Animals
- Life
Male chimps exchange meat for sex
A long-term study of chimps living in western Africa indicates that males hunt down monkeys not only to eat their meat, but also to exchange the meat for sex with female chimps.
- Animals
Sonar causes rock-concert effect in dolphins
Test of recorded sonar causes temporary hearing impairment in dolphins.
- Animals
Chimps ambidextrous when digging wells
A survey of water-collection holes dug on the banks of an African river by wild chimpanzees indicates that, unlike people, these apes don’t have a preference for using either the right or left hand on manual tasks.
- Animals
It’s not just his croak
Male tree frogs with redder vocal sacs prove more popular with females, even at night.
- Animals
Dogs show a fetching communication savvy
In a sign of understanding that one object can be used to represent another, border collies fetch toys after being shown replicas or, in some cases, photos of those toys.
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- Animals
Public tantrums defeat monkey moms too
Rhesus macaque moms are more likely to give in to screaming babies when bystanders are watching and reacting
- Animals
Climate change discourages second families
Birds out of sync with local baby food supply of caterpillars aren’t nesting a second time.
- Plants
Animals’ jaundice pigment found in plants
Bilirubin, a compound well known in animals, gives seed fuzz its intense orange.
- Genetics
Dog gene heeds call of the wild
Domesticated dogs passed a gene for dark fur color to their wild cousins.
- Life
A Most Private Evolution
The most dramatic examples of the power of evolutionary theory may come from the strange and ugly stuff — biology too dumb to have been designed.
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