Feathers make the man in world of birds: study:
Writing in the journal Current Biology, Safran and colleagues said they captured 63 male barn swallows in New Jersey at the start of the breeding season, when levels of sex hormones like testosterone are typically declining.
They used a nontoxic marker to color the breast fathers of half to resemble the darkest, most attractive feathers of males within the population. They also tested the blood of the birds before releasing them.
A week later, the birds were recaptured. The marked birds had higher levels of testosterone and had lost weight, perhaps because they had been fighting and making love, the researchers said. Or perhaps they had worn themselves out trying to live up to inflated expectations, said Safran.
Her team showed in 2005 that male barn swallows given darker breast colors bred earlier in the season and fathered more young. Their mates also cheated less often with other male suitors.
Ah, so men dyeing their hair could make them more attractive? (But not Scott Weiland.) Heehee. The article says the human equivalent is like wearing a flashy suit. I’ve been trying to get Neil to buy ‘going out’ trousers (as opposed to more boring ‘work’ trousers) for ages now — maybe this will convince him.
Turns out that fast-moving dinosaurs had a similar breathing system to PENGUINS.
Penguins. Cute and cuddly on the outside, efficient, merciless KILLERS on the inside.
*skree*
Penguins apparently hang out in the same group to go fishing.
Skree!
Normal ones will do — Squirrels wield a hot, secret weapon:
The ground squirrel heats up its tail then waves it in the snake’s face – a form of harassment that confuses the rattler, which has an infrared sensing organ for detecting small mammals.
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The squirrels themselves do not see in infrared, so they cannot see another squirrel’s tail heating up. But the snakes can, proving that the squirrels have evolved a specific way to deter rattlesnakes.
Kristen’s dad really needs to watch out.
You know this when even squirrels (I’m looking at your dad, Kristen — I think he’s driven squirrels to adapt) are stealing Kinder Surprises FOR THE TOY INSIDE.
Unless Neil is a shape-shifter, of course. That would be less weird.
Gene for left-handedness is found — I like that they link paranoid schizophrenia to “unusual balances of brain function.”
Australian research published last year found left-handed people can think quicker when carrying out tasks such as playing computer games or playing sport.
And French researchers concluded that being left-handed could be an advantage in hand-to-hand combat.
However, being left-handed has also been linked to a greater risk of some diseases, and to having an accident.
Five out of seven people in my department are left-handed, by the way. The right-handers feels left out. Heehee.
Male osprey flies home to find out his bird (heh) has shacked up with another bloke — she’s even laid eggs for the other man!
Henry kicked the eggs out of the nest and observers had hope that he would believe two more that she laid were his – but he has now ejected them too.
If they were anthropomorphosised, there would be lots of glares and beers consumed in the same dank village pub. And murder trials. And fade-out sex scenes in council flats.
It turns out that hippos make their own sunscreen:
The researchers collected sweat samples from the face and back of a hippo at Ueno Zoological Gardens in Tokyo.
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They found unstable red and orange pigments that turned out to be aromatic compounds, naming the red one hipposudoric acid and the orange one norhipposudoric acid.
The researchers then set out to find out what these pigments did.
As the pigments reflected light in the 200 to 600 nanometer range of the spectrum, the researchers concluded they acted as sunscreen pigments.
Is it only a matter of (evolutionary) time before sun-worshipping humans also start to manufacture our own sunscreen? In the meantime, I’ll stick to my Banana Boat SPF 50.