GMOs, Owls, Cockroaches

GMOs

GMOs have the potential to save lives, such as with golden rice, enriched with vitamins. Another way in which GMOs can change lives, and even protect the environment is through pest-resistant crops. Here's a video on how farmers in Bangladesh are finding growing GMO aubergines. They use 80% less insecticide (which must be good for the eco-system) and get higher yields.

Tawny Owls

Tawny owls hunt at night so they need to be able to see. Their eyes are about 2.5 times more sensitive in low light than our eyes, and take up 70% of their skull compared with just 5% for ours. (Source: BBC TV Springwatch)

Madagascan Hissing Cockroaches

We know that most mammals give birth to live young and birds lay eggs, but is there something in between?

The Madagascan hissing cockroach – they're huge and kind of cool for a cockroach, but I digress – lays eggs which is covers in a hard case before retracting them back into its body. The eggs develop within this casing and when they're ready to hatch, the casing is pushed out of the body again and the fully developed cockroaches hatch. It's an evolutionary stage between egg laying and live birth with a placenta and is called ovoviviparity.

oviparous

egg-laying such as birds, some snakes

viviparous

producing living young which develop within the body such as humans, some snakes, Madagsacan Hissing Coackroach

ovoviviparous

This is a subdivision of the viviparous reproductive strategy, where live offspring which hatch from eggs within the body of the parent. This offspring are nourished from an egg yolk rather than from the parent directly. The Madagascan hissing cockroaches mentioned above are one example, and another is the slow worm.