Zoo Atlanta recently became the first zoological institution in the world to obtain voluntary blood pressure readings from a gorilla. This was made possible by the Gorilla Tough Cuff developed by Georgia Tech students.
In the most comprehensive study of animal evolution ever attempted, an international consortium of scientists plans to assemble a genomic zoo--a collection of DNA sequences for 10,000 vertebrate species, approximately one for every vertebrate genus.
New insights into the biology of the platypus and echidna have been published, providing a collection of unique research data about the world’s only monotremes.
Moose eat plants; wolves kill moose. What difference does this classic predator-prey interaction make to biodiversity? A large and unexpected one, say wildlife biologists at Michigan Technological University, reporting in the November 2009 issue of the journal Ecology.
The "Ask A Biologist" Web site at Arizona State University, a scientific sanctuary for students and teachers alike – hosts this year's Ugly Bug Contest.
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) researchers are close to unraveling intricate cellular pathways that control molting in blue crabs. The discoveries could revolutionize the soft-shell crab industry, generating new jobs and additional profits for the U.S. fishing industry along the coastal Southeast.
While comedian Tommy Smothers always told his brother, “Mom always liked you best,” a study by biology researchers at North Dakota State University, Fargo, and Iowa State University, Ames, have found that female American coots favor their largest offspring, even before they hatch.
As fun as it is to obsess over and be scared by fictional vampires, the real things are much more fascinating. Here is some blood-curdling information from National Wildlife Federation on living, breathing vampires that might just be stalking you.
A recent study at Oregon State University has shown that native bumble bee species have high pollination and seed production levels in red clover. These findings offer promise for alternative crop pollinators, as the population of European honey bee in the US declines
Biologists for the first time have documented a second breeding season during the annual cycle of five songbird species that spend summers in temperate North America and winters in tropical Central and South America.
What do a West African drummer and a sperm whale have in common? According to some reports, they can both spot rhythms in the chatter of an ocean crowded with the calls of marine mammals -- a feat impossible for the untrained human ear.
Spend a little time people-watching at the beach and you're bound to notice differences in the amount, thickness and color of people's body hair. Then head to the zoo and compare people to chimps, our closest living relatives.
The government of Cambodia has transformed a former logging concession into a new, Yosemite-sized protected area that safeguards not only threatened primates, tigers, and elephants, but also massive stores of carbon according to the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which worked closely with governmental agencies to help create the protected area.
It may take a village to raise a child, and apparently it takes at least two adult birds to teach a young song sparrow how and what to sing.
Eastern forests are under siege from an insect that has laid waste to southern forests and is now threatening farther north. Like a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, one UMass Amherst entomologist has been quietly seeding hemlock plots with predatory beetles which scientists hope can stem the invasion.
To avoid becoming a bat’s tasty treat, a species of tiger moth plays a trick with sound. The moth can make up to 450 ultrasonic clicks in a tenth of a second to jam the hungry bat’s sonar and escape death.
Plants may not have eyes and ears, but they can recognize their siblings, and researchers at the University of Delaware have discovered how.The ID system lies in the roots and the chemical cues they secrete.
Conservation biologists are setting their minimum population size targets too low to prevent extinction, according to a new study led by University of Adelaide scientists in Australia.
A new investigation of a fossilized tracksite in southern Africa shows how early dinosaurs made on-the-fly adjustments to their movements to cope with slippery and sloping terrain. Differences in how early dinosaurs made these adjustments provide insight into the later evolution of the group.
On October 3, the skeleton of a 40-foot-long, 7.5 ton dinosaur was put up for auction in Las Vegas. The dinosaur was a skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex, the iconic flesh-eating dinosaur that lived some 66 million years ago. The sale at auction of fossils such as this and others is a matter of deep concern to the profession of vertebrate paleontology.
The National Wildlife Federation has teamed with the upcoming feature film Where the Wild Things Are, to launch Be Out There™, a national campaign to get families and kids to spend daily time outdoors for their health, happiness and well-being.
New research from the University of Maryland shows that termite offspring not only stay to help in their birth colony, but may join with other colonies when the king and queen parents die to form a stronger group. It's social insect evolution at its best.
An unintended consequence of crop-based biofuels may be the loss of wildlife habitat, particularly that of the birds that call this country's grasslands home.
When pondering the demise of a famous dinosaur such as 'Sue,' the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex whose fossilized remains are a star attraction of the Field Museum in Chicago, it is hard to avoid the image of clashing Cretaceous titans engaged in bloody, mortal combat.
When the ancestors of living cetaceans—whales, dolphins and porpoises—first dipped their toes into water, a series of evolutionary changes were sparked that ultimately nestled these swimming mammals into the larger hoofed animal group. But what happened first, a change from a plant-based diet to a carnivorous diet, or the loss of their ability to walk?
Australian researchers have discovered a huge number of new species of invertebrate animals living in underground water, caves and "micro-caverns" amid the harsh conditions of the Australian outback.
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) researchers exploring strategies for conserving the Diamondback Terrapin along Alabama’s Dauphin Island coastline are working to keep the once-celebrated turtle off the endangered species list. The Diamondback Terrapin has been a national delicacy, a source of state taxes and a casualty of commercial development and victim of new predators.
Work by Washington and Lee biologists persuaded the federal government to declare Helenium virginicum, also known as Virginia sneezeweed, a new protected species. Now the biologists are trying to determine whether the species will retain that status.
A team of Chicago biologists including UIC's Emily Minor is asking the public to use an online form to report monk parakeet nest sightings. The biologists plan to use the data to track real-time migration of this exotic Argentinean native as it expands its range across metropolitan Chicago.
Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell’s insight that elephants ‘talk’ and ‘listen’ to vocalizations that they send through the ground grew from long hours of observation and experimentation, as well as her own in-depth knowledge of insects that communicate seismically. The Stanford University professor updates her research from the APS journal Physiology.
The reason some female hoofed animals have horns and others don’t has long puzzled evolutionary biologists, even Darwin. But a survey of 117 bovid species led by a UMass Amherst researcher suggests females living in open country and those who defend a feeding territory are more likely to have horns.
A 9-foot dinosaur from northeastern China had evolved all the hallmark anatomical features of Tyrannosaurus rex at least 125 million years ago.
Before humans colonized New Zealand about 750 years ago, the largest inhabitants of the islands were birds unlike those anywhere else in the world. Giant, flightless birds known as moa were the main plant-eaters. The role of predator, according to a study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, was filled by a giant, extinct raptor known as Haast’s eagle.
Dr. Akoi Kouadio, a West African manatee scientist and conservationist and Coordinator of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Côte D’Ivoire Coastal Wetland and Biodiversity Conservation Projects, died Thursday, August 13, 2009 in Côte D’Ivoire.
A new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and other groups reveals how oil development in the Artic is impacting some bird populations by providing “subsidized housing” to predators, which nest and den around drilling infrastructure and supplement their diets with garbage – and nesting birds.
Try dodging hungry bears, lifting loads 50 times your own weight, laying 1,500 eggs a day, or migrating 22,000 miles.
Veterinarians from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo and the University of Tennessee have found a solution to the challenge of providing effective pain relief to some of their most difficult patients: big cats.
Music is one of the surest ways to influence human emotions; most people unconsciously recognize and respond to music that is happy, sad, fearful or mellow. But psychologists who have tried to trace the evolutionary roots of these responses usually hit a dead end. Nonhuman primates scarcely respond to human music, and instead prefer silence.
University of Utah researchers used data from Portuguese water dogs – the breed of President Barack Obama’s dog Bo – to help find a gene that gives some dogs curly hair and others long, wavy hair.
UMass Amherst biologists used a technique they call multi-gene silencing to, for the first time, silence nine genes at once in a multicellular organism. This allowed them to discover how root hairs and pollen tubes recognize their growing tip and illuminate a process found in all seed plants.
Study may prove useful in conservation efforts for over-fished sharks.
Looking over her orienteering map, Lynn Aldrich, Ed.D., associate professor of physics at Misericordia University, can quickly find the exact location of her favorite trail at Frances Slocum State Park in the Back Mountain. Being in tune with the environment comes naturally for Dr. Aldrich, a self-described environmentalist and humanitarian, who has been making a second home for herself in Mother Nature’s environs since her early teens. “I feel at peace, I feel renewed,’’ she says about being in the great outdoors. “I just feel in touch with the natural world that God created and we are the stewards of.’’
Natural Resource Conservation Service to use monitoring technique for stream assessments
A team of Washington and Lee University faculty and students are investigating the Sherando salamander, which is limited in its habitat to one ridge in the Blue Ridge mountains, to determine whether or not it is a new species.
Mira, a foal born Aug. 4, trots happily in Binghamton, N.Y., even though her mother died almost a year ago from a ruptured intestine. That is thanks to a team at Cornell, which is believed to be the first to successfully extract and ship eggs from a dead mare for remote fertilization and implantation.
A study to inventory native species of bees in the Black Hills will help biologists determine stressors on habitat to help fully understand environmental changes in the region.
Researchers discover that the same chemicals that make California's Central Valley so successful as a farming area also make the nearby Sierra Mountains deadly for frogs.
Although you wouldn't want one to balance your checkbook, dogs can count. They can also understand more than 150 words and intentionally deceive other dogs and people to get treats, according to psychologist and leading canine researcher Stanley Coren, PhD, of the University of British Columbia. He spoke Saturday on the topic "How Dogs Think" at the American Psychological Association's 117th Annual Convention.
Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) scientists studying shorebirds in western Arctic Alaska recently made a serendipitous discovery when they spotted a bar-tailed godwit with a small orange flag and aluminum band harmlessly attached to its legs. Further research revealed that scientists in Australia had banded the bird and attached the flag near Victoria "“ more than 8,000 miles away.
African village dogs are not a mixture of modern breeds but have directly descended from an ancestral pool of indigenous dogs, according to a Cornell-led genetic analysis of hundreds of semi-feral African village dogs.
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