Gray whales often engage in threesomes… and dolphins watch

Mar 22 2022

So, get this. Gray Whales apparently just love getting it on in groups of three and they do it quite regularly.

According to Christopher Fitzsimmons, who is an education specialist at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the huge mammal regularly mates in pods of three.

The threesome often involves two males and a female, with the whales rolling and rubbing to get themselves familiar with one another and to make sure the female is receptive to mating.

It turns out that the whales use their pectoral fins to coerce and align female whales into mating positions. Female whales are highly selective when choosing mates as they are pregnant for around 13 months and spend around a year nursing.

Females are observed avoiding the advances of males for days on end, but when they do engage in mating, the males act as ‘wing-men.’

The Gray whales engage in mating triads wherein one male props the other male up to mate and then they flip position. And it gets weirder… dolphins are often seen near large whale mating rituals for unclear reasons.

The whales often know that the dolphins are there and it appears that they sometimes have fun with them by swimming upside down. The whales are also suspected to mate just for the fun and not just for child rearing.

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Two new frogs discovered in Ecuador are see-through

Mar 22 2022

Just 10 miles away from Ecuador’s capital city Quito are the slopes the Andes shelter which is one of the most biologically diverse and threatened spots in the tropical area.

Here, two newly identified species of glass frogs were discovered in a river called the Guayllabamba. What is special about the frogs is that they are see-through!

This means that underneath, the frogs have a completely transparent belly which shows a red heart, textured white liver and digestive system. In females, the belly also shows a pouch of greenish eggs.

It turns out the two newly discovered frogs are of a different species, with both existing at roughly the same altitude in similar humidity and temperature conditions.

At just around 1.9 to 2.1 centimetres long, the bodies are nearly identical to the naked eye, with lime-green backs peppered by black dots arranged around yellow spots.

There are around 156 known species of glass frogs living throughout the neotropics. With researchers sequencing genes for about 90% of the 150 existing species for the past decade, this revealed that the two new discovered frogs diverge genetically by 5%.

Due to environmental differences between the habitats of the two species, the populations started to get an accumulation of different mutations, separating them genetically.

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28,000 people sign petition to get Kanye West off Coachella line-up

Mar 22 2022

Thousands are calling for Coachella to dump Kanye West after the alleged abusive threats the rapper hurled at Kim Kardashian and her boyfriend Pete Davidson.

The rapper, who is now legally named Ye, was set to perform at the 2022 Coachella festival next month alongside rappers such as Big Sean and Lil baby.

However, a Change.org petition surfaced which demanded that the rapper be banned from the event. It gained some traction, racking up almost 29,000 signatures as of time of writing.

With a goal of reaching 35,000 signatures, the petition states that ‘we have watched Kanye harass, manipulate and hurt Kim, Pete and others for over a year now.’

‘No one seems to want to stand up to him, and the ones that do, he puts under fire as well. Most recently, he has been threatening actual bodily harm on others’ said the petition.

‘This is ridiculous that he is allowed to freely do this. Coachella should be ashamed of themselves and should not be giving him any more of a platform.’ West was recently banned from Instagram after he violated the platform’s guidelines on hate speech and harassment.

The Daily Show host Trevor Noah, who was targeted by Ye for publicly calling him out, said that even though people may not feel sorry for Kim due to her being ‘rich and famous’, what she is going through is terrifying to watch.

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Prime Minister defends cheques on eve of election as necessary

Mar 22 2022

Prime Minister Robert Abela defended the decision to distribute tax cuts and COVID relief cheques just two weeks before the election.

Abela claimed that the cheques were necessary to fend off rising prices from supply shortages and the damaging effects caused by the invasion of Ukraine. He described the cheques as a safety net against inflation.

Abela went on to insist his pledge to keep energy prices stable despite the rise in gas prices due to invasion. ‘This isn’t the first time that oil prices went up like this’ he said, recalling a similar incident in March 2020.

The government, Abela sad, is using the same economic model which was used at the start of the pandemic. The PM was interviewed by Saviour Balzan on TVM News Plus’ Xtra, where he refused to commit on two Labour proposals for mandatory union membership or the scrapping of homework for school pupils.

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