Yearly Archives: 2018

Animal weapons such as antlers, tusks and limbs specialized for fighting require a large energy expenditure to produce and may cost even more to maintain. Because the leaf-footed bug sheds its large hind limbs, used as weapons in male-male battles, scientists working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama could measure energy use...

A study using animal-attached technology to measure food consumption in four very different wild vertebrates has revealed that animals using a high-risk strategy to find rarer food are particularly susceptible to becoming extinct, as they fail to gather food for their young before they starve.

Bartonella bacteria are disease-causing, blood-borne pathogens found in various mammal species. A study in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases by Hannah Frank and colleagues at Stanford University, California suggests that humans play an important role in disease risk, infection patterns, and distribution of Bartonella, advancing current understanding of Bartonella's evolutionary history and how the bacteria may...

Trying to find your lunch in the dark using a narrow flashlight to illuminate one place at a time may not seem like the most efficient way of foraging. However, if you replace light with sound, this seems to be exactly how the largest toothed predators on the planet find their food. A paper out...

Although the presence of humpback whales in the Mediterranean has been considered unusual, it is known that their visits have increased in the last 150 years. Until now, there had been no clear reason to justify this fact, with various options being considered, such as disorientation, following the migratory routes of other species, etc. However,...

Killer whales display personality traits similar to those of humans and chimpanzees, such as playfulness, cheerfulness and affection, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.