1,416 results
- Animals
Little Professor: Ants rank as first true animal teachers
The best evidence so far of true teaching in a nonhuman animal comes from ants. With video.
- Humans
Letters from the November 12, 2005, issue of Science News
Big leap The pendular running gait described in “Stepping Lightly: New view of how human gaits conserve energy” (SN: 9/17/05, p. 182) as one of the most efficient bipedal gaits looks remarkably like the way eyewitnesses claim Bigfoot creatures move. In a Bigfoot hoax, one might use a gait that is unhuman but energy efficient, […]
- Humans
Letters from the May 21, 2005, issue of Science News
Rascal rabbits Evidence of animals sensing where people are looking and what they’re seeing is interesting yet hardly new (“Monkey See, Monkey Think: Grape thefts instigate debate on primate’s mind,” SN: 3/12/05, p. 163). For years, I have observed that wild rabbits will remain motionless as long as I stare in their direction. But as […]
- Animals
Face Time: Bees can tell apart human portraits
Honeybees will learn to zoom up to particular human faces in a version of a facial-recognition test used for people.
- Anthropology
Chimps to People: Apes show contrasts in genetic makeup
The first comparison of the chimpanzee genome to that of people has revealed new DNA disparities between ourselves and the primate species most closely related to us.
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Infectious Evolution: Ancient virus hit apes, not our ancestors, in the genes
A potentially deadly infection wormed its way into the DNA of ancestral chimpanzees and gorillas between 4 million and 3 million years ago, thus altering the evolution of these African apes while keeping clear of human ancestors on that same continent.
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Seminal Discovery: Promiscuous females speed sperm evolution
A gene responsible for semen viscosity has evolved more rapidly in primate species with promiscuous females than in monogamous species.
- Animals
More junk makes for better dads
A new analysis links dutiful fatherhood in prairie voles to a stretch of DNA once dismissed as meaningless.
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Cloning Milestone: Monkey embryos urged to stem cell stage
Researchers have coaxed cloned rhesus macaque embryos to grow to the blastocyst stage, the furthest point yet reached in cloning a nonhuman primate.
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Babies Learn to Save Face: Infants get prepped to perceive
A minimal amount of parent-directed training at home allows babies to sustain facial-discrimination skills that they would otherwise lose by age 9 months.
- Animals
Big Mimics: African elephants can learn to copy sounds
Two captive African elephants—one rumbling like a truck and the other chirping like a different elephant species—show they may be the first land mammals other than primates to learn vocal imitations.
- Animals
Getting the Gull: Baiting trick spreads among killer whales
A young male orca that spits up fish and then ambushes gulls attracted to the mess seems to have started a wave of cultural transmission.
