"More than 1,000 Catfish species are venomous"

Watch out, sucka!!

We can now add catfish to the lust of animals can kill us.

Like most animals, the catfish uses its venom as a defense mechanism. The effects can range from a slight sting to...well, dying.

"Catfish venom glands are found alongside sharp, bony spines on the edges of the dorsal and pectoral fins, and these spines can be locked into place when the catfish is threatened. When a spine jabs a potential predator, the membrane surrounding the venom gland cells is torn, releasing venom into the wound.

Catfish venom poisons a victim's nerves and breaks down red blood cells, producing such effects as severe pain, reduced blood flow, muscle spasms and respiratory distress.

The main dangers to humans from North American catfish, however, come not from the initial sting and inflammation, but from secondary bacterial and fungal infections that can be introduced through the puncture wound or when pieces of the spine and other tissue break off in the wound, said University of Michigan graduate student Jeremy Wright, who led the research."

Jellyfish Don't Like Japan

Huge swarms of the Nomura jellyfish are threatening the livelihood of Japanese fisherman. These nasty suckers can grow up to 6ft in diameter and weigh up to 450 lbs and look like evil red-orange jello blobs. They easily get snagged in fishing nets and kill the little catch these fisherman are able to bring in.

This massive swarm is not local only to Japan, but is occurring thousands of miles off its coast. It has shut down desalination plants in the Middle East and Africa, killed off fishing industries and piss off beachgoers. This invasion used to be an every 40-yr occurance, but has slowly evolved into an annual event.

Why, you ask? Jellyfish steroids? Jelly take over? 2012 prophecy? Attack on Godzilla?

No..global warming. Warming of the oceans has allowed the jellyfish to spread and breed. Pollution also has increased the amount of plankton in the water, which provides even more food for these gelatinous bastards.

In Japan, these pests have cost the fishing industry upwards of ~$300 billion where upwards of 500 million of jellies have capsized boats from their weight in the nets and reduced daily catches by 30%.

Although scientists have shown a correlation between water temps and jellyfish population booms, there are other limiting factors such as food, currents and the temperature getting too high. One population decreased in the Bering Sea although there were record highs.

Ew, Antarctica is Dirty: Antarctic Lakes Full of Viruses

Alcami and his colleagues analyzed DNA from viruses found in water samples collected fromAntarctica's Lake Limnopolar, a surface lake on Livingston Island. They found nearly 10,000 species, including some small DNA viruses that had never before been identified. In total, the viruses were from 12 different families, some of which may be completely new to science, the researchers suggest.

The results reveal this Antarctic lake supports a virus community that's more diverse than most aquatic environments studied in the world so far — a surprising find considering that the polar region is generally thought to have low biological diversity due to the extreme environmental conditions. The scientists speculate the newly discovered viruses may have adapted specifically to thrive in such harsh conditions.

The team also found the community of viruses changed dramatically depending on the season. When the lake was ice-covered in the spring, the liquid water under the ice was inhabited by mostly small viruses, but in the summer months when the ice melted, the lake was home to mostly larger viruses.

"It looks like a completely different lake in summer," Alcami said. The scientists think the shift might be due to an increase in algae in the summertime, which the larger viruses infect.

The researchers hope to figure out whether any of the viruses are unique to Antarctica. If so, that would shed light on whether microbial life evolved independently in Antarctica, which has been isolated for millions of years, or they were introduced there more recently.

Using Women's Stockings as Whale Pregnancy Tests

As big as whales are, they are pretty hard to study and keep track of. Most techniques require to kill them in order to examine them. However, scientists think they have developed a way for them to collect biological samples from these animals test to see if they are pregnant or just horny.

The magic answer is: women's nylons.

Presumably, this would be a relatively simple, cheap and non-invasive way to get more information. To test this method, researchers in Austrailia collected 35 samples from two types of whales. They attached a stocking to a pole and then dangled it over the animals' blowhole when they came up for air. Tada! Whale blow soaked nylons!

Although scientists originally thought whale blow was simply air and water, it actually includes lung mucus. So instead of whales simply blowing air out, they are actually sort of sneezing. Measurable levels of the hormones progesterone and testosterone were also present in the blow, allowing scientists to figure out the sexual health of the animal.

For example, whales that were coming back from tropical waters, where they are thought to breed and bore offspring actually were still hormonally in the breeding period. In the long term sense, scientists hope to discover why certain whales are unable to breed.

RUN! JELLYFISH ARE GOING TO RULE THE WORLD!!!

There are certain things everyone should know about Mother Nature:
1. Some animals are sort of ugly.
2. Animals are trying to kill us.
3. You don't f*ck with Mother Nature. Seriously.

Case in point, Turritopsis nutricula aka the Immortal Jellyfish.

I'm older than Jesus.

WTF is it? Am I going to run into one? Well, it's a jellyfish. Actually it is a hydrozoan, but it's pretty much a jellyfish. They are normally found in warm tropical waters but is believed to spreading because of ships dumping their water in various ports.

What do they do? They are solitary predators...which is boring. The big deal is that they are theoretically immortal. When they become sexually mature, instead of growing old like the rest of us, they revert back to the polyp stage (in other words, they become babies again). The animals do this via transdifferentiation, which is a fancy way of saying that they can change their cells into a different type of cell. This isn't anything special to certain members of the species either. In laboratory studies, 100% of the jellyfish reverted back to this stage.

What does this mean for me? These animals are only 4-5mm long in diameter meaning you probably won't notice them if they were in front of you. However, you might not have noticed THESE THINGS ARE IMMORTAL. So, it's possible they can continue reproducing but never dying. And possibly combine together in a network to make a big godzilla-jellyfish (Jell-zilla) monster who can kill us all. Although they can't do this NOW, the COULD do it later. Evolution, people. It will kill us all. (Except these jellyfish).

Want to read more on this hiccup in the circle of life??:
Turritopsis nutricula: the world's only 'immortal' creature
Cheating Death: The Immortal Life Cycle of Turritopsis