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Elephants understand humans in a way most other animals don’t, according to the latest research from the University of St Andrews. The new study, published October 10, 2013 by Current Biology, found that elephants are the only wild animals to understand human pointing without any training to do so. The researchers, Anna Smet and Professor Richard Byrne from the University’s School of Psychology and Neuroscience, set out to test whether African elephants could learn to follow pointing — and were surprised to find them responding successfully from the first trial. They said, “In our study we found that African elephants spontaneously...

A bird that had previously gone extinct came back to life thanks to a rare evolutionary process known as "iterative evolution." The white-throated rail bird can presently be found on the island of Aldabra. Early fossils of the bird suggest it lived there thousands of years ago and died out because it could not fly to higher ground when rising sea levels threatened its safety. But thanks to "iterative evolution," which evolves similar body parts due to genetics from a similar ancestor, the bird came back from the dead. **SNIP** In order to make the determination that the extinct bird...

VICTORIA - Crabs that have a normal diet of a type of plankton have been seen munching on methane-filled bacteria off B.C.’s coast in what experts say could be their way of adapting to climate change. Researchers with Oceans Networks Canada and Oregon State University discovered the snow crabs using other food sources because their main meal may be disappearing with a warmer climate. The crabs were previously thought to exclusively eat phytoplankton but researchers said in a study published this month in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science that there is first evidence that the commercial species is finding...

He continued, “Darwin said his whole theory depended on the fossil remains. He said we should be able to line up from a single-cell organism to man, several miles long and just walk right down the fossil trail and see how everything evolved.” “He [Darwin] said the only reason they didn’t have the fossils was because they were not geologically sophisticated enough, but that we would be in 50 to 100 years,” said Dr. Carson. Well, that was 150 years ago. We still haven’t found them. Where are they? Where are the fossil remains?” Carson continued, “When you ask the...

Acting as super-predators, humans are forcing changes to body size and reproductive abilities in some species 300 percent faster than would occur naturally, a new study finds. Hunting and fishing by individual sportsmen as well as large-scale commercial fishing are also outpacing other human influences, such as pollution, in effects on the animal kingdom.

Characteristics passed between generations are not decided solely by DNA, but can be brought about by other material in cells, new research shows. Scientists studied proteins found in cells, known as histones, which are not part of the genetic code, but act as spools around which DNA is wound. Histones are known to control whether or not genes are switched on. Researchers found that naturally occurring changes to these proteins, which affect how they control genes, can be sustained from one generation to the next and so influence which traits are passed on. The finding demonstrates for the first time...

Scientists now know that our DNA is being altered all the time by environment, lifestyle and traumatic events. Genetic faults caused by trauma, poor lifestyle or environmental stress can be passed down to future generations, scientists at the University of Cambridge have discovered. Previously large studies have shown that devastating events such as famine can scar future generations, making them more prone to obesity and diabetes. However it is the first time that the biological mechanism for the effect has been seen. Although the same genes are passed down through generations, scientists now know that our DNA is being altered...

A study suggests that rocky landscapes in East and South Africa could have pushed our apelike ancestors toward bipedalism. Being four-legged has its perks. As a quadruped, your center of gravity is lower, there's less wind resistance when you're running, and, best of all, you can use your hind foot to scratch your ear. All of this raises a big question: What were our apelike ancestors thinking when they started walking upright? A prevailing hypothesis is that they were prompted by climate change. As African forests declined due to temperature fluctuations some 2.5 million years ago, the hypothesis goes, our...

Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) at the John Innes Centre have made a discovery, reported this evening (24 July) in Nature, that explains how an organism can create a biological memory of some variable condition, such as quality of nutrition or temperature. The discovery explains the mechanism of this memory – a sort of biological switch – and how it can also be inherited by offspring. The work was led by Professor Martin Howard and Professor Caroline Dean at the John Innes Centre, which receives strategic funding from BBSRC. Funding for the project came...

UMMS research suggests paternal diet affects lipid metabolizing genes in offspringWORCESTER, Mass. — Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the University of Texas at Austin have uncovered evidence that environmental influences experienced by a father can be passed down to the next generation, "reprogramming" how genes function in offspring. A new study published this week in Cell shows that environmental cues—in this case, diet—influence genes in mammals from one generation to the next, evidence that until now has been sparse. These insights, coupled with previous human epidemiological studies, suggest that paternal environmental effects may play a more...

ANAHEIM, CA – In studies on cancer, heart disease, neurological disorders and other degenerative conditions, some scientists are moving away from the "nature versus nurture" debate, and are finding you're not a creature of either genetics or environment, but both - with enormous implications for a new approach to health. The new field of "epigenetics" is rapidly revealing how people, plants and animals do start with a certain genetic code at conception. But, the choice of which genes are "expressed," or activated, is strongly affected by environmental influences. The expression of genes can change quite rapidly over time, they can...

Penn State Assistant Professor of Biology Tracy Langkilde has shown that native fence lizards in the southeastern United States are adapting to potentially fatal invasive fire-ant attacks by developing behaviors that enable them to escape from the ants, as well as by developing longer hind legs, which can increase the effectiveness of this behavior. "Not only does this finding provide biologists with an example of evolution in action, but it also provides wildlife managers with knowledge that they can use to develop plans for managing invasive species," said Langkilde. The results will be described in a paper to be published...

Environment can change the way our genes work Environmental factors such as stress and diet could be affecting the genes of future generations leading to increased rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.A study of people suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after the 9/11 attacks in New York made a striking discovery. The patients included mothers who were pregnant on 9/11 and found altered levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the blood of their babies. This effect was most pronounced for mothers who were in the third trimester of pregnancy suggesting events in the womb might be responsible....

The evolution of novel characteristics within organisms can be enhanced when environments change in a systematic manner, according to a new study by Weizmann Institute researchers. Merav Parter, Nadav Kashtan and Uri Alon suggest that in environments that vary over time in a non-random way, evolution can learn the rules of the environment and develop organisms that can readily generate novel useful traits with only a few mutations. Details are published November 7 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology In this study Parter, Kashtan and Alon began with the observation that environments in nature seemingly vary according to common...

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) handed out the first payments in a multi-million-dollar project to explore epigenomics last month. But some researchers are voicing concerns about the scientific and economic justification for this latest 'big biology' venture. Epigenetics, described as "inheritance, but not as we know it"1, is now a blisteringly hot field. It is concerned with changes in gene expression that are typically inherited, but not caused by changes in gene sequence. In theory, epigenetic studies can help explain how the millions of cells in the human body can carry identical DNA but form completely different cell...