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An international team of researchers from the University of Turku, Finland, and the INRAE of Nouzilly, France, explored the ability of sledging reindeer to follow directional indications from humans. Their results highlight that reindeer, which are well habituated to humans, can make use of gestural cues very well with minimal training.
A new study shows that horses living in big enclosures and in groups of at least three horses are better at following directional indications from humans than horses kept in individual paddocks. The results also indicate that familiarity to the human providing the indications does not matter for the horses.
Wind turbines are built at an increasing pace but their effect on nature and animals are poorly known. Researchers from the Universities of Turku and Helsinki in Finland have investigated the impact of wind turbines on bat presence and activity in boreal forests. The results indicate clearly that bats don’t like wind turbines.
A new study shows that horses can be more reluctant in new situations if they have multiple riders, have had several owners or the horse has been with its current owner only for a short period of time. The results of the international research group that studied the interaction between horses and humans also indicate that it takes time to build a good interactive relationship with a horse.
An international team of scientists found that sociality is linked to stress in Asian elephants. For example, loneliness increased male elephants’ level of stress, whereas having babies present reduced the stress level in female elephants.
Although the giant panda is in practice a herbivore, its masticatory system functions differently from the other herbivores. Through the processes of natural selection, the giant panda’s dietary preference has strongly impacted the evolution of its teeth and jaws.
The article published by the researchers of the Biodiversity Unit at the University of Turku, Finland, highlights how amateur venom-extraction business is threatening scorpion species. Sustainably produced scorpion venoms are important, for example, in the pharmacological industry. However, in the recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people involved in the trade and vast numbers of scorpions are harvested from nature. This development is endangering the future of several scorpion species in a number of areas.
Ecologists at the University of Turku, Finland, have discovered that the food hoards pygmy owls collect in nest-boxes ("freezers") for winter rot due to high precipitation caused by heavy autumn rains and if the hoarding has been initiated early in the autumn. The results of the study show that climate change may impair predators’ foraging and thus decrease local overwinter survival . The study has been published in the internationally esteemed Global Change Biology journal.
The researchers at the Biodiversity Unit of the University of Turku are specialised in studying poorly known species habiting some of the most remote places on earth. As a result of their scientific expeditions, the researchers constantly discover species that are unknown to science. One of the most recent discoveries is a spider which was named after actor Joaquin Phoenix and his famous portrayal of the Joker character.