likely that the ants could soon infiltrate Louisiana. Other states where Asian needle ants have been spotted include North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Connecticut, New York, Wisconsin, Washington and Ohio, according to iNaturalist. Presley Bo Tyler is a reporter for the Louisiana Deep South Connect Team for Gannett/USA Today. Find her on X @PresleyTyler02 and email at PTyler@ This article originally appeared on Shreveport Times: Are Asian needle ants in Louisiana? What to know about venomous ants
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
David Byrne Announces ‘Who Is the Sky?' Solo Album Featuring Hayley Williams, St. Vincent and Tom Skinner
Just days after performing the Talking Heads' 'Burning Down the House' with Olivia Rodrigo at New York's Governors Ball over the weekend David Byrne announced his 11th solo album, Who Is the Sky? The follow-up to Byrne's 2018 LP American Utopia is due out on Sept. 5 via Matador Records. Produced by Kid Harpoon (Miley Cyrus, Harry Styles), the 12-track album will feature collaborations with Paramore's Hayley Williams, St. Vincent and The Smile drummer Tom Skinner, with arrangements by the New York chamber ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra. Byrne previewed the album on Tuesday (June 10) with a video for the universalist anthem about the emotions and feelings we all share. More from Billboard Olivia Rodrigo Brings Out David Byrne for Scorching 'Burning Down the House' (And Does Some of His Dance Moves) at Gov Ball Quincy Jones Remembered by Lucky Daye, Luke James & Miles Caton With Smooth 2025 BET Awards Tribute Jamie Foxx Honored by Stevie Wonder & Reflects on Health Scare at BET Awards: 'You Can't Go Through Something Like That & Not Testify' 'Everybody laughs and everybody cries/ Everybody lives and everybody dies/ Everybody eats and everybody loves/ Everybody knows what everybody does,' Byrne sings over strummed acoustic guitar and a bouncy rhythm in the clip in which the camera scoots from left to right as dozens of people act out the lyrics and bust into an impromptu marching band performance when they're not dancing with selfie sticks. 'Someone I know said, 'David, you use the word 'everybody' a lot.' I suppose I do that to give an anthropological view of life in New York as we know it,' said Byrne in a statement announcing the album and the single. 'Everybody lives, dies, laughs, cries, sleeps and stares at the ceiling. Everybody's wearing everybody else's shoes, which not everybody does, but I have done. I tried to sing about these things that could be seen as negative in a way balanced by an uplifting feeling from the groove and the melody, especially at the end, when St. Vincent and I are doing a lot of hollering and singing together. Music can do that – hold opposites simultaneously. I realized that when singing with Robyn earlier this year. Her songs are often sad, but the music is joyous.' Producer Kid Harpoon (born Tom Hull) added, 'It took me a second to realize, oh yeah, these songs are personal, but with David's unique perspective on life in general. 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?' 'I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party' 'Don't Be Like That' 'The Avant Garde' 'Moisturizing Thing' 'I'm an Outsider' 'She Explains Things to Me' 'The Truth' North America 2025 tour dates: Sept. 14: Providence, RI @ Veterans Memorial Auditorium Sept. 16: Pittsburgh, PA @ Benedum Center PAC Sept. 17: Columbus, OH @ Mershon Auditorium Sept. 19: Akron, OH @ Akron Civic Theatre Sept. 21: Schenectady, NY @ Proctors Sept. 23: Syracuse, NY @ Landmark Theatre Sept. 25: Buffalo, NY @ Shea's Buffalo Theatre Sept. 27: Washington D.C. @ The Anthem Sept. 28: Washington D.C. @ The Anthem Sept. 30: New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall Oct. 1: New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall Oct. 3: Boston, MA @ Boch Center Wang Theatre Oct. 4: Boston, MA @ Boch Center Wang Theatre Oct. 7: Wallingford, CT @ Toyota Oakdale Theatre Oct. 8: Portland, ME @ Merrill Auditorium at City Hall Oct. 10: New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall Oct. 14: Richmond, VA @ Altria Theater Oct. 16: Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia presented by Highmark Oct. 17: Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia presented by Highmark Oct. 21: Toronto, ON, Canada @ Massey Hall Oct. 22: Toronto, ON, Canada @ Massey Hall Oct. 25: Detroit, MI @ Fox Theatre Oct. 28: Chicago, IL @ The Auditorium Oct. 29: Chicago, IL @ The Auditorium Oct. 31: Chicago, IL @ The Auditorium Nov. 3: Minneapolis, MN @ Orpheum Theatre Nov. 4: Minneapolis, MN @ Orpheum Theatre Nov. 6: Denver, CO @ Bellco Theatre Nov. 7: Denver, CO @ Bellco Theatre Nov. 11: Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre Nov. 12: Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre Nov. 16: San Francisco, CA @ The Theater at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium Nov. 17: San Francisco, CA @ The Theater at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium Nov. 20: Los Angeles, CA @ Dolby Theatre Nov. 21: Los Angeles, CA @ Dolby Theatre Nov. 25: Austin, TX @ Bass Concert Hall Nov. 26: Austin, TX @ Bass Concert Hall Nov. 28: Dallas, TX @ Music Hall at Fair Park Nov. 29: Dallas, TX @ Music Hall at Fair Park Dec. 2: Atlanta, GA @ Fox Theatre Dec. 3: Atlanta, GA @ Fox Theatre Dec. 5: Miami, FL @ Fillmore Miami Beach At Jackie Gleason Theatre Dec. 6: Miami, FL @ Fillmore Miami Beach At Jackie Gleason Theatre 2026 Australia & New Zealand dates: Jan. 14: Auckland, New Zealand @ Spark Arena Jan. 17: Brisbane, Australia @ Brisbane Entertainment Center Jan. 21: Sydney, Australia @ ICC Sydney Theatre Jan. 22: Melbourne, Australia @ Sidney Myer Music Bowl Jan. 24: Adelaide, Australia @ Adelaide Entertainment Centre Arena Jan. 27: Perth, Australia @ RAC Arena 2026 Europe & United Kingdom dates: Feb. 12: Berlin, Germany @ Tempodrom Feb. 15: Amsterdam, Netherlands @ AFAS Live Feb. 16: Amsterdam, Netherlands @ AFAS Live Feb. 18: Brussels, Belgium @ Forest National Feb. 21: Milan, Italy @ Teatro degli Arcimboldi Feb. 22: Milan, Italy @ Teatro degli Arcimboldi Feb. 24: Frankfurt, Germany @ Jahrhunderthalle Feb. 27: Zurich, Switzerland @ The Hall March 2: Cardiff, UK @ Utilita Arena March 3: London, UK @ Eventim Apollo March 4: London, UK @ Eventim Apollo March 6: Glasgow, UK @ SEC Armadillo March 7: Glasgow, UK @ SEC Armadillo March 9: Manchester, UK @ o2 Apollo March 10: Manchester, UK @ o2 Apollo March 13: Dublin, Ireland @ 3Arena March 15: London, UK @ Eventim Apollo March 18: Paris, France @ La Seine Musicale March 19: Paris, France @ La Seine Musicale Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart