cuckoo
bleimanb | July 22, 2008Discovery.com recently reported two instances of animals manipulating sound to master their environments.
Cuckoos are known for tricking birds into rearing their chicks: They lay their eggs in another species' nest and, once hatched, the baby cuckoos push out the eggs and/or chicks of the host birds. While it's also known that the baby cuckoos can mimic the cries of the host birds' chicks, scientists were surprised to find that one Australian species, the Horsfield's bronze-cuckoo, takes this a step further.
Tengo pince hambre! Je suis baiser affamé! Sono scopare affamato! Excuse me, can…
bleimanb | January 3, 2008A new scientific paper has shown a strange, deceptive adaptation in the Maculinea butterflies of North Western Europe--an adaptation that has caused a genetic race between the butterflies and many different species of ants. The butterflies' caterpillar larvae emit a powerful smell that tricks the ants into believing that they are in fact ant larvae. The ants then...
...carry the larvae back to their secret lairs, and feed them. Just like the famed cuckoo birds, the larvae trick the ants so effectively that the ants give up on taking care of their own brood to focus exclusively on the…
grrlscientist | December 6, 2007This little story just goes to show that you should never underestimate a blonde.
A contestant on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" had reached the final plateau. If she answered the next question correctly, she would win $1,000,000. If she answered incorrectly, she would pocket only the $25,000 milestone money. And as she suspected it would be, the million-dollar question was no pushover.
The question was; "Which of the following species of birds does not build its own nest, but instead lays its eggs in the nests of other birds? Is it:
A) the condor
B) the buzzard
C) the cuckoo
D) the…