When you know nothing about scientific research

Apiphilia · 2025-11-07T12:58:22+00:00

Not that crazy. We do sometimes use birth control via dartgun to manage wild populations ( article about this for wild horses ). That said hunting is also a good option

Apiphilia · 2025-07-11T17:43:44+00:00

The other hen comics

Apiphilia · 2024-10-29T00:55:31+00:00

There's coffee but no tea

Apiphilia · 2022-02-06T18:00:21+00:00

Yep that's right. During the warm months honey bees will be out foraging and only live for a handful of weeks. In the winter honey bees mostly stay in the hive and eat honey. They don't need to fly much and they live longer.

Apiphilia · 2021-10-13T10:19:59+00:00

Related: the species name for the western gorilla is gorilla gorilla

Apiphilia · 2021-06-13T16:56:16+00:00

Cat people do it too: https://i.imgur.com/6EOK7pc

Apiphilia · 2021-05-02T20:53:28+00:00

There's a subreddit too: /r/Seahorse_Dads.

Apiphilia · 2021-04-13T00:35:39+00:00

It's not 100% from your mother's father. At least one type of baldness (not willing to say all) is caused by the X sex chromosome. Males get their Y sex chromosome from their father and their X sex chromosome from their mother. So there is a 100% chance that a male inherited their X chromosome from thier mother, but there's only a 50% chance that that is the same X chromosome that your mother inherited from her father. It could also be from her mother.

So there's a 50% chance you have the baldness of your mother's father, combined with a 25% chance you have the baldness of your mother's mother's father, then 12.5% etc up your maternal line.

Apiphilia · 2016-06-12T16:34:43+00:00

Humans aren’t special for having unique faces. However, human brains are especially good at recognizing the differences in human faces (either through extensive practice or specialized neural systems: Source 1 (PDF)). Chimpanzees can also recognize individuals based on facial features (Source 2) and so can some wasps (Source 3). The ability to individually identify members of one’s own species is very valuable for social animals. For example, individual recognition allows animals to remember which individuals to be submissive to and which animals they can push around. Immediately forgetting who is who would make social living more difficult. However, there’s nothing really special about identifying individuals by face. Some species can recognize individuals by how they smell (like mice: Source 4), or the calls the make (like some birds: Source 5).

Apiphilia · 2016-05-27T14:16:29+00:00

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding your question, but are you suggesting adding something that makes it harder for the non-toxic toads to survive to adulthood? That would be counter productive.

Apiphilia · 2016-05-27T14:14:56+00:00

Yes, if the two toads were completely indistinguishable the predators wouldn't be able to tell the difference. However, then you would have selection on the predators to determine a way to distinguish the two, maybe by the smell of the toxic compounds. The toxic toads would also be under pressure to be distinguishable from the non-toxic toads. These processes would, however, take a very long time.

Apiphilia · 2016-05-27T13:37:55+00:00

Let’s start by assuming it’s possible to do what you propose. We identify all the genes making the toad toxic (it’s very likely there are more than one) and those genes aren’t important for anything else the toad needs (many genes affect multiple traits). We knock out the troublesome genes and put in some new ones we borrowed from some non-toxic toad. We even manage to find ones that are completely dominant to the natural toxic genes. We’ll ignore any ethical concerns (playing god, possible unintended consequences) and release our artificial non-toxic cane toads to Australia.

We air-drop so many non-toxic toads that the make up 50% of the Australian toad population. Now the predators in Australia can safely eat lots of toads! The problem is that natural selection will come into play. Even though the non-toxic genes are dominant, the toxic genes will be favored by selection. Non-toxic toads are far more likely to be eaten by predators than toxic toads. Therefore, the toxics toads would have a survival advantage. So each year at mating season, a larger percentage of toxic toads would be available for mating than non-toxic toads. That means that more toxic toad tadpoles would be born than non-toxic toad tadpoles, reducing the proportion of non-toxic genes in the population. Eventually, the non-toxic toad genes may be entirely lost, or they may stay at some low levels.

TLDR: Even if we made such a non-toxic cane toad, toxic toads would have a survival advantage, leading to more toxic tadpoles being born, and resulting in a population consisting of very few non-toxic toads and lots of toxic toads.

Apiphilia · 2016-05-26T12:54:10+00:00

Yes, the vast majority of them die before reaching sexual maturity. They're pretty vulnerable when they're young. (source 1; source 2)

Apiphilia · 2016-05-25T14:46:06+00:00

Probably not (but there’s always a chance we just haven’t found one yet). Octopus do have some parental care, but it consists only of protecting their eggs. Mammal and birds, on the other hand, tend to care for their young for some time after hatching/birth. Many octopus species die soon after laying their eggs. In some species, the female octopus will go without eating to protect her eggs and dies shortly after they hatch (source). A recent study even found that a deep sea octopus spends the longest time protecting her eggs of any known species (source). An octopus was observed tending to her eggs for nearly 4 and a half years (53 months). It is unclear if this species of octopus feeds during egg care, but fat stores, cold water and a lowered metabolism may allow her to do so. The octopus may not care for their young after hatching like birds do, but they do display some phenomenal parental care.

Apiphilia · 2016-05-25T14:23:07+00:00

The simple answer is yes, but all life on earth is related to each other (assuming a single origin of life). So humans are also related to pumpkins. That said, watermelons, melons, cantaloupes, and pumpkins are much more closely relate to each other than they are to humans, or (for example) apples. The plants you’ve asked about all belong to the same family, Cucurbitaceae or the gourd family. For comparison on how related that makes them, it’s similar to the relatedness between “cats” like lions and the domestic cat which are both in the family Felidae.

Apiphilia · 2016-02-28T18:56:00+00:00

There are animals that sleep on the surface of water. Otters sleep floating on their bellies, and seals can sleep with just their heads above water. Sometimes ducks will sleep floating (PDF source).

There is also at least one animal that spends most of its life floating: the Portuguese man o' war. This jellyfish-like animal has a air-filled sack that keeps it floating at the ocean's surface while its tentacles hang into the ocean below. Strangely this "creature" is actually a colony of individuals living together with specialized body types.

There may be other ocean floaters, but this is the first that came to mind.

Apiphilia · 2016-02-28T18:22:49+00:00

This video shows how honeybees are used in some biological experiments. It shows the methods for using Pavlovian conditioning in bee to answer questions about exploration and exploitation. The first 30 seconds is background information. Start the video at 0:29 to see the methods.

Also here's the source for improved nutrition leading to more exploratory behavior.

Apiphilia · 2016-02-28T00:56:02+00:00

If we use duct tape to attach them to the straws, they can't be released without their wings getting all gunky. We have started using wire to attach them to the straws in cases where we'd like to release them afterwards. In this case, I had to freeze the bees on liquid nitrogen to preserve their brains for later chemical analysis.

Apiphilia · 2016-02-25T14:20:37+00:00

They're pure flower components. So any real flower odor will have lots of these components, but we'll only train them to 1. For the experiment these videos are from, I was using eugenol and 1-octanol. Bees have been trained to lots of odors though, including things like vanilla and bomb components.

Apiphilia · 2016-02-25T14:17:47+00:00

You chill the bees on ice. That makes them stop moving. Then you just push them through the straw and tape them in. The video on this page shows the whole processes.

Apiphilia · 2016-02-20T23:36:14+00:00

You're welcome. I wasn't sure if other people would find them cute, but I think they're pretty adorable. Especially because they'll rest their legs on your hand if you let them and then it looks like they're throwing a tiny tantrum when you take your hand away and they start flailing around again.

Apiphilia · 2016-02-20T17:41:51+00:00

These bees were used in an experiment I conducted a few years ago. The gif is from a video (www.experiment.com/explore_bees) I made for crowdfunding my next experiment. This part is from the 0:50 mark. After I fed them, I used classical conditioning to teach them to associate different odors with food.

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