Researchers from the CNRS and université Toulouse III -- Paul Sabatier (UT3) show that fruit flies possess all of the cognitive capacities needed to culturally transmit their sexual preferences across generations. The study, published on November 30, 2018 in Science, provides the first experimental toolbox for studying the existence of animal cultures, thereby opening up...
Soil compound fights chronic wasting disease
A major compound in soil organic matter degrades chronic wasting disease prions and decreases infectivity in mice, according to a study published November 29 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Judd Aiken of the University of Alberta, and colleagues.
Chronic wasting disease is an environmentally transmissible, fatal prion disease affecting free-ranging deer, moose, elk and...
Whales lost their teeth before evolving hair-like baleen in their mouths
Rivaling the evolution of feathers in dinosaurs, one of the most extraordinary transformations in the history of life was the evolution of baleen -- rows of flexible hair-like plates that blue whales, humpbacks and other marine mammals use to filter relatively tiny prey from gulps of ocean water. The unusual structure enables the world's largest...
How a rat and bat helped heal a 90-year cultural rift
Tyrone Lavery, postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago, traveled nearly 8,000 miles to find two species -- a giant rat and a monkey-faced bat -- in Malaita, one of the Solomon Islands' largest provinces.
The search for these mammals isn't over yet -- but in partnership with the Kwaio, an indigenous people in Malaita,...
Lizards adapt to invasive fire ants, reversing geographical patterns of lizard traits
Some lizards in the eastern U.S. have adapted to invasive fire ants -- which can bite, sting, and kill lizards -- reversing geographical trends in behavioral and physical traits used to avoid predators. A new study describing this reversal appears online on November 29, 2018, in the journal Global Change Biology and reveals that new...
Whale songs' changing pitch may be response to population, climate changes
Blue whales around the world are singing a little flat, and scientists may now have more clues as to the reason why.
A new study finds there's a seasonal variation in the whales' pitch correlated with breaking sea ice in the southern Indian Ocean. The new research also extends the mysterious long-term falling pitch to related...