Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

Oct 31, 2009

Aussie Birds Shrinking, Heading Poleward

Australia’s average surface temperature has risen more than 1 Fahrenheit degree since 1900. During roughly the same period, the body size of Australian passerine (perching) birds has declined by as much as 3.6 percent. Zoologist Janet L. Gardner of the Australian National University in Canberra and colleagues, who detected the...

Oct 31, 2009

Ants Save Mates Trapped in Sand

Helpful acts, such as grooming or foster parenting, are common throughout the animal kingdom, but accounts of animals rescuing one another from danger are exceedingly rare, having been reported in the scientific literature only for dolphins, capuchin monkeys, and ants. New research shows that in the ant Cataglyphis cursor, the...

Oct 31, 2009

Key to Success? Dinosaurs May Have Been Warm-Blooded

Many dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded just like mammals or birds, potentially explaining their extraordinary success before their extinction. For decades, scientists assumed that because dinosaurs resembled lizards, they were cold-blooded as well, their internal temperature rising and falling with the outside world. However, birds are warm-blooded, and the fact...

Oct 31, 2009

Following Feathers from Birds to Dinosaurs

Richard Prum, a biologist at Yale University and the director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, is one of the leading experts on the evolution of feathers and the relationship between birds and their dinosaur ancestors Recently, Prum and his colleagues showed that an ancient, 47-million-year-old bird had...

Oct 31, 2009

Female Wild Horses Stick Together

Wild mares that form strong social bonds with other mares produce more foals than those that don’t, researchers have found, in what may be the first documented link between “friendship” and reproductive success outside of primates. The study followed bands of feral horses in the Kaimanawa Mountains of New Zealand...

Oct 31, 2009

Pearls Cultured from Conchs

The queen conch, a marine snail, lures shell collectors with its unique, spire-shaped shell, but the mollusk also produces lustrous, deep-pink pearls. For years, people have attempted, with little success, to farm such pearls. Now, scientists say they have developed the first reliable technique for culturing conch pearls. The scientists...

Oct 31, 2009

Really Rare Rhinos Found by Dung-Sniffing Dogs

We all know dogs like to smell just about everything, including other animals' poo. Now scientists have figured out how to put the canines' odd pastimes to work to help sniff out the dung of endangered rhinos in Vietnam. The collected dung will help scientists to figure out how many...

Oct 31, 2009

Marmots Remember Long-Gone Predators

Talk about bearing a grudge! Even though wolves were extirpated from Colorado in the 1930s, yellow-bellied marmots there still fear them, a recent study shows. Foxes, coyotes, and mountain lions all think marmots make a nice meal. But each predator represents a different threat: foxes, for example, usually attack pups,...

Oct 31, 2009

Teensy Chameleon Is New Species

A tiny chameleon species with a scaly horn atop its snout and blue dots on its limbs has been discovered in Tanzanian forests. It would sit quite easily on one finger, said Andrew Marshall of the University of York and Flamingo Land, adding the chameleon's body spans just 2.8 inches...

Oct 31, 2009

Chimps Enjoy a Good Tune, Too

Love of music is universal among people, but when did that taste evolve? Do other primates share our preference for consonant rather than dissonant chords? Cotton-top tamarins do not, according to past research. Our closest cousins, chimpanzees, had never been tested, however—until now. It’s hard for researchers to find a...

Oct 31, 2009

Naked Mole Rats Survive Extreme Oxygen Deprivation

The air in underground colonies of naked mole rats is disgusting and limited, high in carbon dioxide and low in oxygen. If you had to breathe it, you would not only be grossed out, but you'd get brain damage. Yet these blind and nearly hairless creatures have adapted to survive...

Sep 30, 2009

Dragonfly Nymph Attacks Pregnant Mussels

For female freshwater mussels, reproduction is a stressful affair. Now zoologists have discovered an extra burden on pregnant Texas hornshell mussels, Popenaias popeii: an unexpected assailant that eats them away from within. A mussel mom’s stresses start when her fertilized eggs enter tubes within her gills and develop into glochidia,...

Sep 30, 2009

'First Bird' Not Very Bird-Like

A feathered beast that lived some 150 million years ago and which is considered the first bird likely grew more like its sluggish ancestors, the dinosaurs. That's according to new analyses of tiny bone chips taken from Archaeopteryx and detailed this week in the journal PLoS ONE. The study researchers...

Sep 30, 2009

Big Cats Picky About Habitat

Many species of large cats, including the leopard, are particularly fussy about where they live, actively avoiding certain areas, a new study in Tanzania finds. Surprisingly, all the species surveyed tended to avoid croplands, the researchers found, suggesting that habitat conversion to agricultural land could have serious implications for carnivore...

Sep 30, 2009

Flying Reptile May Have Snatched Dinosaurs in Midair

A crow-sized reptile sporting a lengthy tail likely soared through the skies some 160 million years ago, snatching feathered dinosaurs and tiny flying mammals from the air, suggest fossils of a newly identified pterosaur. While paleontologists can't go back in time to watch the in-flight meal capture, the reptile's fossils,...