Mimic
dr. dolittle | December 27, 2015
If you own a dog you may agree that it seems as if they understand our feelings. While some may call this anthropomorphizing, you know ascribing human emotions to animals, new research may vindicate the feelings of many pet owners. A study recently published in Royal Society Open Science provides evidence to suggest that dogs can mimic the emotional state of their owners as well as their canine friends, a process similar to empathy called emotional cognition. The research team recorded the behavior of animals at a dog park in Palermo, Italy and noticed that the animals copied the expressions…
dr. dolittle | June 22, 2015 A camouflaged giant Australian cuttlefish. Image from LiveScience; Credit: Sarah Zylinski, Duke University
Could you imagine artificial skin capable of quickly changing colors to communicate or hide? Scientists have been testing ways to mimic the skin of cephalopods like squid, octopuses and cuttlefish, which have a remarkable ability to change skin color and sometimes even texture to mimic their surroundings. Cephalopods have networks of chromatophores, which are cells within their skin that contain a pigment sac. Expanding these cells with the aid of muscles, makes the pigment expand…
edyong | March 11, 2010Not Exactly Pocket Science is a set of shorter write-ups on new stories with links to more detailed takes by the world's best journalists and bloggers. It is meant to complement the usual fare of detailed pieces that are typical for this blog.
Geneticist sequences own genome, finds genetic cause of his disease
If you've got an inherited disease and you want to find the genetic faults responsible, it certainly helps if you're a prominent geneticist. James Lupski (right) from the Baylor College of Medicine suffers from an incurable condition called Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, which…
edyong | July 1, 2009It's been just three weeks since I last wrote about the dark-footed ant-spider Myrmarachne melanotarsa, but this is one species that just keeps getting more and more interesting. To quickly recap, M.melanotarsa is a jumping spider that protects itself from predators (like other jumping spiders) by resembling an ant. Earlier this month, Ximena Nelson and Robert Jackson showed that they bolster this illusion by living in silken apartment complexes and travelling in groups, mimicking not just the bodies of ants but their social lives too.
Now Nelson and Robert are back with another side to the…