Belly in Biological News

Olympus advances technology for laparo-endoscopic single-site surgery

... and urological or gynecological surgery through just one incision in the belly button. In Laparo-Endoscopic Single-Site surgery (LESS), the TriPort ... the surgeon removes the port, allowing the natural contours of the belly button to hide the surgical incision. Along with the TriPort, the ...

How alligators rock and roll

... cavity in humans and other mammals. But in gators, it runs parallel to the belly and encases the stomach and intestines. When an alligator inhales, the ... muscles help maintain posture. In crocodilians, these muscles encase the belly ribs, helping push the guts upward to force air from the lungs when the ...

The secret of a snake's slither

... this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that it's all in their design--specifically, their scales. Overlapping belly scales provide friction with the ground that gives snakes a preferred direction of motion, like the motion of wheels or ice skates. Like wheels and ...

Discovery of giant roaming deep sea protist provides new perspective on animal evolution

... to think that it takes bilateral symmetry to move in one direction across the seafloor and thereby leave a track," explains Matz. "You have to have a belly and a backside and a front and back end. Now, we show that protists can leave traces of comparable complexity and with a very similar profile." ...

Fish choose their leaders by consensus

... including size, fatness, shade, and spottiness, that reflect something about the health or fitness of the individual. For instance, a plump belly can indicate success in food gathering, while spots may indicate a parasitic infection. He then ran trials in which one, two, four, or eight ...

Researchers uncover world's oldest fossil impression of a flying insect

... to the common mayfly. "We can tell from the imprint that it has a very squat position when it lands," Engel says. "Its legs are sprawled and its belly is pressed down. The only group that does that today is the mayfly." Identifying the insect will also help the researchers to gain knowledge ...

When particles are so small that they seep right through skin

... width of a human hair. If the width of that strand of hair were equivalent to the length of a football field, a typical nanoparticle wouldn't even belly up to the one-inch line. In the September issue of the journal Nano Letters, a team led by DeLouise at the University of Rochester Medical ...

New meat-eating dinosaur from Argentina had bird-like breathing system

... as well as in a chicken." Sereno further noted that Aerosteon has air sacs in an unusual place. "They come around the edge of the body and go into belly ribs. It looks like the beast had a system of air tubes under its skin," he said. The team highlighted three explanations for the evolution of air ...

Looks matter to female barn swallows

... -- the reddish color of the males' breast and belly feathers. If the male's red breast is not as ... She either painted their throats, breast and belly feathers with a red marker to enhance their ... said Safran. The reddish breast and belly feathers indicate a male's quality, such as his ...

Scientists discover that three overlapping signals in embryo help get the backbone right

... the right path. The formation of the back and belly is a milestone for frogs as well as for humans ... injecting one of these factors, noggin, into the belly of an embryo caused surrounding tissues to ... said. "Not only were back tissues lost, but belly tissues were greatly expanded - the whole embryo ...

Phthalates now linked to fat, related health risks

... direct link to obesity, since low testosterone appears to cause increased belly fat and pre-diabetes in men. They analyzed urine, blood samples and other ... Indeed, men with the highest levels of phthalates in their urine had more belly fat and insulin resistance. Researchers adjusted for other factors that ...

The origin of the brain lies in a worm

... a spinal cord running along their backs, insects and annelid worms like the earthworm have a rope-ladder-like chain of nerve cell clusters on their belly side. Other invertebrates on the other hand have their nerve cells distributed diffusely over their body. Yet, all these species descend from a ...

Scientists describe new African monkey genus ?first in 83 years

... that Kipunji (its common name) belongs to an entirely new genus. Kipunji have light-to-medium grayish brown fur, with off-white fur on the belly and the end of their long, mainly curled-up tail. They have a "crown" made up of a very broad crest of long, erect hair. Adults make a distinctive, ...

A New Species of Monkey is Discovered in Tanzania: The First in Africa for More Than 20 Years

... a head and body length of about 3 ft (90 cm). It is characterized by a long, erect crest of hair on its head, elongated cheek whiskers, an off-white belly and tail, and an unusual call, termed a 'honk-bark' by the authors. The monkeys occur as high as 8,000 ft (2450 m) where temperatures frequently ...

To sea or not to sea: When it comes to salmon sex, size sometimes doesn't matter

... sciences and author of a recently released book, "The Behavior and Ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout." Just picture that tiny male under the belly of a 20-pound adult female that's returned to spawn, Quinn says. He's almost as likely to be a "winner" as the full-size males that are releasing ...