Yearly Archives: 2018

What makes a good working dog? Canine 'aptitude test' might offer clues

The canine labor market is diverse and expansive. Assistance dogs may be trained to work with the visually or hearing impaired, or with people in wheelchairs. Detection dogs may be trained to sniff out explosives, narcotics or bedbugs. Other pups even learn to jump out of helicopters on daring rescue missions.

Despite the wide variety of...

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Evolution does repeat itself after all: How evolution lets stripes come and go

A team of evolutionary biologists from the University of Konstanz, headed by Prof. Dr. Axel Meyer, discovers the genetic basis for the repeated evolution of colour patterns. The findings about the stripes of the especially diverse species of East-African cichlid fishes explain how evolution can repeat itself at record speed. The study is published in...

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Artificial fly brain can tell who's who

Despite the simplicity of their visual system, fruit flies are able to reliably distinguish between individuals based on sight alone. This is a task that even humans who spend their whole lives studying Drosophila melanogaster struggle with. Researchers have now built a neural network that mimics the fruit fly's visual system and can distinguish and...

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Novel bat behavior in Panama observed

Baby birds learn to fly. Baby mammals switch from milk to solid food. Baby bats, as winged mammals, do both at the same time during their transition from infants to flying juveniles. According to a new report from researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) who studied Peters' tent-making bats (Uroderma bilobatum), mothers prod...

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Genome-wide study confirms six tiger subspecies

Fewer than 4,000 free-ranging tigers remain in the wild. Efforts to protect these remaining tigers have also been stymied by uncertainty about whether they represent six, five or only two subspecies. Now, researchers who've analyzed the complete genomes of 32 representative tiger specimens confirm that tigers indeed fall into six genetically distinct groups. The findings...

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