By Colline Brassard and Trish Fleming. Dogs (Canis familiaris) are descendants of the grey wolf (Canis lupus). The earliest accepted dog remains date back to about 15,000 years ago. Although all dogs share this same ancestor, their life as human domesticates has led to considerable variation, and modern dogs are one of the most variable…
Category: Ecomorphology
How to eat a mouse whole; changes in skull shape in a large elapid snake
By Matt Patterson and Ash Wolfe. It’s not that easy to eat your food whole. Especially if you don’t have limbs to assist you. That’s what snakes have to deal with every day. The challenge is even harder for young snakes, which have to develop their abilities to handle and ingest their food. The dugite…
Spiny, striped, pygmy and giant bandicoots of New Guinea
By Natalie Warburton. Quenda are quirky inhabitants of many gardens and parks in the Perth metropolitan region. But did you know that they are only one of more than twenty species of bandicoots that are found around Australia and New Guinea? Unlike our local species, little is known of the diets and behaviour of their…
Ancient animals reveal unexpected environments
By Natalie Warburton @aNATomy_lab. Studying animal behaviour and ecology can involve hundreds of hours of field work in uncomfortable conditions, and for Australian mammals at least, very long nights. But what about animals from the past? How can we understand their behaviour and ecology, and what can this tell us about how ecosystems and the…
A Rubbish Diet
By Heather Crawford, Mike Calver and Trish Fleming. Domestic cats (Felis catus) are one of the most widely distributed and successful carnivores globally. In cities, unowned cats (‘stray’) live in close association with human habitations and can roam across neighbourhoods, commercial areas, parks and bush reserves, hunting wildlife and scavenging food where they can find…
A fearsome predator — even small stray and feral cats take large and difficult-to-handle prey
By Trish Fleming, Heather Crawford, Clare Auckland and Mike Calver. Despite thousands of years of domestication, pet cats (Felis catus) retain a strong hunting drive. It is therefore easy for cats to survive independently of people. Today in Australia, it is estimated that there are 1.4–5.6 million feral cats in natural environments, and another 0.7…
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