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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 s... |
23 April 2008
11:15 GMT |
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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 th... |
23 April 2008
03:56 GMT |
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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 wer... |
14 April 2008
10:59 GMT |
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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. T... |
4 April 2008
04:59 GMT |
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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 microbes to small vertebrates (like frogs), feathers, plant organs and pollen. N... |
3 April 2008
03:23 GMT |
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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... |
12 March 2008
18:06 GMT |
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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 inhabitin... |
21 February 2008
04:31 GMT |
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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... |
6 February 2008
14:06 GMT |
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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 Univ... |
6 February 2008
05:09 GMT |
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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 i... |
4 February 2008
05:01 GMT |
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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 bill... |
22 January 2008
16:56 GMT |
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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 ani... |
9 January 2008
07:07 GMT |
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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 t... |
28 December 2007
05:10 GMT |
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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 ... |
18 December 2007
05:01 GMT |
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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 co... |
15 December 2007
02:56 GMT |
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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,... |
29 October 2007
15:06 GMT |
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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 ye... |
27 October 2007
07:38 GMT |
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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 Instit... |
17 October 2007
06:51 GMT |
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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 relative... |
19 September 2007
14:26 GMT |
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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 beli... |
9 August 2007
03:00 GMT |
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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 th... |
8 August 2007
14:06 GMT |
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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 "Tre... |
6 August 2007
05:03 GMT |
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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... |
31 July 2007
07:07 GMT |
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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, followe... |
28 July 2007
06:51 GMT |
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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... |
27 July 2007
06:37 GMT |
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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 ea... |
23 July 2007
14:16 GMT |
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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 (... |
20 July 2007
14:16 GMT |
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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 ... |
17 July 2007
07:17 GMT |
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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 wh... |
14 July 2007
04:37 GMT |
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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 ex... |
7 July 2007
06:13 GMT |
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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. Scientist... |
23 May 2007
06:53 GMT |
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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 ... |
17 May 2007
02:53 GMT |
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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 ... |
16 May 2007
06:52 GMT |
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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 40... |
15 May 2007
09:55 GMT |
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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... |
12 April 2007
03:59 GMT |
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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 ... |
6 April 2007
06:11 GMT |
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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 cl... |
21 March 2007
09:16 GMT |
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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... |
16 March 2007
08:03 GMT |
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