The process of domestication fundamentally changes an animal’s looks and behavior. Floppier ears and a loss of fear of humans, for example, are nearly universal in domesticated species. Now, researchers have learned what domestication looks like in the brain—at least, for rabbits. Continue reading “Becoming Fearless: Study Finds Major Changes to Domesticated Bunny Brains”
If you feel your stomach flutter uncomfortably at the mere image of a slithering serpent, you’re not alone. It’s thought that snakes make about half of us anxious, and 2-3% of people are Ophidiophobic—that is, they’re deeply afraid of snakes. Such fear is thought to have deep roots; over the course of our evolutionary history, snakes are thought to have had such an influence on our risk of dying that we’ve evolved an innate fear of them, which has even influenced our visual acuity—an idea known as the Snake Detection Hypothesis.
Whether we all really share an innate terror of snakes is still somewhat controversial, but the case is much clearer in dogs: our beloved canine companions simply aren’t afraid of snakes, and that’s probably part of the reason so dang many of them wind up in veterinary ERs for envenomations. Continue reading “Man’s Best Friends Don’t Share Our Fear Of Snakes”
It comes as no surprise to regular readers of mine that I have a special place in my heart for parasites. I have waxed poetic about their global dominion, but usually, I focus on the animal kingdom’s most malicious moochers. Today, though, is all about plant parasites. Specifically, this lovely orchid:
光合成やめた植物「クロヤツシロラン」が、地下でも（栄養源として）、地上でも（送粉者を呼び寄せる道具として）キノコに頼って生きる「究極のニート生活」を行っていることを明らかにした論文をEcology誌に発表しました。面白い仕事だと自負しています。ぜひご覧下さい。https://t.co/Ucg52izBda pic.twitter.com/EW0IyQQEtA
— 末次 健司 (@tugutuguk) March 26, 2018
Meet Gastrodia pubilabiata, a plant that survives in the most un-planty way. That lack of green isn’t because it’s dying—it doesn’t photosynthesize. Instead, it’s what’s known as a mycoheterotroph: it relies on fungi for food. But according to a new paper in Ecology, this particular species doesn’t just suck the life from its mushroom hosts. Instead of offering nectar or other rewards for its pollinators, it uses the smell of the fungi rotting corpses to draw the flies that transport its reproductive dust. Continue reading “Orchid Mooch Steals Nutrients From Mushroom And Uses It To Fake Out Fly Pollinators”
In one of his journal entries from his time aboard The Beagle, Charles Darwin told of a “great black bug” and how it boldly sucked blood from his finger through its large mouthpart. The creature was likely Triatoma infestans, a kissing bug—one of the almost 7,000 species of assassin bug that are now described. Like its kin, it’s armed with an ominous looking proboscis which it uses to slurp up its meals.
But the kissing bug is one of only a few assassin bugs with vampiric tastes. Most are much more murderous, preferring to use potent venoms to paralyze a their prey so they can liquify them from the inside out, then suck their soupified meal through their needle-like mouths.
It was that behavior which intrigued Andrew Walker, a molecular entomologist and postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at The University of Queensland. He and his colleagues were curious what the paralyze then liquify-and-slurp venom looked like. “We wanted to see if assassin bugs had venom that was similar in composition to other venomous animals due to convergent evolution, or if the different feeding physiology would result in a different composition,” he said. And when their research began, essentially no one has looked at their venoms—”almost nothing was known about them.”
But what they found was much more surprising: the animals are equipped with two different venoms, which are made and stored in distinct compartments—a first for any venomous animal. Continue reading “Dual-Venomed Assassin Bugs Store Their Chemical Arms Separately”
When it comes to interesting cephalopod sex lives, squid seem to have drawn the short straw. Argonauts, their cousins, keep things interesting with swimming, detachable penises. Giant Pacific Octopus mating involves several hours of rough, squishy grabbing action that would make Toshio Maeda blush. But squid just get a quick hello, a few colorful flashes, and second or two of perfunctory sperm delivery—or so it would seem. A new study suggests that for all they lack in kink, bigfin reef squid do have engaging sex lives. As explained in a new paper in The Biological Bulletin, these randy cephalopods take direction well, switching up their sexual position at a female’s behest to improve their odds of successfully mating. Continue reading “Squid Lovers Switch Sex Positions In Response To Partner’s Signals”
Organisms’ immune systems are constantly trying to detect and boot freeloaders. No living thing is particularly willing to give up its hard earned resources to just any moocher that comes along, so all parasites must find a way past their hosts’ defenses and survive incessant attacks. Some constantly disguise themselves to move about undetected, while others mysteriously slip under the radar. Now, in a paper published this month in Nature, researchers have discovered one parasitic plant has evolved a remarkable way to survive: it creates small chunks of RNA to silence its hosts’ genes. Continue reading “Floral Hackers: Plant Parasites Use MicroRNAs to Shut Down Host Genes”
If you’ve spent any time around roosters, you know that their “morning” crowing can be… loud. That distinctive cock-a-doodle-doo is piercing: if you happen to be standing near a rooster sounding off, you’re hit with a sound wave that’s about 100 decibels. That’s unpleasantly loud, like the whir of chainsaw. If one cock-a-doodled right in your ear, the sound is even louder—over 140 decibels. Sounds that loud can cause damage in less than a second, and are just shy of shattering your eardrum.
In fact, roosters are so loud that it’s surprising they aren’t deaf from their own calls. So Belgian researchers looked into it, and found that they have special ears which allow them to crow to their hearts’ content without losing their hearing. Continue reading “Roosters Have Special Ears So They Don’t Crow Themselves To Deaf”
Few groups of animals are as feared as spiders. Doctors estimate at least 5% of people are arachnophobic, meaning they are terrified of the eight-legged critters. But such fear is largely misplaced. Of the nearly 47,000 species of spider on the planet, only 200 or so can actually bite through our tough skin and deliver venom that causes any kind of reaction. And of those, only a few are considered truly dangerous. Rather than fearing them, we should be in awe of just how incredibly diverse, successful, and unique these animals are.
But turning fear into fascination is no easy feat. Hopefully, a new paper in PeerJ can help. Stefano Mammola and his colleagues have meticulously summarized these octo-appendaged wonders, documenting dozens of incredible facets of their diverse anatomies, behaviors, and lifestyles. Continue reading “From Longest Name to Loudest Sound, Scientists Catalog Over 100 Spider World Records”
Humans in North America only spend one night a year in costume with the hopes of feasting on tasty treats. For Zodarion spiders, that’s just called Tuesday. These clever mimics pretend to be ants to sneak close to their prey. And if in danger, they’ll use the corpse of their latest capture to complete the charade. Continue reading “Real Halloween Horrors: Corpse Cosplay by Zodarion Spiders”
Perhaps the hardest part about studying marine mammal reproductive anatomy using organs collected from deceased animals is that they can’t get an erection the easy way.
Reinflating human penises postmortem is a relatively trivial feat, says Diane Kelly, a research assistant professor at University of Massachusetts and penis inflation expert. Like most mammals, human penises are mostly fleshy, with lots of vascular space for blood to flow into to make the flaccid structure rigid with turgor pressure. But whale and dolphin penises are a lot tougher—quite literally. “It’s actually a real challenge to artificially inflate cetacean penises,” she told me. Yes, the size makes things difficult—it takes a lot more saline to fill a large penis than a small one—but it’s more than that. “They have what’s called a ‘fibroelastic’ penis,” she explained, which means their penile tissue contains “a lot of collagen, and it makes the penis, even when flaccid, very stiff and less extensible.”
Finding a way around this hard problem is a large part of why Dara Orbach and Patricia Brennan brought Kelly on to the project. The goal: make the first 3-D CT scans of simulated intercourse of any marine mammal species using real, post-mortem genitalia—scans that were just published in a paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Continue reading “The Mechanics of Dolphin Sex: All The Dirty Details You Need To Know”
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