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Tag: "mammals" at biology news

Possible brain hormone may unlock mystery of hibernation

... "One of the most curious biological phenomena in mammals is their ability to hibernate circannually, which ...events such as reproduction in seasonally breeding mammals and migration in birds, they said. Even humans can maintain seasonal rhythms as exhibited by seasona...

Alaska seal pup diet may hold key to decline of population

...the declining population of seals and other marine mammals with the change in availability of seal prey, incl...fort to find out why harbor seals and other marine mammals are disappearing from the chilly waters off the Alaskan coast. The population decline, which has bec...

Novel connection found between biological clock and cancer

... a direct result of action by an enzyme, called in mammals checkpoint kinase-2 (CHK2), whose normal role is exclusively in regulating the cell division cycle. CHK2 physically interacts with FRQ; the mutation makes this interaction much stronger. However, a mutant enzyme that has lost its activity has no eff...

Afghanistan to protect wildlife and wild lands

...ep in his writings in the late 13th Century. Other mammals known to occur in Afghanistan include the ibex, the Persian leopard, gazelles, and the elusive snow leopard. Specifically, five areas being considered by this project for protected area status include the Pamir-I-Buzurg, Little Pamir, and the Waghji...

Researchers add crucial information on how the body's T cells react to parasitic diseases

...asite that carries it, T. cruzi, is transmitted to mammals and humans through the bite of several genera of flying, biting insects. What intrigued Tarleton was that T cell response to infection from T. cruzi, while important to the body's ability to fight disease, has remained somewhat cryptic because of the...

First surveys of Tanzanian mountains reveal 160+ animal species, including new & endemic

...raps and audio recordings. The phototraps captured mammals like a Mountain dwarf galago (Galagoides orinus) and a red duiker (Cephalophus natalensis). Using a tape recorder and directional microphone, researchers recorded the calls of two species of galagos. Galagos are small, nocturnal primates with large,...

Elephants, large mammals recover from poaching in Africa's oldest national park

...rica. It once boasted the highest density of large mammals in the world before a wave of unrest and poaching ...rend of decline, and that most of the park's large mammals have increased in number since the last census in 2003. Elephants have increased to 340 individuals ...

Seeing the serpent

...sils of snakes with mouths big enough to eat those mammals appear at about the same time. Other animals that could have eaten our ancestors, such as big cats, and hawks and eagles, evolved much later. Venomous snakes evolved about 60 million years ago, raising the stakes and forcing primates to get better ...

How ancient whales lost their legs, got sleek and conquered the oceans

...appened," Thewissen said. "Studies on swimming in mammals show that a sleek body is necessary for efficient swimming, because projecting organs such as rudimentary hind limbs cause a lot of drag, and slow a swimmer down," said Thewissen, who spends about a month every year in Pakistan and India collecting f...

NHGRI announces latest sequencing targets

... how, when and why the genomes of humans and other mammals came to be composed of certain DNA sequences. ...e-Scale Sequencing program. Seven mammals which have been previously approved to be sequenced at low-density genome coverage have been targete...

Primates take weather into account when searching for fruits

...ore strongly developed cognitive skills than other mammals has a long history in science. The most widely accepted notion has been that primates' superior cognitive abilities have evolved in the social realm. Many primate species live in complex societies, and, the argument goes, this favored the evolution o...

Vampire bats recognise their prey's breathing

Vampire bats, the only mammals to feed exclusively on blood, including human blood, recognize their prey by the sound of its breathing. In a study published today in the open access journal BMC Biology, vampire bats of the species Desmodus rotondus could recognise recorded human b...

Dolphins at risk

... for further research into the reactions of marine mammals to industrial noise to help mitigate future effects in relation to the increase in off-shore industry, such as the construction of wind farms. Other wide ranging topics covered in the new edition of the Water and Environment Journal include the W...

South Pacific plant may be missing link in evolution of flowering plants

... for further research into the reactions of marine mammals to industrial noise to help mitigate future effects in relation to the increase in off-shore industry, such as the construction of wind farms. Other wide ranging topics covered in the new edition of the Water and Environment Journal include the W...

Salk and Stanford teams join forces to reveal two paths of neurodegeneration

...een developmental pruning and injury from flies to mammals points to general mechanisms which are most likely also at work in the human nervous system. Both investigators believe that these and related studies can help in the development of therapies that preserve injured axons and restore proper connections...

Wild meerkats school their young

...arning per se wouldn't be surprising, whether wild mammals teach their young was still debated. The findings were published in this week's edition of the journal Science. Meerkats live in groups of three to 40 individuals in the arid regions of southern Africa. Each group includes a dominant male and fem...

Tyrannosaur survivorship -- tough times for teens

... juveniles and subadults of most large terrestrial mammals today." The estimated survivorship curve also provides a possible explanation for the rarity of individual giants--just two per cent of the population lived long enough to attain maximal size and age for the species. ...

Scientists reverse evolution

... they were redundant, so today in humans and other mammals there are 39 instead of 52 Hox genes. The study focused on two modern Hox genes: -- The Hoxa1 gene, which helps control how an embryo's brain stem develops and is compartmentalized into seven sections called rhombomeres. When Hoxa1 is disabled...

Non-coding RNAs help silence the mammalian transcription

... for the silencing of all imprinted genes. Rather mammals have co-opted multiple transcriptional regulatory mechanisms that were already evolved. In the case of the Kcnqt1ot1, the mechanism utilizes some form of RNA silencing. The variation in silencing mechanisms lends further support to the argument that ...

Study shows frogs can play key role in stem cell research

...or Stem Cell research said: "Our results show that mammals have adopted the function of the amphibian PouV proteins to maintain their embryonic stem cells. These features of dividing without limit and giving rise to many types of cell are thus ancient features of early embryonic cells, crucial for the correc...

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