Vultures fight climate change, one carcass at a time
Vultures have a face only a mother could love, but their unsavory eating habits obscure a surprising benefit: lowering carbon emissions.
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Animal behavior
Contagion: Staying Safe While Species Share Spaces
As climate change pushes species around the world together, cross-species viral infections become a growing concern.
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Soft Manatee, Warm Manatee? Understanding How Manatees Behave
Antillean manatees are an endangered subspecies of manatee that live in the warm waters of the Caribbean, but little is known about their behavior, both in the wild and under human care. This is why scientists in France set out to better understand and define manatee behavior in captivity, identifying how bold or shy they were and how they acted towards novel and familiar stimuli.
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Into the Brains of Mosquitoes – Finding out how they find us
It’s all fun and games outdoors until mosquitoes crash the party. Female mosquitoes need protein-rich human blood for energy to produce eggs. While an itchy bump follows most bites, some can transfer harmful viruses, like Zika and dengue. Mosquitoes are experts at finding human hosts, and now scientists have discovered how. Mosquito brains may give insights into new strategies to control mosquitoes and the diseases they carry.
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Matriarch Madness: Mechanism of Social Parasitism and Colony Takeover in Ants
Carpenter ants play an important role in an ecosystem; they break down wood into smaller pieces that will ultimately become part of the soil. But a parasitic ant can rapidly take over and destroy a colony by simply disguising herself through chemical means.
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Parasite Problems Call for Microbiome Maintenance
How the bacteria living inside of us may protect us against harmful infections.
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Fire and Animal Behavior: How Forest Fires are Mediating Predator-Prey Interactions
Fires, both from intentional and unintentional sources, have been altering our ecosystems for as long as history has been recorded, yet little is known about how these occurrences affect animal behavior, especially concerning predator-prey interactions. Countless factors, including the extent of the fire and the adaptability of both predator and prey to these new conditions affect the behavior and survivability of both predator and prey. In the end, change is inevitable, but if we improve our understanding of how fires influence animal behavior, we can then help rehabilitate affected populations in more effective and efficient ways.
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How Citizen Science Led to The Discovery of Tree-Dwelling Toads
Two groups of citizen scientists in the UK discovered something previously unknown to science– toads living in trees. Read on to learn about how citizen science and collaborations with scientists can lead to more interesting questions and discoveries.
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Fenced Off: What Attracts our Wild Neighbors to our Yards?
Though you may expect to only spot wildlife in natural areas such as parks, urban animal visitors are likely more common than you’d think! What kind of animals might be spotted in human-dominated areas, and how do they interact with our backyards?
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Freezing Frogs Help Preserve Human Organs for Transplant
Primary Source: Al-Attar R, Storey KB. Lessons from nature: Leveraging the freeze-tolerant wood frog as a model to improve organ
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