Biology

A new species of stiletto snake has been discovered living in the rainforests of Liberia and Guinea. The Branch’s stiletto snake (Atractaspis branchi) in its natural habitat. Image credit: Mark-Oliver Rödel. The stiletto snakes, also known as burrowing asps, are members of Atractaspis, a genus with over 20 validly described …

Humans and other mammals are limited to seeing a range of wavelengths of light called visible light, which includes the wavelengths of the rainbow. But infrared radiation, which has a longer wavelength, is all around us. People, animals and objects emit infrared light as they give off heat, and objects …

  Like us, mice can’t see in the infrared. Well, most mice can’t. There are a few rodents in a laboratory that can see infrared light after being enhanced with special nanoparticles. The team thinks a similar procedure could work on humans, giving you night vision without any bulky goggles. …

Fairy circles are extremely ordered round patches of bare soil within arid grasslands. They are known from southwestern Africa around the Namib Desert and from Western Australia. Up to now, scientists offered several theories to explain the honeycomb-like pattern formed by these circles. Some believed termites or ants nibble away …

Insect migration has long been fascinating to me. I’ve written several posts on this before, including one on migrating moths and one on painted lady butterflies. We’ve long known that many dragonfly species are long-distance migrants, including the large charismatic green darner. Citizen science records have helped document that migration, …

When humans go through big changes in life, their personality traits can change. In a study published in the Journal of Research in Personality, a duo of researchers from Michigan State University found that this also happens with dogs — and to a surprisingly large degree. Additionally, the team found …

Deep learning has recently revolutionized the field of machine hearing and vision, by allowing computers to perform human-like activities including seeing, listening, and speaking. Such systems are constructed from biomimetic, ‘deep,’ artificial neural networks. Now a team of researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine has created deep …

A types of aloe thought to be brand-new to scientific research has actually been located in Somaliland, a self-declared state, globally taken into consideration to be a self-governing area of Somalia. The Somali red aloe(Aloe sanguinalis), with co-author Dr. Ahmed Ibrahim Awale, at Lafarug, Somaliland, in January 2018. Picture debt: …

The cassowary(Casuarius casuarius)is a huge, flightless bird that births a popular headgear (or casque). The feature of the cranial framework has actually brought in substantial interest as well as conjecture for virtually 2 centuries and also pet specialists have actually suggested numerous concepts, consisting of that it’s a safety tool …

According to a brand-new research study, released in the Process of the Royal Culture B, motions of monkeys comply with the exact same mathematical patterns– called etymological regulations– as are seen in human language. Gestures of our primate relatives might be a lot more comparable to our very own language …