The striking color patterns that animals use to interact with their environment have fascinated mankind since even before our ancestors drawing directly some of them in the first cave paintings.

But how to create and exhibit their spectacular patterns different creatures in the animal kingdom, such as certain birds, coral reef fish, butterflies and snakes, has been, until now, one of the greatest secrets of nature.

A team of researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has now revealed the details of how animals create from scratch new body ornamentation. This study is the result of years of painstaking experimentation. (more…)

Although bats are active after sunset, depending on it as their most reliable guidance for their flight paths over long distances. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology have found that the bat Myotis is oriented at night with the help of the Earth’s magnetic field, and calibrate the compass by reference to the position of the sun king during the sunset.

Since the 1940s, it is known that bats use echolocation through its ultrasonic cries directed at close range. Some bats, however, fly 20 miles and even farther from their caves, every night, looking for prey. The caves used in summer are often more than 50 kilometers apart from those used in winter. And some species migrate even at distances of a thousand miles every year. (more…)