Latest Megafauna Stories
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Scientists using GPS technology and modern 3D acceleration measurements have mapped out the annual migration of the Galapagos giant tortoise. The team from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology found that the male tortoise can travel up to 6.2 miles into the highlands of the island, and they usually start their annual migration at the beginning of the dry season. According to the findings, only the full grown animals migrate,...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Disentangling the effects of climate change from those related to human activities is a major challenge for scientists who study the Earth's environmental history. Researchers from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst have recently gotten creative with poop, using a special biomarker found in human feces to establish the first human presence, the appearance of grazing animals and human population dynamics in a landscape. "We are...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online When long-finned pilot whales sense the presence of a potential danger, they use synchronized swimming as a defense mechanism, an international team of scientists has discovered. Scientists from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC) and the Conservation, Information and Study on Cetaceans (CIRCE) studied the behavior of the approximately 300 members of the Globicephala melas species...
[ Video 1 ] [ Video 2 ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Researchers tracking the behavior of emperor penguins near the sea have identified the importance of sea ice for their feeding habits. The team wrote in the journal PLOS ONE about the emperor penguins foraging behavior through the birds' chick-rearing season. Emperor penguins spend more time than other penguins diving for food, and only use about 30 percent of their time at sea to take short breaks to rest...
Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A duck will carefully wade into the water before allowing her ducklings to follow suit. Bears will leave their young undercover before beckoning them into a clearing they have deemed safe. Your own mother would insist upon taking you by the hand before venturing across a city street. These are all protective acts of mothers in the animal kingdom. But not every mother necessarily subscribes to this model of parenting....
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Apes, like humans, experience a decline in happiness during middle age, which rebounds as they approach old age, according to a new study that suggests the infamous mid-life crisis may have biological, rather than sociological, roots. Humans across many cultures report a dip in happiness during their late-40s when compared with their life satisfaction during younger and older years. In the current study, an international team...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online The metabolite homarine is a useful indicator of the health status of whale sharks, according to new research from experts at the Georgia Aquarium and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Dr. Alistair Dove, the Director of Research & Conservation at Georgia Aquarium and an adjunct professor at Georgia Tech, and colleagues, discovered that the concentration of homarine in the serum was a major difference between...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A discovery on the south coast of South Africa is leading to implications that modern humans evolved in this location. Scientists have found evidence for an advanced Stone Age technology that dates back 71,000 years at Pinnacle Point near Mossel Bay. The technology allows projectiles to be thrown at a greater distance and killing power. Considering the technology, along with other findings of advanced technologies and evidence for...
Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Perhaps one of the greatest things about science is that there’s still so much left to discover. Though scientists have been studying and cataloguing the world for hundreds of years, there are still creatures and mysteries which continue to elude us. Take, for instance, the spade-toothed whale. According to the Telegraph, scientists weren’t aware of this species of whale until some pieces of bone were discovered on an isolated...
ROCHELLE PARK, New Jersey, November 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Sapiens International Corporation [http://www.sapiens.com/home.html ], (NASDAQ and TASE: SPNS), a global provider of innovative insurance software solutions, announced today that Hagit Ashkenazi has joined Sapiens to head up its North America Life & Annuities [http://www.sapiens.com/life-insurance-software.htm ] (L&A) Insurance Professional Services operation. (Logo:...
Latest Megafauna Reference Libraries
The Baikal seal (Pusa sibirica), also known as the nerpa or the Lake Baikal seal, is a true seal in the Phocidae family that is native to Lake Baikal located in Siberia. This species is one of three seals that reside solely in fresh water areas. It is not known exactly how these seals came to inhabit such an isolated area, but some experts assert that a sea-passage was formed that linked the Arctic Ocean and Lake Baikal. The Baikal seal is one of the smallest of all true seal species,...
Image Caption: Fossil of Feresa Attenuata, Shimonoseki Marine Science Museum KAIKYOUKAN, Japan. Credit: OpenCage/Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 2.5) The pygmy killer whale is widely distributed in tropical and sub-tropical waters worldwide. Regular sightings of this species occur off the coast of Hawaii and Japan, and also in the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka and Lesser Antilles. In the Atlantic the pygmy killer whale has been seen off the coast of South Carolina and Senegal. This species swims in...
The Ross seal (Ommatophoca rossii) is a true seal in the Phocidae family, and can only be found on pack ice in Antarctica. This species was formally described by James Clark Ross in 1841, during his British Antarctic Expedition. It is very uncommon to see in its range and rarely leaves the pack ice, with stray individuals occurring off southeast Australia or sub-Antarctic islands. The Ross seal can reach an average length between 5.5 and 6.9 feet, although some females can reach up to 8.2...
The ribbon seal (Histriophoca fasciata) is a true seal within the family Phocidae that can be found in the North Pacific Sea. It prefers a habitat in arctic and subarctic areas like the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea. As is typical to seal species, it will leave the water during the winter and spring months, where it will remain on pack ice to breed, birth pups, and molt. For the rest of the year these seals will live in open water, although some will occasionally move north as the ice...
The grey seal (Halichoerus grypus), known as the gray seal in the United States is a species that can be found on shores on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean. Its other common names include the Atlantic grey seal and the horsehead seal, because of its elongated nose. It has a large range on the shores of Ireland and Great Britain, with larger populations residing in areas including the Farne Islands near the Northumberland Coast, North Rona near northern Scotland, and Ramsey Island near...
