Ecology & Zoology

Dolphins have a clever trick for overcoming sleep deprivation, according to Sam Ridgway from the US Navy Marine Mammal Program and colleagues.   They are able to send half of their brains to sleep while the other half remains conscious. What is more, the mammals seem to be able to remain continually vigilant for sounds for days on end. Does the dolphins' unrelenting auditory vigilance tire them and take a toll on the animals' other senses? Ridgway and his team set about testing two dolphins' acoustic and visual vigilance over a 5 day period to find out how well they functioned after days…

The number of species who can dance - actually get down, shake their groove thing, etc - has jumped from one (humans) to three. The other two? Parrots and elephants. Unlike other animals, according to this NPR article, parrots and elephants are vocal mimics and can imitate sounds. Dancing, then, could be a byproduct of the ability to learn and imitate vocally. Two papers in today's online Current Biology discuss the dancing parrot: One reports on "experimental evidence for synchronization to a beat in a sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita eleonora). By manipulating the tempo…

People aren't the only ones who've got rhythm. Two reports published online on April 30th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveal that birds – and parrots in particular – can also bob their heads, tap their feet, and sway their bodies along to a musical beat. The findings show that a very basic aspect of the human response to music is shared with other species, according to the researchers.  "We've discovered a cockatoo [named Snowball] that dances to the beat of human music," said Aniruddh Patel of The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, lead author of one of the studies…

During a seminar several years ago, University of Chicago paleontologist David Jablonski fielded a hostile question: Why bother classifying organisms according to their physical appearance, let alone analyze their evolutionary dynamics, when molecular techniques had already invalidated that approach? With more than a few heads in the audience nodding their agreement, Jablonski, the William Kenan Jr. Professor in Geophysical Sciences, saw more work to be done. The question launched him on a rigorous study that has culminated in a new approach to reconciling the conflict between fossil and…

I can't decide if this image from the Panda's Thumb is pretty or creepy looking?

Researchers know that animals which seem identical can actually belong to completely different species.   But if it's worms used in laboratory testing, that could be important news in research. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, say they have used DNA analyses to discover that one of our most common segmented worms, Lumbriculus variegatus, is actually two types of worm. Along with some obvious issues in research it also affirms that the variety of species on the earth could be considerably larger than we thought. "We could be talking about a large number of species that…

"Wash that for you?" If you were a fish living in the warm turquoise waters off the coast of Bonaire, you may not hear those words, but you'd see the shrimp sign language equivalent. It seems Periclimenes yucatanicus or Spotted Cleaner Shrimp is doing a booming business in the local reefs by setting up a fish washing service. That's right, a Fish Wash. You'd be hard pressed to find a terrestrial Molly Maid with two opposable thumbs as studious and hardworking as this wee marine beauty. This quiet marine mogel is turning out to be one of the ocean's top entrepreneurs. Keeping its host and…

Scientists have developed new technology connecting social media and the hydration needs of plants. Miracle grow, rocks - a message from your plant direct to your social media reader. Who knew? Now if only they could say the police are at the door. In time, my friends, patience is a virtue.

Tormented cries from mother as her cub is butchered and eaten... Does it pull at your heart strings? Mine, too. A rally of cries about a shark attack generally bring something less warm and fuzzy, something closer to terror and visions of a nasty end for some surfer. No surfer this time. The 20th Century's most significant marine find became surf and turf himself at a recent feast in a village off the coast of Donsol in the Bicol Region of the Philippines. More than a rare sighting, this is the 41st specimen ever known. A massive Megamouth, a rare breed of filter-feeding shark, was caught…

Once thought to be only the realm of the blue-ringed octopus, researchers have now shown that all octopuses and cuttlefish, and some squid are venomous. The work indicates that they all share a common, ancient venomous ancestor and highlights new avenues for drug discovery. Conducted by scientists from the University of Melbourne, University of Brussels and Museum Victoria, the study was published in the Journal of Molecular Evolution. Dr Bryan Fry from the Department of Biochemistry at the Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne said that while the blue-ringed octopus species remain the…