About: Joseph

Habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and the loss of genetic diversity are the three main factors driving the extinction of many wild species, and the few eastern massasauga rattlesnakes remaining in Illinois have certainly suffered two of the three. A long-term study of these snakes reveals, however, that -- despite their alarming decline in numbers --...

Cut off a salamander's tail and, in a few weeks, a near-perfect replacement grows. Do the same to a lizard and a new tail will regrow, but it won't be the same as the original. By comparing tail regeneration between the two animals, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that stem...

Putting land management in the hands of local communities helps the wildlife within, according to new research by a Penn State scientist. A new study demonstrates the positive ecological impacts of a community-based wildlife conservation area in Tanzania. The research is summarized in a paper that appears online [date] in the Journal of Wildlife Management.

Children are constantly learning new things, but whether they find it easy or hard to generalise what they have learned and apply it to new situations can depend on how they learned it. It is much the same for songbirds. In their first few months of life, they too must learn a great deal; for...

Chimpanzees are generally known as the ripe fruit specialist among the great apes but also incorporate other food items such as leaves and seedpods into their diets. Savannah chimpanzees are thought to rely on these non-fruit resources more than their forest counterparts. The mechanical properties of plant foods can vary substantially but to date there...

Dogs, known for their extraordinarily keen senses of smell, can be trained to use their sensitive sniffers to find drugs, bombs, bed bugs, missing hikers and even cancer. Among dogs and other animals that rely on smell, at least one factor that may give them an advantage is a sheet of tissue in the nasal...