Will the world’s fastest land animal make a comeback in India, nearly half a century after it became extinct in the country? A serious initiative is afoot to bring the cheetah back to India and make it, as many wildlife experts say, the flagship species
of the country’s grasslands, which do not have a single prominent animal now. A similar effort in the 1970s — India was then talking to Iran, which had around 300 cheetahs at that time — flopped after the Shah of Iran was deposed and the negotiations never progressed
A Maori legend about a giant, man-eating bird has been confirmed by scientists. Te Hokioi was a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips, in an account given to Sir George Gray, an early governor of New Zealand. It was said to be named after its cry and to have raced the hawk to the heavens
. Scientists now think the stories handed down by word of mouth and depicted in rock drawings refer to Haast’s eagle, a raptor that became extinct just 500 years ago
Decades of inbreeding is causing immense suffering for pedigree dogs, who are plagued by painful and deadly genetic diseases as a result of breeding for appearance, a UK investigation has found. The BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed (video), aired on ABC1 on Thursday, shows boxers suffering from epilepsy and spaniels with brains far too big for their skulls. Other painful disabilities and deformities, including poor gait and severe heart and respiratory problems, plague purebreds like west highland terriers, golden retrievers and german shepherds
Wolves do better on some tests of logic than dogs, a new study found, revealing differences between the animals that scientists suspect result from dogs’ domestication. In experiments, dogs followed human cues to perform certain tasks despite evidence they could see suggesting a different strategy would be smarter, while wolves made the more logical choice based on their observations. In fact, dogs’ responses were similar to human infants, who also prioritise following the example of adult humans
David Bowie has had a large, yellow, hairy spider from Malaysia named after him. A German spider specialist told the Observer newspaper he named the new species after Bowie — whose album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was a huge hit in 1972 — because he wanted to raise awareness about the discovery. Peter Jaeger, who has found 200 new species of arachnids in a decade, says he’s named it Heteropoda davidbowie. Jaeger says most of the species he’s uncovered are endangered
Google’s algorithm for ranking web pages can be adapted to determine which species are critical for sustaining ecosystems, say researchers. According to a paper in PLoS Computational Biology, PageRank
can be applied to the study of food webs. These are the complex networks of who eats whom in an ecosystem. The scientists say their version of PageRank could be a simple way of working out which extinctions would lead to ecosystem collapse
Researchers used stem cells to grow a replacement tooth for an adult mouse, the first time scientists have developed a fully functioning three-dimensional organ replacement. The researchers at the Tokyo University of Science created a set of cells that contained genetic instructions to build a tooth, and then implanted this tooth germ
into the mouse’s empty tooth socket. The tooth grew out of the socket and through the gums, as a natural tooth would. Once the engineered tooth matured, after 11 weeks, it had a similar shape, hardness and response to pain or stress as a natural tooth, and worked equally well for chewing. The researchers suggested that using similar techniques in humans could restore function to patients with organ failure
It is not uncommon for workplaces to have pets. Perhaps a fish or a bird, or at most a dog or cat roaming around the waiting room of a vet’s clinic. But the Yarrambat Veterinary Hospital, north of Melbourne, has its very own horse who trots around the surgery, nibbling rubbish in the bins and hanging off whoever he can. But this horse is different from most. At just 35 kilograms and 59 centimetres tall, 12-month-old Koda is said to be Australia’s smallest horse. He was born the size of a cat and he is still smaller than some dogs, but what he lacks in size he makes up for with his gigantic personality
Spanish researchers claim to have discovered evidence of a type of giant worm that lived 475 million years ago and was up to one metre in length. The fossilised tracks of the marine worms were found in the Cabaneros National Park in central Spain in an area that was a seabed during the Lower Ordovician period, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) said. It said the creatures lived in horizontal galleries of five metres in length and 15-20 centimetres in diameter under the seabed
The stunning metallic green sheen of the jewelled beetle
is produced by microscopic cells in its exoskeleton. Researchers reporting in the journal Science have revealed that, with no green pigments, these structures make the beetle appear iridescent green. These cells, they said, were almost identical to hi-tech liquid crystals
Bats use sonar to navigate and hunt. Many have been killed by wind turbines, however, which their sonar doesn’t seem to recognise as a danger. Surprisingly, radar signals could help keep bats away from wind turbines, scientists have now discovered
A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered. Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another. The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination
Rats are able to play the odds in a gambling task
designed by scientists to test the biology of addiction. In the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, researchers describe how the rodents developed a strategy
in a timed task where they make choices to earn treats. The rodents avoided high-reward options because these carried high risks of punishment — their sugar pellet supply being cut off for a period
New research shows small native animals in the Northern Territory seem to benefit from the presence of dingoes. Dr Mike Letnic from the University of Sydney has studied areas in central Australia on either side of a dingo fence. He found that rather than reducing the numbers of small native animals, dingoes seem to encourage them to flourish because dingoes suppress predators such as foxes
Octopus and squid can hear. The discovery resolves a century-long debate over whether cephalopods, the group of sea creatures that includes octopus, squid, cuttlefish and nautiluses, can hear sounds underwater. Compared to fish, octopus and squid do not appear to hear particularly well. But the fact they can hear raises the possibility that these intelligent animals may use sound to catch prey, communicate with one another or listen out for predators
The third contaminated pet food scare in six months has upset veterinarians and prompted calls for stronger regulations. The Australian company Virbac has pulled some products from veterinarians’ shelves after small-animal specialists established a possible link between Vietnamese-made dog dental chews and an outbreak of mysterious illnesses in dogs
As if flying around in the dark swooping and diving to catch insects was not tricky enough, bats also listen for their fellow hunters. A study has revealed how these winged mammals recognise other bats’ voices
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now genetically engineered a strain of mice whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for the human version. Svante Paabo, in whose laboratory the mouse was engineered, promised several years ago that when the project was completed, We will speak to the mouse
. He did not promise that the mouse would say anything in reply, doubtless because a great many genes must have undergone evolutionary change to endow people with the faculty of language, and the new mouse was gaining only one of them. So it is perhaps surprising that possession of the human version of FOXP2 does in fact change the sounds that mice use to communicate with other mice, as well as other aspects of brain function
Rooks have a remarkable aptitude for using tools, scientists have found. Tests on captive birds revealed that they could craft and employ tools to solve a number of different problems. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, came as a surprise as rooks do not use tools in the wild. Despite this, the UK team said the birds’ skills rivalled those of well-known tool users such as chimpanzees and New Caledonian crows
One hundred million years ago a termite was wounded and its abdomen split open. The resin of a pine tree slowly enveloped its body and the contents of its gut. In what is now the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar, the resin fossilised and was buried until it was chipped out of an amber mine. The resin had seeped into the termite’s wound and preserved even the microscopic organisms in its gut. These microbes are the forebears of the microbes that live in the guts of today’s termites and help them digest wood. The fossil is the earliest example of a relationship between an animal and the microbes in its gut
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