Long Lost Carolina Wolf Spider Found in Ohio

If you have arachnophobia, you may want to shield your eyes. The long lost Carolina wolf spider, which hasn't been seen for more than half a century, was just found recently in Ohio. (Photo : Twitter)

If you have arachnophobia, you may want to shield your eyes. The long lost Carolina wolf spider, which hasn't been seen for more than half a century, was just found recently in Ohio.

It's been 60 years since this orange-fanged, gray-furred spider reared its ugly head. But this past weekend, a group of naturalists poking around the Edge of Appalachia preserve at the southern tip of Ohio peered into a burrow, and there it was.

Jim McCormac, one of the naturalists who found the spider's burrow, said the group immediately realized what they stumbled upon.

"It's the holy grail of arachnids," McCormac, who works for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, told The Columbus Dispatch.

And though the Carolina wolf spider (Hogna carolinensis) is the largest spider in the United States, naturalists insist the 3- to 4-inch spider is nothing to fear.

"He wasn't aggressive at all," McCormac told The Dispatch.

Wolf spiders are big, hairy and typically found in the South. The Carolina wolf spider, for example, is South Carolina's state arachnid.

According to Fox19, wolf spiders look very similar to brown recluses - whose poisonous venom can cause skin to rot within 12 to 24 hours and be fatal in extreme cases, National Geographic reports - and are often killed because they resemble these dangerous arachnids.

However, Carolina wolf spiders are not poisonous, though they do carry venom in its fangs to paralyze the insects it eats.

Wolf spiders hunt alone and earned their name from the fact that they run down their prey instead of trapping it in a web. They especially have good eyesight at night, which isn't hard to believe considering they have eight eyes, lined up in three rows.

"If you don't like spiders, this thing is a real horror story," John Howard, an Adams County resident, told The Dispatch. "But if you think they're cool, this is really cool."

Rabbit Meat for Sale at Whole Foods, Causes Outrage

It turns out that it's 'wabbit season' at Whole Foods. The grocery chain has begun selling rabbit meat in select stores nationwide, and animal activists are up in arms. (Photo : Pixabay)

It turns out that it's 'wabbit season' at Whole Foods. The grocery chain has begun selling rabbit meat in select stores nationwide, and animal activists are up in arms.

On Sunday, rabbit lovers organized a national day of action to draw attention to Whole Foods Markets' production and sale of rabbit meat, accusing the store of being "bunny butchers," according to The Daily Beast. Change.org even created a petition calling on the company to not sell rabbit meat, and has already gained over 13,000 signatures.

In response to the bunny backlash, Whole Foods spokeswoman Katie Malloy issued a statement to CBS6 News:

"Whole Foods Market is sensitive to the companion animal issue and we understand this product won't appeal to everyone. However, for those customers who have been asking us to carry rabbit, it's our job to make sure we offer the highest-quality product from responsible sources."

The silver lining for all the non-rabbit eaters out there is that the rabbits are not ill-treated, and the meat will be consistent with Whole Foods standards. This means the rabbits won't be caged, will be well fed, treated if sick, and allowed time to rest before being re-bred.

"The welfare-focused standards we developed at Whole Foods Market, are designed around their instinctual behaviors and include more than 75 species-specific requirements that ensure the overall health and well-being of the animal," the company said in a news release.

However, activists from the House Rabbit Society allege that those standards may not be as stringent as they appear, The Dodo reported. Rabbits are not covered under the USDA's Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, so, like poultry, they don't have to be stunned before they are slaughtered, meaning death may be painful.

Opponents suggest that Whole Foods should introduce new meat alternatives, rather than sell a different type of meat; especially since rabbit meat is not a wildly popular meat of choice, compared to chicken, beef or pork.

Interestingly, while activists are outraged by humans eating rabbits, that doesn't stop from rabbits eating rabbits. These cute creatures are known for killing their young, whether it's because they feel threatened by predators nearby, there isn't enough food to adequately nourish all the babies, or because the young mother doesn't understand parenthood.

Latest Camouflage Material Inspired by Cuttlefish

Many octopus and cuttlefish have the remarkable ability to change the hue of their skin to better reflect their surroundings. Now soldiers may one day be able to pull off the same feat, blending into their environment no matter where they go. (Photo : Wiki CC0 - Nick Hobgood)

Many octopus and cuttlefish have the remarkable ability to change the hue of their skin to better reflect their surroundings. Now soldiers may one day be able to pull off the same feat, blending into their environment no matter where they go.

Sure, it isn't the same seamless camouflage we see in the Predators' or even Harry Potter's invisibility cloak. However, octopuses have the astounding ability to expand and contract the pigment cells located throughout their body, changing color and texture to look like rocks, sand or coral in the area.

Snorkeling in Bora Bora, diving and fishing enthusiast SpearoBlog captured an excellent example of what some octopuses can do in a short video. BBC One's Richard Hammond took things a step further, asking a cuttlefish to blend in with a checkerboard pattern and even classic upholstery. Amazingly, the cuttlefish was at least partially up to the challenge.

Now, experts at the Rogers Research Group hope to recreate that amazing, natural ability in synthetic material.

"I think we've put together the key elements that are needed," John Rogers, who heads the materials research group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recently told IEEE Spectrum.

According to Rogers, he and his team have developed a material comprised of stacked and very thin dye layers that are divided up into pixels. The dye is normally black, but becomes transparent when heated at a specific temperature spike. Beneath that dye is a layer of reflective silver that appears white to the naked eye, and below that is an array of heating diodes.

What is most key - a sheet of photodetectors - runs throughout the material.

(Photo : Yu et al. PNAS)

According to study recently published in the journal PNAS, when light strikes a photodetector it sends a signal to a connected diode, which begins to heat up, essentially thinning the dye's duskiness. In this way, the pixels can match the pattern of light hues that they are exposed to.

The pixels change rapidly and adapt to new patterns easily, just like our friend the cuttlefish. However, with just being able to change from black to white, the "camouflage" sheet is far from being inconspicuous.

"It's nothing close to being ready to deploy, in a military setting or anything else," Rogers told BBC News. "It's really a beginning point, to focus on the engineering science around how you might create systems that have this type of function."

Endangered Desert Tortoises Getting Sterilized Due to Unlikely Threat

In a sort of paradoxical situation, wildlife officials are taking the unusual step of sterilizing endangered desert tortoises, a species that they are in fact trying to protect. (Photo : Flickr/Pacific Southwest Region)

In a sort of paradoxical situation, wildlife officials are taking the unusual step of sterilizing endangered desert tortoises, a species that they are in fact trying to protect.

US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) officials say the action is necessary to save this species from captive backyard tortoises, which are diverting resources from efforts to preserve the species in the wild, The Associated Press (AP) reports.

Tortoises in captivity threaten native populations because they can carry diseases with them when they escape or are released illegally in the desert.

Nevada law allows just one pet tortoise per household, but the measure adopted last year grandfathered in those who already had more.

Mike Senn, assistant field supervisor for the FWS in Nevada, said it can be "a really difficult issue" to explain to people, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, but the bottom line is that simply breeding more of the species won't save it in the long run. Techniques such as sterilization much be applied to improve and protect natural habitat and address threats in the wild.

The agency is inviting veterinarians from Nevada, Arizona, California and Utah to attend a first-ever desert tortoise sterilization clinic, a two-day event to teach new techniques that could help slow backyard breeding of the reptile.

More than 50 tortoises will be sterilized during the event.

Sterilizing tortoises is normally a complicated and invasive process, but Senn has come up with a new, low-risk and effective technique.

"For the males it's pretty straightforward," he explained to the Review-Journal, but the work is "a bit more involved" for females and must be done when they are in breeding condition, generally in July and August.

These desert tortoises will be available for adoption post-op. The Desert Tortoise Conservation Center, which will provide some patients for sterilization, takes in as many as 1,000 unwanted tortoises each year. They also acquire as much as about $1 million in costs that otherwise could be spent on research and recovery work, Senn said.

These brown, hard-shelled reptiles have largely been wiped out, with numbers having decreased as much as 90 percent in certain areas, according to the organization Defenders of Wildlife. Recent estimates indicate that there are only about 100,000 individual desert tortoises remaining in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts.

Fracking's Impact on Animals Still Largely Unknown

Fracking's impact on animals is still largely unknown, which scientists see as a real problem given that business is booming. (Photo : Flickr: Smudge 9000)

Fracking's impact on animals is still largely unknown, which scientists see as a real problem given that business is booming.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no signs of stopping. Between 2005 and 2013, some 82,000 fracking wells were drilled into the shale deposits beneath 17 states, according to the environmental advocacy group Environment America.

But scientists are concerned about this method of accessing oil and gas beneath the soil - which involves injecting chemicals into the ground. Opponents point out the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing, such as potential contamination of ground water, the depletion of fresh water, possible reduction in air quality and triggering of earthquakes.

There are already more than 1,000 documented cases of water contamination from fracking operations - from toxic wastewater, well blowouts, chemical spills, and more, according to Environment America.

But some also argue that the technique is not only dangerous to humans but to wildlife as well.

"We know very little about how shale gas production is affecting plants and wildlife," Sarah Souther, a conservation biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement. Souther and her colleagues discovered critical gaps in the current body of knowledge surrounding shale production, which they reported in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

"There is a lack of accessible and reliable information on spills, wastewater disposal and the chemistry of fracturing fluids," Souther added. "Of the 24 US states with active shale gas reservoirs, only five maintain public records of spills and accidents."

About 200 different chemicals are injected into the ground during fracking, but about a third of them lack sufficient toxicity information according to a study presented at the American Chemical Society on Wednesday.

"There are a number of chemicals, like corrosion inhibitors and biocides in particular, that are being used in reasonably high concentrations that potentially could have adverse effects," William Stringfellow, an environmental engineer at the University of the Pacific and lead author of the study, said in a press release.

Stringfellow and his colleagues identified eight chemicals that are particularly toxic to mammals, but the impact on the rest of the commonly used chemicals during fracking has yet to be determined.

Souther and her colleagues told Inside Climate News that they are not "anti-shale development," just "anti-lack of knowledge."