ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News

Scientists have discovered that birds know to avoid the plants where toxic animals dwell.

Consuming sustainably sourced wild meat instead of domesticated livestock reduces greenhouse gas emissions and retains precious tropical forest systems, which in turn mitigates the effects of climate change.

A new study suggests that Mylodon -- a ground sloth that lived in South America until about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago -- was not a strict vegetarian like all of its living relatives. Based on a chemical analysis of amino acids preserved in sloth hair, the researchers uncovered evidence that this gigantic extinct sloth was an omnivore, at times eating meat or other animal protein in addition to plant matter.

Paleoanthropologists have wondered how and why humans evolved molars that emerge into the mouth at specific ages and why those ages are so delayed compared to living apes. It is the coordination between facial growth and the mechanics of the chewing muscles that determines not just where but when adult molars emerge. This results in molars coming in only when enough of a 'mechanically safe' space is created. Molars that emerge 'ahead of schedule' would do so in a space that, when chewed on, would disrupt the fine-tuned function of the entire chewing apparatus by causing damage to the jaw joint.

While researchers have discovered numerous cell types in the brain, this atlas of all cell types in one area -- the primary motor cortex -- is the first comprehensive list and a starting point for tracing cellular networks to understand how they control our body and mind and how they are disrupted in mental and physical disorders.

It takes billions of cells to make a human brain, and scientists have long struggled to map this complex network of neurons. Now, dozens of research teams around the country have made inroads into creating an atlas of the mouse brain as a first step toward a human brain atlas. The results describe how different cell types are organized and connected throughout the mouse brain.

Researchers further refine the organization of cells within key regions of the mouse brain and the organization of transcriptomic, epigenomic and regulatory factors that provide these brain cells with function and purpose.