Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A dragonfly in its radical final moult, metamorphosing from an aquatic nymph to a winged adult.. In biology, moulting (British English), or molting (American English), also known as sloughing, shedding, or in many invertebrates, ecdysis, is a process by which an animal casts off parts of its body to serve some beneficial purpose, either at specific times of the year, or at specific points in ...
When preening, a bird (such as this red lory) draws individual feathers through its beak, realigning and re-interlocking the barbules.. Preening is a maintenance behaviour found in birds that involves the use of the beak to position feathers, interlock feather barbules that have become separated, clean plumage, and keep ectoparasites in check.
Animals caught in terrestrial mudflows are subject to involuntary locomotion; this may be beneficial to the distribution of species with limited locomotive range under their own power. There is less opportunity for passive locomotion on land than by sea or air, though parasitism (hitchhiking) is available toward this end, as in all other habitats.
The question of why prey animals stot has been investigated by evolutionary biologists including John Maynard Smith, C. D. Fitzgibbon, and Tim Caro; all of them conclude that the most likely explanation given the available evidence is that it is an honest signal to predators that the stotting animal would be difficult to catch. Such a signal is ...
Younger animals are marked by net-like, chocolate brown markings and flecks on the shoulders, sides and flanks, shading into the predominantly dark hind and fore flippers and head, often due to scarring from leopard seals. After molting, their fur is a darker brown fading to blonde on their bellies.
A boa constrictor in the U.K. gave birth to 14 babies — without a mate. The process is called parthenogenesis, from the Greek words for “virgin” and “birth.”
Top: A male ornate boxfish (aracana ornata). Bottom left: a close-up of the boxfish’s natural hexagonal pattern. Bottom center: fish pattern simulation based on Turing’s reaction-diffusion theory.
Some arthropods, especially large insects with tracheal respiration, expand their new exoskeleton by swallowing or otherwise taking in air. The maturation of the structure and colouration of the new exoskeleton might take days or weeks in a long-lived insect; this can make it difficult to identify an individual if it has recently undergone ecdysis.