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It is often thought that humans are different from other animals in some fundamental way that makes us unique, or even more advanced than other species. These claims of human superiority are sometimes used to justify the ways we treat other animals, in the home, the lab or the factory farm.
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Love, sex and mate choice are topics that never go out of fashion among humans or, surprisingly, among some Australian birds. For these species, choosing the right partner is a driver of evolution and affects the survival and success of a bird and its offspring.
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As winter approaches, marine turtle nesting in the far north of Australia will peak. When these baby turtles hatch at night, they crawl from the sand to the sea, using the relative brightness of the horizon and the natural slope of the beach as their guide.
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Humans are unusual, even among primates, in the length of our "extended childhood." Scientists think that this period of childhood and adolescence, which gives us lots of time to explore, create, and learn, is a key reason why we are smart enough to learn skills that take years to master. But humans are not the only species with an extended childhood. Elephants, some bats, whales, dolphins, and some birds—especially corvids—also have them. But does an extended childhood confer higher intelligence for other species, and if so, what is the role of parenting?
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After a severe drought gripped the Prairie Pothole Region of the U.S. and Canada in the 1980s, populations of almost all dabbling duck species that breed there have recovered. But not northern pintails. Now, a new study by a team of researchers suggests why—they have been caught in an ecological trap.
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,Waders like wet conditions. They look for insects and other creepy-crawlies in the damp earth. Some species, such as the Mexican snowy plover or the ruff have developed fascinating behavioural patterns. Clemens Küpper and his working group at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen is conducting long-terms studies of the social behaviour of these birds. Here, the issue of biodiversity is central, since like many groups of bird species, the numbers of wading birds are in dramatic decline.
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People in Britain feed up to 196 million birds a year with 60,000 tonnes of bird food, at a total cost of £300 million. All those garden feeders have helped boost populations of dozens of bird species, including the garden regular, the blue tit, whose numbers have increased by 26% in the last 50 years.
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A ZSL study published in Nature Communications today maps the evolutionary history of the world's terrestrial vertebrates—amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles—for the first time, exploring how areas with large concentrations of evolutionarily distinct and threatened species are being impacted by our ever-increasing 'human footprint'.
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Diving as a lifestyle has evolved many times in the animal kingdom, and the ecology of all diving animals is essentially shaped by how long they can hold their breaths.
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Spring is in full swing. Trees are leafing out, flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing, and birds are singing. But a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that those birds in your backyard may be changing right along with the climate.
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Have you seen small birds nervously jumping up and down the branches and calling at a cat in a park? For a long time, scientists have been interested in what type of information about predators is coded in alarm calls; is it predator's species identity? Or their size? Or how dangerous it is? A recent study published in Ethology provides new discoveries in this field.
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Shea yields are likely to benefit from a diversity of trees and shrubs in parkland habitats in West Africa, according to a new study led by scientists from Trinity College Dublin. The findings have important implications for managing a crop that is typically harvested and sold by women in rural areas, and which helps finance education for children.
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It is low tide at the end of the wet season in Broome, Western Australia. Shorebirds feeding voraciously on worms and clams suddenly get restless.
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No other event in our lifetimes has brought such sudden, drastic loss to Australia's biodiversity as the last bushfire season. Governments, researchers and conservationists have committed to the long road to recovery. But in those vast burnt landscapes, where do we start?
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Preserving biodiversity is one of the key debates of our time—but another subject of hot debate in recent decades among evolutionary experts is how biodiversity has changed over the past few hundred million years. New findings are challenging the conventional view on this.
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Operation Decoy Dan begins at dawn.
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The challenge of diversifying STEM fields may get a boost from the results of a new study that show field courses help build self-confidence among students—especially those from underrepresented groups.
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Fais attention! Serpent!
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For the first time in 50 years, ornithologists at the Manomet nature observatory in Plymouth, Massachusetts are not opening their mist nets every weekday at dawn to catch, measure and band migrating songbirds. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the center has essentially canceled its spring field season and will be doing only very limited sampling. Going forward, its long-term banding data will contain only a fraction of the usual information on songbird migrations during the spring of 2020.
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The secrets behind magnetoreception—that is, the ability of some animals to sense Earth's magnetic field—are beginning to gradually unravel, thanks in part to a new study that demonstrates magnetic sensitivity in a completely artificial protein, which will help guide further study into what makes this phenomenon possible.
DNA robbery in progress in Australia's copperback quail-thrush
in Bird Research in the Media
Posted
Quailthrush are a group of songbirds unique to our region. They are widespread throughout Australia and New Guinea and there are eight recognized species.
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