Scientists mapped the fruit fly brain’s more than 50 million connections, a step in aiding future human brain research.

We all know the adage, 'You can't teach an old dog new tricks.' As we age, our ability to learn new skills, like mastering a foreign language or picking up a musical instrument, seems to fade.

With hand signals, she asked Muppet to fly to the testing platform and wait ... PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY Zebra finches, found across Australia, form ...

Vallentin's team focused on zebra finches, songbirds known for their elaborate vocalizations. Like many animals, zebra finches have a critical period for song learning, within their first 90 days ...

Thomas Hunt Morgan has now been studying flies in his "fly laboratory" at Columbia University for two years. Day after day, the trained geneticist feeds thousands of these insects, a mere three ...

Natural selection at its most powerful winnowed certain finches harshly during a severe drought in 1977. That year, the vegetation withered. Seeds of all kinds were scarce. The small, soft ones ...

Sep. 18, 2024 — Millions of birds migrate every year to escape winter, but spending time in a warmer climate does not save them energy, according to new research. Using miniaturized loggers ...

The attractive house finch is one of the more common and recognizable species throughout the United States. Originally a “western” species of semiarid environments, it was introduced in the ...

Some disoriented birds may also fly around artificial light in circles, or worse, crash into lit-up buildings. Sleeping can even improve some birds’ ability to remember their songs. In 2008, ...

There are now at least 13 species of finches on the Galapagos Islands, each filling a different niche on different islands. All of them evolved from one ancestral species, which colonized the ...

Recently in Nature(399, 466– 470, 1999), Anthony Leonardo and Mark Konishi of Caltech reported that zebra finches retain a surprising ability to modify their songs in response to auditory ...

I also studied senescence and sexual signaling of bill coloration in zebra finches. Both during my PhD at the University ... To do this we use the fruit fly, a functional genetics powerhouse. We use a ...