How Owls Spin Their Heads Around
Owls don’t need eyes in the back of their heads to see what’s behind them — they can just swivel their heads all the way around. In fact, many owl species, such as the barred owl, can rotate their heads 270 degrees in each direction, which means they can look to the left by rotating all the way to the right, or vice versa.
--- 4 months ago --- 8 notes ---Elephant Speaks Korean
Just weeks after it was revealed that a beluga whale named NOC could mimic human voices, the journal of Current Biology has released a study documenting an male Asian elephant named Koshik who can mimic certain Korean words so accurately they are understood by native speakers.
--- 7 months ago --- 3 notes ---Wild Seahorse Filmed for the First Time
(Source: National Geographic)
--- 7 months ago --- 2 notes ---ScienceDaily (Oct. 28, 2012) — Primates’ brains see the world through triangular grids, according to a new study published online October 28 in the journal Nature.
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Huge Deposit of Jurassic Turtle Remains Found in China
ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2012) — “Bones upon bones, we couldn’t believe our eyes,” says Oliver Wings, paleontologist and guest researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. He was describing the spectacular find of some 1800 fossilized mesa chelonia turtles from the Jurassic era in China’s northwest province of Xinjiang. Wings and the University of Tübingen’s fossil turtle specialist, Dr. Walter Joyce, were working with Chinese paleontologists there in 2008.
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White shark diets vary with age and among individuals
White sharks, the largest predatory sharks in the ocean, are thought of as apex predators that feed primarily on seals and sea lions. But a new study by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows surprising variability in the dietary preferences of individual sharks.
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--- 8 months ago --- 7 notes ---Research suggests that evolution sometimes meant becoming simpler, not more complex
(Phys.org)—The view that animals have become more complex over time could be a thing of the past, according to the latest research.
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--- 9 months ago --- 405 notes ---Incredible Wildlife Shots by Rob Kroenert (13 photos) - My Modern Metropolis
--- 9 months ago --- 6 notes ---Sexual selection, which is a subset of natural selection, is defined as “selection based on mate choice.” It usually, but not always, takes the form of males competing for access to females, and results in the development of either armaments in males that help them compete in the battle for mates (antlers on deer, horns on stag beetles, etc.), or bright plumage, coloration, adornments, calls, or behaviors of males that catch the fancy of females (the bowers of bowerbirds, the plumage, colors, and strange behaviors of the New Guinea birds of paradise, the songs of male frogs, etc.). We understand the competition scenario more than the “female preference” scenario, for it’s hard to figure out why females would prefer one plumage or adornment rather than another.
