News by Subject Biology

Like humans, cattle are social creatures with complex relationships that change as group dynamics evolve. New research into social grooming interactions between a small herd of dairy cows illustrated patterns of behavior that could be used to better align future farm management practices with the social needs of bovines. Previous research has demonstrated that happier cows are healthier and more productive.

Dog brains, just as human brains, process speech hierarchically: intonations at lower, word meanings at higher stages, according to a new study by Hungarian researchers. The study reveals exciting speech processing similarities between us and a speechless species.

Researchers compared human-oriented communicative behaviours of young miniature pigs and dogs kept as companion animals. They found that in a neutral situation pigs turn to humans, initiating interactions as much as dogs do. But in a problem solving situation the two species behave differently. Natural differences between pigs and dogs prevail despite similar socialization if an exciting challenge comes, the research suggests.

Warmblood fragile foal syndrome is a severe, usually fatal, genetic disease that manifests itself after birth in affected horses. Due to the defect, the connective tissue is unstable. Under force, the skin tears from the tissue underneath and the joints can dislocate. Researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Halle have now been able to prove that the disease did not stem from the English thoroughbred stallion Dark Ronald XX. The results were published in Animal Genetics.

Silver strands and graying hair is a sign of aging in humans, but things aren't so simple for our closest ape relatives--the chimpanzee. A new study published today in the journal PLOS ONE by researchers at the George Washington University found graying hair is not indicative of a chimpanzee's age.

The Raspberry Pi Virtual Reality system (PiVR) is a versatile tool for presenting virtual reality environments to small, freely moving animals (such as flies and fish larvae), according to a study published July 14, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by David Tadres and Matthieu Louis of the University of California, Santa Barbara. The use of PiVR, together with techniques like optogenetics, will facilitate the mapping and characterization of neural circuits involved in behavior.

The history of human and cat relationships began 10,000 years ago. Its origins, however, still remain a mystery mainly due to scarcity of research material. Gaps in our knowledge in the subject are successfully filled by a group of researchers from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toru?. Dr Magdalena Krajcarz has made an attempt to find ancestors of domestic cats in Neolithic Central Europe. An article discussing the topic has recently been published in PNAS.