Tag: Animals

3D-printing can help our canine friends walk again. But with around 25% of US-produced meat ending up in pet food, domestic animals leave a significant carbon footprint. Now a Canadian startup is aiming to change all that. Their all-women team makes its nutritious dog-food using a protein from the larvae of soldier flies. These contain 9 times the omega...

Recently, an unusual album stormed the Australian charts. Now, an international research team has been focusing their attention on a species which, according to DNA comparisons, is remarkably similar to our own. The team analysed the sounds of pigs in happy and stressful situations, with recordings made from birth to death. Positive feelings were expressed by a short grunt;...

Winged beasts can teach us a lot about aerodynamics and joint protection. Insects are an incredibly important part of our world. Now, thanks to a research team at Copenhagen University, they can be automatically identified and catalogued using infrared sensors and artificial intelligence. If an insect flies past, a sensor automatically measures its wingspan. The AI compares the size...

Navigation apps help with directions. Lamps tail us as we walk. Now lighted fish nets are here to make commercial fishing more humane and efficient. A research team equipped their gillnets with green LED lights and used them to fish along the Pacific Coast of Mexico. The innovation reduced bycatch - the capture of non-target species - by...

Originality isn’t just for the fashion industry. Following on from the success of indigenous tribes in Australia, a PhD student at Charles Darwin University recently teamed up with a music producer. He recorded the sounds of endangered bird species and together with the producer they produced a 24-minute album within three weeks. It features the chatter and calls of...

Fresh air, vitamin C and zinc are all good for our immune system. Fish, meanwhile, need clean water. Now, a university research team from Russia has hit upon an unusual link between tropical fruit and tilapia fish. Giving the fish pineapple peel powder as a feed additive boosted their disease resistance. For 8 weeks, 4 different groups of fish...

Thanks to weather apps, we know when we need an umbrella. In banana plantations, information about the condition of the fruit is even more helpful. And now a startup from Latvia is focusing its attention on bees. The team’s solution, an intelligent, wind- and weather-resistant set of scales, is placed under the beehive, where it can measure hive weight,...

It’s not always possible to leave a clean plate. Chitin from crustacean shells, for example, can be used in many ways. A girl from Malaysia is ensuring that waste from fish restaurants is meaningfully re-used. Fish waste is also an important ingredient in animal feed. The 11-year-old collected 30 kg of shrimp and sea snail shells from seafood restaurants...