10 Things About Bird Songs
	1.Birds really have their "dialects", just like human languages. When researchers played to the birds from one population the recorded song of birds from other population, they remained indifferent to the voice of the same species if coming from another area, even if for the human ear, the songs of both populations sounded similarly. 2.Many studies made in humans revealed that what we learn during the day is imprint ... [read more >>]
	23 April 2008, 11:15GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Humans Caused the Holocaust of Nature
	Throughout the history of Earth, countless plant and animal species have appeared and disappeared, because not only individuals, but species too get old and become extinct. Best case scenario, they live on in related species, that may later evolve in new plant or animal groups. Very few species resisted throughout the eons unchanged – they are called living fossils or relict species. However, most species simply disappeared with the pa ... [read more >>]
	23 April 2008, 03:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Circus Animals
	Circus, in its modern meaning, has been employing both domestic and wild animals. The horse was the first animal used in circus shows, whose canons emerged during the 18th century. Since then, the circus animals have been gradually increasing in number and variety. At the beginning, the trainers used animals that were easy and cheap to keep: dogs, cats, pigs, goats, crows, geese, pigeons and so on. Later, the shows turned far-reach ... [read more >>]
	14 April 2008, 10:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Human-Eyed Fish Could Make a New Family
	It is one of the weirdest fish of the ocean: it has a human-like face, it sees binocularly (just like us) and it rather crawls into crevices than swims. This creature appears to make a new unknown family of fishes. The fish has been spotted off Ambon Island (Indonesia) and has tan- and peach-colored zebra-striping. The new species has leg-like pectoral fins (relating it to the ... [read more >>]
	04 April 2008, 04:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Technique Peeks Inside Opaque Amber
	Opaque amber looks like a stone. The naked eye cannot see anything in this material. But, because it is a fossil resin, it can incorporate fossils like any other amber. So far, palaeontologists have found in amber from fossil insects and ... [read more >>]
	03 April 2008, 03:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Paleozoic: Ancient Life
	The geological strata of the world are assigned to four ages: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Quaternary. The Earth is believed to be 4.5 billion years old, but the oldest rocks with visible fossils are just 590 million years old, from the beginning of the Cambrian. Cambrian fossils are made of a large array of life forms, like worms and mollusks, obviously evolved from more primitive forms. A. Precambrian is the oldest eon, stretch ... [read more >>]
	12 March 2008, 18:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Giant Sea Spiders and Many Mysterious Creatures Detected Around Antarctic
	We are looking for new worlds on other planets, and we don't even know the worlds hosted by our own. A large array of giant mysterious creatures have been found by a recent two-month expedition in the freezing waters of Antarctica, including huge sea spiders and worms. The new specimens have been found inhabiting the Antarctic sea bed at depths of up to 6,500 ft (2,000 m). Gigantism is a common phenomenon for many abyssal animals (gia ... [read more >>]
	21 February 2008, 04:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Europe's Last/Lost Giants
	Around 1500 AD, Europeans managed to kill the last ancestors of the domestic cattle, called aurochs. The auroch was a giant animal as compared to the domesticated cattle (1.8 m or 6 ft height in withers, compared to around 1.5 m or 5 ft in modern cattle). The body was black and the horns were lyre-shaped and set in a forward angle, being much larger than in the case of the domestic cattle. With all its size, the auroch was ag ... [read more >>]
	06 February 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Monkey Species Discovered!
	In the 21th century, when we thought that all that is larger than a mouse has already been described by zoologists, the surprises keep coming. A new species of uakari monkey has been described in the International Journal of Primatology. Its discoverer is the New Zealand primatologist Jean-Phillipe Boubli of the University of Auckland, who encountered the animal after following Yanomamo Indians on their hunt trips along the Rio A ... [read more >>]
	06 February 2008, 05:09GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Languages Behave Like Biological Species
	Languages behave just like species. This is the conclusion of a new research published in the Nature journal, showing that languages evolve in fits and starts, rather than gradually, a phenomenon called punctuated evolution in biology. The idea is not that new, but the British team employed mathematics to show this is real in the case of the language evolution. The team led by evolutionary biologist Quentin Atkinson and mathe ... [read more >>]
	04 February 2008, 05:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

17 Amazing Issues About Insects
	1.There are about 900,000 described species of insects, forming 80% of the described animal species, and scientists evaluate their actual number to be somewhere between 2 to 10 million species, including unknown species. Calculating the total number of insects on the globe, researchers found it overpassed by 200 billion times the number of humans. Insects live in various environments, from hot volcanic spring and hot deserts to frozen tund ... [read more >>]
	22 January 2008, 16:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Happy is a Zoo Animal?
	Unlike the stuffed animals in the museums or the documentaries on wild life, a zoo gives you the opportunity to see wild animals alive with your own eyes, at close range. Today, as our knowledge about species' biology and behavior has increased, zoos come with conditions more similar to those required by the animals in the wild. But many zoos are still far from being a heaven for the animals. The improper conditions in w ... [read more >>]
	09 January 2008, 07:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Not One, but Six Giraffe Species!
	There's nothing taller on Earth: large giraffe bulls can be 6 m (20 ft) tall, and weigh up to 1.5 tonnes! If you look at giraffes across the African savannas, you'll see that they all look the same. With one exception: the shape and color of their spots. A new DNA research published in "BMC Biology" shows that there is more than that: those different models betray, in fact, different giraffe species. At least six. ... [read more >>]
	28 December 2007, 05:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Cat Sized Rat Species!
	Most cats are chicken enough not to face regular rats. But this rat would fight from equal to equal with a cat. An expedition made by an American-Indonesian team in a remote jungle in western New Guinea, in the area Papua province of Indonesia, has found a giant rat and a tiny possum that seem to be new undescribed species, pointing to the stunning biodiversity of the area. Further research will clear if the animals are newfou ... [read more >>]
	18 December 2007, 05:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Do We Bring the Species to Extinction?
	Human activity has triggered the fastest extinction rate in Earth's history. In the last 30 years, 33% of the natural places have disappeared: over 10% of the forests, 30% of the ecosystems and 50% of the freshwater ecosystems, due to increased agriculture and industry contamination as well as increased water consume. In the last 500 years, 844 vertebrate species disappeared because of the human activity. The Dodo bird has turned ... [read more >>]
	15 December 2007, 02:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Future of Humanity: Larger Penises and Pert Breasts
	If you think that human evolution has just stopped, you're wrong. Not only are we still in the middle of a vivid evolution, but in 100,000 years, we will be split into two species: a sexy, intelligent power-detaining elite and an underclass of low intelligence, ugly dwarf humanoids. This is what Dr. Oliver Curry, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, believes that sexual selection will induce in humans. Hi ... [read more >>]
	29 October 2007, 15:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What Makes Panda Special?
	The rarity and the tame look of the giant panda, resembling a living teddy bear, transformed this animal into the symbol of the fight for the preservation of endangered species. But have you ever thought that what you see is a bear? An odd bear, but a real bear! The line that led to panda appeared about 12 million years ago, and the oldest known panda species, Ailuropoda microta, was half the size of the modern species, Ailuropoda mela ... [read more >>]
	27 October 2007, 07:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Submarine UFO
	We are looking for life in other worlds and we have not actually catalogued the entire life on Earth yet. And perhaps the most unexplored life on Earth is found in deep sea, for obvious reasons. A team of U.S. and Philippine scientists led by Dr. Larry Maddin of the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has found unknown species isolated for millions of years during an investigation made in the Celebes Sea ... [read more >>]
	17 October 2007, 06:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sex, (No) Parasites, (No) Predators, (No) Diseases, Competition
	When in the 50's the British first released American ruddy ducks (Oxyura jamaicensis) onto their ponds in southeast England, they did not suspect the ecological disaster they would bring. At the same time, the Spanish biologists were intending to protect the last individuals of the ruddy’s European relatives, the white-headed duck (O. leucocephala). The white headed duck nests only in Spain, Danube Delta, and Central Asia. A massi ... [read more >>]
	19 September 2007, 14:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New African Fossils Further Complicate Human Evolution
	We are more than an odd ape. We are odd as a species due to the fact that we are just one human species. Usually, only living fossils and relicts are represented by just one isolated species. Now, a pair of fossils recently found in Kenya show that once more than just one human species lived side by side. It was believed that there was a successive progression: Homo habilis gave rise to Homo erectus, whose African type, H. ergaster, ev ... [read more >>]
	09 August 2007, 03:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Top 10 Extinct Humans
	With the emergence of the genus Homo, we evolved from the stage of ape-man to that of humans. But do not think that we passed from one species to another and the final result is Homo sapiens. The genus Homo produced various species, of which only Homo sapiens survived till today. At a given moment, there were more than one species of Homo on the planet, till very recently, with the total extinction of the Neanderthals. These are the fossi ... [read more >>]
	08 August 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Many Species Dwell on Earth?
	We focus on finding life on Mars and other alien worlds, but we still don't know everything about our own planet. After over 250 years of taxonomy research, we don’t even know exactly how many flora and fauna species roam the Earth, not to mention classifying them. The National Science Foundation’s "Tree of Life" project estimates the number from 5 million to 100 million species on the planet, but roughly 2 million have b ... [read more >>]
	06 August 2007, 05:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Real "Loch Ness Monsters" to Be Monitored
	The Loch Ness monster has been stirring people’s fantasy for so long. But instead of looking for an imaginary monster, people should take care of the real documented monster from lakes and rivers. One could be already doomed: the Three Gorges Dam could have decided the faith of the Chinese paddle fish: a monster believed to reach lengths of 23 feet (7 meters) and weights of 500 kg (even if recorded data speaks about 3.5 m (12 ft) in le ... [read more >>]
	31 July 2007, 07:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Place Where The Equator and The Antarctic 'Touch' One Another
	In the Equatorial Pacific, between 90 and 91o V, and 1o 29' S, 968 km (605 mi) off western South American shore, at the same level with the Ecuador, to which it belongs, there’s the the volcanic archipelago of Galapagos. It is formed by 18 greater islands (the largest being Isabella, 4290 square km, followed by Santa Cruz, Santa Maria, San Cristobal, San Salvador, Espaniola, Pinta and Fernandina), 42 islets and numerous rocks, having ... [read more >>]
	28 July 2007, 06:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The World's Largest River Fish Could Be Extinct
	Mekong giant catfish can reach 3 m (10 ft) in length and be 350 kg (780 pounds) and arapaima of the Amazon can be 4.5 m (15 ft) long. But all these "little" creatures are dwarfed by the Chinese paddlefish, a monster that is 23 feet (7 meters) long and weighs 500 kg (even if recorded data speak about 3.5 m (12 ft) in length and 300 kg in weight). Or at least were, as no adult Chinese paddlefish has been captured in the Yangtze Ri ... [read more >>]
	27 July 2007, 06:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Longest-Lived Animals Ever Recorded
	Elephants can live up to 60 years. Crocodiles can reach 80 and even more. Recent data points to the fact that large whales can live over 150 years. But clear data comes from huge land tortoises to crown them as the planet's most long lived animals. If small tortoises can live over 30 years, the large ones can easily reach 180. The most long lived tortoise ever recorded (and the most long lived animal ever recorded) is Tu ... [read more >>]
	23 July 2007, 14:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

41 lb (20 kg) Huge Mushroom
	400 million years old mushrooms were known to grow as big as trees. But this one has been recently picked up, in a forest, close to a coffee plantation, in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, Southern Border University Center officials said on Tuesday. The white mushroom was 20-kilo (41-lb) heavy and 70 cm (27 in) tall, belonging to the species Macrocybe titans, and could feed a family of four for over a day. This specie ... [read more >>]
	20 July 2007, 14:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Egg Laying Mammal Found Alive in the Mountains of New Guinea
	This living fossil was thought to have been extinct. Till recently, an expedition on Papua's Cyclops Mountains revealed that the egg-laying mammal, baptized after the famous TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough, is still alive, as proven by burrows and tracks. Attenborough's long-beaked echidna is known to science only through a 1961 specimen, found in a Dutch museum. The month-long expedition made by a team from the Zoologic ... [read more >>]
	17 July 2007, 07:17GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

3.8 Million Years Old Human Jaw Clarifies Human Evolution
	The famous Lucy did not come from nowhere. She had a grandfather, and recently discovered jawbones of that species, dug in northeast Ethiopia, could explain more on a virtually unknown period of human evolution. The new bones were discovered in the same fossil-rich Afar region, just 20 mi (32 km) north of the site where "Lucy", a 3.2 million years old human was dug up in 1974. The new bones could be 3.8 million to 3.5 million ... [read more >>]
	14 July 2007, 04:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Rarest Creature on Earth
	This is an unusual case: scientists know that a species is extinct even if its last individual has not died yet. But it could still exist for 1-2 centuries more. This is the "Lonesome George", the last known survivor of a species of Pinta tortoise, one of the 13 species of giant tortoises (of which two are already extinct) found in the Galapagos archipelago off Ecuador. Pinta is one of the islands of the archipelago. Many say ... [read more >>]
	07 July 2007, 06:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Rate of Extinction: 3 Species per Hour
	About 6 waves of massive extinction are known in the history of the Earth. The last one wiped out the dinosaur world 65 million years ago and was probably due to a meteorite collision. But the recent one has no natural causes. It is man made and rampant, eliminating three animal or plant species every hour. Scientists and environmentalists issued reports about threats to creatures and plants including right whales, Iberian lynxes, ... [read more >>]
	23 May 2007, 06:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Strange Deep-Sea Species Found on the Depths of Antarctica
	If you think that the deep cold waters of Antarctica have no life, forget it. A new research of the Antarctic Benthic Deep-Sea Biodiversity Project (ANDEEP) has found over 700 new species in the depths of the Southern Ocean (the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans surrounding Antarctica). Amongst the species found on the seafloor at depths of 2,300 to 19,700 feet (700 to 6,000 meters) there were heart-shaped sea urchins, carnivor ... [read more >>]
	17 May 2007, 02:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Faster Reproduction Saves Animals from Being Slain to Extinction
	Faster mating means safer existence. This is valid at least in the case of the large herbivorous mammals, from rhinos and elephants to deer and antelopes: the slower their reproductive period, the higher the risk of extinction. Habitat loss and naturally limited living areas are also great factors of risk, but under the hunting pressure, speedy reproduction is the best tool, as found by a new complex statistical analysis made by ev ... [read more >>]
	16 May 2007, 06:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Newest Hummingbird Species, Threatened by Cocaine Production
	Besides being the smallest birds in the world (a Jamaican species, Mellisuga minima, is 6 cm (2.3 inch) long and weighs 2g), hummingbirds have also other peculiar characteristics, like the hovering ability, being the only birds species in the world able to move their wings equally forth and back. Now, to the about 400 species already known, a new one is added by science. The Gorgeted Puffleg, a rare hummingbird displaying a plumage o ... [read more >>]
	15 May 2007, 09:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Medicinal Leeches, Found to Be of Three Species, Not One!...
	For many people, they may represent some disgusting worms, but leeches (believed to come from an Old English word for “physician”) were employed in therapies even 3,500 years ago by the ancient Egyptians. And leech treatments were popular in Middle Ages Europe. Some of these treatments were legitimate, some weren’t. In 1758, Linnaeus gave the medicinal leech the name Hirudo medicinalis. But a new genetic research shows that the wil ... [read more >>]
	12 April 2007, 03:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Magnolias Are Here Since Dinosaurs, Now They Face Extinction
	Dinosaurs enjoyed their odor, as these ancient flowers exist since the Cretaceous Epoch (145.5 to 65.5 million years ago). They existed also in Europe till the arrival of the glaciations. But today, they are restricted to subtropical climes. About 60 % of magnolia species are found in Asia, with over 40 % growing in southern China (but many also in Japan). The other species are found in the Americas. But even if they b ... [read more >>]
	06 April 2007, 06:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The First Global Map of Plant Biodiversity
	Researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Bonn, Germany have realized the first global map of estimated plant species richness. The map assessed three hundred thousand species and is the most extensive map of the distribution of biodiversity on Earth to date. The map signals very clearly areas of particular diversity, important for conservation, and helps assessing the impact of climate chan ... [read more >>]
	21 March 2007, 09:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A New Leopard Species Discovered
	We are now looking for life “out there”, beyond Earth; and from time to time, scientists discover unimaginable surprises: big beasts here on Earth that passed unobserved. The current such discovery is not a creature from the bottom of the oceans, but a big cat, up to 23 kg (58 pounds) from the islands of southeastern Asia: the clouded leopard of the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. The shy rainforest animal was originally believed to ... [read more >>]
	16 March 2007, 08:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia