Ecology & Zoology

The Geometry Of How Whale Sharks Swim

The largest fish species in the ocean, the whale shark, is spectacular for lots of reasons, not the least is that their motion is an astonishing feat of mathematics and energy conservation.  In new research,  marine scientists reveal how these massive shar ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 2 2010 - 4:00am

Bad News For (Polar) Bears

Will polar bears survive in a warmer world?   New evidence says their numbers are likely to dwindle.  As polar bears lose habitat due to global warming, biologists say, they will be forced southward in search of alternative sources of food, where they will ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 29 2010 - 4:00am

Tarsiers

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Article - Ken Myron - Oct 24 2012 - 2:24pm

Ammonites, Monterey, And Argentina Again

Yesterday I finished two novels. One was Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and I have babbled about it here. The other was my own invention. The working title is A Girl and her Squid, and that is what it is about. I am intending to ma ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Dec 2 2010 - 9:51am

Overcoming Instincts: Fear Versus Foraging

We instinctively know how to keep ourselves safe and so do other animals, according to neuroscientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.   University of Washington researcher Jeansok Kim demonstrates that rats weigh their odds of safe ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 2 2010 - 10:32pm

Squid Star in Droid Game

More cephalopods in pop culture: not anime this time, but games! Mobile phone games, to be specific. "Squibble" sounds like a lot of fun: A mad scientist has captured your cutesy, albeit deranged-looking octopus-self and locked you away in the at ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Dec 4 2010 - 1:25am

Squid: Nutritional Supplement

Almost nothing in the ocean can resist eating squid. That includes the macaroni penguin, which " live almost entirely on krill" but "do supplement their krill diet with up to five percent squid." I wonder if they get specific nutrients ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Dec 6 2010 - 11:30am

Spirits From The Vasty Deep

Back in October I wrote on the subject of the Kraken, stating rather emphatically and cantankerously that w hales eat squid. It is a unidirectional ecological interaction. I received a very thoughtful response from one Daniel Rolph, who commented ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Dec 7 2010 - 6:06pm

Biomimicry: Squid Skin!

Okay, this is really cool. It's an interdisciplinary project between biologists, mathematicians, and engineers to understand and, eventually, mimic cephalopod skin. One of Hanlon's many discoveries is that cephalopod skins contain opsins, the sam ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Dec 9 2010 - 9:40pm

The Sappy Mystery Of Mangrove Swamps

The mechanisms are used by plants when they extract water from very dry or inhospitable land could provide insight into how to do the same thing more efficiently for people. "In the case of mangrove swamps, for example, the plants are able to extract ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 13 2010 - 11:16am