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Science Tuesday - Animals
Nov. 30th, 2004 07:31 am
Sexier Posterior Evolves Almost Overnight
By CARL ZIMMER, The New York Times, November 30, 2004
Swallows are getting sexier.
Male barn swallows attract females with long tail feathers, and European researchers have observed that over the last 20 years those feathers have become much longer.
"We've demonstrated quite a dramatic change in a short period of time," said Dr. Anders Pape Moller, an evolutionary biologist at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, who conducted the research with Dr. Tibor Szep of the College of Nyiregyhaza in Hungary. The findings are to be published in The Journal of Evolutionary Biology.
( Read more )
SIDE EFFECT: Good Dogs, Bad People, and Cats
By JAMES GORMAN, The New York Times, November 30, 2004
Do animals have moral values?
It's a tough question. We can't rely on exit polls. As everyone knows, it's impossible to get a straight answer from a cat.
The question comes to mind because of a report in the Nov. 25 issue of Nature by Karthik Panchanathan and Dr. Robert Boyd of the University of California, Los Angeles. The researchers did a mathematical analysis of how cooperation and punishment might make evolutionary sense.
( Read more )
By CARL ZIMMER, The New York Times, November 30, 2004
Swallows are getting sexier.
Male barn swallows attract females with long tail feathers, and European researchers have observed that over the last 20 years those feathers have become much longer.
"We've demonstrated quite a dramatic change in a short period of time," said Dr. Anders Pape Moller, an evolutionary biologist at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, who conducted the research with Dr. Tibor Szep of the College of Nyiregyhaza in Hungary. The findings are to be published in The Journal of Evolutionary Biology.
( Read more )
SIDE EFFECT: Good Dogs, Bad People, and Cats
By JAMES GORMAN, The New York Times, November 30, 2004
Do animals have moral values?
It's a tough question. We can't rely on exit polls. As everyone knows, it's impossible to get a straight answer from a cat.
The question comes to mind because of a report in the Nov. 25 issue of Nature by Karthik Panchanathan and Dr. Robert Boyd of the University of California, Los Angeles. The researchers did a mathematical analysis of how cooperation and punishment might make evolutionary sense.
( Read more )
