Animal Planet

lswot · Post by **lswot** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 12:29 pm

Nessie moved?

Henry J · Post by **Henry J** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 8:17 am

In the animal kingdom cooperation is crucial for survival. Predators hunt in prides and prey band together to protect themselves. Yet no other creature cooperates as successfully as we do. But where did this ability come from, and is it uniquely human? In a new study to be published in Science on 3 March 2006, Alicia Melis and co-authors from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany show that our close relatives, chimpanzees, are much better cooperators than we thought.

(Where's Tarzan when ya need 'em? Ah-ah-a-ah-ah-a-ahhh)

Henry

lswot · Post by **lswot** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 11:36 am

Birds of a feather?

Henry J · Post by **Henry J** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 9:14 pm

Chirp?

Henry J · Post by **Henry J** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 2:21 pm

A global evolutionary map reveals new insights into our last common ancestor

In 1870 the German scientist Ernst Haeckel mapped the evolutionary relationships of plants and animals in the first 'tree of life'. Since then scientists have continuously redrawn and expanded the tree adding microorganisms and using modern molecular data, yet, many parts of the tree have remained unclear.

Website · Post by **brian** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 10:27 am

PARIS, France (AP) -- Divers have discovered a new crustacean in the South Pacific that resembles a lobster and is covered with what looks like silky, blond fur, French researchers said Tuesday.

Scientists said the animal, which they named Kiwa hirsuta, was so distinct from other species that they created a new family and genus for it.

A team of American-led divers found the animal in waters 2,300 meters (7,540 feet) deep at a site 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) south of Easter Island last year, according to Michel Segonzac of the French Institute for Sea Exploration.

The new crustacean is described in the journal of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

The animal is white and 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) long -- about the size of a salad plate.

In what Segonzac described as a "surprising characteristic," the animal's pincers are covered with sinuous, hair-like strands.

It's also blind. The researchers found it had only "the vestige of a membrane" in place of eyes, Segonzac said.

The researchers said that while legions of new ocean species are discovered each year, it is quite rare to find one that merits a new family.

The family was named Kiwaida, from Kiwa, the goddess of crustaceans in Polynesian mythology.

The diving expedition was organized by Robert Vrijenhoek of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California.

Henry J · Post by **Henry J** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 11:12 am

Re "quite rare to find one that merits a new family. "

The poor thing's an orphan? No wonder it's crabby!

Maybe it's the sasquatch of the crab world? Nah, that'd be too hairy of a situation for it.

lswot · Post by **lswot** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 11:47 am

Sounds, looks a little fishy to me. The story without the picture wouldn't have suggested that remark to me.......but, the picture sure did.

Henry J · Post by **Henry J** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 3:35 pm

A monstrous discovery suggests that viruses, long regarded as lowly evolutionary latecomers, may have been the precursors of all life on Earth

Few things on Earth are spookier than viruses. The very name virus, from the Latin word for "poisonous slime," speaks to our lowly regard for them. Their anatomy is equally dubious: loose, tiny envelopes of molecules—protein-coated DNA or RNA—that inhabit some netherworld between life and nonlife. Viruses do not have cell membranes, as bacteria do; they are not even cells.

(It's a turvy topsy world out there!

)

Henry

Henry J · Post by **Henry J** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 8:13 am

Most human-chimp differences due to gene regulation--not genes

The vast differences between humans and chimpanzees are due more to changes in gene regulation than differences in individual genes themselves, researchers from Yale, the University of Chicago, and the Hall Institute in Parkville, Victoria, Australia, argue in the March 9, 2006, issue of the journal Nature.

(Oooh! Oooh!)

Henry

Henry J · Post by **Henry J** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 9:24 am

Early Land Animals Could Walk and Run Like Mammals, New Study Finds

Salamanders and the tuatara, a lizard-like animal that has lived on Earth for 225 million years, were the first vertebrates to walk and run on land, according to a recent study by Ohio University researchers.

(Those tuataras are cute little things, aren't they?

)

Henry

Henry J · Post by **Henry J** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 9:07 am

Old-World Primates Evolved Color Vision to Better See Each Other Blush, Study Reveals

PASADENA, Calif.--Your emotions can easily be read by others when you blush--at least by others familiar with your skin color. What's more, the blood rushing out of your face when you're terrified is just as telling. And when it comes to our evolutionary cousins the chimpanzees, they not only can see color changes in each other's faces, but in each other's rumps as well.

(Hair today, gone tomorrow? Butt at least the chimps can get to the bottom of things.

)

Henry

lswot · Post by **lswot** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:40 am

(Hair today, gone tomorrow? Butt at least the chimps can get to the bottom of things. )

Monkey see monkey do.....

Henry J · Post by **Henry J** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 4:04 pm

Rat whiskers lead to brain map

Neuroscientists at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT have discovered an exquisite micro-map of the brain. It's the size of the period at the end of this sentence, and it's in a most unexpected place -- connected to the whiskers on a rat's face.

(Cute little guy, huh?)

--

lswot · Post by **lswot** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 2:27 pm

Always knew we were in a rat race.