Curio Cabinet

Save the last dance for these beautiful birds. Bengal floricans are critically endangered birds famous for their elaborate courtship dances. Unfortunately, there are fewer than 1,000 of them left, and only three wild populations are known: one in India, one in Cambodia, and another in Vietnam. Conservationists have long struggled to boost the birds’ numbers, since they’re elusive and it wasn’t known whether they would survive well in captivity. But recently, the Angkor Centre for Conservation of Biodiversity in Cambodia’s Phnom Kulen National Park has been rearing wild-caught Bengal floricans and returning them to the wild with great success. The facility monitors surrounding grasslands for Bengal florican nests and takes in any eggs that have been laid in unfavorable places. They then hand-rear the chicks until they’re ready to be released, all while keeping contact between birds and handlers to a minimum to ensure that the animals don’t get attached to humans. One day, the facility hopes to create a captive breeding program to further improve the birds’ numbers.
 
The world would certainly be less interesting without Bengal floricans. These lively, black-and-white birds are the only surviving member of the genus Houbaropsis, and have several quirky qualities. Though their bodies are small, their long legs elevate them high off the ground, with adults reaching an average height of about 22 inches. Unlike many birds, Bengal floricans aren’t strictly insectivores or vegetarians; they’re omnivorous, able to eat fruits, nuts, insects, and small reptiles. But it’s their mating habits that really set these birds apart. From February to June, male Bengal floricans stage an elaborate, two-part show to attract and woo females.
 
At sunrise, the birds puff out their feathers and dance around their territories, bobbing their heads and calling. They sometimes leap straight into the air and float back to the ground, over and over, while making a humming sound. This is how they got the nickname “the whispering bird” in Cambodia. The display is meant to attract nearby females, but if it doesn’t work, males then take to the air, careening in a complicated pattern of dips and dives. This part of the display can be seen over a long distance, making it more likely to attract a mate.
 
If the courtship display works, females will nest on the ground and lay one to two eggs, which she’ll incubate for around four weeks. Bengal floricans’ small population already makes it difficult for males and females to find one another; the fact that they lay so few eggs at a time adds to their population woes. It’s lucky that humans are stepping in to protect these energetic avians—it would be truly tragic to lose a bird that can whisper, jump, and dance all at once.

 
[Image description: An illustration of a male and female Bengal Floricans standing on their long, thin legs. The male is taller with more black feathers.] Credit & copyright: Hamilton, General Douglas (1892) Hamilton, Edward , ed. Records of sport in southern India chiefly on the Annamullay, Nielgherry and Pulney mountains, also including notes on Singapore, Java and Labuan, from journals written between 1844 and 1870, London, Illustrated, photo. Frontis of the author. Numerous illustrations, some full page. 284 pages.: R. H. Porter, pp. 36. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer.

There’s a new tissue in town…sort of. Scientists at the University of California, Irvine have rediscovered a largely forgotten type of skeletal tissue, and their findings have massive potential in the field of regenerative medicine. Most cartilage in the body is held together and keeps its shape thanks to an extracellular matrix, a network of molecules and cells that provide rigidity and structure. Then there are adipocyte fat cells, which are soft and fluctuate in size based on water and food availability. Cartilage forms connections between bones, and the same kind of cartilage was thought to provide the structure for our noses, ears, and other soft, flexible body parts. However, researchers have now discovered that there is another type of skeletal tissue, called lipocartilage, which doesn’t rely on an extracellular matrix. Instead, it’s filled with lipochondrocytes, which are similar to adipocyte fat cells but don’t change size or shape over time, regardless of food availability. They’re soft, yet can maintain their shape under pressure, like resilient bubbles.
 
The existence of lipochondrocytes was actually first discovered in 1854 by Dr. Franz von Leydig, who noticed the presence of fat in the cartilage of rats’ ears. Just like with Von Leydig’s rats, lipocartilage is found in human ears and noses, allowing them to maintain their shape while remaining highly flexible. Von Leydig’s discovery, however, was largely unexplored by the wider medical community until scientists at UC Irvine began their own research into the subject. The discovery of lipocartilage could change the way that surgery on cartilage works in the future. Currently, the best option to replace and repair damaged cartilage is to harvest donor tissue from the ribs. In the future, lipochondrocytes could be used to grow custom-made cartilage, which might even be 3D printed into specific shapes. All this because someone decided to take a closer look at rats’ ears!

 
[Image description: A diagram of the skeletal system with individual bones named.] Credit & copyright: LadyofHats (Mariana Ruiz Villarreal), Wikimedia Commons. This work has been released into the public domain by its author, LadyofHats. This applies worldwide.

Even legends come and go, but dreams never really die. In the 1960s, acting legend Marlon Brando purchased an atoll, a ring shaped island surrounding a lagoon, in the South Pacific with the hopes that it would one day become a “university of the sea” for scientists. Now, researchers are honoring the late actor’s ambitions. Located around 30 miles north of Tahiti, Tetiaroa is an atoll consisting of 12 coral islets (also known as a motus) around a lagoon. In his autobiography, Brando wrote, “The lagoon was… infused with more shades of blue than I thought possible: turquoise, deep blue, light blue, indigo blue, cobalt blue, royal blue, robin’s egg blue, aquamarine.” But for Brando, Tetiaroa was more than just a tranquil tropical getaway. The actor saw its potential as a haven for marine research, a potential that is now being realized thanks to the Tetiaroa Society, a nonprofit focused on education and conservation of the atoll. Back in 2014, the Tetiaroa Society opened the Ecostation, a research facility for visiting scientists. Not long after, they built 35 private villas for visitors of all kinds, including students from nearby communities who are given a chance to learn about their Polynesian heritage. The resort provides around 70 percent of the funding for the Tetiaroa Society, which allows them to make use of the atoll’s relatively pristine state to study the effects of climate change, microplastics, and shoreline erosion. The islets of the atoll are home to green sea turtle nesting sites, which scientists keep a close eye on to see how environmental problems affect them. Unfortunately, the atoll has its share of unwanted intruders in the form of mosquitoes and other invasive species, but its isolated nature is allowing scientists to research better ways to eradicate them. That kind of vigorous research must take atoll!

 
[Image description: The surface of water.] Credit & copyright: Matt Hardy, Pexels

Don’t you just lava good eruption? Researchers at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport have predicted the eruption of an underwater volcano this year, something that can normally only be done a few hours in advance. While the word “volcano” mainly conjures up images of towering mountains spewing lava, most volcanoes are actually on the ocean floor. There are approximately 4,000 volcanoes per million square kilometers in the Pacific Ocean alone, and there’s almost always an eruption going on somewhere. Knowing when those eruptions will occur is nearly impossible, except when it comes to the Axial Seamount, one of the most closely-monitored volcanoes in the ocean. The Axial Seamount is located around 300 miles off the coast of Oregon, and one of its eruptions was successfully predicted back in 2011. It erupted again just a few years later, in 2015, and it just so happened that the second eruption came a few months after researchers began monitoring it. William Chadwick and his colleagues took the data from the 2015 eruption and continued to monitor Axial’s surface, which has now grown to around 95 percent of its pre-2015 eruption size as a result of magma buildup. Chadwick and his team believe that the next eruption is imminent. Thankfully, an eruption wouldn't pose any threat to those on land, but studying underwater volcanoes and learning to forecast them early might one day lead to a similar system for terrestrial volcanoes. That would be quite a relief, since volcanos on land can wreak havoc on nearby wildlife and people. Imagine a forecast that calls for a light shower of flaming rocks and chance of pyroclastic blast.

[Image description: The surface of water.] Credit & copyright: Matt Hardy, Pexels