Promiscuous Lionesses Keep Cubs Safe
African lions seem to exemplify the conflict between genders. Acoalition of males will defend their right to exclusively breed with agroup of females against intruding males, who won’t think twice aboutkilling all the cubs in order to hasten the siring of their own with thefemales.
But in a subspecies of lion, infanticide and sexual coercion are much rarer – and much of it appears to be due to the savvy mating strategy of the females.
Read the whole story at my Animal Minds blog: Who's the Daddy? For Lion Cubs, It's Safer Not to Know.
Emotional Mirror Neurons in Rats
Researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have demonstrated that specific neurons in the rat brain are active both when a rat experiences pain itself and when it observes another rat in pain. The results, published today in Current Biology, suggest that sharing the emotions of others is a common mammalian trait.
Read my article on the study here: Rats Feel One Another's Pain.
When Animals are Both Defended and Defenseless
It sounds like a good conservation strategy: If a native species is being killed by invasive predators, move the native species to a predator-free sanctuary where their numbers can recover. However, a new paper suggests this approach could result in problems if the native species ever faces their invasive foes again.
Read my latest Animal Minds blog post to see how this played out in New Zealand robins: When Animals are Both Defended and Defenseless.
How Whip Spiders Smell Their Way Home
Whip spiders, or amblypygids, are arachnids, but only six of their eight legs are for walking. The front two are elongated sensory structures that process, among other things, smells. Whip spiders use these sensory legs to sniff their way back home after a night of hunting.
Read all about it in my latest Animal Minds post: The Arachnid That Smells With Its Legs
Animals in Space
Animals have played a key role in determining the safety and survivability of spaceflight. At first, animals were used to test the effects of weightlessness and the feasibility of sending a living being into space and returning it unharmed. Later, as spaceflight programs evolved and matured, scientists launched animals into space to study the effects of microgravity and spaceflight on various biological processes.
Check out my latest for Muse magazine is a timeline of animals in space.