Most people have heard squirrels and other animals raise a racket when there’s a predator nearby. Sometimes, the chirps, tweets and screeches don’t change much when a prey species is threatened by a hawk, say, or a prowling jackal. But scientists are becoming increasingly aware of other animals — including prairie dogs, lemurs and red [...]
It’s fascinating enough that human moms pass immunity to their kids by nursing. But as it turns out, even mothers of the egg-laying variety have ways to stop nasty pathogens from harming their kids. A new study in the open access journal PLoS ONE reveals new insights about the anti-bacterial methods of the pearly-eyed thrasher, [...]
Fortune has smiled on two species in radically different parts of the world and the animal kingdom over the past week, as United States biologists announced a plan to study the American pika for possible protection, and the government of Cameroon unveiled its intention to create a new national park which will protect more than 600 gorillas.
In both [...]
Researchers in Germany and Russia have been spying on the creepy little bacteria that cause Lyme’s Disease, and think they may be closing in on an Achilles Heel. And that could translate into good news someday for the roughly 30,000 people who contract the tick-born disease in the United States each year (see map) — and [...]
New research this week has revealed that pigeons know precisely what they’re doing when they poop on people’s heads.
Okay, not really. But the intelligence gap between people and non-human animals is getting narrower all the time, and pigeons are the latest species to demonstrate that in a lab.
Edward Wasserman, an experimental psychology professor at the University [...]
