South America

Monkeys accomplished a monumental task of migration eons before the two American continents joined together 3.5 million years ago. Scientists believe that monkey mariners resembling today’s capuchins crossed a hundred miles of open ocean some 21 million years ago to get from South America to North America.  Japan Times reports: Scientists said on Wednesday they reached that conclusion based on the discovery of seven little teeth during excavations involving the Panama Canal’s expansion, showing monkeys had reached the North American continent far earlier than previously known.

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

Amid a media frenzy over the spread of the Zika virus worldwide, the CDC have been forced to admit that people are able to self-immunize against the virus, and have also suggested that Zika itself does not cause Microcephaly.  On their own website, the Center for Disease Control, say: People usually don’t get sick enough to go to the hospital, and they very rarely die of Zika. For this reason, many people might not realize they have been infected. Once a person has been infected, he or she is likely to be protected from future infections.

At the beginning of May the planet Mercury is set to travel in front of the sun in a rare event that we will be able to see from Earth.  The planet will not travel between our planet and the sun again for another three and a half years. Businessinsider.com reports: Here’s everything you need to know to watch. The transit of Mercury occurs when Mercury passes between the Sun and Earth, and happens around 13 or 14 times each century. This year the event kicks off on May 9 just after 7am EDT (9pm AEST, 11am UTC), with the planet taking around 8 hours to make its glorious way across the Sun.

A new virus that attacks both farmed and wild tilapia has been identified by a team of international researchers. Tilapia is one of the most widely consumed inexpensive proteins globally. The virus, called the Tilapia Lake Virus (TiLV), is said by the researchers to be the cause of the mass die-offs of the fish which occurred in Israel and Ecuador in the last few years. A paper produced on the virus by the research team lays out a plan for developing a vaccine to protect the global tilapia supplies from contracting TiLV.