Yearly Archives: 2018

Prototype of robot dog nose

Every day, thousands of trained K9 dogs sniff out narcotics, explosives and missing people across the United States. These dogs are invaluable for security, but they're also very expensive and they can get tired.

Duke researchers have taken the first steps toward building an artificial "robot nose" device made from living mouse cells that officers could...

Read more

Geneticist solves long-standing finch beak mystery

Bridgett vonHoldt is best known for her work with dogs and wolves, so she was surprised when a bird biologist pulled her aside and said, "I really think you can help me solve this problem." So she turned to a mystery he'd been wrestling with for more than 20 years.

"I love a good challenge and...

Read more

Eleven seal species narrowly escaped extinction

Their fur was used as a raw material for coats; their fat was used for oil lamps and cosmetics: right up to the end of the nineteenth century, millions of seals were being hunted and killed every year worldwide. The consequences of this episode of commercial hunting for today's seal populations is the subject of...

Read more

Predatory behavior of Florida's skull-collecting ant

"Add 'skull-collecting ant' to the list of strange creatures in Florida," says Adrian Smith a scientist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University. His new research describes the behavioral and chemical strategies of a Florida ant, Formica archboldi, that decorates its nest with the dismembered body parts of other...

Read more

Human pharmaceuticals change cricket personality

Crickets that are exposed to human drugs that alter serotonin levels in the brain are less active and less aggressive than crickets that have had no drug exposure, according to a new study led by researchers from Linköping University. The findings have been published in Scientific Reports.

Individuals in many animal species show different personality types....

Read more