Ecology & Zoology

ICAD 2012: Top Ten Cephalopod Stories From The Last Year

To celebrate International Cephalopod Awareness Days, I decided to comb through all the cephalopod news since last October (and there's been quite a bit of it) to bring you the top ten  essential, not-to-be missed stories of cephalopod science and cul ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Oct 11 2012 - 2:09am

Did Body Hair Evolve To Warm Or Cool Animals?

Body hair in mammals is typically thought to have evolved to keep us warm in colder prehistoric periods but in elephants it may do the opposite.  A new study contends epidermal hair may have evolved to help the animals keep cool in the hot regions they liv ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 11 2012 - 5:00am

Wyoming: Where The Deer And The Antelope Play In An Overpass (At Last)

The best reasons to allow hunting in animal-heavy states are that they get hit by cars a lot and they starve. When it comes to cars, some areas are going to be a lot more dangerous than others and it is not a question of how many animals are there but simp ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 15 2012 - 12:00pm

Dogs Yawn When You Do- But They Have To Learn It (And Empathy Too?)

Dogs are susceptible to contagious yawning just like people, says an article in Animal Cognition, but only after they get older. Dogs, like humans, show a gradual development of susceptibility to contagious yawning and the new paper says dogs catch yawns f ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 23 2012 - 9:50am

Beetle Air Conditioning, Silicon Boots, And A Ball Of Dung

In the African savannah can reach 149° Fahrenheit in the middle of the day, which leads to burning sand and an obvious problem for anything that lives there,  including small insects that spend their lives on the surface of the sand. Some insects seek prot ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 25 2012 - 9:30am

Why Europe’s Pleistocene Hippos Shrank To Pygmy Size

1.8 million years ago, giant German hippopotamuses wallowed on the banks of the Elbe. Hippos were all over Europe then, along with other megafauna like woolly mammoths and giant cave bears.  What went wrong?  P alaeontologists blame global cooling during t ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 25 2012 - 11:00am

With This Devoted Squid Mama, I Bid Farewell

Squid typically die after spawning. Their orphaned eggs are left alone in the cold brine to develop and hatch, never knowing a mother's tender caress.  But as in all of biology, there are exceptions. It's strangely appropriate that the second of ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Nov 6 2012 - 10:56am

Sympatric Predator-Prey Relationships: How Bear Dogs And Giant Cats Coexisted

The fossilized fangs of saber-toothed cats, a leopard-sized Promegantereon ogygia and a much larger, lion-sized Machairodus aphanistus, hold clues to how large, extinct mammals once shared space and food with other large predators 9 million years ago. Pale ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 7 2012 - 5:00am

Tall, Dark, And Successful

BOSTON, MA—“The trees are certainly shorter out here,” said Luke. The East Coaster in me bristled instantly. “Well, sure, nothing’s going to measure up to a Redwood,” I said, “but these guys along the road are hardly the best that Massachusetts has to offe ...

Article - Holly Moeller - Nov 9 2012 - 10:57am

Bornean Elephant: Endangered Species Conservation Gets Some Genomics

Studying the genetic variability of endangered species will be necessary for species conservation and monitoring but endangered species are difficult to observe and sample and typically have very limited genetic diversity.  A research team has taken advan ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 22 2012 - 1:00pm