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POPSMetagenomics http://www.realitysandwich.com/metagenomics_accessing_aliens_inside_us_all
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POPSChimpanzees Dancing with Fire When it comes to understanding fire, chimpanzees might have a leg up not only on the rest of the animal kingdom, but also on those of us in the human species who would sprint in the other direction at the sight of a blaze. A study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology argues that these primates don’t panic when the flames start, and could even understand the basics about how fire behaves.
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POPS Octopus Builds Home In Coconut Shells
VIDEO http://bit.ly/8ZQDT8 "What makes it different from a hermit crab is this octopus collects shells for later use, so when it's transporting it, it's not getting any protection from it," Finn said. "It's that collecting it to use it later that is unusual." The researchers think the creatures probably once used shells in the same way. But once humans began cutting coconuts in half and discarding the shells into the ocean, the octopuses discovered an even better kind of shelter, Finn said. "Octopuses have always stood out as appearing to be particularly intelligent invertebrates," Robson said. "They have a fairly well-developed sense of vision and they have a fairly intelligent brain. So I think it shows the behavioral capabilities that these organisms have." There is always debate in the scientific community about how to define tool use in the animal kingdom, Robson said. The Australian researchers defined a tool as an object carried or maintained for future use.
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POPSANIMALS’ ALTRUISM AND ABILITY TO EMPATHIZE
Ethologists use the terms care-giving, or epimeletic behavior, and care-soliciting, or et-epimeletic behavior, to identify those behaviors that underlie the altruism we see in various species that means that they do have the capacity to empathize. Skeptics dismiss all of this as anthropomorphic and scientifically unproven, and it disturbs me to read some professional comments on this topic. For example, veterinarian John S. Parker stated that "Pets can and often do react to their owners’ distress or discomfort, but that is not to be confused with experiencing the emotion of empathy" (Letter in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, June 1, 2006, pp 1677-1678). Aside from contending that animals "do not have the cognitive capacity to put themselves in our place", he incorrectly sees empathy not as a process or affective state but as an actual emotion, which it is not. Animal ethics philosopher Dr. Bernard E. Rollin’s response (in this same Journal, on p.1678), stati
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POPSPersonal Injury in the Wild (infographic) Every year, thousands of people across the world are seriously injured and even killed by the wild creatures of the animal kingdom. Check out these stats on personal injury in the wild and see which animal attacks are the most dangerous.
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POPSThe First Video Footage of the World's Most Elusive Cat "Andrew Hearn and Joanna Ross, researchers from the United Kingdom’s Global Canopy Programme’s Bornean Wild Cat & Clouded Leopard Project, have been surveying five species of wild cats of Borneo for several years. Their work has uncovered some remarkable findings. Besides capturing the world’s first ever video of the rare cat, the two are also credited for snapping the first photograph of a live bay cat. Based in the Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Sabah, camera trapping and radio-tracking methods are utilized in their research. The program also provides educational materials, community surveys and training courses as well. " (from the article)
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POPS World Animal Day 2009 World Animal Day started in Florence, Italy in 1931 at a convention of ecologists. On this day, animal life in all its forms is celebrated, and special events are planned on locations all over the globe. 4 October was originally chosen for World Animal Day because it is the feast day of Francis of Assisi, a nature lover and patron saint of animals and the environment. Numerous churches throughout the world observe the Sunday closest to 4 October with a Blessing for the Animals.
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POPSPETA Plans to Turn VA. Prison into 'Chicken Empathy Museum' Other features outlined in PETA's proposal for the Chicken Empathy Museum include an interactive display where visitors can lug heavy, 150-pound backpacks in order to simulate the pain of disproportional weight on chickens' upper bodies and a restaurant serving faux-chicken drumsticks and chickenless pot pie. Additionally, the proposal mentions plans for a gift shop where kids aged 12 and under would be provided free plush chickens with tags reading, "I Am Not a Nugget!"
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POPSChlorophyll Eye Drops Give Night Vision
In 2004, Ilyas Washington, an ophthalmic scientist at Columbia University Medical Center, came across Douglas’s findings. Washington knew that the mechanisms involved in vision tend to be similar throughout the animal kingdom, so he wondered whether chlorophyll could also enhance the vision of other animals, including humans. His latest experiments in mice and rabbits suggest that administering chlorophyll to the eyes can double their ability to see in low light. The pigment absorbs hues of red light that are normally invisible in dim conditions. That information is then transmitted to the brain, allowing enhanced vision. Washington is now developing ways to deliver chlorophyll to human eyes safely and easily, perhaps through drops. He believes that a night-vision drug would be most useful on the battlefield, so it is no surprise that the U.S. Department of Defense is funding his work. “The military would want this biological enhancement so they don’t have to carry nighttime goggles
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POPSEarly life united “We’ve known about the gram-negative bacteria for three scientific generations. We’ve been staring at them for a hundred years, and we never realized how they came about or what made them so different,” said Lake. “Without them, we wouldn’t have eukaryotes as we do today.”According to Lake, the union likely took the form of endosymbiosis, in which one of the prokaryotes literally swallowed the other, and the two grew together. Were mammals derived from a union of insect and amphibian, the story-of-life rearrangement would be comparably profound.
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