Previous research has shown the hunter-gatherer Jahai are much better at naming odors than Westerners. They even have a more elaborate lexicon for it. New research by language scientist Asifa Majid of Radboud University shows ...
Other
Jun 18, 2018
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65
Biologists at the University of California, Riverside have discovered surprisingly that the complex odor-detecting machinery of the fruit fly Drosophila is heavily influenced by one specific odor receptor. This same receptor ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 8, 2018
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17
Your grandmother's insistence that you receive more bug bites because you're 'sweeter' may not be that far-fetched after all, according to pioneering research from Virginia Tech scientists.
Plants & Animals
Jan 25, 2018
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341
When it comes to naming colors, most people do so with ease. But, for odors, it's much harder to find the words. One notable exception to this rule is found among the Jahai people, a group of hunter-gatherers living in the ...
Other
Jan 18, 2018
0
19
It takes less than one-tenth of a second—a fraction of the time previously thought—for the sense of smell to distinguish between one odor and another, new experiments in mice show.
Plants & Animals
Nov 14, 2017
0
93
Vinegar odor boosts the perception of a male sex pheromone in the brain of unmated female Drosophila melanogaster flies, as a team of scientists from the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology has now discovered. The researchers ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 30, 2017
1
27
Queen ants spend most of their time having babies. To reign supreme in a colony, they exude a special scent, or pheromone, on the waxy surface of their body that suppresses ovary development in their sisters, rendering the ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 17, 2017
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82
Markus Knaden and Bill Hansson, and their colleagues at the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology, study ecologically relevant odors in the natural environment of insects, especially vinegar flies. In this new study they ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 16, 2017
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43
The gene-editing technology called CRISPR has revolutionized the way that the function of genes is studied. So far, CRISPR has been widely used to precisely modify single-celled organisms and, more importantly, specific types ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 10, 2017
5
359
It's a waxy layer that covers their bodies and is the source of the complex aromas that ants use to communicate. These odorant blends act like biochemical uniforms, identifying individual ants by caste, colony and species. ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 10, 2017
1
40
