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Modern cats bite harder than Sabretoothed cats

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Written by Thomas Hesselberg
Sunday, 03 August 2008
Skeleton of a sabretoohed cat at La Brea Tar Pits Museum, Los Angeles. Wikimedia Commons. New measurements on skulls show that the extinct sabre-toothed cats had much less biting force than modern cats. Instead their skulls had evolved for efficient predation with a high gape angle. Palaeontologists can derive surprisingly many details about the life history and behaviour of extinct animals based solely on the morphology of their skeleton. In a new study published in PLoS One, the Danish scientist Per Christiansen from the Zoological Museum of Copenhagen investigated predatory behaviour in the extinct sabretoohed cats. Tag it: ? Be first to comment this article \| Add as favourites (8) \| Quote this article on your site \| Views: 186 \| E-mail
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Why do we sleep?

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Written by Thomas Hesselberg
Wednesday, 07 May 2008
Although several hypotheses attempt to explain why we sleep, it remains a scientific mystery. Photo courtesy of Photocase.com. Most of us spend about 7-9 hours of the day in a passive state of unconsciousness. Why do we humans have to �waste� around a third of our lives doing absolutely nothing? This time could surely be better used for something else. However, like everything else in the world that surrounds us, sleep has been subjected to evolutionary forces, so since it is observed universally among animals, its advantages must outweigh the costs of less time available for food and mate searching. We know from ourselves that we definitely need sleep, without it, we become drowsy and our mental and motor faculties lose efficiency. With prolonged sleep deprivation we start to hallucinate and lose grasp of reality. The same effects are seen in animals. However, science cannot yet completely solved the mystery of we have to sleep. In a recent review paper, Emmanuel Mignot from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute looks closer at the hypotheses for why we sleep. Tag it: ? Be first to comment this article \| Add as favourites (10) \| Quote this article on your site \| Views: 217 \| E-mail
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Parasite makes ant resemble a fruit

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Written by Thomas Hesselberg
Thursday, 24 April 2008
The parasite changes the appearance of the ant so it resembles a fruit. On the left is the normal ant and on the right is the infected ant. Photo by Stephen Yanoviak from Current Biology (2008) 18: R294. The evolutionary arms race between parasites and their hosts have been ongoing, almost since the first organisms appeared on Earth. The development of hosts defences including immune, chemical and behavioural defences have forced parasites to develop more and more advanced counter-measures. Some of the most impressive outcomes include parasites, which can affect and control the behaviour and physiology of their hosts. A new addition including a parasitic nematode and an ant has recently been described by scientists from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Tag it: ? Be first to comment this article \| Add as favourites (12) \| Quote this article on your site \| Views: 327 \| E-mail
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Amazing diversity among indonesian monitor lizards

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Written by Dr. H. P. Bustami
Friday, 02 November 2007
Andre Koch with a monitor lizard, Gorontalo, N Sulawesi. Courtesy: Evy Arida A young german scientist, phd-student André Koch, from the Alexander-Koenig-Museum in Bonn, Germany and his indonesian collegues (Zoological Museum of Bogor, Java, Indonesia) discovered new species of monitor lizards. The islands of sulawesi are known for their diversity in animal species also applying to the family of monitor lizards. Koch captured and investigated morphologically and taxonomically specimens of the genus Varanus. Tag it: ? Be first to comment this article \| Add as favourites (16) \| Quote this article on your site \| Views: 462 \| E-mail
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Snails actively build up a camouflage

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Written by Dr. H. P. Bustami
Thursday, 25 October 2007
Snail modelizing its wormgearbox. Courtesy, C. Allgaier, University Tuebingen, Germany It was well known from hermit crabs that they use conches as protection against predators. They carry with them their own fortress. Now scientists from the university of Tuebingen, Germany, revealed that some land snail species actively use structures of their substrate they are living on and attach it to their wormgearbox. The 1 cm long land snail Napaeus barquini, living on the canary island Gomera, lives on rocky underground which is covered by lichen. Young snails actively build bumps of lichen on their wormgearboxes. They use their mouth to graze the lichen and during a complicated behaviour add it to the camouflage. Tag it: ? Be first to comment this article \| Add as favourites (45) \| Quote this article on your site \| Views: 565 \| E-mail
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