The yak is the third largest beast in Asia after the elephant and rhino but due to its remote location has never been weighed officially.
Yaks live in alpine tundra grasslands and the cold desert regions of the northernâ Tibetan Plateau ranging from 13000 to 20000 feet (4000 to 6100 meters) in elevation according to the IUCN.
 While polar bears represent a sad disclaimer for a warming Arctic the recent count of almost 1000 wild yaks offers hope for the persistence of free-roaming large animals at the virtual limits of high-altitude wildlife.
So far Mitalipov and his colleagues have not been able to grow a cloned monkey fetus to term suggesting that primate reproduction may be even more complex than what is known from Dolly the sheep and other farm animals.
  From the mouse data we know that embryonic cloning is better than ips cells Cibelli said.
The cloning of a monkey or other nonhuman primate would likely be a strong signal that it's time to set some rules around human cloning Cibelli said.
Thirteen states currently have laws on the books prohibiting reproductive cloning. A worst-case scenario would be a clone showing up on the scene before the legalities are hammered out Knoepfler said.
They apparently formed in two phases an older layer made up primarily of the shells of freshwater apple snails as well as the bones of deer fish reptiles
#Hunting Cheetahs Rely More on Agility Than Speed Cheetahs may hold the distinction of being the fastest animals on land
but these elegant felines actually owe their hunting prowess to their ability to rapidly accelerate
A team of researchers monitored five wild cheetahs in northern Botswana and found that despite clocking top speeds of nearly 60 mph (97 km h) cheetahs use their agility rather than simply relying on a furious pace to track down prey.
Cheetahs have a very high top speed but they don't always use it said study lead author Alan Wilson a professor in the department of comparative biomedical sciences at The Royal Veterinary College in the United kingdom. oewhat was more remarkable was the maneuverability
and acceleration that they displayed. Quick kitty Wilson and his colleagues designed special GPS-tracking collars for their cheetah subjects that collected precise data on the animals'location speed acceleration and deceleration.
Cat Album: The Life of a Cheetah Over the course of 367 runs in 17 months the cheetahs recorded a blistering top speed of 58 mph (93 km h) far outpacing greyhounds racing horses
and humans the researchers said. On most runs however the cheetahs kept a more modest pace averaging 31 mph (50 km h) Wilson said.
They're doing about half their top speed so they're not moving extremely quickly
when they hunt he told Livescience. The researchers used the extensive information collected by the collars to map out the running behaviors of wild cheetahs on the prowl.
Runs started with a period of acceleration either from stationary or slow movement (presumably stalking) up to high speed they wrote in the study
The cheetahs then decelerated and maneuvered before prey capture. From zero to The acceleration and turning speeds measured from these cheetahs either match
or exceed the known speeds of all other land mammals the researchers said. In fact cheetahs are so agile they can increase their speed by up to 6. 7 mph (10.8 km h) in a single stride the researchers added.
The calculated muscle power output during these sustained accelerations is the highest of any land mammal
and roughly four times greater than that exerted by Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt during his world-record-breaking 100-meter sprint in 2009 they added.
Of the 367 runs studied 94 resulted in the cheetahs capturing their prey contributing to a success rate of about 26 percent.
The researchers also examined where the cheetahs preferred to chase down their meals: Nearly half or 48 percent of the runs occurred on open grasslands 28 percent were carried out around large trees
and 24 percent happened in areas of thick vegetation cover. Although trees and shrubs may offer cheetahs better means to stalk prey the researchers did not find significant differences in the speed
or distances run across the various terrains. The five cheetahs studied predominantly hunted impala a type of African antelope
but one male cheetah who frequently hunted in areas with thicker vegetation occasionally hunted warthogs Wilson said.
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#Ice-free Arctic May be Near, Study Suggests The Arctic experienced an extended period of warm temperatures about 3. 6 million years ago before the onset of the ice ages at a time
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Dozens of species disappeared altogether including 17 giant lemurs three pygmy hippopotamuses two aardvarklike mammals a giant fossa (a catlike carnivore) eight elephant birds a giant crocodile and two giant tortoises.
In the summer they climb even higher up to 8500 feet (2590 m). Their climbing skills help them evade predators such as coyotes and bobcats.
The passenger pigeon the dodo and the woolly mammoth are just a few of the species wiped off the Earth by changing environments and human activities.
and select for specific traits as a dog breeder might. Eventually the resulting offspring would appear very much like the passenger pigeon.
Woolly mammoths next? Other scientists dream of bringing back a beast that roamed the Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago:
the woolly mammoth. Well-preserved mammoths have been dug out of the Siberian tundra containing bone marrow skin hair and fat.
If a living mammoth cell were found it could be grown in a lab and coaxed to form an embryo.
The embryo could be implanted into the closest living relative of mammoths an elephant which would give birth to a baby mammoth.
Images: 25 Amazing Ancient Beasts Finding a living mammoth cell is very unlikely. But South korean biomedical engineer Insung Hwang hopes to find just a cell nucleus and produce a clone from it like Dolly the sheep.
The nucleus would be implanted into an elephant egg whose nucleus had been removed. But this is no easy feat no one has harvested yet successfully an elephant egg.
The challenges aren't trifling. Even if researchers succeed in creating a mammoth passenger pigeon or other extinct creature it has to survive in the wild.
or woolly mammoth has a strong appeal to the public's imagination Temple said. But the species that are hyped often don't meet those criteria at all he said.
when woolly mammoths existed. Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+.+Â Follow us@livescience Facebook & Google+.
#Invasive Mink Threatens South america's Largest Woodpecker Invasive American minks may threaten the largest woodpecker species in South america according to new research.
and the University of Santiago in Chile report they have now found the first evidence of Magellanic predation on Navarino Island a 955-square-mile (2473 square kilometers) island off the coast of Southern Chile by the American mink
Minks that escaped these farms have multiplied since and have become an invasive species without any natural predators in the region.
The Peskiest Alien Mammals Though the team did not make direct observations of a mink attacking a woodpecker they collected several pieces of evidence to argue their case which they detailed earlier this month in the journal Biological Invasions.
For instance the team found an adult Magellanic woodpecker which they had outfitted with a radio-tag for an unrelated study dead within a mink den.
While it's possible a mink had found the bird already dead and scavenged it in the den this type of behavior would be atypical of carnivores that tend to hunt live prey said Jaime Jimenez a researcher at the University of North Texas
On a separate occasion the team observed a mink creep up on a woodpecker looking ready to pounce at about 1 foot away (30 centimeters) until a student scared it off to prevent the attack.
And finally the team stationed cameras around the island revealing footage of minks and woodpeckers feeding in the same areas of the forest floor on separate occasions
if the minks had this intent. The team thinks the woodpeckers have adapted to feed on the forest floor rather than holing up more cautiously in trees
and understand the ecological consequences of their potential decline in an effort to develop management plans in response to the invasive mink population.
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Cats are bigger than mice because they have more cells. In a sense we are all like Lego constructions.
and in mammals red blood cells (but not white blood cells) push out their DNA as they mature so they can squeeze along tiny blood vessels.
We are the big guinea pig and we're doing fine Sneller said. But it is possible to create a GM food that is unsafe for instance researchers could insert a gene that allowed the plant to produce an allergen or a protein to
For more than 30 years a consortium of researchers has examined how genetic variation in the cottonwood tree can affect entire communities of organisms from microbes to mammals.
According to the Bible swarms of locusts were the eighth plague sent into ancient Egypt as a punishment for suppressing the Jews said Hendrik Bruins a researcher who studies the archaeology and environmental aspects of desert peoples at Israel's Ben-Gurion
This current swarm fits very well with the seasonal timing of the exodus in the bible Bruins said.
This we cannot say Bruins told Livescience. Because there have been so many plagues throughout history not every locust plague can be classified in that way he said laughing.
The locust is the only kosher insect meaning it is acceptable to eat under Jewish law Bruins said.
or hadrosaurs were large herbivores that filled the same ecological niche as deer or kangaroo today.
Surprising skin Bell had found a fleshy dome extending off of the duckbill's skull something that had never been seen before.
or if other duckbills might have had similar fleshy accessories. Skin associated with the head may not preserve well meaning that other combs have vanished without a trace Bell said.
When the colonists ran out of food they oefed upon horses and other beasts as long as they lasted we were glad to make shift with vermin as dogs cats rats
and mice writes George Percy in an account of what happened. Boots shoes and leather were consumed also
and as recent archaeological evidence confirms some colonists resorted to cannibalism to survive. In May 1610 Thomas Gates the governor who had been shipwrecked on Bermuda before he could arrive at Jamestown made his way to the colony using makeshift ships made partly with wood they found on Bermuda.
Most accounts suggest that the creature has a horse-like face with antlers or horns sprouting from the top of its head.
The overall body shape resembles a kangaroo though it also has wings like a bat.
Some say it has a tail like a lizard; others say it has no tail at all.
The monster is said to kill dogs chickens and other small animals as well as leave spooky cloven hoof prints in snow
He painted a kangaroo green attached fake wings to the helpless creature and had exhibited it to the public The 1909 hoax
you'd have better luck putting butterfly wings on a rhino. Most images of the Jersey Devil look like a monster that a high school Dungeons & dragons player might dream up as a composite of different unrelated animals
and clearly shows they are extremely clever that they love to play and (like dogs)
And neither would most dogs. Bullying is bullying no matter who the victim is. The teacher who would stop a child from being picked on should extend the same compassion toward animals.
Bekoff's most recent Op-Ed was'The Dog's Telltale Tail. This article was adapted from Kiss a Pig Contests Cheap Laughs and Bullying in Psychology Today.
The Peskiest Alien Mammals But in a greenhouse laboratory researchers at North carolina State university found that baby Generation A kudzu bugs did not have restricted a kudzu diet.
Morde claimed that his guides told him tales of a temple dedicated to the worship of a monkey god.
#Lemurs Snooze in Caves Like Early Humans Some of Madagascar's ring-tailed lemurs head to bed in caves every night new research finds.
The study is the first evidence of modern wild primates sleeping regularly in caves. Early human remains in South africa have been found in caves suggesting that
although lemurs and humans aren't particularly closely related as far as primates go there is something in deep primate history that makes caves appealing possibly protection from predators said study researcher Michelle Sauther an anthropologist at the University of Colorado Boulder.
We think cave-sleeping is something ring-tailed lemurs have been doing for a long time Sauther said in a statement.
The behavior may be characteristic of a deep primate heritage that goes back millions of years.
Lemur lodge Ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) are part of a branch of primates that includes other lemurs bushbabies and lorises.
Lemurs are found only on Madagascar and they typically sleep in trees. Sauther and her colleagues found that ring-tailed lemurs in Tsimanampesotse National park
and the Tsinjoriake Protected Area in southwestern Madagascar were doing something quite different. They seemed to come out of nowhere
See Video of the Lemurs and their Caves The researchers observed the lemurs between 2006 and 2013 using field observations
and motion-sensing cameras. The cave-sleeping may be related to a unique feature of this environment the spiny forest.
In areas where lemurs sleep in trees the branches are high off the ground and form a safe canopy.
Regular quarters The ring-tailed lemur's nemesis is the fossa a catlike mammal also found only in Madagascar.
Modern fossa get as large as fat housecats weighing in around 20 lbs. 9 kilograms.
An ancestral fossa that went extinct only a few thousand years ago likely also would have preyed on lemurs
and have grown to be the size of a cougar Sauther said. This is the first time that wild primates have been found to use caves as a place to bunk regularly Sauther
and her colleagues reported in November in the journal Madagascar Conservation and Development. Previously endangered Fusui langurs monkeys found in Asia had been seen retreating to caves at night
but the langurs slept in caves only after their forest homes had been logged or clear-cut. The langurs also moved from cave to cave each night instead of returning to the same cave for years.
 The remarkable thing about our study was that over a six-year period the same troops of ring-tailed lemurs used the same sleeping caves on a regular daily basis Sauther said.
What we are seeing is a consistent habitual use of caves as sleeping sites by these primates a wonderful behavioral adaptation we had known not about before.
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#Let's Not'Feed The World':'Moving Beyond an Unhelpful Phrase (Op-Ed) Margaret Mellon is a senior scientist for food and the environment at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS.
which consists of plant-eating rhinoceros-like dinos including Triceratops. It has the biggest nose and the longest horns of any of the ceratopsids said study co-author Mark Loewen a paleontologist at the University of Utah.
The emergence of flowering plants several million years earlier probably allowed mega-herbivores such as the imposing Triceratops to evolve from smaller herbivores that were about the size of a house cat Loewen said.
The dinosaur had a long flaring snout and absurdly long curving horns that stretched almost to the tip of its nose.
Similar to modern-day elk or deer Nasuceratops likely used its outlandish horns to deter rivals
whether such ornamental headgear was unique to males as is common in modern-day deer.
Researchers at Emory University near Atlanta have demonstrated that primates map their environment using grid cells specialized neurons that help the animals navigate by overlaying a virtual grid made of triangles atop regularly spaced points in the environment.
She suspects that these grid cells don't just help primates navigate--they also help form visual memories.
They put six rats in a pen and monitored individual neurons while the rats explored.
The neurons they were watching lie in a part of the brain called the entorhinal cortex. It sits in the lower part of the brain near its intersection with the brain stem.
 As a rat walked around the enclosure a neuron in the entorhinal cortex fired;
the rat walked a little more and the neuron fired again. When the team mapped out all the points in the enclosure that had lit up a particular neuron they found that these weren't just random signals:
While experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging had hinted at the presence of human grid cells they had never been observed directly in any primate.
In research reported in November in the journal Nature three Rhesus monkeys looked at images on a computer screen
When Buffalo and her coworkers compared eye-tracking results to the electrode measurements they found that the monkeys like the rats were using neurons in the entorhinal cortex to construct a triangular grid they could superimpose on their environment.
 Primates though are sophisticated more cartographers: the monkeys were able to activate their grid cells simply by looking around.
We tend to explore things with our eyes said Buffalo and unlike the rats in the original experiments primates don't have to actually visit a place to construct the same kind of mental map.
Showing the monkeys the same picture twice enabled Buffalo to link grid cells to memory.
When the monkeys looked at a familiar image some cells fired less frequently apparently remembering what they had mapped already.
This suggests that grid cells may provide a kind of framework for making associations said Buffalo.
Studies of brain changes in Alzheimer's disease in humans consistently show localized degeneration in the same parts of the entorhinal cortex where Buffalo found grid cells in monkeys.
She suspects that the cells Buffalo observed which respond to the monkeys'eye movements may represent a new type of grid cell
The next step is to study grid cells in a 3-D virtual environment where the ability to manipulate the monkeys'surroundings permits researchers to study how grid cells respond to a range of variables.
#Man Arrested for Harassing Baby Manatee in Florida A man has been arrested in Florida after posting pictures on Facebook that showed him harassing a baby manatee authorities announced this week.
The incriminating images show Ryan William Waterman 21 and his two children petting a manatee calf at Taylor Creek in Fort Pierce last month according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife
While the family's actions might look playful biologists said such contact could be deadly for a manatee calf.
This was a young manatee which was likely still dependent on its mother for food and protection.
Separating the two could have severe consequences for the calf FWC manatee biologist Thomas Reinert said in a statement.
World's Cutest Baby Wild Animals The calf also appeared to be experiencing manatee cold-stress syndrome a condition that can lead to death in extreme cases Reinert added.
Waterman faces charges under the Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act which makes it illegal to molest harass
or disturb manatees classified as an endangered species in the state. His offense also violates the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972
which makes it illegal to hunt or get up close to manatees as well as all other marine mammals such as whales seals and walruses.
These laws however have not prevented some recent close encounters in Florida perhaps due to a lack of awareness.
and didn't know it was illegal to touch a manatee.)In December a woman snapped pictures at Pompano Beach on Florida's Atlantic coast of swimmers who might have been trying to ride a sickly sperm whale.
The 35-foot (10.6-meter)- long creature was reported to be flapping its tail at the time of the incident
And last October a woman turned herself in after photos surfaced showing her riding a manatee at Florida's Fort Desoto Park near Tampa.
There are estimated to be just 3800 manatees in Florida and each year about 87 are killed by humans according to the U s Fish and Wildlife Service most of them dying in boat collisions.
and destroyed manatee habitat also threatens the species. Follow Livescience on Twitter@livescience. We're also on Facebookâ & Google+.
First Ancestor of All Placental mammals Revealed A tiny furry-tailed creature is the most complete picture yet as to
what the ancestor of mice elephants lions tigers bears whales bats and humans once looked like researchers say.
These new findings also suggest this forerunner of most mammals appeared shortly after the catastrophe that ended the age of dinosaurs scientists added.
Species like rodents and primates did not share the Earth with nonavian dinosaurs but arose from a common ancestor a small insect-eating scampering animal shortly after the dinosaurs'demise said researcher Maureen O'Leary at Stony Brook University in New york. The study was so thorough that the team made up of 23
The largest living branch of the mammalian family tree holds the placentals mammals that keep fetuses alive with placentas as opposed to marsupials such as kangaroos
which raise offspring in pouches or monotremes such as platypuses which develop fetuses in eggs. See Images of the Furry Mammal Ancestor
and Descendants There are over 5100 living placental species and they exhibit enormous diversity said researcher Nancy Simmons at the American Museum of Natural history. if (typeof (defined poll functions)==undefined'&& $(#poll javascript).
poll options 47 149=Pipsqueak Placental; poll options 47 150=Proto-Placental; poll options 47 151=Protosorex mammaliensis;
poll options 47 152=Ralph; load poll (47; The roots of placentals Much remains controversial about the origins of placentals such as
when they arose and how they diversified. Fossil evidence suggests they evolved after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event about 65 million years ago that ended the age of dinosaurs;
when placentals evolved an international team of researchers took part in a six-year research collaboration called Assembling the Tree of Life.
10 Coolest Genome sequences The molecular team gathered DNA sequences of living animals while the morphology team analyzed the anatomy of both living and extinct mammals.
The molecular team was limited largely to living mammals because researchers currently cannot extract genetic material from fossils more than 30000 years old so morphological data was key
when it came to exploring more ancient branches of the mammal family tree. Discovering the tree of life is like piecing together a crime scene it is a story that happened in the past that you can't repeat O'Leary said.
Combining both DNA and morphological datasets led to an unprecedented amount of information for each of the 83 mammals they investigated.
What our ancestor looked like From all this data from living and extinct mammals the scientists extrapolated the appearance of the most recent common ancestor of all placental mammals.
We have all these placentals alive today from elephants to shrews from things that fly to things that swim Spaulding said.
In addition to a furry tail the researchers suggest the four-legged creature likely ate insects weighed from 6 grams (about the weight of some shrews) up to 245 grams less than half a pound
Using the new family tree of mammals in tandem with this anatomical data we were able to reconstruct
what this common placental ancestor may have looked like. Meet the Mammal Ancestor (Infographic) Their research also suggested placental mammals appeared after the end of the age of dinosaurs with the original ancestor developing about 200000 to 400000 years after the event.
This is about 36 million years later than the prediction based on purely genetic data said researcher Marcelo Weksler at Brazil's National Museum at the Federal University of Rio de janeiro.
The diversification of placental mammals was tied not to the breakup of continents from a supercontinent Gondwana O'Leary told Livescience.
I plan to continue trying to make fossil discoveries that expand the placental mammal family tree. The scientists detailed their findings in the Feb 8 issue of the journal Science.
#Melting Sea Ice Keeps Hungry Polar bears On land Polar bears the iconic victims of climate change are shifting their migration patterns because of changes in sea ice.
The bears are arriving on land earlier and departing later a new study found and it's threatening their access to food.
A team of researchers studied the migration patterns of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in Hudson bay Canada using satellite-tracking data collected between 1991 and1997 and 2004 and 2009.
when the bears migrated onto or off of land. The findings are detailed today (March 19) in the Journal of Animal Ecology.
when polar bears move on and off the ice is an important aspect of monitoring the risks to the population associated with climate change study leader Seth Cherry a graduate student in ecology at the University of Alberta Canada told Livescience in an email.
Polar bears hunt their main food source seals primarily while on sea ice. Changes in the ice are driving the bears to spend more time on land where they have to go longer without eating
and rely on fat reserves to tide them over. Climate-induced changes that cause sea ice to melt earlier form later
or both likely affect the overall health of polar bears in the area Cherry said. 10 Odd Facts About Arctic Sea Ice Cherry
and colleagues fitted 109 female polar bears with tracking collars (males can't wear collars because their necks are wider than their heads).
Putting a tracking collar on a polar bear is quite a feat. The researchers located the bears from a helicopter
and flew in close to dart the bears. With the animals immobilized the researchers attached the collars
which were equipped with GPS transmitters that beamed their location. The scientists also took measurements in the form of blood samples and fat biopsies
which told them about the bears'diet and nutrition. When we look at the migration patterns of the collared bears it appears as though bears in recent years are arriving on shore earlier in the summer
and leaving later in the autumn Cherry said. These are precisely the kind of changes one would expect to see as a result of a warming climate.
The findings suggest that it's not only the distribution of sea ice that affects the bears'migration but how quickly that ice melts or forms.
When the ice melts in Hudson bay the bears spend longer on land where they are essentially fasting.
because when the other bears resume hunting in late November or early December these females stay in dens on land to give birth to cubs and nurse them.
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