Mathematics is a uniquely human capacity. Studies of animals and human infants reveal, however, that this capacity builds on language-independent mechanisms for quantifying small numbers ([less than] 4) precisely and large numbers approximately. It is unclear whether animals and human infants can spontaneously tap mechanisms for quantifying large…

This column presents a brief biography of Dick King-Smith. Born on March 27, 1922 and raised in Gloucestershire, England, he grew up with animals of all kinds. King-Smith was a farmer for twenty years and then became a school teacher. He was also a soldier during wartime, a traveling salesman, shoe factory worker, and television presenter. He…

When students enter the author's classroom on the first day of school, they are greeted with live crabs scuttling around in large bins. The crabs are her way of grabbing students' attention and launching the unit on the Chesapeake Bay watershed. She chooses to start the year with this unit because, despite the fact that the Potomac River can be…

There are many reasons people are afraid of bats but most are myths. Many people are also afraid of bats because they believe all bats are vampire bats, or bats that feed on blood. There are a few species of bats called "vampire" bats;however, these bats are found in Central and South America--there are no vampire bats in the United…

Studying animals in the classroom enables students to develop skills of observation and comparison, a sense of stewardship, and an appreciation for the unity, interrelationships, and complexity of life. This article offers guidelines for working with live animals in the science classroom or laboratory.

An attempt is made to find how polarity arises and is maintained, which is a central issue in development. It is a fundamental attribute of living things and cellular polarity is also important in the development of multicellular organisms and controversial new work indicates that polarization in mammals may occur much earlier than previously…

The researchers in London have developed an emerging technology that utilizes mass spectrometry to detect processed animal protein (PAP) in animal feed. The amount of animal protein in the feed can be determined by the ratio of the hydrolyzed gelatine signal at m/z 1044 to an internal standard signal at m/z 556.

The power of mathematical inscriptions, such as graphs, is often attributed to the fact that they summarize a lot of information independent of their contextual particulars. There is evidence, however, that even quintessential experts and scientists have difficulties interpreting graphs when they are unfamiliar with the entities represented and…

This paper explores the changing relationship between "nature" and rurality through an examination of the shifting iconography of animals, and particularly "wild" animals, in a rural setting. Drawing upon a set of examples, the paper argues that the faunistic icons of rural areas are evolving as alternative conceptions of the countryside, of…

An experiment is reported in which the effect of unconditioned stimulus (US) intensity on latent inhibition (LI) was examined, using a two-stage conditioned emotional response (CER) procedure in rats. A tone was used as the pre-exposed and conditioned stimulus (CS), and a foot-shock of either a low (0.3 mA) or high (0.7 mA) intensity was used as…

Two experiments are reported using a visual familiarization categorization procedure. In both experiments, infants were familiarized with sets of stimuli previously shown to contain asymmetric feature distributions that support an asymmetry in young infants' categorization of cats and dogs (i.e. infants' cat category excludes dogs but their dog…

Pets can be loyal, loving, and entertaining members of a family. Their deaths are generally experienced as painful losses by the people who love them, even though the grief experience is often culturally disenfranchised. In this manuscript, we discuss the role that pets can play in a person's life; the effects that pet loss can have on the people…

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a potent modulator of synaptic transmission and plasticity in the CNS, acting both pre- and postsynaptically. We demonstrated recently that BDNF/TrkB signaling increases dendritic spine density in hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons. Here, we tested whether activation of the prominent ERK (MAPK) signaling…

This study examines whether or not habituation contributes to the regulation of the inhibition of predatory behavior observed during the "prawn-in-the-tube" training procedure. When presented with prawns that are visible behind glass but untouchable, cuttlefish promptly learn to inhibit their capture attempts. The first three experiments…

Neural integration of glutamate- and dopamine-coded signals within the nucleus accumbens (NAc) is a fundamental process governing cellular plasticity underlying reward-related learning. Intra-NAc core blockade of NMDA or D1 receptors in rats impairs instrumental learning (lever-pressing for sugar pellets), but it is not known during which phase of…