Month: January 2021

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There are more antelope in Africa than any other continent. Of the world’s 91 antelope species, most are native to Africa, and all belong to the family Bovidae. Here are a few of my favorites.

Many continents do not have native antelope: Europe, Australasia, Antarctica and the Americas.

What a beautiful, natural sight it is, then, to observe antelope grazing and leaping across Africa’s savannahs.

They vary tremendously in size.

Larger antelope include the kudu and waterbuck.

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Antelope horns vary also. Unlike deer antlers, antelope horns grow continuously and are never shed.

The horns are used as weapons, especially when fighting among their own species.

Sometimes both genders of a species have horns, with the male horns often bigger; but there are variations. In kudus, only the…

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Throughout time and across the globe, cranes have symbolized longevity, wisdom, immortality, happiness and good fortune. Here is a gift of cranes as we welcome the new year.

There are 15 species of cranes in the world, all in one family, Gruidae. They fall under three genera; each genera–Antigone, Balearica, Grus–is represented here today (pre-pandemic).

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Antigone. The sandhill crane, Antigone canadensis, is one of North America’s two crane species.

While not all cranes are migratory, the sandhill cranes are.

In Northern California we welcome their migrations on the Pacific Flyway every winter.

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Cranes are gregarious birds and form large flocks. They have specialized trachea and a big vocabulary, a very vocal bird.

Many cultures associate happiness with the crane, and it is easy to see why when you have witnessed…

https://www.sciencealert.com/octopus-and-squid-evolution-is-weirder-than-we-could-have-ever-imagined

(Olga Visavi/Shutterstock)NATURE

SCIENCEALERT STAFF31 DECEMBER 2020

Just when we thought octopusescouldn’t be any weirder, it turns out that they and their cephalopod brethren evolve differently from nearly every other organism on the planet.

In a surprising twist, in April 2017 scientists discovered that octopuses, along with some squid and cuttlefish species, routinely edit their RNA (ribonucleic acid) sequences to adapt to their environment.https://8fca1865db38fa71528b67178c37ab73.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

This is weird because that’s really not how adaptations usually happen in multicellular animals. When an organism changes in some fundamental way, it typically starts with a genetic mutation – a change to the DNA.

Those genetic changes are then translated into action by DNA’s molecular sidekick, RNA. You can think of DNA instructions as a recipe, whileRNA is the chefthat orchestrates the cooking in the kitchen of each cell, producing necessary proteins that keep the whole organism going.

But RNA…