Questions tagged [zoology]
The biological study of animals. Very broad use so be sure to add additional clarifying tags
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What is this insect I found in Russia?
I found this in Russia. It is approximately 2cm long.
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Is it true that oral sex exists in non-human animals?
For example, outside of humans, do other species of animals engage in oral sex, or any oral stimulation of others' genitals purely for pleasure, not any cleansing habits, etc.?
Basically, what I am ...
user3846
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What's this insect (Oregon, USA)?
Any ideas? This was taken in July on the beach of Bandon, OR, in the USA.
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Why do pigeons kill their chicks when touched by a human?
I used to have many pigeons around the house. If by chance one of the chicks fell out of the nest, we used to put it back using gloves.
Usually, if we would touch the chicks with our bare hands, ...
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Can you identify this insect for me?
Does anyone know what this is? I have lived in this area of northern Utah, USA for over 30 years and played with insects, snakes and spiders growing up here. However, until this week, I have never ...
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What is the convention for log notation in biology?
I'm reading through some oldish (1980s) papers on length-weight relationships in fish and crustaceans. Many report log-log relationships without specifying whether this is natural log, base 10, etc. ...
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Do other animals suffer from myopia or hypermetropia?
Mammals have eyes similar to humas and many other animals like octopuses have a lens in the eye. So do they have such eye defects? If yes, how do they overcome it? Do they feel selection pressure ...
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Why does ostrich meat look and taste more like beef than chicken?
Some time ago I tasted ostrich meat, and what was amazing to me was that the meat very much resembled beef, much more than it resembled chicken, turkey or duck meat. And even more than lamb and pork ...
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Is there a purpose for nucleated red blood cells in reptile, avian and fish blood?
I have read, and read, and read documents on this subject but still have no conclusions.
Everything I have read explains why mammals don't have a nucleus (to make more room for the haemoglobin and ...
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Is the squid giant axon the fastest conducting unmyelinated axon known?
The conduction velocity of the squid giant axon can reach 30 m/s. Is there any known example of an even faster conducting unmyelinated axons?
user24
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What is the family of this insect caught by my Drosera?
I am currently trying to find out what type of flies are flying around in my home. If they are fruit flies, fungus gnats or something else.
Currently my Droseraa caught one of them and I am currious ...
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What will happen if a scorpion pierces itself?
If a scorpion pierces itself, will it die or immune to its poison? If it produces the venom its blood should be immune to itself poison.
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Is there a relationship between efficiency of cellular metabolism and warm-blooded-ness?
My BIO 101 book states that when human cells convert glucose to ATP, the process is only approx 35% efficient, and much of the potential energy is lost as heat. However, that heat is useful to us in ...
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Are there any structures in mammals that are used only by males?
There are examples of structures which only serve a purpose in females, but it seems like the opposite could also be true. Are there any structures which exist in both mammalian sexes and only serve a ...
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What happens to snakes that swallow rodents as a whole?
As we all know, a few species of snakes swallow rodents as a whole. My question is what happens to the teeth and bones of these animals? Won't they cut into the flesh of the snake and hurt it? Are the ...
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Identify a small bug, possibly a plant bug?
We found this bug in a bedroom in southern California. It's small: the body is about 5mm and the length including legs and antenna could be up to about 10mm. It's mostly black, though the abdomen from ...
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Do non-human animals suffer from insomnia?
And how do we know whether they do or not?
§
If sleep is a physiological need, it seems weird that we become unable to fulfill on demand even in the absence of any obvious physical issues. We would ...
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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 do marine mammals control buoyancy?
Presumably, as a whale or seal dives, its lungs get compressed by the increasing water pressure, and it gets less buoyant.
Under this model, for a given amount of air taken in at the surface, the ...
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Identification of a small to mid-sized, yellow moth species found in India at monsoon season
I am from India and it's monsoon here. What is the name of this insect?
Description:
Length: ~4cm
Width: ~2.5cm
Color: yellow, almost uniform across the wings. Slightly darker, dandelion yellow ...
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Why do animal teeth get darker if exposed?
I was wondering why the teeth of cats (And dogs, as far as I know, plus possibly some other animals or even humans) get darker if they are exposed to air / light?
Example:
(See the lower end of the ...
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What kind of fish is this white blue-stained fish?
This fish has been spotted at the Great Barrier Reef near Cairns (Queensland).
I put a big effort to find it via Google but never could encounter anything similar.
I have also made an attempt to find ...
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What insect is this? I saw it in my house in Kolkata on 2 April 2018, at 8:00 p.m
I saw this insect in my house in Kolkata (India) on 2 April, 2018 after a storm at around 8:00 p.m. I would like to know what insect it is. Thanks in advance.
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Can animals train to be noticeably stronger, faster, more agile... than other animals of the same species?
Humans have a huge variation in physical ability because of exercise differences. Olympic athletes are a number of times stronger than average people on the street. It seems that variation in animals ...
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Goats are so fearless but sheep are not. Is there any genetic difference responsible?
As you see in the picture goats (not only wild goats) are so fearless, but I never saw any sheep do this. What is the source of this difference in behavior?
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The biggest underground living animal
It's easy to find information about the biggest animals at land / at sea / in the air. But what was the biggest underground-living animal that ever existed?
No animals that were forced to live ...
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Can a human acquire a memory of an animal? [closed]
I would like to know if it's possible for a human to acquire an animal memory.
I mean, animals store their memories in their brain, right? And so do we, humans, store our memory.
So, is it possible ...
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What is this bone from?
This object showed up on my fire escape in New York city. It appears to be some kind of bone. It's a bit smaller than an adult human hand. What animal is it from?
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Examples of animals with 12-28 legs?
Many commonly known animals' limbs usually number between 0 and 10. For example, a non-exhaustive list:
snakes have 0
Members of Bipedidae have 2 legs. Birds and humans have 2 legs (but 4 limbs)
Most ...
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Why are lions the only social cats?
We know that almost all cats are solitary.
How did the Lions (Panthera leo) end up social animals? Do we have an explanatory evolutionary path describing how the Lions became social while the rest of ...
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What is called the "area size that an animal usually lives in"?
What is called the "area size that an animal usually lives in" or "needs for a normal life"? Is there any specific term?
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Do animals exist which have good vision, but see only grayscale?
In computer vision the color information is often discarded, as most object recognition tasks seem to work just as well on the greyscale image (even better, because there is less unnecessary ...
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Can ants sense food from a long distance?
I recently had ants find and then swarm to a food container that I put down on a desk. I'm curious as to whether an ant would have needed to get lucky (i.e., discovering the food after crawling up the ...
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Facultative Cannibalism?
I heard about Larger cats eating the cubs. Is it some kind of facultative cannibalism or they can eat there own kind like that?
What are the facultative cannibalism present in animal kingdom?
What ...
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Theoretically, is domestication of (virtually) any animal possible?
Looking at ones that manage well alongside us human animals, such as dogs and cats, we see that this is possible for evolved, distant animals to have heritable, preferable traits around people. ...
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Why do stranded marine mammals die so quickly?
Mammals have lungs, so do marine mammals. Nevertheless some marine mammals seem to die rather quickly when they strand on a beach.
As they have lungs and can breath while on land, why do they die so ...
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Picture of a camel's red blood cells
I'm an art student in need of a little help. I'm looking for microscopic pictures of camel's red blood cells, I need their shape for an art project.
The pictures I find on Google seem a little ...
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Are there animal species that sense infrared light with their eyes?
I asked a question earlier today about birds with infrared vision but this time I am asking about animals in general. I know that many snakes have receptors between their eyes and their snout that ...
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Cockroach-like insect identification (India)
I just saw an insect in my room, and I have never seen anything like it ever before. I captured a photo, please see if you can identify it. It has got quite unique colours on its exodermis and it has ...
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Could someone help me identify this insect?
Does anyone know what this insect is? I put a rubber ball on my lawn, and within seconds a bunch of these insects (maybe 15 or 20) landed on it. I took a look around and saw that there were lots of ...
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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 this worm like creature?
Recently while cleaning my garden, I saw this worm like creature which resembles a leech but is humongous in size if I compare that with commonly found leeches in my area, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. ...
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Toronto spider identification
I found it in Toronto, Ontario, during early June, 2015.
When prodded it seemed to jump around, or at least to move very fast.
I can also post a short video of it if needed.
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Is there a term for tool use in animals?
Is there a technical/scientific term that scientists use to refer to tool making abilities found in certain types of animals?
Reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_cognition#...
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Identification of a strange skull
My father is a fisherman in the Baltic sea, and he has found this very strange skull. I would like to know to which animal it belonged. Can someone help identify it?
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Can elephants smell when they have water in their trunks?
For humans, humans cannot smell when they have water stuck in their noses. However, I am wondering if elephants can smell scents when they have water in their trunks, as they are designed to hold ...
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Are Sloth tongues soft or rough?
Are Sloth tongues soft or rough?
Dogs have soft tongues, while cats have rough tongues, so the feeling when they lick e.g. a human hand is quite different. So what about sloths?
This question came ...
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How does a spider's legs not get caught in silk when wrapping prey?
When a spider catches a prey, it wraps it up in silk. It uses its legs to do this. So how does its own legs not get stuck on the silk?
Note: I'm not talking about walking around the web. There are ...
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How do animals end up in remote areas?
I was thinking specifically about random marshy water holes on farmers fields. It seems that you can visit just about any one of these and you will find frogs if you look hard enough.
They usually ...
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Why are there so many sex determining systems in animals
There are several sex determining systems in animals.
In mammals XY = male(except in rare cases where SRY crosses with genes on the X so that it is the reverse) and XX = female.
In some birds it is ...
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