About: Joseph

Almost all mammals avoid eating chili peppers and other "hot" foods, because of the pain they induce. But not the tree shrew, according to a study publishing July 12 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Yalan Han of the Kunming Institute of Zoology in China, and colleagues. The researchers found that this close relative...

For lovers throughout the animal kingdom, finding a suitable mate requires the right chemistry. Now, scientists at The Rockefeller University have been able to map an unexpected path in which evolution arranged for animals to choose the correct partner.

A new mixture of cryoprotectives allows for an unprecedented high motility of frozen rhinoceros sperm after thawing, report scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in Berlin, Germany. These new cryoprotectives can increase the prospects of utilising assisted reproduction techniques for many endangered wildlife species. The study, based on three rhinoceros...

Rat control should be considered an urgent conservation priority on many remote tropical islands to protect vulnerable coral reefs, according to an international team of scientists.

The "Baltic flounder" Platichthys solemdali is the first fish species shown to be native only to the Baltic Sea, i.e. the first endemic fish described from the area and one of the only two known endemic species when considering any organism. The fact that a new vertebrate species is found and described from European waters,...

Two thousand years ago the Mediterranean Sea was a haven for two species of whale which have since virtually disappeared from the North Atlantic, a new study analysing ancient bones suggests.