12th June 2009

Text

New study: Dogs are just shameless

A new study by Barnard College researcher Alexandra Horowitz has established that the canine body language often misread by dog owners as “guilt” has nothing to do with a dog’s reaction to its own misdeeds.

For the study, Horowitz instructed dog owners to forbid their pup to eat a tasty treat. Then the owners left the pup in the room with her. Sometimes she fed the dog the treat on the sly, sometimes she did not.

The owners would return to the room and Horowitz would either tell them their dog had behaved or tell them their dog had eaten the treat. If the owner reprimanded the dog, the pooch usually took on a hangdog “guilty” look, whether it had eaten the treat or not.

Says a report via Fox News: “Dogs that had been obedient and had not eaten the treat, but were scolded by their (misinformed) owners, looked more ‘guilty’ than those that had, in fact, eaten the treat.”

Tags dogsdiscoveriesbehaviorscientists

2nd June 2009

Text

The secret world of tapirs, revealed

Scientists have discovered new facts about tapirs, says yesterday’s New York Times, southeast Asian jungle animals described as “ponderous, powerful herbivores, weighing about 650 pounds” with “incessantly sniffing” anteater-like snouts.

Biologist Carl Traeholt and behavioral ecologist Boyd Simpson have, through exhaustive recent research and tracking, found that tapirs…

1. can be indentified by unique wrinkles on their necks.
2. will travel up to three miles a night in search of salty mineral deposits they like to lick, despite normally having a rather small home range.
3. are much more endangered than previously assumed, numbering only 1500 to 2000 in Malaysia and perhaps 300 in Thailand. (Previous estimates, says Dr. Traeholt, were “way off reality” and would have resulted in “a traffic jam of tapirs.”)
4. will occasionally defend their companions, though they are nonviolent.
5. are equipped with canine-like teeth unusual in herbivores.
6. poop neatly in streams.

Tapirs are still targets for poachers but, some good news,  Dr. Traeholt “is confident that [tapir] habitat in Malaysia and Thailand is now stable.” He hopes to create “a conservative plan backed by ecology” to further slow the loss of the jungle beasts.

Tags tapirsscientistsdiscoveries

23rd May 2009

Text

Do animals have morals?

A bold new book argues that animals can exhibit empathy and understand the moral codes of right and wrong.

In “Wild Justice” (out May 30), Marc Bekoff, an ecologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, presents a case that species from mice to monkeys possess the tools to make moral judgments.

He presents examples in which animals from around the world appear to have displayed an innate sense of fairness, or have helped animals that are in distress. And, he says, the bonds of animal morality can extend across species.

“There are cases of dolphins helping humans escape from sharks,” he says, “and elephants that have helped antelope escape from enclosures.”

Bekoff’s ideas have met with skepticism from the scientific community, says the London Telegraph, but fellow researchers admit that animals share neurological characteristics that were once solely attributed to humans.

For instance, whales including humpbacks (above) have all been found to have spindle cells in their brains – large, specialized cells that play a role in human empathy and understanding the feelings of others. (See the Telegraph article for Bekoff’s examples involving wolves, coyotes, elephants, Diana monkeys, chimps, rats, mice and bats.)

Tags wolvescoyoteselephantschimpanzeesmonkeysratsmicebatspsychologyscientistsdiscoveries

10th May 2009

Text

This frog is new on the scene

The Latin name for this green fellow is boophis aff elenae, and he’s one of 200  new species of frogs recently discovered in Madagascar.

The Spanish Scientific Research Council released photos of some of the finds last week. Check out the gallery here.

Also in the mix are guibemantis liber, boophis ulftunni, and a rather serene-looking example of boophis aff miniatus ranomafanakely.

Tags frogsscientistsdiscoveries

4th May 2009

Text

This wolverine’s travels boggle the mind

A mind-boggling amount of math goes into this breaking story about a wolverine spotted two years in a row in the northern Sierra Nevada.

A team of 10 federal, state and university scientists have published a new study in “Northwest Science” that concludes the predator probably came from Idaho. That “probably” has an exactly 73% confidence level attached to it.

“We still can’t be sure how this animal came to the Tahoe National Forest,” said co-author Bill Zielinski, a research ecologist at the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station.

Zielinski says the animal must have traveled more than 400 miles. Wolverines hadn’t been seen in California for 86 years.

(PS, thank you, Hugh Jackman, for making it so difficult to Google image search “wolverine.”)

Tags wolverinesscientiststravels