These days, with the media and paparazzi chronicling their every quip and nip-slip, it stands to reason that celebrities don’t need an outlet of their own to look stupid.

Katy Perry’s updates on the state of her inanely named cat, Kitty Purry, John Stamos’ scrutiny of sweat, and Ashton Kutcher’s ode to wife Demi Moore’s behind are among the vapid celebrity musings on Twitter.

(Getty Images)

But celebrities on Twitter appear to be so beyond reason.

It started off purposefully enough, with Lance Armstrong using the micro-blogging platform to tell fans about his collarbone injury and Demi Moore harnessing the power of the “tweeple” to stop one of her followers from committing suicide.

Signs abound that the worst of the recession is over: Stocks have been surging, the rate of job losses has slowed, so it seems that the economic apocalypse has been averted.

Elizabeth Warren, chairman of the Troubled Asset Relief Program Congressional Oversight Panel,…

Elizabeth Warren, chairman of the Troubled Asset Relief Program Congressional Oversight Panel, testifies at a hearing on Capitol Hill, in this July 2009 file photo. A report by the panel warns that toxic assets still present a serious threat, especially for small banks.

(Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

Government programs such as the $787 billion stimulus and last fall’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program have so far been successful, the Obama administration says.

Except, the Congressional Oversight Panel warns in its August report, TARP never actually bought any troubled assets.

“It is likely that an overwhelming portion of the troubled assets from last October remain on bank balance sheets today,” the panel’s report says.

These days, with the media and paparazzi chronicling their every quip and nip-slip, it stands to reason that celebrities don’t need an outlet of their own to look stupid.

Katy Perry’s updates on the state of her inanely named cat, Kitty Purry, John Stamos’ scrutiny of sweat, and Ashton Kutcher’s ode to wife Demi Moore’s behind are among the vapid celebrity musings on Twitter.

(Getty Images)

But celebrities on Twitter appear to be so beyond reason.

It started off purposefully enough, with Lance Armstrong using the micro-blogging platform to tell fans about his collarbone injury and Demi Moore harnessing the power of the “tweeple” to stop one of her followers from committing suicide.

Alien-like” scenes of tadpoles feasting on eggs emerging from their mother have been caught on camera.

The footage marks the success of a captive breeding programme for the critically endangered mountain chicken frog, one of the world’s largest frogs.

In April, 50 of the amphibian giants were airlifted from Montserrat after a deadly fungus swept through the island, devastating the population.

Now several breeding programmes are under way to save the frogs.

Once numbers have been boosted in captivity, researchers hope to reintroduce the frogs back into the wild within the next two years.

Bizarre sight

The remarkable footage was recorded at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, in Jersey, which took in 12 of the rescued frogs. Twenty-six others went to Parken Zoo in Sweden, and 12 are now housed in ZSL London Zoo.

Giant of the forest Enlarge Image

So far, four pairs of mountain chicken frogs have started to breed - which could result in hundreds of frogs. And this has given researchers an insight into the way that these unusual amphibians care for their offspring.

Professor John Fa, director of Durrell, said: “Mountain chickens have very peculiar breeding habits because they form foam nests in burrows in the ground.”

The females lay their eggs in these nests, which eventually hatch into tadpoles. But as the nests are underground, food is scarce - so the frogs need to find a way to provide nutrition for their young.

Professor Fa explained: “In the case of mountain chickens, we have discovered that the female comes into the nest and starts laying a string of infertile eggs.

The tadpoles feast on the unfertilised eggs

“We thought that the eggs would come out and drop to the bottom of the nest and then the tadpoles would start eating them. But the footage shows about 40 tadpoles congregating around the female and eating the eggs as they come out of the female’s body.

“Every now and again, the female uses her back legs to push the tadpoles away from her body so another set can come up and eat as much as they can.”

He added: “It is really weird - it is an alien scene. This is the first time we have caught this on film.”

Frog killer

The mountain chicken frog (Leptodactylus fallax) is one of the world’s most threatened frogs. The frog is so called because its meat tastes like chicken.

It was once found on seven Caribbean Islands, but thanks to hunting and environmental pressures it is currently found only on Montserrat and Dominica.

Q&A: The frog-killer fungus

Now, however, the deadly chytrid fungus, which has devastated amphibian populations around the globe, has also ravaged Dominica’s mountain chickens.

The fungus was first detected on the island in 2002, and within 15 months, 80% of the mountain chicken population had been obliterated.

Conservationists were extremely concerned when they found that the chytrid fungus had spread to Montserrat earlier this year, and was sweeping quickly through the last mountain chicken population.

The team made a decision to airlift some of the last healthy frogs and bring them into captivity in a bid to save the creatures from extinction.

Professor Fa said: “Things are not going terribly well in Montserrat because chytrid has now infected the safe population - or at least the one we thought was safe.”

The breeding success has offered scientists a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak situation, and they are now concentrating on increasing the frogs’ numbers.

The team hopes to get the mountain chickens back into the wild

They hope to eventually release the captive mountain chickens back to their native home of Montserrat, and are currently looking for sites that are free of the deadly fungus.

But Professor Fa said: “If that doesn’t work, if the area is infected, we will have to think again, and it could be that we take the animals to another island.

“Within a year or two we have to get these animals back to the wild. The longer you keep them in captivity, the more difficult it is for them to enjoy a life in the wild again.”

The average user has 120 friends on the site

Facebook has turned up the heat on Google by purchasing content-sharing service FriendFeed, say industry watchers.

Many expected Google or even Twitter to buy the company, which has been praised for its “real-time” search engine.

This type of search is valuable because it lets you know what is happening right now on any given subject.

“Google look out, Facebook knows the real money is in real-time search,” said respected blogger Robert Scoble.

“Google is the king of regular search. FriendFeed is the king of real-time search. This makes the coming battle over this issue much more interesting,” Mr Scoble told the BBC.

Back in May, Google founder Larry Page admitted that the search giant had fallen behind other services like that of Twitter, which boasts nearly 45 million users worldwide.

“People really want to do stuff real time and I think they (Twitter) have done a great job.

“We’ve done a relatively poor job of doing things that work on a per second basis,” Mr Page said at the time.

‘Warning shot’

Many in Silicon Valley agree that this deal has changed the game.

“Facebook was unable to acquire Twitter so this is the next best option,” said Ben Parr, associate editor of Mashable, a news blog covering social media.

“FriendFeed is well known for having some powerful and intelligent technology that allows users to aggregate everything they do online and do it all in real time.

“With this acquisition, Facebook is gunning directly not only at Twitter, but at Google. This is a warning shot to those two companies,” Mr Parr told BBC News.

Mr Scoble noted that FriendFeed’s real-time search could stretch back 18 months compared to a few days for Twitter.

Silicon Valley commentators have long regarded FriendFeed as an inspiration for many of Facebook’s features.

These include the ability for users to import activities from third parties services like YouTube and Flickr to letting users comment or say they “like” something in another user’s feed.

“FriendFeed has in effect been the R&D (research & development) department for Facebook for some time now,” said Mr Scoble, who is one of the service’s most popular users with nearly 46,000 subscribers.

“They have the best community technology out there and Facebook should continue to use them to try out new features and test them out before transferring them over to Facebook.”

The deal

The purchase caught many in Silicon Valley by surprise, even though the two companies had been talking on and off for the past two years.

“This is an 11th hour deal,” admitted FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor.

Twitter sees itself as a new form of real-time communication

Industry commentators had expected Google to make a bid for the company, especially given the fact that its founders all used to work there.

“FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request” is how Mr Taylor described the buyout, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to how Facebook users ask one another to become part of their friend network.

He continued in a similar vein in his blog post.

“As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle.

“Our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was equally complimentary.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information.

“As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and the company’s four founders will be given senior roles on the social networking site’s engineering and product teams.

FriendFeed will continue as it is for the moment independently.

“Eventually, one way or another, it’s hard to see FriendFeed as it stands now, continuing on,” said MG Siegler of Silicon Valley news site Tech Crunch.

“Facebook will begin to take up too much of the FriendFeeders’ time, and it will languish. It’s sad, but that’s the web. Not every service can flourish. There simply aren’t enough users with enough time to use all of them.”