Are Cloned Animals Born Old?

Scientists are studying Dolly the sheep's "siblings" in order to study the health of cloned animals - and resolve a puzzle over whether they age normally.  "I'm feeling the joints for any kind of heat or swelling."  Veterinary surgeon Dr Sandra Corr puts Daisy the sheep through a very hands-on physical examination.  "I'm looking for any signs of crepitus or lameness," she says, "Anything that might indicate the onset of disease or osteoarthritis."

http://tinyurl.com/zungubj

Secret Life of Animals, Captured on Camera

Scientists trying to learn about the lifestyles of elusive critters (tigers and cougars come to mind) have their work cut out for them.  Many animals will smell or hear a researcher long before the researcher sees them. As for observing nocturnal animals? Forget it. But in the last few years, many wildlife researchers studying animals in their natural habitat have had a technological assist from camera traps. These devices lie in wait until a passing animal triggers their motion sensor.

http://tinyurl.com/jsmwz48

Researchers: Female Animals May Be Less Colorful to Avoid Harassment

Scientists have come up with a new explanation for why female animals are usually less colorful and decorated than their male counterparts — they could be seeking to avoid sexual harassment.  The reason for the relative drabness of many female animal species has long been a source of puzzlement, with various theories posited over the years.  Males compete for the sexual attention of females, which need to be picky about their mates because in the animal kingdom they generally look after any resulting offspring.

http://tinyurl.com/hzsmknd

Oxygen-Free Animals Don't Exist After All

In 2010 a group of scientists announced that they’d found evidence of multi-cellular life in hyper-salty, oxygen-free pools at the bottom of the ocean. A new study indicates that what they thought were living animals were actually corpses taken over by bacterial “body-snatchers.”  Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have published a paper in BMC Biology that dashes the hopes of biologists on Earth and those who hope to find life in extreme conditions on other planets. Their findings cast doubt on whether or not metazoans can ever live entirely without oxygen.

http://tinyurl.com/heuogmq

The Whale Too Big for Its Own Good

For decades, scientists have tried to solve a deadly puzzle: Why can’t highly intelligent blue whales avoid the collisions with ships that are a leading cause of mortality for the endangered marine mammals?  The short answer, according to a first-of-its-kind study, is that they have never learned to steer clear of big objects like ships. The largest animal that’s ever lived, at more than 100 feet long and 320,000 pounds, the blue whale for 30 million years never had to move out of anything’s way.

http://tinyurl.com/qfxb35z

Study Reveals People's Hormonal Link With Dogs

Dogs are called "man's best friend" - women's, too - and scientists say the bond between people and their pooches may be deeper than you might think.  Researchers in Japan said on Thursday oxytocin, a hormone that among other things helps reinforce bonds between parents and their babies, increases in humans and their dogs when they interact, particularly when looking into one another's eyes.  They described a series of experiments that suggest that people and their canine companions have mutually developed this instinctual bonding mechanism in the thousands of years since dogs were first domesticated.

http://tinyurl.com/l58duxy

200 Year Old Whale Offers Clues to Living Longer

Scientists are hoping the fountain of youth might be hidden inside a whale species that can live up to 200 years.  Joao Pedro de Magalhaes and his team at the University of Liverpool sequenced the genome of the bowhead whale, the longest living mammal on earth. The team wanted to understand why they live so long and don't succumb to some of the same illnesses as humans do earlier in life.  "One of the big mysteries of biology is understanding species differences including species differences in aging," Magalhaes told CBS News.

http://tinyurl.com/ncjo3z3

Killer Whales Learn to Speak Dolphin

Are killer whales multilingual?  A new study from the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute has found that captive orcas kept with bottlenose dolphins adopt the signature clicks and whistles of their tank mates. But some scientists question claims made in the paper that this knowledge can benefit endangered orca populations in the wild.

http://tinyurl.com/krf98du

New Deep Sea Species Found Off Australian Coast

Scientists say two new animal species discovered off the Australian coast in 1986 have the potential to "reshape the tree of life."  A study in scientific journal PLOS ONE describes the mushroom-shaped organisms for the first time since their discovery. Although the organisms, known as Dendrogramma enigmatica and Dendrogramma discoides, resemble extinct forms from more than 600 million years ago, scientists have not classified them into an existing animal group.

http://tinyurl.com/nkrr8e3

Humpback Whale Breaches Off New York City

There she blows!  A humpback whale, dubbed Jerry by researchers, showed that some summer tourists come by sea, as the magnificent creature surfaced off the coast of the Big Apple.  Jerry got a gorgeous glimpse of the Empire State Building, and surely must be heading to Broadway to take in a performance of “The Little Mermaid.”  Scientists describe Jerry’s behavior as spyhopping, a move that’s much like humans treading water and allows the massive marine mammals to take a look at their surroundings.
http://tinyurl.com/m7tr7fv

Meet the World’s Newest Dolphin Species

Welcome the newest addition to the Flipper family, the Australian humpback dolphin.  The Australian humpback dolphin has been around for millennia. We just didn’t know it, as the species was lumped in with other humpback dolphins that roam the world’s oceans. But in a new study, scientists say they’ve solved a 300-year-old taxonomic riddle, declaring that the Down Under dolphin is a separate species from its African and Asian relatives.

http://tinyurl.com/o7hhx54

Scientists Tagging Sharks To Predict Hurricanes

Fifty sharks, tuna, tarpon and billfish are swimming around the Gulf of Mexico right now fitted with satellite-linked tags to help scientists track water temperatures and perhaps one day help improve hurricane forecasting.The devices were put there by researchers at the University of Miami who have tagged a total of 750 animals in the past 10 years to record water temperature and salinity at different depths.  The fish had merely provided data of interest to biologists, but earlier this year scientists realized the temperature figures coming back from the animals could be crucial to humans living in the path of hurricanes.

http://tinyurl.com/p24g2kd

Elephants Can Tell One Language From Another

Wild elephants can distinguish between human languages, and they can tell whether a voice comes from a man, woman or boy, a new study says.  That's what researchers found when they played recordings of people for elephants in Kenya. Scientists say this is an advanced thinking skill that other animals haven't shown. It lets elephants figure out who is a threat and who isn't.  The result shows that while humans are studying elephants, the clever animals are also studying people and drawing on their famed powers of memory, said study author Karen McComb.
http://tinyurl.com/ptgoxq4

Brazil Dolphin First New River Species Since 1918

Scientists in Brazil have discovered the first new river dolphin species since the end of World War One.  Named after the Araguaia river where it was found, the species is only the fifth known of its kind in the world.  Writing in the journal Plos One, the researchers say it separated from other South American river species more than two million years ago.  There are believed to be about 1,000 of the creatures living in the Araguaia river basin.  River dolphins are among the world's rarest creatures.

http://tinyurl.com/ovh7veg

Ancient Chinese Cat Shakes Up Domestication Theory

A cat-and-mouse game played out in a Chinese village 5,300 years ago is helping scientists understand how wild felines became the tame pets we know today.  Scientists believe it was the cat's appetite that led to domestication. Grain stored by ancient farmers was a magnet for rodents, which in turn attracted wild cats.  Over time, the cats adapted to village life and became tame around their human hosts.  This is, at least, the leading theory, derived from archaeological evidence in the Middle East, rather than China. But bones recently discovered in a Chinese village add weight to the idea that felines took on pest-control duties in ancient times, says researcher Fiona Marshall of Washington University in St. Louis.

http://tinyurl.com/nbdm77y

Cute New Animal Discovered

The animal kingdom just got a lot cuter.  Scientists have discovered a a new species of mammal — a raccoon-like furball with the face of a teddy bear.

http://tinyurl.com/kjnqqca

Bears Can 'Count' And Compare Numbers, Showing Cognitive Ability, Scientists Say

If there's anything more impressive than a bear's size, it's its intelligence. Bears can learn to ride bicycles, use tools, and as new research shows, "count." Scientists trained three American black bears (Ursus Americanus) to discriminate between groups of dots on a touchscreen computer: Two bears learned to pick the group with fewer dots, while the third learned to choose the group with more dots.

http://tinyurl.com/827h453

Video: Hibernating Black Bears Could Have Supernatural Healing Abilities

A new discovery that hibernating black bears have a remarkable ability to heal has scientists scratching their heads, but it could be exciting news for human medicine. Researchers found that despite a huge drop in heart rate, metabolism and body temperature, hibernating black bears are able to heal without any scars or infections.

http://tinyurl.com/6nztlct

12 New Frog Species Discovered

Years of combing tropical mountain forests, shining flashlights under rocks and listening for croaks in the night have paid off for a team of Indian scientists which has discovered 12 new frog species plus three others thought to have been extinct.

http://tinyurl.com/3hgfdah