lowly intern
zooillogix | May 19, 2009
by Katie the Lowly Intern
Does the sinking feeling of knowing you could have gotten what you wanted had you made better choices in life sound familiar? Like how if in college, had you gotten a real degree, set goals for yourself, and not tried to buy friendships with your credit card, you could possibly now have a steady job, ambition, and friends? If it does, then you may rest easier tonight knowing there is a term for that: "fictive thinking". And guess what... monkeys get it too!
Researchers at Duke University have concluded that monkeys don't respond solely to direct punishment or…
zooillogix | April 14, 2009
by Katie the Lowly Intern
As a kid, I was always interested in bioluminescence:
So I can't really pass up the chance to post about beings that can produce their own light. Marine biologists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have been playing around with bioluminescent fireworms.
Odontosyllis phosphorea
Dimitri Deheyn and Michael Latz are trying to figure out how and why fireworms generate light producing proteins. Before releasing a mess of gametes, hot lady fireworms create a big cloud of glowing mucus which appears to attract male fireworms. Sexy. Deheyn and Latz…
zooillogix | April 2, 2009
by Katie the Lowly Intern
You might recall this gentle soul who got her face gnawed off by a chimp in February. I won't even begin to sift through the big ball of bizarre that story is, but it does lead to an interesting discussion concerning exactly where apes get enough strength to go around mauling humans. Biologists agree that a great ape's muscle structure is better, faster, stronger than our measly muscles. However, Alan Walker, a professor of Biology at Penn State just published an article in Current Anthropology that looks at another possible contributing factor.
He makes the…
zooillogix | March 26, 2009It might not seem like the an 8 inch long leopard slug could put on an amazing sex show. After all, they can be real slimeballs. But actually, these hermaphroditic gastropod mollusks' sexual behavior is quite... well... beautiful.
video link:
The foreplay for the fertilization, which consists of a lot of licking and nibbling, can last up to 2.5 hours. That's about 793 days in slug time. And when it's all over with, both slugs (slowly) retreat to cold and damp hideaways in order to lay their respective sets of eggs.
If you're thinking about eating these monster slugs, please don't.…