And tumble they did

Josh Pittman lives in West Texas, where one of the hazards is wind. He wasn't thinking about that when he took down the fence behind his Midland home. He intended to replace it, but the storm blew up in the meantime. The tumbleweeds took over, and he had to clear them by hand into a ditch in the backyard. "I didn't even know this many tumbleweeds existed," he said. In fact, there are many different species of plants which – when they mature – disengage from their roots and take on what is known as the "tumbleweed habit."

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Biting bioluminescence

Scientists have just found species – 2 plants and an animal – that give off a glow:

• Pitcher plants and Venus flytraps give off fluorescence (IMAGE ABOVE). "These distinct blue emissions were so far not known in carnivorous prey traps. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study reporting such strong and distinct fluorescence emissions in the plant kingdom," says researcher Dr. Sabulal Baby from Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute in Kerala, India.
• The velvet belly lantern shark has lightsaber-like spines and a glowing belly, describes Dr. Julien Claes, a shark biologist from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium (VIDEO HERE). "The scientists believe that while the light-up spines can be seen by larger, potentially dangerous fish, they are harder for the shark's prey to spot."

The carnivores glow for opposite purposes: the plants lure their prey and the sharks camouflage themselves from their predators.

 

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