Tag: "mammal" at biology news

First demonstration of new hair follicle generation in an animal model

...ent.? Researchers previously believed that adult mammal skin could not regenerate hair follicles. In fact, investigators generally believe that mammals had essentially no true regenerative qualities. (The liver can regenerate large portions, but it is not de novo regeneration; some of the original liver h...

Male owls pitch their hoots to advertise body weight to competitors

...irds," says Reby, who is an expert in the study of mammal vocal communication. ...

Tracking sperm whales and jumbo squid

...with their prey," added Davis, an expert on marine mammal behavior. "I can’t think of another place in the world where this would be possible." Despite the vital role that jumbo squid and sperm whales play in oceanic ecosystems and fisheries, many aspects of their lifestyle—including feeding and hunting—...

Researchers find gene mutation that causes infertility in male mice

...tation that leads specifically to infertility in a mammal has been discovered, the researchers say they can now look for similar mutations in the DNA of infertile men. "If you consider infertility a disease, you can't study it like you would other diseases, because the affected people can't reproduce," sai...

Manipulating nature: Scientists query wildlife birth-control method

...cians and animal-welfare agencies. An expert in mammal reproduction, Professor Cooper, of the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, questions immuno-contraception on three grounds. "Firstly, immuno-contraceptives are ineffective against substantial minorities of animals, probabl...

Paleontologists discover new mammal from Mesozoic Era

...se paleontologists has discovered a new species of mammal that lived 125 million years ago during the Mesozo... of the Yixian Formation and is the first Mesozoic mammal recovered from Hebei. The fossil site is about 300 kilometers outside of Beijing. The researchers...

Birth rate, competition are major players in hominid extinctions

...d birds. "Rather than being a specialized large mammal predator, modern humans would eat anything they could get their hands on. They eked out a living even if it meant eating grasshoppers or whatever," says Jablonski. "Even with this, modern humans barely hung on from 12 to 16,000 years ago. "Why ...

Bird sex is something else

... ZW females. This contrasts with findings from the mammal samples, where dosage compensation meant that the male: female ratio of X-linked genes is similar to that of autosomal genes. In mammals, mismatched doses of X genes between males and females threaten to upset the gene network in one or both sexes...

Dinosaur extinction didn't cause the rise of present-day mammals, claim researchers

...eous epoch, when dinosaurs walked the earth, these mammal species were relatively few in number, and were prevented from diversifying and evolving in ecosystems dominated by dinosaurs. The tree of life shows that after the MEE, certain mammals did experience a rapid period of diversification and evoluti...

Global map shows new patterns of extinction risk

...xample, will mean that large numbers of endangered mammal and amphibian species will also be protected. The ...th endangered amphibians in its creeks and rivers, mammal and bird species in the same area might be flourishing. It's really important not to assume that the...

NASA snow data helps maintain nation's largest, oldest bison herd

...on have one of the longest migrations of any large mammal in the country. The fact that they are moving to low-elevation winter ranges outside the park is actually a sign of how successful our restoration efforts have been," said Rick Wallen, leader of the Park's Bison Ecology and Management team. "The mode...

Researchers discover that sheep need retroviruses for reproduction

...p and led to the death of Dolly, the world's first mammal cloned from an adult cell. The idea that endogenous retroviruses are important for reproduction in mammals has been around for about 30 years, Spencer said. Studies in cultured cells have shown that a protein of a human endogenous retrovirus might ha...

Pattern of human Ebola outbreaks linked to wildlife and climate

...g everything in its path, since apparently healthy mammal communities thrived in close proximity to Ebola ep...including how the virus spreads within and between mammal species. "Our study provides more pieces of the puzzle, but at the same time it is enlarging the ...

Worms produce surprise insight into human fever

...immune defenses have homologs—similar proteins in mammal cells, including ours. These conserved pathways are involved in many similar “effector?strategies against hostile bugs peristalsis, low gut pH, lytic enzymes, and antimicrobial peptides to prevent microbial colonization of the intestine. In dis...

Tiny bones rewrite textbooks

...a unique, mouse-sized land animal unlike any other mammal known. They were unearthed from the rich St Bathan...dely in other lands. The fact that even one land mammal lived there, at least 16 million years ago, has put paid to the theory that New Zealand's diverse pr...

Researchers give name to ancient mystery creature

...able to put a name and a description to an ancient mammal that still defies classification. The findings, p...ars are unlike any others so far discovered in the mammal world. "There is nothing else with teeth quite like it," Craig said. "In an area of North America...

New dwarf buffalo discovered by chance in the Philippines

...to any continental land mass. "Documenting past mammal diversity in the Philippines, an area of extremely...at The Field Museum. "The concentration of unique mammal species there is among the very highest in the world, but so is the number of threatened species." ...

Plague proteome reveals proteins linked to infection

Recreating growth conditions in flea carriers and mammal hosts, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists have uncovered 176 proteins and likely proteins in the plague-bacterium Yersinia pestis whose numbers rise and fall according to the disease’s virulence. The team, led by the Department of Ene...

Contrary to common wisdom, scientist discovers some mammals can smell objects under water

...he star-nosed mole and another small, semi-aquatic mammal - the water shrew - can smell objects underwater. Using a high-speed camera, he discovered how they do it. After observing that the moles were blowing bubbles out of their nostrils and then sucking them right back in, he determined they were exhali...

Female pronghorns choose mate based on substance as well as show

..., such as the American pronghorn, an antelope-like mammal that evolved in North America. Byers has been studying pronghorn at the National Bison Range, a 30-square-mile National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Montana, for 20 years, and recognizes all individual pronghorn in the population. In recent rese...

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