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Curiosity and sociability among traits found, despite dolphins having evolved separately for millions of yearsDolphins have developed a number of similar personality traits to humans, despite having evolved in vastly different environments, researchers have found.A study, published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology, looked at 134 male and female bottlenose dolphins from eight facilities across the world, with each dolphin’s personality being assessed by...

Study found pigs were able to move a cursor to hit a wall on a screen and earn a treatThey’ve long been thought of as smarter than your average animal, but now researchers claim they have taught pigs to use a joystick, suggesting they are even cleverer than previously thought.Pigs have previously been found to be capable of a host of tasks, including solving...

Study finds macaques go for tourists’ electronics and wallets over empty bags and then maximise their profitAt the Uluwatu temple in Bali, monkeys mean business. The long-tailed macaques who roam the ancient site are infamous for brazenly robbing unsuspecting tourists and clinging on to their possessions until food is offered as ransom payment.Researchers have found they are also skilled at judging which items their...

The discovery that bilbies, bandicoots, Tasmanian devils and echidnas emit bio-fluorescence under UV light has sparked the burning question. Why?Dr Kenny Travouillon turned off the lights and headed straight for the shelf holding the stuffed platypus, armed with an ultraviolet torch to test something out. Would the monotreme glow?“All the platypuses were glowing,” says Travouillon, the mammals curator at the Western Australian Museum in...

Research offers insights into marsupial’s rearguard defences and ‘brutal’ mating rituals Australia is known for its strange and deadly wildlife, with plenty of attention given to venomous snakes and bird-eating spiders. But it seems one terrifying aspect of outback fauna has been thoroughly ignored: the wombat’s deadly bum.The rump of the wombat is hard as rock, used for defence, burrowing, bonding, mating and possibly...

Creatures’ attempts are in vain, and as they are unable to burrow through the fish’s ribcage, the eels become trapped in the gut of their captorIt’s no secret that nature can be brutal and violent, but a new Queensland Museum report on the death of some snake eels reads more like the plot of a horror movie than a scientific paper.Snake eels are a...

While colour of body changes little, legs are more translucent to help amphibians to blend inThe mystery of why glass frogs have see-through skin has been solved, scientists say: the unusual feature is a type of camouflage.Glass frogs are found in tropical Central and South America, and get their name from their skin. Continue reading...

Researchers say cannibalistic tendency may help explain why the invasive creatures thriveWhen the going gets tough, most parents try to protect their offspring. But the warty comb jelly takes a different tack: it eats them.Despite initial appearances, comb jellies are not jellyfish but belong to a different group of animals, ctenophora, which swim using tiny hair-like projections called cilia. Continue reading...

‘Stink flirting’ observation may be first finding of primate sex pheromones, say scientistsAn irresistible floral scent dabbed on the body may sound like a cliche from a perfume advert, but it appears to play a role in how male ring-tailed lemurs attract a mate.Researchers in Japan say they have identified the odours males waft at females, and shown the latter’s attention is indeed captured...

Experiment finds species try to avoid audible road sounds The thunder of road traffic is likely to drive away bats, according to a study, which found vehicle noise caused bat activity to decrease by two-thirds.While environmental assessments of new roads focus on the danger of habitat fragmentation, or bats colliding with traffic, the first ever controlled field experiment to investigate the impact of vehicle...

A hulking grizzly bear has found online stardom after he was caught groggily emerging from hibernation on camera. Canadian ranger Nicole Gagnon filmed the end of Boo's hibernation on her phone, a moment she said she had been waiting to document for eight years. It has since been viewed over 100,000 times on Twitter. Boo, 18, draws thousands of tourists every year to his...

Researchers use 3D glasses, films and food to test whether cuttlefish use stereopsis to find prey There are some questions in science that can only be answered by strapping a pair of 3D glasses to an unsuspecting cuttlefish and setting it loose in an underwater movie theatre.That, at least, was the thinking of a team of researchers who set themselves the task of working...

New video footage reveals the world's fastest ants galloping across the scorching sand of the Sahara at speeds approaching one metre per second, which is the equivalent of a house cat tearing about at 120mph.Researchers have found that at full pelt the Saharan silver ants can travel 108 times their body length per second in gallops that brought all six legs off the ground...