Future Soldiers Could Wear Fish-like Armor
	By studying the scaled armor of a species of fish that have been swimming through the freshwater pools of Africa for the past 100 million years or so, engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology now revealed the secrets to one of the most effective aquatic armors, which could eventually lead to the development of armored suits for the soldiers of the future. The fish examined by the researchers during the study is ... [read more >>]
	29 July 2008, 10:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Ancient Fish Moms Gave Birth
	Scientists have recently found the oldest known fossil that indicates that reproduction through birth was encountered in vertebrate animals as early as 380 million years ago. The fossil belongs to an armored fish female that was about to give birth, but it perished and got fossilized along with the embryo inside it. The previous oldest evidence of the presence of reproduction through birth was found in a fossil dated some 180 million years ... [read more >>]
	29 May 2008, 07:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Grilled Trout with Tomato and Red Onion
	Fish must be an integral part of any eating plan, whether we're talking about a weight loss diet or simply a healthy life regime that involves getting all the beneficial substances that your body needs in order to function properly. The American Heart Association recommends at least two servings of fish every week, and trout is an excellent choice in this respect, as it's a valuable source of omega-3 fatty acids which p ... [read more >>]
	27 May 2008, 11:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Starfish City Found on Underwater Mountains
	Scientists studying the Macquarie Ridge sea mountains south of New Zealand, which are part of a string of underwater volcanoes inactive for several million years, have discovered an area populated by millions of tiny starfish, feeding in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current - world's biggest oceanic current. It was the largest collection and density of cardinal fish and bubblegum coral found during the expedition. The study involved 19 r ... [read more >>]
	19 May 2008, 10:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

4 Things about Gannets and Boobies
	1. Gannets and boobies are coastal seabirds famous for their dive for fish. They have been thought to be related to the pelicans, but DNA analysis revealed that their closest relatives are the snakebirds and, more distantly, the cormorants. The oldest known relative of the gannet is the Odontopterix, which lived 50 Ma ago; its relatives had wingspans of 6 m (20 ft). The Plotopteridae were a type of wingless gannets resembling penguins tha ... [read more >>]
	12 May 2008, 11:27GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

5 Things About Pelicans
	Pelicans look like birds hailing from prehistoric times. Truth is, they are precisely that. These birds are believed to have appeared 100 Ma ago, during the dinosaur era, and it is said they reached their peak of diversity 65-57 Ma ago, when about 57 species roamed the Earth. Today, only 8 species of pelicans can be found around the world. 30 Ma ago, giant pelicans, larger than the modern ones, existed. 1. For long, pelicans were belie ... [read more >>]
	07 May 2008, 11:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Victoria Beckham's Japanese Diet
	When it comes to putting the words "Victoria Beckham" and "diet" in the same sentence usually signals the beginning of a very long expose, riddled with rhetoric questions such as "does she really starve herself" or "I wonder if it's possible for any other woman out there to keep that thin". The fact is, it all becomes much less impressive and more down-to-earth the moment we are all aw ... [read more >>]
	23 April 2008, 09:29GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Metal Alloy for Repelling Sharks
	Sharks are extremely sensitive to electric fields, and this enables them to detect their preys, as all living creatures emit weak electric fields. But this ability of the sharks comes with pros and cons: in captivity, sharks avoid metals reacting with seawater and producing an electric field. In fact, this may be their salvation, as metal longline gears could decrease the number of bycatch of sharks. A new research made at NOAA and presen ... [read more >>]
	23 April 2008, 03:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest Vertebrates
	Chinese researchers from the University of Xi'an found in 1999, in Kunming area, Yunan (southern China) vertebrate fossils older than 500 Ma. Myllokunmingia and Haikouichthys had muscles with a "W" shape (myomeres) in transversal section of the body and a cartilaginous skull and spine. The previous oldest vertebrate fossils were 480 Ma old, but from the Cambrian (542-488 Ma) when most living groups of animals h ... [read more >>]
	16 April 2008, 11:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Top 10 Weird Tongues
	Tongue is an organ specific to the vertebrates. And they can do a lot of things with their tongues... 1. A blue whale weighing 60-70 tons (and the largest blue whales can double this weight) has a 3 tons tongue. It is by far the largest tongue in the animal world. And the whale tongue is not large because of the overall size of the animal; right whales have extremely oversized tongues for their bodies, because they use their tongues lik ... [read more >>]
	12 April 2008, 07:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Passion for Aquarium Fish
	Which are the most common pets? Dogs, cats... No! Fish. In France, for example, there are about 22 million pet fish, but only 7.7 million pet dogs, 8.8 million pet cats and 5.4 million pet birds. In France, the aquarium lovers are organized in 50 clubs and 6 large associations that organize congresses, competitions and diverse pet fish markets annually. They even have magazines, edited in numbers from 35,000 to 65,000. In fact, s ... [read more >>]
	07 April 2008, 16:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Human-Eyed Fish Could Make a New Family
	It is one of the weirdest fish of the ocean: it has a human-like face, it sees binocularly (just like us) and it rather crawls into crevices than swims. This creature appears to make a new unknown family of fishes. The fish has been spotted off Ambon Island (Indonesia) and has tan- and peach-colored zebra-striping. The new species has leg-like pectoral fins (relating it to the ... [read more >>]
	04 April 2008, 04:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Top 10 Deadly Sharks
	The biology books say that sharks and rays make the group of cartilaginous fish, less evolved than most of the other species, that make the group of the bonny fish. Still, sharks, with their highly developed senses and teeth, make the top predators of the seas. Paradoxically, the two largest species of shark, that make also the largest fish species, are harmless for people, being plankton feeders, like the whales: the whale shark (Rhi ... [read more >>]
	22 March 2008, 07:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Jellyfish Attack: One Solution
	Jellyfish inhabit most warm and temperate seas. Over 900 species are known (the Mediterranean Sea alone harbors 180 species). In tropical regions, some jellyfish may inhabit even freshwaters. Usually they are solitary, but sometimes gather in huge numbers, forming "jellyfish soups". In Florida, during the estival season, from March to September, one in four swimmers gets out of the water with burnings caused by jell ... [read more >>]
	19 March 2008, 16:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Deepest Lake in US: Crater Lake
	This is an unique and wild landscape, characterized by chaotic rocks, sharp volcanic cones and coniferous forests surrounding the highest lake in the Cascades Mountains, the deepest lake in US (589 m or 1,963 ft) and the seventh in the world: Crater Lake. It is located in southern Oregon, in a volcanic region. The lake occupies an area of 5,438 hectares (21 square mi), having a diameter of 10 km (6 mi) and being located at an ... [read more >>]
	14 March 2008, 10:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Meet the Fire God: He Cooks With His Hands
	I tell you, Chinese men are precious. They wont's leave you starving even when a kitchen is not nearby. "The power of mind" can have a very realistic meaning in the case of He Tieheng, a mystic Chinese who does not need to keep a cooking machine in the house. That's because the cooking machine is himself: he can cook food only using his mind power. The auto-denominated Fire God explains his unusual deeds thro ... [read more >>]
	13 March 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Enigma of the Natives of Tierra del Fuego
	One of the most primitive human groups on Earth were the native inhabitants of the Tierra del Fuego ("Land of Fire") island, at the southern tip of South America, a stormy, cold and inhospitable area, discovered by Magellan in 1520. The weather is cloudy almost all year long and violent storms are accompanied by tremendous showers, preceded by powerful hurricanes. The harsh clime is due to the freezing humid current, coming from ... [read more >>]
	11 March 2008, 16:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Water Cats
	You may love or hate cats, but they gained their right of citizenship in most urban and rural human settlements. Along the millennia, cats accompanied people mostly through their will. Some civilizations adored and worshiped cats (in Egypt, there was even a cat goddess, Bastet), but in other cases cats were useful auxiliaries in the battle with the rodents. Venice, for example, is a town of canals, gondolas and ...cats. Even if the sym ... [read more >>]
	11 March 2008, 10:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Fishy Business on Your Mobile Phone
	A fishy business is one that you wouldn't want to get involved into, because it usually leads to fishy results and other kinds of fishy situations. And no one wants a fishy life, right? Apparently now there is a fishy business that you would love to be in, and we're talking about a newly announced ... [read more >>]
	10 March 2008, 10:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Most Northern Reef in America
	Biscayne National Park is located at the southeastern extremity of the North American continent, in southeastern Florida. It comprises 750 km²(300 mi²) of islands, clear waters, reef corrals and mangrove forests, preserving Biscayne Bay, one of the top scuba diving areas in the United States. The zone was declared a National Monument in 1968 and turned into a National Park on June 28, 1980. 95 % of the surface of the park is l ... [read more >>]
	26 February 2008, 09:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Hunt in the Dark Underwater
	Shrews have always been considered an ancestral model of mammals, the model of how primitive mammals must have looked during the dinosaur era. But a new research made on water shrews and published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" reveals highly sophisticated methods for hunting underwater small fish and aquatic insects even in total darkness. Being so small (half the size of a house mouse), water shrew ... [read more >>]
	20 February 2008, 04:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sexual Parazitism: Females Carrying Harems of Parazite Males
	Many males have a bad life. We use to say that the male is an appendix of the penis. In octopuses and other cephalopods, the contact of the female with the male is made only with his penis (hectocotylus, represented by the male's eighth arm). In other species, like spiders or praying mantises, males starts to be eaten even during the copulation. But the case of the Deep Sea Angler fishes is revolting for the male kind... ... [read more >>]
	16 February 2008, 07:19GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Black Smokers: Extraterrestrial Life on Earth!
	At the bottom of the oceans, the lowest level of the ocean waters, submarine volcanoes are found. They erupt periodically, but also phenomena similar to others that accompany terrestrial volcanoes, such as submarine geysers, can be found and are called hydrothermal vents (hot vents) or black smokers. The submarine vents, linked to the submarine volcanic activity, trigger an unusual life abundance on the bottom of the ocean, at depths ... [read more >>]
	15 February 2008, 09:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Does Contamination-Induced Hermaphrodism Vary?
	Some fish may be hermaphrodites by nature, but they live in the sea and their breeding is not affected by this. Instead, what happens with many freshwater fish in developed countries is not something natural. A new research published in the "Journal of Aquatic Animal Health" has made a step closer to find out why so many male smallmouth bass in the Potomac River basin produce immature female egg cells in their teste ... [read more >>]
	12 February 2008, 06:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Cannibal Dads Have More Sex!
	Your parents might urge you to get a job if you've reached 30 and you're still living with them, but in animals, this can be much tougher: dad will eat his offspring. A new research published in the journal "Biology Letters" has attempted to explain some of the reasons why parents might cannibalize their own spawn. Many animals cannibalize their own offspring, from pigs and polar bears to burying beetles, hamsters, ... [read more >>]
	07 February 2008, 06:54GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Not Only Some Men Kiss Female Behinds for Power
	Kissing a female bottom in order to ascend in the hierarchical rank is not specific only to some men. There are cases when testosterone (and its accompanying aggression) or kin degree may not help, but the help of the right female may, as found by a study on the social behavior of an African fish species and published in the journal "Proceedings of the Royal Society." With their tiny brains, fish make complex connections between ... [read more >>]
	31 January 2008, 04:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

10 Things You Did not Know About Bony Fish
	1. Today there are about 21,000 species of bony fish, inhabiting all marine and freshwater environments. Their number is larger than the number of all other vertebrates together. Compare this with about 50 species of lampreys and hagfish (jawless fishes) and about 700 species of sharks and rays (cartilaginous fishes). Of the bony fish, about 6,700 species live in freshwater (33.1 %), 1,625 freshwater species that can live for a time in sa ... [read more >>]
	29 January 2008, 16:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

9 Things About Ocean Life
	1. Ocean life can go from the surface down to... 2.5 km (1.5 mi) under the ocean floor. That's the place where living bacteria were found! 2. At a depth of 5 m (16 ft), 50 % of the solar light is already absorbed. At a depth of 25 m (83 ft), just 3 % of the sunlight penetrates. 3. The base of the food chain is the ocean is made by plankton, microscopical algae and tiny animals feeding on them. The plants (phytoplankt ... [read more >>]
	23 January 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

This 100 Years Old Fish Has 225 Kg (500 lbs)!
	The largest fish you will find in a river is beluga, a sturgeon living in the Danube and Volga rivers. Today, overfishing and poaching made it impossible to catch such huge beasts up to 8.6 m (28 ft) long and weighing as much as 2,700 kg (5,940 lbs), but individuals up to 5.5 m (18 ft) long and weighing hundreds of kg are still found. So, maybe this is a small fish compared to a fully-grown beluga, but this is what two Britis ... [read more >>]
	23 January 2008, 05:24GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Is Fish Good or Bad For Your Heart?
	Fish oil is the childhood nightmare for many of our grandparents. And while fish oil supplements could be recommended for some cardiac patients, others could experience negative effects, as found by a meta analysis carried out at St. Michael’s Hospital and University of Toronto and published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The team analyzed data coming from researches made on subjects with implantable cardioverte ... [read more >>]
	15 January 2008, 04:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Huge Dinosaur Ate Fish!
	We are more familiarized with the ferocious meat-eating dinosaurs, like T-rex. But some appear to have been skilled fishers, too! Baryonyx was found in 1983 near Dorking in Surrey, UK. It was 125 million years old, and was classified to the family of spinosaurs. The beast was up to 10 m (33 ft) long and weighed up to 2 tonnes. The odd look of these dinosaurs pointed that they might have eaten fish. But a new research, using computer mo ... [read more >>]
	14 January 2008, 06:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Top 4 Angler Hunters
	1.There is a whole order of fish, comprising 18 families, called anglerfish. The first spiny ray of the dorsal is located on the head and transformed into line and esca (bait), aimed for attracting prey to the mouth, imitating small marine creatures making the fish's food. The most famous fish of this order belong to the genus Lophius (monkfish, goosefish, fishing-frog, frog-fish, sea-devil), with a grotesque body shape. Despite ... [read more >>]
	12 January 2008, 08:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

5 Issues About the Otters
	1.Otters are nothing more than water weasels. The oldest otter was found in France: Potamotherium, 30 million years old. The upper carnassial teeth were similar to those of a seal, very different from those of the weasels. This could have also been an ancestor of the seals. The genus Lutra, comprising most modern otters, emerged in Eurasia and spread to North America and northern Africa. The modern otter of Eurasia (Lutra lutra) was pre ... [read more >>]
	11 January 2008, 16:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Bass Landing Gameplay Hints (PSX)
	As Real as it Gets Without Getting wet! Bass Landing sets the standards for fishing game realism with its exclusive dual shock compatible rod and reel controller. Bass Landing comes bundled with a custom designed rod/reel controller that ... [read more >>]
	07 January 2008, 17:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Weather and Contamination Indicator Species
	Indigenous and rural people, staying in a closer contact with nature, can predict the weather by "reading" flora and fauna. For example, in Europe, people know when a rainfall is approaching because lettuces, Hipochoeris radicata (a forb), and wall lettuces open their leafs. Bees, too, hurry up to their hive, the butterflies fly near the windows and the swallows and martens on "air pillows" at 10-20 cm (4-8 in) from ... [read more >>]
	21 December 2007, 07:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Records of Mekong
	The largest river in Southeastern Asia, Mekong is also the 11th-longest river in the world and the 12th-largest in volume (discharging 475 km³ of water annually). Its estimated length is 4,880 km (3,032 mi), and it drains an area of 810,000 km² (313,000 sq mi). From the Tibetan Plateau it runs through Yunnan (China), Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The name Mekong comes from Thai "Mae Nam Khong", "Mother of all ... [read more >>]
	18 December 2007, 06:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Piss Fight and Sex: Dominant Males Urinate More and Have Smellier Urine!
	In many cultures, pissing over the enemy is the supreme act of humiliation, and clearly proof of power and dominance. Some monkeys piss over their possible predators on the ground. But urine can also mix with sex. If you thought that only some human freaks can reach orgasm through urine (a sexual deviation called urolagnia, urophilia or undinism), you should know that our evolutionary relatives are 'better' than us: in capuchin m ... [read more >>]
	17 December 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Secrets of the Corals Revealed to You
	Corals really give a meaning to the notion that beauty is under the surface. That's the clearest seawater, a crystal clearness increased by the white sand. A coral reef is like a sea rainforest. Corals are colonies of polyps, small animals with a maximum diameter of 2.5 cm (1 in). The soft polyp is connected to its neighbor through living tissue covered by mucus. During the day, the corals seem to be dead stones, because the poly ... [read more >>]
	15 December 2007, 04:24GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Size Really Does Matter!
	"Oh, no, honey, it's about technique!" says your girl. Is it so? Some fish come with the pure truth: size does matter! In the case of the swordtail, a common tank fish, the simple sight of a well-endowed male turns off an entire families of genes (about 77 genes overall) in the female's brain, as a team at the University of Texas at Austin has found in a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Soci ... [read more >>]
	14 December 2007, 03:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Eels: the Oddest Migration for Sex
	Today, eel is one of the most popular fish in some world's cuisines, despite the strange snake like look. The oldest eel fossils are 100 million years old (from the time of dinosaurs) and were found in southern France and Lebanon, coming from Mesogea, the ancestral sea from which Mediterranean appeared and made a link between Atlantic and Pacific. Two groups of eels formed from the ancestral species, Anguilla ancestralis: the 17 ... [read more >>]
	10 December 2007, 16:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

8 Amazing Facts About the Great White Shark
	It is difficult to trigger the sympathy of the audience with a giant conical head, a set of huge razor sharp serrated teeth, a carnivorous appetite, a malicious grin and a reputation of "man-eater". The slightest encounter with people is enough to fill the headlines. 1.With a strong rocket-like body, up to 7.2 m (24 ft) long and up to 3.4 tons heavy, the great white shark is the world's largest predator fish (even at 6.4 ... [read more >>]
	04 December 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Driest, Lowest and Hottest Land in North America: the Death Valley
	With a length of 225 km (140 mi) and a width of 8-24 km (5-15 mi), the Death Valley, located in eastern California and western Nevada, is the driest, lowest and hottest land in North America. At Furnace Creek, the air temperature reached 57°C and that of the soil 94°C, with just 6°C under the water boiling point. This value was overcome just in Libya (58oC), still, the average summer temperature is the highest in the Death Valley, turning ... [read more >>]
	01 December 2007, 07:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Top 10 Weird Fish
	Most people think that fish are some quite dumb beings living in the water, just waiting to be eaten. Is that really so? Read on and you may be amazed... 1. Archerfishes (Toxotes sp) reunite a group of seven small fish species, with a maximum length of 40 cm, found in fresh, brackish or marine waters from India to the Philippines, Australia and Polynesia. They are unique in the animal kingdom because of their peculiar way of huntin ... [read more >>]
	24 November 2007, 08:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Giant 2.4 m (8 ft) Long Catfish!
	This is the largest freshwater fish. Just before midnight on November 13, fishers in Cambodia captured this individual of Mekong giant catfish, 8 ft long (2.4 meters long) ands weighing 450 pounds (204 kg). "This is the only giant catfish that has been caught this year so far, making it the worst year on record for catch of giant fish species", said Zeb Hogan, a fisheries biologist at the University of Reno in Nevada ... [read more >>]
	23 November 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The African Venice: Ganvie
	Venice is not something unique to Europe. There are Asian Venices, and even an African one: Ganvie. This is a tourist attraction not just for the westerners but also for the Africans. Ganvie is a 15,000 inhabitants village, built on pillars over the waters of the lake Nokoue, at north of Cotonou, Benin. In Ganvie there are no bicycles, cars, sidewalks or streets. If a local wants to go to the school, market, dispensary, home or to [ADM ... [read more >>]
	21 November 2007, 10:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Lose 3-5 kg (6.6-11 pounds) in Two Weeks with the Rotation Diet
	The rotation diet is based on introducing in your daily menu various food categories every 4 days. The types of food are divided into four categories and into biological families. Each day you should eat food belonging to the same family or distinct families and groups, but you should not eat that again before four days have passed. For example, if today you eat an apple, during the next four days you must not eat another one or a fruit be ... [read more >>]
	17 November 2007, 06:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Coral Reefs: Beautiful but Fragile
	That's the clearest seawater, a crystal clearness increased by the white sand. A coral reef is like a sea rainforest. Corals are colonies made up of polyps, small animals with a maximum diameter of 2.5 cm (1 in). The soft polyp is linked to its neighbor through living tissue covered by mucus. During the day, the corals look like stones, because the polyps retire into their skeletons. During the night, the spread tentacles of the p ... [read more >>]
	16 November 2007, 17:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Lose 3-4 kg (7-9 Pounds) in Two Weeks with the Ovo-lacto-vegetarian Diet
	Despite the fact that everybody believes it's easier to lose weight if you avoid eating meat and fish, because of the satiating power of the animal proteins, it is sure that ovo-lacto-vegetarian slimming can be as much or more effective than carnivorous diet. This diet allows the consume of a great variety and quantity of green vegetables, especially raw, having a euphoria effect on our mood, while having a depurative and disintoxicat ... [read more >>]
	16 November 2007, 15:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Gene for Oral Sex!
	The penis is a gift of evolution. At least in the case of fish, in which most species have an external fecundation (like we see in most frogs and toads), and a penis would be useless. (the sole exception are sharks, rays, and species of Poeciliidae family and related groups, tiny tropical species, some very common in fish tanks, like gupy, molly, platy, swordtail). But some fish need to have complete oral sex. And they can do ... [read more >>]
	16 November 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Best Way to Move Using an Electrical Radar
	The vast majority of the animals, including us, walk forward because they sense what's in front of them. Predators focus on the prey located in front of them. But a small electric fish from the Amazon, the black ghost knifefish (Apteronotus albifrons), just 15 cm (6 in) long, can move also backwards to catch its prey. This is possible because while most predators use passive sensing, waiting for information to come to them, the knifef ... [read more >>]
	14 November 2007, 05:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia