![]() It took the patience and perseverance of Gregor Mendel, a 19th century monk, to discover that traits were passed on from one generation to the next. Outlandish speculations ranged from the birds hibernating at the bottom of ponds, flapping up to the moon, or simply staying put but morphing into new species. Modern tagging techniques have provided researchers with detailed knowledge of where birds migrate to with the change of the seasons, but for thousands of years their whereabouts was shrouded in mystery. ![]() The footage showed the squid lunging, tentacles first, out of the gloom. In 2004, Japanese scientists Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori lowered a bait-laden video camera 900 metres under the sea and snapped around 50 images of the beast in action. ![]() The giant squid is the largest invertebrate on the planet, but lives at such inaccessible depths that little was known of its behaviour in the wild. The algae take up residence inside the polyps, trading the products of photosynthesis for a safe haven. But these marine creatures would die were it not for a symbiotic relationship with photosynthesising algae called zooxanthellae. What we call coral is the hard shells of animals called polyps. The discovery challenged anthropologists' description of humankind as "man the toolmaker". In 1960, Jane Goodall discovered that chimps in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania stripped leaves from twigs and inserted them into termite mounts to fish for grubs. How have they fared? 10) Tool use by chimps The list in full is below, in descending order. Today, the results of their deliberations are published as the top 10 breakthroughs in zoology. By tackling questions like those Aristotle posed, scientists have made great strides in understanding the animal kingdom, from the collective behaviour of ant colonies and the intricate dances of honeybees, to the great migrations of whales and co-dependence of one species on another.īut what are the greatest zoological discoveries of all time? At BBC Wildlife magazine, a panel of judges has been mulling over the question. The History of Animals might well be considered the starting point for zoology, at least in a systematic sense. So the inferences and assertions are often flawed (even if they contain a kernel of truth), but then how well will our own understanding of nature hold up in another 2,000 years? In humans, baldness is declared a consequence of sexual passion, since no boy, woman or castrated man ever loses hair like an intact adult man. How fish hear is frankly a mystery since they don't seem to have ears. He observes that elephants do not sleep standing up, but do copulate in lonely places.
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