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...
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...
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...
How spider eyes work together to track stimuli
Using a specially designed eye-tracker for use with spiders, biologists Elizabeth Jakob, Skye Long and Adam Porter at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, along with colleagues in New York and New Zealand, report in a new paper that their tests in jumping spiders show a secondary set of eyes is crucial to the principal eyes'...
Glyphosate found in cat and dog food
Got glyphosate? Your pet's breakfast might.
A new Cornell study published this month in Environmental Pollution finds that glyphosate, the active herbicidal ingredient in widely used weed killers like Roundup, was present at low levels in a variety of dog and cat foods the researchers purchased at stores. Before you go switching Fido or Fluffy's favorite...
Male humpback whales change their songs when human noise is present
Male humpback whales reduce or cease their songs in reaction to human-generated shipping noise, according to a study published October 24, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Koki Tsujii from Ogasawara Whale Watching Association and Hokkaido University, Japan, and colleagues.
Increasing human shipping activity is causing a rise in low-frequency ocean noise. Baleen whales...