Everyone loves animal oddities.
Darwin and Lamarck pondered the advantages of the giraffe’s long legs and neck, while a few decades later Rudyard Kipling explained how the leopard got its spots. Today genome sequencing is fleshing out what we thought we knew about some distinctive animal adaptations, from the giraffe to the leopard.
Adaptations are inherited traits that increase the likelihood of an individual surviving to reproduce. A zebra's stripes rendering it invisible when it runs and the fennec fox's giant ears that dissipate heat and hear distant predators are adaptations.
A report in this month’s Genome Research provides the basis for a “just-so story” about how the pangolin – aka the scaly anteater -- got its scales. They protect, but in a way beyond the obvious. According to the genome, the armor of the pangolin replaced part of its immune response.
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Darwin and Lamarck pondered the advantages of the giraffe’s long legs and neck, while a few decades later Rudyard Kipling explained how the leopard got its spots. Today genome sequencing is fleshing out what we thought we knew about some distinctive animal adaptations, from the giraffe to the leopard.
Adaptations are inherited traits that increase the likelihood of an individual surviving to reproduce. A zebra's stripes rendering it invisible when it runs and the fennec fox's giant ears that dissipate heat and hear distant predators are adaptations.
A report in this month’s Genome Research provides the basis for a “just-so story” about how the pangolin – aka the scaly anteater -- got its scales. They protect, but in a way beyond the obvious. According to the genome, the armor of the pangolin replaced part of its immune response.
Read More