[unable to retrieve full-text content]To a mantis shrimp, walking away from a fight doesn't mean being a wimp. It means recognizing who they're up against and knowing when to bail rather than drag out a doomed battle, researchers say. Mantis shrimp use sparring matches to decide when to fight and when to fold....
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Not just for Christmas: Study sheds new light on ancient human-turkey relationship
For the first time, research has uncovered the origins of the earliest domestic turkeys in ancient Mexico.
The study also suggests turkeys weren't only prized for their meat -- with demand for the birds soaring with the Mayans and Aztecs because of their cultural significance in rituals and sacrifices.
In an international collaboration, researchers from the University...
Canine distemper confirmed in Far Eastern leopard, world's most endangered big cat
The Far Eastern or Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) is already among the rarest of the world's big cats, but new research reveals that it faces yet another threat: infection with canine distemper virus (CDV). A new study published in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases describes the first documented case of CDV in a wild...
Why don't turtles still have tail spikes?
We're all familiar with those awesome armored giants of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods -- Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus -- and their amazing, weaponized tails. But why aren't similar weaponized tails found in animals living today? In a study covering 300 million years of evolutionary history, researchers from North Carolina State University and the North Carolina...
New light on the mysterious origin of Bornean elephants
How did Borneo get its elephant? This could be just another of Rudyard Kipling's just so stories. The Bornean elephant is a subspecies of Asian Elephants that only exist in a small region of Borneo. Their presence on this southeastern Asian island has been a mystery. Now, in a study published in Scientific Reports, a...
No-fishing zones help endangered penguins
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Small no-fishing zones around colonies of African penguins can help this struggling species, new research shows....
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