The animal has lengthy incisors, a large, flat, pink nose and forward-facing nostrils, hence its rather unflattering name. Photo / Kevin C. Rowe
The animal has lengthy incisors, a large, flat, pink nose and forward-facing nostrils, hence its rather unflattering name. Photo / Kevin C. Rowe
Is this world's ugliest rodent?
Rats have never been pretty to look at, but this one? Sheesh.
A team of researchers discovered the hog-nosed rat during a expedition in a remote and mountainous area of Indonesia two years ago.
"We had never seen anything like this - it was obviously a new species," said Louisiana State University's Dr Jake Esselstyn, after catching one of the hideous critters in a trap he had set.
Ironically, the same day another member of the team, Kevin Rowe, from Museum Victoria, also caught the odd-looking rat in his trap.
The animal has lengthy incisors, a large, flat, pink nose and forward-facing nostrils, hence its rather unflattering name.
With extremely large ears, long hind legs that may be used for hopping, long white incisors and very long pubic hairs, the rat was so genetically different from any other species it is considered part of a new genus.
Pre-pregnancy exercise can ease pain later
A study published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine has found taking part in full-on activities like aerobics up to five times before pregnancy may help to later stave off pelvic girdle pain, the umbrella term for any type of pain associated with the joint and ligament changes prompted by pregnancy.
This is characterised by pain in the rear part of the pelvis and at the joint where the pubic bones meet at the front of the pelvis, and can last up to a year after the birth.
A survey of 39,000 Norwegian women found those who reported it were more likely to smoke, be overweight, young and to have a history of depression and low back pain, while those who didn't were more likely to have exercised between three and five times a week before they got pregnant.
Want a bet?
Kiwi and German researchers have analysed more than five million bets with the New Zealand Racing Board, and taking into account the size of bets, found there's no reason to assume those betting on odds like 100-to-1 take bigger financial risks than those betting on "favourite" odds like 5-to-1.
The authors wrote in the European Journal of Operational Research: "Our estimations strongly reject the hypothesis that the overbetting of outcomes with low probabilities (favourite-longshot bias) can be explained by risk-seeking bettors."
It's a lake, Jim - but not as we know it...
Nasa's impression of the Gale Crater lake. Photo / NASA & JPL
At a glance, this lake looks like a nice spot for a dip, but there's one minor hitch - it's on Mars.
Or was on Mars, as scientists from Nasa's Mars Science Laboratory have reported in the journal Science.
They suggest that, billions of years ago, Mars had a more substantial atmosphere than it does today, with an active hydrosphere capable of storing water in long-lived lakes.
The scientists say that this water helped to fill Gale Crater with sediment deposited as layers that formed the foundation for the mountain that is in the middle of the crater today.
Nasa senior scientist Dr Ashwin Vasavada said observations from the rover suggested that a series of streams and lakes existed between 3.3 billion and 3.8 billion years ago, delivering sediment that slowly built up the lower layers of Mount Sharp.
"However, this series of long-lived lakes is not predicted by existing models of the ancient climate of Mars, which struggle to get temperatures above freezing," he s
Walk like a man, my son
Chimpanzees show such surprising similarities to humans in the way they rotate their bodies when walking on two legs that they've led scientists to believe our chimp-like ancestors were more capable of efficient upright walking than we thought.
What's called "human bipedal walking" is characterised by co-ordinated movements of the hips and upper body, which move in opposite directions during a stride.
It had been assumed chimpanzees were set apart because their trunks remained rigid when walking on two legs.
Using kinematic analysis, researchers tracked the motions of hips, lumbar and thorax in humans and chimpanzees trained to walk on two legs.
They found that, although the direction in which the upper body was aligned during strides differed, the magnitude of their movements relative to the pelvis was nearly identical.
