Humans have a complicated relationship with our non-human cousins.
Some animals we invite into our homes, and treat as members of our families.
Indeed, in November of this year singer Fiona Apple made headlines when she announced that she would cancel the South American segment of her tour to be with her dying dog.
Some animals we brine, barbecue, bake, roast, fry, or saute. Strong opinions were expressed on all sides of the issue when a law passed by the California state legislature went into effect on July 1, banning the sale of foie gras.
Still other animals we’d prefer to avoid entirely even while remaining endlessly fascinated by them. When Hurricane Sandy poured down upon New York City, one question on everyone’s mind was what would become of the subterranean rat populations, living deep underneath the city streets?
Whatever anyone’s personal thoughts about animals' place within human society, stories about animals have a unique ability to captivate us. To celebrate our relationship with the rest of animal kind, we’ve compiled a list of what we consider to be the best animal stories of 2012.
Some are scientifically important. Some provide commentary on the human-animal connection. Some are funny, quirky, or surprising. Some just made us smile. Here are our picks for the best animal stories of 2012.
Best tool-using species
As each year passes, more and more species are inducted into the club of the tool-wielding, making the group less and less exclusive. This year, a male Goffin’s cockatoo (Cacatua goffiniana) named Figaro from the Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna paved the way for the inclusion of his species among the tool users of the world.
Parrots such as cockatoos have long been known for their linguistic abilities. Now that there’s evidence for the possibility of tool use, researchers can begin to probe the relationship between language and tool use.Clever captive cockatoo creates tool, a first for his species by Jason; The Innovative Cockatoo by Virginia Morell.
Best Piece of Jargon We Learned this Year
Since the 1930s, we’ve been calling the chemical cocktail released by anxious fish – which they use to warn others of danger – schreckstoff, an excellent term that means “scary stuff” in German. All that time, we didn’t know what it was made of, though.
This year, writes Ferris Jabr at Scientific American, researchers from Singapore and Switzerland, think they’ve isolated schreckstoff‘s key ingredient, “a sugar-like molecule named glycosaminoglycan (GAG) chondroitin.”
Best new species that was hiding in plain sight
Last summer, in a piece at the New York Times, Carl Zimmer reported that some scientists estimate that there are some 8.7 million species populating our planet (give or take 1.3 million; some scientists think the number is actually far higher). Many of the still undescribed species are microbes and fungi, others are found only in tiny corners of the world, and hundreds if not thousands are certainly gathering dust in museum basements.
More surprising, however, is that a monkey species new to science might be found in the backyard of a local school director in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a pet tethered to a post. The new species, called the Lesula monkey or Cercopithecus lomamiensis, is only the second new monkey species discovered in Africa in 28 years, after the Highland mangabey (Lophocepus kipunji) of Tanzania. Lesula: New species of African monkey discovered by Becky Crew.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider