Science

Mother goats can remember their kids’ voices more than a year after they have been separated, a study has found.

Researchers recorded calls made by five-week-old pygmy goats and played them back to their mothers.

The mother goats were able to recognise their individual kids’ calls after as long as 12 to 18 months.

Study leader Dr Elodie Briefer, from Queen Mary, University of London, said: Because of the difficulties involved in following the same individuals over years, long-term recognition has been studied in only a few species.

Our study shows that animals remember socially important partners.

The research is reported in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Sika deer eavesdrop on monkey chatter in order to find food, say scientists.

A team from Kyoto University, Japan, tested how macaque monkey calls affected the feeding behaviour of the deer that live on Yakushima Island.

Previous research has focussed on species listening to one another to avoid danger.

But when scientists played macaque calls from hidden speakers, the deer gathered nearby, indicating that they associate the sounds with benefits.

The results were published in the journal Behavioural Processes — via redwolf.newsvine.com

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. In some trials, the group with fewer dots took up more space; in others, the dots moved. All three bears could use the number of dots to guide their choices, but the bear trained to pick groups with more dots performed better on its tests and could also discriminate with moving dots, researchers report online this month in the journal Animal Behaviour — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The pesky cane toad, which has played havoc with native species, could soon be facing death by its own poison.

Native tadpoles are repelled by the cane toads’ poison, but cane toads themselves are attracted to it.

Now, the University of Sydney’s Professor Rick Shine says work is underway to manufacture a poison pill to target the rogue tadpoles.

We’re hoping that we can come up with a relatively non-toxic pure form of the chemical that’ll last for a long time, Professor Shine said.

It’ll be safe to use [and] it’ll make it a lot easier to go and catch those cane toad tadpoles from that pond down the road — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Specially chosen for their spring frenzy and voracious appetite for dung, two new species of European dung beetles have arrived in Australia to improve cattle pastures and finish off a job well started through more than 40 years of dung beetle work by CSIRO and partners.

Collected in the south of France, Onthophagus vacca and Bubas bubalus are the first new species of dung beetles imported in more than 20 years through a project led by CSIRO and supported by Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) — via redwolf.newsvine.com

In the 1940s, visitors watching football games at Berkeley’s Californian Memorial Stadium would often be plagued by beetles. The insects swarmed their clothes and bit them on the necks and hands. The cause: cigarettes. The crowds smoked so heavily that a cloud of smoke hung over the stadium. And where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And where there’s fire, there are fire-chaser beetles.

While most animals flee from fires, fire-chaser beetles (Melanophila) head towards a blaze. They can only lay their eggs in freshly burnt trees, whose defences have been scorched away. Fire is such an essential part of the beetles’ life cycle that they’ll travel over 60 kilometres to find it. They’re not fussy about the source, either. Forest fires will obviously do, but so will industrial plants, kilns, burning oil barrels, vats of hot sugar syrup, and even cigarette-puffing sports fans.

The beetles find fire with a pair of pits below their middle pair of legs. Each is only as wide as a few human hairs, and consists of 70 dome-shaped sensors. They look a bit like insect eyes. In the 1960s, scientists showed that the sensors detect the infrared radiation given off by hot objects. Each one is filled with liquid, which expands when it absorbs infrared radiation. This motion stimulates sensory cells and tells the beetle that there’s heat afoot.

The ability to sense infrared radiation explains why, in the past, fire-chasers have gathered in places with neither open flames nor smoke plumes—they don’t need to see the signs of fire to know it’s there. Their detectors must be extraordinarily sensitive for they have arrived at sites that are dozens of miles from the nearest forests — via redwolf.newsvine.com