This squid is playing peekaboo at the bottom of the ocean
Like a scarf out of a magician鈥檚 sleeve, the squid appeared. Seconds before, there had been nothing.
Isis, a robotic vessel traveling more than 2.5 miles under the Pacific, saw only ocean through its front camera. Another camera, pointing toward the seabed, saw nothing but sediment and some stalks that might have been a dead sea sponge. But a third camera captured a cephalopod swimming away.
Scientists later realized that the unmoving stalks were really the squid. It had been upside down in the mud, with its head and short arms buried, holding its two long tentacles upward in a rigid position. The researchers, who published their discovery in the journal Ecology, said the animal might have been mimicking another life-form to avoid predators 鈥� or to lure prey.
The sighting happened while researchers from the National Oceanography Center in Britain were surveying a region of seafloor between 91直播 and Mexico. At a depth of about 13,500 feet, the squid appeared on camera in March 2023. Researchers scrutinized their footage. 鈥淭he squid must have come from somewhere,鈥� said Alejandra Mej铆a-Saenz, the study鈥檚 lead author and a graduate student at the Scottish Association for Marine Science. Then they realized their cameras had captured the unmoving, branched object becoming the swimming squid.
They aren鈥檛 sure, but the researchers think the animal might be a whiplash squid 鈥� which would be fitting, given the double take this specimen caused at the ocean鈥檚 surface. 鈥淭he way they normally hunt is by taking advantage of how sticky their tentacles are,鈥� Mej铆a-Saenz said. Like flypaper, a whiplash squid鈥檚 two long tentacles capture tiny crustaceans for the animal to eat.
It鈥檚 important for life-forms in the abyss, where food is scarce, to conserve energy. The scientists speculated that the squid might have been posing as one of the deep seafloor鈥檚 less threatening creatures, such as a coral, a tube worm or a sponge, to lure prey. Or it could have been disguising itself to hide from deep-diving beaked whales or other predators. Or both.
A hot plant鈥檚 irresistible signal makes beetles pollinate it
If a plant wants to reproduce, there are a number of tricks it can use to lure a pollinator insect. It can display gaudily colored flowers to catch their eye or appeal to their noses with sweet or pungent scents.
Then there are the cycads. These 250 million-year-old tropical plants look like palms and reproduce with structures resembling pine cones. To secure their next generation, they get hot.
Their warm glow at dusk tempts beetles with unique infrared-sensing antennae in a relationship so ancient it may be at the basis of all pollination as we know it, according to a study published in the journal Science.
鈥淚f you think about how the ancient planet looked when plants and animals first started to communicate, there were other signals that were important,鈥� said Wendy Valencia-Montoya, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University and an author of the study.
Some plants, including the pink lotus and the titan arum, can heat up to temperatures of 60 to nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit above their surroundings, especially when it鈥檚 very cold outside. Botanists mainly thought this helped these plants boost the potency of their scent signals or offer pollinators a cozy refuge.
But Valencia-Montoya had a hunch that heat could be a beacon in itself. She tried enticing beetles with fake 3D-printed temperature-controlled cycad cones 鈥� with no cycadlike scent, color or texture 鈥� in the wild, placed next to real cycads. The dupes attracted hundreds of pollinators.
Cycad cones follow daily cycles of heating and cooling: Pollen-laden male cones produce a big burst of heat in the late afternoon, and then ovulating female cones warm up about three hours later, cooling by sundown. This push-pull pollination guides beetles through the steps of plant reproduction, from male to female.
And, as it seems as if different parts of the cones heat at different times, the temperature change also shepherds the beetles in how to enter the cones. 鈥淪omehow these signals are helping you get very fast where you have to go,鈥� Valencia-Montoya said.
But the signaling is not just the warmth emanated by the cones. It is also the heat鈥檚 infrared signature, which is invisible to human eyes but can be sensed by a beetle鈥檚 antennae. Valencia-Montoya replicated the experiment of the 3D-printed cone by covering the cone with a thick but transparent material; the beetles couldn鈥檛 feel the heat, but they could see its infrared signal.
In fact, when the team members analyzed the antennae of two beetle species that pollinate different cycads, they found that they were full of the same genes that allow snakes and mosquitoes to hunt down prey by sensing body heat. The sensors of the two kinds of beetle are tuned in slightly different ways to detect the specific signatures of their preferred cycad species.
Killer whales find an 鈥榰nlikely friend鈥� in dolphins
In the waters off British Columbia, killer whales trail Pacific white-sided dolphins to hunt Chinook salmon and may even share fish scraps with them, a new study finds.
From a boat, the interaction between the orcas and dolphins looks like organized chaos, the study authors said. But underwater, an opportunistic alliance gives orcas access to prey that would otherwise be less accessible. 鈥淪ometimes you can have an unlikely friend that helps guide you to a buffet or takes you to an underground speakeasy,鈥� said Sarah Fortune, a marine ecologist at Dalhousie University and lead author of the study.
Pacific white-sided dolphins are often seen alongside orcas in Pacific Northwest waters. The orcas appear to tolerate them, showing no evasive or aggressive behavior. Scientists had thought the dolphins mobbed orcas or stole their prey. But the new study documents cooperative foraging between the species 鈥� showing that dolphins earn their share.
Both species invest time and energy in this foraging activity. The findings dispel the idea that dolphins are 鈥渟tealing bits of fish鈥� from the killer whales and getting a 鈥渇ree lunch,鈥� she added.
To study the interaction, Fortune and her colleagues attached tags with suction cups to resident killer whales off Vancouver Island in British Columbia.
Scientists identified 25 occasions when orcas trailed dolphins on foraging hunts. When the dolphins dived, the killer whales did, too. At greater depths, where the whales often catch salmon, the dolphins swam alongside, producing echolocation clicks and homing in on fish targets, perhaps scouting for the orcas. There were eight occasions when orcas ate and shared Chinook salmon with other orcas; dolphins were present for four.
漏 2025 The New York Times Company