So they help their brightly colored dominant brothers seduce hens in a process called rather coyly cooperative courtship.
so they're a good replacement for mammal or bird meat. They eat less food reduce our need for pesticides
The Bt endotoxin is considered safe for humans other mammals fish birds and the environment because of its selectivity.
Penguins? I don't like the smell of penguins but I guess we can. You can do it with any sort of satellite cell from an animal.
The leftovers were taken home for Dr. Post's children. well with any new product lets see what happens to the first few people who eat this
Would you like to try our new Bald eagle petri-nuggets? http://www. joesid. comsounds great! Does it have less purines that a regular hamburger
the dodo. Does not have to memorable so stop waiting for the approval of your peers.
and diversity of fish and bird populations trap silt and expand the riparian border. I'm curious
Raptors became birds...these guys cows...othey got the short end of the evolutionary stick-lolcarter.
Nilton Renno a professor at the University of Michigan and an atmospheric convection expert believes Michaud's calculations assume that AVES cover the entire surface area of Earth.
While the theory behind AVES is solid scaling them up to the size AVETEC requires could go awry Renno says.
He believes that his AVES have the potential to be a major electrical energy producer and one that will be cost-effective.
Building AVES will reduce our reliance on fossil fuels he says and that will reduce emissions in turn.
TWO TIT ONE TIME! ON YOU I SIGN! ONE TIME! TRY THE SIGH!?YOU WALK YA HIGH!
TWO TIT ONE TIME! ON YOU I SIGN! ONE TIME! TRY THE SIGH!?YOU WALK YA HIGH!
TWO TIT ONE TIME! ON YOU I SIGN! ONE TIME! TRY THE SIGH!?YOU WALK YA HIGH!
How Birds Lose Their Penisesa team of researchers at the University of Florida has solved the mystery of what some call one of the most puzzling events in evolution:
the reduction and loss of the penis in most male birds. About 10000 species of birds have reduced
or absent external genitalia as adults. Many have normal penises as embryos but as they develop their penises stop growing
Despite that male birds still manage to fertilize female birds through internal insemination just like humans.
To study how male birds lose their penises the UF researchers examined the embryonic development of birds with penises (ducks and emus) and birds without penises (chicks) among other creatures.
In other birds like ducks and emus that gene stays switched off allowing their penises to grow fully.
In some birds they grow a little too fully: certain species of water fowl like ducks have such large phalluses they can exceed the length of the body.
Our discovery shows that reduction of the penis during bird evolution occurred by activation of a normal mechanism that attenuates development programmed cell death in a new location the tip of the emerging penis says Martin Cohn a professor at UF
's Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a senior author on the study. Cohn and his colleagues believe their research could shed light on evolutionary developments beyond the fowl world.
Birds have figured clearly out how to make do given that they've have had no trouble replenishing the flock.
In some birds they grow a little too fully: certain species of water fowl like ducks have such large phalluses they can exceed the length of the body...
Aaaaa my imagination of seeing this duck fly is just so funny. Just picture it as you look to the sky
The photo of the cock is quite fitting considering the subject of the story. -wise uphahahaaaa@penis-less cock.
LOL! I think I have an obvious hypothesis for what function this would serve birds.
Ducks retained penises but duck genitalia are optimized mechanically to allow conception only from consensual sex.
Extensively so they're like corkscrews. Ducks also have a lot of what should probably be called gang rape.
Birds rear their young as parents. Proper mating behavior and display screens for potential as a parenting partner to a female.
The process can be short-circuiting by otherwise behaviorally unworthy males forcing sex on females
For a bird species to last it was either adapt in the way ducks did...
or this s
#World's Oldest Primate Fossil Discovered A tiny beady-eyed long-tailed primate with hand-like feet is now the world's oldest known fossil primate skeleton.
Literally every insectivorous animal in the northeast--songbirds carnivorous birds (hawks owls) opossums foxes cats shrews snakes spiders and even dogs--will gorge on cicadas.
Redwing blackbirds and eastern bluebirds have been found to have much stronger and healthier broods in years that coincide with Magicicada's emergence as do mammals like foxes and raccoons.
Multimedia Video Studying Birds With a Drone s Help. Video: Drones: A Booming Business? Connect With Us on Twitter Follow@NYTNATIONAL for breaking news and headlines.
Flowers blooming birds migrating and deciduous trees re-leafing are all examples of phenology measures.
I have observed many more birds this year. The early spring meant fewer birds went hungry. My backyard sounds like a jungle.
We also had lots of weeds this year and last. So the question is was the early spring a problem for nature or for people?
Now the sound of birds has been replaced by a constant sizzling and the smell of scorched feathers...
and expert on mammalian evolution at the American Museum of Natural history to find out why the US is stuck with lame squirrels and pigeons and stuff rather than cool monkeys.
Although we can admire a stick insect that seems to flawlessly imitate a leafy twig in every detail down to the marks of faux bird droppings on its wings
Its not like squirrels are hoarders or foxes or ravens...or many other animals that demonstrate distinctly Human qualities.
when it comes to saving a particular species such as the snail darter fish or the spotted owl.
How many chances does a new bird get to build a nest in a tree starting with big twigs to wooving in smaller branches to light soft downy material.
At what point does the bird understand that the walls of the nest is high enough.
or Birds with varying beak lengths that vary from island to island contingent on available food source.
But the moth is still a moth-the bird is still a bird. The fossil record does not support enough transitional species to date.
Beaded Buff Laced Polish Frizzle Bantam Hen. If you have never been to a poultry show you've probably never even imagined chickens as diverse and stunning as the ones in Staples'portraits.
What happens it turns out is you learn just what the thin line is that divides human beings from birds.
and dinosaurs have been mention on a few other articles the writers thought this related. loltoronto photographer Pete Paterson has been photographing fowl for years. much better too. you can see his work at www. petepaterson. comi helped out on one of his shoots. the birds are feisty. wtf???
and wrap an estimated nine billion birds annually. Unsurprisingly work in poultry plants is dirty and dangerous.
and dexterity to debone a bird in four seconds flat on par with a human butcher. 1) Queue Gutted whole chickens sit on metal cones as they travel along a conveyor belt
Inside two pairs of stereo cameras scan the bird one pair per side. A computer instantly renders the images into a 3-D map of the bird.
It also identifies useful markers such as the humerus and the coracoid bones. 3) Calculate (Not shown in illustration) In a production model that the Georgia Tech researchers plan to build two robotic arms work on opposite sides of the conveyor belt one arm for each side of the bird.
Equipped with a 3-D map of the incoming chicken the robots calculate a cutting trajectory accurate to within three millimeters.
and continue down the bird's backside along the shoulder blade all in two seconds. 5) Repeat Nine billion times a year.
The big challenge is teaching the robot to adjust its behavior in real time to account for all the variation in different birds says Ai-Ping Hu senior research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.
Calculations per Second to Render a Map of the Bird: 1000seconds it Takes to Calculate a Cut:
0. 5seconds to Debone an Individual Bird: 2ã¢Â#ÂESTIMATED Cost of Each Robot Butcher:
This is of course in addition to the many many other species dying across the globe these days-manatees on the coasts birds all over fish and crabs all over.
Luckily it is now possible to buy a hybrid lawn mower known as the Raven MPV-710. In many ways a hybrid mower makes sense.
Almost a cross between ATV and mower the Raven MPV-710 appears to be one of the highest-tech options on the market.
Because of the electric direct drive Raven says it transfers more power to the wheels than most mowers on the market
Used as a generator the Raven's engine is more frugal than other mowers so you'll get up to 12 hours of running on a 5-gallon fill.
or beyond) in the Quran and that the shape of the earth is like an ostrich's egg (elliptical
At some point a chicken-like bird produced an offspring that due to some mutation in its DNA crossed the threshold from mere chicken likeness into chicken actuality.
Many characteristics of the modern avian egg namely an oblong asymmetrical shape and a hardened shell were in place before birds diverged from dinosaurs about 150 million years ago.
A lot of the traits that we see in bird eggs evolved prior to birds in theropod dinosaurs says Darla Zelenitsky of the University of Calgary.
Another key moment in the history of avian eggs occurred at least 150 million years before that
You still see that in birds crocodilians and snakes he explains. Like other placental mammals we humans lost our yolk somewhere along the line
At some point a chicken-like bird produced an offspring that due to some mutation in its DNA crossed the threshold from mere chicken likeness into chicken actuality.
'And the bird made chicken walked among the avians who knew it not'is a much more poetic way of saying the same darn thing.
and that a pre-chicken bird was changed genetically enviromentally to the point where it entered that spectrum of chicken dna.
All that is needed is for the more chicken like birds to out-breed the rest over generations
Domesticated birds were interbred with wild birds to create a new species called chicken. So God did not create chickens.
People and horny birds did. Goo came first then life came from goo and then for
so its going to have to settle with a member of another already existing species. This is an unavoidable roadblock for evolution this new bird's genetic material is added merely to that of an existing species where evolution requires it branches off on it's own.
At some point a chicken-like bird produced an offspring that due to some mutation in its DNA crossed the threshold from mere chicken likeness into chicken actuality.
#Are Birds Evolving To Not Get Hit By Cars? If you've ever had the soul-crushing misfortune of hitting a bird
while speeding down the road you can at least take heart in the fact that some birds are on the whole getting better at dodging them.
A new paper published today in the journal Current Biology theorizes that today's natural predators (like the Ford f-150) are causing birds to adapt.
Every year for the past 30 years researchers have been acting like urban Darwins observing cliff swallows in Nebraska
and surveying how they die. The swallows often build nests under bridges or other well-trafficked areas
The researchers tracked birds who've died by car and then compared them to birds who accidentally died some other way.
They've found that during the last three decades the swallows have been dying less by car
and it's not caused by the number of birds in the area or number of cars on the road.
the shorter-winged birds may be able to turn and take off faster than their counterparts avoiding oncoming traffic.
I believe the term they were looking for was natural selection. obviously the animals smart enough to not get hit by cars would be selected the ones for based on the new environment the birds live in currently.
If those birds are quicker--maybe by shorter wings or smarter then they survive and the others get hit by cars
The birds that did not change are dead. Therefore less birds will be hit every year and only evolved
or changed birds will pass on to future generations. Honestly the moment we found out that DNA does not make perfect copies that was all the proof we needed for evolution.
Obviously if you keep changing a creature little by little in random ways there is no limit to the number of variations
Micro Evolution is an adaptation within a species where unique characteristics of each bird will
The bird is still a bird only able to reproduce after it's own kind.
The way this article writes it It sounds more like scientists observed that birds with shorter wings spans are less likely to get hit by cars than birds with longer wingspans.
birds before 150 million years ago flowers before 130 million years ago modern humans before 200000 years ago The fossil record clearly shows life becoming more and more complex over Earth's history.
or for playing Angry Birds yet it is the same processor all our brains may each have these abilities.
and donã want to go to lab I prefered hobbies or just watched TV. Then once I woke up
About two weeks after the bloody river discovery an animal rights group flew a microdrone above private property in South carolina aiming to film what they said was a live pigeon shoot.
unless a bird crapped on it. And then what toilet facilities do farm labourers have? Who must you blame
an unknown starling you have seen never or the lettuce you had with your lunch. So when my mother was making
By the way there are trillions of different critters bugs bacteria virus yeast and molds in the environment and yes birds bugs and animals dodo on our food too.
That means if you want to hunt deer elk moose antelope ducks geese cougars and now wolves you have to buy a permit.
#Lifting James'Giant Peach Would Have required Way More Seagulls Than Roald Dahl Saidah physics: Taking the world's greatest mysteries and turning them into cold hard facts.
In the story orphaned James seeks refuge with a bunch of anthropomorphized insects inside a huge stone fruit which is toted then across the Atlantic ocean by a flock of seagulls.
Dahl said it would take 501 birds to do the job: I shall simply go on hooking them up to the stem until we have enough to lift us.
In fact 2425907 seagulls would actually be needed according to the students'research paper. Emily Jane Watkinson Maria-Theresia Walach Daniel Staab and Zach Rogerson calculated the mass of the peach
This greatly exceeds the carrying capacity of 501 Common Gulls the students write. To determine this they modeled the seagulls as airfoils
which you can think of basically like an airplane wing. These curved shapes create the force known as lift.
A common gull can provide 2. 02 N of lift the students write. For a peach of the dimensions calculated it would not be possible to fly such a heavy object with the assistance of such a diminutive number of birds they conclude.
Their course leader Mervyn Roy said the exercise prepares his students for a career in scientific publishing.
Considering the quantity of Gulls that peach should be covered completely like icing on a cake with bird do do lol!
but they give a gull count to seven digits s
#Clever Measures: Three Projects That Reimagine Conventional Calculatingartist and cycling enthusiast Gregory de Gouveia based in Chico California has built bike sculptures before.
Bird and whale migrations have been changing. They're coming later then they used to. We knew from this that climate change was here before the term was introduced to us in English.
Swine are susceptible to avian human and swine flus and these virus can circulate inside pigs for varying lengths of time with no signs of illness.
and the birds may have carried the Lone Star tick with them. A rising deer population may also explain the tick s spread as they are also big carriers of the parasites.
These birds find baldness a virtue not a curse because the adaptation allows the south-of-the-equator poultry to throw off additional body heat
mapping the birds gene sequences in order to determine the best approach for getting those good heat-resistant genes into American chickens without taking along all the genetic baggage as Schmidt calls it that s unnecessary to duplicate in the hybrid chickens.
and South american poultry they hope American producers will crossbreed them to North american birds. It could take around 10 generations of chickens carefully bred to arrive at new heat-resistant breeds that can successfully reproduce on their own.
and use of these toxic pesticides until determined safe Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica told the AP P
Only discovered less than two years ago scientists know little about these marvelously strange web-weavers
I meet Lary Reeves a University of Florida entomologist and graduate student I've come to follow around.
Welcome to the jungle Reeves says. We all share a Cusquena a ubiquitous Peruvian beer that
During the eight days that I am here Reeves and Pomerantz locate and photograph scores of these spiders
and Reeves and colleagues plan to formally describe the species though it remains nameless. This Peruvian Cyclosa species was found in September 2012 by entomologist Phil Torres.
Six months earlier while researching butterfly diversity Reeves discovered a similar spider in the jungles of the Philippines that likewise makes spider-shaped decoys in its web albeit of a slightly different shape.
and now Reeves has shifted his research to the Peruvian Cyclosa since among other reasons it is easier to get to--all things being relative.
and hasn't been reported until recently--I have no idea how people have not done this before says Reeves who is also a graduate fellow with the National Science Foundation.
and the world expert on helicopter damselflies as Reeves puts it. Over the course of my trip and Reeves's month in the jungle he goes about laying the groundwork to test this hypothesis
and makes several interesting discoveries. First Reeves devised a method to collect the webs (which he doesn't want to share in detail for proprietary concerns) that he will use in the future to collect the animals and their silken firmaments and expose them to damselflies.
The idea is to see if the winged creatures pluck more spiders from webs where the decoys have been removed--that would provide evidence that the decoys are meant indeed to scare off the insects.
--and hanging out with Reeves and Pomerantz who are mad for understanding the intracices of animal life here especially the infinite strangeness of small beasts like spiders--nothing seems banal.
and identify and distractions provided by visitors like macaws. At one point an ornery curious scarlet macaw flies onto Reeves's shoulder and begins gnawing at the tooth of a Spinosaurus aegyptiacus (a type of dinosaur) on his necklace.
I can't help but be reminded that these birds are in fact dino descendants and to hear their depraved calls--hauntingly doleful
or just as often angrily strident--one could mistake them for Jurrasic Park velociraptors. One afternoon Reeves and Pomerantz are photographing the spiders this time back in the lab
which isn't really a laboratory but a messy room full of equipment used by researchers with the Macaw Project who have been studying the habits and health of the area's macaws and parrots here at the research center for decades.
The lab's recesses house such treasures as a sloth preserved in a vat of formaldehyde.
Reeves takes aim with his Canon 7d which boasts a powerful macro lens. From time to time Pomerantz gently corrals the spider with the tip of a small paintbrush to prevent it from running off this white plane
so Reeves can get a good shot. Wait a second Reeves says as he snaps a photo of a spider and zooms in on the camera's screen.
That's a male! This is a surprise. Before Reeves and colleagues had only found females making these decoys.
In other members of the family Araneidae (the taxonomic family that includes orb-weavers) once males are sexually mature they pretty much hang out in the webs of the females
and steal food rather than making complex webs of their own he adds. And sometimes they become the females food.
Those aren't eggs Reeves says as he zooms in on the photo he's just taken.
To learn more about the web-building activities of this species Reeves and Pomerantz place a couple in two newly-devised observation boxes that force the spiders to build webs parallel to the clear plastic sides perfect for viewing by humans.
Reeves has also found out that the spiders don't tolerate artificial stuff in their webs.
and Reeves thinks that's because of the romanticized idea behind it that people are thinking these spiders are so clever that they're building these structures that look like larger spiders.
The spiders are dummies Reeves continues using term he often applies to his beloved arachnids with bemused affection
On the last night that we are both there Reeves is still up photographing insects after the electricity in the center has turned off.
It will be awhile before Reeves and co. will be able to sort through all of the data
But Reeves thinks that's unlikely. Only the future will tell. As is often the case with fieldwork obstacles are an everyday occurrence (for example time
If we had a lab specimen it would go a long way Reeves says. Until then the jungle is an open book
Reeves--and Pomerantz--will be back. t
#Last Straw: How The Fortunes Of Las vegas Will Rise Or Fall With Lake Meadthe bathtub ring can be seen for miles.
#John Steinbeck On Why'Camping Is For The Birds'Earlier this month we published John Steinbeck's 1966 letter to the editor of Popular Science in
In the essay below titled Camping Is For The Birds Steinbeck contrasts the idyllic imagery of motorhome advertisements (A glowing wife is cooking something delicious
We peck like sandpipers along the edges for the small treasures the restless waves wash up.
We peck like sandpipers along the edges for the small treasures the restless waves wash up.
or Jordan or Mozambique hen it is possible it is already in Latin america. Only time will tell. n
#Scientists Rank World's Most'Evolutionarily Distinct'Birdsis a bird more worth saving from extinction if it is evolutionarily unique as well as physically rare?
That's one challenging question raised by newly published research that factors together the distinct evolutionary history of the world's bird species with how healthy their population numbers
Arne Mooers a professor of biodiversity at Canada's Simon Fraser University and colleagues worked for seven years to assess how much evolutionary history a specific bird represents compared to other bird species currently alive.
In order to do it the team developed an evolutionary tree containing all 9993 known bird species says Mooers
They then ranked the birds by how much of that work each accounted for. The species that top the list go back furthest in evolutionary history and share that history with few or no living relatives.
The title of most evolutionarily distinct goes to the oilbird a Central and South american species that alone accounts for 80 million years of avian evolutionary history Mooers says.
Its name derives from the layers of fat on oilbird chicks which have historically been rendered for use as torches.
The average grackle or chickadee by comparison has so many close relations that they all share the same evolutionary effort.
The research also sets evolutionary distinctness against the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List ranking the 575 bird species considered threatened
or endangered on that list by their unique evolutionary histories. The Giant Ibis tops the list by this reckoning followed by the Kagu the New Caledonian Owlet-nightjar the Plains-wanderer and the California condor.
This information could help conservationists natural resource managers and policy-makers set priorities says Mooers when trying to figure out how to allocate resources to saving endangered bird species. The team has created also a compound metric that sets a bird's evolutionary uniqueness against how widely it can be found in the world.
Some species may be distinct but they may be spread over a very large range like the osprey
which has the widest range of any bird in the world says Mooers. Or you could have something like a kiwi or a kakapo which only lives in one place.
You can think of that distinctness being concentrated in a very small place for that species. The project took seven years to complete in part
because when it started there was no single overarching analysis or evolutionary tree of bird evolution.
But there is no single perfect tree of birds. So we had to do this over we had to create many millions of possible trees
The project has already put the research to work with its list of Top 100 EDGE Birds that are at risk of extinction.
Click here for a gallery of some of the world's most evolutionarily unique birds including some of the most endangered e
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