Haven't had time to look at these so apologies if anything's rubbish....

DNA variability
http://www.newstarget.com/021175.html


video of mounted police demo
http://www.olympiahorseshow.com/show/metvideo.htm

City Squirrels

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061211/ap_on_sc/city_squirrels


New world primates

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/NewWorldPrimates/


----------------------------------------------------------
>From issue 2580 of New Scientist magazine, 02 December 2006, page 6

Brainy whales get emotional
02 December 2006

Andy Coghlan


"Putting our brains together

THEY were touted as the brain cells that set humans and the other great
apes apart from all other mammals. Now spindle neurons - the specialised
brain cells thought to process our emotions and that may even enable
us to
love and suffer - have been found in whales. The discovery will stimulate
debate both on the level of whale intelligence and on the ethics of
hunting them."
------------------------------------------------------------

Targeted Jumps by Salticid Spiders
http://www.users.qwest.net/~phidippus/paper1.html

------------------------------------------------------------

Aping ethical behaviour

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/desmond_morris/2006/12/post_787.html

Aping ethical behaviour

When it comes to testing on primates, most of us gloss
over the difficult issues - precisely because we know
how similar we are.

December 12, 2006 05:30 PM

The Weatherall committee reports today that monkeys,
but not great apes, should continue to be used for
experimentation in medical research. Anyone who has
worked with apes will know just how close to us they
are and will be pleased by the decision to spare them
the pain of experimental procedures. But what about
the monkeys? In my experience, capuchin monkeys are
more intelligent than gibbons, even though the latter
are classified as apes. So we find ourselves in a very
grey area.

Why does intelligence matter? The objection to using
any animal in experimental research is that it
experiences pain, both physical and mental. As far as
physical pain is concerned, there is really no
difference between a rat and a chimp. They both
possess a highly sensitive nervous system, capable of
sending intense pain signals to the brain when they
are being hurt. To prevent physical pain to
experimental animals, one would have to stop all
animal research tomorrow.

The separation of apes from other animals reflects our
concern that they, being so similar to us, must also
be able to experience horrific mental pain, and this
is what makes us feel the need to exempt them from
medical research duties. We envisage that, like a
human torture victim, they must be able to sit in
their cells awaiting the next test, with all the
anticipatory dread that we ourselves would feel.

This brings us to the ultimate dilemma. If a human
terrorist knew when and where a bomb would explode,
killing a thousand innocent people, would we have the
right to inflict pain on him to save them? If a severe
experiment on an ape was the only way we could save
the lives of a thousand sick children, would we have
the right to carry out the procedure to save them? If
the terrorist and the ape are both capable of
experiencing intense physical and mental pain, what is
the difference? Should we not treat them both in the
same way? And do we really want to live in a culture
that accepts torture, just so long as it is for a good
end?

And where, incidentally, does this leave the amazingly
clever and sensitive capuchin monkey?

What these questions do is to force us to recognise
that most of us are hypocrites. If your child is
seriously ill and can be cured by using a medicine
that was developed using painful experiments on
animals, you, like most people, will not hesitate to
use that medicine. But you, like most people, would
refuse to carry out the painful experiments yourself.
Just as you would refuse to work in an abattoir, even
though you enjoy eating meat.

It is disturbing to realise that the only
non-hypocrites in this issue are the animal
experimenters and the animal liberationists. Although,
having said this, one can't help wondering how many of
the experimenters have sleepless nights and how many
of the liberationists quietly visit chemist shops.

Perhaps the day will dawn when all medical testing
will be done on tissue cultures, and when the use of
highly efficient truth drugs will painlessly replace
all forms of human torture.

Desmond Morris' most recent books are a volume of
memoirs, Watching: Encounters with Humans and Other
Animals (Little Books, 2006), and Fantastic Cats: A
Feast of Famed and Fabled Felines (Little Books, 2006)

Vibrating Odor Molecules? Rogue Theory May Help Explain Sense Of Smell

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061212102620.htm

Sorry, posted some of the above without reading them first and they're not the usual sort of articles I'd post. Won't edit the posts as that messes up the URLs and then I'll have to re-edit them all again....

I've never read any of Desmond Morris's books - are they any good?

And sorry again, the article about whales was incomplete - here it is properly....

>From issue 2580 of New Scientist magazine, 02 December 2006, page 6

Brainy whales get emotional
02 December 2006
>From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
Andy Coghlan

Enlarge image
Putting our brains together

THEY were touted as the brain cells that set humans and the other great
apes apart from all other mammals. Now spindle neurons - the specialised
brain cells thought to process our emotions and that may even enable us to
love and suffer - have been found in whales. The discovery will stimulate
debate both on the level of whale intelligence and on the ethics of
hunting them.

Spindle cells, named for their long, spindle-shaped bodies, occur in the
parts of the human brain linked with social organisation, empathy, speech,
intuition about the feelings of others and rapid "gut" reactions (see New
Scientist, 19 June 2004, p 32). It turns out that they are in the same
place in the brains of humpback whales, fin whales, killer whales and
sperm whales. What's more, they have existed in whales for at least twice
as long as we have had them, and early estimates suggest they could have
three times as many as us proportionately.

"It's absolutely clear to me that these are extremely intelligent
animals," says Patrick Hof of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New
York, who found the whale spindle cells with colleague Estel Van Der
Gucht. "We must be careful about anthropomorphic interpretation of
intelligence in whales," he adds, "but their potential for high-level
brain function, clearly demonstrated already at the behavioural level, is
confirmed by the existence of neuronal types once thought unique to humans
and our closest relatives."

Dolphins seem to be capable of self-recognition (New Scientist, 4 November
2006, p 17) and Hof suspects humpback whales are too. "They communicate
through huge song repertoires, recognise their own songs and make up new
ones. They also form coalitions to plan hunting strategies, teach these to
younger individuals, and have evolved social networks similar to those of
apes and humans," he says.

Like all other species with spindle cells, whales undergo an unusually
long period of development before sexual maturity, they have very few
offspring at one time, and adults can live independently from other whales
for long periods.

Hof and Van Der Gucht found the spindle cells in two regions vital for
"visceral" reactions - those that require fast but emotionally sensitive
judgements, such as whether another individual is suffering pain and the
general feel of whether an experience is pleasant or unpleasant (The
Anatomical Record Part A, DOI: 10.1002/ar.a.20407).

One area, the anterior cingulate cortex, lies beneath the midline at the
front of all mammalian brains (see Diagram). In humans it guides
attention, senses pain and registers mistakes. By tapping into body
systems that control breathing, heart rate, erections and other automatic
responses, it helps us to register emotions such as fear, disgust, anxiety
and intense pleasure or pain.

The other region is the frontoinsular cortex, reckoned to be critical for
emotional responses to others, such as when someone else is suffering, or
a baby cries. It also helps us spot attempts at deception.

In whales, spindle cells were also found in another region, the
frontopolar cortex, and were sparsely distributed elsewhere, though Hof
says he doesn't yet know the significance of spindles in these areas.

The shape of the spindle cells may provide a clue to their function.
"They're like the 'express trains' of the nervous system," says Hof. Their
long length enables them to fast-track information around the cortex,
bypassing irrelevant connections, enabling us to instantly process and act
on emotional cues during complex social interactions.

"My interpretation is that the spindles are adaptations which support fast
communication of information from the anterior cingulate cortex and the
frontoinsular cortex in very large brains," says neuroscientist John
Allman, a spindle cell researcher at the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.

Spindle neurons transmit highly processed information, says Hof, which
helps us formulate behavioural responses. This might include responding
verbally, retrieving memories and images, empathy, feelings and insight.
It's tantalising to think that the songs and vocalisations of whales might
be based on similar processing.

"The discovery is a stunning example of neuroanatomical convergence
between cetaceans and primates," says Lori Marino of Emory University in
Atlanta, Georgia. "This is consistent with a growing body of evidence for
parallels between cetaceans and primates in cognitive abilities, behaviour
and social ecology."

The brains of smaller cetaceans examined by Hof and Van Der Gucht didn't
have spindle cells. The only toothed whales - the suborder of cetaceans
that includes dolphins - to have spindles were the two largest, the killer
whale and the sperm whale. But Hof suspects that all baleen whales, such
as humpbacks and fins, are likely to have the cells.

The smaller cetaceans might have evolved some kind of alternative to
spindle neurons. "In this respect, it will be interesting to discover what
mental capacities might distinguish humpback whales from dolphins," says
Keith Kendrick, a neuroscientist at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge,
UK.

Kendrick also warns against assuming that the spindle cells must be linked
with complex socialisation, which is one explanation put forward for the
evolution of increased brain size. "At this point, we don't know for sure
what the key functions of these spindle cells are, and whether they really
do represent an important index of higher social and intellectual
functioning," he says.

Hof is convinced, however, that the cells signify intelligence. "Whales
have evolved absolutely unique traits in their environment," he says.
"They don't have written language but they can do a lot, and their fishing
strategies are better than ours."

All the more reason, he says, for rethinking whaling strategies on
humanitarian grounds. "That such a parallel trait occurs in such divergent
groups of animals as primates and cetaceans speaks to the need to protect
them and understand fully their biology and ecology."

Inside the mind of a Whale

One of the greatest problems facing researchers interested in whale
intelligence is a logistical one. It's just not easy to carry out the kind
of intense behavioural observations needed, like Jane Goodall's
observations of chimpanzees in the wild. For this reason, our
understanding of whales falls well short of that of the great apes.

"We're several decades out of kilter," says Mark Simmonds of the Whale and
Dolphin Conservation Society in Chippenham, UK. Despite the relative lack
of information, Simmonds has reviewed a wealth of evidence for apparent
emotional and intelligent behaviour in cetaceans (Applied Animal Behaviour
Science, vol 100, p 103).

In 1990, for example, two male orcas were observed swimming together
without any contact with other orcas for several days, after the body of
their mother was found floating dead nearby. They appeared to be retracing
their mother's last movements, which researchers tookto be a sign of
grief.

Does this mean we should treat them better? Around 200,000 cetaceans are
killed annually in fishing nets, and Japanese whaling statistics suggest
that just 40 per cent of hunted animals die instantaneously.

"It is clear deaths in hunts and fishing nets may often be prolonged and
painful and also significantly affect more members of the population than
just the animals killed," says Simmonds. "Meanwhile, if cetaceans are
passing information from generation to generation, and you then start to
wipe out some of the cultural populations, other populations may not be
able to occupy the niches left behind. Should we be focusing on conserving
the species, particular groups in oceans, or the cultural groups that
they're divided into?"

Linda Geddes

>From issue 2580 of New Scientist magazine, 02 December 2006, page 6