Ecology & Zoology

It's the Most Squidful Time of the Year!

In case you missed the memo (HOW COULD YOU), we're in the middle of International Cephalopod Awareness Days. Over the years the celebration has grown to encompass five full days of merriment (you can follow the joy on facebook) and I'm pretty su ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Oct 10 2013 - 11:22pm

Aliens Vs. Predators: In Zoology, Europe Can Defeat America

Resident European shrimps may be beating back invaders from America, which means Europe has fared better on this battlefront than it has against the Californian grey squirrel and American crayfish.  The researchers mapped the occurrence of the interloper ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 13 2013 - 9:21am

The Science Of What The Dog Knows

These days, when I watch a good working dog hone in on scent — whether it’s a dog locating the scent of human remains or trailing someone who is still alive — I can see him trace its passage in the air until he’s drawn a clear picture with his nose. An ex ...

Article - Cat Warren - Oct 15 2013 - 9:43am

Fat But Fit- Dormice Do It, So Can You

Female edible dormice (Glis glis) have a pleasant taste and have long been viewed as a special delicacy. The Romans even kept them in captivity to fatten them up for eating, which explains the "edible" part of their name.  The reason is because ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 22 2013 - 10:36am

Australian Humpback Dolphin Is A New Species

Humpback dolphin swimming in the waters off northern Australia are a new species   previously unknown to science, according to a team of researchers  To determine the number of distinct species in the family of humpback dolphins (animals named for a pecul ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 29 2013 - 1:49pm

Animal Free Will? Their Personalities Are Unpredictable, Just Like Ours

A new paper says that unpredictability is a consistent trait in the animal world, just like it is humans. Anyone who owns a cat knows that, right? Not really. Though animals are known to show consistent individual differences in behavior, and pet owners m ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 31 2013 - 11:17am

Bug Dracula

Today is Reformation Day, which until recently (so I have heard) was a national holiday in Germany, but the government decided that the Germans were getting too many holidays, and took it out of the calendar.  It is still, though, a civic holiday in Slove ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Oct 31 2013 - 2:20pm

Viet Nam Testing Dengue-Blocking Mosquitoes

Dengue fever is the most common vector-borne disease in the world, the World Health Organization estimates that 2.5 billion people at risk and that up to 390 million people are infected with the virus each year. There's no medication and no vaccine, s ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Nov 5 2013 - 11:03am

Ecological Jenga: Which Creatures Of Influence Need To Be Preserved From Extinction?

We can't identify 99 percent of the species that have gone extinct so trying to keep everything we do know about from going extinct is tilting at nature's windmill. But if we played Noah and had a giant ark and wanted to engage in ecological Jen ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 6 2013 - 10:57am

Sexual Dimorphism Trend: Male Fence Lizards Don't Like 'Bearded Ladies'

Which do male lizards find sexiest, the more feminine kind or the masculine? Researchers recently tackled this question by examining the mating behavior and blue-color patterns of fence lizards in Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi and offer some insight ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 6 2013 - 6:00am