Land Mammals, features and articles | Educational Science

Dec 31, 2005

Frisky Ferrets Bouncing Back

Thanks to conservation efforts and some exceptionally frisky behavior in the wild, the endangered black-footed ferret is making a comeback. Scientists considered the furry creatures extinct as recently as the 1970s, but 120 of the ferrets were found in Wyoming in the mid-1980s. Then in 1985 two disease outbreaks wiped...

Dec 31, 2005

Chimps More Like Humans than Apes

While you might think of yourself as smarter than the average ape, beware: Those distant relatives of ours have a knack for evolving more quickly than we do. And by revealing this through DNA analysis, scientists have provided support for a controversial hypothesis that chimpanzees are more closely related to...

Nov 30, 2007

Incredible Batch of Rare and New Species Discovered

Two species of primates that are of global conservation concern, eight new species of katydids, a critically endangered frog species, 17 rare butterfly species and wild birds such as the brown-cheeked hornbill are among the finds of an expedition to a forest reserve in Ghana. Scientists exploring one of the...

Nov 30, 2007

Monkeys Do Math Like Humans

Monkeys can perform mental addition in a manner remarkably similar to college students, a new study shows. The researchers stressed that monkeys will not pass college math tests anytime soon. Nevertheless, the finding promises to shed light on the ancient origins of math in humanity and our distant relatives. Humans...

Nov 30, 2007

World's Oldest Orangutan Dies

MIAMI (AP) -- A 55-year-old Sumatran orangutan, believed to be the world's oldest, has died at the Miami zoo. Nonja, who was born on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and lived in Miami since 1983, was found dead Saturday morning. Everybody's very sad, especially with an animal like an orangutan,...

Oct 31, 2007

Dogs Do Well on Computers

They sport bejeweled chokers, lavish in spa bubble baths and have their own leather-bag chauffeurs. And now our almost-human dogs might also try their paws at computers. Four dogs strutted their stuff recently by using touch-screen computers to classify color photographs for a study of animal cognition. Using touch-screen computers...

Sep 30, 2007

Why Dogs Bite Kids

Territorial behavior, anxiety and other medical issues lead dogs to bite children, a new study shows. To see if there were any common links among dogs who had bitten a child within a particular four-year period, researchers examined 111 cases of dog bites by 103 dogs, all referred to the...

Aug 31, 2007

Asthma Linked to Cat Allergies

More than 50 percent of the current asthma cases in the U.S. are the result of allergies, especially to cats, according to a new National Institutues of Health (NIH) study. Asthmatics, people with allergies and doctors alike have long debated possible connections between pets, dust, ragweed, mold, fungus, foods, cockroaches,...

Jul 31, 2007

Sounds Like ... Apes Play Charades

When humans play charades, the game's ban on talk often reduces players to wild gestures in a frustratingly minimalist form of communication. Still, skillful players get the point across eventually. Apes can't talk at all, of course. But now scientists have found that orangutans rely on the same kinds of...

Jun 30, 2007

Full Moon Sends More Dogs and Cats to Emergency Room

Injuries and illness among dogs and cats seems to be higher during full moon than at other times of the month, a new study finds. But researchers don't know why. The study, reported in the July 15 issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, finds emergency room...

Jun 30, 2007

Why We Walk Upright: Beats Being a Chimp

Humans walking on two legs consume only a quarter of the energy that chimpanzees use while “knuckle-walking” on all fours, according to a new study. The finding, detailed in the July 17 issue of the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, supports the idea that early...

May 31, 2007

Adoption Group: Cat Invasion Due to Global Warming

Droves of cats and kittens are swarming into animal shelters nationwide, and global warming is to blame, according to one pet adoption group. Several shelters operated by a national adoption organization called Pets Across America reported a 30 percent increase in intakes of cats and kittens from 2005 to 2006,...

Mar 31, 2007

Study Reveals Why Some Dogs Are So Small

From the Chihuahua that’s tiny enough to fit in a purse, to the most massive mastiff, dogs have an incredible, and scientifically baffling, range in size. “Dogs have the biggest range of sizes of any mammal in existence,” said biologist K. Gordon Lark of the University of Utah. “One of...

Feb 28, 2007

Key Found to Reindeer's Throaty Mating Call

A large air sac in a male reindeer's neck allows him to let loose a throaty mating call that may boast of his fighting ability to rival males and contribute to his sexual prowess and reproductive fitness, new research shows. The inflated air sac expands the neck region and influences...

Feb 28, 2007

Genetically Tweaked Mice Get Human-Like Vision

Scientists have some lab mice seeing red. The animals had their vision genetically upgraded and can now see colors normally invisible to rodents. The finding, detailed in the March 23 issue of the journal Science, has implications for the evolution of full-color, or “trichromatic,” vision in our own ancestors. “What...