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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
Establishment of the immortalized cell line derived from Okinawa rail (endangered species)
The number of critically endangered animals has been increasing in recent years. According to data from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 1375 avian species are categorized as being endangered animals, and around 12% of the endangered species are avian. The conservation of endangered species is an important task for our next...