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ScienceAnimals
Dogs Feel Jealousy, Raising Questions About Its Evolutionary Origin
Despite the wide variety of species that have complex social structures – elephants, monkeys, chimps, dolphins, giraffes, wolves, corvids, and lots more – many have argued that jealousy requires a sophisticated understanding of the self and of other’s social goals and desires. That skepticism has proven reasonable in the case of guilt. What many dog … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
China Is Turning Tiger Bones Into Wine
Chinese brewers are making wine from tiger bones despite specific regulations against the trade in tiger bones. And it’s not technically illegal, since they’re not actually selling the bones. What? The tigers’ modern plight in China began in 1959 when tigers were targeted for eradication by Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” and in the more than … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Is Eating Kosher Seafood Better for the Environment?
In some ways, absolutely yes. That’s the conclusion reached by researchers from NOAA and California State University, Channel Islands. And it mostly has to do with the distance that seafood travels from the ocean to your plate. Foods are now covered in all kinds of labels. Free range, organic, GMO-free, and all the rest. But … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Learn How To Talk To Animals
The BBC has a new series all about animal communication called Talk to the Animals. Someone has posted the first episode online in its entirety, and it’s well worth a watch. Lucy Cooke, TV presenter and zoologist, begins the series with segments on vocal communication in mongooses, hippos, and frogs; on visual communication in fireflies; … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Animals Shaped the Evolution of Colorful Fruits
Fruits can get their colors from a lot of places. New research suggests that the color preferences of the animals that eat fruit are among the strongest influences on fruit color. It’s an assumption scientists have always made, but now they have some evidence to support it. It has long been thought that part of … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Pangolins Walk Just Like T. Rex
Pangolins, or Scaly Anteaters, are fascinating creatures. The eight pangolin species are found in Africa and parts of Asia, and they’re the only mammals whose skin is covered in scales. The scales, which harden as a pangolin ages, are made of keratin. The substance is found in human skin as well, but is best known … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Predatory Birds Remind Us That Inside, They’re 100% Dinosaur
Watch this Great Blue Heron stalk, snatch, and swallow a gopher and you’ll get a sense of how terrifying it must have been to be a small prehistoric proto-mammal just trying to survive without getting gobbled up by a dinosaur. Also: OMG you can still see the gopher wriggling around as it moves down the … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Shark Week Doubles Down On Its Lies
Last week, Youtube user “Fisher86” posted what appeared to be a video shot with a camera phone of a shark in Lake Ontario. It resulted in mainstream news coverage and official government warnings. It was all a hoax created to drum up interest in Shark Week. And to scare people. It took Discovery Channel a … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Here’s What Happens To Snakes In Microgravity
In honor of World Snake Day, which is today, here’s what happens when you put a bunch of snakes on a plane…for science. Most animals perceive the weightlessness of microgravity as if they were falling upside down. If you drop a cat from a great height, for example, it will roll over to attempt to … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Biologists Have Finally Realized That Animals Don’t Live in Flatland
Animals live their lives in three dimensions. By incorporating data from the third, vertical dimension – elevation, altitude, or depth – scientists can finally have a more accurate understanding of how animals move. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions was an 1884 parable written to satirize the hierarchies of Victorian culture, but it also provides … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Treetop Camera Traps Catch Animals In Their Most Candid Moments
Most of the world’s photographs are taken between zero and six feet from the ground. Wildlife biologists love their camera traps, and one group finally decided to place some in the trees of a tropical rainforest, nearly 90 feet high. Here’s what they found. In Peru, a strip of rainforest was mowed down recently for … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
High Speed Footage Reveals The Alien Mechanics of Fish Feeding
How do you eat if you don’t have any teeth? Combine an independently moving jaw with a delicate, refined use of the principles of fluid dynamics and you’ve got a perfect hunting mechanism. If you’re like me, you haven’t spent all that much time thinking about how fish eat, but it’s pretty incredible. The super … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
A Pack of Zoo Wolves Escapes…Right Into The Polar Bear Enclosure
Canada’s wildlife is at it again, but this time they’re playing out a classic scene from literature. It’s The Count of Monte Cristo, or perhaps The Shawshank Redemption, zoo style. In The Count of Monte Cristo, the Mad Priest miscalculates the route that his tunnel must take to break him out of imprisonment at the … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
New and Improved Bird Bath, Now With Extra Coyote!
Bird baths aren’t just for birds any more. A crafty coyote at Death Valley National Park decided to escape the heat by squeezing itself into a small bird-sized bathtub. And how could you blame it? The overnight low last night in Death Valley was a “cool” 93 degrees Fahrenheit! The photo comes courtesy the US … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Understanding Chimpanzee Intelligence Can Shed Light On Our Own
It’s hard to study intelligence in humans — our cultures are incredibly complex, and what counts as “smart” is defined as much by our societies as it is by our genes. So some researchers have turned to chimpanzees to understand what actually gives rise to intelligence in the brain. A century of scientific investigation into … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Your Next Pair of Jeans Could Be Designed by Lions and Tigers
You know how trendy it is to wear jeans that look old and beat up, right? Most denim companies turn to sandblasting to get the job done, but a Japanese charity has a new idea: let lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!) do it. We’ll show you how, with gifs. Step one: Wrap denim around … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Tiny Thumb-Sized Hedgehog Lived in Canada 52 Million Years Ago
During the early Eocene epoch, North American mammals were quite different from what we see today. Here’s one example: researchers have just uncovered a 2-inch-long fossilized hedgehog in British Columbia. That’s the size of your thumb. It’s the tiniest hedgehog known to science. The researchers, writing in the most recent issue of the Journal of … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
The Alien Brains Living on Planet Earth
To look for aliens, most people peer towards the sky. But if you look down, you’ll discover they already live among us. These aliens have brains, like we do, but they’re mostly inside their arms, and each arm acts as if it has a mind of its own. I’m speaking, of course, of the octopus. … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Baby Pygmy Seahorses Have The Most Amazing Camouflage
You might have to look really hard at this video of the California Academy of Sciences‘ newest residents – the first ever born in an aquarium – to find the tiny fish. The adults are dwarfed by a pencil eraser; imagine how tiny the babies are! Their camouflage is so perfect that they evaded scientists … Continued
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ScienceAnimals
Zoo Keepers Use “Vicks Vap-O-Rub” To Help Mongooses Get Along
Keepers at the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo found that their mongooses weren’t getting along. Their solution to keep the peace was as surprising as it is clever. The problem first became apparent when one of the zoo’s banded mongooses (Mungos mungo) had a veterinary exam. When he returned to his enclosure, his group didn’t recognize … Continued