animal behavior
clock | January 12, 2007In a time-crunch like this, one can always count on Buzz Skyline to save the day.....
retrospectacle | January 10, 2007I'm sure you've heard of it by now, as numerous blogs (from Big Fat Blog to Effect Measure to Corpus Callosum) have been buzzing with the news of Pfizer's pet obesity drug Slentrol. As a very brief re-cap, this liquid drug is administered to overweight dogs and cats to induce a sense of 'full-ness,' and reduce their food intake. Why this couldn't be accomplished by feeding them less rather than relying on them to voluntarily eat less ('fat' chance), I'm not sure. But, fact is, the drug is now here and its going to make Pfizer a boat-load of cash (as planned) despite it seeming to fill an non…
clock | December 30, 2006
Why burn or recycle when zoo animals love them - some eat them, some play with them, but they are certainly not wasted.
Hat-tip: Russlings
clock | December 28, 2006Here is the next installment of my lecture notes for teh adult education speed-class in biology. As always, I ask for corrections and suggestions for improvement (May 20, 2006):
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BIO101 - Bora Zivkovic - Lecture 3 - Part 1
Imagine that you are a zebra, grazing in the savannah. Suddenly, you smell a lion. A moment later, you hear a lion approaching and, out of the corner of your eye, you see the lion running towards you.
What happens next? You start running away, of course. How does that happen? Your brain receieved information from your sensory…
clock | December 14, 2006Identification Of Carbon Dioxide Receptors In Insects May Help Fight Infectious Disease:
Mosquitoes don't mind morning breath. They use the carbon dioxide people exhale as a way to identify a potential food source. But when they bite, they can pass on a number of dangerous infectious diseases, such as malaria, yellow fever, and West Nile encephalitis. Now, reporting in today's advance online publication in Nature, Leslie Vosshall's laboratory at Rockefeller University has identified the two molecular receptors in fruit flies that help these insects detect carbon dioxide. The findings could…
clock | December 12, 2006Thanks to a bout of warm weather, the new triplet lion cubs at the NC Zoo in Asheboro have been placed in the exhibit yesterday.
Until recently, the visitors could watch them on TV. You can see some pictures here and here and watch some videos here.
clock | December 8, 2006Did mammoths scratch themselves against rocks?
Parkman believes, and he has a growing body of evidence to prove that mammoths and other large Ice Age creatures once used these very rocks near Duncan's Landing, along the Sonoma Coast State Beach, to scratch their backs. He claims the giant mammals rubbed so much that large swaths of rock have been buffered smooth.
Bears scratch against the trees, but which species is which? Lumpers vs. Splitters.
clock | December 8, 2006Shelley scored quite a blogospheric scoop today - an exclusive interview with Irene Pepperberg.
clock | December 7, 2006Interspecific Communicative and Coordinated Hunting between Groupers and Giant Moray Eels in the Red Sea:
The article offers a description and accompanying videos, such as the one showing a grouper and eel swimming side by side as if they are good friends on a stroll. It also offers quantification, which is truly hard to achieve in the field, of the tendencies involved in this mutually beneficial arrangement. The investigators were able to demonstrate that the two predators seek each other's company, spending more time together than expected by chance. They also found that groupers actively…
clock | December 2, 2006Dave explains the incident and gives some excellent background information way beyond what the media reported.
retrospectacle | November 16, 2006
The forests of Siberia are full of insomniac bears, scaring the locals, as the weather has been staying too warm for them to go into hibernation. Usually Siberian bears sleep six months, beginning in October or November, but the Kemerovo region where they live has currently gotten no snow.
Hunters, out in the woods stalking birds and hares now that the hunting season is open, need protection from restless bears the most, she added.
"We have observers who ensure there are no attacks on hunters."
Bears den in dry places usually covered by snow, and wet weather makes finding a suitable "bedroom…
retrospectacle | November 13, 2006Some news from my old stomping grounds at Mote Marine Lab in Sarasota, Florida. Back in undergrad I worked there with the manatees Hugh and Buffet to test their visual acuity (its bad), now the marine observatory is attempting to test the hearing of manatees. This is essential, as the most likely cause of death for a manatee is an "meeting" with the propeller of a speed boat. Can they hear the approach of a boat? And, if so, how loud or far away can they hear it?
When a buzzer sounds, the speed bump-shaped mammal slowly flips his 1,300 pounds and aims a whiskered snout toward one of eight…
clock | November 4, 2006It is not just mirrors that elephants can figure out - they can also flush toilets! [OK, jokes aside, click on the link to see what is really happening]
retrospectacle | November 4, 2006Although I wasn't initially aware of this myth, a technician in my lab informed me that an oft-quoted scientific myth is that a duck's quack doesn't echo. Now, as a student of acoustics, I found that hard to believe. And indeed, a research team at the University of Salford decided to actually test this theory by putting a duck named Daisy in a sound chamber and making it quack.
After recording the quack (and any echos that might have arisen) they came to the conclusion that a duck's quack DOES echo, its just usually too soft for most people to hear. Therefore, the myth probably arose that…
clock | October 31, 2006Humans do it, great apes do it, dolphins do it, now elephants (also here) have also been shown to do it - recognize themselves in the mirror, i.e., realize that the image in the mirror is the image of themselves and not a strange animal. That's a biggie in the world of cognitive science and the study of evolution of consciousness:
When the mirror was unveiled in their yard, they immediately walked over and began poking and prodding and inspecting and playing. They used their trunks to inspect it and then themselves. Two got on their hind legs to look on top of the mirror. One got on the…
clock | October 22, 2006Magnetoreception is one of the most fascinating sensory modalities in living organisms. Most of the work has been done in homing pigeons, migrating birds and salmon. More recently, work has been done in mammals and fruitflies. But this sense is not limited only to the most complex organisms - it is found in a number of bacterial species:
Researchers Reveal Mystery Of Bacterial Magnetism:
Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and Purdue University have shed light on one of microbiology's most fascinating mysteries--why some bacteria are naturally magnetic. Their description of…
clock | October 13, 2006You may remember that Clark's Nutcracker is one of my favourite birds, so I'll be watching this guy (I am assuming he got his PhD with Nikki Clayton):
Researcher Uncovering Mysteries Of Memory By Studying Clever Bird:
Scientists at the University of New Hampshire hope to learn more about memory and its evolution by studying the Clark's nutcracker, a bird with a particularly challenging task: remembering where it buried its supply of food for winter in a 15-mile area. Like many animals preparing for the winter, every fall the Clark's nutcracker spends several weeks gathering food stores. What…
clock | October 11, 2006Meandering Musings on evolutionary psychology and many other things (from February 15, 2005)...
I remember when PZ Myers posted this exercise on his blog. The point was to show how much all of modern biology is based on and dependent on evolutionary theory because of oft-repeated bizzare claim by Creationists that this is not so.
Now Josh Rosenau has embarked on expanding this project and has started a pair of blogs just for this purpose. One blog, The Evolution Project will track recently published scientific papers that more or less explicitely are based on evolutionary theory, while its…
clock | October 4, 2006For easy-to-understand quick look at the evolution of vision I have to refer you to these two posts by PZ Myers, this post of mine, and these two posts by Carl Zimmer.
Now, armed with all that knowledge, you will curely appreciate the importance of this new study:
Compound Eyes, Evolutionary Ties:
Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have discovered that the presence of a key protein in the compound eyes of the fruit fly (which glow at center due to a fluorescent protein) allows the formation of distinct light gathering units in each of its 800 unit eyes, an evolutionary…