• Is that a wig, or a bug? Five strange sightings in the Peruvian Amazon

    Phil Torres / PeruNature.com

    A spider created a "decoy" that looks like a much larger spider.

    By Douglas Main
    OurAmazingPlanet

    Deep in the Peruvian Amazon lurk strange creatures and unique animals and sights, including spiders that make large spider-shaped decoys in their webs, unusually hairy caterpillars and atmospheric specters called solar halos.

    These amazing finds were spotted by Jeff Cremer, marketing director for Rainforest Expeditions, an eco-tourism company that hosts guests in the Peruvian Amazon and organizes trips to the jungle, as well as Phil Torres, a collaborating biologist. 

    Here are five of the stunning sights Cremer and Torres have spotted:

    1. Spider-shaped decoys

    As if spiders weren't frightening enough (to many, anyway), here's a spider that makes designs in its webs that look like spiders, but are much larger than the web-builders themselves. The animal is almost certainly a new species, Torres said in a release from Rainforest Expeditions. It's thought that the spider-shaped design is a defense mechanism that is meant to distract or confuse predators, wrote Torres, who originally spotted the spiders. 

    "Because of the spider's behavior and appearance, I thought that it might be a new species," Torres said in the statement. "After contacting spider experts, we think it is likely in the genus Cyclosa, which is known for piling debris in its web for defense against predators but has never been recorded to do it in such a defined pattern as this particular discovery."

    Jeff Cremer / Rainforest Expeditions

    Macaws and other birds gather at a "clay lick," which contains minerals not found elsewhere in the area.

    2. Macaw clay lick

    In the middle of the jungle is an exposed hillside with a special type of sodium-rich clay, upon which nine species of parakeets, parrots and macaws feed, according to Cremer. The trace minerals in the clay cannot be obtained anywhere else in the area or from their usual food sources, so the birds flock there in large numbers to ingest small amounts of clay, he said.

    Jeff Cremer / Rainforest Expeditions

    The cocoon of a urodid moth hangs like a basket.

    3. Basket cocoon

    Inside the delicate mesh of a basketlike web, a young urodid moth larva waits to grow to maturity.

    "This cocoon is unlike any other I've come across," Torres writes on the blog TheRevScience. "I couldn't find a lot of literature on these guys, but my best guess is the almost 1-foot-long (30-centimeter) silk string it hangs from and the detailed lattice structure would do well to protect against ants while minimizing investment in an all-encompassing cocoon as many moths have."

    Phil Torres / PeruNature.com

    The larval form of a flannel moth, also known as a puss caterpillar, looks like a yellow toupee.

    4. Bizarre puss caterpillar

    This strange-looking chap is a larval form of a flannel moth, also known as a puss caterpillar. But don't be fooled by their soft-looking hair: Many flannel moth species' spiny hairs are poisonous. The insect also resembles the toupee of a rather famous financier. "We found Donald Trump's wig in the Peruvian Amazon," Cremer joked.

    Phil Torres / PeruNature.com

    These amazing solar halos were spotted above the Tambopata River in Peru.

    5. Solar Halos

    These amazing solar halos were spotted above the Tambopata River, and this may be the most spectacular photo of the phenomenon ever photographed, Cremer said. These halos are caused by refraction and reflection of the sun's rays by ice crystals high in the atmosphere, in cirrus clouds.

    Email Douglas Main or follow him @Douglas_Main. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

    Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Billionaire Jeff Bezos recovers Apollo rocket engines from ocean floor

    Slideshow: Moon rocket engines recovered

    Click through scenes from Bezos Expeditions' recovery of historic Saturn 5 rocket engines from the Atlantic Ocean floor.

    Launch slideshow

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    Salvagers backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos have recovered components from the Saturn 5 rocket engines that powered NASA's Apollo moon missions off the launch pad, more than four decades after they hurtled down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

    Amazon.com's founder reported on the successful three-week sea salvage operation on his Bezos Expeditions website. "What an incredible adventure," he wrote.

    "We've seen an underwater wonderland — an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program," Bezos said Wednesday.

    Almost a year ago, Bezos announced that deep-sea sonar scans had located the first-stage engines that were used for the historic Apollo 11 launch in 1969 — the launch that sent astronauts on their way to the moon's surface for the first time. The first stage of the three-stage Saturn 5 was jettisoned once its fuel was spent, and fell into the Atlantic.

    It took months to plan the recovery expedition — and three weeks ago, Bezos and the salvage team headed out into the Atlantic on the Seabed Worker, a ship that has previously played a role in recovering sunken treasures.

    "While I spent a reasonable chunk of time in my cabin emailing and working, it didn't keep me from getting to know the team," Bezos wrote. Much of his posting was given over to thank-yous for the team members. 

    The chilly ocean waters preserved the hardware in "gorgeous" condition at a depth of more than 14,000 feet, Bezos said. He noted that it was difficult to make out the serial numbers on the hardware. Confirmation of the Apollo 11 connection will have to wait until the parts are more closely examined.

    Engine parts from the Apollo moon effort's Saturn 5 rockets have been in the ocean since the 1960s, but after a year of trying, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos has brought them to the surface. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    Remotely operated vehicles recovered enough components to fashion displays of two flown F-1 engines. Bezos said the ship was now on its way back to Cape Canaveral, Fla., to offload the artifacts. Bezos Expeditions said the restoration would take place at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center.

    "The upcoming restoration will stabilize the hardware and prevent further corrosion," Bezos said. "We want the hardware to tell its true story, including its 5,000 mile per hour re-entry and subsequent impact with the ocean surface. We’re excited to get this hardware on display where just maybe it will inspire something amazing."

    Even before the expedition, Bezos and NASA worked out where the artifacts would be going. The first option would go to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs told NBC News in an email. The second engine would be offered to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, the hometown for Bezos and Amazon.com.

    "While we have no role in the restoration, we are providing assistance to help identify the hardware through our various history offices and field centers," Jacobs said.

    Although Bezos made his billions in the dot-com world, he's had a longstanding interest in spaceflight as well: His rocket venture, Blue Origin, has been working on a launch system for suborbital as well as orbital passenger flights with NASA's backing. Last year, Bezos donated a 5-ton Blue Origin lander prototype to the Museum of Flight.

    In a statement, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden praised the recovery of the engines as a "historic find."

    "We look forward to the restoration of these engines by the Bezos team and applaud Jeff’s desire to make these historic artifacts available for public display," Bolden said. "Jeff and his colleagues at Blue Origin are helping to usher in a new commercial era of space exploration, and we are confident that our continued collaboration will soon result in private human access to space, creating jobs and driving America’s leadership in innovation and exploration."

    A salvage operation backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos has brought up historic Saturn 5 rocket components from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, using remotely operated vehicles. Watch scenes from the recovery effort.

    More space history:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Religious norms may alter animal life in Amazon

    Jose Fragoso / Courtesy of Stanford University

    Two Wapishana women maintain traditional rock carvings at a spiritual site.

    By Megan Gannon
    LiveScience

    Religious and cultural norms often dictate which animals should be protected, eaten or avoided at all costs. Islam prohibits consuming pork; cows are considered sacred by Hindus; and most Americans squirm at the idea of eating a horse. These varying taboos and customs can change the faunal landscape around certain groups of people.

    Researchers from Stanford University investigated how three Christian influences — evangelical, Sabbatarian and Roman Catholic/Anglican — may have altered animal treatment among converted indigenous communities in the Amazon. It turns out that missionaries might not only be changing hearts and minds in the region, but also biodiversity, the researchers say.

    Though people of the Makushi and Wapishana tribes have traditionally believed that consuming lowland tapir meat can make them sick, many of them eat the animal anyway, trusting that their shamans will cure the potential illness. But people in the tribes who converted to one of the Sabbatarian faiths, such as such as Seventh-Day Adventism, and strongly rejected shamanism were much less likely to eat tapir, because their new religion made doing so taboo, the researchers found in their survey of 9,900 individuals in the Amazon. [The Awá: Faces of a Threatened Tribe]

    While the new religions might mean fewer tapirs are killed, getting rid of shamanism, especially among evangelical and Sabbatarian groups, seems to have hit animals that once enjoyed protection under the indigenous leaders, the researchers say. Shamans often guarded and discouraged hunting in areas of land thought to be swarming with powerful spiritual entities.

    "Based on field observations, I think that the removal of shamans has translated into more killing of animals," José Fragoso, a scientist at Stanford University, said in a statement. "Our perception is that they are killing more animals that are not taboo, such as pigs, and also that they are making kills in the holy areas, which were previously off-limits."

    Fragoso and his colleagues, whose research is funded by the National Science Foundation, plan to investigate whether some animals are being killed in greater numbers, according to Stanford University. Their most recent findings were published last year in the journal Human Ecology.

    Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook  and Google+.

    Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Amazon forest more resilient to climate change than once feared

    By Alister Doyle
    Reuters

    The Amazon rain forest is less vulnerable to die off because of global warming than widely believed because the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide also acts as an airborne fertilizer, a study showed on Wednesday.

    The boost to growth from CO2, the main gas from burning fossil fuels blamed for causing climate change, was likely to exceed damaging effects of rising temperatures this century such as drought, it said.

    "I am no longer so worried about a catastrophic die-back due to CO2-induced climate change," Professor Peter Cox of the University of Exeter in England told Reuters of the study he led in the journal Nature. "In that sense it's good news."

    Cox was also the main author of a much-quoted study in 2000 that projected that the Amazon rain forest might dry out from about 2050 and die off because of warming. Others have since suggested fires could transform much the forest into savannah.

    Plants soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it as an ingredient to grow leaves, branches and roots. Stored carbon gets released back to the atmosphere when plants rot or are burnt.

    A retreat of the Amazon forests, releasing vast stores of carbon, could in turn aggravate global warming that is projected to cause more floods, more powerful storms and raise world sea levels by melting ice sheets.

    "CO2 fertilization will beat the negative effect of climate change so that forests will continue to accumulate carbon throughout the 21st century," Cox said of the findings with other British-based researchers.

    Root and branch
    The scientists said the study was a step forward because it used models comparing forest growth with variations in the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

    It estimated that the damaging effects of warming would cause the release of 53 billion tons of carbon stored in lands throughout the tropics, much of it in the Amazon, for every single degree Celsius (1.8F) of temperature rise.

    The benefits of CO2 fertilization exceeded those losses in most scenarios, which ranged up to a 319 billion ton net gain of stored carbon over the 21st century. About 500 to 1,000 billion tons of carbon are stored in land in the tropics.

    Climate change would be more damaging for the Amazon if greenhouse gases other than CO2, such as ozone or methane which do not have a fertilizing effect, take a bigger role, the study said.

    It did not factor in damaging effects from deforestation, mostly burning to clear land for farms, that is blamed for perhaps 17 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

    Brazil has sharply reduced forest losses in recent years. But predictions of a die-back in coming decades had led some people to conclude that there was no point safeguarding trees.

    "Some people argued bizarrely that it would be better to chop them down and use them now," Cox said, adding that the new findings meant that reasoning was no longer valid.

    By underlining the importance of trees for soaking up CO2, the study could also bolster slow-paced efforts to create a market mechanism to reward nations for preserving tropical forests as part of U.N. negotiations on a new treaty to slow climate change, due to be agreed by the end of 2015.