The Philippine tarsier is a tiny primate with a seriously high voice. The saucer-eyed mammal can let out (and listen to) squeaks and squeals at such a high frequency that it effectively gives the mammal a private communication channel. A team of researchers found that the tiny tarsier can hear and emit sounds in the…
If there was a ‘Just So’ story for how the zebra got its stripes, Rudyard Kipling certainly would have come up with an amusing and entertaining camouflage explanation. But would he have come up with the explanation that zebra’s stripes stave off blood-sucking insects? According to a study, published in The Journal of Experimental Biology,…
The tip of a girl’s 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins. The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago,…
Recent media stories suggest that anti-aging medicine may soon change from fantasy into a scientifically realistic prospect. If anti-aging medicine is to become a reality, then the various theories about how to halt or reverse the aging process will require testing on human subjects. Carrying out such tests will place unprecedented pressure on the rules…
Jumping spiders, which hunt by pouncing on their prey, gauge distances to their unsuspecting meals in a way that appears to be unique in the animal kingdom, a new study finds. The superability boils down to seeing green. Scientists in Japan discovered that the arachnids accurately sense distances by comparing a blurry version of an…
Your genes could be a strong predictor of whether you stray into a life of crime, according to a recent study that focused on whether genes are likely to cause a person to become a life-course persistent offender, which is characterized by antisocial behavior during childhood that can later progress to violent or serious criminal…