The Verge Review of Animals: the cow

When we review animals here on The Verge, some of the conceptual fun comes from treating things that have been shaped by the callous hand of evolution like they’re high-tech gadgets. But cows — or more formally, members of the species Bos taurus — actually are as carefully designed as the iPhone, except that Jony Ive didn't need to capture and tame a herd of wild BlackBerrys to make one. The cow is an invaluable invention and a terrible animal, and we have only ourselves to blame.

http://tinyurl.com/jhfb4mt

Listen To These Lovely Cats

"Oh, evolution," writes Mara Grunbaum in her new, about-to-come-out book, WTF Evolution,"You were doing so well with the lynx. You made it a fierce and graceful hunter, you gave it a luxurious spotted coat, you gave it pretty yellow eyes and tufted ears — and then you made it sound like this ..."

http://tinyurl.com/ptqv7ft

-Igor Purlantov

How Zebras Got Their Stripes

How did the zebra get its stripes? It sounds like the theme for a “Just So” story that Rudyard Kipling never got around to writing. You would think that someone would have come up with the definitive answer by now, but, in fact, the reason zebras have stripes remains a biological mystery. The laws of evolution suggest that the random emergence of stripes on the ancestors of modern zebras must have had some sort of advantage that allowed them to reproduce more prolifically than their unstriped brethren. The striped animals would have become more common with each generation, ultimately outlasting the ones without stripes.

http://tiny.cc/97jiex

-Igor Purlantov

Culture in Humans and Apes Has Same Evolutionary Roots

Culture is not a trait that is unique to humans. By studying orangutan populations, a team of researchers headed by anthropologist Michael Krützen from the University of Zurich has demonstrated that great apes also have the ability to learn socially and pass them down through a great many generations.

http://tinyurl.com/3byyxuy

Human Brain Wired to Notice Animals

Surrounded by technology and urbanity though we may be, the human brain remains profoundly hard-wired to respond to animals. When people are shown pictures of animals, specific parts of the amygdala — a structure central to pleasure and pain, fear and reward — react almost instantly.

http://tinyurl.com/3rzdvhm