Animal superpowers!

I just read a remarkable story about a parasitic wasp (edit) that can drill through plastic :flushed:
Tiny Parasite with a GREAT superpower - discovered by a teen researcher
(Still tingling!)

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A pregnant woman, in the hours or days before giving birth, can survive, even walk around, with a little human skull lodged inside her pelvis. That’s a superpower.

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[quote=“dlevitis, post:2, topic:45426, full:true”]

A pregnant woman, in the hours or days before giving birth, can survive, even walk around, with a little human skull lodged inside her pelvis. That’s a superpower.
[/quote]

Well, that makes me tingle, too?

How about - Butterflies taste with their feet?

It works for nutrients, but the proboscis does not have sensors to determine taste. Instead, those sensors are located on the back of the butterfly’s legs. The insect will step on its food to sense dissolving sugars. Even more importantly, a female butterfly will use her feet to drum on a plant and “taste” its juices .

That’s a superpower!! Just think, you could taste all the chocolate ice cream you want by walking through it and never gain any weight (although, possibly this would put some of us at risk of frost bite).

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Many vertebrates can sense the electric fields of hidden prey’s nervous system. That must make hide and seek a really fast game.

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That is very interesting, though I should note the article says it’s a wasp (which is related to an ant)

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Thanks, I corrected that :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

the video is really nice

The way that crabs can regenerate lost limbs sure looks like a superpower to me. If we could do that, amputees wouldn’t have to be classified as permanently disabled.

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Not wildlife, but a few months ago I brought home a homeless dog who was super nervous and scared. Everytime I walked through the door she cowered and lost control of her bladder, poor beast.

She doesn’t do that anymore, but she is still very anxious. Anyhow, last month, it was a little after midnight and she kept poking me and staring at me and running from the bedroom to the living room frantically. I told her to go back to bed, everything is fine, but she wasn’t having it and she kept bugging me until I went out to the living room. From the window there, I saw that the building next to my apartment was on fire. It must have barely started, because only the door and part of the wall were burning. The fire department came quickly and it was extinguished fast. I was pretty impressed with this dog.

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Very impressive, what I’m also very impressed by is the 13-year-old discovering it!

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The topic seems to be limited to animals, but wasn’t there some organism eating away at the steel hull plating of ships? And similarly, some other organism that broke down plastic? I can’t remember any details though. Might look it up later and edit this post.

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I think that I saw a video once of some sort of “worm” that breaks down plastic.

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Here’s a YouTube short about that

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I heard a guy on the radio talking about how flowers can detect when pollinators land on them and up the sugar content of their flowers. I was VERY impressed with that.

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Birds knowing when I am pressing the exposure button and flying out of the frame. Happens too often to be a coincidence - I think it must have to do with entanglement. (Said mostly in jest).

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I do not claim to know a scientific explanation for this, but it’s what I have observed. Animals seem to be able to sense human intent in some way, I have observed fish back away from my bait as soon as I feel excited that I’m about to catch them, only re-approaching the bait when I force myself to relax, and I have observed dogs react to emotions and thoughts that were never expressed outwardly

My guess is the dogs can pick up on subtle body language/facial expressions or can smell hormones, while the fish (largemouth bass in particular) are reacting to to how I am vibrating the line subconsciously. I suspect that there is some subtle way you may give off a sign that you are intent and excited to catch something as you go to take the picture, and this makes the birds perceive you as a predator

I also wonder about some sort of ability of animals to sense nerve impulses electromagnetically, like sharks, but to my knowledge dogs, bass, and birds lack this

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WoW! Super interesting thoughts. :smiling_face: I think you are on to something.
Kind of the reverse, but there have been times when I am half asleep, and I get this feeling that the dog needs something. And I open my eyes, and she’s just standing there staring at me. Of course, it’s probably a simple explanation, like she licked me and I was too groggy to realize she did something more than just stare at me.

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Wow, that’s fascinating! On a similar note I’ve always been fond of the diabolical ironclad beetle. Its exoskeleton is so strong that it can withstand being ran over by a car, and pinning it requires drilling a hole into it because it bends pins.

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