How much did THAT cost the taxpayer?
So, what happened?
TIA
Whose idea was this?
Should I apply for a grant to see what happens
when you drop dead fish in the desert?
Amazing
a good experiment to try with live demonrats...
This blog is not on the excerpt-only list. Spoilers ahead.
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The researchers, Craig McClain and Clifton Nunnally from Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (Lumcon), share the surprising results of their experiment in a newly published study in the open-access science journal PLOS One.
The scientists placed three dead gators 6,600 feet in the Gulf of Mexico and made their biggest find when they came back to their last dead alligator 51 days later. It was eaten completely down to its skeleton, except for a mysterious brown fuzz left on the bones.
Scientists found brown fuzz on one of the alligator skeletons happens to be bone-eating worms.
DNA studies of the brown fuzz revealed it was a newly discovered species of bone-eating worm from the Osedax genus. This is the first time any Osedax species have been spotted in the Gulf of Mexico, the researchers say.
“We confirmed it as a new species through comparing the DNA of the animals that we collected to the DNA of known Osedax species,” River Dixon told Gizmodo. (Dixon is a Ph.D. Fellow in the McClain Lab at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and a co-author of the new study.) “We found that the DNA was different enough to qualify our samples as a new species.”
The other two dead alligators offered up some interesting findings too. One was devoured in less than 24 hours by giant isopods, which are known for going without food for years.
The scientists found that another one of their alligator carcasses went missing altogether. On further investigation, the scientists discovered drag marks where they’d left the gator.
“Whatever did that had to be huge. The carcass and weight combined to be over 36 kilograms (80 pounds), and its shape and length made it quite unwieldy,” Dixon told Gizmodo. “With some calculations we were able to figure out that the bite strength needed to cut cleanly through our rope was consistent with that of a large shark.”
Wow, the usual suspects. Sharks, isopods, marine worms. I’m pretty sure the same fate has fallen upon things not normally found on the seabed, say humans, for a long time.
Why didn’t they drop a camera down there while they were at it?
Strange, I never felt it odd that I could catch crabs using chicken parts.
Giant osiopods seem to be the cock roaches of the ocean
Giant isopods - rolly-polly pill bugs the size of a football !
Video of them in action here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54YezX7HeSI&feature=emb_logo
Next time use communists and jihadis.