Latest news with #marsupial
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Glow-in-the-dark animal captured on camera for first time
It's a bird! It's a plane! Wait, no, it's a glow-in-the-dark animal? A photographer from Down Under has become the first person to capture a photo of a glowing marsupial in the wild. Aussie photographer Ben Alldridge submitted a photo as part of the 2025 Beaker Street Science Photography Prize. The photo was of a wild Eastern quoll, which is carnivorous marsupial that's native to Tasmania and exhibits biofluorescence. Using invisible ultraviolet light, Alldridge captured the mammal glowing in the dark, and his photo is considered the first photographic evidence of a quoll exhibiting biofluorescence in its natural habitat, reported. 'Where their fur is normally fawn or black, under certain wavelengths of light, they exhibit a process referred to as biofluorescence — like nature's version of a white shirt glowing at a disco,' Alldridge said, per the Daily Mail. Smithsonian Magazine reported that several mammals across the globe, many of them nocturnal, are known to exhibit this phenomenon, including polar bears, moles, zebras, wombats, armadillo and more. Non-mammals such as corals, insects, spiders, fish, amphibians, reptiles and birds also exhibit the phenomenon, although the exact biological purpose of biofluorescence is still unknown. Alldridge said he hopes his photos and studies into biofluorescence will help solve the mystery surrounding it. Recommended video 'I'd say it's likely a messaging or identifying system similar to our fingerprints, but that is wild speculation at best,' he said, per the Daily Mail. 'For now, we will just say they like to party.' Alldridge's photography will be considered as part of the ongoing research. 'The amount of light we waste illuminating space — both physical and now literal — is ridiculous, and in many cases is counterproductive to why the lights are installed to begin with,' Alldridge said. Alldridge's photo is one of 12 finalist images to be exhibited at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery from Aug. 6-31, as part of the Beaker Street Festival. Experts puzzled as chimps reportedly getting extra cheeky with grass fad Pets can stave off dementia for people over 50 living alone: Study
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Glow-in-the-dark animal captured on camera for first time
It's a bird! It's a plane! Wait, no, it's a glow-in-the-dark animal? A photographer from Down Under has become the first person to capture a photo of a glowing marsupial in the wild. Aussie photographer Ben Alldridge submitted a photo as part of the 2025 Beaker Street Science Photography Prize. The photo was of a wild Eastern quoll, which is carnivorous marsupial that's native to Tasmania and exhibits biofluorescence. Using invisible ultraviolet light, Alldridge captured the mammal glowing in the dark, and his photo is considered the first photographic evidence of a quoll exhibiting biofluorescence in its natural habitat, reported. 'Where their fur is normally fawn or black, under certain wavelengths of light, they exhibit a process referred to as biofluorescence — like nature's version of a white shirt glowing at a disco,' Alldridge said, per the Daily Mail. Smithsonian Magazine reported that several mammals across the globe, many of them nocturnal, are known to exhibit this phenomenon, including polar bears, moles, zebras, wombats, armadillo and more. Non-mammals such as corals, insects, spiders, fish, amphibians, reptiles and birds also exhibit the phenomenon, although the exact biological purpose of biofluorescence is still unknown. Alldridge said he hopes his photos and studies into biofluorescence will help solve the mystery surrounding it. Recommended video 'I'd say it's likely a messaging or identifying system similar to our fingerprints, but that is wild speculation at best,' he said, per the Daily Mail. 'For now, we will just say they like to party.' Alldridge's photography will be considered as part of the ongoing research. 'The amount of light we waste illuminating space — both physical and now literal — is ridiculous, and in many cases is counterproductive to why the lights are installed to begin with,' Alldridge said. Alldridge's photo is one of 12 finalist images to be exhibited at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery from Aug. 6-31, as part of the Beaker Street Festival. Experts puzzled as chimps reportedly getting extra cheeky with grass fad Pets can stave off dementia for people over 50 living alone: Study
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Only known colour footage of extinct Toolache wallaby revealed after 90 years
The film shows one of the female marsupials fenced in a paddock, likely the last living representative of her species when the footage was shot in 1936. This is the only known colour footage of a living Tulla wallaby taken almost 90 years ago. The film shows one of the female marsupials fenced in a paddock, likely the last living representative of her species when the footage was shot in 1936. A digital copy of the film has been held at the South Australian Museum for 20 years, but that version is entirely in black and white. What's incredible about the newly digitised National Film and Sound Archive copy is that it contains 34 seconds of colour footage at the end while the colour section of the film has deteriorated and turned a deep magenta in colour, it still helps viewers imagine what this fascinating creature was like to see in real life.
Fox News
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
The Quiz #454
What is a baby Kangaroo called? Play. Share. Listen with FOX News Headlines 24/7 Anchor, CJ Papa.
The Guardian
10-06-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Distorted moles to lesser bilbies: a new way to marvel at Australia's supremely weird and unique mammals
The skeleton of Australia's supremely weird southern marsupial mole has a distorted skull 'that looks like a god rammed it into a mountain side on its day of creation', says Vera Weisbecker. It is one of 189 Australian mammals in a new public database of 3D scans of bones and skeletons where users can spin the mole's skeleton around, zooming in and out, to marvel at its oddness. 'It's my favourite because that skeleton is a one-stop shop that dispels the myth that our animals are primitive – it's like the essence of mammal design in so many ways, with these claws like shovels so they can almost swim through the sand,' Weisbecker says. Weisbecker, an associate professor at Flinders University in South Australia, is a self-confessed 'militant' out to dispel what she says is a common scientific myth that Australia's marsupial mammals are less evolved. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as a free newsletter To help in her mission, she has led the creation of Ozboneviz – a virtual collection of 1,600 bones and skeletons for researchers, teachers, students, artists and anyone else who wants to gaze at mandibles, femurs or the skeletons of ringtail possums or brush-tailed phascogales. 'Australia leads the world in mammal extinctions, but we are losing far more than a few fluffy rat-like critters,' she says. 'Our mammals have evolved in isolation for nearly 40m years – there is simply nothing like them anywhere else. They're all so weird and diverse.' As a German native, she says many scientists in the northern hemisphere with a western scientific background see even the common kangaroo as exotic. Australia's marsupials, to them, are 'an alternative universe'. To create Ozboneviz, researchers spent three years travelling around Australian museums and universities digitising specimens using a 3D light scanner. Some complete specimens were put into CT scanners so the whole skeleton could be digitised – such as the ringtail possum, the rakali (a native water rat), the golden bandicoot and the northern quoll. But there are also more individual mandibles, skulls, femurs and ankle bones in the collection than you can shake a tibia-shaped stick at. The technical detail in the collection means the online specimens can be used to help researchers identify bones found in the field. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion 'Hopefully this will lead the way to an even wider use of digitisation to make Australia's unique local biodiversity accessible to the global public,' Weisbecker says. Ten extinct species have also been digitised, including the full skeleton of the lesser bilby and the skull of the thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger that some scientists are trying to revive. The 3D files are housed in a repository called MorphoSource, but some of the more important and intriguing specimens have been uploaded to a site allowing users to spin and zoom the 3D images. 'This means the public can compare the cranium of a fox to a thylacine and dingo, for example, and compare the size and shape of limb bones of common marsupials,' says the Flinders University archaeologist Dr Erin Mein, of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. The project is described in an article in the scientific journal Bioscience.
