Ants’ Love of Pee May Reduce Greenhouse Gas
Ants consume urine for its nitrogen content, and a new study shows that this helps ants thrive in sandy habitats and may even reduce greenhouse gases.
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Urban Animal Adaptations, the Musical
Adaptations! How do animals adapt to live in human cities? Which animal sings the best? Watch them audition for survival and try an experiment with ping pong balls and tongs! This video is brought to you by our very good friend Sophia Shrand, creator and star of the educational science comedy series Science with Sophie. In this episode, we learn how different animal adaptations help them survive and thrive in city environments. We also learn how many different animals Sophie can portray (a lot). Finally, the experiment is fun for…
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Wood Ants Make Defensive Cocktails Against Microbes
By Neha Jain @lifesciexplore Wood ants are natural mixologists, concocting their own defensive cocktails, a new study finds. They protect themselves from infection by mixing self-produced acid with resin collected from trees to create a potent antimicrobial. “This is an unusual case where insects combine plant defenses with their own chemical defenses to produce a potent antimicrobial substance,” says Michel Chapuisat, of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, who is the senior author of the study. We sanitize our homes using cleaners such as alcohol and bleach to protect ourselves from…
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Amazonian Frog Uses Mimicry to Ward Off Ants
By Neha Jain @lifesciexplore More than a thousand species of frogs live in the warm and humid Amazonian forest. Some of these species have to contend with ant attacks. But scientists have found a frog in the Amazon rainforest that doesn’t have to worry about these attacks, thanks to chemicals produced in its skin that mimic those released by leaf-cutting ants. The frog Lithodytes lineatus buries itself under leaf litter and logs in the Amazon where it lives happily among leaf-cutting ants. These ants are known for farming their own fungus…
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Inside the World of Fire Ants
In this video, Dr. Joe Hanson and the It’s OK to Be Smart team deliver everything you didn’t realize you wanted to know about fire ants. Special appearance by ant-decapitating flies. Enjoy! GotScience.org translates complex research findings into accessible insights on science, nature, and technology. Help keep GotScience free: Donate or visit our gift shop. For more science news subscribe to our weekly digest.
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