Dinosaurs -- stones did not help with digestion
...hich weighed more than 30 tonnes, were the largest herbivores which have ever existed. Many of them had a very small head, in relation to the size of their body, and narrow, pointed teeth, which were more suited to tearing off plants rather than chewing them. At the same time, they had to digest enormous amount...Winning by a neck -- Giraffes avoid competing with shorter browsers
...a tested whether foraging competition with shorter herbivores could explain why giraffes feed mostly on leaves h...ed high in the tree canopy, above the height other herbivores can reach. Giraffes receive more leaves per bite by foraging high in the tree, but it's unclear whe...Big vegetarian mammals can play a critical role in maintaining healthy ecosystems, study finds
...ological function, this new study shows that large herbivores can also play critical roles." Extinctions, pas...ere mammoths, giant sloths, camels and other large herbivores once were common. But most of these mega-fauna species were eliminated during the Pleistocene epoch ...Toward more effective paleolgenetic analysis
...round 250 fossil bones from 600 to 50 000 year old herbivores was carried out thanks to international cooperation between the Institut Jacques Monod at CNRS, the Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid and a number of European, Turkish and Japanese paleontologists and archeologists. The work showed that mitochondr...Studies of population genetics, evolution are an exercise in bad taste
...toxins used by plants to defend themselves against herbivores bitter taste probably helped our early ancestors avoid poisoning," he said. If that is the case, then why are both tasters and nontasters still present in the human population? Based on the rules of natural selection, shouldn't all of the nontaste...Can a taste for poison drive speciation?
...ve mostly degraded. Behavioral adaptations between herbivores and their hosts tend to involve changes in genes linked to taste and odor perception. With over 50 Obp genes in the D. melanogaster genome, researchers have a rich resource for studying the ecological contributions to speciation....Weeds survive the wild better than natives
...isation - visited weeds and natives, the attack by herbivores may have an unfair advantage for the weed. "Esse...plants," she said. "What I wanted to see was the herbivores eating the weeds, but this was not the case. "Herbivores demonstrated a preference for the native ...... years and stay infectious," Aiken explains. And herbivores such as deer and sheep, which are susceptible to prion infection, tend to consume a fair amount of dirt daily as they graze and forage. They are also known to consume soil as a source of minerals. Mineral licks are frequented by many animals, raising...