We’re always hearing about the things that may cause cancer — saccharin, cell phones, plastic water bottles — but what about those things that can help prevent it? Well, at the American Association for Cancer Research Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference held earlier this month, researchers from around the world presented the most recent findings in the field of cancer, and many of them had good things to say.  Here’s a brief run down of some of the more unexpected items that may help protect our bodies against the dreaded disease:

– Hops: People are always arguing that a glass of red wine a day is good for you, but what about beer? Well, according to a group at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, a natural compound known as xanthohumol derived from hops blocks the tumor-promoting effects of testosterone — such as gene expression and cell growth — which can help prevent prostate cancer. And for the girls, xanthohumol also appears to block the action of estrogen, which may help protect against breast cancer. (Photo credit)

– Pistachios: A daily dose of pistachios may help reduce the risk of lung and other cancers, according to work done at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.  Apparently, pistachios are a good source of gamma-tocopherol, a form of vitamin E that is known to provide protection against certain forms of cancer, and eating 117 kernels a day resulted in significant increase in gamma-tocopherol in just a few weeks. (Photo credit)

– Coffee: The more coffee you drink, the more you reduce your risk of lethal or advanced prostate cancer. According to a study from the Harvard Medical School, men who drank the most coffee had as much as a 60 percent lower risk of aggressive prostate cancer than men who did not drink any coffee. As for which component of coffee might be the key factors in this protection, that is still up in the air. While caffeine did not appear to contribute greatly to the association, coffee does contain a variety of biologically active compounds like antioxidants and minerals that may participate. (Photo credit)

– Omega-3 fatty acids: Finally, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, which are found primarily in fish and other seafoods, may help protect against colon cancer, according to research conducted at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in North Carolina. The researchers found an inverse relationship between how much omega-3s one ate and the occurence of distal large bowel cancer. Added to the growing list of other omega-3 benefits, such as reduced tumor growth, suppression of angiogenesis and inhibition of metastasis, it’s seeming more and more like a fish a day may keep cancer at bay. (Photo credit)

I do have to throw in the disclaimer that despite all of this exciting research, it is still far too early to start trusting your health to pale ales, nuts, espresso, and salmon. But for me, I’ll take some of each this Christmas. Happy holidays everyone!

Animals and their clever ways never cease to amaze me. It’s part of the reason I started this blog in the first place. Today I was alerted to a BBC video of octopi carrying coconut half shelves to use as shelters. This is apparently the first example of tool use in this species, which surprises me slightly. The octopus is one of the smartest — maybe the smartest — invertebrates. To study them requires the completion of all the same regulatory measures as vertebrate work does, and octopi in captivity require mental stimulation, just like dogs or dolphins. (Playing with the octopus was one of the daily jobs I got to partake in during my time at the Tennessee Aquarium where I did much of my graduate work.)

In any case, this video has inspired me to start blogging again. My new job has kept me busy, with lots of writing, so I have been less motivated to work on my blog during the evenings and weekends. Kind of like how the last thing I wanted to do during my prelim exams was pick up a pleasure book. But my fascination with the animal world has not dwindled, and for those of you who do read my blog (thanks Mom!), I want to continue to share all the newly discovered animal stories with you. So check out this video, and check back soon for more tales of what, why, and how animals do what they do.

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Bats and moths are a classic predator and prey story, with lots of evolutionary twist and turns along the way. It has long been known that moths could detect the ultrasonic pulses that bats emit as part of their echolocation navigational system. Researchers have identified a variety of moth survival strategies, including their distinctive erratic flight patterns, which they employ when they hear an approaching predator. A Current Biology paper a couple of years ago even found that the yellow underwing moths can tune their ears to better hear the bats calls while being chased. It’s a constant evolutionary struggle for the bats to overcome these prey defenses to catch their daily full meals.

A new study, published in Science, identifies yet another innovative moth adaptation to avoiding bat predation: sonar jamming. Using a paired set of sound-producing organs known as tymballs, the moths can emit up to 450 ultrasonic clicks in a tenth of a second — a frequency that somehow disrupts the bat’s echolocation.

Whether or not this strategy helps the moths evade capture in the wild remains to be seen, but it certainly seems like it could buy them enough time to escape. What’s next in this evolutionary arms race?

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When tragedy strikes a family, it’s often hard to “look on the bright side.” But when it comes to having your pet pooch — your best friend and loyal watchdog — diagnosed with cancer, learning what we can about the disease from the unfortunate circumstances may be of some comfort.

A recently launched cooperative effort — the National Cancer Institute’s Comparative Oncology Trials Consortium — aims to do just that. By providing the infrastructure and resources needed to gather information from naturally occurring cancers, such as in dogs and other animals (as opposed to the more removed mouse models of cancer), the project hopes to inform the study of human cancer and aid the development of new drugs, devices, and imaging techniques.

I don’t at all mean to imply that these potential benefits can even begin to outweigh the heartbreak that comes along with a loved pet succumbing to this terrible illness, but perhaps it’s something to keep in mind if that tragic news should ever come. Would you be willing to enroll your pet in an experimental cancer treatment that holds hope for both your pet’s health and the future of human oncology?

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We hear sounds waves that have traveled through the air or the water or a string in the case of a child’s homemade cup phone. But vibrations can also travel through the ground. While we, as humans, may not be able to perceive, nevermind interpret, these subtle vibrations, there is at least one species that can: elephants.

Indeed, elephants produce and ‘hear’ low frequency vocalizations (below what the human ear can perceive) that can travel very long distances through the ground. Dr. Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell of Stanford identified this so-called seismic communication when a group of elephants she was observing simultaneously paused during a midday stroll and pressed their front feet or trunks into the ground. This bizarre behavior turned out to be the pachyderm version of perking one’s ears.

Based on O’Connell-Rodwell’s experiments, it seems that elephants can not only perceive these seismic signals, but they can interpret them as well. One signal produced by the elephants, for example, appeared to warn of hunting lions in the area.

Elephants are believed to process these signals through mechanoreceptors known as Pacinian corpuscles found in their feet and their trunk. They also seem to be detecting the signal through their toenails, which transmits the vibrations through the bones of their legs and body all the way to the bones of the middle ear, which perceive the noise. This pathway is heightened when they close their middle ear canal, which allows pressure to build up in the middle ear and enhances the bone-conducted signal and shuts out any airborne noises.

Click here to hear a podcast of The American Physiological Society with O’Connell-Rodwell about her studies of elephant communication, or what Christine Guilfoy calls ‘elecomm.’

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On August 4, a foal named Mira was born. But Mira is no ordinary horse — her mother Rebaqua died almost a year ago. To preserve the legacy of the champion barrel racer, veterinarian Sylvia Bedford-Guaus of the Cornell Hospital for Animals scraped immature oocytes from Rebaqua’s ovaries within hours of her death. Nine oocytes were recovered and shipped to another veterinarian, Katrin Hinrichs, at the Equine Embryo Laboratory at Texas A&M University, who incubated the oocytes, inducing five to reach maturity. The lucky five were then given to veterinarian Young-Ho Choi to fertilize with frozen-thawed sperm from another barrel-racing champion, Frenchmans Guy. After seven days in culture, two fertilized eggs developed into embryos and were sent to veterinarian David Hartman at the Hartman Equine Reproduction Center in Whitesboro, Texas. Hartman transferred the embryos to a surrogate mare, who was later purchased by Rebaqua’s owner, Kristin Contro. The mare was shipped to New York to meet her new owner and give birth to Mira, an equine miracle.

So now, a year after her death and four veterinarians later, Rebaqua has a daughter. How much did this all cost, and is it really worth it? Contro obviously thought it was. What about you?

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Maybe. A new study published in Journal of Food Science reports that the amino acids and minerals found in asparagus may help fight the oxidative stress associated with liver damage after drinking alcohol, and two key enzymes in alcohol metabolism were upregulated by more than 2-fold when treated extracts from the leaves and shoots. Hey, whatever works, right?

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It’s a bit of a stretch but an interesting theory nonetheless: house cats simultaneously produce a meow and a purr in order to get their owners to feed them. According to the authors of a new study in Current Biology, a straight meow would annoy the owner and result in the banishment of the cat altogether, while just a purr signifies contentment, which would not succeed in getting any food. Instead, embedding the cry for help within a contented purr is the most effective way to get fed. Like I said, a bit of a stretch, but I wouldn’t necessarily put it past the creative arm of evolution.

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The control of fire was such a significant step in the evolution of man that is easy to forget that it existed long before any man-like creature took shape. In fact, fire existed ever since the first land plants evolved — or more than 400 millions years ago. In a recent post on her blog The Wild Side, Olivia Judson raises some interesting questions about the ways in which plants have evolved to deal with naturally-caused fires, or even start them. Yes, start them. There are indeed many species of plants that need fires for their existence. Many plants also have flammable oils, resins, and gums inside their leaves and branches. So the question is: Are these flammable materials an adaptation for the promotion of forest fires? Are these plants also evolving the ability to survive such events of mass destruction and then “setting” fires to spread their seeds and burn out their competition? The one piece of evidence in support of this spiteful theory — that of fire resistant plants encouraging the initiation and propagation of natural fires — comes from pines, in which those that retain their dead branches longer, and are therefore more flammable, also have fire-triggered seed release. As Judson points out, this is hardly proof of arson, but the question remains: are the trees evolving to start fires?

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Market economies are self-regulating, and we are usually satisfied with its ability to keep prices on essentials, such as gas and groceries, to a minimum. It is often assumed, however, that this kind of system was uniquely human — something we “invented” as our growing materialism demanded. But non-human animals also participate in the exchange of goods, and now there is evidence that the value of these goods fluctuates in response to supply and demand.

Ronald Noë and his colleagues at the University of Strasbourg, France created an artificial market in a group of vervet monkeys by providing food in a plastic box that only one member of the group could open. Sure enough, that individual received more grooming time — an exchangeable asset in the vervet community — from the other group members. When they introduced a second box that a different group member was trained to open, the first monkey’s stock value plummeted — that is, she did not receive as much grooming from her comrades. (Their findings are published in PNAS, DOI:10.1073/pnas.0812280106, and written up in NewScientist.)

This raises the question of what level of cognitive processing is required for the development of such market dynamics, and what other animal communities possess such striking similar economies to our own.

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