Sneaky Fish

On this week's news update…

Space Tourists Blast Off

space tourists blast off…

Strawberry-Picking Robot

a strawberry-picking robot…

Sneaky Fish

…and a sneaky fish with a clever way to hunt.

First up…

Virgin Galactic has begun its long-awaited commercial space flight service.

So far, two flights have lifted off. The first flight carried a group of scientists so they could perform experiments in weightless conditions, while the second took the company’s first tourists to the edge of space. On board were mother and daughter Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers, who won their tickets in a prize draw and became the first mother and daughter to travel to space together.

They were joined by a third tourist, Jon Goodwin. He booked his seat back in 2005, paying $250,000 for his ticket.

The next group of eager space tourists lifts off from Spaceport America in September.

Up next…

Engineers at Organifarms have created BERRY, a strawberry-picking robot.

BERRY uses image recognition software to identify and select only ripe strawberries. To reduce bruising and damage to the fruit, it picks them at the stem. It then places the strawberries in crates ready to be collected.

BERRY can work 24 hours a day and throughout the year, allowing farmers to pick the fruit whenever they want. Engineers aim to increase the robot's picking speed to 10 kg of strawberries per hour—they hope that the technology will benefit farmers, who can sometimes struggle to find fruit pickers at harvest time.

And in the future, they plan to adapt their technology to pick other fruits and vegetables.

And finally…

trumpetfish

Trumpetfish live in coral reefs and hunt other fish.

parrotfish

They have been observed swimming close to plant-eating parrotfish. Scientists from Cambridge University suspected this was a hunting strategy.

To test this theory, the team set up an underwater wire, and used it to pull a 3-D printed model of a trumpetfish over a group of damselfish. They discovered that the damselfish quickly fled from the model trumpetfish, which is one of their natural predators, but when they used a model parrotfish, the damselfish did not hide in the same way.

Next, the team recreated the behavior that had been seen in the wild and placed the model trumpetfish behind the parrotfish. Again, the damselfish did not swim away. This suggests that hiding behind parrotfish is a useful hunting strategy for trumpetfish.

This is the first study to provide experimental evidence of a non-human species hiding behind another animal to hunt.

That's all for this week, we'll see you next time!