Charred Human Remains Found in Burned Cabin

Investigators have located charred human remains in the burned-out cabin where they believe suspected cop killer and ex-LAPD officer Christopher Dorner was holed up as the structure burned to the ground, police said.

The human remains were found within the debris of the burned cabin and identification will be attempted through forensic means, the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner Department said in a news release early this morning.

Dorner barricaded himself in the cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains near Big Bear Tuesday afternoon after engaging in a gunfight with police, killing one officer and injuring another, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said.

Cindy Bachman, a spokeswoman for the department, which is the lead agency in the action, said Tuesday night investigators would remain at the site all night.

FULL COVERAGE: Christopher Dorner Manhunt

When Bachman was asked whether police thought Dorner was in the burning cabin, she said, "Right. We believe that the person that barricaded himself inside the cabin engaged in gunfire with our deputies and other law enforcement officers is still inside there, even though the building burned."

Bachman spoke shortly after the Los Angeles Police Department denied earlier reports that a body was found in the cabin, contradicting what law enforcement sources told ABC News and other news organizations.

Police around the cabin told ABC News they saw Dorner enter but never leave the building as it was consumed by flames, creating a billowing column of black smoke seen for miles.

A news conference is scheduled for later today in San Bernardino.

One sheriff's deputy was killed in a shootout with Dorner earlier Tuesday afternoon, believed to be his fourth victim after killing a Riverside police officer and two other people this month, including the daughter of a former police captain, and promising to kill many more in an online manifesto.

PHOTOS: Former LAPD Officer Suspected in Shootings

Carjacking Victim Says Christopher Dorner Was Dressed for Damage Watch Video

Christopher Dorner Manhunt: Inside the Shootout Watch Video

Chris Dorner Manhunt: Fugitive Ex-Cop in Shootout With Police Watch Video

Cops said they heard a single gunshot go off from inside the cabin just as they began to see smoke and fire. Later they heard the sound of more gunshots, which was the sound of ammunition being ignited by the heat of the blaze, law enforcement officials said.

Police did not enter the building, but shot tear gas inside.

One of the largest dragnets in recent history, which led police to follow clues across the West and into Mexico, apparently ended just miles from where Dorner's trail went cold last week.

It all began at 12:20 p.m. PT Tuesday, when a maid working at a local resort called 911, saying she and another worker had been tied up and held hostage by Dorner in a cabin, sources said.

The maid told police she was able to escape, but Dorner had stolen one of their cars, which was identified as a purple Nissan.

The San Bernardino Sheriff's Office and state Fish and Wildlife wardens spotted the stolen vehicle and engaged in a shootout with Dorner.

Officials say Dorner crashed the stolen vehicle and fled on foot only to commandeer Rick Heltebrake's white pickup truck on a nearby road a short time later.

"[Dorner] said, 'I don't want to hurt you, just get out and start walking up the road and take your dog with you.' He was calm. I was calm. I would say I was in fear for my life, there was no panic, he told me what to do and I did it," Heltebrake said.

"He was dressed in all camouflage, had a big assault sniper-type rifle. He had a vest on like a ballistic vest," Heltebrake added.

The white pickup truck bought Dorner extra time because police were still looking for the purple Nissan, California Department of Fish and Wildlife Lt. Patrick Foy told "Good Morning America" today.

"We were looking for a purple color Nissan and all of a sudden this white pickup starts coming by in the opposite direction. That's not the suspect's vehicle that we had been looking for," Foy said.

A warden with the Fish and Wildlife department noticed Dorner driving and the pursuit picked up again, Foy said.

"Ultimately, the officer who was driving that vehicle stopped and pulled out his patrol rifle and engaged probably 15 to 20 shots as Dorner was driving away," Foy said.

Dorner then ran on foot to the cabin in which he barricaded himself and got in a shootout with San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies and other officers who arrived.

The two deputies were wounded in the firefight and airlifted to a nearby hospital, where one died, police said. The second deputy was in surgery and was expected to survive, police said.

Police sealed all the roads into the area, preventing cars from entering the area and searching all of those on the way out. All schools were briefly placed on lockdown.

Believing that Dorner might have been watching reports of the standoff, authorities asked media not to broadcast images of police officers' surrounding the cabin, but sent him a message.

"If he's watching this, the message is: Enough is enough," Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Andy Smith told reporters at a news conference Tuesday. "It's time to turn yourself in. It's time to stop the bloodshed. It's time to let this event and let this incident be over."

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Horsemeat disguised as beef confirmed in France: company

PARIS: A major French frozen food retailer said on Tuesday it had found horsemeat in two lots of frozen beef lasagne meals it removed from its shelves last week.

Picard, which has hundreds of outlets across France that sell ready-to-eat meals, said the products were made by Comigel, the French firm which last week sparked the frozen food scandal now spreading across Europe.

- AFP

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No merger with anyone, Raj Thackeray responds to Uddhav's offer

MUMBAI: Ruling out merger with the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray today said he had no intention of aligning with anybody.

Speaking at a rally in Maharashtra's Kolhapur town, Raj said, "There is no thought now of any alliance. Do talks of alliance happen through newspapers?"

He was making a veiled reference to Uddhav's "merger offer" made through an interview in Sena's mouthpiece 'Saamana' last month.

In the interview, Uddhav Thackeray had said that he would welcome any offer of an alliance between his party and the MNS in the interests of the Marathi people.

Responding to a query on whether the cousins could come together, Uddhav had pointed out, "One cannot clap with a single hand. Tell me, can you?"

Asked what he would do if estranged cousin Raj approached him with a proposal for an alliance, Uddhav had said, "If someone is going to come wholeheartedly with Sena, I will welcome them."

Raj Thackeray split from the Shiv Sena in 2006 after his late uncle Bal Thackeray made it clear that his son Uddhav would succeed him as Sena chief. Last year, Raj had fuelled speculation about a patch-up, visiting his ailing uncle at Matoshree several times.

He also visited Uddhav in hospital when the latter underwent an angiography first, and then an angioplasty.

Raj also attacked migrants from other states, saying they indulge in crimes. "If they indulge in crimes here, teach them a lesson," he told MNS workers.

Raj praised the development work in Gujarat by Narendra Modi. "Why has Maharashtra not been able to emulate the development work in that state," he said.

Alleging that activists close to Maharashtra Home Minister R R Patil were threatening MNS workers and their family members, Raj said that if this does not stop, "We will threaten your (Patil's) family members."

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What Killed Dinosaurs: New Ideas About the Wipeout

New insights about the asteroid thought to have killed off the dinosaurs suggest it may have just been the final blow, and that the reptiles were already suffering from a finicky climate prompted by volcanic eruptions long before the meteorite struck.

"The [asteroid] impact was the coup de grace," Paul Renne, a geologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.

The research, detailed in the February 8 issue of the journal Science, adds to the ongoing scientific debate over what exactly killed off the dinosaurs.

That debate, which once revolved around the question of whether the culprit was an asteroid or volcano-induced climate changes, has evolved to consider the possibility that perhaps multiple environmental factors were involved.

Renne and his team recently determined the most precise date yet for the asteroid strike, which occurred in the Yucatan peninsula in what is now Mexico.

Using a high-precision dating technique on tektites—pebble-sized rocks formed during meteorite impacts—from Haiti that were created during the event, the team concluded that the impact occurred 66,038,000 years ago—slightly later than previously thought.

When error limits are taken into account, the new date is the same as the date of the extinction, the team says, making the events simultaneous.

Renne said the new findings, should lay to rest any remaining doubts about whether an asteroid was a factor in the dinosaurs' demise.

"We have shown that these events are synchronous to within a gnat's eyebrow," he said, "and therefore the impact clearly played a major role in extinctions."

That is not to say, however, that the asteroid—which carved out the so-called Chicxulub crater—was the sole cause of the dinosaurs' extinction.

Evidence now suggests massive volcanic eruptions in India that predated the asteroid strike also played a part, triggering climate changes that were already killing off some dinosaur groups.

For example, "nobody has ever found a non-avian dinosaur fossil exactly at the impact layer," Renne said in an email. "Hence, strictly speaking, the non-avian dinosaurs"—those dinosaurs unrelated to birds—"may have already gone extinct by the time of the impact."

Death From the Skies

The idea that volcanism was responsible for the dinosaurs' demise actually predates the impact theory, and it fits well with what is known about Earth's other mass extinction events.

"Many of the other mass extinctions have been found to co-occur with large-scale volcanic eruptions," said Heiko Pälike, a paleoceanographer at the University of Bremen in Germany.

But in the 1980s, father-son team Luis and Walter Alvarez, a physicist and planetary scientists, respectively, presented a bold new theory.

After discovering that a layer of clay that's found throughout the world and that coincided with the end of the Cretaceous period is enriched in iridium—an element rare on Earth but common in space rocks—they proposed that a meteorite wiped out the dinosaurs.

"As the impact theory took hold, especially with the more physical scientists ... the volcanists lost ground," Renne explained.

The impact theory gained further momentum in the 1990's, when scientists discovered a 110-mile (180-kilometer) wide impact crater in the Yucatan peninsula that dated to the boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods—the so-called KT boundary—when the dinosaurs disappeared.

The crater's size indicated that whatever created it was roughly 6 miles (10 kilometers) in diameter.

An asteroid of that size striking the Earth would have had devastating consequences, including destructive pressure waves, global wildfires, tsunamis, and a "rain" of molten rock reentering the atmosphere.

Additionally, "much additional particulate matter would have stayed afloat in the atmosphere for weeks, months, perhaps years, blocking incoming solar radiation and thus killing plant life and causing catastrophic drops in temperatures," explained Hans-Dieter Sues, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

Hybrid Theory for Dinosaur Extinction

The once-abandoned volcanism theory has seen a revival of sorts in recent years, however, as a result of fresh insights about a period of sustained ancient volcanic activity in India and the discovery that dinosaur diversity may have already been declining before the asteroid strike.

The debate now is "whether the Chicxulub impact was the 'smoking gun,' as many researchers claim," Sues said, "or one of several causative factors, kind of like 'Murder on the Orient Express.'"

Renne belongs to the camp that thinks a series of volcanic eruptions in India that produced ancient lava flows known as the Deccan Traps caused dramatic climate variations, including long cold snaps, that may have already been culling the dinosaurs before the asteroid struck.

"It seems clear that volcanism alone, if on a sufficiently massive and rapid scale, can trigger extinctions," Renne said. "Thus my view that the impact was probably the final straw, but not the sole cause."

Unanswered questions

The new hybrid theory still has some major questions it must answer, however, like precisely how much the Indian volcanic eruptions affected the dinosaurs.

"Some people say if you look at the eruption of Mount Pinatubo [in 1991], it cooled the Earth for a short period of time due to the aerosol and the dust that was ejected," Pälike said.

But "others say in the long run volcanoes probably pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and actually warm the planet, at least temporarily."

It's also unclear how the Deccan Traps eruptions were spread out in time. "We know that they started a few million years before the end of the Cretaceous and lasted for several million years after, extending even beyond the [asteroid impact]," Pälike said.

"However, some people have suggested that there were clusters of eruptions that happened within a span of a few tens of thousands of years."

Knowing the timing of the eruptions is important, Pälike added, because if they were happening close to the end of the Cretaceous, it's more likely they played a role in the dinosaurs' extinction than if most of the eruptions happened two million years before.

Pälike thinks that more precise dating of the volcanic ash layers in India could help answer some of the remaining questions: "That's the next step of the puzzle."

Pinning down the cause of the dinosaurs' extinction isn't just of academic interest, said Jonathan Bloch, associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.

"It's important for us to understand how ecosystems respond to big perturbations," Bloch said, "whether it's gradual climate change or a catastrophic event. These are all things we have to think about as humans on the planet today."

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Fort Hood Hero Says Obama 'Betrayed' Victims

Three years after the White House arranged a hero's welcome at the State of the Union address for the Fort Hood police sergeant and her partner who stopped the deadly shooting there, Kimberly Munley says President Obama broke the promise he made to her that the victims would be well taken care of.

"Betrayed is a good word," former Sgt. Munley told ABC News in a tearful interview to be broadcast tonight on "World News with Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline."

"Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," she said. "In fact they've been neglected."

There was no immediate comment from the White House about Munley's allegations.

Thirteen people were killed, including a pregnant soldier, and 32 others shot in the November 2009 rampage by the accused shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, who now awaits a military trial on charges of premeditated murder and attempted murder.

Tonight's broadcast report also includes dramatic new video, obtained by ABC News, taken in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, capturing the chaos and terror of the day.

WATCH Exclusive Video of Fort Hood's Aftermath

Munley, since laid off from her job with the base's civilian police force, was shot three times as she and her partner, Sgt. Mark Todd, confronted Hasan, who witnesses said had shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he opened fire on soldiers being processed for deployment to Afghanistan.

As Munley lay wounded, Todd fired the five bullets credited with bringing Hasan down.

Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

Leader Wants to Rehabilitate 'Misguided' Youth Watch Video

Despite extensive evidence that Hasan was in communication with al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki prior to the attack, the military has denied the victims a Purple Heart and is treating the incident as "workplace violence" instead of "combat related" or terrorism.

READ a Federal Report on the FBI's Probe of Hasan's Ties to al-Awlaki

Al-Awlaki has since been killed in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen, in what was termed a major victory in the U.S. efforts against al Qaeda.

Munley and dozens of other victims have now filed a lawsuit against the military alleging the "workplace violence" designation means the Fort Hood victims are receiving lower priority access to medical care as veterans, and a loss of financial benefits available to those who injuries are classified as "combat related."

READ the Fort Hood Victims' Lawsuit

Some of the victims "had to find civilian doctors to get proper medical treatment" and the military has not assigned liaison officers to help them coordinate their recovery, said the group's lawyer, Reed Rubinstein.

"There's a substantial number of very serious, crippling cases of post-traumatic stress disorder exacerbated, frankly, by what the Army and the Defense Department did in this case," said Rubinstein. "We have a couple of cases in which the soldiers' command accused the soldiers of malingering, and would say things to them that Fort Hood really wasn't so bad, it wasn't combat."

A spokesperson for the Army said its policy is not to comment on pending litigation, but that it is "not true" any of the military victims have been neglected and that it has no control over the guidelines of the Veterans Administration.

Secretary of the Army John McHugh told ABC News he was unaware of any specific complaints from the Fort Hood victims, even though he is a named defendant in the lawsuit filed last November which specifically details the plight of many of them.

"If a soldier feels ignored, then we need to know about it on a case by case basis," McHugh told ABC News. "It is not our intent to have two levels of care for people who are wounded by whatever means in uniform."

Some of the victims in the lawsuit believe the Army Secretary and others are purposely ignoring their cases out of political correctness.

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Internal GOP clash pits tea party conservatives against Karl Rove

The internal conflicts that have roiled the Republican Party since its dismal showing in November appear to be deepening as conservative activists and tea party officials have begun to loudly resist an establishment effort to blame them for the GOP’s 2012 troubles.

The nation’s largest tea party organization is launching a new federal political action committee, Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, aimed at challenging GOP incumbents and other establishment candidates to adopt more conservative positions.

“If we are going to change Washington and save America, the tea party movement must hold every politician who supports higher taxes and even higher spending accountable — regardless of their political party. If that means we have to defeat some of these big-government politicians in primaries, so be it,” said Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, in a statement released Friday.

The move appeared to be a direct response to an effort by veteran strategist Karl Rove and other GOP establishment figures to wrest control of the Republican Party from candidates and activists whom they view as unelectable and harmful to the party’s future.

After spending more than $300 million in what was widely regarded a losing effort in the 2012 elections, Rove and his fundraising allies have launched the Conservative Victory Project to help fight primary battles, especially for the Senate, against candidates they think will hurt the party’s chances in the 2014 midterms.

Many Republicans think that the party blew a chance to take control of the Senate in 2012, when they needed to win four Democratic-held seats, by offering candidates who were too flawed to win.

They point to Missouri and Indiana, where Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, respectively, lost what had been scored early on as winnable races for the GOP. In both cases, the party’s chances dimmed after the candidates made controversial comments about rape and abortion. Frustrated by those outcomes, Rove and his group will seek more control in the primary process through ad buys and the vetting of candidates.

“We have been the largest backer of very conservative candidates and tea party candidates in general elections, and in most cases, we’ve been pleased with the results,” said Steven J. Law, president of the super PAC American Crossroads, who will direct the Conservative Victory Project’s efforts. “But in a few instances, we realized that the candidate-vetting before the primary was slim to none. And the problems that the candidate had, made it impossible to win even when we had an excellent shot at winning the seat.”

But the conservatives who are the target of the effort say that Rove and the establishment hardly fared better than the tea party last year. They pointed out that American Crossroads supported no winning candidates and had a 1.29 percent success rate and that a number of well-funded establishment candidates, such as George Allen (Va.) and Tommy Thompson (Wis.), lost Senate races.

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US tornadoes strike southern states, 60 injured

MIAMI: Several powerful tornadoes ripped through the southern US states of Mississippi and Alabama injuring at least 60 people and destroying hundreds of homes at the weekend, emergency officials said Monday.

The city of Hattiesburg in Mississippi's Forrest County bore the brunt of the storms, with heavy rain continuing to lash the region and create a risk of flooding.

"Two people were critically hurt in Lemar County right next to Hattiesburg, but no deaths have been reported at this stage," Greg Flynn, a spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), told AFP.

"Around 60 people are reported injured, but fortunately most injuries are minor," he said.

The bad weather, however, destroyed hundreds of homes and caused damage to the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi, authorities said.

A spokeswoman for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency (AEMA) said that while the area was hit by bad weather on Sunday it had so far received no reports of injuries.

The National Weather Service said flooding and flash flooding will become a concern if rainfall continues to add up across the lower Mississippi valley.

-AFP/ac

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Suspend, book cops who 'detained' Gilani: Katju

NEW DELHI: Slamming the police for "detaining" journalist Iftikhar Gilani on Sunday, Press Council of India chairman Markanday Katju on Monday asked Union home secretary to charge and suspend the cops if the allegations of "high-handedness" against them were correct.

In a letter to the home secretary RK Singh , Justice Katju also sought immediate institution of criminal proceedings against such officers under relevant provisions of IPC and grant of compensation and apology to Gilani for his alleged harassment.

He said the action against the cops should be initiated by the government within 48 hours.

The letter came after Gilani in an email to Katju complained that security agencies had illegally detained him on Sunday at the house of his father-in-law Syed Ali Geelani following the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru and harassed him for many hours.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani is a Kashmiri separatist leader who heads the hardline faction of Hurriyat Conference.

Katju used the opportunity to ask police personnel to not carry out such "illegal" orders of their superiors, "otherwise they will be charged for serious crimes, and if found guilty, severely punished".

On Gilani's charges of harassment, Katju said, "They reveal great high-handedness and outrageous behaviour by the Delhi policemen concerned in harassing and tormenting Mr Gilani and his family, including his small children. These were the undemocratic and abhorrent methods of the Gestapo during Nazi rule.

The PCI chairman said, "If these allegations are correct, the concerned police officers ... as well as those higher ups who were instrumental in ordering these shameful and odious acts are prime facie guilty of serious crimes."

Katju said the incident was a "clear violation" of the Supreme Court directions.

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Year of the Snake: The Serpent Behind the Horoscope

On February 10, people all around the world will ring in the Lunar New Year with paper lanterns and firecrackers. At the heart of it all sits the snake, a slithery reptile feared for its sharp fangs and revered for its undeniable charm. (Watch videos of some of the world's deadliest snakes.)

Those born in the Year of the Snake are said to be intelligent and quick thinking, but they can also be dishonest and prone to show off. Though based on Chinese astrology, some of these traits are similar to characteristics of the actual serpent.

Snakes are known to be great at outsmarting their predators and prey. Their colorful, patterned skin makes them some of the best tricksters in the animal kingdom. And despite a bad rap as frightening creatures, snakes never fail to fascinate scientists, explorers, and zoo-goers. (See pictures of snakes.)

With more than 3,400 recognized species, snakes exhibit incredible diversity in everything from behavior and habitats to skin colors and patterns.

"As a vertebrate lacking in limbs, all snakes look largely like other snakes, yet they succeed in tremendous diversity in multiple directions," said Andrew Campbell, herpetology collections manager at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute.

To usher in the Year of the Snake, Campbell and herpetologist Dennis Ferraro at University of Nebraska-Lincoln weigh in on some of the snake's qualities that the Chinese zodiac predicts people born this year will have.

Horoscope: Snakes have an innately elegant personality but can also be ostentatious at times.

In Nature: Snakes come in all different colors, patterns, and textures, making them some of nature's most visually stunning creatures.

According to Campbell, the utility of their coloring falls into two main categories: to use as camouflage and to warn predators to stay away.

Among the most beautiful are the emerald tree boa (Corallus caninus)—whose vibrant green body is decorated with white stripes resembling lightning bolts—and the Brazilian rainbow boa (Epicrates cenchria), characterized by its iridescent skin and the large black rings down its back.

For some snakes, the diversity in color occurs within the same species, which is why Ferraro tells his student not to identify snakes by colors. For example, the polymorphic bush viper (Atheris squamigera), many of which are green, also come in shades of yellow, orange, red, and blue, as captured in photographer Guido Mocafico's "Serpent Still Life" photo series.

Horoscope: The snake is known to be the master seducer of the Chinese zodiac.

In Nature: Female garter snakes (Thamnophis) have all the luck with the gentlemen.

When a female garter snake is ready to mate, she announces it by producing chemicals called pheromones. Males, upon encountering the scent, immediately come crawling out and gather around the female in a large, wriggling "mating ball."

The competition intensifies when a male passing by the ball tries to fool the others by producing a scent that mimics that of the female, said Ferraro.

As soon as his rivals are led off in the wrong direction, the trickster slides right in. In areas with smaller populations of garter snakes, each ball consists of about 12 males and one female.

But in places like Manitoba, Canada, where garter snakes travel to certain areas to mate after coming out of hibernation, a mating ball can have thousands of males and only a hundred females.

Horoscope: Though snakes don't often tell lies, they will use deception when they feel it's necessary and they think they can get away with it.

In Nature: When it comes to using trickery to catch dinner, or to hide from predators, snakes are no amateurs.

Their sneaky techniques range from tricking fish to swim right into their mouths, to playing dead when threatened, to using their wormlike tails to lure in prey.

The most cunning of them all is the two-headed snake. To protect against a sneak attack from behind, the two-headed snake's tail looks just like its head. While the business end looks for food, the snake coils up its body and rests its tail on top to look like it is on guard.

The tail can even mimic the behavior of a retreating snake to trick predators into thinking they're going face-to-face with their opponent.

Horoscope: When snakes get down to work, they are organized and highly efficient, and they work quickly and quietly.

In Nature: While snakes are often perceived as lazy, Campbell said people are mistaken. "What we perceive as shy, lazy, or inactive is really efficiency," he said.

"On average, they are bigger than other lizards and can build a lot of body mass. They do that by being efficient in feeding and traveling." In other words, snakes don't move very much because they don't have to.

When it comes to food, snakes catch prey that are significantly larger than them so they can eat less frequently. This reduces the time they spend hunting and thus makes them less vulnerable to falling victim to a predator themselves.

For Campbell, the most impressive hunter is the eastern diamondback rattlesnake (Crotalus Adamanteus), which is able to hunt and kill its prey very quickly using venom, so it doesn't have to travel far. "Because they don't have to do that, they can become relatively large and heavy, being able to build up body mass and not having to spend that energy hunting."

Horoscope: Snakes are charming, with excellent communication skills.

In Nature: For snakes, their visual and auditory senses don't mean much when it comes to communicating with each other.

Instead, they use their sense of smell and the chemicals produced by their musk glands. Unlike mammals, a snake picks up scent through the forks of its tongue.

When the snake retracts its tongue, it inserts the forks into grooves in an olfactory organ located at the roof of its mouth. Depending on which fork picks up a stronger scent, the snake knows in which direction to go when looking for prey or a mate.

It's when snakes are threatened that they use sight and sound, said Ferraro. Rattlesnakes, for example, shake their tails, making a loud rattling noise to ward off predators.

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Benedict XVI First Pope to Resign in 600 Years

Pope Benedict XVI's unexpected announcement today that he will step down for health reasons makes him the first pontiff to resign in nearly 600 years, even catching the Vatican by surprise and setting off a chain reaction that will end with a conclave to elect a new pope before the end of March.

"My first reaction was this is, it's very startling," Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, said. "I was totally unprepared for it. The second reaction was we're going to have to now think a little differently. This will be the first time in modern history that we've had a pope resign. How do we work with all of that?"

Announcing his decision in Latin during a meeting of Vatican cardinals, Benedict, 85, said he will resign Feb. 28, explaining that his role requires "both strength of mind and body."

FULL COVERAGE: Pope Benedict XVI Resignation

"After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths due to an advanced age are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry," he said. "I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only by words and deeds but no less with prayer and suffering."

Pope Benedict XVI was the oldest pope to be elected at age 78 on April 19, 2005. He was the first German pope since the 11th century and his reign will rank as one of the shortest in history at seven years, 10 months and three days.

RELATED: Pope Benedict XVI Resigns: The Statement

The last pope to resign was Pope Gregory XII, who stepped down in 1415.

Vatican officials said they've noticed that he has been getting weaker, while Benedict said he is aware of the significance of his decision and made it freely.

Pope Benedict XVI Resignation: Who Will Be Next? Watch Video

Pope Benedict XVI Never Aspired to Be Pope: Historian

Vatican Communications Director Greg Burke told ABC News that he was surprised but not shocked by the announcement, and cited an interview in which Benedict said a pope not only could resign, but should resign, if necessary.

"[Pope Benedict] is slowing a bit, and there's nothing immediately serious or grave," Burke said. "He has an older brother. He just thought the demands of the job were too much for his physical well being."

INTERACTIVE: Key Dates in the Life of Pope Benedict XVI

Benedict's brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, had shared his concerns about the pope's health in September 2011, telling Germany's Bunte magazine that he should resign if health issues made the work impossible. More recently, Ratzinger has apparently cited his brother's difficulty in walking and his age, saying that Benedict had been advised by his doctor to cease transatlantic trips and that he had been considering stepping down for months, according to the German DPA news agency.

Among other ailments, the pope reportedly suffers from arthritis and arthrosis -- a debilitating joint-degeneration condition -- and his declining health drew attention about a year ago when he used a cane at the airport on his way to a trip to Mexico and Cuba.

Benedict has been a less charismatic leader than his predecessor, John Paul II, but tending to the world's roughly 1 billion Catholics still requires stamina Benedict seems to believe he now lacks.

PHOTOS: Pope Benedict XVI Through the Years

"Obviously, it's a great surprise for the whole church, for everyone in the Vatican and I think for the whole Catholic world," the Rev. John Wauck, a U.S. priest of the Opus Dei, told "Good Morning America" today. "But, at the same time, it's not completely surprising given what the pope had already written about the possibility of resigning.

"It's clear in terms of his mental capacity he's in excellent shape, he's very sharp, and so when he says he's making this official with whole freedom, it's clear that that's the case, that makes one believe that this is an act taken out of a sense of responsibility and love for the church."

It is a road that leads back to the 1930s.

Ratzinger started seminary studies in 1939 at the age of 12. In his memoirs, he wrote of being enrolled in Hitler's Nazi youth movement against his will when he was 14 in 1941, when membership was compulsory. In 1943, he was drafted into a Nazi anti-aircraft unit in Munich. He says he was soon let out because he was a priest in training.

He returned home only to find an army draft notice waiting for him in the fall of 1944.

As World War II came to an end, the 18-year-old Ratzinger deserted the army. In May 1945, U.S. troops arrived in his town and he was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.

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