| Carnivorous (26) |  |
| Herbivorous (19) | |
| Insectivorous (6) | |
| Carnivorous (26) | |
| Herbivorous (19) | |
| Insectivorous (6) | |
Why do animals adopt? Is adopting a child a benevolent or a foolish act? If you were taking a cold evolutionary perspective,
But this makes it especially perplexing in animals, who do not have the cultural influences we do.
One of the more striking places to see adoption in the animal kingdom is Ano Nuevo Island, rising from the sea less than one kilometre off the rocky California coast.
he writes in the journal Animal Behaviour, selection will favour universal acceptance of young in the nest.
In other words, it may be better to needlessly waste resources on alien infiltrators than to accidentally reject one of your own hatchlings.
It seems as if the drive to care for helpless infants is fairly universal among species that care for their own young oe and even between different animals.
kittens and other baby animals? If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future,
The salmon run draws carnivores such as bears and wolves to the river bank, where they gorge on the migrating fish.
but it turns out that animals like sea otters are providing another solution by helping to keep forests growing.
I will be exploring the mind-reading abilities of humans and animals in all forms. We start with one of the most basic aspects of theory of mind:
or motivation within an animal. Goodall would describe the behavior as if it was deceptive. Â And it certainly was a stretch to say that this meant chimpanzees had theory of mind.
and modified for a wide range of animals. A clever experiment in which rhesus monkeys could steal food
The evidence gathered so far suggests that many clever animals are capable of deception, and some can make basic predictions about the knowledge states of others.
Neither animal could distinguish parasitised from healthy droppings yet sheep responded by playing it safe,
When the wrong move could land you between the teeth of a bigger animal, perhaps the risk of infection from faecal matter is the lesser of two concerns.
Laboratory animals, pets, and livestock are generally at a much lower risk from predators than their wild counterparts,
Every animal, the researchers argue, must calculate the trade-off between dodging parasites and surviving another day.
Smell is important to various other animals too. What is less well known is that the intentional creation of aromas is not a uniquely human trait.
There is at least one other animal that practices the ancient art of perfume mixing and perhaps the most disgusting is the male greater sac-winged bat, Saccopteryx bilineata.
which is given large the animal's size. Despite the presence of what researchers call odiferous content oe smelly stuff, basically oe within the wing sac,
or perfume containers, says Christian Voigt, of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin.
All of which suggests that animals tune the frequency of their shakes to maximise the efficiency of getting dry.
and Mogwai the golden lab. Dickerson had filmed his soggy animals at around 500-1, 000 frames per second (fps).
which states that animals from places such as North africa or Australia that get wet, but maybe not that cold, simply don't need to shake so efficiently.
It means that diseases that infect animals have unprecedented an chance to jump across species to us.
rivers swim with fish and populations of animals that have become rare in the countryside are thriving in urban niches.
animals have made cities their home in some cases, their natural habitats have disappeared. In other places, the mix of human-introduced plant and animal species,
anthropology, tend to point up how similar humans are to other animals, not how different. Whatever sets us apart,
goat, and other animals. For many of the residents, livestock is their only livelihood, and they will go to any lengths to protect them oe including poisoning
According to Dr Charles Musyoki, a senior scientist in carnivore issues for Kenya Wildlife Service, the flickering lights is applied an ingenious design intervention that introduces a"serious risk consideration  for the lions.
Lungs of the planetit accounts for more than half of the planet's remaining rainforest and  is home to more than half the world's species of plants and animals.
Why animals also seek teenage kicksif you are an otter who wants to play a game of"chicken Â,
The only otters foolish enough to attempt an incursion into the triangle are adolescent males oe it turns out that human teenagers aren't the only animals that make bad decisions during the awkward transition between childhood and maturity.
Throughout the animal kingdom, adolescence is a tightrope Act as they gradually lose the care and protection they receive from their parents,
young animals of any species must strike a delicate balance between risk and safety. If they play it too safe
Perhaps concerned human parents can rest a bit easier knowing that their worries echo throughout the animal kingdom.
Animals that can countnumbers are fun. So insisted my seventh grade teacher, but my stubborn thirteen-year-old self refused to believe him.
mathematical ability is widespread in the animal kingdom. Take the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus), a bird that many think of as having more to do with barbecue sauce than with arithmetic.
But the real maths wizards of the animal kingdom are the ants of the Tunisian desert (Cataglyphis fortis). They count both arithmetic and geometry as parts of their mathematical toolkit.
"It's not clear if any of this works in a live animal, Â says Hecht."
Animals make collective decisions too. While nonhuman species typically don't vote to choose their leaders,
However, social species throughout the animal kingdom often have to make decisions without the aid of expert knowledge.
One thing animals don't appear to do, though, is explicitly select their leaders, as humans do.
and the animals already threatened or endangered are wiped out this century. Barnosky studies biodiversity changes and extinction rates that occurred in the deep past,
or Age of man, will be marked by a rapid decline in biodiversity as animals and plants disappear from the planet forever.
Many animals and plants have evolved to occupy specific geographical niches such as islands or mountain lakes.
South america got its first large carnivore oe the jaguar from North america oe which proceeded to eat much of the native fauna,
resulting in the loss of many species. Dominant force Humans have been orchestrating tectonic-scale species migrations of their own,
The combined weight of humans and the animals we've domesticated now outweighs all the wild back-boned creatures on the planet's surface by a ratio of 95 to 5
while trying to route out the more harmful invasives that out-compete unique flora or fauna.
or introduce animals to restore the functions that the pre-human ecosystem once provided oe such as reducing soil erosion,
or exist only in human-made environments like zoos or private breeding colonies far from their natural habitat,
we are beginning to understand how we could bring extinct animals back from the dead.
even if successful for individual animals, could not be applied practically to restore the intricate diversity of life that existed before humans took over the planet.
warming the habitats for plants and animals, melting glaciers and ice sheets, increasing the frequency of wildfires and raising sea levels.
And we are doing this at such a rapid pace that animals and plants may not have time to evolve to the new conditions.
When a three-month-old female chimpanzee was killed in June at the LA Zoo keepers allowed Gracie to retain her infant's body for several days
Even still, the available evidence offers an important reminder that humans are not the only animals who respond to death in a particular way.
And the list of nonhuman animals that seem to do so keeps expanding: recent reports suggest that giraffes
But we humans like to convince ourselves that we are somehow special, unique among the entire animal kingdom.
But for every facet of life that is unique to our species, there are hundreds that are shared with other animals.
As important as it is to avoid projecting our own feelings onto animals, we also need to remember that we are, in an inescapable way, animals ourselves.
Is it possible that we're simply offering post-hoc explanations in an effort to justify behaviours to which we're naturally driven?
Instead, they often get parts of the animal in the form of pills, snippets of hair,
They then compare the sequence they have with a database of animals and plants. If it matches something in the database
all animals have it; it accumulates small differences as species diverge; and it's relatively easy to extract,
which records"sightings  of giant squids and whale-like animals. During the visit, the pair began to wonder
"It could be a sample of an extinct animal that has nothing to do with the Yeti myth,
"If animals as large as oxen can remain hidden into an era when we would expect that scientists had rustled every tree
and the animals we've domesticated. The quest for resources to supply us all with materials
but as many of the other animals and plants we share our planet with. If you would like to comment on this article
water taken up by plants is eaten by animals that breathe out water vapour, returning the water to the soil for the plants by way of rain.
and animals to cope with, resulting in dead zones around the shores of reservoirs. Fish that lay their eggs in the shallows among submerged tree roots,
ranging from cataloguing stars in the distant corners of the universe with Galaxy Zoo to predicting the complex three dimensional structures of protein structures with Foldit.
Conservationists say that the animals may go extinct within two decades. But here is the big question:
and the animals we have domesticated. Megafaunal biomass (that's anything weighing more than 97lbs, or 44kg) is greater now than at any time
Conservation benefitsbut many people would argue that tigers are an iconic animal; culturally important in several nations.
That has not been enough to protect other iconic animals, such as the Asiatic lion, which once ranged from Northern europe down to South Asia
including other endangered animals such as rhinos, as well as the vital ecosystem services humans rely on from food to water management.
for example, helping keep the herbivore numbers down, which allows tree saplings to mature. Conservationists also argue that tigers are good for the local economy
Habitat conservation is key to preventing the animals'extinction in the wild. Consumers are urged not to buy timber products made from tiger-inhabited forests, such as Asia Pulp & Paper brands accused by the WWF and Greenpeace of rainforest destruction in Sumatra.
and number less than 60 in captivity oe from zoos in China to a reserve she has created in South africa.
the last known passenger pigeon, died in Cincinnati Zoo. But if Church has his way, this majestic sight could one day return to our skies.
he and other scientists are dreaming up ambitious plans to resurrect long-dead animals from pigeons to Tasmanian tigers and wooly mammoths.
A key part of this grand ambition lies in the lines of test tubes frozen in liquid nitrogen in a Californian zoo.
In 1972, Oliver Ryder, a geneticist at the San diego Zoo, had the visionary idea of freezing skin samples from endangered animals in the hope they might help protect these species in the future.
Many captive animals suffer from genetic abnormalities and inbreeding, and Ryder imagined that his repository of animal cells could be used long after their donors died to help zoo veterinarians manage captive populations.
He never viewed his"Frozen Zoo  oe which now stores cells from 9 000 individual vertebrates belonging to more than 1, 000 different species oe as a way of producing new animals.
As far as he and other scientists knew,  only stem cells found in embryos had the ability to transform into the building blocks of  any part of the body,
whether a cell in the liver or the eye. Ryder's collection of skin cells were thought just that
it was implanted into the uterus of another animal, which carried the clone to birth.""Dolly is derived from a mammary gland cell
From dogs to cows, scientists rushed to clone a menagerie of animals using Wilmut's technique, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT.
Many animals were born unhealthy and the cloning process was inefficient, with success rates of around 1%.Less charitable critics still call these efforts stunts,
"Producing the odd animal here and there, which may be sick, didn't seem a very sensible thing to do,
Skin cells could be converted into sperm that could create an animal through in vitro fertilisation (IVF), or even transformed into whole animals.
Both feats have been accomplished in mice and they should be possible in other animals, scientists say.
As a first step, Ryder and a team of stem cell scientists have reprogrammed the skin cells from a northern white rhinoceroses named Fatu, one of seven still alive,
With extinct animals, scientists need to take more involved measures to recover the complete DNA sequence oe its genome.
though, might lie in nature's version of Ryder's Frozen Zoo. Flash-frozen remains of wooly mammoths have been found preserved under the Siberian permafrost,
but they still contain the animal's genetic code. This genome is shredded into short fragments,
and more ancient animal genomes are on the way, such as the Tasmanian tiger. These genomes exist in the form of computerised data,
producing a chimera animal with some tissues made from elephant cells and others from mammoths.
What is more, the technologies that scientists are hoping to use have mostly been developed for use in laboratory animals and valuable livestock only.
Basic genetic principles may carry over to more exotic animals but many steps will not, particularly those involving reproduction and development.
humans resurrect an extinct animal. A wealthy American investor approached him several years ago and asked Poinar to quit his academic job and work full time on bringing back woolly mammoths.
There could even be an upside for other animals on the brink of extinction.""If there's enough people enthusiastic about bringing an extinct species like a mammoth or passenger pigeon,
and animals use to develop proteins. Animal faeces contain many of these chemicals, and recycling essential nitrates from biomatter is the easiest and cheapest way of replenishing the soil.
"Previously we just raised food for humans and animals. In 2011 more corn went to biofuel than to feed for the first time in the US.
and the animals we have domesticated, according to Prof Vaclav Smil in his book The Earth's Biosphere:
as if it was an animal being trained. http://www. dailymail. co. uk/sciencetech/article-1044909/Robot-powered-rats-brain-bizarre-British-experiment. html#ixzz16mpvastz 9. Brain
#Plants and Animals Fending Off Diseases! This is a plant nothing touches! Contrary to long-held beliefs, plants and animals have developed remarkably similar mechanisms for detecting microbial invasions.
This holds promise for the future treatment of infectious diseases in humans. It may have been 1 billion years
since plants and animals branched apart on the evolutionary tree but down through the ages they have developed strikingly similar mechanisms for detecting microbial invasions
This revelation was arrived at over a period of 15 years by teams of researchers from seemingly disparate fields who have used classical genetic studies to unravel the mysteries of disease resistance in plants and animals
signaling the plant or animal in which the receptor resides to mount an immune response and fend off microbial infection and disease.
According to the study, producing food from animals, such as meat and dairy products, causes the greatest impact.
A sacred animal in India, urine from the cow is distilled before it is blended with traditional Indian herbs and medicinal plants.
An 11-year study of a population of wild sheep located on a remote island off the coast of Scotland that gauged the animals susceptibility to infection may give new insight into why some people get sicker than others when exposed to the same illness.
The answer to this medical puzzle may lie in deep-rooted differences in how animals survive and reproduce in the wild,
The scientists tested the animals for levels of antibodies, natural molecules produced by the sheeps immune systems to fend off infections such as influenza
These animals also were most likely to survive harsh winters. However they failed to produce as many offspring each spring as other sheep.
Graham said. oeto find evidence for such tradeoff may clarify why animals vary so much in the strength of their immune responses,
the field of immunology has been based on studies of domesticated animals in clean lab environments where animals are given all the food they want,
where these little ants are up against these huge herbivores, protecting trees and having a major impact on the properties of the ecosystems in
and do protect trees from animals that are about a billion times more massive, Dr Palmer said.
When animals get in the way of people sometimes the first reaction is to remove the animals from the equation, even with native species like the double-crested cormorant.
The cormorant didnt make this Top Ten list, from Daily Finance, an AOL site. The site based its list on animals
and insects that were introduced by humans to correct an imbalance, and species that were endangered once
and why the animal or insect is considered costly: 1. Canada Geese for endangering public health by soiling parks and lakes,
when humans and animals collide? You can say that human life is more important than animal life.
While one expert suggests the animal might only be suffering from hypertrichosis, a condition once known as werewolf syndrome,
Torchios experience is known the only encounter with such an animal. Torchio has lived and worked in Kenya for the past two decades
He initially thought the animal was a dog and oewas wondering, what is this dog doing?
The animal has all the markings of a Thomsons gazelle. oei would say its a younger female,
based on the body and the horn size, says Lanny Brown, a zookeeper at the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona,
Torchio noted that the animal was spooked not easily by other gazelles and visa-versa. However, it was spooked by Torchio himself.
Gazelles are one of the fastest animals on earth, running at speeds up to 55 and 60 mph.
#The Childhood Goat Trauma Foundation The Childhood Goat Trauma Foundation was created in 1982 by a small group that originally came together as a an informal support group for problems that were the result of traumatic experiences at petting zoos
when facing large animals that rapidly consume the plants they live on, said Moshe Inbar of the University of Haifa in Israel. oethey reliably detect the danger and escape on time.
when he saw the strange animal. He said it was impossible for a pig to mate with a cow. oethe whole body
insects could be used to feed farmed animals such as chicken and fish which eat them naturally.
Under European law, foodstuffs produced from cloned animals must pass a safety evaluation and get approval before they are marketed.
Research has identified concerns for the health of animals produced as a result of cloning. There is some evidence of premature births and deformities.
Their research project originally aimed to figure out how animals make eggshells because its an extraordinarily strong yet lightweight material that no human has been able to replicate,
and the researchers hoped to learn how to develop a manmade equivalent by learning about the way animals make eggshells.
#Genetically-Modified Salmon Will be First GM Animal Available for Human Consumption Genetically modified salmon could be on supermarket shelves within a year.
A salmon that grows at twice the normal rate is set to be the first genetically modified (GM) animal available for human consumption.
But despite the creation of a GM mouse as early as the 1980s, the idea of eating modified animals does not appeal to the public.
policy director at the Soil Association, said the new technology is not worth the risk. oeonce you have bombarded an animal with other genes,
if a GM animal becomes available for human consumption. But in the UK the public remains suspicious of Frankenfoods.
#10 Unbelievable Animal Friendships This macaque was rescued from Neilingding Island in China after his mother abandoned him
But since then, the animals have been oeinseparable, say observers, napping together, walking together, and even picking up each others habits:
These photos from the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Thailand show a tiger nursing a litter of piglets
(and the animals were harmed to get the shots) for publicity. Mi-Lu and his sibling are believed to be the first two Pere David deer born in captivity
the staff at Arizonas Halo Animal Rescue had the impossible job of trying to find another nursing dog to take over and with no dogs available,
After its mother left, the panda joined a group of kittens being raised by a housecoat at the Artis Zoo in Amsterdam,
While the endangered animal would have lived for about three months on a liquid diet before switching to bamboo and fruit,
#Latest Ag Innovation Mobile Slaughterhouses Any animal, anywhere, any time The slaughtermobile a stainless steel industrial facility on wheels is catching on across the country,
000 animals a day. oethere are farming operations that are really big and do huge volumes of food and thats part of American agriculture and thats good,
pork and lamb raised on local pastures by farmers who can vouch for the animals diet and treatment.
Thats difficult for a small farmer raising animals in pastures, where weather and other variables can affect their growth and readiness for slaughter.
and has certified eight others across the country for large animals cattle, sheep and pigs. A group of about 20 farmers in Western Maryland will meet with the USDA later this month to discuss bringing a mobile slaughterhouse to Washington
And once the animal is slaughtered, the carcass still has to be brought to a packing house for cutting
000 animals a day. oethere are farming operations that are really big and do huge volumes of food and thats part of American agriculture and thats good,
pork and lamb raised on local pastures by farmers who can vouch for the animals diet and treatment.
Thats difficult for a small farmer raising animals in pastures, where weather and other variables can affect their growth and readiness for slaughter.
and has certified eight others across the country for large animals cattle, sheep and pigs. A group of about 20 farmers in Western Maryland will meet with the USDA later this month to discuss bringing a mobile slaughterhouse to Washington
And once the animal is slaughtered, the carcass still has to be brought to a packing house for cutting
A zoo run by flies is such a zoo. No really...When you look at yourself in the mirror,
since different kinds of animals had different temperaments, they were used together to control each other. If one of them refused to move,
be kind to animals and not to cut trees. The followers are principled so as to lay down their lives to protect a tree The Bishnois are called rightfully the first environmentalists of India.
Deers, Black bucks, Peacocks, Blue bulls, Chinkaras, are some of the animals that you would find roaming around their settlements.
Because of Bishnois and their commitment to protection of nature, many animals have survived this long. Nowhere else would one find a perfect marriage of all forms of flora and fauna.
Long before Rain Harvesting concept caught fire to combat the severe drought and water shortage, the Bishnois build water storage tanks that can collect and store rain water.
This water is not only for humans but animals too. Bishnois oppose to their religious tradition of cremating the dead.
One of their principle tenets oeamar Rakhave That means to provide shelter for abandoned animals
The Bishnois do not tolerate destruction of flora and fauna by unnatural means. They are very protective of their surroundings
#Mysterious Desert Lines Found To Be Animal Traps Animal Traps in the desert? British RAF pilots in the early 20th century were the first to spot the strange kite-like lines on the deserts of Israel, Jordan and Egypt from the air and wonder about their origins.
The walls form large funnels to direct gazelle and other large game animals into killing pits Whats more, the kites are between 2, 300 and 2,
Interestingly, the walls of the kites are not high enough to actually block the animals.
A careful examination of not just the kites but their locations in relation to pastures and migration routes makes it very clear that desert kites were specialized for specific types of animals.
Some kites cleverly exploited low spots in the landscape to lure animals into the unseen killing pit. oeindeed,
the pit would have appeared to the animals in the funnel as an opening in the boundary walls of the kite through
or shoulder of a hill so that animals driven over the ridge would suddenly be confronted by the installation before and below them,
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