October 23, 2007, 9:36 PM CT

Duckling Mole Rats Might Hold Key To Longevity

Who would have thought that the secrets to long life might exist in the naked, wrinkled body of one of the world's ugliest animals? Probably not a number of, but current research may be leading seekers of the Fountain of Youth to a strange little beast - the naked mole rat.

The naked mole rat is certainly not one of nature's cuddliest species. These small rodents are hairless, wrinkled, blind and buck-toothed. Stan Braude, Ph.D., lecturer in biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, however, is attracted to these animals and has been studying them for over 25 years, with about 20 of those years being in the field in Kenya.

Braude is currently working on a new book that will serve as a synthetic review of the past 20 years of research on naked mole rats. While various research has been conducted on naked mole rats in a lab setting, Braude and his students are the only researchers out in the wild with them.

"I make the case [in my book] that if you really want to understand the lab work you also have to know what these animals are doing in the wild," said Braude.

Some of the "hottest" research on naked mole rats today concerns senescence, or aging. Naked mole rats in the lab have reached up to 28 years of age. And it's not just the controlled environments of their captivity that are doing this. Braude has observed mole rats in the wild that are 17 years and older. But these are the breeders. Lab researchers didn't realize that in the wild workers only live two or three years......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 23, 2007, 9:02 PM CT

New population of Iberian lynx raises hope

Spanish authorities have announced they have discovered a previously unknown population of Iberian lynx, triggering hope for one of the worlds most endangered cat species, said World Wildlife Fund today.

We are excited and amazed by this discovery, said Luis Suarez, head of WWFs Species Program in Spain. However, we are a long way from saving the Iberian lynx from imminent extinction.

It appears that the new population was discovered in previously unsurveyed estates in Castilla - La Mancha (Central Spain). This Iberian community is one of the most sparsely populated of Spain's autonomous communities.

At present, the exact numbers and location of the newly discovered population are being kept confidential, but the population is believed to be made up of both adults and cubs.

Until the exact location is known, conservationists cannot confirm if this population is genetically distinct from the larger and more stable population of lynx found in Andujar (South).

As per the most recent comprehensive survey previous to this discovery, there were about 100 adult Iberian lynx in two isolated breeding populations in southern Spain. The population is thought to have since risen to some 110 adults.

The Iberian Lynx faces myriad threats - a lack of prey, accidental deaths from cars and trucks on Spanish roads, and new construction work destroying habitats......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 19, 2007, 5:09 AM CT

Researchers studying how singing bats communicate

Bats are the most vocal mammals other than humans, and understanding how they communicate during their nocturnal outings could lead to better therapys for human speech disorders, say scientists at Texas A&M University.

Thousands of bats native to Central Texas fly overhead each night singing songs of complex syllables but at frequencies too high for humans to hear.

Texas A&M researcher Michael Smotherman is trying to understand how Mexican Freetail bats organize syllables into songs and how their communication is associated with the brain. If we can identify those areas in a bat brain [responsible for communication], we can learn more about how a normal [human] brain generates and orchestrates complex communication sequences, Smotherman says. And by understanding how that works, we can then come up with testable hypotheses about what might be going on in speech disorders.

The scientists in Smothermans lab are studying two aspects of bat communication. In behavioral studies, they examine sex differences and seasonal variations in communication, and in physiology studies they try to locate the parts of the bat brain active during communication.

Mexican Freetail bats sing mostly in ultrasonic frequencies that are right above the upper limit of human hearing. Humans can sometimes hear little bits of bat songs, however, when parts of syllables drop low enough......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 01:58:15 GMT

Designer Pet - A Hairless Guinea Pig

A bizarre breed of guinea pig that was created for laboratory testing more than 30 years ago has become the latest designer pet. The skinny-pig has no hair on its body except for tufts on its face and feet.

They eat three times the amount of a normal hairy pig and their dry skin requires moisturising. But animal lovers are willing to pay up to $300 for a Hairless Guinea Pig. Posted by: Gerard      Read more     Source

October 17, 2007, 9:35 PM CT

Sea cucumbers fast track organ regrowth

Sea cucumbers are the champions of organ regrowth because they direct their wound healing abilities towards restoring their organs, as per research reported in the online open access journal, BMC Developmental Biology. The discovery that Holothuria glaberrima uses similar cellular mechanisms during wound healing and organ regeneration gives us the opportunity to discover how to repair our own wounds and, perhaps eventually, how to regenerate body parts.

The research was carried out by the researchers Jos San Miguel-Ruiz and Jos Garca-Arrars, at the University of Puerto Rico. "Sea cucumbers should be viewed as the tissue regeneration equivalent of the squid for our knowledge of nerves and Drosophila for genes and the genome. They can help us learn to fix ourselves," commented Professor Garcia-Arraras. "A number of people, including scientists, regard sea cucumbers and other echinoderms like star fish and brittle stars as bizarre, exceptional outcasts because of their regenerative abilities. But we've shown that they use the same 'ordinary' mechanisms and processes to both regenerate and heal wounds".

All animals possess some kind of tissue repair mechanism. The sea cucumber, H. glaberrima, belongs to a group of marine animals that are well known for their ability to regenerate, along with the axolotl salamander, which is also famous for regrowing lost limbs. The researchers made observations over a four-week healing period and observed that sea cucumbers healed up rapidly after receiving a 3 to 5 millimetre cut along the body wall. The repair process involved special cells called morula cells moving to the injury site and full repair was achieved after just a couple of weeks. The cellular events observed during the healing of sea cucumber muscular, nervous and dermal tissues that correspond to those observed during intestinal regeneration include extracellular matrix remodeling and the dedifferentiation of muscle cells......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 17, 2007, 4:44 AM CT

City Is An Old Growth Forest For Big Owls

It may be news to its bankers, but Charlotte, the biggest city in North Carolina and a major center of the American financial industry, is actually an old growth forest.

At least thats the way the barred owls see it.

Charlotte is famous for having two kinds of green. It is home to two of the nations largest banks and its downtown residential neighborhoods and near-suburbs are also known for their lush yards and green streets, lined with large trees. Less well-known is the fact that the city is almost as well populated with large owls especially barred owls as it is with bankers. Harry Potter would feel very much at home.

In fact, the barred owl population in Charlotte is so strong that the city was chosen to be the site for the most extensive barred owl research study that has ever been attempted, with fieldwork going on in the manicured front lawns and gardened back yards of urban and suburban neighborhoods.

Urban wildlife numbers have been increasing in recent decades, notably in populations of squirrels, Canada geese, raccoons and deer, but the appearance of significant urban populations of barred owls, the third largest owl species in the US, is a surprise to a number of biologists.

If you read about barred owls in the textbooks, it says they need large stands of old-growth forest to survive, notes University of North Carolina at Charlotte ecologist and ornithologist Rob Bierregaard, who has directed the six-year-old research study. Either the barred owls in Charlotte havent read that book or the book is wrong, because they are really here and apparently doing quite well......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 16, 2007, 7:24 PM CT

The dawn of animal vision

The findings appear in this weeks issue of the scientific journal PLoS ONE. The researchers studied the aquatic animal Hydra, a member of Cnidaria, which are animals that have existed for hundreds of millions of years. The authors are the first researchers to look at light-receptive genes in cnidarians, an ancient class of animals that includes corals, jellyfish, and sea anemones.

Not only are we the first to analyze these vision genes (opsins) in these early animals, but because we dont find them in earlier evolving animals like sponges, we can put a date on the evolution of light sensitivity in animals, said David C. Plachetzki, first author and a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara. The research was conducted with a National Science Foundation dissertation improvement grant.

We now have a time frame for the evolution of animal light sensitivity. We know its precursors existed roughly 600 million years ago, said Plachetzki.

Senior author Todd H. Oakley, assistant professor of biology at UCSB, explained that there are only a handful of cases where researchers have documented the very specific mutational events that have given rise to new features during evolution.

Oakley said that anti-evolutionists often argue that mutations, which are essential for evolution, can only eliminate traits and cannot produce new features. He goes on to......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 00:34:36 GMT

Organic Armor For Dogs

Organic Armor are handmade costume pieces, jewelry and props that look like ancient metal, bone and leather. But unlike the real thing the pieces are lightweight and comfortable. You can wear them to clubs, rituals, festivals, on stage, or in the backyard.

And now, there's even organic armor for dogs. Posted by: Gerard      Read more     Source

October 10, 2007, 6:53 PM CT

Bat and mouse game

This image by MIT researchers, based on a computer model of a bat in flight, won first place in the Informational Graphics category of the 2007 International Science and Technology Visualization Challenge.

"When viewed in slow motion, bat flight is beautiful and complex. The goal of this illustration is to capture that beauty while also adding scientific merit," David J. Willis, a research scientist in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, told Science magazine. The competition is sponsored by Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Science Foundation.

Willis created the winning image with Professor Jaime Peraire of aeronautics and astronautics and several colleagues from Brown University led by Professor Kenneth Breuer.

For the contest, illustrators, photographers, computer programmers, and graphics specialists from around the world were invited to submit visualizations that would intrigue, explain and educate. More than 200 entries were received from 23 countries, representing every continent except the Arctic and Antarctica.

"Breakthroughs in science and engineering are often portrayed in movies and literature as 'ah-ha!' moments. What these artists and communicators have given us are similar experiences, showing us how bats fly or how nicotine becomes physically addictive," said Jeff Nesbit, director of NSF's Office of Legislative and Public Affairs. "We look at their visualizations, and we understand"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 10, 2007, 5:03 AM CT

Humans unknowing midwives for pregnant moose

When its time for moose to give birth in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, they head to where it is safest from predators namely closer to people, as per a new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Reported in the Royal Societys journal Biology Letters, the study says that moose avoid predation of their calves by grizzly bears by moving closer to roads and other infrastructure previous to giving birth.

Wildlife Conservation Society scientists tracked both moose and bears, finding that pregnant moose in Greater Yellowstone have shifted their movements each year for the past decade about 125 meters closer to roads during calving season, specifically to avoid road-shy brown bears, which can prey heavily on moose calves.

Given that brown bears avoid areas within approximately 500 meters of roads in Yellowstone and elsewhere, moose mothers have apparently buffered against predation on offspring using roadside corridors, said Wildlife Conservation Society biologist Dr. Joel Berger, the studys author.

Berger also cited similar examples where prey species tend to use humans as cover from predation, including vervet monkeys in Kenya and axis deer in Nepal that avoiding big cats by staying close to ranger stations.

The studys results indicate that moose and other prey species find humans more non-malignant and hence move to humans for safety whereas predators do not because we humans tend to be less kind to predators, Berger added......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source