Parasites can take over their hosts and trigger dramatic changes in host appearance and behavior that are typically interpreted as extended phenotypes that promote parasite survival and fitness. For example, Toxoplasma gondii is thought to manipulate the behaviors of infected rodents to aid transmission to cats and parasitic trematodes of the genus Ribeiroia alter limb development in their amph...

Approximately 9 billion chickens and 270 million turkeys are raised for meat annually in the United States. When these farmed birds reach market weight, they must be caught and crated for transport from production facilities to slaughter plants. Conventional manual catching results in severely compromised welfare. Birds experience stress and fear, and can be physically harmed, suffering bruises...

Suzanne: Indeed, there are other species of birds related to peacocks that use feather vibrations in a very similar way during mating displays, including the Great Argus and a variety of Peacock Pheasants. Some birds species have feathers that make sounds due to vibrations driven by the passage of air over the feathers during flight,while others drive the vibrations using specially adapted feat...

O you the creator, you the destroyer, you who sustain and make an end, Who in sunlight dance among the birds and the children at play, Who at midnight dance among the corpses in the burning grounds, You, Shiva, you dark and terrible Bhairava, You Suchness and Illusion, the Void and All Things, You are the lord of life, and therefore I have brought you flowers; You are the lord of death, and the...

Observations of hummingbirds feeding at flowers longer or shorter than their bills seem to contradict the view that bill lengths of hummingbirds evolved in concert with the lengths of their flowers. Recent experiments, however, indicate that a hummingbird’s ability to feed at artificial flowers of different lengths depends on the widths of the flowers. We examined if the broad range of flower l...

Sexual reproduction in flowering plants depends on the evocation of flowers, which, in general, consist of four whorls of organs: sepals, petals, anthers, and pistil. Sepals and petals can be regarded as initially protective organs. During the first stage of floral development, meiosis occurs in the anthers and the pistil while these organs are still enclosed by the sepals. Petals, the organs o...

The sense of smell in most birds is considered to be relatively unimportant, and with a few exceptions, it has been little studied. In an extensive anatomical survey of 15 1 species in 23 orders, Bang and Cobb (1968) and Bang (197 1) measured the relative diameters of the olfactory bulb and ipsilateral hemisphere, finding a 12-fold variation in the ratio of these dimensions. Behavioral studies ...