Stegosaur plates for mates, according to an article in ScienceNOW 19 May 2005. The distinctive plates and spikes that projected from the back and tail of stegosaurs have intrigued scientists ever since they were first discovered. They were first thought to be for defence, but when hollow channels were found in them, some scientists suggested […]
Tag: communication
Spying with DNA
Spying with DNA is now possible. American scientists have recently developed a way to use, the genetic code (DNA) as a spy code to transfer information secretly. How does it work? Since there are only four chemical letters in the DNA code, A (adenine), T(Thymine), G (guanine) and C (cytosine), and 26 letters in English […]
Speech Timing Revealed
Speech timing revealed, as reported in Nature News 20 February 2013 and ABC News in Science 21 February 2013. Edward Chang and colleagues from the University of California San Francisco have carried out a study of brain activity during speech. They were able to record directly from the surface of the brains of patients who […]
Speech Evolved From Fish
Speech evolved from fish, according to reports in BBC News and ScienceNOW, 17 July 2008 and Science, vol. 321, p 417, 18 July 2008. A group of American researchers have been studying the brain activity of the fish that communicate with sound. The midshipman fish makes a nest hole under rocks and makes humming sounds […]
Sound Engineering for Birds
Sound engineering for the birds reported in New Scientist, 12 January 2002, p12. Scientists from the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Comparative Etholgy in Vienna recorded the songs of different species of Venezuelan Ant-birds and played them back at different heights above ground. They measured how fast the song faded and how well it could be […]
Dinosaurs had Camouflage Colours
Dinosaurs had camouflage colours, according articles in Science (AAAS) News 14 September 2016, BBC News and ScienceDaily 16 September 2016 and Current Biology doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.06.065, published online 15 September 2016. Researchers from the University of Bristol, UK, along with colleagues from Hong Kong, USA and Germany, have studied the distribution of pigment in an “exquisitely preserved” […]
Who is Talking?
”I had to speak to a bunch of humans instead” lamented science writer Gail Vines who wanted to talk to chimpanzees whilst gathering information for an article on chimp intelligence for New Scientist, 14 Oct, 2000, p39. One of the humans she spoke to was Daniel Povinelli who has researched learning in both chimps and […]