Ecology & Zoology

One day last summer, I was making a feeble stab at cleaning the deck (or as I like to call it the “backyard basement!”) There was a long, thin plastic planter (junk) with dirt in it…

Scientists writing in BMC Ecology say the "giggle" sound made by spotted hyenas has revealed that the animals' laughter encodes information about age, dominance and identity.  Researchers…

At Nature's Innocentive site, (a directory for X-prizes), there is an entry looking for someone who can develop a standard method of placing insects into a latent state and then reanimating them.…

Now that the latest battle in the invertebrate wars seems to have died down a bit (victors inconclusive, of course), I can post a list of cool things about cephalopods that have put them in the news…

I have yet to be bored watching the 27-and-a-half-hour extended versions of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy with the kids. It is truly an awe-inspiring cinematic masterpiece. There is, however,…

How would you be feeling, if you had parked your boat in the marina at Caergybi (Holyhead) just off Ynys Môn (Anglesey, see map below) and found its anchor chains covered with this?  This is…

I am watching the new min-series "Life," on Animal Planet. Animal Planet and the Discover Channel remind me of FOX "News" and MSNBC networks covering politics. Um... Schlocky....Maybe I make too much…

A 3,000-year record from 52 of the world's oldest Sequoia trees shows that California's western Sierra Nevada was drought-ridden and often on fire from 800 to 1300, according to a new study published…

Butterflies are emerging over 10 days earlier in Spring than they did 65 years ago, and anthropogenic global warming is probably at fault, according to a study in Biology Letters.   The study…

Birds communicate with their developing chicks before they hatch by leaving them messages in the egg, new research published in Science has found. By changing conditions within the egg, canary…