When I was young, Pluto was still a planet and nine was my lucky number, so I really liked that we had nine planets in our solar system – it made it easy for me to remember. My love of astronomy out-lasted Pluto’s status as a planet, and as I write this I am actually wearing a solar system necklace; each planet is represented, yet it only has eight planets on it.
Imagine an alien. If you’ve been influenced by movies and television at all, the creature you’re picturing is probably two-legged, two-armed, bipedal and with a reminiscently human layout – head, eyes and mouth somewhere near the top. And while most of us recognise that this vision of extra-terrestrial life is a bit silly, conversations about life elsewhere in the universe are often still painfully unimaginative.
Genetically modified organisms, especially plants, get a lot of hate. People – even some very environmentally conscious people – seem to fear or hate GM crops. Yet, as someone who is very worried about climate change, very worried about the human-induced mass extinction event that is happening before our eyes, and worried about the livelihoods of farmers and about those people that have so little food they go to bed hungry every night…
How much of the land on Earth is covered by humans? (Asked by Lynne)
Approximately 10%.
This question is an interesting one because, when my friend asked me the other day, I could tell her confidently that not only did science know the answer, science had multiple different ways to quantify that answer, but that I had absolutely no idea what it was.
Great-tailed grackles are very flexible, quickly learning to associate new cues with food, but new research suggests this doesn’t help them innovate to solve new problems.
I’ve previously blogged on the topic of edible insects, so I was thrilled to hear from Ghergich about their new blog and infographics on the subject. It is great to see real recipes using insects as an ingredient and I’m pleased to see how far the industry has progressed since I wrote my original post. So here’s a guest post for Curious Meerkat by Tafline Laylin for Ghergich.com, with a special introduction by Kaitlyn Blakeley. This article was originally posted on Fix.com.
Thinking about ways to increase your protein intake? You might want to think about bugs.
Yes, that’s right, we said it: Edible insects are an environmentally friendly addition to your dinner plate. How are they environmentally friendly? For starters, they need less water and less feed than traditional sources of protein. They also don’t release the same amount of greenhouse gases and don’t have the same troubling welfare issues as other animals that are harvested for their meat.
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What do those cute little baby sea turtles do after their epic sprint to the water? Until very recently, we simply didn’t know. Nobody had been able to study the movement of juvenile sea turtles in natural conditions – they were simply too small and too difficult to track. But a new study reveals for the first time just what the young turtles have been up to in the Pacific ocean – and it shows that they are just as determined and tenacious as they were on land, fighting strong currents to reach their preferred feeding grounds.
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A Guest Post for Curious Meerkat by Erica McAlister
I have just finished four weeks of fieldwork collecting insects in Dominica. I can’t really complain about that except that the fieldwork did not follow my usual routine. Generally when employed at The Natural History Museum your fieldwork is either part of a general collecting trip hoping to find as much as possible (work with Dipterists Forum); part of a research focused group (me collecting flies from Potatoes in Peru); or part of a consultancy project (Mosquitoes in Tajikistan). However this trip was different, I wasn’t marauding around the countryside with collector’s glee, this time I had to teach as well as collect.
Habitat disturbance, be that logging, agriculture, or roads and infrastructure, can be hugely damaging to biodiversity. But even after the visible wounds have healed, the genetic scars of past disturbance remain in the genome, according to results from a two-decade-long study of shrubs in Spain.
The effects of habitat disturbance on plants can be seen in the genomes of the next generation, a new study reports for the first time. The team compared the genetic and epigenetic profiles of shrubs (Lavandula latifolia) that had been experimentally disturbed 20 years previously, with those left undisturbed for more than 50 years.
What big eyes you have! The net-casting spider Deinopis spinosa uses it’s enormous eyes to accurately trap prey at night, according to new research.
A new study published in Biology Letters this month shows that net-casting spiders (Deinopis spinosa) use their enlarged, secondary eyes to spot prey in the dark.
Brains rather than braun may have guided our ancestors out of Africa, but new research suggests primates’ big brains are no longer the assets they once were.
A study published in the journal Evolution reports that larger brains are directly related to an increased risk of extinction in modern primates. Researchers led by Alejandro Gonzalez-Voyer at Doñana Biological Station in Spain, compared published data on 474 species of mammal, with their IUCN Redlist categorisations, to find out how different biological traits influence extinction risk. The team found that larger brains tend to be associated with a longer gestation period, longer weaning period and smaller litter sizes, all of which indirectly increase extinction risk.
Did you hear the one about the drunken monkey? Primates frequently encounter and consume alcohol in their natural environment, most commonly through fermented fruit. But a study published last year showed that some Chimpanzees are actively seeking it out, and have even developed tools to help them access their preferred tipple!
I’ve written before on the topic of animals and recreational drug use. Research has shown that many animals consume alcohol in their diet, from treeshrews drinking alcoholic nectar in Malaysia to Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) drinking fermented berries of the Brazilian Pepper Tree (Schunus terebinthifolius). But deliberate consumption of alcohol – which is, let’s not forget, a poison – is harder to find.
A new fossil discovered in France promises to shed light on the murky evolutionary history of spiders. The rare three-dimensional fossil of the new species shows that it is nearly, but not quite, a spider, lacking the key silk-spinning adaptation that defines spiders. This 300-million-year-old arachnid is our closest view yet of the ancestor to all spiders.
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