91
votes
Accepted
Do animals exhibit handedness (paw-ness?) preference?
Short Answer
Yes. handedness (or Behavioral Lateralization) has been documented in numerous vertebrates (mammals, reptiles and birds) as well as invertebrates.
This includes domestic cats (see Wells ...
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43
votes
Accepted
What do butterflies eat?
Adult butterflies don't eat! I mean.... not in the sense of chewing on food. They rather drink. They get their nutrients via ingestion of liquid substances. Their mouth consists of a long tube called ...
- 68k
40
votes
Accepted
How long before robin no longer needs the nest on my porch?
According to Cornell's All About Birds website, you will have to wait about a month for the nest to be cleared.
The egg incubation period is 12–14 days.
Following hatching, the nestlings will remain ...
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26
votes
Why is wombat scat (feces) shaped like cubes?
I'm almost certain that your question is based on the press that Patricia J Yang's research is receiving (e.g., here and here).
Yang and her co-authors examined the structure and mechanics of some ...
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24
votes
What do butterflies eat?
Several species of the order Lepidoptera don't feed at all in adult form, surviving entirely on the reserves made while they were larva. Two examples I'm aware of are the Atlas moth (as well as most ...
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23
votes
Accepted
What is this grasshopper doing?
It's its ovipositor & it's trying to dig a hole to lay its eggs.
"How Do Grasshoppers Dig Holes to Lay Their Eggs? After breeding, female grasshoppers dig a hole in the ground in which to lay ...
- 801
22
votes
What exactly is this small puffer fish doing and how did it manage to accomplish such a feat?
A tiny Japanese puffer fish creates a grand sand sculpture on the featureless seabed by using his fins to dig furrows. He uses this to attract the attention of passing females.
Why do puffer ...
- 1,562
16
votes
What exactly is this small puffer fish doing and how did it manage to accomplish such a feat?
This "nest" is created by a male pufferfish for both courtship and for rearing young.
The male puffer fish uses its body and fins (a combination of pectoral, anal, and caudal -- see here) to ...
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15
votes
Accepted
Why do we laugh?
Like so much of biology, we just don't know!
I'll preface this answer by disappointing you; this answer doesn't entirely answer your question. That's because this is a pretty big mystery in research ...
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15
votes
Accepted
Where do birds and squirrels go to die?
A major cause of squirrel death is predation:
Survival and mortality of the Arizona gray squirrel (Sciurus arizonensis)
Causes of red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) mortality in England
You won't see ...
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14
votes
Accepted
Why do carnivores evolve?
I'm going to focus on the why do carnivores exist part of this question, which should be extendible to answer why humans eat meat.
Let's start a thought experiment in which we only allow the ...
- 16k
10
votes
Accepted
Are there any animals that gradually approaches the predator to search for food?
The behaviour that you describe is common in most animal species, as part of the natural trade-off between access to food, minimizing risk, habituation and hunger. Animals usually choose to forage in ...
- 16.7k
9
votes
Accepted
Are there examples of animals that live in groups, where all have the same role?
Yes, there are many examples. Those species are said to be gregarious. See below for examples.
Level of sociality
When it comes to social behaviour, it is common to categorize species into one of four ...
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9
votes
Accepted
Why do bumble bees run repeatedly into walls?
Crall et al., 2015, studied bumblebee collision avoidance (note the senior authors are the same from your link). It seems that, contrary to popular belief and experience, bumblebees are actually quite ...
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9
votes
Why is wombat scat (feces) shaped like cubes?
On a more serious note than my comment, and as a supplement to theforestecologist's answer, it's worth pointing out that a cube with rounded corners and edges has larger surface area to volume ratio ...
9
votes
Accepted
Do birds grieve and feel emotion?
Your "grieving bird" is a video of a peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) and its (nearly?) dead chick on a hot summer day in Phoenix, Arizona (USA) in 2016.
Photo credit: Arizona Game And ...
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9
votes
Accepted
How do beavers learn how to build dams?
Question summary: is dam building learned or instinctive in beavers?
A blog post from 2011 references an article in the Juneau Empire titled Running water is sound of spring for beavers. This article ...
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8
votes
Why would a mother reject her offspring if it has been "interfered" with by humans?
Several ungulates and other species such as seals and primates are known to initially use odour to discriminate their offspring. Most relevant work to study this has been done in sheep; sheep are ...
- 3,346
8
votes
What is the mechanism behind cats' geolocating homing behavior?
It is explained with path integration in behavioral neuroscience. Not only cats, but other mammals, birds and even insects use path integration to return to a starting point.
Here is a relevant ...
- 1,117
8
votes
Accepted
What do you call clearly different sub-groups within a species?
In eusocial insects, especially ants and bees, these groups are called "castes" (see e.g. Hölldobler & Wilson, 1990. This is the same term that is used for social stratifications in some human ...
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8
votes
Accepted
Are there any pairs of animal species that regularly prey on other?
Caiman and Anacondas - though each hunts the other at a stage of development when the hunter is larger.1 2
Occasionally this occurs with Orcas and Sharks.3
Some species of shark3
Spiders and mantids4
...
- 1,562
7
votes
Is it one queen bee per hive or per colony?
Every beehive contains one colony, and every colony has one queen. (Of course there are exceptions, like if a queen dies or is about to be replaced, but I don't think that's what you're asking.)
A ...
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7
votes
What's the relationship between snail movement and rain?
The movement of organisms towards water is termed hydrotaxis. 'Hydro-' refers to water and '-taxis' refers to movement. Hydrotaxis has been investigated in animals such as the nematode Caenorhabditis
...
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