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Also known as the paiche or the pirarucu, the arapaima is one of the most fascinating species of fish in the world. It’s one of the largest freshwater fish in the world, and certainly the biggest in South America, being a native to the Amazon Basin and nearby lakes and swamps. These arapaima are absolutely huge, most spanning 2.5 […]
How do organs such as the heart or kidneys know when to stop growing? A number of theories have been proposed to answer this, the most entrenched of which dating back from 1952, when the infamous Alan Turing used math to show how biological cell patterns form and how these knew when to stop division. Turing […]
A rare sight to behold, the elusive Pinocchio lizard was finally spotted after a team of researchers and photographers set on a long quest to find it. Their efforts were rewarded as this is only the third time a specimen of this long-nosed lizard was ever reported in nearly the 60 years since its discovery. […]
Paleontologists have scratched the surface of what appears to be a very promising dinosaur site near the Arctic circle, in Alaska. When these dinosaurs roamed the Earth, they stepped in mud; their footprints quickly filled with sand, and were preserved in the form we see them today, like blubs with toes. In July, the scientists […]
For some 50 years, scientists have tried — but failed — to find a way to use microbes against termites. What makes these magnificent creatures (which are often destructive for humans, and even regarded as pests) so resistant in the face of very dangerous microbes – designed specifically to kill them? University of Florida researchers […]
Instead of digging through layers of rocks, a few paleontologists focused their efforts on ‘digging’ through museum collection instead – and their efforts were quite successful. Their unique approach led to the discovery of never-before seen structures, which they think are something called dino-fuzz. The fluffy structures trapped in the small bits of ancient amber […]
For the first time in history, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have been able to eliminate dangerous drug-associated memories in mice and rats without apparently affecting other memories. Erasing memories If you’ve ever seen The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (truly a remarkable movie, which I highly recommend) […]
Evidence of surprisingly diverse life forms have been found in the 100.000 year old sediments of a subglacial lake in Antarctica. British scientists working on the site have apparently gathered samples without contaminating them. The possibility of life existing in these cold, dark lakes, hidden beneath (sometimes) kilometers of ice has fascinated researchers. We’re talking […]
Loliginidae, also known as pencil squids, are formidable animals that can change their colour matching their surroundings really fast and effortlessly. For centuries the only thing man has learned from them is how tasty they are. Now, researchers at University of California, Irvine, found there’s much more to them then a simple calamari dish. The scientists […]
It may come as a shock to you to find out that the chemical make-up of human urine hasn’t been identified until now – but it shouldn’t. The study which led to this breakthrough took over seven years and involved 20 researchers; in the end, it revealed over 3.000 metabolites (small molecules resulted through […]
The more researchers study ecosystems, the more we learn that an ecosystem behaves, in many ways, just like a living organism: thousands of years after human hunters wiped out big land animals like giant ground sloths, the ecosystems they lived in are still suffering from the effects, much like a body suffers from past trauma. […]
The fat-tailed dwarf lemur, native to the marvelous isolated ecosystem of Madagascar, is the closest human relative known to hibernate. After studying the sleeping behavior of both captive and wild lemur specimens, scientists at Duke University have discovered a great deal about how hibernation works in lemurs. The key discovery is that they can go […]
A team of evolutionary biologists at Indiana University has shown for the first time that asexual lineages of a species are doomed not necessarily from a long, slow accumulation of new mutations, but rather from fast gene conversions which unmask preexisting genetic mutations. The groundbreaking research started with the sequencing of the entire genomes of […]
With new insights derived from Game Theory, University of Pennsylvania biologists offer a mathematically based explanation for why cooperation and generosity have evolved in nature. Their work relied on the work of John Nash, who proposed the famous Nash equilibrium and advanced Game Theory in the 1950, as well as those of computational biologist William […]
One of the smallest amphibians in the world, the Gardiner’s Seychelles frog, is also one of the most eccentric. The frog doesn’t stand out through an over-glamorous coloring or some unique, wild mating call, but rather as a result of one of its weird biological features. This frog doesn’t have ears – yet it can hear. […]
A 350 million year old fossilized scorpion has become the world’s oldest known land animal to have ever walked the supercontinent Gondwana. Ancient history It’s 350 million years ago – take a moment to ponder that. Take a long human lifespan of 100 years, and multiply it by 100, and again by 100 – now […]
A surprisingly diverse range of life forms exists deep in the oceanic crust, but they live at an extremely slow pace. Long lived bacteria, which reproduce only once in 10.000 years, have been found in rocks 2.5km below the ocean floor, rocks which are 100 million years old. Viruses and fungi have also been found […]
Farmers, with the help of researchers in the field, have been desperately trying to develop new insecticides that can ward off pests looking to claim their crops. These products work with a varying degree of effectiveness. For one, the insect pests tend to develop tolerance and new solutions have to be developed, and of course […]
It’s clear that humans are now, more than ever, a driving force in evolutionary biology. Early domestication efforts through breeding and training have changed some species to the point that they’ve grown to be as we wanted them to become. The effects of climate change, a great part of which is anthropogenic, actually influence animals […]
A fossil of a small, forest-floor-dwelling animal called Megaconus puts a big question mark on the evolution of mammals – it suggests that its group predated animals, while another one, from its tree dwelling ‘cousing’ Arboroharamiya shows the group belonged to the mammals. The two fossils have paleontologists scratching their heads, not knowing where to […]
A few years ago ZME Science reported how a group of researchers at University of Maastricht in Holland were on a mission to grow the first lab cultured ‘hamburger’. After five years of painstaking work and €250,000 invested (backed by Google’s Sergey Brin), an edible version was finally developed and what better way to put it to […]
The king of all predators, the godfather of his time, la creme de la creme – Tyrannosaurus Rex (T. Rex) was the ultimate predator… or was he? When Jurassic Park came out, even though the cinema crowd went wild as T. Rex smashed and ate velociraptors (and the occasional human), at the time, there was […]
An extremely challenging study published by a team of researchers from the Stanford School of Medicine claims that through some unknown mechanism mammals can bias the sex of their offspring in order to win the genetic lottery and produce extra grandchildren. The holy graal of modern evolutionary biology After analyzing 90 years of breeding records […]
The reason why some drugs can only be taken by injecting them, instead of less intrusive solutions like oral ingestion, is because otherwise these drugs can not reach the bloodstream effectively. For people suffering from chronic diseases that require a lifetime treatment of drugs administered by injection, like those suffering from diabetes who need an […]
What if the world’s greatest unsolved heists were made by aviary burglars? Bear with me for a second. A bird is small enough to fit through cages and window cracks, it can fly in and out fast and on the sly, and if it ever gets caught, it won’t turn its partners in crime since […]
A number of human-like unique limb features, like the thumb, can be witnessed from the earliest most stages of development. Intuition tells us that this means the genetic changes and material that underlie these traits are active in the embryo stage. Recently, researchers Yale School of Medicine found there are thousands of active sequences that control […]
Located in the North Atlantic, right in between Greenland and Scotland, Faroe Islands is one of the smallest countries in the world. At the same time, however, it has also remained fairly isolated for many centuries, which in time has led to the formation of a distinct language and population. You can spot a native […]
Scientists at The University of Nottingham have come across what can be a monumental discovery, demonstrating for the first time a new layer of the human cornea. The layer, which was described in a paper in Ophthalmology, could help surgeons to dramatically improve outcomes for patients with severe cornea affections and those undergoing surgery. The […]
As reported earlier on ZME, as little as three thousand tigers are currently alive today in the wild from six subspecies, or thirty times fewer than 100 years ago. Loss of habitat and poaching are the main drivers that brought these majestic cats at the brink of extinction. Now, a new threat might put tigers […]
A new visualization technique developed by researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute used a thin sheet of laser light that beams, stepwise, into different planes of a specimen to create intricate and detailed snapshots of cells. In these pictures featured above and below you can see how zebrafish and fruit fly embryos were imaged using this novel […]
Living fossils, fast adapters Sturgeons have been conserved as fossils ever since the early Cretaceous – some 130 million years ago; they are what we call ‘living fossils’. But a new study by University of Michigan researchers revealed that in some aspects, sturgeons are one of the fastest-evolving fish on the planet. “Sturgeon are thought […]
Our general appearance and dominating facial features have come a long way since the days of our early homo sapiens ancestors some hundreds of thousands of years ago. For instance the size of our brain, and of course skull that houses it, has grown in size three times since then. Moreover, medical records only a […]
The case of birds missing out on a proper penis has been a longstanding mystery in evolutionary biology. Roughly 97% of avian species sport little or nothing like a real phallus, yet they still reproduce via internal fertilization. A new study, conducted by Martin Cohn, a developmental biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville […]
At 55 million years old, it represents the earliest known member of this broad group of animals that includes humans. It may be no bigger than a mouse, but it is a primate, and a very valuable one at that; paleontologists have named it Archicebus, which roughly translates as “ancient monkey”. The team which described […]
One big obstacle scientists face in their efforts to develop effective drugs against HIV is the virus’ capsid – an outer cell membrane-derived envelope and an inner viral protein shell that protects HIV essential proteins and genetic information. Current drugs have a hard time breaching this structure, however this might change. Using a supercomputer that crunched immense […]
New analysis of fossil teeth from extinct fossils has shown that human ancestors greatly expanded their diets 3.5 million years ago, moving on to eat grasses and also other animals. Before this, the humanlike creatures (hominis) ate a forest based diet, pretty similar to what chimps and apes eat today. Researchers from the California Academy […]
Despite the fact that triceratops are some of the most well known dinosaurs, finding a complete skeletons is an extremely rare treat. It was one of the last non-avian dinosaur genera to appear before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event – the extinction which caused the end of dinosaurs and the Mesozoic. The scientists from the Black […]
Researchers have for the first time described an unique snail species that can only be found high on top Mount Kaputar in New South Wales, Australia. The snails exhibit an atypical coloring – fluorescent pink – and can grow as large as eight inches long, true giants by snail standards. Though Triboniophorus aff. graeffei […]
Every living being is important, however in a transnational-based society everything has a price label on it, even humans. A recent study, for instance, has assessed the economic value of sharks, both alive and dead. The researchers involved in the study found that shark ecotourism currently generates more than US$314 million annually worldwide and is expected […]
The Brazilian rain forest is a home to a slew of birds of all shapes, sizes and coloring – some 1,700 species to be more precise. One of such bird is the goofy looking toucan, which can be easily recognized by its extremely long beak which can reach half the size of the bird’s body. Human […]
Turtles are maybe the most majestic creatures in the reptile world, and have always been a source of inspiration for man. Everybody knows the fable of the turtle and the hare, which teaches how slow, but sturdy and resilient strides can outwit inconsistent sprints. The turtle’s really serious about it, and as evidence it practices […]
When you think about photosynthesis, the color green probably comes to mind – almost all plants are green, and they rely on photosynthesis, right? But purple bacteria have been around for a long time, and they are among the most efficient organisms at turning sunlight into usable chemical energy. Now, a key to their light-harvesting […]
MIT engineers have taken one step forward to the realm of sci-fi gadgets, transforming bacterial cells into living calculators that can compute logarithms, divide, and take square roots, using three or fewer genetic parts. Using cells as analog circuits Inspired by how analog electronic circuits function, the researchers created synthetic computation circuits by combining existing […]
Cockroaches, the blight of every urban apartment; they’re adaptable, they’re sturdy, and they reproduce really fast. The nasty, disease carrying bugs can eat pretty much anything they find around the house, from mold and rotten food to the thing they love the most – sugar. When given the opportunity, cockroaches always go for the sugary […]
It’s the Middle Ages, the 1600s, and the Little Ice Age is striking the planet. The Little Ice Age, as the name describes it pretty much was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period (Medieval Climate Optimum). It is usually described as lasting from the 16th to the 19th centuries, but […]
A team of Canadian researchers has discovered a bacterium that thrives in the Arctic regions, much below freezing point, at -15 degrees C in one the coldest temperature ever reported for bacterial growth. The discovery of the bacterium Planococcus halocryophilus OR1 was made in Ellesmere Island, Canada, a part of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, […]
Serving as one of the strongest metaphors nature has to offer, at the later stages of its evolution the caterpillar - a soft bodied, not very pretty, ground based insect - morphs into a butterfly - a majestic flying insect of varying coloring and shape. What exactly goes inside the chrysalis the caterpillar wraps itself with for the many weeks required for metamorphosis remains a mystery, though.
The life expectancy gap between men and women is a rather attested fact, and while in the past a laborious, physically tense lifestyle for men was used to serve as an explanation, in our day and age of gender equality this doesn’t quite cut it anymore. Researchers in Japan might have stumbled across a clue […]
Only 2% of the human genome is comprised of genes, while the vast majority of genetic material is known as noncoding DNA – that is to say DNA that doesn’t code proteins. A complex plant, the carnivorous bladderwort plant, known as Utricularia gibba, recently became the center of attention for evolutionary biologists after a recently published paper by […]
A matter of great debate and ardent discussion in the field of evolutionary biology today is the transition of complex life from a watery environment to land. So far, there have been numerous speculations put forward in attempt to explain how tetrapods (four-legged land animals) first evolved and washed ashore to start life fresh as […]
