Coffee and Provocation

Rat-Free After 139 Years:
Back in 1870, a Japanese shipwreck put the rats on Alaska's Rat Island. The result: wholesale decimation of the native bird population as the rats ate eggs and killed babies in their nests. Now, after a few tons of rat poison have been put on the island, Alaska's Rat Island is now officialy rat-free. On the down side, there may have been some accidental bald eagle deaths from the rat poison: 41 Bald Eagle carcases were found on the island after the winter thaw. Some eagle mortality is normal, but these numbers seem to be higher than usual. Bald eagles, however, are not rare in coastal Alaska, and they will recover very quickly. For more on the impact of rats on island bird populations, see >> Rats and Extinctions

Creating a New Species With One Mutation:
From Science Now: Catching one species in the act of becoming two is no easy feat. Yet evolutionary biologists working in the Solomon Islands may have done just that. They have found that a single genetic change turns a small, brown-bellied bird black, possibly leading it to mate with like-colored birds -- and setting it on the road to becoming a new species.

How You Spend Your Day:
Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles

Secret Wildlife Reintroduction Succeeds:
From The Financial Times: "The large blue butterfly, which became extinct in Britain 30 years ago, has returned in large numbers after being reintroduced from Sweden in a secret conservation project. Today large blues are present on 33 sites in south-west England, from chalk downs to railway embankments, and are spreading across the Polden Hills."

What Limits the Size of Birds?
What limits the size of birds? It turns out that it's the time it takes for a bird to replace lost feathers. So how is that there used to be a bird with a 20 foot wingspan -- almost as as big as a Cessna airplane? It seems this giant bird lost all its feathers at once, and then fasted while those lost flight feathers grew in. Or at least that's the theory today.

A Folding Military Mountain Bike?
Not only does such a thing exist, but the U.S. military buys them. "The Paratrooper® is a full size, 24-speed mountain bike designed to endure any terrain at high speed in silence with no heat signature. In addition to the high performance feature, the bike folds simply without the use of tools. By turning one quick lever, the Paratrooper® folds in less than 30 seconds into 3' x 3' pack that can be dropped from a plane, strapped to the side of an LAV or thrown in the back of a trunk." Check it out (video). Price: $800.
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