The brain is more adept at using the nose than previously realized
...ell and also examined behavior related to smell in mammals and other animals. "This is the first study to look at the ways in which mammals respond to challenges of distinguishing smells by studying actual activity in the olfactory bulb whi...Study of planarians offers insight into germ cell development
...anarians share some important characteristics with mammals that may help scientists tease out the mechanisms ...s called inductive specification, and is common to mammals and a number of other animals. Graduate student Yuying Wang and the other team members were able t...Study shows hibernating bears conserve more muscle strength than humans on bed rest do
...mans." In contrast to other, smaller hibernating mammals such as prairie dogs and squirrels, black bears also conserved muscle protein and size. The researchers found no loss in the fiber cross-sectional area of the bears thighs or calves, a drop of only about 10% in the protein content of the thighs, and ...Robust time estimation reconciles views of the antiquity of placental mammals
...past decade, the evolutionary history of placental mammals remains controversial. While a consensus is emergi...atheria. The revised time at the root of placental mammals was much younger than the preceding reports, 84 million years ago instead of around 122 million year...Scripps research study shows humans and plants share common regulatory pathway
..." SGT1 is a protein found in yeasts, plants, and mammals in both the nucleus and the cytosol. It functions in several biological processes through interaction with different multi-protein complexes. A large body of evidence also suggests that the protein plays a role in regulating pathogen resistance in pl....... The IGF1 genes hormone helps humans and other mammals grow from birth to adolescence. But in small dogs, one or more mutations in the DNA next to the IGF1 gene suppress the genes activity, keeping small dogs from growing larger, says Lark, a distinguished professor emeritus of biology. Medium and lar...Newly discovered 'platform' for processing dietary fat
...l have to be revised," she said. Dietary fats in mammals are packaged by the intestine into "chylomicrons," which are large triglyceride-rich lipoproteins, Beigneux explained. After reaching the bloodstream, the triglycerides within chylomicrons are broken down by an enzyme found along the surface of capil...Male owls pitch their hoots to advertise body weight to competitors
...as interesting similarities to that of terrestrial mammals where the information is typically encoded in acoustic components of the calls rather than in the diversity of the vocal repertoire as it is in songbirds," says Reby, who is an expert in the study of mammal vocal communication. ...Why are there so many more species of insects? Because insects have been here longer
...are so old. In contrast, less diverse groups, like mammals and birds, are evolutionarily younger. This is a s...s, spiders, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals appear to have accumulated new species at surprisingly similar rates over evolutionary time. Groups ...... are actually more efficient at carrying than most mammals but carrying awkward loads, such as an infant on one side of the body, uses much more energy. However this sort of carrying would have been inevitable once early hominins lost the ability to cling on with their feet. The high energetic cost of carry...The delayed rise of present-day mammals
...s after the dinosaurs were wiped out before modern mammals - including our ancient human ancestors - were abl...he widely held belief that the ancestors of modern mammals were able to quickly evolve and spread to fill many of the empty niches left behind following the ma...Dinosaur extinction didn't cause the rise of present-day mammals, claim researchers
...te 'tree of life' tracing the history of all 4,500 mammals on Earth shows that they did not diversify as a re...5 million years ago prompted the rapid rise of the mammals we see on the earth today. The multinational research team has been working for over a decade to...No need to thank dinosaur-killing asteroid for mammalian success
...ss extinction that allowed the ancestors of todays mammals to thrive. The asteroid part of the story may st...n has constructed a complete evolutionary tree for mammals that puts the major diversification well after asteroid strike, casting into doubt the role the dino...Widely used iron nanoparticles exhibit toxic effects on neuronal cells
...g extensions. "Iron is an essential nutrient for mammals and most life forms and iron oxide nanoparticles were generally assumed to be safe," said Sungho Jin, a professor of materials science at UCSD and senior author of a paper to be published in Biomaterials. The paper is currently available on the journ...Fruit fly gene research may shed light on human disease processes
...operly count X chromosomes is lethal to embryos of mammals and flies. That's why biologists want to understand the process of "chromosome counting." Early in his career, Erickson was part of the research team that identified the genes involved in counting Drosophilia sex chromosomes. Now, he and Avila ha...Making mice with enhanced color vision
...imates such as humans and monkeys are unique among mammals in that they have three visual receptors that absorb short (blue), medium (green) and long (red) wavelengths of light. Mice, like other mammals, only have two; one for short and one for medium wavelengths. In the study, the researchers designed a...Paleontologists discover new mammal from Mesozoic Era
...at is an intermediate step between those of modern mammals and those of near relatives of mammals, also known...ondition in the evolutionary process of how modern mammals acquired their middle ear structure." Yanoconodon is about 5 inches (or 15 cm) long and estimated ...Alien predators are more dangerous than native predators
...ustralia has nine of the world's 14 worst invasive mammals (domestic cat, goat, grey squirrel, mouse, pig, rabbit, red deer, red fox, ship rat). Scientists believe that more frequent contact between predator and prey populations in contiguous continents such as Eurasia, Africa and the Americas has made pre...Location, location -- Cell sizes, lives influenced by host size
Cells from the smallest to the largest of mammals often seem to be "one size fits all." Now a closer...odels that they used to examine 18 cell types from mammals ranging from mice to elephants. They found two basic categories cells that stay the same size but h...Human pubic lice acquired from gorillas gives evolutionary clues
... giant apes, said David Reed, assistant curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus, one of the study's authors. The research is published in the current edition of the BMC Biology journal. "It certainly wouldn't have to be what many people are going to immediately assume i...