Animal Studies

Explore the fascinating world of animal research, behavior, and conservation. This category covers scientific breakthroughs, studies on animal health, and advancements in understanding the animal kingdom’s role in ecosystems and human society.

How Big Brains and Flexible Skulls Led to Evolution of Modern Birds

3D modeling shows how larger brains triggered changes in jaw muscles and joint mechanics that powered a flexible feeding system for modern birds.

Modern birds are the living relatives of dinosaurs. Take a look at the features of flightless birds like chickens and ostriches that walk upright on two hind legs, or predators like eagles and hawks with their sharp talons and keen eyesight, and the similarities to small theropod dinosaurs like the velociraptors of Jurassic Park fame are striking. Yet birds differ from their reptile ancestors in many important ways. A turning point in their evolution was the development of larger brains, which in turn led to changes in the size and shape of their skulls. New research from the University of Chicago and University of Missouri shows how these physical changes affected the mechanics of the way birds move and use their beaks to eat and explore their habitats — adaptations that helped them evolve into the extraordinarily diverse winged creatures we see today.

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The Art of Tracking Invisible Patterns in Animal Behavior

In the Kronauer lab, Pruefer placed entire colonies of clonal raider ants on his canvasses and allowed them to move over these surfaces for hours or even days. “In the end, it’s like a narrative of their movements and what they’ve done over that whole time” says Pruefer, who has been experimenting with this technique for over a decade.

Anyone stepping into a gallery featuring Maximilian Pruefer’s work might mistake the intricate patterns on the walls for imagery from a scientific symposium. The 38-year-old German multimedia artist has spent years capturing the unseen movements of animals, rendering their invisible world visible. Using innovative techniques, he records fleeting interactions—most recently, those of ants—transforming their behavioral traces into striking visual compositions. The pursuit of uncovering hidden narratives in nature brought him to The Rockefeller University, where he spent six weeks in the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior as an artist-in-residence. The lab is led by Daniel Kronauer, PhD, the Stanley S. and Sydney R. Shuman Associate Professor, who studies the evolution of complex insect societies, using ants as a model to explore how social behavior is regulated—from genes and neural circuits to colony-wide interactions. The two were introduced by a mutual friend, and Kronauer immediately saw a connection.

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Pig Retinal Organoids May Be Useful Model for Human Retinal Disease Treatment; Pig-Derived Photoreceptors Share Many Similarities with Those Made from Human Retinal Organoids

Porcine allies in fight against retinal disease

Inside the human eye, the retina is made up of several types of cells, including the light-sensing photoreceptors that initiate the cascade of events that lead to vision. Damage to the photoreceptors, either through degenerative disease or injury, leads to permanent vision impairment or blindness. David Gamm, MD, PhD, Director of UW–Madison’s McPherson Eye Research Institute and Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, says that stem cell replacement therapy using lab-grown photoreceptors is a promising strategy to combat retinal disease. The challenge is that stem cell treatments aimed at replacing photoreceptors need to first be tested in animals. Because human cells are not compatible in other species and are quickly rejected when transplanted, it’s difficult to assess their potential. “Pig and human retinas share many key features, making pigs ideal for modeling human retinal disease and testing ocular therapeutics,” Gamm says. “By testing ‘human-equivalent’ photoreceptors in pigs, we can get a better sense of what these cells can do if they are not immediately attacked by the host animal.”

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Study Uncovers Secret UV Color Language of Snakes

In the study of why and how animals look the way they do, color is king—at least, the range of color humans can see. A University of Michigan (U-M) study examined a color range that humans can’t see and often ignore: color in the ultraviolet range. Examining snakes, the researchers categorized how the animals used patterns of UV color and tested for factors that promote the evolution of UV color in snakes. The researchers discovered that UV color is found widely across the snake tree of life, and that it is frequently used for predator avoidance, says study co-author Hayley Crowell, a doctoral student in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The study, published June 18, 2024 in Nature Communications, also highlights how researchers might be ignoring the way a whole group of organisms might be using color. The open-access article is titled “Ecological Drivers of Ultraviolet Colour Evolution in Snakes.”

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Scientists Identify Genes That Make Humans and Labradors More Likely to Become Obese

Dogs carrying the genetic variant most associated with obesity, DENND1B, had about 8% more body fat than those without it. (Credit: University of Cambridge)

Researchers studying British Labrador retrievers have identified multiple genes associated with canine obesity and shown that these genes are also associated with obesity in humans. The dog gene found to be most strongly associated with obesity in Labradors is called DENND1B. Humans also carry the DENND1B gene, and the researchers found that this gene is also linked with obesity in people.  DENND1B was found to directly affect a brain pathway responsible for regulating the energy balance in the body, called the leptin melanocortin pathway.  An additional four genes associated with canine obesity, but which exert a smaller effect than DENND1B, were also mapped directly onto human genes. 

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Unexpected Discoveries in Study of Giraffe Gut Flora

Reticulated giraffes (pictured) were one of three species studied by the researchers. By sequencing DNA from fecal samples, they were able to determine both the bacterial composition of the gut and which plants wild giraffes had eaten. (Credit: Tyler Kartzinel).

The gut bacteria of giraffes are not primarily determined by what they eat, but by the species they belong to. This is shown in a new study from Uppsala University (Sweden) and Brown University (USA) in which researchers have analyzed the link between diet and gut flora in three giraffe species in Kenya. The study also provides new knowledge that can help secure the food supply of endangered giraffe species. In a new study published February 5, 2025 in Global Ecology and Conservation, researchers have analyzed the relationship between the diet and the microbiome, or gut flora, of giraffes in Kenya. By sequencing plant and bacterial DNA from fecal samples, the scientists were able to investigate both the bacterial composition of the gut and which plants wild giraffes had eaten. The open-access article is titled “Diet-Microbiome Covariation Across Three Giraffe Species in a Close-Contact Zone.”

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