5 nature curiosities that show how strange the world can be

Nature has a habit of making even familiar ideas feel strange again. Scientists are now finding evidence that spiders may pass through different sleep stages, seabirds can be frightened away from fishing nets by giant googly eyes, and underwater sound could help struggling reefs recover.

Here are five recent discoveries that show how much remains to be learnt about the natural world.

1. Spiders may have something resembling REM sleep

Do spiders sleep deeply enough to experience something like dreams? Scientists are not ready to go that far, but new research suggests at least one jumping spider passes through two distinct sleep stages.

Researchers at the University of Bonn studied the Australian jumping spider “Portia fimbriata”, recording the animals over several days and nights. They found periods of regulated sleep as well as a REM-like state marked by rapid eye movements and muscle twitches, behaviours familiar from REM sleep in humans and other vertebrates.

The team also disrupted the spiders’ rest and found evidence of “sleep rebound” – meaning they later compensated for lost sleep. According to the researchers, this provides the first comprehensive experimental evidence of true sleep behaviour in a spider.

Whether the spiders actually dream remains unknown, however, because scientists did not measure brain activity. For now, the finding simply raises the intriguing possibility that surprisingly complex sleep may extend far beyond animals with backbones.

2. ‘Googly eyes’ can help keep seabirds out of fishing nets

Sometimes an elegant conservation solution can look downright silly. During trials off Cornwall in Britain, researchers attached floating devices with large spinning “eyes” to fishing gear, hoping they would scare diving seabirds away from dangerous gillnets.

Nets fitted with these so-called looming-eye buoys had 59% lower odds of catching guillemots and razorbills, while predator-shaped kites reduced the odds by 71%.

Ten fishers took part in the study, with more than 1,000 net deployments monitored by cameras. Lead researcher Tom Horton said the results provided strong evidence that “simple, practical deterrents can substantially reduce seabird bycatch”.

The devices are not perfect: strong or weak winds can affect the kites, and other studies suggest birds may eventually become used to visual deterrents. Even so, the trial shows that something resembling a pair of giant googly eyes may have serious conservation value.

3. An Instagram photo helped reveal a giant new waterlily

A casual social-media post is not where most scientific discoveries begin, but that is exactly how botanists were alerted to a remarkable waterlily in Colombia.

In 2021, Kew waterlily specialist Carlos Magdalena noticed an unusual plant in an Instagram photograph taken in the Inírida River region. It resembled the well-known “Victoria amazonica”, except there was one problem: that species was not known to grow there.

Years of satellite searches, planning and fieldwork followed, involving Colombian botanists and Indigenous communities. The team eventually found flowering plants during a last-minute overnight boat trip through flooded rainforest, allowing them to formally describe the species as “Victoria colombiana”.

Its enormous leaves can reach about 2m across, yet the plant appears to be extremely rare. Researchers currently estimate that only 30 to 50 individuals survive in the wild, making its discovery as much a conservation alarm as a botanical triumph.

4, Giant ‘sea spiders’ can glow blue in the abyss

Thousands of metres beneath the ocean surface off eastern Australia, giant sea spiders have been caught putting on a light show of their own.

Scientists studying two deep-sea pycnogonid species recorded bioluminescence for the first time in this group. One species, “Colossendeis tasmanica”, produced a bright deep-blue glow from its legs when stimulated in laboratory experiments.

Despite the name, sea spiders are not true spiders: they are marine arthropods with extremely long legs and small bodies, and some deep-sea species can grow to surprisingly large sizes.

Scientists suspect specialised cells associated with the digestive system may help produce the glow, but they still do not know what it is for. It could play a role in defence, attracting prey or reproduction – another mystery glowing away in a part of the ocean humans rarely see.

5. Healthy reef sounds may help damaged reefs recover

Coral reefs are not only colourful – they are noisy. Clicking fish, snapping shrimp and other marine life combine to produce a rich underwater soundscape that young animals can potentially use as a guide.

Researchers in Hawaii recently tested whether playing recordings of healthy reefs through underwater speakers could encourage coral larvae to settle on artificial reef structures.

They found that structures closer to the speaker tended to record higher settlement – although the experts stressed that sound was only one of several restoration techniques being tested simultaneously.

The same research also found that sites broadcasting healthy reef sounds attracted substantially more young fish than control sites. In separate experiments, cameras recorded four to 14 times more fish larvae near the sound source.

The scientists are cautious about treating underwater speakers as a cure-all, especially because reef recovery depends on many environmental conditions.

But the experiments suggest that restoring the sounds of a healthy ecosystem could help draw life back to damaged habitats – a small but welcome note of hope for a planet under pressure.

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