Adventure Ausrama Blog

You would think that all the snakes in Australia are known.  However a new species has been found.  It is a death adder in the Acanthopis family.  Official named Acanthophis cryptoamudros the Kimberley death adder is two thirds of a meter long.  Like many snakes its head is diamond shaped. Adders hide and blend in with the underbrush then ambush prey.  Four legged reptiles and small mammals are the main food.  Oddly, the new adder does not look like other adders.  It is similar to snakes of other species. Australia has been a happy hunting ground for scientists recently.  Many new animals have been identified.  The search goes on in this sparsely populated region of the dry continent.    New species include: shark , dolphin , antechinus , seadragon , lizard , fish  and  spider , ,     A new water flower has also been discovered. ◆ Biology by Ty Buchanan   ◆ Adventure Australia F...

The odd case of a woman who police claim stabbed herself to death with an 8 inch long knife - you would have to be a Japanese officer in dire straits to do this! For some reason police have always stuck to their suicide finding. A doctor working in a funeral parlor thought it was odd that the woman had wounds on her hands as if she was defending herself. It took two years before police got back to him after he reported this. Police said that the victim, Dr Karen Mahlo, had stabbed herself as she lay on her back in bed. John Michael Hehir, her boyfriend, was not a suspect, then: his claims of not being able to phone her and rushing to her house had been verified. He said lights were turned off downstairs. Why would you turn the lights off if you were going upstairs to kill yourself? A very strange thing was that the knife had been plunged through her pyjamas. One would have pushed the pyjamas aside to get it over with. Her death was well planned: a note was on a runn...

You may stop fearing an asteroid colliding with the Earth. Man himself could be the cause of the next mass extinction. People who harp on about climate change being a religion and an article of faith are like those who ignored Noah. Remember that humans got down a few hundred individuals in the past. We are very lucky to be here today. Of course the world would have gone on without us: it would be a very different world. There would be no pollution anywhere. Ebola is out of control. Antibiotics are failing. A world-wide plague could be on the cards. Danger to Man is not the only issue. Twenty five per cent of mammals could soon disappear. Forty per cent of amphibians are at risk. Because species are already dying off, a mass extinction could have already begun. The hottest decade on record shows that life is declining. When animals die off the food supply for other creatures also goes. So the path of extinction of predator species becomes real as well. Carbon is the...

Times have always been bad. Before this enlightened age a person could be "bludgeoned" to pieces at random by a man wielding a massively heavy and crude sword. Murder was seldom punished. The law was mainly aimed at theft, settling property disputes, heresy against the church or a challenge to the crown. Even before Christ people were claiming that the end of the world was nigh. The fiasco about the Mayan calendar shows how such "precognition" can be totally wrong. Once again the recent "clash" of a meteor and asteroid with Earth has drawn the doomsayers out of the woodwork. Wonders in the heavens have occurred since man came down from the trees. It is not something that stops, then starts again. The lightning strike at St. Peter's Basilica after the Pope announced he would step down was just coincidence. Lightning strikes happen regularly and despite the myth it does strike twice in the same place. Rabbi Jonathan Cahn says he was inundated...

Albert Einstein wasn't only a genius her was a very odd human being. His brain shows peculiar differences from the norm; it had many more folds than the average person. This gave the brain a greater surface area. It is like using a larger computer to do calculations. Upon his father's death in 1955, Thomas Einstein gave the pathologist permission to preserve the brain of Albert Einstein. It was photographed then dissected into 2,000 ultra-thin slices. The slices and slides of them were later distributed to researchers. The brain had more neurons and glia cells, well outside of the normal range; pariental lobes were unusual in the pattern of ridges and grooves. Einstein only had a brain of average size. The area controlling the tongue and face was larger, as was the region that involves attention and planning. Overall, Einstein's brain was complex. Many people think in words. He said his thinking was like a physical activity. If selection based on "healthy...

Something is going on out there. Mysterious deaths of particular species of animals occur regularly. Recently dolphins died in their hundreds while thousands of pelicans died off the coast of Lima, Peru. This was followed by thousands of crustaceans dying. The crustacean affected is red krill. It is known that some species of dolphin eat this food. Pelicans also surface feed for krill.  Why would a food source die after poisoning other animals? These deaths are not being caused directly by humans with perhaps chemicals or pesticides. The reason is the ocean off the coast of Lima is warming up. Krill have been moving closer to the coast to avoid the heat. Environmentalists blame offshore oil exploration. The government says they died of natural causes, but the seemingly static La Niña with cool weather in the western Pacific (oddly currently warm in the east) is not natural. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ htt...

Australia's death adder is contributing to its own extinction. Moving around to hunt their prey is not their method. An adder tempts its victims by laying in ambush and wiggling its tail tip. By wiggling its tail, however, it is noticed by cane toads, frogs and lizards who eagerly gulp down the tasty meal. After cane toads were introduced into Australia death adder numbers plummeted. Ironically as the cane toad attacks the snake it is bitten, so after its meal the cane toad dies - mutual suicide. Even if the snake eats the toad it will end up dead because cane toads are poisonous. For millions of years death adders have survived by enticing their prey within easy reach. Now this behavior is leading to their demise. Man cannot intervene to prevent this. There is nothing that can be done. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia http://www.technorati.com/blogs/ http://adventure--aust...

It seems people don't live on after their partner passes away. There is a higher risk of survivors getting a heart attack in the months after losing a husband or wife. It is believed to be due to the increased heart rate from the loss. If the living partner can get through the danger period the risk dissipates. This shows that people who lose partners need medical help and support from friends and relatives during the grieving process. Doctors should pay special attention to cardiac symptoms. Persistent stress and depression should also be monitored. The research involved people aged from 33 to 91, so this tendency affects spouses of any age. Subjects wore 24 hour monitors. Heart rate was closely observed. Periods of rapid heart beat occurred during the grieving period. Overall heart rate was also higher compared to people who had not had a loss. Depression was four time higher than the norm in subjects. This persisted for several years. http://www.adventure--australia.bl...