Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

Apr 30, 2012

Despite Legal Challenge, Tyrannosaur Sells for $1 million

NEW YORK — A nearly complete tyrannosaur skeleton has sold for just over $1 million, in spite of a call to halt its auction because the fossils may have been taken illegally from Mongolia. During an auction this afternoon (May 20), Heritage Auctions sold the Tyrannosaurus bataar specimen to an...

Apr 30, 2012

Why Dogs' Origins Are Still Mysterious

Humans' close relationship to dogs has so far obscured their history so much that it's not yet possible to use genetic data to tease out the details of their domestication, new research indicates. Their complicated history involves being interbred, as well as transported around the world. There's a central irony...

Apr 30, 2012

Beyond the Tyrannosaur: Other Auction Specimens Alarm Scientists

While the nearly complete tyrannosaur skeleton up for auction on Sunday (May 20) is now the subject of a legal battle, other fossils sold that day may also have been smuggled out of Mongolia, paleontologists say. These include teeth belonging to the same species of dinosaur, a Tarbosaurus bataar, and...

Mar 31, 2012

Fuzzy Dinosaur Fishes at Dawn in New Paleo-Art

A paleontologist-artist has revealed what a meat-eating dinosaur called Unenlagia (whose name means half-bird) may have looked like when it roamed the Earth some 85 million years ago during the late Cretaceous. Paleontologist, consultant and scientific illustrator Scott Hartman depicts Unenlagia fishing in the early morning glow from the sun....

Mar 31, 2012

How Gravity Messes with Honeybees' Waggle Dance

Honeybees are known to communicate in a dance language called the waggle dance to point out the location of resources that keep the hive alive, but new research reveals that gravity can mess with this dance's accuracy. The waggle dance is an important part of how they provide for the...

Mar 31, 2012

Image Gallery: Russia's Beautiful Killer Whales

White Orca (Image credit: © Far East Russia Orca Project) A mature all-white male orca, the only one of its kind known, has been spotted in the North Pacific off the east coast of Russia, scientists announced Monday (April 23). After seeing its towering white dorsal fin breaking through the...

Mar 31, 2012

Strange Organism Has Unique Roots in the Tree of Life

Talk about extended family: A single-celled organism in Norway has been called mankind's furthest relative. It is so far removed from the organisms we know that researchers claim it belongs to a new base group, called a kingdom, on the tree of life. We have found an unknown branch of...

Feb 29, 2012

Freeze-Dried Pets Comfort Grieving Owners

Mike McCullough never intended to start freeze-drying beloved pets for grieving owners. But more than a decade ago, a friend of a friend asked the Fort Loudon, Penn., taxidermist to save his beloved dog from the grave or cremation by preserving the animal instead. McCullough agreed. Then he talked to...

Feb 29, 2012

Eyeless Sea Creature Senses Light Like Humans

An eyeless sea creature, related to jellyfish and sea anemones, may nonetheless be able to see light and dark, say researchers who found light-sensitive neurons that work in a manner similar to human vision. I wouldn’t call this vision, because as far as we know the hydra are not processing...

Feb 29, 2012

Photo: Who's Feet Are These?

Guess who? Though these weird tootsies may spark the imagination, these are not the feet of a mythical beast featured in the pages of a Harry Potter book. The luxurious fur and claw-like toes belong to an animal that needs both for its high-mountain lifestyle: an alpaca. Thick fur helps...

Feb 29, 2012

Do Animals Get Seasick?

When Earnest Shackleton trekked to the Antarctic, he brought ponies (and whiskey) with him to help. According to his journals, those ponies didn’t fare so well on the water. They, like many people, responded to the pitching seas with confusion and dizziness. But because horses cannot vomit — the sphincter...

Feb 29, 2012

Camera Traps Spot Mother Tiger and Cubs in India

A few weeks after conservationists spotted tigers crossing a river in northern India firsthand, a field team has collected camera-trap photo evidence of the area being used by 13 tigers, including a mother and her cubs. Having this information will help officials and conservationists learn how to better protect the...

Feb 29, 2012

High Number of Sick Dolphins May Be Linked to Gulf Oil Spill

Sickly, underweight bottlenose dolphins living and dying in the northern Gulf of Mexico may be the result of exposure to oil that gushed into the water after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. The oil disaster occurred April 20, 2010, when the Macando oil well blew out. During the three...

Feb 29, 2012

Against the Arapaima, the Piranha Scores but Doesn't Win

This Research in Action article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. It's a match-up worthy of a late-night cable movie: Put a school of starving piranha and a 300-pound (130 kilogram) fish together, and who comes out the winner? The surprising answer, given the notorious...

Feb 29, 2012

Can Animals Commit Suicide?

At the end of the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove, former dolphin trainer Ric O'Barry claims that a dolphin he worked with jumped out of the water and committed suicide in my arms. Animals such as primates, dolphins and even squid have been shown to have self-awareness, but can they actually...