Credit: Pip Laker
Pheasants fall into two groups in terms of how they find their way around - and the different types prefer slightly different habitats, new research shows.
University of Exeter scientists tested whether individual pheasants used landmarks (allocentric) or their own position (egocentric) to learn the way through a maze.
The captive-bred pheasants were later released into the wild, and their choice of habitat was observed.
All pheasants favoured woodland, but allocentric navigators spent more time out in the open, where their landmark-based style is more useful. Humans tend to use both of these navigational tactics and quite frequently combine them, but when animals are tested, they often seem to rely more on one or the other, said Dr Christine Beardsworth.
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In the first few months of their lives, babies cry, babble, gurgle and make a variety of other peculiar sounds. It can be difficult to imagine that they are actually laying the foundations for later speech with these utterances. However, there is a determining element that proves that even their cries can be assigned to a particular language: the speech melody - or, more accurately: prosody. Every language is characterised by specific musical elements, which we call prosody, says Kathleen Wermke. Prosody, in simple terms, is the combination of intonation (melody) and rhythm. Earlier studies have shown that even newborns are able to distinguish different languages, like German or French, using prosodic cues, particularly melody. With the help of these musical elements, infants recognise the respective language long before they are able to perceive its special features such as consonants, vowels or syllables.
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IMAGE: The spatial organisation of the C. elegans brain is modular. The image shows the different brain regions that process information to direct behaviours such as navigation, avoidance and feeding. The. view more
Credit: University of Leeds
Researchers have mapped the physical organization of the brain of a microscopic soil-living nematode worm called
Caenorhabditis elegans, creating a new model for the architecture of the animal s brain and how it processes information.
In a surprise twist, they found a large degree of variation in the structure of some neural circuits or pathways in individual worms which complemented a core set of neural circuits common to different animals.
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VIDEO: Volumetric reconstruction of the L4 C. elegans neuropil (from EM serial sections) with neurons from the four strata highlighted (S1-Red, S2-Purple, S3-Blue, S4-Green). view more
Credit: Mark Moyle et al., Nature, 2021.
WOODS HOLE, Mass. Understanding how the brain works is a paramount goal of medical science. But with its billions of tightly packed, intermingled neurons, the human brain is dauntingly difficult to visualize and map, which can provide the route to therapies for long-intractable disorders.
In a major advance published next week in Nature, scientists for the first time report the structure of a fundamental type of tissue organization in brains, called neuropil, as well as the developmental pathways that lead to neuropil assembly in the roundworm
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IMAGE: Catalog #3522 swims off the coast of Georgia in 2006 with fresh propeller cuts on his back.
He was never seen again and is presumed dead due to these injuries. view more
Credit: New England Aquarium, collected under NOAA Permit #655-1652-01
A study co-authored by scientists at the New England Aquarium has found that known deaths of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales represent a fraction of the true death toll. This comes as the death of a calf and recent sightings of entangled right whales off the southeastern United States raise alarm.
The study, published this month in