Meet the Tarsier - they always look surprised to see you
A tiny, carnivorous primate with big eyes, these nighttime creatures are both cute and vicious. Learn more about them!!
A tiny, carnivorous primate with big eyes, these nighttime creatures are both cute and vicious. Learn more about them!!
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that our pet cats are predators at heart, especially if you just fill their bowl of kibble every now and then. But beneath that fuzzy, cute exterior is a potentially vicious killer, even if your cat doesn’t have the opportunity to practice mass destruction of small animals. That’s where playtime with interactive toys comes in! But more on that later!
There are two major categories of predators: specialists – those who hunt just one or two prey types; and generalists – animals with a broad diet or who may show a wide range of prey preferences within a species. Both types are likely related to prey available, and how an animal has adapted over time to that prey availability. These preferences could be learned during development, such as when a mother cat brings injured prey to her kittens, or could be a response to changes in the environment. If prey abundance changes, predators have to change their responses too…or go hungry.
Bees sleep more after hanging out with bees than they do after spending time alone - five hours more! It could be the flood of information they have to process after encounter so many of their colony members - the extra sleep may help with learning and memory. Read more here!
Who would have guessed that the big research questions of 2014 would be all about cats (okay, I’m biased)? Do cats really love us? Do they recognize our voices? Do they hate petting? Why do they love boxes? Does anyone understand them (even our vets?)? Why are cats so mysterious???
I wrote about several cat studies that came out in the last year or so: on whether cats ignore us when they hear our voices, whether cat bites are related to depression, whether play can prevent behavior problems, how people feel about stray cats, how little veterinarians know about cat behavior, and of course the yet-unpublished study claiming that cats aren’t attached to us.
One of my fave blogs, GrrlScientist, proposes a squirrel maze as a lovely alternative to the chemistry set as a family science project. I couldn't agree more!
Scientists are using accelerometers on various animals - from cockroaches to elephants - and correlating their movements with positive or negative experiences. So far they have found significant differences in how animals move their bodies during positive or negative states. This potentially gives us new, non-invasive tools for studying animal emotions! So cool! Now tell me, what does my Fitbit say about my mental state?
Leave it to two of my science-blogging faves, DogSpies and BuzzHootRoar to bring us the top reasons that dogs hump, complete with animated GIFs. We can all just go home now, science journalism is done.
I think most of us who adopt a kitty from a shelter (especially if they are an adult) wonder about their past life, before we brought them home. Who fed them? Were they born under a bed or under a bridge? But how important is it to adopters to know that their cat previously lived in a home, with people? A new study, "Is There a Bias Against Stray Cats in Shelters?" suggests that there might be a bias against stray cats with an unknown history.
The authors of the paper, Kathryn Dybdall and Rosemary Strasser, did three studies. In the first, they examined shelter records of adult adoptable cats (12 months or older) who had been listed as either owner-surrender or stray. Owner-surrender cats tended to be adopted on average in 26 days, compared to 32 days for stray cats.
Are cat people just a little different? Do we relate to our pets a little differently too? Yes. I wrote on this subject for the Dodo many months ago, and was interviewed for this excellent piece by Gwynn Guilford that was released this week on Quartz (qz.com).