Animal Life news stories

The brain is an immeasurably complex organ, and we’re only just scratching the surface of how it even comes into existence. In a paper published in Nature Neuroscience today, a Stanford-led research team says the brains of humans and other animals are actually made up of two collaborating neural systems that start developing in parallel in an embryo’s earliest moments.

“The tooth itself is in immaculate condition. It’s the most complete mastodon molar from our area, and the most spectacular mastodon molar that I’ve ever seen. I had chills and shivers up and down my spine,” said paleontologist Wayne Thompson in a statement. “It’s another puzzle in the Ice Age saga that we can put into place.”

If you ask a scientist how life appeared on Earth, they will usually begin the story in one of two places: A warm, mineral-rich pool on the surface of our primordial planet. Or a deep-sea vent pumping warm, hydrogen-rich fluid through the ocean floor. Both tales are highly engaging, but only one holds any water, according to a provocative new take by geochemist Benjamin Tutolo from the University of Calgary. Tutolo’s perspective is now laid out in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS.

Some cynodonts may have been giving birth to live young much sooner in evolutionary history than previously assumed. A new Frontiers in Mammal Science study has offered the first compelling evidence that cynodonts may have been viviparous—a reproductive mode characterized by live birth.

Research published on Thursday has revealed that the humble birds were first domesticated 3,500 years ago, meaning they have been enmeshed in our lives for nearly a millennium longer than previously thought.

The authors of a new study published in iScience propose that cephalopods may be evidence that something else is the dominant driver of brain size.

Earth’s underground fungal network is so vast that, if it were in outer space, it would span roughly 10% of the Milky Way if placed in a straight line, a new study finds. The study was published Thursday (June 11) in the journal Science.

New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that our ancestors were not just lucky scavengers. They were also effective foragers who repeatedly processed, accessed, and shared animal resources across different environments.

Mayflies are among the world’s oldest winged insects, emerging roughly 300m years ago – long before dinosaurs walked the Earth. Even the Mesopotamian poem the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest pieces of literature, makes reference to the short-lived mayfly. Over the epochs, the insect’s basic design has changed very little compared with the fossils of their ancestors.

There’s been a lot of buzz in recent years about bee cognition, but not all scientists are convinced. Now, new research has added a fresh ingredient to the mix: Accounting for how bees actually see the world, rather than relying on human assumptions…And guess what? The bees still seem to be able to count.The research has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

In our research, published today in Current Biology, we show that when some animals spot a predator, they issue a warning cry that is picked up by others and spread through the rainforest canopy. For a time, different species are linked into a shared information network, and parts of the forest briefly fall silent.

The staccato clicks of sperm whales may sound like meaningless background noise to human ears, but a new analysis suggests they may be part of a communication system with a level of complexity approaching that of our own. The research has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

The identity of a mysterious artifact found in Devon almost 160 years ago has finally been revealed. New research has identified it as a pendant made from the tooth of a gray seal, which would have been worn by an ancient human more than 15,000 years ago. The findings of the study are published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

For decades, archaeologists have debated when the hominin ancestors of humans first started eating megafauna—animals weighing more than 1,000kg. In a new study published in eLife, our team of archaeologists studying the evolution of the earliest humans in Africa has identified one of the earliest cases of elephant butchery.

The ancestor of apes was long thought to come from East Africa, but newly discovered fossils in Egypt may prompt a rethink. The discovery of an enigmatic ape’s 18-million-year-old fossils in Egypt hints that the ancestors of all living apes, a group that includes humans, may have originated in northeast Africa or Arabia, a new study finds. The study was published March 26 in the journal Science.

The discovery of the oldest ever dog DNA suggests they have been our best friends for nearly 16,000 years – 5,000 years earlier than had previously been thought, new research said Wednesday… Two new studies published in the journal Nature sequenced the genomes from archaeological remains, shedding light on the elusive origins of our furry friends.