animals
edyong | October 3, 2008
According to Christian lore, Mary gave birth to baby Jesus without ever having had sex with Joseph. A biologist might describe this as 'parthenogenesis', the Greek version of the more familiar phrase 'virgin birth'('parthenos' means virgin, and 'genesis' means birth). The New Testament aside, shunning fertilisation and giving birth to young through parthenogenesis is rare among higher animals, occurring in only one in every thousand species. Nonetheless, two Christmases ago, eight virgin births took place in the English town of Chester. The mother's name was Flora and she was a komodo…
omnibrain | October 2, 2008
According to a recent National Geographic article primates pay a lot of attention to their friends asses. But not only that, they can actually identify them based on their fabulous booties. In humans facial recognition is based on a region coined as the Fusiform Face Area (FFA) and I believe a similar region has been found in primates. There is also an area of the human cortex dedicated to processing the body, call the Extra Striate Body Area (EBA). The big question here is whether primates have a particular area of the brain dedicated to only ass processing or they are using one of…
grrlscientist | September 29, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that are or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle bird pals, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is published here for your enjoyment. Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by which lists ecology, environment, natural history and bird books that are (or will…
edyong | September 29, 2008
Two strangers are having a normal conversation in the middle of a large crowd. No one else can see them. No one else can listen in. Thanks to advanced gadgetry, they are talking in coded messages that only they can decipher. These invisible conversationalists sound like they've walked out of a Bond film. But they are entirely real, and their skill at secrecy is biological, not technological. They are squid.
Squid and their relatives, the octopus and cuttlefish, are masters of concealment. They have the most sophisticated camouflage abilities in the animal kingdom and use them to avoid…
edyong | September 28, 2008
You are on a date and by all accounts, it's going well. Midway through dinner, you excuse yourself and head to the bathroom where, to your chagrin, the mirror reveals that you have a streak of sauce on the side of your face. Embarrassed, you wipe it away and rejoin your date.
It's a fairly innocuous scene but it requires an ability that only the most intelligent of animals possess - self-awareness. It's the understanding that you exist as an individual, separate from others. Having it is a vital step to understanding that others are similarly aware and have their own thoughts and…
edyong | September 24, 2008A caterpillar is an eating machine - a mobile set of mandibles, whose sole mission is to survive long enough to munch its way to adulthood. Standing in their way are spiders, birds and predatory insects that want to eat them, and parasitic wasps that want to convert them into living incubators for their own larvae.
With so many enemies, defence is paramount for caterpillars and the various species have evolved a dazzling array of countermeasures. Some camouflage themselves, others use bright colours to advertise their toxic chemical weapons, which in at least one species is powerful enough…
grrlscientist | September 21, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that are or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle bird pals, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is published here for your enjoyment. Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by which lists ecology, environment, natural history and bird books that are (or will…
edyong | September 20, 2008
The decades that make up a typical human lifespan can seem like vast stretches of time to us. But to the forces of evolution, they are mere temporary blips. Common wisdom has it that evolution occurs over geological timescales - thousands and millions of years. As such, evolutionary biology takes a lot of criticism for being a 'descriptive science', being less open than other fields to that fundamental aspect of science - experimentation. Though there are exceptions, those who study evolution must mostly be content to observe snapshots of life, either present or entombed in rock, and…
edyong | September 19, 2008Genetically modified crops have received a frosty welcome in the UK, and more widely in Europe. Those opposed to such crops worry (among other things) that they could affect the flora around them by outcompeting them or by spreading their altered genes in a round of genetic pass-the-parcel. Now, a new study shows that genetically-modified crops does affect surrounding plants - but in a positive way.
Kong-Ming Wu from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences found that genetically modified cotton designed to kill an insect pest can also protect other species plants from its jaws. In…
grrlscientist | September 14, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that are or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle bird pals, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is published here for your enjoyment. Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by which lists ecology, environment, natural history and bird books that are (or will…
edyong | September 13, 2008
As you read this post, your computer is probably busy. You may have multiple programs running in the background, with email clients, anti-virus software or file-sharing software all competing for valuable memory. The ability of computers to multi-task has grown substantially in recent years, as processors have become increasingly powerful.
Evolution has chartered a similar course, and humans are particularly talented at dividing our attention among multiple priorities. Now scientists are showing that the asymmetrical differences between the two sides of our brain are essential for this…
omnibrain | September 11, 2008"I guess a lot of you already know that "liberel" isn't a real word. But it sure was news to me! And now my face is as red as a mooseburger cooked up rare and painted in lipstick!" haha....
edyong | September 10, 2008The forests of east Asia are home to giant honeybees. Each one is about an inch in length and together, they can build nests that measure a few metres across. The bees have an aggressive temperament and a reputation for being among the most dangerous of stinging insects. Within mere seconds, they can mobilise a swarm of aggressive defenders to repel marauding birds or mammals. But against wasps, they use a subtler and altogether more surprising defence - they do a Mexican wave.
Wasps, and hornets in particular, are major predators of bees and the largest ones can make even the giant bees…
edyong | September 8, 2008 In September last year, a team of scientists launched a squad of tiny animals into space aboard a Russian satellite. Once in orbit, the creatures were shunted into ventilated containers that exposed them to the vacuum of space. In this final frontier, they had no air and they were subjected to extreme dehydration, freezing temperatures, weightlessness and lashings of both cosmic and solar radiation. It's hard to imagine a more inhospitable environment for life but not only did the critters survive, they managed to reproduce on their return to Earth. Meet the planet's toughest animals - the…
grrlscientist | September 7, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that are or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle bird pals, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is published here for your enjoyment. Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by which lists ecology, environment, natural history and bird books that are (or will…
edyong | September 2, 2008
Love is all around us and love is in the air, and if I know my mainstream science reporters, today they will have you believe that love is in our genes too. A new report suggests that variation in a gene called AVPR1A has a small but evident influence on the strength of a relationship, the likelihood of tying the knot and the risk of divorce. It's news for humans, but it's well-known that the gene's rodent counterpart affects the bonds between pairs of voles. The story really starts with these small rodents and it's them that I now turn to.
Voles make unexpectedly good animals to study if…
grrlscientist | September 1, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that are or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle bird pals, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is published here for your enjoyment. Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by which lists ecology, environment, natural history and bird books that are (or will…
edyong | August 25, 2008For centuries, farmers have known that their livestock not only gather in large herds but also tend to face the same way when grazing. Experience and folk wisdom offer several possible reasons for this mutual alignment. They stand perpendicularly to the sun's rays in the cool morning to absorb heat through their large flanks, or they stand in the direction of strong winds to avoid being unduly buffeted and chilled.
But cows and sheep don't just line up during chilly spells or high wind. Their motivations for doing so during warm, pleasant and unremarkable weather, or indeed in the dead of…
grrlscientist | August 24, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that are or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle bird pals, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is published here for your enjoyment. Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by which lists ecology, environment, natural history and bird books that are (or will…
tqa | August 23, 2008
I've only recently started birding with any sort of regularity or enthusiasm, and I'm not all that good at it yet. I snapped a couple of pictures of a bird in flight the other day, and I've been trying to figure out what species it is ever since. Despite my lack of expertise, I think I've got it narrowed down to two possibilities. Of course, it's also possible - again given my lack of expertise - that I've managed to totally miss even the family identification.
With that in mind, I'm turning to all of you for help. I've got two pictures, both taken through a 300mm telephoto lens. One of…