BryLog

To a Mosquito, Matchmaking Means ‘Singing’ in Perfect Harmony (via ScienceDaily)

In finding a partner of the right species type, male and female mosquitoes depend on their ability to “sing” in perfect harmony. Those tones are produced and varied based on the frequency of their wing beats in flight.

New Evidence Of Culture In Wild Chimpanzees (via ScienceDaily)

A new study of chimpanzees living in the wild adds to evidence that our closest primate relatives have cultural differences, too. The study, reported online on October 22nd in Current Biology, shows that neighboring chimpanzee populations in Uganda use different tools to solve a novel problem: extracting honey trapped within a fallen log.

Kibale Forest chimpanzees use sticks to get at the honey, whereas Budongo Forest chimpanzees rely on leaf sponges — absorbent wedges that they make out of chewed leaves….

Chimps Use Cleavers and Anvils as Tools to Chop Food (via BBC Earth News)

For the first time, chimpanzees have been seen using tools to chop up and reduce food into smaller bite-sized portions.  Chimps in the Nimba Mountains of Guinea, Africa, use both stone and wooden cleavers, as well as stone anvils, to process Treculia fruits.  The apes are not simply cracking into the Treculia to get to otherwise unobtainable food, say researchers.  Instead, they are actively chopping up the food into more manageable portions.

Mystery of Amazon Manatee Migration Solved (via BBC Earth News)

Only in recent years did scientists find that the secretive aquatic mammal migrates from shallow to deep water.  Now researchers can reveal that the manatees make this perilous journey to avoid being exposed to attack by predators during the low water season.  That means the species maybe at greater risk than previously thought, say scientists, as migration and low water levels make them vulnerable to hunters….

Moving to the deeper habitat is not easy, as the large mammals must pass through narrow bottlenecks in the aquatic landscape, where human hunters wait for them.  The perilous journey also has another downside; it forces the manatees to fast for several months due to a lack of aquatic plants….

Sucker-Footed Bats Don’t Use Suction After All (via ScienceDaily)

In first-time experiments in the wild, a researcher at Brown University has discovered that a species of bat in Madagascar, Myzopoda aurita, uses wet adhesion to attach itself to surfaces. The finding explains why the bat — unlike almost all others — roosts head-up. It also helps to explain how it differs from a similar head-up roosting species. Results appear in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. There are approximately 1,200 species of bats worldwide. Of that total, only six are known to roost with their heads pointed upward….

Scientists study bird courtship with help of a “Fembot” (via BoingBoing)

Turtles are ‘right-flippered’ (via BBC Earth News)

Leatherback turtles tend to be the reptilian equivalent of “right-handed”.  Across a population studied by scientists, more turtles preferred to use their right rear flipper rather than their left when laying eggs.  The result, published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research, is the first time a species of turtle has found to prefer one limb over another.

The discovery adds to growing evidence that even lower vertebrates prefer to use one side of the body more often.  Such preference is known by scientists as a “lateralised functional behaviour”, and it usually indicates that an animal’s brain function is also lateralised, with one side of the brain dominating control of certain tasks….