At Scicon, Bernard Beckett talked about getting people excited about science by telling stories about cool science stuff. One of his examples was how he told one of his classes about what makes voles monogamous or promisuous. Racy stuff! I remember reading about this some years ago in a book by US author Natalie Angier, […]
Continue readingTag: animal behaviour
better s*x from headless males…
On Monday night a newspaper article caught my eye – the reporter had picked up on a study suggesting that, if you’re a female praying mantis, eating your partner during sex can actually be quite beneficial…
Continue readingcool cephalopods
Ages ago I saw an item on TV about cuttlefish – one of the neat things I took away from it was how cuttlefish and other cephalopods (octopus & squid) use colour to communicate, and how precise their control of skin coloration is. And I would tell my students about it, but I didn't have […]
Continue readingeven octopuses get christmas presents
Or should that be 'octopi'? Anyway, I just came across this story, about an octopus that was given a Mr Potatohead toy for Chrismas – and not only plays with it for extended periods, but gets aggressive if keepers try to remove it from his tank. (Thanks, PZ!) Awwww.
Continue readingindigobirds and evolution
I see the level 3 paper had a question on indigobird evolution. This is quite a neat example of rapid sympatric evolution in an animal (& one that I use in my own teaching here at Waikato), so I thought I might flesh it out a bit for you here.
Continue readingbattle of the brains
A day or so ago people were talking in the tea-room about a clip on TV that showed chimpanzees beating humans hands-down on a test of memory. This piqued my curiosity, because I don't watch a lot of TV & hadn't seen the show. But today I found a link to it – have a look! I […]
Continue readingwho’d be a cockroach?
Well, OK, they wouldn’t be my bug of first choice. But have a look at this video – would you wish this on a even a cockroach? I’ll admit, it does look pretty gross. As Stephen Jay Gould said (1983), I suspect that nothing evokes greater disgust in most of us than slow destruction […]
Continue readingtree-hugging wolves?
The university has an e-subscription to the journal Science, so each week we get details of the latest issue via e-mail. I was scrolling through one of the July issues when an article's title caught my eye: Aspens return to Yellowstone, with help from some wolves. Really? I thought. What have wolves got to do […]
Continue readingswan girl’s story
I was idly looking at my page this morning & thought, it might be quite fun to tell you the story behind the picture (yes, that really is me; my husband took the photo in nineteen-mumbley-mumble). That is, how (& why) did I become mother to a bunch of little swans? It's a long story…
Continue readingSexual signals and strong, silent males
On hot summer nights male crickets chirp constantly in their attempts to attract mates, rubbing a toothed ‘file' on one forewing over a ridge on the other forewing to produce their song. But this can be a risky business, as it might not be only females who are drawn by the males' calls. Predators and […]
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