Machines Like Us – Science News

Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have discovered the first conclusive evidence of Alzheimer's-like neurofibrillary brain tangles in an aged nonhuman primate. The unprecedented finding, described in the online issue of the Journal of Comparative Neurology, has the potential to move the scientific community one step closer to understanding why age-related neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, are uniquely human and seem to never fully manifest in other species -- including our closest evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee.

Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he's come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human.

It has long been known that birds and many other animals including turtles, salamanders and lobsters, use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate, but the nature of their global positioning systems (GPS) has not been completely understood.

A team of researchers at New York Medical College has discovered why birds, unlike mammals, lack a tissue that is specialized to generate heat. A paper published April 21, 2008 in the online peer-reviewed journal BMC Biology contains the surprising implication that the same lack of heat-generating tissue may have contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs.

Whales are the largest marine mammals in the world -- the smallest species weigh in at several tons. When whales beach themselves, they can die simply from the crushing weight of their own bodies or from overheating due to their blubber, which is needed for insulation in cold ocean waters. What causes these often fatal incidents?

Scientists around the world are researching or seeking the funds to research ways to produce meat in the laboratory -- without killing any animals. In vitro meat production would use animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce. The result would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten. Some promising steps have been made toward this technology, but we're still several years away from having in vitro meat be available to the general public. PETA is now stepping in and offering a $1 million reward to the first scientist to produce and bring to market in vitro meat.

The government of Cameroon -- with guidance from the Wildlife Conservation Society -- has created the world’s first sanctuary exclusively for the Cross River gorilla, the world’s rarest kind of great ape.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that female mice avoid mating with inbred males by ‘sensing’ the diversity of a protein type in their urine.

Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have discovered that the skin of mice can sense low levels of oxygen and regulate the production of erythropoietin, or EPO, the hormone that stimulates our bodies to produce red blood cells and allows us to adapt to high-altitude, low-oxygen environments.

Some primates have evolved big brains because their extra brainpower helps them live and reproduce longer, an advantage that outweighs the demands of extra years of growth and development they spend reaching adulthood, anthropologists from Duke University and the University of Zurich have concluded in a new study.

Having a lower social standing increases the likelihood that a monkey faced with a stressful situation will choose cocaine over food, according to a study at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. More dominant monkeys undergoing the same stressful situation had fewer changes in brain activity in areas of the brain involved in stress and anxiety and were less likely to choose cocaine.

As the saying goes, some people are born with silver spoons in their mouths. The same goes for at least one species of the animal world, according to research done in part by the University of Alberta.

Dog owners, who have noticed that their four-legged friend seem equally delighted to see them after five minutes away as five hours, may wonder if animals can tell when time passes. Newly published research from The University of Western Ontario in London, Canada may bring us closer to answering that very question.

By Caitlin Sedwick

Forty-two thousand years ago, during the last glacial advance of the Pleistocene epoch, woolly mammoths thundered across the frozen steppes of the Eurasian continent. The huge beasts thrived on the arid tundra of the last ice age, having adapted to temperatures that would chill the toes off any hairless ape. Yet, by the middle of the Holocene epoch, 6,000 years ago, the glaciers had retreated and the Eurasian woolly mammoth was on the verge of extinction. They were ultimately done in, say David Nogués-Bravo and colleagues, by climate change -- with a helping hand from humans.

The Elephant Art & Conservation Project near Chiang, Mai, Thailand, showcases and sells paintings made by the animals. The paintings are decidedly abstract, but some resemble everyday objects, mostly flowers.