| Researchers have unearthed evidence that humans domesticated horses and used them for milk, meat and transport at least 1,000 years earlier than previously believed. |
A team of archaeologists has found conclusive evidence that the Botai culture of Kazakhstan kept domesticated horses 5,500 years ago. |
“What’s really key here is they weren’t just domesticated,” said lead author Alan Outram of the University of Exeter, in southwestern England. |
“By this point they’ve really got the full pastoral package: they were eating them, they were riding them they were milking them, which suggests that the original domestication is even earlier still,” he said. |
| Shifting back the date of horse domestication has a significant impact on understanding how early societies developed |
| “Having a domesticated animal that could be eaten, milked, ridden, used as a pack animal and potentially for haulage would have had a tremendous impact on any society that initiated or adopted horse herds,” See more at www.cosmosmagazine.com |
| Tool use was once thought to distinguish humans from animal ” until, that is, so many animals proved able to use them. |
| Below is a compilation of some of the most interesting animal tool use yet observed. |
| Darwin himself was quite intrigued by animal tool use, suggesting that it allowed them to overcome biological shortcomings. |
| Cute YouTube videos of elephant painters show their amazing dexterity, but even more impressive is this peculiar habit: after digging a water hole, elephants will strip bark from a tree, chew it into a ball, then use it to fill the hole. Once the top has been covered with sand, the elephant has an evaporation-resistant canteen. |
| Egyptian
vultures, who use rocks to break open ostrich eggs. |
| bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay |
| For 30 years, scientists have been studying stone-handling behavior in several troops of Japanese macaques to catch a unique glimpse of primate culture. By watching these monkeys acquire and maintain behavioral traditions from generation to generation, the scientists have gained insight into the cultural evolution of humans. |
| The scientists found, for example, that an infant’s proximity to their mother had a significant impact on the development of the infant’s stone-handling abilities. In other words, infants with mothers who frequently exhibited stone-handling behaviors spent more time with their mother, about 75% of their time, during the first three months of life, and they also participated in stone-handling earlier in life than the other infants. |
| These findings suggest that the mothers’ frequent stone-handling caught the infants’ attention, and as a result, the infants acquired the behavior more quickly than other infants.See more at www.sciencedaily.com |
| A fish that uses mirrors, as well as lenses, to find its way in the dark depths of the sea has been discovered by scientists. |
| The brownsnout spookfish, which lives between 500 and 2,500 metres below sea-level, may have evolved its reflective eye to more easily spot predators in the light-starved deep ocean. |
| What’s more, the spookfish (Dolichopteryx longipes) is the first vertebrate ever found to use mirrors to see |
| Although the spookfish was first discovered 120 years ago, this is the first time a live one has been caught, allowing scientists to get a closer look at its unique optics. |
| At first glance, it appears the spookfish has four eyes (see image, right), but in fact, it has two eyes both separated into two compartments. |
| One half of the eye points upwards to capture the tiny amount of sunlight that makes its way this deep |
| this half contains a lens, and is similar to a human eye |
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