Featured series 
Tag: comparative zoology
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Health
The way of the digital dodo
The National Science Foundation-funded, three-year effort aims to create 3-D digital models of each species represented in Harvard’s collection of 12,000 bird skeletons.
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Health
Jamaican lizards mark their territory with shows of strength at dusk and dawn
What does ageless fitness guru Jack LaLanne have in common with a Jamaican lizard? Like LaLanne, the lizards greet each day with vigorous push-ups. That’s according to a new study…
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Health
Opossum genome shows ‘junk’ DNA source of genetic innovation
A tiny opossum’s genome has shed light on how evolution creates new creatures from old, showing that change primarily comes by finding new ways of turning existing genes on and…
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Campus & Community
Eclipsed for decades, Harvard’s glass animals step out
Long overshadowed by their famed floral kin, some of the exquisite 19th century glass animals housed at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) have finally hit the road for a Minnesota exhibit – the first time in Harvard’s nearly 130-year ownership that the rare sculptures are known to have left Cambridge.
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Campus & Community
Spring in your step helps avert disastrous stumbles
From graceful ballerinas to clumsy-looking birds, everyone occasionally loses their footing. New Harvard University research suggests that it could literally be the spring, or damper, in your step that helps…
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Campus & Community
Wing color not just for looks
Harvard and Russian researchers have documented natural selection’s role in the creation of new species through a process called reinforcement, where butterfly wing colors differ enough to avoid confusion with…
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Campus & Community
A tale of a venomous dispute
Sea spiders as large as a foot across have been seen crawling along the deep ocean floor from the windows of submersible research vessels. Most of them, however, including those in a Harvard study, are a scant millimeter (.04 inch) in size. But big or small, they boast long snouts, on either side of which…
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Health
Zoologist says in animal kingdom, less is more
Harvard researcher Piotr Naskrecki hopes his new book, “The Smaller Majority” (Harvard University Press, 2005), will win over some new advocates for the tiny creatures he has spent his life…
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Health
How ant (and human) societies might grow
Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus Edward O. Wilson remains fascinated with the highly organized societies of ants, bees, wasps, termites, and humans. He and Bert Holldobler, with whom he shared a…
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Health
The tale of the tail
Sharks’ tails have always mystified biologists. Their relatives, hundreds of different species of fish, happily push themselves through the water with symmetrical tails that move from side to side. But…
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Health
Scientists identify hundreds of worm genes that regulate fat storage
Findings by Harvard researchers, published in the Jan. 16, 2003 issue of Nature, represent the first survey of an entire genome for all genes that regulate fat storage. The research…
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Science & Tech
Researchers debate origin of language
Birds sing, chimps grunt, and whales whistle, but those sounds fall far short of expressing the richness of their experiences. Their lack of language goes to the question of why…
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Health
Pigment plays role in Xenopus development
Harvard Medical School researchers have discovered that a pigment contained in the egg of the South African claw-toed frog is indispensable for development. Witout the pigment, called biliverdin, which is…
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Science & Tech
Oldest mammal is found
When dinosaurs ruled the world, scampering around their feet were platoons of diminutive insect-eating animals, part reptile, part something new. When the giant reptiles and many other animals were wiped…
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Health
Tiny creatures offer clues to human aging
When its aging gene is not working right, a worm named C. elegans lives three times longer than normal, according to Harvard researcher Gary Ruvkun. The development gene keeps an…
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Health
Understanding how fish swim
The pattern is hard to see at first because the movement seems to happen in the blink of an eye.