Questions tagged [zoology]
The biological study of animals. Very broad use so be sure to add additional clarifying tags
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How many cells does the smallest animal have?
Note: question rewritten to prevent misunderstanding and make it more answerable
I know that some small animals like C. elegans display surprising sophistication with a very small number of cells. ...
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Identification of colorful jelly-like marine creature
I'm on my trip to Gulangyu Island, Xiamen, Fujian Province, China. Today(4th February 2017), at 12:13 A.M., I saw a beach filled with huge rocks on which various dry shells reside. Among the shells, I ...
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Hippos in infrared
Watching Netflix's "Night on Earth", I discovered that Hippos, or at least some Hippos, have quite a weird appearance in infrared. They seem to be covered by IR bright spots all over their body, ...
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Owl identification. Winter in Haliburton, Ontario, Canada
Is this owl a 'Great Grey Owl' or 'Barred Owl'? I'm thinking a Great Grey because it was quite huge - about 1.5 to 2 feet tall.
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Are there specific features of birds that cats/small predators are attracted to?
I've recently heard a podcast, in which a professor describes one of the theories as to why we like abstract art. In his talk, he mentions an experiment with seagull chicks, in which the seagull ...
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How does a jumping spider manage to "jump" on the ceiling?
I just witnessed a small jumping spider jump on some kind of louse or bed bug on the ceiling. How does it do that without falling? I have yet to find a high-speed-camera video of a jumping spider ...
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Skull mystery on beach
The skull was found on a beach on the Sechelt inlet on Canada's pacific coast. A marine environment.
What species is this skull from?
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Name and Behaviour of Arthropods near a Cactus
Background Story
I have a small, old cactus on my sunny, south-facing window sill in southern Germany. Since a few years, small black dots gathered around its pot. At first, I thought the dots were ...
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Identify blue/translucent jelly-like animal on beach
A few weeks back a beach in California had lots of this animal (if it is an animal?). Can anyone identify what it is?
They had a distinct blue bottom and a see-through top.
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Are there any pre-Holocene venomous animals?
The novel (and subsequently movie) Jurassic Park featured a dinosaur called Dilophosaurus, that was purported to be venomous and had an ability similar to that of the extant spitting cobra. ...
user132
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Have elephants (or any species other than humans) been known to cover their dead?
I was just reading this blog on HarperCollins website about 5 animals that grieve. Of elephants, the following claim is made:
They bury their dead and pay tribute to the bodies and to the bones. [my ...
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How do baby animals that primarily subsist on cellulose get their initial gut flora?
In the case of mammals like giraffes and koalas, is that bacteria common on the plants they eat so when a baby starts to try to stick something besides its mother's milk in its mouth, it can't digest ...
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Identify fuzzy black quarter sized spider with orange on abdomen, in Minnesota
Found this spider on my car in Minnesota near St Paul (USA). Total size including the legs (end of rear leg to end of front leg in picture) is probably about the size of a quarter.
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What species of fox is this?
I found this picture of a fox in a news article about arctic foxes in Sweden (source), but I'm not sure whether it is actually an arctic fox.
On the one hand, it has white fur, which is the correct ...
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Why is Portuguese man o' war considered a colony?
The wikipedia entry on the Portuguese man o' war says:
... the Portuguese man o' war is ... not actually a single multicellular organism but a colonial organism made up of many highly specialized ...
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What animal has the longest juvenile period?
I just heard the following complaint from a comedienne.
Humans are the only animal that is completely useless for the first twenty five years of life.
Obviously this is just a joke but it is true ...
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Do any animals prepare food?
I was just wondering if any animals (are smart enough to) enhance the flavor of their food by, for example, mixing ingredients or seasoning or letting it cure in some ways. In the first episode of ...
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Why do sparrows jump instead of walk when they are not flying?
I want to talk about sparrows, one of the most common birds around the world. I noticed that when one slowly walks into them (so that they are not frightened enough to fly away), these tiny birds ...
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Small worm living in some kind of cocoon, what are these animals?
I am curious what animal is this. It is/lives inside some kind of cocoon, about 1 cm in length. They are attached to walls and to the ceiling, but sometimes they fall off. Inside the structure there ...
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Identification of an animal building
I live in south-west Germany and today while mowing the lawn I discovered a strange structure. It looks like a molehill on which additional branches were placed. This kind of branches are easy to find ...
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Why does the butterfly have a cocoon stage in its life cycle?
Why does the butterfly have a cocoon stage in its life cycle? It could have simply grown up within the egg/cocoon, and emerged as a butterfly. Instead it is first an egg, then a worm, then a chrysalis,...
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If I put a cup over a spider, and leave it there for a day, will the spider survive?
Will it travel more slowly since it hasn't had food for a day?
What if I left the cup there for longer?
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How much energy does a lion contain? [closed]
I was looking into the following problem:
Obviously, the solution lies in how much energy either can output per unit of time.
The total energy output of the sun is $3.8×10^{26} \frac{J}{s}$.
The ...
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Are humans Gnathostomates?
Gnathostomates are vertebrates having jaws. But when I search on the internet for Gnathostomates, I always find out that they are sharks and fish-like organisms.
But are humans not also ...
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From which animal is this derived?
I know only that it is not a bird and an insect. I am really interested in from what it is.
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What are the frequency ranges of most marine mammal vocalizations?
I am trying to determine a list of frequency ranges into which marine mammal vocalizations fall.
Ideally, I would like a list showing where the most popular marine mammal vocalizations fall, followed ...
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Do animals get sick from eating dirty food or eating off the floor?
Humans have very strict tradition of hygiene, such as washing hands before eating, using utensils, and in general keeping as much distance between food and dirt as possible.
At the same time, most ...
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Species with reproduction barriers that can both reproduce with a third species
To start with, I do not have a sound knowledge in biology or any formal education in the area.
I was told that one of the definition of a species is a reproductive barrier, which means that if two ...
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What kind of crow is this? [duplicate]
Years ago, when I lived in Greece, I saw crows from a close distance, but never with this peculiar colouration. Today I saw two individuals, both with these gray parts.
Location: Austria, Vienna. ...
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How best to count bees entering and leaving a hive to measure hive activity?
This is my first question here, so I apologize for all mistakes I could have possibly made.
I'm a high school student in East-Central Europe and I need to complete some research for a biology contest ...
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What causes notches in elephants' ears?
What causes the elephants' ear to rip like this?
Is it a natural process as they get old, or it's injuries, like consequence of fighting with other elephants?
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Dorsal vs Posterior and Ventral vs Anterior
From prior reading, I thought that Dorsal is the same as Posterior and Ventral is the same as Anterior. However, when I checked in google images for these anatomical terms for a horse (just to ...
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Why do bumble bees run repeatedly into walls?
I have noticed on dozens of occasions that bumble bees will run repeatedly into a wall. Usually between 1 - 5 times before clearing the obstacle or flying away.
Credit: Spine Films
This source ...
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Why do animals have more heavy nitrogen and carbon than plants?
There are two stable Isotopes of nitrogen N14 and N15. The ratio of
15N/14N tends to increase with trophic level, such that herbivores
have higher nitrogen isotope values than plants, and ...
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Can a lizard shed a regrown tail again?
Some lizards are famous for their ability to voluntarily shed their tail to elude predators (Autotomy). After a while, the tail will be regenerated, though with slightly different qualities, as ...
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Is there any math formula that can be used to describe shape of leaves?
There can be great variation in shape of leaves. Neverthless they are fairly simple shapes. How far are we in describing the shape of leaves in a mathematically rigorous way? Do we have a general ...
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Do fish break a water molecule to absorb oxygen?
How do fish separate oxygen from H20 & consume it? Do they break the water molecule and absorb the oxygen only?
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What makes humans omnivores, and not herbivores?
Some vegans claim that humans are herbivores, not omnivores, and that we are not physiologically designed to eat meat (see here: http://www.peta.org/living/food/natural-human-diet/).
"According to ...
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What was the reason for some plant and animals to become giant in course of evolution?
The dinosaurs, mammoths, giant plants etc are known to be bigger than modern animals. I wonder why they had been lived and why they are not living now? I really don't know much but is it something ...
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How did zootoxins evolve?
I've always wondered how toxins in certain organisms have evolved. Particularly, organisms that produce toxins as a deterrent to predators as opposed to organisms that use it to paralyze their prey.
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Can any species be bred selectively/engineered to become as diverse looking as dogs?
I've done some research and it appears that dogs are the most diverse looking single species of mammals. The questions that interest me is - are dogs special in respect to genes/gene activation ...
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What is this bird similar to a seagull but with a forked swift-like tail?
I observed these birds in Saint Petersburg, Russia this June, mainly in the evening when the sun was setting. They are similar to seagulls and often fly (presumably hunting) at the same location as ...
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Strange Striped Insect identification (Northern Indiana)
These bugs are coming out of some wood that I cut and burned in Northern Indiana (USA) . I am not sure if it is coming out of a white ash, cherry or oak. We did have the emerald ash boarer come ...
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Will the "frog in boiling water not jumping out" work on warm blooded animals
There is the famous saying about a frog that is put in water that are slowly boiling will not jump out until it's too late. I realize it happens because of the frog's cold blood that adjusts to the ...
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Help Needed Identifying Corvids
I'd appreciate some help identifying these three corvids I photographed in Austria during the Summer:
I know identifying corvids can be difficult and I'm not an ornithologist -- just an amateur bird ...
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Why do pandas have a high probability of giving birth to twins?
According to the BBC documentary "Wild About Pandas", about half of panda birth result in twins. Why do they have such a high probability compared to other mammals? What factor(s) control that ...
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Why does the sex of the parent species determines the species of a hybrid offspring
I've read a little about hybrid animals, and have been amazed by the fact that the sex of the parent species determine the species of the offspring, in some hybrids.
A male horse and a female donkey ...
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What is this woodlouse doing?
I picked an apple from the ground, it was wet with dew and a woodlouse was stuck to it, with its back against the apple. When it got loose, it started flexing its "tail" like this for a while. Why?
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How can an albatross stay airborne for months?
Albatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large seabirds allied to the procellariids, storm-petrels and diving-petrels in the order Procellariiformes. They range widely in the Southern ...
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How do animals identify their offspring?
Recently I was watching a documentary about penguins and how a mother penguin lost its chick. Then it went looking for it, and among a horde of penguins it was able to find its chick and take it back.
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