Butterflies Taste With Their Feet

 

Credit: Image by Openverse

Butterflies possess a remarkable ability to taste with their feet through specialized sensory organs called chemoreceptors located on their tarsi. These tiny hair-like structures, known as sensilla, detect chemical compounds when butterflies land on flowers, fruits, or leaves. This adaptation helps them identify food sources, conserve energy by only extending their proboscis when nectar is present, and select suitable host plants for egg-laying. Females are especially sensitive, ensuring caterpillars hatch on the right plants. This evolutionary trait, refined over millions of years, highlights butterfly-plant coevolution and faces modern threats from pesticides and environmental toxins that disrupt their sensory systems

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Are Sharks Older Than Trees? The Truth About Earth’s Oldest Predators

 

Credit: Kevin Lino NOAA/NMFS/PIFSC/ESD

Sharks are far older than trees, with fossil evidence showing they first appeared about 400 million years ago, while trees emerged around 350 million years ago. This gives sharks a 50‑million‑year evolutionary head start. Early sharks had cartilaginous skeletons, multiple rows of teeth, and sharp senses, traits that made them efficient hunters and remain central to their survival today.

Over the ages, sharks endured all five mass extinction events, including the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs. Their resilience comes from adaptable diets, acute senses like smell and electroreception, varied reproductive strategies, and streamlined bodies that have required little change. When sharks first swam Earth’s seas, land was barren, covered only with mosses and fungi; forests developed much later.

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Yes, Cows Really Do Have Besties

 

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Cows are highly social herd animals that form complex relationships and even develop “best friends.” Their social hierarchy is shaped by age, sex, breed, size, and personality traits such as boldness or sociability. Beyond hierarchy, cows establish preferential bonds, often shown through social licking, head rubbing, and synchronized behaviors like eating and resting together. These friendships reduce stress, as cows display calmer heart rates and less agitation when paired with preferred partners compared to non-preferred ones. Long-term separation from a best friend negatively impacts behavior, physiology, and milk production, but reunion restores normal patterns. Calves also benefit from companionship: those raised with peers are more confident, less fearful, and quicker learners, while isolated calves show cognitive deficits and struggle with farming technologies. Research emphasizes that stable social groups and housing systems improve welfare, reduce stress, and enhance productivity, highlighting the importance of respecting cattle’s natural social bonds.

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Why octopuses have three hearts: when three are better than one

 

Credit: BBC Wildlife Magazine - Debbie Graham

Compared to many other animals, octopuses have rather a complicated circulatory system to ensure oxygenated blood reaches the extremities of their multi-limbed body. Octopuses pump their blood around their circulatory system using three hearts instead of one. While a ‘systemic’ heart supplies the animal’s body, two ‘branchial’ hearts supply each of the two gills where the blood is oxygenated

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