Questions tagged [zoology]
The biological study of animals. Very broad use so be sure to add additional clarifying tags
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What animal has the most social tail?
Animals with tails can communicate with them. What animal can communicate the most number of messages or most complex message with its tail?
From what I’m able to figure, it seems like satisfaction, ...
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Wierd exoskeleton that I found [closed]
Weird body with a long tail with a hole in the head. It was in a little crevice. I'm in Laconia, New Hampshire.
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Identification of insect casing
Photo of specimen with a US quarter (~24 mm diameter) for size reference. Please help identify what left behind this casing. It was found in middle of the yard, approximately 25 feet from nearest tree ...
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Is this a bear poo on trees?
We were hiking lately in Canadian Rockies (the Kananaskis country) and kept encountering branches of conifers near ground covered in brown substance similar to mud or poo.
It didn't have any strong ...
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Does running from a fight indicate weakness or rationale? Or both?
Say an animal gets approached in a violent manner, and chooses to run (flight) instead of engage in a physical act (fight).
I've heard that fighting to animals -- even humans arguably -- is "...
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How does frog egg clumping work?
Frog egg clutches can exist in large patches of inosculating eggs, or strings of eggs, and resist separation despite their aqueous environment. How do these eggs stay attached to one another?
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Identifying a Texan horned butterfly
I found this butterfly on some late-season bluebonnets in Fort Worth, Texas, this evening. You can get some sense of scale if you know how big bluebonnets are; the body is probably about the size of ...
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Are there any examples of social animals which show collective behavioral change in response to disease?
When Covid-19 happened, collective behavioral changes were taken in order to curb the spread of the virus by the human race. Do things like these happen in other animals as well? Like isolating a ...
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What is the deepest living underground organism?
A quick search reveals Halicephalobus mephisto which was
detected in ore recovered from deep rock fracture water in several gold mines in South Africa [...] 3.6 km (2.2 mi) under the surface of the ...
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What is the technical term for a combination-mouth-anus?
Some organisms have a single hole that is used both for food intake and for waste excretion. Does the scientific community have a name for that hole? What is it called? Or is it simply called the ...
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What Philippine snake is colored black with yellow markings?
I am from Philippines, found a snake inside our house and my father killed it. It is small about 10 inches or more. I doubt this snake was venomous though I didn't want to kill it.
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How to Scale Metabolic rate and drug dosage according to Mass?
I was reading a book "Biology and evolution of Crocodilians" by Gordon Grigg and David Kirshner.
And I can't understand the part about metabolic scaling no matter which method I tried I can'...
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What kind of scorpion is this?
This is in Nevada; it's about the size of a tooth pick in length.
(click to enlarge)
What kind of scorpion is this?
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Found this under a rock at the beach, removed it carefully and couldn't find any other bones, must be a marine mammal of some sort
Does anyone know what this is? I know this is not a land mammal because [details needed].
Unknown skull found under rock at beach.
No sign of eye sockets or jaw with teeth.
I have no idea what this ...
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What is the bird that are on house and make sound during part of the night?
For a few weeks, my neighbour is disturbed by a sound that seems to comes from me. It's mostly heard at the end of a day, but he said the sound stops in the night.
After checking, yes, it seems to be ...
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What is this marine creature? Is this a fossil?
Found this on a beach on the East coast of India - Vishakhapatnam, India
Is this a fossil? A coral?
Its small enough to fit in my hand
These tunnel-like structures are hard like rock/calcified
...
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What types of spider and caterpillar are these, and what are they doing?
What varieties of spider / caterpillar(?) are these?
And what is the spider doing to the caterpillar?
This is in Texas.
This went on for hours, with the spider dancing with the caterpillar in the ...
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Why are animal's whiskers in a square lattice?
I was observing my cat up close when I noticed his whiskers were in a square lattice as a novice mathematician, took notice of it and wanted to know if any other animal had this peculiar feature, so I ...
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Have any animal been discovered which don't have any kind of symmetry?
Bilateral symmetry is a common feature, yet we come across starfish that has rotational/circular symmetry.
But is there any animal that has no symmetry?
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What is the name of this creature?
What is the name of this creature?
It looks like either a crustacean or a conch.
user60848
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Seasonal fur shedding
How does an animal's (specifically dogs and cats) body "know" to shed fur in the spring and retain fur in the autumn?
Google just tells me that it happens, not the biological process of ...
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Are the muscles of all animals mechanically similar?
For instance, is the skeletal muscle of an elephant made of the same balance of fibers and cells as the skeletal muscle of a hippopotamus?
I recognize that slow- and fast-twitch muscles are a thing, ...
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What is the average length-width ratio of snakes
I am trying to find information on the average ratio between length and width of snakes, but I am having a lot of difficulty finding much information on this. Most places only giving information on ...
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Do cheetahs compete with lions?
Do cheetahs compete with lions for the same prey?
A quick Google search says the answer is no:
Lions hunt big animals such as buffalo, giraffe, wildebeest, and zebra. What prey do cheetahs hunt? ...
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What role does Salmonella Enteritidis play in the environment?
for my project, I have to research many different things, and one of them is the Salmonella Enteritidis. I have to answer what role it plays in the environment. Like, why is it important in our ...
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What mammalian species has the greatest relative variance in adult size?
The smallest adult chihuahuas weigh about 2 kg, and the largest adult English Mastiffs are around 104 kg, making them 52 times larger by weight.
Of course, this enormous variance is the result of ...
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Is there "limbic mimicry" in real life to distract animals? (like it was portrayed in "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore")
In the movie "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore", one of the characters comes up with the idea of "limbic mimicry" to distract dangerous animals from violent behavior. ...
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Do *Ambystoma macrodactylum* predate on *ceuthophilinaens* like the one I observed?
I observed this Ambystoma macrodactylum within half of a meter of this Ceuthophilinaen under an old board. I can imagine salamanders eating cricket-like things, but this question is far outside my ...
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Has anyone seen/read interspecies competition that is different at spatial scale for the same group of animals?
I work at a highly fragmented wildlife sanctuary in North Borneo, Malaysia. We have 8 species of hornbills here and from our observation they've grown to be less territorial in terms of where they ...
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What types of sounds do sperm whales produce?
Sperm whales produce echolocation clicks, what are the other types of clicks and other sounds they can produce?
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What is the name/type/species of this insect?
Facts:
Found in a bathtub in western Washington (state) (the pacific northwest).
3/16-1/4" long, 1/8-3/16 thick.
Gray colored.
No elongated noise but two antennas.
No pets in home, older 1969 ...
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Animal specific names with non-alphabetic characters
I'm part of a research team that investigates and documents native bee species, and we identified one of our Andrena specimens as A. w-scripta. With over ten years of experience in insect and ray-...
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Why is the sex ratio of male and female cats close to 50/50 (with males actually being more prevalent)?
According to this study from 1970, cats are about 50% male and 50% female. Furthermore, there appear to be about 100 male pedigree cats born for every 92 female cats.
I couldn't find any info about ...
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A level 2022 Biology percentage increase question
In January 2022 WBI12/01 they asked:
9c. In 1963, there were only three males and 12 females of
C. hoodensis left in the wild. These 15 tortoises were used in a
breeding programme.
ii.The wild ...
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Is there a published calibration between footprint measurements to body length in moose?
I am in the early stages of designing a study involving a moose (Alces alces) population.
An often-true heuristic is that body parts of an animal monotonically increases in size. There likely exist ...
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Why the "trailing" woodpecker sound?
I recently (March 26th, 2022) recorded a woodpecker in the woods around Habo Ljunga, Lomma, Skåne, Sweden and that gave me an idea. While cutting the audio, I noticed that the woodpecker's sound seems ...
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How could microplastics accumulate in the bodies of marine mammals?
I have read several literature reviews and studies on the effects of microplastic particles on fish and invertebrates (one example includes the review by Franzellitti et al. (2019)) and there are ...
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Photo attached of flies ‘injecting’ into spider egg sacs. Why? What’s going on here?
Brisbane, Australia.
While no image is available, direct observations were made of flies doing something to the egg sac.
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How can this coral survive with little sunlight?
Forgive me if this question is off topic, but I’ve seen similar questions so I think it should be on topic.
I’m at the beach currently, and I was looking in tide pools for interesting things. I found ...
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Do all vertebrates have a hypothalamus?
Since mammals and birds are warm-blooded animals, it's got me thinking whether our less-evolved vertebrate pals (reptiles in particular) have a sort of mechanism, alike to our hypothalami, that is ...
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What is the phenomenon when animals mimic other animals in order to survive?
The caterpillar Hemeroplanes triptolemus adopts the appearance of a snake when it detects danger. What is this phenomenon called in which animals mimic other animals in order to survive? Is it ...
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What's the definition of 'natural prey' and 'natural predator'?
I am sure we all see both of these phrases used commonly, but is there a reason as to why the terms 'natural predator' and 'natural prey' are used as opposed to just 'predator' and 'prey'?
Below are ...
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What insect in shell is this?
Location: INDIA(Tropical Monsoon)
I found an insect (approx 7mm) (marked with red in image) in my bedroom hanging from the roof.
It can spin some kind of thread, since it was hanging at the first ...
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Which animal has the smallest percentage of their body mass made up of water?
It's a "well known" and interesting "fact" that the human body is made up of "mostly water". With percentages from 65% to 90% often being repeated as if they were exact ...
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Which varieties of Aurelia aurita do not have a polyp phase?
According to this "In some Aurelia aurita, the polyp stage does not exist.", but they don't cite anything. Is there a resource detailing life cycles of various jellyfish or do I have to find ...
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Does anybody know what sort of fossil this could be?
enter image description here
Found in rural North Dakota. Small rock with black circular indentations.
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What is the modern experiment in which a frog was heated at the slowest rate?
I did a bit of research on the boiling frog phenomenon. It turned out that:
In the 19th century, there have been done three experiments in which a frog in water was heated very slowly. It didn't jump ...
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What is the thickness of the mucous, submucosal, muscular and serous membranes of the stomach wall of a piglet aged 60-75 days? (Large White pig)
There is publicly available data on the thickness of the layers of the stomach wall of piglets aged no more than 20 days. But at an early age, the thickness of the layers of the stomach wall increases ...
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Movement of Common Jelly Fish
Among the different types of movements in the bodies of various organisms, the movement exhibited by jelly fishes are very unique and peculiar in some ways. I can't understand how to classify the type ...
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Identify this bone found on beach
Does anyone have an idea what this bone is?
It was found on the beach in the Outer Banks, North Carolina, USA.
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