Puff adders have some sort of scent camouflage to stop them being detected.

The African Puff adders, scientifically known as Bitis arietans, hunt by ambushing their prey. When annoyed, they often emit a hiss or puff sound – hence their name. The snake's main predators include honey badgers, warthogs, some larger birds and other snakes.

Puff adders catch prey by remaining motionless until it approaches within striking range. They can stay still for days. Since they are in this position for a long time above ground it should make them easy for predators to find using their sense of smell.  

However, researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand  discovered that the snakes have evolved an impressive visual and chemical camouflage that makes them virtually impossible to detect. They spent three years radio tracking 30 puff adders to see how effective their scent camouflage is in combination with their natural markings.

When dogs and mongooses, which have no problem in smelling other types of snakes, were released near the puff adders they were almost completely unaware of them, on occasion actually stepping on them and walking over them.

The puff adders, surprisingly, remained motionless, relying on their colouration and lack of obvious smell to protect them. This appears to be an adaption as a result this habit of keeping still, even when threatened.

Puff adders are usually only aggressive when they are on the move, presumably because they have given their presence away at that stage.

I wouldn't recommend testing it out though.

New marine reserve around Ascension Island in the Atlantic ocean

The UK government is to create a marine reserve almost as big as the UK in the  waters of Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

Just over half of the protected area will be closed to fishing. It is the latest marine reserve to be declared around remote islands, which will increase marine conservation zones to about 2% of the ocean. This is still much less than  the 30% recommended by scientists to preserve species and expand fish stocks, but is a step in the right direction.

Various governments have designated marine parks at Palau in the North Pacific, Easter Island
and Pitcairn in the South Pacific, and New Zealand's Kermadec islands, in what has become a
landmark year for ocean conservation.

The latest reserve at Ascension Island is said to hold some of the largest marlin in the world, one of the largest populations of green turtles, which breed there, big colonies of tropical seabirds and the Ascension frigate bird. The bird has brownish-black plumage and a deeply forked tail. It has a wingspan of around 2 m (6.6 ft). The male has a striking red gular sac which it inflates to attract a mate. They feed mainly on Flying fish.

The reserve totals 234,291 sq km, slightly less than the size of the United Kingdom. It could
be ready by 2017, once further data has been collected and analysed.

A sixty four year old albatross is about to lay yet another egg

The World's oldest known tagged seabird is a Laysan Albatross named Wisdom. She is at least 64
years old and was tagged in 1956.

And this year she is back at her nest site at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife refuge and preparing to lay yet another egg. She has already raised around 37 chicks over the years.

It takes both parents about six months to rear a single chick.

During her lifetime she has flown over six million miles over the Southern Oceans.

The biggest threat to most Albatrosses is pollution in the form of plastic waste. Most species
are endangered.

Chiton mollusks can see with eyes embedded in their shells

The chiton is a type of mollusk, and the species that was studied is named  Acanthopleura granula. It
was found that these animals have lots of small lenses with mineral bases that are scattered
across their armored shells. Each is smaller than a tenth of a millimeter across.

The eyes allow the animals to see what is happening in their nearby environment without having
to open a shell or anything like that. In effect they are seeing through the shell. The rest of
the shell is opaque, and only the eyes are transparent.

A team at the at the Argonne National Laboratory,  performed high-resolution X-ray tomagraphy
tests on individual eyes in the chiton shell, in order to confirm that the lenses can form images. The chitons can rapidly respond when predators approach. They do so by gripping onto the substrate below them and not allowing themselves to be dislodged from it.

There is a downside to this. The study team also learned that as chiton eyes increase in size
and complexity, the armor actually performs less effectively as the eyes weaken it somewhat.

Nematodes and tardigrades: survivors of the apocalypse?

In the very deepest, hottest and inhospitable parts of some Gold Mines, there live some tiny worms which creatures are the deepest living animals that have ever been discovered.

How they got there is a mystery, as is how long they have been living there. There is not much food or oxygen down there. These creatures are a type of Nematode worm.

Tests have been done on the worms to make sure they are not being brought in from outside, and also it has been found that they prefer to feed on the bacteria present in the mine rather than those present on surface. Bacteria have been shown to live up to 12Km underground so who knows how far down the worms can go.

Nematodes are widespread through most environments in the Earth, from hot deserts to the top of cold mountains and also in the bodies of other livng beings, including humans.

They can survive oxygen levels down to just 0.5% and have been found to tolerate temperatures up to 61 deg C.

If things get really really tough they have another survival technique ready to deploy. They can go into a kind of stasis triggered by releasing a pheromone and slow their metabolism right down in what is known as the Dauer stage. Dauer is a non aging duration that does not affect the adult lifespan. In this stage they have survived re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere from space.

Other amazing survivors are a group of tiny animals known as Tardigrades.These are tiny (0.5-1.5mm) water dwelling, eight legged, segmented micro animals. They are some of the toughest of known organisms.

They can cope with conditions that would be rapidly fatal to nearly all other known life forms.

They can withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to above the boiling point of water (100 °C), pressures about six times greater than those found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space.

Some were stuck on a space craft and not only survived the jouney but a few of the females had laid eggs.

They can go without food or water for more than 10 years, drying out to the point where they contain 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce once given the chance.

Most eat mosses lichens and algae, but some are carnivorous.

I think tardigrades would make the perfect pets.

Not all rats are bad

The NGO APOPO has announced plans to raise funds via crowdfunding to transform a former
military site in Mozambique into a nature reserve.

The organisation uses specially trained rats that can sniff out explosives. They are known as
HERO Rats. There are sixteen  African giant pouched rats used in operations at this site.

They are trained from an early age to first associate a 'click' sound with food. Then they are taught to scent out TNT and are rewarded with food and a click when they correctly differentiate this smell.
Food is then hidden in a sandbox and the rat has to find it and walk down lanes back to its
trainer. After that they enter field training and then fianlly they are used for real operations.

The work is ongoing at the Malhazine site in Maputo. There have been several explosions therein
the past which have left many civilians either dead or maimed, and ammunition scattered across
the Landscape.

The site will be transferred into an ecologial park and will be staffed by locals.

So far in other operations, principally mine clearing, HERO Rats have cleared 13274 mines, 28792
small arms and ammunition, and 1142 bombs, and returned 11,000,000 m2 of land to the public.

Not all rats are bad.

Bananas may bash viruses

A new study of Bananas says that with slight changes, the favourite yellow fruit holds the potential to battle many viruses, including influenza.

The technique that creates the protein that fights viruses may also be the first step to developing other drugs that take hold of the "sugar code" used by our cells to talk amongst themselves. Viruses and other invaders tend to hijack that code and use it for their own purposes.

What happens is a protein called banana lectin, or BanLec, can "read" sugars on the exteriors of viruses and cells and block them. It was already known that the same thing could prevent the virus that causes AIDS from entering cells, but there were side effects that kept it from becoming useable.

A team of scientists have put together a new version of BanLec which is effective against the
viruses behind AIDS, influenza and hepatitis C in tests in blood samples and tissue. In mice,it also worked at preventing infection by the flu virus.

However it is years away from being able to be used by humans.

Camels and the MERS virus

Nearly half of all camels in Kenya have been infected by the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a new study shows. These findings shed light on the role the desert animals might play in transmitting this emerging disease to humans.

Camels May Transmit Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) To Humans

IVORY TRADE BAN IN AMERICA AND CHINA

WASHINGTON (Sept. 25, 2015) — In a historic accord to save Africa’s elephants from a poaching crisis killing 33,000 elephants annually, President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping agreed Friday to end commercial ivory sales in the United States and China.

Robot being used to Kill Queen of Thorns Starfish on Great Barrier Reef

On Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the Crown-of-thorns starfish destroys large swathes of coral
and threatens the overall health of the reef. This starfish is proving difficult to find and eradicate with conventional methods.

Queensland University of Technology researchers have created a hunter-killer robot – the COTSbot – that's designed to automatically search out and destroy these aquatic pests.

the COTSbot is fitted with stereoscopic cameras to provide it with depth perception, along with
five individual stability thrusters, GPS navigation, pitch-and-roll sensors, and the weapon that gives it its killer status: A pneumatic injection arm is used to give a COTS  a lethal dose of bile salts.

If the robot is unsure that something is actually a COTS, it takes a photo of the object to be
later verified by a human, and that human feedback is incorporated into the robot's memory bank.

The robot has been trained to think for itself over a period of six months.