FLORA FAUNA

5,060 articles

Long-beaked echidna may not be a thing of the past
Jan 04, 2013 (SPX)
The western long-beaked echidna, one of the world's five egg-laying species of mammal, became extinct in Australia thousands of years ago...or did it? Smithsoni...
Galapagos pink iguana captured on film
Jan 01, 2013 (AFP)
Veteran British nature broadcaster David Attenborough is to show the first filmed sighting of the rare pink iguana, in a television series on the Galapagos Isla...
Speeding train kills five elephants in eastern India
Dec 31, 2012 (AFP)
A speeding passenger train killed five elephants when it ploughed into a herd crossing the track in eastern India, a railway spokesman said Monday. The train st...
Saber-toothed cats in California were not driven to extinction by lack of food
Dec 31, 2012 (SPX)
When prey is scarce, large carnivores may gnaw prey to the bone, wearing their teeth down in the process. A new analysis of the teeth of saber-toothed cats and ...
Cambodia battles to save rare Mekong dolphins
Dec 31, 2012 (AFP)
The sight of two dolphins twisting playfully in the murky waters of the Mekong river elicits barely-stifled squeals of delight from a boatload of eco-tourists. ...
Birdsong study pecks at theory that music is uniquely human
Dec 31, 2012 (SPX)
A bird listening to birdsong may experience some of the same emotions as a human listening to music, suggests a new study on white-throated sparrows, published ...
Survival of the females
Dec 26, 2012 (SPX)
It is well known that many mammals are able to adjust the ratio of male and female young depending on the surrounding conditions at the time of conception but h...
A nanoscale window to the biological world
Dec 26, 2012 (SPX)
If the key to winning battles is knowing both your enemy and yourself, then scientists are now well on their way toward becoming the Sun Tzus of medicine by tak...
'Yak insurance' plan saving Nepal's snow leopard
Dec 26, 2012 (AFP)
The remorse felt by Himali Chungda Sherpa after he killed three snow leopard cubs in retaliation for his lost cattle inspired him to set up a scheme to prevent ...
China survey reports fewer sightings of engangered porpoise
Dec 24, 2012 (AFP)
A survey of endangered porpoises in China's longest river has yielded fewer sightings as intense ship traffic threatens their existence, scientists said Monday....
Nepal campaigners plead for killer elephant's life
Dec 24, 2012 (AFP)
Nepalese animal rights groups pleaded Monday for the life of a lovelorn elephant which has trampled several people to death and is being hunted down by an army ...
Black Piranha, Megapiranha Have Most Powerful Bites of Fish Living or Extinct
Dec 24, 2012 (SPX)
The black piranha and the extinct giant piranha, or megapiranha, have the most powerful bites of carnivorous fishes, living or extinct, once body size is taken ...
Oscillation of gene activity may underpin how embryos grow in proportion
Dec 24, 2012 (SPX)
From a single-cell egg to a fully functional body: as embryos develop and grow, they must form organs that are in proportion to the overall size of the embryo. ...
Helping the nose know
Dec 24, 2012 (SPX)
More than a century after it was first identified, Harvard scientists are shedding new light on a little-understood neural feedback mechanism that may play a ke...
Century-old Wallace map of natural world updated
Dec 24, 2012 (SPX)
Until today, Alfred Russel Wallace's century old map has been the backbone for our understanding of global biodiversity. Thanks to advances in modern technology...
Lizard tails detach at a biological 'dotted line'
Dec 24, 2012 (SPX)
Like sheets of paper marked with perforated lines, gecko tails have unique structural marks that help them sever their tails to make a quick getaway. Though vol...
Genomic frontier: The unexplored animal kingdom
Dec 21, 2012 (SPX)
A new report in the journal Nature unveils three of the first genomes from a vast, understudied swath of the animal kingdom that includes as many as one-quarter...
Plumes across the Pacific deliver thousands of microbial species to West Coast
Dec 20, 2012 (SPX)
A surprising number of microorganisms - 99 percent more kinds than had been reported in findings published just four months ago - are leaping the biggest gap on...
Hybrid tunnel may help guide severed nerves back to health
Dec 20, 2012 (SPX)
Building a tunnel made up of both hard and soft materials to guide the reconnection of severed nerve endings may be the first step toward helping patients who h...
Toward a new model of the cell
Dec 20, 2012 (SPX)
Turning vast amounts of genomic data into meaningful information about the cell is the great challenge of bioinformatics, with major implications for human biol...
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