Life Science
dr. dolittle | January 23, 2013
Figure 1 from Pérez-Rodríguez L et al., 2013.
A new study shows that the feather pattern on the chests of some birds (i.e. the bib) may be an outward sign of how healthy the bird is. The pattern the study refers to is called a fractal dimension, which is used to describe the complexity of the pattern (see image above). Researchers, Pérez-Rodríguez et al., discovered that red-legged partridges (Alectoris rufa) who were well-fed had more complex patterns than those who were food-restricted. Moreover, food-restricted animals weighed 13% less and had weaker immune systems.
Source:
Pérez-…
dr. dolittle | January 20, 2013The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University that has just come out with the top 10 new species of 2012! This is the 5th year they have come out with such a list. If you would like to nominate your favorite new species discovered in 2013, click here.
Here are my favorites from the 2012 list:
The snub nose monkey (Rhinopithecus strykeri) from Myanmar that sneezes when it rains:
Photo reconstruction credit: Thomas Geissmann / Fauna & Flora International)
The Spongebob Squarepants sponge (Spongiforma squarepantsii), just because I LOVE that cartoon!:…
dr. dolittle | January 14, 2013
Lake Vostok (cross-section) prior to completion of drilling. Credit: National Science Foundation
Okay, this may not have anything to do with animal physiology...but then again maybe it does...
Russian scientists have just retrieved a core sample of frozen ice from the subsurface Lake Vostok in Antarctica that has been isolated from the outside world for at least 100,000 if not millions of years. The lake was protected by 4,000 meters of ice. The scientists drilled a hole that reached the surface of the lake and allowed the pressure from the lake to raise the water into the hole, where it…
dr. dolittle | January 8, 2013
Image Credit: Stephanie Abramowicz
Image Credit: Stephanie Abramowicz
Researchers have unearthed a fossil of a robin-sized bird (Sulcavis geeorum) from the Cretaceous Period in China that had teeth! This species belonged to a class of birds with teeth (Enantiornithines) that were plentiful in the age of the dinosaurs. However, the teeth of this well-preserved specimen were different. The teeth were sharp and had serrated ridges. The researchers think the ridges observed on the teeth were designed to crack open insects with hard shells, snails or perhaps even crabs. What I also found…
dr. dolittle | January 3, 2013Check out this "sculpure" of a spider discovered by Biologist Phil Torres, created by what may be a new species of Cyclosa found in the Peruvian Amazon. This is not just a pattern weaved by the spider into the web, but instead it is created from debris in the forest (dead insects, leaves, etc.). It is believed the spiders use the sculptures to confuse predators. The real spider can be spotted in the second image below just above the fake spider. In this location, the real spider can actually shake the fake spider to make it appear alive.
Spider sculpture (image credit: Phil Torres,…
dr. dolittle | January 1, 2013Scientist Steven Wiederman from the University of Aukland (shown in image below) has recently published his work suggesting that dragonflies have the ability to focus on a target while blocking out other useless visual information. This is known as selective attention and his work is the first to demonstrate this ability in neurons from an invertebrate.
Sources:
Image Credit: David O'Carroll, University of Adelaide
Wiederman SA, O'Carroll DC. Selective attention in an insect visual neuron. Current Biology doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.11.048
dr. dolittle | December 25, 2012Dr. Alex Taylor from The University of Auckland has demonstrated that New Caledonian crows have the ability to perform causal reasoning, which is the ability to infer that something you cannot see may be the cause of something. According to the article, this is the first study to experimentally demonstrate this ability in a species other than humans.
Source
Science Now
dr. dolittle | December 20, 2012Here are some images of Christmas Tree worms (Spirobranchus giganteus), just in time for the holidays:
Image Source: Ryan Photographic
Image Source: Ryan Photographic
Image Source: Ryan Photographic
These are tube-dwelling worms that live in coral reefs and use their spiral plumes for feeding and respiration.
Christmas Tree Worm Identification -- powered by ehow
Happy holidays!
Sources:
MarineBio
Images: Ryan Photographic
dr. dolittle | December 17, 2012Researchers have actually trained a beagle named Cliff to detect the intestinal bacteria Clostridium difficile on patients and in stool samples that were collected from infected patients in the Netherlands. This infection is common in hospitals and long-term treatment facilities. Infection with the contagious C. diff results in diarrhea that has been responsible for the deaths of up to 14,000 Americans each year. Having a dog sniff out the infection may seem absurd until you consider it can take up to a week to detect the infection using traditional laboratory techniques. Being able to detect…
dr. dolittle | December 13, 2012I just came across a neat blog called "CURIOUS Young Writers" from the New Jersey Assocation for Biomedical Research. The blog features articles written by high school students on how animals are helping scientists answer biomedical research questions. I found the article on how rainbow trout are being used as a model to study liver cancer really interesting! To find out more, click here.
dr. dolittle | December 10, 2012
Carol Meteyer, USGS National Wildlife Health Center
With an estimated 6.7 million bat deaths related to white nose syndrome, understanding this devastating disease is more important than ever. Wildlife Pathologist Carol Meteyer, from the USGS National Wildlife Health Center, has been studying the carcasses of bats that survived white nose syndrome infections, only to succumb to their own immune systems. The overactive immune response is called immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS). While hibernating, the immune system of these bats are down-regulated making them more…
dr. dolittle | December 5, 2012
House sparrow in Mexico City. Photo Credit: © Víctor Argaez
Researchers Suárez-Rodríguez et al., observed house finches (C. mexicanus) and sparrows (P. domesticus) on the National University of Mexico campus in Mexico City routinely pulling apart cigarette butts to obtain the filters. The birds were found to incorporate the filters in their nests leaving researchers to speculate the purpose of used cigarette butts. Using heating elements to attract parasites, they found that probes covered in "used", i.e. artificially smoked, cigarette butts attracted fewer ectoparasites than those that…
dr. dolittle | November 30, 2012
Image of a cynomolgus macaque. Image credit: iStockphoto/Anna Yu
Researchers at Amgen in British Columbia and California have developed an antibody called mimAb1 that mimics the properties of fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21). Having a role in regulating fat and glucose metabolism as well as body weight made this particular growth factor a target for the treatment of obesity and diabetes. When administered to obese cynomolgus monkeys, the new antibody promoted significant weight loss as well as decreases in circulating insulin and glucose concentrations during a tolerance test,…
dr. dolittle | November 29, 2012
Caterpillars with fungus growing out of their heads. Image of Cordyceps sinensis fungus from http://cordyceps-sinensis-mushroom.blogspot.com/
Whoever thought that a brain-attacking fungus might actually be good for you? This particular type of fungus, cordyceps, is known for attacking and killing caterpillars and can be found in the mountains of Tibet. Touted as a cure for various ailments including cancer, asthma, and erectile dysfunction, it is sold in Chinese markets as the "golden worm" or "Tibetan mushroom" for as much as $50,000 per pound! A new study published in RNA provides some…
dr. dolittle | November 21, 2012Jasper is just one of the injured dogs that this research team has been able to help walk following an injection of nasal cells:
dr. dolittle | November 21, 2012This video from Scientific American explains how Thanksgiving dinner makes you feel sleepy:
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
dr. dolittle | November 19, 2012The leading cause of morbidity in captive rhesus monkeys is a condition called idiopathic chronic diarrhea (ICD), a condition similar to the inflammatory disease ulcerative colitis in humans. Since parasitic worms have recently been used to treat inflammatory bowel diseases in humans, researchers Broadhurst et al., decided to try this therapy in infected monkeys. Young rhesus macaques were administered 1000 human whipworm eggs (Trichuris trichiura) orally (don't worry, they are microscopic). The results: 4 out of 5 of the treated monkeys had reduced diarrhea and began gaining weight. …
dr. dolittle | November 14, 2012I just read an article about conservationists in Brazil at the agricultural research agency (Embrapa) who are planning on cloning endangered animals using tissue samples collected from carcasses. The researchers want to clone animals that are not yet critically endangered in order to maintain them in captivity in the event that wild populations decline significantly.
Emprapa is planning to start with the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), a species that is "near threatened" according to the IUCN Red List of endangered species. Other planned species include jaguars, black lion tamarins, bush…
dr. dolittle | November 14, 2012
Image by He Meng, from Nature News
Bactrian camels thrive in conditions considered harsh by many standards: very dry, cold, high elevations. Researchers now suspect their physiological adaptations of high blood sugar, high salt diets, and increased body fat may have evolved to help the animals cope with their environment. For humans, those symptoms could lead to heart disease, but for the Bactrian camel, they are considered physiological, i.e. totally normal.
A paper published in Nature Communications describes the genomic variations in wild and domesticated Bactrian camels. What they found…