Monthly Archives: May 2018

Fruit flies fear lion feces

A new doctoral thesis from Lund University in Sweden shows how fruit flies use their sense of smell and humidity to find food, avoid dehydration and discover the best place to lay their eggs -- in overripe marula fruits. Faeces from herbivores are also suitable, but the flies reject carnivore excrement.

Summer is high season for...

Read more

Climate change forced zombie ant fungi to adapt

Zombie ants clamp on to aerial vegetation and hang for months spewing the spores of their parasitic fungi, but researchers noticed that they do not always clamp on to the same part of the plant. Now the researchers know that the choice of leaves or twigs is related to climate and that climate change forced...

Read more

Dino-bird dandruff research head and shoulders above rest

Palaeontologists from University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland have discovered 125 million-year-old dandruff preserved amongst the plumage of feathered dinosaurs and early birds, revealing the first evidence of how dinosaurs shed their skin.

UCC's Dr Maria McNamara and her team studied the fossil cells, and dandruff from modern birds, with powerful electron microscopes for the study,...

Read more

The stick insects that survive being eaten by birds

It's commonly assumed that when insects are eaten by birds, they and their unborn young have no chance of survival. However, a team of Japanese researchers hypothesized that the eggs within insect bodies can pass through birds undigested. They tested this hypothesis with stick insects, known for their hard eggs, and found that some eggs...

Read more

Dolphin liberation in Korea

"Dolphin liberation in South Korea has raised awareness towards the welfare of marine animals and has resulted in the strengthening of animal protection policies and the level of welfare."

An engineering student, affiliated with UNIST has recently carried out a scientific investigation on dolphin liberation in South Korea. The paper presents the overall analysis of the...

Read more