The Giant Ants of Atlanta Meet The Big Bees of Melbourne

The recent post about Uncle Milton's ant farm colonies, complete with The Giant Ants of Atlanta, 

echoed around the world and brought us The Big Bees of Melbourne, from a reader with a sense of humor. 

Very cool! 

Thank you.

Saudis Declare Vulture Innocent of Espionage

We can all rest easy now...
Prince Bandar bin Saud Al Saud has cleared a vulture of charges that it was spying on behalf of the Israeli government. Last week, Saudi officials had "detained" the vulture, fearing that its GPS tracker, which was labeled "Tel Aviv University," suggested the bird was an Israeli spy. After a long week of international mockery, an apparently embarrassed Prince Bandar bin Saud Al Saud stepped in to order the vulture's release and chide Saudi officials and journalists who had accused it of international espionage. ABC News' Alexander Marquardt reports Saud's statement. (more)

Polar Bear TSCM vs. BBC SpyCams

via engadget.com...

Iceberg Cam, Snowball Cam, Blizzard Cam and Drift Cam were the arctic photographer's best friends -- high-tech spy robot cameras designed to resist cold and traverse sub-zero terrain. Then they got crushed to death by giant polar bears while attempting to make friends. Seriously, that's the basic gist of Polar Bear: Spy on the Ice, a new BBC documentary which began airing last week, and which just so happens to be narrated by David Tennant. (more) (video) (video)

Next out of the lab... DNA stealing mosquitos!

A vulture tagged by scientists at Tel Aviv University has strayed into Saudi Arabian territory, where it was promptly arrested on suspicion of being a Mossad spy, Israeli and Saudi media reported Tuesday.

The bird was found in a rural area of the country wearing a transmitter and a leg bracelet bearing the words "Tel Aviv University", according to the reports, which surfaced first in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv.

Although these tags indicate that the bird was part of a long-term research project into migration patters, residents and local reporters told Saudi Arabia's Al-Weeam newspaper that the matter seemed to be a "Zionist plot."

The accusations went viral, with hundreds of posts on Arabic-language websites and forums claiming that the "Zionists" had trained these birds for espionage.

The Sinai regional governor last month suggested that a shark that killed and maimed tourists on its Red Sea port may have been intentionally released by Israeli agents in order to sabotage the country's tourist industry. (more)

SpyCam Story #592 - The Eggman, superhero.

Anonymous for Animal Rights, an Israeli nonprofit dedicated to exposing cruelty in factory farms, has done something truly revolutionary. Instead of sending in an undercover volunteer to collect horrific footage at slaughterhouses and Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), the group has installed a web camera at an egg farming facility to stream the cruelty live. 
 
And because factory farms are so enormous and indistinguishable, the farmers can’t find the camera.

This ingenious move is part of a larger, ongoing campaign by Anonymous to outlaw battery cages for egg laying hens in Israel. These cages mean that hens spend their entire lifetime in a space smaller than even a page of a trade paperback book—about 550 square centimeters. Click on the link and you’ll see the daily life of egg laying hens, crammed three (or more) to a cage. They can’t spread their wings, bathe in dust, forage, fly, run, or engage in any of their natural behaviors. They don’t even get to stand on solid ground — their feet poke through the gaping wire mesh they’re forced to stand on, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. (more)

And you thought a 'Methane Monster From the Planet Argone' was just sci-fi.

I know this is not spy or security related, but it is just plain too cool to ignore! ~Kevin 

via The Wall Street Journal... 
Researchers on Thursday said they had created microbes that "very likely" use arsenic in their DNA in place of phosphorus, in what may be the first exception to the formula long thought to govern the basic chemistry of life.

Force-grown in the lab, the bacteria use the notorious poison to replace molecules of the element phosphorus in critical parts of their working biology, including in the spiral backbone of DNA, which is a crucial component for all known life, the researchers said. By depending on an element so toxic to normal life, the microbes are a living demonstration of the exotic substances that alien biochemistry might, in theory at least, use on other worlds.

"It is building itself out of arsenic," said geo-microbiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon at NASA's Astrobiology Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey, who led researchers from eight federal and university laboratories conducting the experiment. "All life we know is the same biochemically, and this is a little different. It is suggesting there is another way to be alive."
(more) (another methane monster) (sing-a-long)

Anybody got a match?

"Just don't let the birds see them." ~Hitchcock

The way light hits a tropical butterfly's wings could make your bank card safer, according to a new U.K. study.

That's because scientists are now able to mimic the cell structure of butterfly scales to encrypt information on banknotes and other secure cards, researchers at Britain's Cambridge University say.

"We have unlocked one of nature's secrets and combined this knowledge with state-of-the-art nanofabrication to mimic the intricate optical designs found in nature," said lead researcher Mathias Kolle on the university's website. (more)

SpyCam Story #566 - Bear in the Den (SFW)

No, no, the title did not say "Bare."

“On Friday the 8th January Doug Hajicek (with the help of Pix Controller and www.bear.org) installed an Infra Red camera system into Lily’s den near Ely, Minnesota. It is believed that Lily (a 2 year old black bear) is pregnant and there is an above average chance that she will give birth in mid January.”
The dark area in this screen shot is her fur. The live feed (with sound and 60Hz hum) can be seen here.

Where do pets go? GPS surveillance knows.

To track his wandering cat, Mark Spezio rigged up a cat collar with a lightweight GPS logger. Here's what he discovered about KooKoo's secret habits... (video)

Little Buggers Spy on Neighbors and Spread Misinformation

via The Wall Street Journal...
Bacteria are the oldest living things on earth, and researchers have long felt that they must lead dull, unfussy lives. New discoveries are starting to show just how wrong that notion is. For a simple, single-cell creature, a bacterium is surprisingly social.

It can communicate in two languages. It can tell self from nonself, friend from foe. It thrives in the company of others. It spies on neighbors, spreads misinformation and even commits fratricide.

"Really, they're just stripped-down versions of us," says Bonnie Bassler, microbial geneticist at Princeton University, who has spent two decades peeking at the inner lives of bacteria. Dr. Bassler and other scientists are using this information to devise new ways to fight infections and reduce antibiotic resistance. (more) (video)

SpyCam Story #544 - Monkey Business

TX - Surveillance video at a Dallas-area store caught the theft of several dozen plants, flowers and small statues on tape. But the culprit turned out to be a very unusual thief, a monkey with serious sticky fingers. (video) (sing-a-long)

Mighty Mouse, Atom Ant, Secret Squirrel...

The movie "G-Force" stars a squad of U.S. government-trained guinea pig spies on a mission to thwart an evil billionaire from taking over the world.

While the plot is pure Hollywood, nature is full of critters great and small that humanity has harnessed for espionage, protection and moral support.
• Dolphins
• Sea Lions
• Fish
• Sharks
• Dogs
• Penguin
• Insects
• Robot Chicken (just kidding)
(more)
P.S. - Could "G-Force" be based on a real rodent spy case? (Click here.)

Japanese scientists to build robot insects

Japan - Police release a swarm of robot-moths to sniff out a distant drug stash. Rescue robot-bees dodge through earthquake rubble to find survivors.

These may sound like science-fiction scenarios, but they are the visions of Japanese scientists who hope to understand and then rebuild the brains of insects and program them for specific tasks.

Ryohei Kanzaki, a professor at Tokyo University's Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology, has studied insect brains for three decades and become a pioneer in the field of insect-machine hybrids. (more)

Building Spy Bats

Researchers are studying creatures that fly through the night in hopes of making tiny flying spies.

(right) AeroVironment's DARPA-funded prototype drone made a successful test flight, lifting itself and its energy source.

The most popular of these drones are called Ravens, built by the Monrovia, Calif., company AeroVironment. They are about 4.5 feet across, weigh six pounds and can stay aloft for about an hour and a half. (More, with two cool clips of a bat flying in slow motion.)

"Bug the bugs, then kill them!"

The Island of Guam became a living laboratory for scientists as they attached acoustic equipment to coconut trees in order to listen for rhinoceros beetles... the Guam Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle Eradication Project.

"This method of acoustic detection allowed Guam 'rhino hunters' to quickly and efficiently locate feeding grubs in an area thought to be rhino-beetle free," says Aubrey Moore, "and as the beetle broadens its range the acoustic approach to detection may save money and the lives of many coconut trees." (more)

Oryctes rhinoceros (L.) (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Dynastinae) causes economically important damage to ornamental and commercial coconut palm trees in the western Pacific region that could be mitigated significantly by early detection and treatment. Adults are difficult to detect visually because they attack the crowns of the trees and feed internally before mating and dispersing to new hosts. Visual inspection is nevertheless the most widely used detection method, augmented with pheromone traps. This species is an ideal candidate for acoustic detection because the adults are large, active borers that produce stridulations during courtship and mating. (more)

Fun to play with.
"For some weird reason, Japanese people love Rhinoceros Beetles. It is very common for a boy to have a beetle as a pet. They usually put them in little boxes and carry them around in their pockets. Used almost like a Pokemon, boys will whip out their beetles and make them fight each other. This vending machine sells Rhinoceros Beetles - Males for 300 yen, and females for 100 yen." (more)

...and, Not Your Grandfather's Beetle! Uneavesdroppable. Won't be your pet. Would probably make a great fighter, however. (video)

Brazilian Cell Phones Smuggled

Brazil - Police say inmates are using carrier pigeons to smuggle cellphones onto a prison farm in southeastern Brazil.

Police inspector Celso Soramiglio says that guards at a prison near the city of Sorocaba caught a pigeon last Wednesday with components of a small cellphone inside a bag tied to one of its legs.

A day later, another pigeon was found with a bag containing a cellphone charger.

The birds apparently were bred and raised inside the prison, smuggled out, outfitted with the cellphone parts and then released to fly back.

Soramiglio noted that pigeons "instinctively fly back home — always." (more)

To our Washington, DC readers: Read the headline again. It's not as many cell phones as you're thinking.

Why Woodpeckers Peck

They may be digging for bugs.
They may be building a home.
But when they are whacking loudly on your roof or tin chimney cap (the louder, the better) we know...

...if a male bird is eavesdropping, the message they get is, "Don't mess with me, I'm the biggest, baddest woodpecker around!"

If a female flicker hears the hammering, she just might think, "Wow, what a hunk," and come a little closer to check him out in person. (more)

Not to be confused, of course, with the old Russian Woodpecker, who pecks peeked over the horizon. Why? To keep an eye on U.S.

Pet Eye View Digital Camera

What have Kitty and Fido been up to all day, anyway?
Find out with this amazing device!
The ultra-compact and extremely durable digital camera clips onto your pet's collar, just like an ID tag. Its water-resistant ABS housing will keep it secure while your best friend roams the world, giving you the chance of a lifetime to actually see all the stories your pet has been dying to tell you for years! The internal memory stores lots of photos, and the timer can be set to automatically take a shot every 1, 5, or 15 minutes. (more)
FutureWatch...
Wireless Color Real-Time Video with Sound.
No, wait...
that's the next story.

"Iran a spy ring of squirrels and pigeons."

July 2007 - ...the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported this week, that police had, ahem, "arrested" 14 squirrels on charges of espionage.

The rodents were found near the Iranian border, allegedly equipped with eavesdropping devices, according to IRNA. (more) (background)

TODAY - Security forces in Natanz have arrested two suspected "spy pigeons" near Iran's controversial uranium enrichment facility, the reformist Etemad Melli newspaper reported on Monday. One of the pigeons was caught near a rose water production plant in the city of Kashan in Isfahan province, the report cited an unnamed informed source as saying, adding that some metal rings and invisible strings were attached to the bird.

"Early this month, a black pigeon was caught bearing a blue-coated metal ring, with invisible strings," the source was quoted as saying of the second pigeon. (more) (background) (clue) (history)

FutureWatch - Spying spiders and dragonflys. (video) (video)

Weird Science #342 - E-proboscis

Device can detect distress signals from plants that are harmed, under attack It turns out the best way to hear a plant scream is to smell it.

Scientists are using an electronic nose tailored to eavesdrop on plants that have been damaged or are under attack. The nose successfully discriminated among the various distress signals different plants emit, depending on the pests plaguing them — discerning, for example, a tobacco hornworm attack from assault by powdery mildew. (more)

Not so strange.
Our noses have always been talking.
"I smell a rat." (lying)
"The smell of fear." (fear)
"The smell of death." (sickness)
"The scent of a woman." (attraction)
...and dog's noses talk even louder.