Babies of a bird species called the Eurasian roller vomit a foul-smelling orange liquid as a defense mechanism against predators, biologists have discovered.

Foreign seeds are hitching rides on scientists and tourists to the Antarctic and could someday upset the ecology of the warmest patches of the remote land, international researchers said.

Invasive species are "thought to be among the most significant conservation threats to Antarctica, especially as climate change proceeds in the region," said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Thousands of monkeys are being held in overcrowded and barren farms in Laos and sold for international laboratory research, according to a report from a British animal protection group.

Laos has exported nearly 35,000 long-tailed macaques since 2004 as part of a fast-growing trade in the species for research, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) said in a statement released Monday.

A Japanese scientist said he has made violin strings out of spider silk and claims that -- in the right hands -- they produce a beautiful sound.

Thousands of the tiny strands can be wound together to produce a strong but flexible string that is perfect for the instrument, said Shigeyoshi Osaki, professor of polymer chemistry at Nara Medical University.

Plans to build hydropower dams along small branches of Southeast Asia's longest river could have a devastating impact on millions of people who rely on the world's largest inland fishery, scientists said Monday.

Plenty of attention has focused on plans to develop 11 big dams along the main stem of the 4,600 kilometer (2,850 mile) Mekong River which passes through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Paleontologists have traced the origins of humans and other vertebrates to a worm that swam in the oceans half a billion years ago, said a study published Monday.

A new analysis of fossils unearthed in the Canadian Rockies determined that the extinct Pikaia gracilens is the most primitive known member of the chordate family, which today includes fish, amphibians, birds, reptiles and mammals.

A year on from one of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history, Japanese scientists are warning anew that Tokyo could soon be hit by a quake that will kill thousands and cause untold damage.

Greater Tokyo, home to 35 million tightly packed people, has seen a three-fold increase in tectonic activity since the magnitude 9.0 undersea quake that unleashed a killer tsunami last March.

An ice dam at Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier collapsed early Sunday, creating an impressive spectacle not seen since July 2008, although few tourists were actually awake to experience the moment.

Several tons of ice fell off the 60-meter (200 foot) ice dam into Lago Argentina at the national park in southern Santa Cruz province.

Seven Asiatic black bears kept as pets in small cages will be prepared for a return to the wild in Vietnam after their owner decided they were too big for captivity, an official said Monday.

The animals, also known as moon bears owing to the distinctive yellow crescent-shaped mark on their chests, were given to the Wildlife Rescue Centre in Cat Tien National Park in southern Vietnam.

A pair of Swiss policemen cast a suspicious eye as a creature in a space helmet with a camera mounted on top and carrying an astronaut's backpack wanders around Basel's St. Johann Park.

But what appears to be a visiting extra-terrestrial turns out to be a maverick designer, Jan Torpus, who is pushing the boundary between the real world and fantasy in a project he calls "augmented reality."