the "Headline That Caught My Attention or the WTF" thread

www.yahoo.com

Escaped cloned female mutant crayfish take over Belgian cemetery

Escaped self-cloning mutant crayfish created in experimental breeding programmes have invaded a Belgian cemetery. Hundreds of the duplicating crustaceans, which can dig down to up to a metre and are always female, pose a deadly threat to local biodiversity after colonising a historic Antwerp...
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com

of course - it's 2020.....
===========================
Escaped self-cloning mutant crayfish created in experimental breeding programmes have invaded a Belgian cemetery.

Hundreds of the duplicating crustaceans, which can dig down to up to a metre and are always female, pose a deadly threat to local biodiversity after colonising a historic Antwerp graveyard.

“It’s impossible to round up all of them. It’s like trying to empty the ocean with a thimble,” said Kevin Scheers of the Flemish Institute for Nature and Woodland Research.

Marbled crayfish, which travel across land and water at night and eat whatever they can, do not occur in nature and are banned by the European Union.

Instead the freshwater beasts, which are about 10cm big and voracious, are thought to have been bred by unscrupulous German pet traders in the 1990s.

They are similar to the slough crayfish found in Florida but are parthenogenetic, which means they reproduce with themselves and all their children are genetically identical females.

The mutation, which occurred about 25 years ago, means populations can spring up rapidly from just a single Procambarus virginalis.

In 2018 scientists established the global marbled crayfish population was descended from a single female and didn’t need males to reproduce.

The crayfish have taken root in the pools and streams of the Schoonselhof cemetery in Antwerp, which is known as the Flemish city’s Pere Lachaise.

The beasts, which are the only known decapod crustaceans to solo-reproduce, have already been spotted elsewhere in Antwerp and in Leuven, another city in Flanders.

“The marbled crayfish [...] crawls around both in the water and over land at night,” Mr Scheers said. “That’s how they move to other canals and pools.”

The crayfish has spread rapidly through Africa and Europe and has been compared to the tribbles, which are a fictional alien species in Star Trek that reproduces extremely quickly.
:oops:

Both the crayfish and tumours have “Epigenetic mechanisms”. This helps them adapt to different environments by switching certain genes on or off.

The animal has been reported in countries including Austria, Germany, France, Japan, Madagascar and Israel and is present in four continents, with the pet trade blamed for the population explosion.
 
wader said:
www.yahoo.com

Escaped cloned female mutant crayfish take over Belgian cemetery

Escaped self-cloning mutant crayfish created in experimental breeding programmes have invaded a Belgian cemetery. Hundreds of the duplicating crustaceans, which can dig down to up to a metre and are always female, pose a deadly threat to local biodiversity after colonising a historic Antwerp...
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com

of course - it's 2020.....
===========================
Escaped self-cloning mutant crayfish created in experimental breeding programmes have invaded a Belgian cemetery.

Hundreds of the duplicating crustaceans, which can dig down to up to a metre and are always female, pose a deadly threat to local biodiversity after colonising a historic Antwerp graveyard.

“It’s impossible to round up all of them. It’s like trying to empty the ocean with a thimble,” said Kevin Scheers of the Flemish Institute for Nature and Woodland Research.

Marbled crayfish, which travel across land and water at night and eat whatever they can, do not occur in nature and are banned by the European Union.

Instead the freshwater beasts, which are about 10cm big and voracious, are thought to have been bred by unscrupulous German pet traders in the 1990s.

They are similar to the slough crayfish found in Florida but are parthenogenetic, which means they reproduce with themselves and all their children are genetically identical females.

The mutation, which occurred about 25 years ago, means populations can spring up rapidly from just a single Procambarus virginalis.

In 2018 scientists established the global marbled crayfish population was descended from a single female and didn’t need males to reproduce.

The crayfish have taken root in the pools and streams of the Schoonselhof cemetery in Antwerp, which is known as the Flemish city’s Pere Lachaise.

The beasts, which are the only known decapod crustaceans to solo-reproduce, have already been spotted elsewhere in Antwerp and in Leuven, another city in Flanders.

“The marbled crayfish [...] crawls around both in the water and over land at night,” Mr Scheers said. “That’s how they move to other canals and pools.”

The crayfish has spread rapidly through Africa and Europe and has been compared to the tribbles, which are a fictional alien species in Star Trek that reproduces extremely quickly.
:oops:

Both the crayfish and tumours have “Epigenetic mechanisms”. This helps them adapt to different environments by switching certain genes on or off.

The animal has been reported in countries including Austria, Germany, France, Japan, Madagascar and Israel and is present in four continents, with the pet trade blamed for the population explosion.
Click to expand...

Soon to be showing up on menus across Belgium, Etoffee du Crawdad!!
 
Roccus7 said:

Be wewy, wewy quiet, we are hunting wasps...​

​

Washington state discovers first ‘murder hornet’ nest in U.S.​

pressherald.com/2020/10/23/washington-state-discovers-first-murder-hornet-nest-in-u-s/

By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS Associated PressOctober 23, 2020

SPOKANE, Wash. — Scientists in Washington state have discovered the first nest of so-called murder hornets in the United States and plan to wipe it out Saturday to protect native honeybees, officials said.
Workers with the state Agriculture Department spent weeks searching, trapping and using dental floss to tie tracking devices to Asian giant hornets, which can deliver painful stings to people and spit venom but are the biggest threat to honeybees that farmers depend on to pollinate crops.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we did it,” agency spokeswoman Karla Salp said at a virtual briefing. Bad weather delayed plans Friday to destroy the nest found in Blaine, a city north of Seattle.

The nest is about the size of a basketball and contains an estimated 100 to 200 hornets, according to scientists, who suspected it was in the area ever since the invasive insects began appearing late last year. Officials have said it’s not known how they arrived in North America.
Asian_Hornet_86641
A live Asian giant hornet with a tracking device affixed to it sits on an apple in a tree where it was placed, near Blaine, Wash. Karla Salp/Washington State Department of Agriculture via AP

Despite their nickname and the hype that has stirred fears in an already bleak year, the world’s largest hornets kill at most a few dozen people a year in Asian countries, and experts say it is probably far less. Meanwhile, hornets, wasps and bees typically found in the United States kill an average of 62 people a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said.

The real threat from Asian giant hornets – which are 2 inches long – is their devastating attacks on honeybees, which are already under siege from problems like mites, diseases, pesticides and loss of food. A small group of the hornets can kill an entire honeybee hive in hours, and they have already destroyed six or seven hives in Washington state, officials said.

The nest was found after an Agriculture Department worker trapped two of the hornets Wednesday. Two more were captured Thursday, the agency said.

Using dental floss, “entomologists were able to attach radio trackers to three hornets, the second of which led them to the discovery of the nest” Thursday, agriculture officials said.
Asian_Hornet_87424
In this photo provided by the Washington State Department of Agriculture, a live Asian giant hornet is affixed with a tracking device before being released near Blaine, Wash. Karla Salp/Washington State Department of Agriculture via AP

It was about 300 yards from the traps in the cavity of a tree on private property, officials said. Dozens of the hornets were seen buzzing in and out of the tree about 7 or 8 feet above the ground. The owner is letting the state eradicate the nest and remove the tree.

The plan Saturday is to fill the cavity with foam and cover it with plastic wrap to prevent the hornets from escaping, said Sven-Erik Spichiger, an entomologist for the Agriculture Department. Then a tube will be inserted to vacuum up the hornets trapped inside and deposit them in a collection chamber, he said.

Workers will wear thick protective suits that can prevent the 6-millimeter-long stingers of the hornets from hurting workers, Spichiger said. They also will wear face shields because the trapped hornets can spit a painful venom into their eyes.

“We extract them alive,” he said. “We will kill them.”

The tree will then be cut down to extract newborn hornets and learn if any queens have left the hive already, he said. Officials suspect more nests may be in the area and will keep searching.
“It’s still a very small population, and we are actively hunting them,” Spichiger said.

Scientists for the department have been searching for nests since the first Asian giant hornets were caught earlier this year. The first confirmed detection of the hornet in the U.S. was in December 2019 near Blaine and the first live hornet was trapped this July. Just over 20 have been caught so far, all in Whatcom County.

The invasive insect is normally found in China, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam and other Asian countries. Washington state and the Canadian province of British Columbia are the only places the hornets have been found on the continent.
Click to expand...
I would love do see a Video of the Tech tying a tracker on that bugger.
 
Wonder what brand of vacuum they used?

Crews vacuum ‘murder hornets’ out of Washington nest​

pressherald.com/2020/10/24/crews-vacuum-murder-hornets-out-of-washington-nest/

By Deb Hardy October 24, 2020

BLAINE, Wash. — Heavily protected crews in Washington state worked Saturday to destroy the first nest of so-called murder hornets discovered in the United States.

The state Agriculture Department had spent weeks searching, trapping and using dental floss to tie tracking devices to Asian giant hornets, which can deliver painful stings to people and spit venom but are the biggest threat to honeybees that farmers depend on to pollinate crops.
Murder_Hornets_Nest_45369
A Washington State Department of Agriculture workers holds two of the dozens of Asian giant hornets vacuumed from a tree Saturday, Oct. 24 in Blaine, Wash. Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

The nest found in the city of Blaine near the Canadian border is about the size of a basketball and contained an estimated 100 to 200 hornets, according to scientists who announced the find Friday.

Crews wearing thick protective suits vacuumed the invasive insects from the cavity of a tree into large canisters Saturday. The suits prevent the hornets’ 6-millimeter-long stingers from hurting workers, who also wore face shields because the trapped hornets can spit a painful venom into their eyes.

The tree will be cut down to extract newborn hornets and learn if any queens have left the hive already, scientists said. Officials suspect more nests may be in the area and will keep searching. A news briefing was planned Monday on the status of the nest.
Murder_Hornets_Nest_55657
Sven Spichiger, Washington State Department of Agriculture managing entomologist, displays a canister of Asian giant hornets vacuumed from a nest in a tree behind him Saturday in Blaine, Wash. Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

Despite their nickname and the hype that has stirred fears in an already bleak year, the world’s largest hornets kill at most a few dozen people a year in Asian countries, and experts say it is probably far less. Meanwhile, hornets, wasps and bees typically found in the United States kill an average of 62 people a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said.

The real threat from Asian giant hornets — which are 2 inches long — is their devastating attacks on honeybees, which are already under siege from problems like mites, diseases, pesticides and loss of food.

The invasive insect is normally found in China, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam and other Asian countries. Washington state and the Canadian province of British Columbia are the only places the hornets have been found on the continent.

The nest was found after the state Agriculture Department trapped some hornets this week and used dental floss to attach radio trackers to some of them.
 
Holy CRAP!!! One fine dining source takes out another!!

Sharks Wash Up on Beaches, Stabbed by Swordfish​

The discovery of impaled sharks on Mediterranean shores backs up old fishermen’s tales of the marine predators dueling with swordfish.


merlin_179148243_a7d7d23e-3eaf-4d6b-b933-8cd72b18a32e-articleLarge.jpg


Evidence suggests sometimes a swordfish really is a fish with a sword. Credit...Paulo Oliveira/Alamy
By Joshua Sokol
  • Oct. 27, 2020
The first victim washed up in September 2016. The police in Valencia, Spain, saw a blue shark dying in the surf along a tiny stretch of beach. They lugged the eight-foot corpse to the yard behind the police station. Then they called Jaime Penadés-Suay, who soon suspected foul play.

The shark had what looked like a bit of wood embedded in her head. He pulled. Out slid a broken fragment from a swordfish sword that had lanced straight through her brain.

“I thought it was crazy,” said Mr. Penadés-Suay, a graduate student at the University of Valencia and a founder of LAMNA, a Spanish consortium that studies sharks. “I was never sure if this was some kind of joke.”

But since then at least six more sharks have washed up on Mediterranean coasts, each impaled with the same murder weapon, and almost always in the head. In the latest example, an adult 15-foot thresher shark — itself equipped with a whiplike tail capable of stunning blows — washed up in Libya. Inside was a foot of swordfish sword that had broken off near its heart.

Taken together these cases offer what may be preliminary scientific evidence of high-speed, high-stakes underwater duels that had previously been confined to fisherman’s tales.

Top, an x-ray of a blue shark with a sword fragment in its head. Bottom, a C.T. scan of the same shark and fragment.

Top, an x-ray of a blue shark with a sword fragment in its head. Bottom, a C.T. scan of the same shark and fragment. Credit...Fundació Oceanogràfic - Associació LAMNA

Historically, whalers, fishermen and scholars saw swordfish as stab-happy gladiators. But modern scientists were skeptical. Sure, swordfish sometimes impale boats, whales, submarines and sea turtles. But perhaps these swordfish had aimed for smaller prey, and rammed something else by mistake.

Or maybe not. When sharks die, their bodies typically sink to the bottom of the sea. So a published record of half a dozen stranded sharks with suspiciously precise wounds could indicate that these encounters are common — and that a swordfish sword is sometimes exactly what it sounds like.

“Now at least we have evidence that they might use it really as a weapon, intentionally,” said Patrick Jambura, a graduate student at the University of Vienna.

Mr. Jambura led a study of the recent dead thresher shark, which turned up this April. Sara Al Mabruk at Omar Al-Mukhtar University in Libya had spotted a video posted by local citizen scientists. In the video, a man approaches a shark on the beach, then pulls a sword from its back like a bizarre twist on Arthurian legend. “I was like, ‘Oh come on Sara, we have to do something about this. That’s just incredible,’” Mr. Jambura said.

It’s also puzzling, their team reported this month in the journal Ichthyological Research. Fishermen often catch swordfish with mangled swords, so breaking one isn’t fatal, but they do help their owners swim faster and feed. And they don’t seem to grow back, at least not for adults. So why do some swordfish risk losing them?

Most victims of swordfish stabbings in the Mediterranean have been blue or mako sharks. Both of those species prey on young swordfish, suggesting one explanation: Maybe juvenile swordfish had felt like their lives were threatened and fought back.

But this time the sword fragment looked as if it had come from an adult swordfish, which typically are not eaten by a thresher shark.

Instead, they argue, the swordfish might have been taking out an ecological rival. In the overfished Mediterranean, the swordfish might have fought to ensure a larger share of the remaining scraps.

Mr. Penadés-Suay doubts competition would be enough of a motive given the risks involved in taking on a big, whip-tailed shark. Instead, he thinks, the swordfish might have felt attacked and tried to protect its territory.

Either way, scientists know little about the behavior. Or about swordfish in general, despite how plentiful they are in restaurants and at grocery store fish counters. “Commercial species are only studied for commercial purposes, and that’s a problem,” Mr. Penadés-Suay said.

After partnering with a seafood company, he is now working to measure both a thousand swords and the overall size of the fish that wielded them. That should help scientists extrapolate from the little crime-scene shards left in sharks to the full swordfish that did the deed.

Scientists searching for these rare incidents also want to hear from the public. “Maybe a fisherman for 13 years has been catching sharks, and every year he finds this,” Mr. Penadés-Suay said. “We need everybody to be looking into this.”
 
Only in America's newly found, warped sense of values can a allow a worthless clan like the Kardashian/Jenners to be role models. I do hope this major faux pas sets more than a few of her friends minds' right...

Kim Kardashian West's clueless birthday party​

(CNN)
Kim Kardashian West, you may have heard, turned 40 this week. To celebrate, the television personality threw herself a big party on a private island and invited along a few dozen friends. As part of the celebration, she shared the event with her 190 million and 67 million followers on Instagram and Twitter, respectively, because sharing is what Kardashian West does. Sharing, with few boundaries, is how she built her brand. And, now, it appears sharing may be how she undoes it, too.

Not surprisingly, the reality star and mogul is facing considerable backlash ("Your life seems taxing. @KimKardashian People are struggling in our country and you parade your wealth. Enjoy your cake," wrote one person on Twitter) for what many have considered a cruel and insensitive display of privilege during a time of global crisis.

It's not so much that the party seemed unsafe at a time when Covid-19 infections and deaths are rising in many parts of the world. Kardashian made a point to note that her friends were asked to quarantine for two weeks before the event. Nor was the event even accidentally ill-timed -- one's birthday is, after all, a fixed date.

The problem is that she chose, apparently without much awareness or acknowledgment, to share the extravagance of that birthday while so millions around the world are sick, out of work and going nowhere.

It's maybe a little easy to understand how Kardashian West -- a woman who lives a rarified life -- could be so very tone deaf, so slow to grasp this larger reality. In pre-pandemic times, her "fans" would have gobbled up with delight such details as her dancing on the beach and swimming with whales. They would have expected her "closest inner circle" to be bigger than the average American's Facebook friend list. Kardashian's fame, after all, was built on the public's appetite for seeing how the other half live, even if how they live is often fairly unfathomable to most.
https://nyangler.com/javascript:void(0)
Now, however, as desperation and fear have grown exponentially and there seems to be no end in sight for a global contagion that will affect lives for decades to come, Kardashian West's display is akin to Marie Antoinette's famous declaration, "Let them eat cake."

Sure, she recognized her advantages, writing in a Twitter thread that, "I realize that for most people, this is something that is so far out of reach right now, so in moments like these, I am humbly reminded of how privileged my life is." But such words ring pretty hollow against the backdrop of Kardashian West and her sisters posing beneath a palm tree in tiny bikinis, flaunting bodies made perfect partly by pricey nonessential medical procedures.

Those fans who perhaps delighted in her ridiculous levels of extravagance before may now have had quite enough.

And yet Kardashian West, evidently, didn't see this coming. Which is surprising, if not for a human being then for a heretofore savvy businesswoman. To willfully alienate those who have made you seems unthinkable. A far better bet would have been to donate to a charity in honor of her 40th in lieu of, or even in addition to, a (more modest) party.

Or, how about this? To have kept the private island party private.

Everyone deserves some moments of happiness right now. We should not all be forced to suffer at all times and in all ways just because others are suffering. But a famous person flaunting privilege in this way, right now, is not necessary.

But like it or not, Kardashian West may be one of the world's most recognized people; at the very least part of a short list that also includes President Donald Trump, Bill Gates, and a handful of other major celebrities. As such, she has a responsibility to think about her messaging.

Instead, she has shown that her need to be known and envied can't be tamed even in a pandemic -- final proof, perhaps, that her identity does not exist without validation. Which, ironically, might be the most relatable thing about her. The problem is, it may turn out that far fewer people after this will be willing to care.
 
On the 3 times I witnessed a bullfight, I rooted for the bull. Never thought I root for a cock at a cockfighting den raid...

Rooster Kills Police Officer in Covid-19 Lockdown Raid​

The Philippine lieutenant was slashed by a razor-sharp spur attached to the bird’s leg during a raid on an illegal cockfighting den.
 
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