Nature Hub

  From :- BBC  World News   By :-  Jasmin Fox-Skelly  Edited by :- Amal Udawatta   Chris Howes (Credit: Chris Howes) Ancient bacteria, trapped in caves for millions of years, live in a miniature world of terror. Their only food source is each other. The survival tactics they develop make them resistant to almost all antibiotics. Now scientists hope to use their tricks to inspire new drugs and treatments. Deep underground, plunging 1,604ft (489m) beneath the Chihuahuan Desert in southern New Mexico, lies the Lechuguilla Cave, a cavern which stretches on for 149 miles (240km). There is no light, and little to eat either. Any living thing must eke out an existence under conditions of near starvation. "You can go in an entrance and travel for 16 hours in one direction before you get to the end of it," says Hazel Barton, professor of geological sciences at the University of Alabama.  "So you're a very, very, very long way from the entrance. You're iso...

   From:- BBC World News By :-  Kamala Thiagarajan Editted by :- Amal Udawatta   Hargila Army ( Hargila Army (Credit: Hargila Army) Once known as a bird of ill omen, India's endangered hargila has gained an army of protectors. Now it's beginning to bounce back. On a bright, sweltering January afternoon in 2007, biologist Purnima Devi Barman found herself in Dadara village, on the banks of India's mighty Brahmaputra River in the northeastern state of Assam. Despite being surrounded by tropical evergreen forests and emerald wetlands, all she could think about was the monumental destruction she was witnessing. Local villagers had just hacked away at one of the tallest, most beautiful trees she had ever known – a local species of evergreen known as a kadamba. Now, amidst the tree's fallen branches, scattered leaves, twigs and thatches of nesting material lay large birds with black and white feathers, long limbs and sharp beaks, their dead bodies splayed on the ground. Th...