Study Traces Origins of Monogamous Coupling

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The roots of the modern family--monogamous coupling--lie somewhere in our distant evolutionary past, but scientists disagree on how it first evolved. A new study says we should thank two key players: weak males with inferior fighting chops and the females who opted to be faithful to them.

These mating strategies may "have triggered a key step in the very long process of the evolution of the family," said study author Sergey Gavrilets, a biomathematician at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. "Without it, we wouldn't have the modern family."

The mating structure of humans is strikingly different than that of sexually promiscuous chimps, in which a few alpha males dominate other males in the group and, by dint of their superior fighting prowess, freely mate with the females. Lower-status males are largely shut out from mating opportunities.

http://ow.ly/bdkSr  

How the Scent of Fear May Be Picked Up by Others

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

When one fish is injured, others nearby may dart, freeze, huddle, swim to the bottom or leap from the water. The other fish know that their school mate has been harmed. But how?

In the 1930s, Karl von Frisch, the famous ethologist, noted this behavior in minnows. He theorized that injured fish release a substance that is transmitted by smell and causes alarm. But Dr. von Frisch never identified the chemical composition of the signal. He just called it schreckstoff, or "scary stuff."

Schreckstoff is a long-standing biological mystery, but now researchers may have solved a piece of it. In a study published in February in Current Biology, Suresh Jesuthasan, a neuroscientist at the Biomedical Sciences Institutes in Singapore, and his colleagues isolated sugar molecules called chondroitins from the outer mucus of zebra fish.

http://ow.ly/beVrD  

http://tinyurl.com/73hwerz

The argumentative ape: Why we're wired to persuade

We're all guilty of flawed thinking because our brains evolved to win others round to our point of view – whether or not our reasoning is logical

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428661.200-the-argumentative-ape-why-were-wired-to-persuade.html?cmpid=NLC|NSNS|2012-2805-GLOBAL|mg21428661.200&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS&utm_content=mg21428661.200

South Korea Surrenders to Creationist Demands

from Nature News

Mention creationism, and many scientists think of the United States, where efforts to limit the teaching of evolution have made headway in a couple of states. But the successes are modest compared with those in South Korea, where the anti-evolution sentiment seems to be winning its battle with mainstream science.

A petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx. The move has alarmed biologists, who say that they were not consulted. "The ministry just sent the petition out to the publishing companies and let them judge," says Dayk Jang, an evolutionary scientist at Seoul National University.

The campaign was led by the Society for Textbook Revise (STR), which aims to delete the "error" of evolution from textbooks to "correct" students' views of the world, according to the society's website. The society says that its members include professors of biology and high-school science teachers.

http://ow.ly/boChk  

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/06/bonobo-genome-sequenced.html?ref=hp

Bonobos Join Chimps as Closest Human Relatives

Chimpanzees now have to share the distinction of being our closest living relative in the animal kingdom. An international team of researchers has sequenced the genome of the bonobo for the first time, confirming that it shares the same percentage of its DNA with us as chimps do. The team also found some small but tantalizing differences in the genomes of the three species—differences that may explain how bonobos and chimpanzees don't look or act like us even though we share about 99% of our DNA.

http://www.nature.com/news/hippie-chimp-genome-sequenced-1.10822

'Hippie chimp' genome sequenced

When the Congo River in central Africa formed, a group of apes was forever stranded on its southern banks. Two million years later, the descendants of these apes — the bonobos — have developed distinct social patterns. Unlike their chimpanzee relatives on the northern shore, they shun violent male dominance and instead forge bonds through food-sharing, play and casual sex.

An 18-year-old female named Ulindi has now become the first bonobo (Pan paniscus) to have its genome sequenced. Scientists hope that the information gleaned will explain the stark behavioural differences between bonobos and common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and help to identify the genetic changes that set humans apart from other apes.

http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headlines/76741/Voicemail_discovered_in_nature.html

Voicemail discovered in nature

June 13, 2012

Insects can use plants as 'green phones' for communication with other bugs. A new study now shows that through those same plants insects are also able to leave 'voicemail' messages in the soil. Herbivorous insects store their voicemails via their effects on soil fungi. Researchers from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and Wageningen University (WUR) discovered this unique messaging service in the ragwort plant. The influential journal Ecology Letters will soon publish these results.

A few years ago, NIOO scientists discovered that soil-dwelling and aboveground insects are able to communicate with each other using the plant as a telephone. Insects eating plant roots change the chemical composition of the leaves, causing the plant to release volatile signals into the air. This can convince aboveground insects to select another food plant in order to avoid competition and to escape from poisonous defence compounds in the plant. But the impact doesn't stop there.

http://www.livescience.com/20969-aggressive-dogs-hip-pain.html

Sudden Aggression in Dogs Often a Sign of Pain

Sudden changes in a dog's temperament, for example episodes of aggression, could be related to some internal pain they are feeling, which sets them on edge if they are touched, new research indicates.

"If the pet is handled when in pain, it will quickly act aggressively to avoid more discomfort without the owner being able to prevent it," study researcher Tomàs Camps, of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, in Spain, said in a statement. "Dogs that had never been aggressive before the onset of pain began to behave in this way in situations where an attempt is made to control them."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120612-gorillas-baby-talk-humans-evolution-animals-science/

Gorillas Seen Using "Baby Talk" Gestures—A First

Great apes tailor nonvocal communication for infants, study says.

Gorillas use a nonvocal form of "baby talk" to communicate with infants, a new study says. A first among primates, the discovery may give insight into how similar human communication evolved.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/uol-uol052212.php

University of Leicester study finds low agreeableness linked to a preference for aggressive dogs

Aggressive dog ownership is not always a sign of attempted dominance or actual delinquency

A study carried out at the University of Leicester's School of Psychology has found that younger people who are disagreeable are more likely to prefer aggressive dogs, confirming the conventional wisdom that dogs match the personality of their owners.

Researchers found that low Agreeableness was the best predictor of a preference for those dogs seen as more aggressive, such as bull terriers or boxers. Individuals low in Agreeableness are typically less concerned with others' well-being and may be suspicious, unfriendly and competitive.

Stanford researchers discover the African cichlid's noisy courtship ritual. Male fish attract potential mates with grunts – and females' hearing improves as they get ready to mate.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/uocp-amm061312.php

Anxious mice make lousy dads: study

Normally, male California mice are surprisingly doting fathers, but new research published in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology suggests that high anxiety can turn these good dads bad.

Unlike most rodents, male and female California mice pair up for life with males providing extensive parental care, helping deliver the pups, lick them clean, and keep them warm during their first few weeks of life. Experienced fathers are so paternal that they'll even take care of pups that aren't theirs. "If we place a male California mouse in a test cage and present it with an unknown pup, experienced fathers will quickly start to lick and huddle with it," said Trynke de Jong, a post-doctoral researcher at University of California, Riverside.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/tcob-vjs053112.php

Vampire jumping spiders identify victims by their antennae
Ravenous Evarcha culicivora jumping spiders -- vampire spiders -- have very specific tastes: they prefer to dine on blood-engorged female Anopheles mosquitoes. So how do they pick out female Anopheles from all other insects? Ximena Nelson and colleagues from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, have discovered that the spiders identify their victims by their antennae alone, even though the details of the antennae are too tiny to be seen by humans.
 National Geographic Society, National Institutes of Health

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2012/4/vocal-matching-in-animals

Vocal Matching in Animals
Learning the calls of group members and mates reliably signals social bonds
by Kendra B. Sewall
(The full text of this article is available to the general public.)

Call matching occurs in many of the animals capable of vocal learning, and there is evidence that it confers fitness benefits to signalers and receivers by improving reproduction and survival. Specifically, call matching may help individuals gain access to a mate or coordinate parental care of offspring, secure and retain access to resources, or identify appropriate mates and companions. Although the specific fitness benefits driving vocal matching vary across levels of social organization, the learning process underlying this phenomenon may explain the association between vocal matching and affiliation across vocal learners.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/octopus-gets-handsy-on-dolphin-120619.html

Octopus Gets Handsy on Dolphin's Privates

THE GIST

• The octopus had a tentacle-hold on the dolphin's genital slit.
• The bottlenose dolphin dislodged the octopus after two leaps.
• The brief coalition was photographed near the island of Kalamos off the west coast of Greece

http://news.discovery.com/animals/turtles-fossil-copulating-120619.html

Ancient Turtles Died Copulating

Nine fossilized turtle couples preserved over the millennia died in the act of mating.

THE GIST

• Nine turtle couples died while copulating 47 million years ago, becoming the first known mating couples in the fossil record.
• The turtles likely perished after sinking into poisonous volcanic lake water.
• Fossils rarely preserve behaviors, but some other fossils show animals choking, fighting or brooding their nests.

An Anomaly in Mating: Self-Castration Raises Reproductive Success

Black Brant Geese Show Lifetime Relationship Good for Goose and Gander

Canine Comfort: Do Dogs Know When You're Sad?

Plenty of pet owners are comforted by a pair of puppy-dog eyes or a swipe of the tongue when their dog catches them crying. Now, new research suggests that dogs really do respond uniquely to tears. But whether pets have empathy for human pain is less clear.

In a study published online May 30 in the journal Animal Cognition, University of London researchers found that dogs were more likely to approach a crying person than someone who was humming or talking, and that they normally responded to weeping with submissive behaviors. The results are what you might expect if dogs understand our pain, the researchers wrote, but it's not proof that they do.

In a Chorus of Bleats, One That Sounds Familiar

n the world of big brains, humans have very few competitors. Dolphins come closest, with a brain to body weight ratio just below ours and just above chimpanzees. Now, a new analysis of these sharp swimmers reveals for the first time some of the genetic changes that led dolphins to evolve such large noggins. "Dolphins evolved from relatively small-brained animals like cows and hippos into this large-brained, highly specialized aquatic organism," says Caro-Beth Stewart, an evolutionary biologist at the State University of New York, Albany, who was not involved in the research. "This is one of the first comprehensive studies to look at rates of molecular evolution in dolphins."