These ones from the BBC news pages...
Epilepsy gene identified in dogs
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4149179.stm
Odd couple make friends in Kenya
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4152447.stm
Scientists pinpoint look of fear
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4151489.stm
This one from Ethological Ethics.....
Elephants turn to thievery
SUTIN WANNABOVORN, Associated Press
January 5, 2004
THESE are classic, co-ordinated ambushes: a roadblock is set, and when
vehicles stop the raiders sweep out of the thick jungle to strike their
targets.
But rather than guerrillas, the attackers in Thailand's Khao-Ang Rue-Ni
wildlife sanctuary are savvy -- and desperate -- elephants, who hold up
trucks loaded with sugar cane, tapioca and fruit.
For most of the year, the estimated 200 elephants live quietly in the dense
forests of Khao-Ang Rue-Ni, near the Cambodian border in eastern Thailand.
But with the onset of the dry season, when water and food supplies shrink,
they move to the road to stage their heists and drink from a nearby
reservoir, says the sanctuary's chief, Yuo Senatham.
Conveniently for the elephants, this is also the time when hundreds of
trucks rumble along the 15km road, laden with newly harvested tapioca and
sugar cane -- particular pachyderm favourites.
Yuo says a herd leader usually emerges from the jungle at dusk to block the
road. When a vehicle stops, other elephants move in from the rear to start
feasting.
Roadside signs urging motorists not to feed the elephants seem superfluous.
"It's like the drivers are bribing the elephants -- otherwise the elephants
won't allow trucks to pass through," Yuo says, adding that the mightiest of
the herd leaders, named Mae Phalaek, has never hurt a motorist and sounds a
general retreat when wildlife officials arrive to shine spotlights on the
culprits.
Local villagers also say they have never known the elephants to attack
humans.
But this was no comfort for Somkuan Sirisat, who had to seek help when his
tapioca-laden truck got a flat tyre recently. He returned to find half a
dozen elephants devouring his cargo.
"I was too frightened to go toward the truck," says Somkuan, who rushed to
the nearby sanctuary field station for help.
"We can't prevent the elephants from roaming around the road because the
area used to belong to them," Yuo says. "What we can do is prevent them from
getting hurt and hurting people."
He explains that the Thai army cut the road through the 100,000ha sanctuary
in the 1980s to help the flow of supplies to insurgents along the Cambodian
border, fighting the Cambodian government.
The plight of Thai elephants is not restricted to this reserve.
Chawal Thaphiran, who heads the Forestry Department's Wildlife Conservation
Division, estimates that of Thailand's once vast herds, only about 3000 wild
elephants survive in national parks and other sanctuaries. Deforestation and
battered habitat have forced many to move into surrounding farming
communities in search of food.
Another 2800 elephants are domesticated, eking out a living as tourist
attractions or beggars.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/01/09/speech.rats.reut/index.html
Study: Rats have head for language
Three types of mammals shown to have such language skills
Sunday, January 9, 2005 Posted: 8:24 PM EST (0124 GMT)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Rats can use the rhythm of human language to
tell the difference between Dutch and Japanese, researchers in Spain
reported on Sunday.
Their study suggests that animals, especially mammals, evolved some of
the skills underlying the use and development of language long before
language itself ever evolved, the researchers said.
It is the first time an animal other than a human or monkey has been
shown to have this skill.
"These findings have remarkable parallels with data from human adults,
human newborns, and cotton-top tamarins," the researchers wrote in
their report, published in the "Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Animal Behavior Processes," which is published by the American
Psychological Association.
For their study neuroscientists Juan Toro and colleagues at
Barcelona's Scientific Park tested 64 adult male rats.
They used Dutch and Japanese because these languages were used in
earlier, similar tests, and because they are very different from one
another in use of words, rhythm and structure.
The rats were trained to respond to either Dutch or Japanese using
food as a reward.
Then they were separated into four groups -- one that heard each
language spoken by a native, one that heard synthesized speech, one
that heard sentences read in either language by different speakers and
a fourth that heard the languages played backwards.
Rats rewarded for responding to Japanese did not respond to Dutch and
rats trained to recognize Dutch did not respond the spoken Japanese.
The rats could not tell apart Japanese or Dutch played backwards.
"Results showed that rats could discriminate natural sentences when
uttered by a single speaker and not when uttered by different ones,
nor could they distinguish the languages when spoken by different
people," the researchers wrote.
Human newborns have the same problem, although tamarins can easily
tell languages apart even when spoken by different people, the
researchers said.
"It was striking to find that rats can track certain information that
seems to be so important in language development in humans," Toro said
in a statement.
The study shows "which abilities that humans use for language are
shared with other animals, and which are uniquely human. It also
suggests what sort of evolutionary precursors language might have," he
added.