A Rarity Among Arachnids, Whip Spiders Have A Sociable Family Life:
Whip spiders, considered by many to be creepy-crawly, are giving new meaning to the term touchy-feely. In two species of whip spiders, or amblypygids, mothers caress their young with long feelers and siblings stick together in social groups until they reach sexual maturity. This is surprising behavior for these arachnids, long-thought to be purely aggressive and anti-social, according to a Cornell researcher.
New Species Of Snapper Discovered In Brazil:
A popular game fish mistaken by scientists for a dog snapper is actually a new species discovered among the reefs of the Abrolhos region of the South Atlantic Ocean.
Botanists Identify New Species Of North American Bamboo:
Two Iowa State University botanists and their colleague at the University of North Carolina have discovered a new species of North American bamboo in the hills of Appalachia. It is the third known native species of the hardy grass. The other two were discovered more than 200 years ago.
Jet Engines Help Solve The Mysteries Of The Voice:
Although scientists know about basic voice production--the two "vocal folds" in the larynx vibrate and pulsate airflow from the lungs--the larynx is one of the body's least understood organs. Sound produced by vocal-fold vibration has been extensively researched, but the specifics of how airflow actually affects sound have not been shown using an animal model--until now.
Aging Boosts Chances That A Family Line Will Be Long-lived:
It is an inevitability of life -- you are born and you begin to age. Scientists have puzzled over just why organisms evolved aging as a strategy, and now there appears to be an answer. Allowing one individual to carry all the cellular damage inflicted over time, rather than dividing it between two organisms during reproduction, increases the chances that the individual's line will continue to reproduce for many generations to come, a new study indicates.
Explaining Why We Smell Better When We Sniff:
Unlike most of our sensory systems that detect only one type of stimuli, our sense of smell works double duty, detecting both chemical and mechanical stimuli to improve how we smell, according to University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers in the March issue of Nature Neuroscience. This finding, plus the fact that both types of stimuli produce reaction in olfactory nerve cells, which control how our brain perceives what we smell, explains why we sniff to smell something, and why our sense of smell is synchronized with inhaling.
Lifting Chinese Tiger Trade Ban A Death Sentence For Wild Tigers, Say Wildlife Experts:
Any easing of the current Chinese ban on trading products made from tigers is likely a death sentence for the endangered cats, according to a new TRAFFIC report released today by World Wildlife Fund and TRAFFIC--the wildlife trade monitoring program of WWF and IUCN. The report warns that Chinese business owners who would profit from the tiger trade are putting increasing pressure on the Chinese government to overturn its successful 1993 ban and allow domestic trade in captive-bred tiger parts for use in traditional medicine and clothing to resume. For example, investors in the growing number of large-scale captive-breeding "tiger farms" in China are pushing for legalizing trade of products from these facilities, which now house 4,000 tigers. The farms keep captive-bred tigers together in large enclosures--a condition not found in the wild--and feed live animals to them before busloads of tourists. Such farmed tigers are unsuitable for reintroduction into the wild.
Pig Study Forces Rethink Of Pacific Colonisation:
A survey of wild and domestic pigs has caused archaeologists to reconsider both the origins of the first Pacific colonists and the migration routes humans travelled to reach the remote Pacific.
Cannibalistic Signals Help Mammalian Embryos Develop Normally:
A cannibalistic process called autophagy spurs dying embryonic stem cells to send "eat me" and "come get me" signals to have their corpses purged, a last gasp that paves the way for normal mammalian development, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found. Autophagy is the way cells devour their own unwanted or damaged parts. It was known to be active in cell death that occurs during normal embryonic development, but its precise role was unclear.
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