On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:33:23 -0800 (PST), blacklight
wrote in
:
>The following is an extract from a Sept 4. 2007 story in Australia's
>Sydney Morning Herald (a serious broadsheet , not a sensationalist
>tabloid). It's a fascinating observation of snakes' acquired
>knowledge.
Thanks for the info, Blacklight! The SMH is a good paper, and
the Saturday edition probably has more classified job ads than
any other Sydney paper. When I first came here, the Internet
as we know it today was a distant dream.
So enterprising job seekers came to Kings Cross, where the first
edition would hit the newsstands shortly after midnight. This
gave them plenty of time to read the ads and pick and choose the
jobs they wanted to apply for. Being the first applicant in
those days meant that had a good chance of landing a job before
other job seekers had even awakened, let alone had their paper
delivered.
I'm more interested in international news, so get The Australian,
check its web site, also those the ABC, the BBC and the
Guardian.
So had missed this very interesting article. Thanks for posting
it!
>Professor Rick Shine, evolutionary biologist at the University of
>Sydney and Dr.Ben Phillips put a death adder and 2 toxic frogs into a
>tank fitted with video cameras. The 'marbled frog' when threatened
>produces a powerful glue from its skin which gums mouth and head of a
>snake. Dahl's aquatic frog exudes a toxin that kills a snake in
>minutes. But the marbled frog's glue stops being sticky after 10
>minutes, and the Dahl's frog's poison becomes harmless after 30
>minutes.
>"The surprised scientists watched as the snake would bite the
>(marbled) frog, inject a lethal dose of venom, and then quickly
>release the amphibian before it could wrap the attacker in glue. The
>death adder would wait about 12 minutes for the dead frog's glue to
>break down, before devouring it ... The snake would pounce (on Dahl's
>frog), inject its venom, (then wait) for about 40 minutes"
>Professor Shine said "...the snakes gobbled up harmless frogs without
>delay, indicating they could tell the difference between various
>species. ... The death adder certainly was more sophisticated than I
>would have guessed. It's hard to know what is going on in that very
>small brain"
Actually, we know very little about how any brain functions, how
and where memory is stored, and so on.
This one might interest you or other readers:
Brain's complexity points to soul, afterlife
Graeme Clark, in the first of his Boyer lectures, explains one of
the frontiers to which medicine has advanced | November 10, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22731079-28737,00.html
Alternatively,
http://tinyurl.com/2sxtwu
TIME magazine has opened up its archives free to all, not just
subscribers.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archives
>Similar behaviour has been observed towards the poisonous Cane Toad -
>a newcomer to the Northern Territory where the experiment was taking
>place. It seems Lamarck might have a case who thought that acquired
>behaviour could be passed on to the next generation via inheritance.
>Greetings - Klaus
>www.rent-a-cloud.com
That is an interesting thought, isn't it? Thanks again for the
post!
Cheers,
Kangaroo16
>Nature Cards
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