Tag: Biology - Page 8
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Global Warming Makes Trees Grow Faster
A report published last week offers a peek into the effects of global warming on the world's trees. As it turns out, early indications hint that rising temperatures and increases in CO2 emissions may actually lead to an accelerated
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Man Hunts Crocodile That Has Eaten Over 200 People
For 20 years, near Lake Tanganyika in Burundi, locals have been terrorized by one of the largest freshwater crocodiles in the world. The 25 foot long crocodile, named Gustave, has an insatiable appetite... for people. He is known
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Wasps Help Fig Trees Have Sex Over Long Distances
Life has never been too easy for the African wasp Certosolen arabicus--having a lifespan of two days, after all, doesn't afford them much 'me' time. But, if there is one thing that makes their 48 hours of life worth living, it would
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Winning the Genetic Diversity Race in Lost City
Image: D. Kelley of University of Washington, IFE, URI‑IAO, UW, Lost City science party, NOAA Lost City of Atlantis The Lost City is so named because it juts from an Atlantic undersea mountain named Atlantis and was coincidentally discovered by the
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Minke Whale Genetics Study Shows Faulty Logic in Japan's Pro-Whaling Argument
One of the justifications the Japanese whaling industry gives for violating the international ban on whaling is that killing minke whales will help larger baleen whales recover. Well, a new study in Molecular Ecology,
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7 Creepy, Crawly, Endangered Reptiles With Weird Genetic Traits
If snakes, lizards, skinks, and reptiles in general give you the creeps, then we've got seven reasons to give them another chance: From tiny turtles to massive dragons, these endangered reptiles
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Female Frogs Inflate to Deter Amorous Males
It's long been known by scientists that frogs and toads will inflate themselves when approached by a predator to make themselves seem too big to swallow, but new research in the Royal Society's Biology Letters journal reports that
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Synthetic Bone Material Made From Trees Matches Real Bone (Video)
Another reason to love trees - they can give you new bones! Scientists in Italy have discovered a way to transform rattan (yep, as in what we
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Study Reveals How Flies Mate by Shaving Them with a Laser
Nature is plumb full of bizarre genitalia. Even more bizarre is how often we as humans choose to study the topic--or blog about it.
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Species Must Run From Global Warming to Survive
As global temperatures rise, species across the world will have to, quite literally, run to stay alive. According to the latest research, 28.8% of the biomes of the earth will need to migrate at a rate greater than 1
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Amphibians Dethroned as Environmental Canaries
It seems obvious that amphibians, with their permeable skin and proclivity for aquatic environments, would be among the first to be effected by chemical pollution and environmental degradation. Indeed, they have long been
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Goodbye Cruel World - Ants Save Mates from Danger & Macaque Grandmas Nurse Their Grandchildren
Sometimes nature isn't so harsh and here are two stories as example: BBC News reports that two grandmother macaques have been observed nursing and caring for their grandchildren, the first time such caring behavior has been unambiguously documented; on
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Shiver Me Timbers! Scientists Discover Deep Sea Crab Feeding on Wooden Shipwrecks
A new article in the journal Marine Biology brings to light the interesting feeding habits of the deep sea crab Munidopsis andamanica, better known to the world (somewhat perplexingly) as the squat lobster. It seems that the this particular animal eats
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Great White Sharks Along California Coast Are Unique Population - Haven't Met Outsiders in 10,000+ Years
photo: Hermanus Backpackers via flickr. Mongabay is pointing out a really pretty cool piece of shark research from Proceedings of the Royal Society B: The great white sharks along California's coast were previously thought to roam far and wide, but we
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Horrifying Plants That Eat the Living (Slideshow)
Anyone who has seen Little Shop of Horrors has felt it: that sinking feeling that something is not right. And I'm not talking about Rick Moranis singing. I'm talking about sinister carnivorous plants.
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Horrifying Plants That Eat the Living
Anyone who has seen Little Shop of Horrors has felt it: that sinking feeling that something is not right. And I'm not talking about Rick Moranis singing. I'm talking about sinister carnivorous plants. We all know plants can poison us, sure, but it seems u
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Chinese Fruit Bats Demonstrate Unusual Sexual Behavior Never Before Seen in Adult Animals
New research published in the online journal PLoS ONE demonstrates for the first time that a non-human adult animal species regularly engages in oral sex behavior. While the behavior has
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Weird Ways Global Warming is Changing Animal Populations
We all know global warming is generally changing the planet for the worse, but the
