Animal Behaviour
Neurophilosophy
Category archives for Animal Behaviour
US military planned using spy crows to find Osama bin Laden
Posted by Mo on May 8, 2011 THE United States military funded research into using networks of ‘spy crows’ to locate soldiers who are missing in action, and extended the work to see if the birds might be useful in helping them to find Osama bin Laden. The idea may seem far-fetched, but unlike some military research programs (such as the Stargate…
Box jellyfish stable-eyes vision to hunt prey
Posted by Mo on April 28, 2011 Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of Nature) was a landmark in biological illustration. Published in 1904, it was lavishly illustrated with 100 exquisitely detailed lithographic plates, including this one, showing nine different species of cubomedusae, or box jellyfish. It has been known, since around the time that Haeckel’s masterpiece was published, that box jellyfish…
‘Wasabi receptor’ is snake’s infrared sensor
Posted by Mo on March 17, 2010 SNAKES have a unique sensory system for detecting infrared radiation, with which they can visualize temperature changes within their immediate environment. Using this special sense, they can image the body heat radiating from warm-blooded animals nearby. This enables them to track their prey quickly and with great accuracy, even in the dark, and to target…
Circadian and social cues regulate sodium channel trafficking in electric fish
Posted by Mo on October 2, 2009 SEVERAL hundred species of fish have evolved the ability to generate electric fields, which they use to navigate, communicate and home in on prey. But this ability comes at a cost – the electric field is generated continuously throughout life, so consumes a great deal of energy, and it can also attract predators which are…
The star-nosed mole’s amazing appendages
Posted by Mo on August 26, 2009 THIS weird and wonderful creature is the star-nosed mole (Condylura cristata), a small, semi-aquatic mammal which inhabits the low wetlands of eastern North America. Like other moles, it ekes out an existence in a network of narrow underground tunnels, and digs shallow surface tunnels where it forages for insects, worms and molluscs. Living as it…
Those clever corvids
Posted by Mo on August 6, 2009 NOT so long ago, the idea that birds might possess some form of what we call intelligence seemed quite ridiculous. Yet this view has changed dramatically in recent years, with numerous studies showing that some bird species are capable of complex cognition. Members of one family of birds in particular – the Corvidae, which includes…
Tiger moths jam bat sonar
Posted by Mo on July 17, 2009 BATS use sonar, or echolocation, to navigate complex environments, and also to forage and then accurately pinpoint the flying insects on which they prey. Insects in turn have evolved various counter-measures to evade capture. Some species have ears which are in tune to the echolocation signals, while others are capable of performing complex evasive flight…
The universal grammar of birdsong is genetically encoded
Posted by Mo on May 4, 2009 Human cultural traits such as language, dress, religion and values are generally said to be passed from one generation to the next by social learning. And in animal species which have language, the same is true; male song birds, for example, learn the songs with which they serenade potential mates from older male relatives. A…
Brain & behaviour of dinosaurs
Posted by Mo on February 10, 2009 Bones have been big news recently, following the publication of two papers which document remarkable fossil finds. First, a group of palaeontologists led by Phil Gingerich of the University of Michigan described Maiacetus inuus, a primitive whale which lived in the water but gave birth on land, and which marks the transition between modern whales…
The harmonic duets of mosquitoes in love
Posted by Mo on January 9, 2009 The familiar buzzing sound made by a mosquito may be irritating to us humans, but it is an important mating signal. The sound, produced by the beats of the insect’s wings, has a characteristic frequency called the “flight tone”; when produced by a female, it signals her presence to nearby males, thereby attracting potential mates.…