The Pangolin

So Saturday was World Pangolin Day, and although I was unable to write this post on the day, getting the word out about this amazing species is really important for their conservation!

So I ask, how many of you know what a pangolin looks like? Where do they live? and how endangered are they?

A Female with a Penis? A Male with a Vagina?

In caves, in Brazil, a new genus, Neotrogla, has been discovered and it is by far one of the strangest ones yet. In all species of the genus, the sex organs have been switched, so the males have a vagina and the females a penis. Now surely you would say that this just makes the boys girls, and the girls, boys, but no, there is a reason why the animals are still the same sex but with different genitalia.

The female's penis, known as a gynosome enters the male and inflates. The gynosome has numerous spines that attach the couple together, the gynosome then sucks out the male sperm and nutritious seminal fluids to fertilise the eggs inside the female and also to provide food. Once joined, as a researcher discovered, the male's abdomen can be ripped from the thorax without breaking the coupling. These sexual encounters can last from anywhere between 40-70 hours!!

 If like me you are struggling to imagine just how this is possible, here is a diagram for you.

The role reversal was likely to have been driven by poor resources available in the cave and so the female gains an important food source from the seminal fluid. This also means that it is advantageous for the females to copulate multiple times.

Right now they are trying to establish a healthy population in the lab to be able to study the animals further.

To read more:
http://www.nature.com/news/female-insect-uses-spiky-penis-to-take-charge-1.15064
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(14)00314-5
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27056809

There's more Dolphins

So last week came the very excited news that a new species of dolphin has been discovered of the coast of Australia. Although the species is yet to be named it has been a decade long DNA and data analysis task for scientists to reach the point where they have finally concluded that there is not just 2 species of humpback dolphin but in fact 4 or possibly more. This idea is know as splitting where the new species have come from the two original species but are now to different to be placed together.
Over 200 tissue samples were analysed before the conclusion could be drawn but it now means that conservationists will be able to study the animals behavioural and social groups with greater knowledge and gain an understanding of whether in fact there are any differences between the individual humpback dolphin species.

The paper about the findings was published in Molecular Ecology
and if you wish to just do a little more reading follow the links below

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10417002/New-species-of-humpback-dolphin-discovered-in-Australia.html
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/new-species-humpback-dolphin-discovered
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14921665