Science stories you've missed

Years ago, I reported for Slate on animal relationships across species - not only are humans fond of their cats, but it turns out, it is not uncommon for dogs and cats to bond, as any Youtube search will prove. Less common is the cheetah and the dog, but even that relationship is part of the animal experience. "Animals can forge bonds across species boundaries if the need for social contact pre-empts their normal biological imperatives. A cat raised with dogs doesn’t know it’s a cat, the logic goes," my piece started. So I found it very interesting that a new study out of the UK talks about an aspect of this topic, animal emotions. The new theory from researchers at the School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast suggests that animals experience emotions like we do - showing positive moods when they “win” and sour moods when they “lose”. Their findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B . Using animal contests as a ca...

A study published today, April 6, in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment examines a novel twist on an old idea: that beauty is more than skin deep. The authors have shown how one should take charisma into account when studying and managing invasive species. Such interlopers are the second largest cause of biodiversity loss. Transferred to new environments by human activity, they become competitors or predators of local species, which are often unable to withstand the incursion. An international research team, involving two French laboratories, have evidenced an aspect of these invasions: species charisma. The popularity of a species and its perception by society and the media, they concur, determines how it is introduced and what impact it has on its new surroundings. In Italy, for example, the arrival of the popular North American grey squirrel threatens the existence of the native red squirrel. "Charisma is used in the literature to refer to the “attractive...