Many households can claim at least one four-legged friend as part of the family. But pets that primarily stay indoors can have increased rates of diseases, such as diabetes, kidney diseases and hypothyroidism compared with those that stay exclusively outside. Some scientists propose that chemical substances in the home could contribute to these illnesses. One...
Who's a good boy? Why 'dog-speak' is important for bonding with your pet
Scientists at the University of York have shown that the way we speak to our canine friends is important in relationship-building between pet and owner, similar to the way that 'baby-talk' is to bonding between a baby and an adult.
Speech interaction experiments between adult dogs and humans showed that so called "dog-speak" improves attention and...
Ancient reptile Captorhinus could detach its tail to escape predator's grasp
Imagine that you're a voracious carnivore who sinks its teeth into the tail of a small reptile and anticipates a delicious lunch, when, in a flash, the reptile is gone and you are left holding a wiggling tail between your jaws.
A new study by the University of Toronto Mississauga research team led by Professor Robert...
How a fish species in Lake Tanganyika works together to secure additional food sources
Cooperative behaviour to acquire food resources has been observed in hunting carnivores and web-building social spiders. Now researchers have found comparable behaviours in a fish species. A tiny striped fish called Neolamprologus obscurus only found in Lake Tanganyika in Zambia excavates stones to create shelter and increase the abundance of food for all fish in...
Without 46 million year-old bacteria, turtle ants would need more bite and less armor
You've probably heard about poop pills, the latest way for humans to get benevolent bacteria into their guts. But it seems that a group of ants may have been the original poop pill pioneers -- 46 million years ago.
A new collaborative study, published in Nature Communications, determined that turtle ants (Cephalotes) are able to supplement...
These tropical hummingbirds make cricket-like sounds other birds can't hear
Researchers reporting in Current Biology on March 5 have found that a tropical species of hummingbird called a black jacobin makes vocal sounds with an unusually high-frequency pitch that falls outside birds' normal hearing range. It's not yet clear whether the hummingbirds can even hear themselves, the researchers say.
"These vocalizations are fast and high pitched,...