Animal Life news stories

Can artificial intelligence really help us talk to the animals?
2nd August 2022 | theguardian.com | Animal Life, Earth, Tech, Weird

A California-based organisation wants to harness the power of machine learning to decode communication across the entire animal kingdom. But the project has its doubters

New Mexico mammoths among best evidence for early humans in North America
2nd August 2022 phys.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

About 37,000 years ago, a mother mammoth and her calf met their end at the hands of human beings.

Crustaceans Discovered ‘Pollinating’ Seaweeds in Scientific First
2nd August 2022 | sciencealert.com | Animal Life, Earth, Humans

The study, conducted by research groups based in France and Chile, is the first to document a seaweed species that depends on small marine crustaceans bespeckled in pollen-like spores to reproduce.

‘Never seen anything like it’: Impeccably preserved Jurassic fish fossils found on UK farm
31st July 2022 | livescience.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

A farm in England was the unlikely source of a Jurassic jackpot: a treasure trove of 183 million-year-old fossils.

How humans’ ability to digest milk evolved from famine and disease
29th July 2022 | nature.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

The dawn of dairy farming in Europe occurred thousands of years before most people evolved the ability to drink milk as adults without becoming ill. Now researchers think they know why…

Terrawatch: how mass extinctions can spur on evolution
28th July 2022 | theguardian.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Evidence from 252m years ago shows surviving animals bounced back stronger, fitter, faster and smarter.

DO ANIMALS DREAM? THIS EVIDENCE SAYS YES
26th July 2022 | futurity.org | Animal Life

Do animals dream? And what would proof of their dreams tell us about their consciousness? In a new episode of the University of Chicago’s “Big Brains” podcast, Peña-Guzmán talks about the science of animal consciousness.

Ice age children frolicked in ‘giant sloth puddles’ 11,000 years ago, footprints reveal
26th July 2022 | livescience.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

More than 11,000 years ago, young children trekking with their families through what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico discovered the stuff of childhood dreams: muddy puddles made from the footprints of a giant ground sloth.

Ancient fossil is earliest known animal predator
26th July 2022 | bbc.co.uk | Ancient, Animal Life

The 560-million-year-old specimen, which was found in Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire, is likely a forerunner of cnidaria – the group of species that today includes jellyfish.

 

The Mystery of When Warm-Blooded Mammals Evolved May Finally Be Solved
22nd July 2022 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life

As the first dinosaurs were finding their feet around 230 million years ago, the ancestors of modern mammals were also emerging. Somewhere along the way they developed a remarkable ability: to generate their own warmth.

A robot dog with a virtual spinal cord can learn to walk in just one hour
20th July 2022 cosmosmagazine.com | Animal Life, Humans, Tech

Researchers wanted to know how animals learn to walk and learn from their stumbling, so they built a four-legged, dog-sized robot to simulate it, according to a new study reported in Nature Machine Intelligence.

A single dose of psilocybin has long-lasting antidepressant-like effects in fruit flies
19th July 2022 | psypost.org | Animal Life, Humans, Misc.

Scientists have taken an important first step into studying the effects of the psychedelic drug psilocybin — the active substance in “magic” mushrooms — at a cellular and genetic level. Their findings, published in Scientific Reports, indicate that a single dose of psilocybin produces a long-lasting antidepressant-like effect in flies.

‘Bees are really highly intelligent’: the insect IQ tests causing a buzz among scientists
17th July 2022 | theguardian.com | Animal Life

We all know these busy insects are good for crops and biodiversity, but proof is emerging that they are also clever, sentient and unique beings

To know the history of mammals is to know ourselves
17th July 2022 bigthink.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

The death of the dinosaurs allowed mammals to become ascendant. But the history of mammals stretches far deeper than that. The first mammals go back about 325 million years, when the ancestral mammal lineage split from the reptile line.

Prehistoric giant stork competed with ‘hobbit’ human relative for food
14th July 2022 | nhm.ac.uk | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

Over 50,000 years ago, giant carnivorous storks would have competed with ancient hominins for food on a tropical island.

Not just T. rex: Why do giant dinosaurs have tiny arms?
13th July 2022 bigthink.com | Ancient, Animal Life

Predatory dinosaurs with big skulls tend to have tiny arms. Researchers propose there might be a direct link between those traits.

News stories covering Animal Science, bacterial life, DNA.