Animal
hideAnimals are a major group of mostly multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently. Most animals are also heterotrophs, meaning they must ingest other organisms for sustenance.
Most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago.
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News tagged with animals
Extinct goat was cold-blooded
Nov 18, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- An extinct goat that lived on a barren Mediterranean island survived for millions of years by reducing in size and by becoming cold-blooded, which has never before been discovered in mammals.
Bigger not necessarily better, when it comes to brains
Nov 17, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Tiny insects could be as intelligent as much bigger animals, despite only having a brain the size of a pinhead, say scientists at Queen Mary, University of London.
Warm-blooded dinosaurs worked up a sweat
Nov 11, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Were dinosaurs endothermic (warm-blooded) like present-day mammals and birds or ectothermic (cold-blooded) like present-day lizards? The implications of this simple-sounding question go beyond ...
Researchers Find Key 'Conductor' of Nature's Synchronicity
Jul 22, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Synchronicity in nature is seen in beating hearts, the flashing of fireflies' lights, the ebb and flow of infectious disease—and the simultaneous rise and fall of populations across vast reaches ...
Mockingbirds, no bird brains, can recognize a face in a crowd
May 18, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The birds are watching. They know who you are. And they will attack. Nope, not Hitchcock. It's science.
Fossil evidence of missing link in the origin of seals, sea lions, walruses found in Canadian Arctic
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Apr 22, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the United States and Canada have found a fossil skeleton of a newly discovered carnivorous animal, Puijila darwini. New research suggests Puijila is a "missing link" in the ...
The story of X -- evolution of a sex chromosome
Apr 16, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Move over, Y chromosome - it's time X got some attention. In the first evolutionary study of the chromosome associated with being female, University of California, Berkeley, biologist Doris ...
Researchers find genes important to sleep
Feb 22, 2009 |
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For many animals, sleep is a risk: foraging for food, mingling with mates and guarding against predators just aren't possible while snoozing.
Signs point to sponges as earliest animal life
Biology /
Feb 04, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Even Charles Darwin was puzzled by the apparently sudden appearance in the fossil record of a great variety of multicellular creatures — a rapid blossoming known as the Cambrian explosion. ...
Humans are reason for why domestic animals have strange and varied coat colors
Biology /
Jan 16, 2009 |
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(Physorg.com) -- Humans have actively changed the coats of domestic animals by cherry-picking rare genetic mutations, causing variations such as different colours, bands and spots, according to a new study. ...
Grazing animals help spread plant disease
Biology /
Dec 29, 2008 |
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Researchers have discovered that grazing animals such as deer and rabbits are actually helping to spread plant disease - quadrupling its prevalence in some cases - and encouraging an invasion of annual grasses that threaten ...
Increased daily travel in animals leads to more offspring
Biology /
Dec 23, 2008 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The more an animal walks during the day, the less energy it has to reproduce. Makes sense right? Not so fast, say two researchers at Washington University in St. Louis.
Study says eyes evolved for X-Ray vision
Biology /
Aug 28, 2008 |
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The advantage of using two eyes to see the world around us has long been associated solely with our capacity to see in 3-D. Now, a new study from a scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has uncovered ...
The therapeutic benefits of the human-animal bond
Other Sciences / Social Sciences
Nov 30, 2009 |
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A pet owner knows the enormous joy and comfort that an animal can provide, especially in troubled times. Most pets are considered important members of the family and irreplaceable companions. A growing body of research now ...
Aquatic creatures mix ocean water
Nov 22, 2009 |
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Understanding mixing in the ocean is of fundamental importance to modeling climate change or predicting the effects of an El Niño on our weather. Modern ocean models primarily incorporate the effects of winds and tides. However, ...
