Afghanistan to protect wildlife and wild lands
...ep in his writings in the late 13th Century. Other mammals known to occur in Afghanistan include the ibex, the Persian leopard, gazelles, and the elusive snow leopard. Specifically, five areas being considered by this project for protected area status include the Pamir-I-Buzurg, Little Pamir, and the Wagh...Finding a cellular Neverland: How stem cells stay childlike
...rs readily regenerate severed limbs as adults, but mammals cannot. In fact, mammals have a limited repertoire of tissues they can regenerate, and some essential ones, such as nerves an...Mouse, frog and bird put Snail and Slug to different uses
...xhibit an asymmetric distribution. For example, in mammals the heart is located on the left side of the body while the liver is on the right. Gridley and Murray found that, similarly to what has been described for birds, the Snail gene controls acquisition of these asymmetric body differences in mice. On th...First surveys of Tanzanian mountains reveal 160+ animal species, including new & endemic
...raps and audio recordings. The phototraps captured mammals like a Mountain dwarf galago (Galagoides orinus) and a red duiker (Cephalophus natalensis). Using a tape recorder and directional microphone, researchers recorded the calls of two species of galagos. Galagos are small, nocturnal primates with large, ...Elephants, large mammals recover from poaching in Africa's oldest national park
...rica. It once boasted the highest density of large mammals in the world before a wave of unrest and poaching ...rend of decline, and that most of the park's large mammals have increased in number since the last census in 2003. Elephants have increased to 340 individuals ...Primates take weather into account when searching for fruits
...ore strongly developed cognitive skills than other mammals has a long history in science. The most widely accepted notion has been that primates' superior cognitive abilities have evolved in the social realm. Many primate species live in complex societies, and, the argument goes, this favored the evolution o...Liquid Jungle Lab environs -- home to five new species
... (Victor Martínez Cortes and Abdiel Rodríguez) and mammals (Rafael Samudio and Jorge Pino). Species new to science include a fungus (Opegrapha pigozziana), named for Jean Pigozzi, a lichen (Pyrenula luteopruinosa) and an epiphytic plant in the family Araceae (Monstera sp. nov), which will be described in ...Vampire bats recognise their prey's breathing
Vampire bats, the only mammals to feed exclusively on blood, including human blood, recognize their prey by the sound of its breathing. In a study published today in the open access journal BMC Biology, vampire bats of the species Desmodus rotondus could recognise recorded human b...Another grape excuse to hit the bottle
...elatonin was thought to be exclusively produced by mammals but has recently been discovered in plants. It is thought to have antioxidant properties. Iriti's study discovered high levels of melatonin in Nebbolo, Merlot, Cabernet Savignon, Sangiovesse and Croatina grape varieties. Iriti's team have also shown...Salk and Stanford teams join forces to reveal two paths of neurodegeneration
...een developmental pruning and injury from flies to mammals points to general mechanisms which are most likely also at work in the human nervous system. Both investigators believe that these and related studies can help in the development of therapies that preserve injured axons and restore proper connections...Joslin study refutes recent report that bone marrow can replenish female oocytes
...self contradicted the long-held belief that female mammals are born with a finite number of oocytes that cannot be replenished or regenerated if lost to injury or disease by suggesting that transplanted bone marrow or peripheral blood cells were capable of generating new oocytes in the ovaries of recipient m...Retired FSU professor captures a 'living fossil' on video
...nto an interest in seeing some of the world's rare mammals in their native habitats. When he learned about the discovery of the Laotian rock rat last year -- and that no one had seen a live specimen -- Redfield set out on a personal quest to accomplish the feat. "We were extremely fortunate in so many ways t...Gazelles shrink liver and heart to reduce oxygen consumption during drought
How do gazelles and other large desert mammals adjust their physiology to survive when food and water are in short supply? A fascinating new study from the July/August issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology reveals that gazelles in the deserts of Saudi Arabia have evolved the ability to s...Common carp sheds new light on surviving in extreme environments
... Myglobin is found in large quantities in diving mammals such as whales and seals and helps them remain submerged for long periods during deep sea dives. Similarly in humans, myglobin levels in the heart and some fatigue-resistant muscles increase when at high altitudes. New findings of myglobin levels in...How ancient whales lost their legs, got sleek and conquered the oceans
...happened," Thewissen said. "Studies on swimming in mammals show that a sleek body is necessary for efficient swimming, because projecting organs such as rudimentary hind limbs cause a lot of drag, and slow a swimmer down," said Thewissen, who spends about a month every year in Pakistan and India collecting f...Smithsonian to coordinate planning for Panama's Coiba National Park/World Heritage Site
...uly wild place where we can study migrating marine mammals and coral biodiversity. We want to keep it that way, but without closing it off to fishing, ecotourism and other sustainable activities," explains Dr. Juan Maté, STRI project coordinator. Coiba National Park forms part of the Eastern Pacific Marine ...Scientists scuttle claims that 'Hobbit' fossil from Flores, Indonesia, is a new hominid
...s and the reduced presence of predators. But all mammals that have shrunk due to the constraints of an island's resources or any other reasons, such as selective breeding have done so within certain parameters: Body size can shrink considerably, but brain size always shrinks moderately. At 400 cubic cent...... for further research into the reactions of marine mammals to industrial noise to help mitigate future effects in relation to the increase in off-shore industry, such as the construction of wind farms. Other wide ranging topics covered in the new edition of the Water and Environment Journal include the Wa...Non-coding RNAs help silence the mammalian transcription
... for the silencing of all imprinted genes. Rather mammals have co-opted multiple transcriptional regulatory mechanisms that were already evolved. In the case of the Kcnqt1ot1, the mechanism utilizes some form of RNA silencing. The variation in silencing mechanisms lends further support to the argument that ......or Stem Cell research said: "Our results show that mammals have adopted the function of the amphibian PouV proteins to maintain their embryonic stem cells. These features of dividing without limit and giving rise to many types of cell are thus ancient features of early embryonic cells, crucial for the correc...