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Amazing Facts

Hippos Sweat Their Own Sunscreen
May 25, 2004
You know that reddish fluid on hippo skin that turns brown?  It’s not just funny colored sweat.  Japanese scientists reported in Nature1 that it acts as a sunscreen and an antibiotic.  See also the BBC News report on this finding. 1Saikawa et al., “Pigment chemistry: The red sweat of the hippopotamus,” Nature 429, 363 (27 […]
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Bible and Theology

Humans and Chimps Compared
May 25, 2004
In case you had an identity crisis last time at the zoo, Current Biology can provide psychoanalysis.  The May 25 issue posted two articles side by side: one, simply entitled “Humans,”1 and the other, “Chimps.”2  Various comparisons are contrasts are drawn, including a few surprising facts, such as this statement: “Based on relative amounts of […]
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Amazing Facts

Cormorant Eyes Rapidly Refocus in Dives Into Murky Water
May 24, 2004
You’re hang gliding over a lake, and you spot a fish below.  From your hovering position, you drop into a rapid, steep dive headfirst into the water.  Whoops; your eyes just went out of focus, and you lost your fish in the murky depths.  Too bad you’re not a cormorant.     Cormorants (a kind […]
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Terrestrial Zoology

Fruit Flies Fail to Exhibit Neo-Darwinism
May 18, 2004
The Neo-Darwinian Synthesis is the current reigning paradigm of Darwinian evolution.  It teaches that random genetic mutations provide the raw material of variation, and that natural selection acting on these variations produces all the complexity of life.  A corollary is that mutation is independent of selection; i.e., that mutations do not “conspire” with natural selection […]
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Amazing Facts

Whale Flippers Inspire Aeronautical Engineers
May 11, 2004
Have you seen the bumpy flippers on humpback whales, you know, the species whose males serenade their mates?  Don’t laugh.  Scientists have found that the ungainly flippers actually have superior lift, less drag, and are less susceptible to stalling.  Engineers are imitating the whale flippers for advanced aircraft and helicopter rotors, reports EurekAlert from studies […]
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Terrestrial Zoology

Search for Evolutionary Trade-Offs Comes Up Empty
May 11, 2004
Husbands and wives know a lot about trade-offs, but according to Darwinian theory, all living things are in a constant tug-of-war between competing interests.  In evolutionary terms, a trade-off is a compromise between competing forces of natural selection.  For instance, “Simultaneously obtaining enough food to grow and reproduce while trying not to become someone else’s […]
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Birds

Fossil Hummingbird, Arthropod Look Modern
May 7, 2004
Science announced that a rare hummingbird fossil has been found in Germany and, though assumed to be 30 million years old, is indistinguishable from living New-World hummingbirds.  This upsets the standard theory that hummingbirds evolved in the New World only.  Writing in the May 7 issue,1 discoverer Gerald Mayr said, I report on tiny skeletons […]
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Mammals

Moose Muzzle: A Nose for News
April 28, 2004
Curious about the enigmatic nose structure of the moose, two researchers picked up moose roadkill and decided to study those large, comical Bullwinkle faces, reports Nature.1  Lincoln Tim writes, The moose, Alces alces, is a member of the deer family, but its nasal apparatus is unlike that of any of its relatives.  The apparatus overhangs […]
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Amazing Facts

How Birds Calibrate Their Navigating Maps
April 17, 2004
Three researchers tracked birds in the wild and concluded that “night-flying thrushes set their course using a magnetic compass, which they calibrate to the setting sun before takeoff each evening.”  The team of three captured thrushes in Illinois and attached small radio transmitters to them, then followed their flight for up to 1100 kilometers.  By […]
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Mammals

Underground Rodents Have Better Eyes Than Darwin Predicted
April 6, 2004
European scientists looked into the eyes of African mole-rats, expecting to find retinas that had deteriorated due to disuse in the underground, lightless environment.  What they found were several surprises that “call for a revision of our current views on the visual system of subterranean mammals,” reports a Max Planck Society press release.     […]
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Dumb Ideas

Science Reporters Stretch the Truth on Limb Evolution Claim
April 5, 2004
Item: some fragments of bone were found from a road cut in Pennsylvania.  Conclusion: Darwinian evolution from slime to humans has been demonstrated again.  Sound far fetched?  Not if you are a science reporter for a typical news organization; this is common practice.     The bone this time is a humerus of a presumed […]
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Marine Biology

Sea Genes Multiply
April 4, 2004
A potential paradigm-shifting discovery has been made in the doldrums of the Sargasso Sea: there are many more genes in plankton than expected.  Craig Venter’s Celera team sampled the genetic content of microbes off the Bermuda coast, and in 1500 liters of surface seawater, found 1.5 million new genes.  Falkowski and de Vargas, writing about […]
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Terrestrial Zoology

Validating a Just-So Story: How the Lizard Got Its Horns
April 1, 2004
As if smarting from criticisms that evolutionists trade in stories instead of evidence, Utah State biologists Kevin Young and Edmund Brodie, Jr and son decided to test an instance of natural selection.  Their subject was the horned lizard of the southwestern United States, the misnamed “horny toad” kids like to catch.  Many descriptions of evolutionary […]
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Amazing Facts

Animals Are “Overengineered” for Navigation
March 23, 2004
Animals outshine us in many ways, but one capability that should humble us is animal navigation.  From spiders to mice, from birds to bees, the ability of animals to find their way around is truly astonishing, and James L. Gould of Princeton has raised our awareness of just how astonishing in a short article in […]
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Birds

Do Birds of a Feather Demonstrate Parallel Evolution?
March 19, 2004
A puzzling phenomenon emerges from evolutionary considerations of bird plumage coloration and patterning.  Hopi E. Hoekstra and Trevor Price describe the problem in the March 19 issue of Science1 and provide examples: The pages of any bird guide reveal a spectacular diversity of colors and color patterns.  Although color patterns vary within species, often they […]
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