A Look Back: NJIT's Unusual Explorations of Nature
From discovering dinosaur-era ants with metal horns on their head, to swapping the brains of “Frankenfish,” to joining whale musicians at sea, NJIT faculty have been part of some unusual explorations of nature, sometimes taking them to distant corners of the world. Here, we look back on some of them.
Resurrecting Vlad the Impaler and the “Hell Ants”
A prehistoric ant with deadly scythe-like mandibles and a metal-reinforced horn on its head used for impaling its victims is certainly going to make this list. Such an inclusion was made possible after NJIT evolutionary biologists in 2017 uncovered a 99-million-year-old amber fossil encasing an ancient ant predator, now known as “Vlad the Impaler” (Linguamyrmex vladi). NJIT faculty and students have since collaborated to begin digitally reconstructing the Cretaceous-era insect and other members of the strange ant lineage, known as the “hell ants,” which existed for nearly 20 million years before vanishing around the time the dinosaurs nearly 65 million years ago. Read more about the collaboration, as well as the the latest hell ant discovery...
Researchers Simulate Brain-Body Swaps of “Frankenfish”
Most electric fish enjoy hiding out in tunnel-like refuges, and use some impressive swimming skill to stay tucked away in them despite powerful underwater currents. That was put to the test when NJIT researchers successfully simulated “fish brain transplants” between a South American species of weakly electric fish, the glass knifefish (Eigenmannia virescens). These “frankenfish" showed how they handled the sudden brain-body swap — relying on their senses to regain control of the fine-motor movements they use for staying fixed inside their beloved refuges, while answering some key questions about the connection between the brain, body and locomotor movement. Read more...
These Fishes Were Made for Walking
It’s not every day one encounters a blind, walking cavefish that climbs waterfalls like a salamander. But in 2016, that’s exactly what NJIT researchers observed while exploring Thailand’s northern cave systems. Today, NJIT is leading an NSF-funded study of the hillstream loach family including the extremely rare fish Cryptotora thamicola — a species known capable of walking on land similarly to four-limbed mammal and amphibian vertebrates, or tetrapods. Watch here...
Recovering Oceans of Sound from Humpback Whale Orca-stras
NJIT Distinguished Professor of Humanities David Rothenberg has spent many years traveling around the world investigating the sounds of nature, creating music alongside everything from birds to whales and insects. He's even been referred to as an “interspecies musician.” Recently, Rothenberg collaborated with Pattern Radio, a project in partnership with Google and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to collect thousands of hours of whale songs from miles below the ocean’s surface. Read more...
NJIT Biologists Help “Blow Up” a Tiny Worm with Big Potential
The diminutive worm, C. elegans, isn’t so small of a figure in the labs of researchers. In fact, its small stature — roughly the size of a comma in length — is its biggest asset in that it’s helped make it the only animal to have its compact connectome of 302 neurons and their 7,000 synaptic connections fully mapped. Recently, biologists at NJIT helped find a way to physically blow the worm up in size to study it in greater detail, potentially making the worm even more valuable as a model for exploring the nervous systems of other animals. Read more...
