Weird and wonderful finds from the world of 'regular' science

SMALLPRINT:THIS YEAR saw plenty of big science stories: the hunt for the Higgs, speedy neutrinos and space missions kept tongues wagging and fingers tweeting. But the rest of science was moving on too, so what were some of the more unusual finds from 2011?

Roll up the spiders that think on their feet, the microbes that get a kick out of extreme gravity and the fire alarm with a pungent wake-up call.

In April, researchers published details of the largest known fossil spider, Nephila jurassica, which was found in middle-Jurassic rocks in China. The female dates back to about 165 million years ago, according to the researchers in Biology Letters, and the BBC reported that the spider had a leg-span of about 15cm. "Her body is not the biggest, but if you add in her long legs then she's the largest," researcher Paul Selden from the University of Kansas told the BBC.

But before you wipe your brow in relief that the leggy arachnid is is no longer crawling around, be aware that you could still encounter similar creatures on the planet: nephilid spiders are still on the go today in the tropics and subtropics.

Being that big can mean having plenty of room for brains, but how do smaller spiders stay smart? A study in Arthropod Structure & Developmentanalysed spiders of various sizes, from the rainforest giant Nephila clavipes down to tiny nymphs of spiders in the genus Mysmena. The research found that what the smaller spiders lack in size, they make up for in clever packing, carrying their central nervous systems where they can in their bodies. "The smaller the animal, the more it has to invest in its brain, which means even very tiny spiders are able to weave a web and perform other fairly complex behaviour," says William Wcislo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. "We discovered that the central nervous systems of the smallest spiders fill up almost 80 per cent of their total body cavity, including about 25 per cent of their legs."

And how about the microbes that can withstand – and even thrive in – conditions of extreme gravity? Astronauts undergo training for launches where they might expect to experience forces of around three times the force of gravity but some bugs would scoff at such levels. When put to the test and hyperaccelerated to extreme gravity, the microbial cells seemed quite happy.      "Most notably, the organisms P denitrificansand E coliwere able to proliferate even at 403,627 × g," wrote the researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesearlier this year. "Our results indicate that microorganisms cannot only survive during hyperacceleration but can display such robust proliferative behaviour that the habitability of extraterrestrial environments must not be limited by gravity."

And it wasn't just the spiders and thrill-seeking bugs revealing their secrets: a study of retinas from 17 shark species caught off Queensland and Western Australia suggests that the fish are colour-blind. "Our study shows that contrast against the background, rather than colour per se, may be more important for object detection by sharks," says University of Western Australia researcher Nathan Hart about the findings, published in Naturwissenschaften. "This may help us to design long-line fishing lures that are less attractive to sharks as well as to design swimming attire and surf craft that have a lower visual contrast to sharks and, therefore, are less 'attractive' to them."

Sticking with the senses, an interesting approach to fire safety hit the headlines this year too, when Japanese researchers were awarded an Ig Nobel prize, which honours improbable research that makes you laugh and then think. They received the 2011 chemistry award “for determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm.”

Let’s see what weird and wonderful findings 2012 brings.