Or so our cats might be forgiven for thinking. For among the many things that have occupied the family’s time in the last couple of weeks (along with moving house, having elderly relations to stay for Christmas, & cleaning up the old house for sale) has been the Great Goldfish Shift.
Continue readingTag: animal behaviour
paradoxical frogs
Well, I’ve just got back from a series of conferences (3 in the space of 10 days) – & all of them about teaching! I was getting pretty tired by the end of it all, but at the same time it was really good to be able to spend time talking about teaching (& about […]
Continue readinghomos*xual necrophilia by a mallard drake
I’ll bet that got your attention! A little while ago I was running through a seminar with a colleague. It was an end-of-semester trip through various ‘oddities’ in the biological literature, including things like the amazing corkscrew penises of mallard ducks & the tendency of some tree shrews to use pitcher plants as potties. ‘Hmmm,’ […]
Continue readingAlgae & isopods – a unique symbiosis
When I set essays for my first-year students to write during the semester, I try to give them a scientific paper on each topic to start them off. This means that I need to do some extra bedtime reading as I need to select those papers carefully. Today’s post is based on one of those: […]
Continue readingbats and exam questions
The third question in last year’s Schol Bio paper was about bats – specifically, the ecology, behaviour, and evolution of New Zealand’s only two extant native land mammals, the lesser short-tailed bat & the long-tailed bat (Mystacina tuberculata & Chalinolobus tuberculata respectively). The long-tailed bat is a relatively new immigrant, arriving from Australia ‘just’ a […]
Continue readingrolling brown stuff
Today I saw an image that reminded me of a recent newspaper article that discussed a proposal to introduce ‘foreign’ dung beetles into New Zealand. (I’m assuming it’s a follow-up to an earlier news item from 2009.)
Continue readingconspicuous facultative mimicry in octopuses
Or should that be octopodes? Anyway, this is so much more interesting than so-called psychic octopuses: an octopus whose mimicry can make it more conspicuous, not less. The ‘mimic’ octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus – now, there’s a name that Terry Pratchett would appreciate) is arguably the best colour-changer on the block, & it combines its colour-trickery with […]
Continue readingcaterpillar drool enhances plants’ calls for help
A while ago now I discussed how some plants are able to warn others when they’re under attack by grazing animals. Now it seems that these responses and interactions are even more subtle – a new paper describes how signalling chemicals in tobacco plants can be altered by the grazers’ saliva (Allmann & Baldwin, 2010). […]
Continue readingour lives with dogs, & other interesting reading
I have a dog. As a result, papers to do with dogs tend to catch my eye 🙂 On his blog Neuroanthropology, Greg Downey reviews an upcoming book by Pat Shipman and discusses humanity’s long relationship with canines. Beginning with the point that "the first animals domesticated were not food sources, but a fellow predator and […]
Continue readingfungal parasites & zombie ants
Parasites are ubiquitous. I remember watching a video (years ago, while I was teaching at secondary school) about parasites that make humans their home. Lice, eyelash mites (yes, really!), various intestinal worms… I tell you, I had psychosomatic itching for days after seeing that! Then I got my hands on Carl Zimmer’s wonderful book, Parasite Rex – […]
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