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nature

Female Python Gives Birth Without Male Contact in At Least 15 Years

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Python - Pixabay

Snake #361003 at the Saint Louis Zoo has laid a clutch of eggs despite not being near a male snake in decades. The ball python, at least 62-years-old, surely deserves a name after pulling off the remarkable feat. The snake has been at the zoo since 1961 and hasn’t even seen a male snake in more than 15 years. “We’re saying 15 plus years, but I mean, it’s probably easily closer to 30 years since she’s been physically with a male,” Mark Wanner, the Zoological Manager of Herpetology told CNN. Full Story at LGBTQ Nation

NATURE: This Vampire Parasite Eats Tongues

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tongue-eating louse

When scientists recently X-rayed a fish’s head, they found a gruesome stowaway: A “vampire” crustacean had devoured, then replaced, its host’s tongue. The buglike isopod, also called a tongue biter or tongue-eating louse, keeps sucking its blood meals from a fish’s tongue until the entire structure withers away. Then the true horror begins, as the parasite assumes the organ’s place in the still-living fish’s mouth. Biologist Kory Evans, an assistant professor in the Department of BioSciences at Rice University in Houston, Texas, discovered the tongue biter while digitizing X-rays of fish skeletons. He shared images of the surprising and horrifying … Read more

New Zealand Scientists Find a Vampire Tree

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Vampire Tree - Live Science

In a forest in New Zealand, a vampire clings to life. Once a mighty kauri tree — a species of conifer that can grow up to 165 feet (50 meters) tall — the low, leafless stump looks like it should be long dead. But, as a new study published today (July 25) in the journal iScience reminds us, looks are only surface-deep. Below the soil, the study authors wrote, the stump is part of a forest “superorganism” — a network of intertwined roots sharing resources across a community that could include dozens or hundreds of trees. By grafting its roots … Read more