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As gay couples celebrate their newfound right to marry in California and opposition groups rally to fight the ruling, many struggle with this question: Is homosexuality natural? On this issue, Nature has spoken: Same-sex lovin' is common in hundreds of species, scientists say. Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins at New York's Central Park Zoo, were a couple for about six years, during which they nurtured a fertilized egg together (given to them by a zookeeper) and raised the young chick that hatched. According to University of Oslo zoologist Petter Böckman, about 1,500 animal species are known to practice...

Female chimpanzees 'sell' sex for fruit By Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent Last Updated: 4:01pm BST 11/09/2007 Female chimpanzees are "selling" sex to the males that gather the most fruit, according to new research. Behavioural psychologists found that female chimps mate with the males that give them the most fruit, while male chimps steal "desirable" fruits such as papaya from farms and orchards in a bid to woo potential mates. Oranges, pineapples and maize are among the most sought after crops, with bananas proving far less popular. The scientists also discovered that the chimp that gathered the most fruit in the...

SHREVEPORT, La. - In a mysterious bit of monkey business, a female at a chimpanzee sanctuary has given birth, despite the fact that the facility's entire male chimp population has had vasectomies. Now managers at Chimp Haven are planning a paternity test for the seven males who lived in a group with Teresa, a wild-born chimpanzee in her late 40s who had the baby girl last week. Workers have started collecting hair samples from the chimps for testing. Once they identify the father, it's back to the operating room for him. Chimp Haven managers said they knew something was up...

Zoologist Darren Naish has written a thoughtful essay on “Are Sumatran Rhinos Really Living Fossil?” His blog is in response to my comments on the “living fossil” issue, discussed here. I disagree with Naish’s restrictive parameters, of course, as I see this more an issue of educational semantics influenced by zoology, not ruled by it. Darren Naish’s approach is worthy of your attention and he has every right to his very informed point of view. Needless to say, in this case, I was employing the “living fossil” definition that this rhino species is “a living species/clade with many ‘primitive’ characteristics...

27 May 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. John McCrone ------------------------------------------------ LOOKING more like a flake of bark than a spider, Portia labiata stops to have a think. Portia is a jumping spider that makes a living by eating other spiders - a risky business at the best of times. Luckily Portia has brains. Right now it needs them. Portia, no bigger than a thumbnail, is perched on a branch with its beady eyes trained on a Scytodes pallida, another spider that specialises in eating other spiders. Scytodes is a spitting spider. It can...

IQALUIT, Nunavut - Northern hunters, scientists and people with vivid imaginations have discussed the possibility for years. But Roger Kuptana, an Inuvialuit guide from Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories, was the first to suspect it had actually happened when he proposed that a strange-looking bear shot last month by an American sports hunter might be half polar bear, half grizzly. Territorial officials seized the creature after noticing its white fur was scattered with brown patches and that it had the long claws and humped back of a grizzly. Now a DNA test has confirmed that it is indeed a hybrid -...

It's splitsville for New York's favorite gay penguins — and one of the lover-birds has taken up with a fetching female. Now, the Central Park Zoo is dealing with a gay-straight love triangle Jerry Springer couldn't dream up. And nobody knows who will lay claim to the pair's adopted chick. The drama started when Silo left Roy, his mate of six years, for Scrappy, a female transplant from SeaWorld who'd never had chicks. "Silo and Roy stopped spending as much time together or building a nest," said John Rowden, the zoo's curator of animals. At first, Silo started hanging out...

Two new species of lemur have been found in Madagascar, bringing the number of known species to 49. German and Malagasy scientists made the discovery by analysing the genetic make-up of wild lemurs. Lemurs are considered the most endangered of all primates and live only on Madagascar which has evolved in isolation for 165 million years. As a result, the island is now home to mammals, birds and plants that exist nowhere else on our planet. The first new species is a giant mouse lemur known as Mirza zaza. It has a long bushy tail and is about the size...

"Supersize" mice are eating seabird chicks alive on Gough Island, one of the most important seabird colonies in the world, UK conservationists report. The rodents are taking out one million petrels, shearwaters and albatrosses each year on the UK Overseas Territory, in the South Atlantic. ...

WELLFLEET — If it’s determined that the decline of the eastern oyster on the Maryland and Virginia coastline represents a “significant portion” of the subspecies, the oyster could be added to the federal endangered species list, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service spokesperson Marta Nammack said Monday. A ban on oystering would significantly affect this town, where shellfish — oysters, in particular — are its biggest industry. Wellfleet oysters are a world-famous delicacy that accounted for more than $2.5 million of the town’s aquaculture, or shellfish farming, industry in 2002. About 100 families in town rely primarily on oysters...

Snow leopards are protected Police in north Pakistan have shot dead a rare snow leopard, blamed for killing six women in the past two weeks. The ageing animal was caught in a trap, with a goat as bait, but was shot when it tried to escape, police in the town of Abbotabad told the BBC. Fear had spread through the area after the attacks. The last was on Friday. Abbotabad police chief Feroz Shah said he was sure it was the leopard that had killed the women, all of whom had been gathering firewood in forests. "It's a huge animal...

Red tide may be the least of Cape shellfishermen's worries this summer. In May, the National Marine Fisheries Service decided that the Eastern, or American, oyster is a candidate for endangered species status based on a petition they received in January. The agency has until Jan. 11, 2006, to decide. Fisheries service spokeswoman Teri Frady said yesterday her agency was in the process of putting together a panel of experts to study the issue. Eastern oysters are harvested in New England and on the Cape, accounting for more than $1.2 million in revenue for the Cape and islands aquaculture industry...

A team of scientists has identified a new dolphin species - the first for at least 30 years - off north Australia. The mammals - named snubfin dolphins - were initially thought to be members of the Irrawaddy species, also found in Australian waters. But one researcher found the snubfins were coloured differently and had different skull, fin and flipper measurements to the Irrawaddys. DNA tests confirmed that they were two distinct species. The researcher, Isabel Beasley of James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, said that because they live in shallow waters, both types face the same threats to their...

A German zoo's plan to introduce females into a group of what they think are homosexual male penguins has angered gay rights groups — who complain that the zoo's actions are trying to turn the penguins straight. The Bremerhaven Zoo concluded the penguins might be gay after the males tried to mate with one another. Zookeepers say they just want to see whether the birds were acting that way because of a lack of females. A spokesman added, "Nobody is trying to break up same sex pairs by force."

"Gay" penguins spark protest 1 hour, 4 minutes ago BERLIN (Reuters) - A plan by a German zoo to test the sexual appetites of a group of suspected homosexual penguins has sparked outrage among gay and lesbian groups, who fear zookeepers might force them to turn straight. "All sorts of gay and lesbian associations have been e-mailing and calling in to protest," said a spokesman for the zoo in the northwestern city of Bremerhaven on Friday. He said the zoo concluded the penguins might be gay after seeing male penguins trying to mate with other males and trying to hatch...

DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- Villagers digging in China's rich fossil beds have uncovered the preserved remains of a tiny dinosaur in the belly of a mammal, a startling discovery for scientists who have long believed early mammals couldn't possibly attack and eat a dinosaur. Scientists say the animal's last meal probably is the first proof that mammals hunted small dinosaurs some 130 million years ago. It contradicts conventional evolutionary theory that early mammals were timid, chipmunk-sized creatures that scurried in the looming shadow of the giant reptiles. More at link...

LONDON (Reuters) - A lone whale, with a voice unlike any other, has been wandering the Pacific for the past 12 years, American marine biologists said Wednesday. Using signals recorded by the US navy to track submarines, they traced the movement of whales in the Northern Pacific and found that a lone whale singing at a frequency of around 52 hertz has cruised the ocean since 1992. Its calls, despite being clearly those of a baleen, do not match those of any known species of whale, which usually call at frequencies of between 15 and 20 hertz. The mammal does...

Dingo's origins tracked by DNA The dingo may have been introduced on a single occasion to Australia A genetic analysis of the Australian dingo suggests the dogs tagged along on an epic expansion of people out of southern China around 6,000 years ago. An international team claims that dingoes descend from a small group that could have been introduced to Australia in a "single chance event" from Asia. Evidence from mitochondrial DNA suggests that the wild dogs arrived on the continent around 5,000 years ago. The work appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Peter Savolainen of the...

"The Dixie Dingo" "The Native American Dog" "The American Dingo" " Southern Aboriginal Dog" "The Indian's Dog" Still living Wild in the bottom land swamps and forests of the Southeastern United States. Genetic (mitochondrial DNA) testing being performed at the University of South Carolina, College of Science and Mathematics, indicates that these dogs, related to the earliest domesticated dogs, are the remnant descendants of the feral pariah canids who came across the Bering land mass 8,000 to 11,000 years ago as hunting companions to the ancestors of the Native Americans. However, their future in the wild looks bleak. Loss ...

Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan, are completely devoted to each other. For nearly six years now, they have been inseparable. They exhibit what in penguin parlance is called "ecstatic behavior": that is, they entwine their necks, they vocalize to each other, they have sex. Silo and Roy are, to anthropomorphize a bit, gay penguins. When offered female companionship, they have adamantly refused it. And the females aren't interested in them, either. At one time, the two seemed so desperate to incubate an egg together that they put a rock in their nest...

How do homing pigeons navigate? They follow roads By Caroline Davies (Filed: 05/02/2004) Researchers have cracked the puzzle of how pigeons find their way home: they just follow the main roads. Zoologists now believe the phrase "as the crow flies" no longer means the shortest most direct route between two points. They say it is likely that crows and other diurnal birds also choose AA-suggested routes, even though it makes their journeys longer. Some pigeons stick so rigidly to the roads that they even fly round roundabouts before choosing the exit to lead them back to their lofts. Animal behaviouralists...

Lazy birds given car to migrate south Researchers have provided a flock of lazy and disorientated rare birds with a car and driver because they are incapable of migrating on their own. Ornithologists from the Konrad Lorenz research centre in Gruenau in Austria have spent more than two years breeding the Northern Bald Ibis species. They had to drive the birds to their winter quarters in the Maremma region in northern Italy by car after discovering they were unable to make the 500 mile trip on their own. Dr Kurt Kotrschal from the Zoology Department at Vienna University said the...

At a time when religious and conservative right-wing groups are attempting to dismiss homosexuality as "unnatural," a leading zoologist has said gay people could be seen as the "pinnacle of evolution." Speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Clive Bromhall said that humankind's evolution has resulted in our present state of "infantilism," in which we break the primate mold by being playful, creative and childlike right into adulthood. "From men's obsession with swollen breasts to our constant search for a pseudoparental God, everything about the human species is infantile," Bromhall said in a lecture. "Like baby chimps, we have soft, downy...

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - Scientists said on Wednesday a huge mass of slimy flesh that washed up on a Chilean beach last week may be a rare type of giant octopus or just discarded whale blubber. European zoologists contacted by the Chileans to help identify the 40-foot-long (12-meter) piece of gelatinous tissue said it closely resembled descriptions of a bizarre specimen found in Florida in 1896 that was named "octopus giganteus" and has confounded experts ever since. Other informal sightings of similar deep-sea creatures by fishermen and divers from the Bahamas to Tasmania are the stuff of folklore on the...

Four starving lions which dug their way out of a Baghdad zoo have been shot dead by American soldiers, the military says. Two of the big cats lunged for the US troops who then fired at them, one soldier said. The lions were among hundreds of animals abandoned at the zoo. Most of the others were stolen by looters or released in the aftermath of the US takeover of the Iraqi capital. But the thieves left seven lions and two tigers in their cages, unfed for 10 or more days. Sergeant Matthew Oliver said three lionesses and one male lion...