Self-freezing frogs--it's true - News - The Prism

. Photo credit: Jens Gade, iStock\ThinkstocK WASHINGTON (VR)— I know what you're thinking, a frogcicle will never become the top flavor at Baskin Robins, but for the Alaskan wood frog the genetic trick has become a very important survival trait. What the frog does, according to Don Larson, a Ph.D. student at Fairbanks, is dig a shallow hole near ponds where it breeds. After the hole fills with water, it will wade in and wait until the water freezes. This trick allows the wood frog to freeze up to 60% of its body, so as to reduce calorie consumption, and allow it to survive until the Spring thaw. "So, when we say about 60-70% of their body water's frozen, the other percent is the water really inside their cells. So, it's everything around their cells that's freezing." Larson says that wood frogs not only practice their own form of cryogenics, but practice a form of camouflage to avoid predators while they are frozen. "They make sure to hibernate under leaves so they're pretty well covered, and I can tell you from my own experience that these guys are very, very hard to find." Mind you, it's not just a petal or two hiding them. They are hiding under leaves and buried under snow. Larson once spent two weeks raking, hunting for frogs, only to find two of them. That's a pretty bad payoff for 196 hours of work. It's even worse,...

Read More........→June 09, 2016

Aggression in dogs: New study aims to 'bust some myths'

. Academics at the University of Bristol’s School of Veterinary Sciences have been investigating dog aggression towards people with a survey of UK dog owners which has been published online in Applied Animal Behaviour Science. Dr Rachel Casey is Senior Lecturer in Companion Animal Behaviour and led the research. VOR's Tim Ecott asked her what had prompted the survey. "Aggression is a big public health issue," Dr Casey says. "People have even been killed by dogs, so it's a serious problem for people, but it's also a welfare issue for dogs, because it they're showing aggression, it's likely to be because they're feeling stressed in their environment. "We wanted to look not at serious aggression such as biting, but at any sign of aggression, such as barking or lunging." What did you find? "We asked about aggression in different situations. Are dogs generally aggressive or in very specific situations? We asked owners about the dog's behaviour in the family, out for walks, and when people visit the household. The results varied quite a lot between the contexts." "It tells us about the behaviour, not why the dogs are doing it. It's a baseline." There's a danger that these findings will be taken up by people who think that dogs should be more controlled, or vice versa, that it's only a small number of dogs that are aggressive....

Read More........→January 08, 2015