The test of advanced animal intelligence is tool use. More and more animals are joining the primates in this group. This artistic spider has even learned how to make decoys. In September, Torres was leading visitors into a floodplain surrounding Peru’s Tambopata Research Center, located near the western edge of the Amazon. From a distance, they […]
Tag Archives: biology
Tapetum lucidum
And now you know! Eyeshine is a visible effect of the tapetum lucidum. When light shines into the eye of an animal having a tapetum lucidum, the pupil appears to glow. Eyeshine can be seen in many animals, in nature and in flash photographs. In low light, a hand-held flashlight is sufficient to produce eyeshine […]
“Mommy Gene”
I’ve joked about lacking a “mom gene” for years, turns out it might have a basis in fact. While this is some pretty controversial and not-yet-fully-fleshed-out information, if your mom is a total asshole, this might solve a few mysteries for you! Researchers at the Rockefeller University in New York have been studying female mice […]
Inside of a Shark
… it’s too dark to read. Luckily we have this fantastic documentary to enlighten us. A team of scientists dissects a Great White and give some fascinating facts about the much maligned White Death. I became a huge fan after watching this one, and have burned through most of the other episodes in this series. […]
Pan sapiens
Initial genetic studies characterised the DNA of chimpanzees (common chimpanzee and bonobo, collectively) as being as much as 98% (99.4 in one study) identical to that of Homo sapiens… In the seminal Nature paper reporting on initial genome comparisons, researchers identified thirty-five million single-nucleotide changes, five million insertion or deletion events, and a number of […]
TED Talk: Tierney Thys’ Sunfish
This is a prototypical TED Talk: Fun, funny, interesting and informative. The Giant Sunfish is lucky to have someone like Tierney Thys looking out for it.
Body Tricks
http://melissadesa.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/body-tricks/ Some of these are really nifty. As one who constantly wakes up with dead limbs (and a terror that I’ve lost their use forever) I have to try this one for sure: 15. Wake the dead! If your hand falls asleep while you’re driving or sitting in an odd position, rock your head from […]
Mike deGruy: Hooked by an octopus | Video on TED.com
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/mike_degruy_hooked_by_octopus.html Mike deGruy’s TED talk about octopods and the preservation of our oceans is very engaging. (NB Future marine biologists: having a huge shark bite visible on your arm lends credulity, as well as making you look like a total badass.)
Posted in Marine Biology
Also tagged big-blue, environ-mental, great-speeches, Marine Biology
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Revealed! Where babies come from! – Boing Boing
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/20/revealed-where-babie.html I was told a stork brings them. My mother totally lied to me. (Words cannot explain how awesome – and Plymptonian – this vid is. Click it, click it, click it!)
Spleen – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spleen Behold! The Spleen! These days, one of our less considered organs, though popular enough with medieval generations across many cultures, each of which ascribed it different responsibilities to our humours. The word spleen comes from the Greek and is the idiomatic equivalent of the heart in English, i.e. to be good-spleened means to be […]