predators

Plans to introduce plant-eating predators to fight a superweed spreading throughout Britain should not be seen as a 'magic bullet', says a world expert on Japanese knotweed.

With long limbs and a soft body, the duck-billed hadrosaur had few defenses against predators such as tyrannosaurs.

But new research on the bones of this plant-eating dinosaur suggests that it had at least one advantage: It grew to adulthood much faster than its predators, giving it superiority in size.

Many animal species detect and avoid predators by smell, but this ability has been largely overlooked in the study of birds, since it was traditionally thought that they did not make use of this sense.

However, it has now been discovered that birds are not only capable of discerning their enemies through chemical signals, but that they also alter their behavior depending on the perceived level of risk of predation.

Circular markings on creatures such as butterflies are effective against predators because they are conspicuous features, not because they mimic the eyes of the predators' own enemies, according to new research.

Many animals possess protective markings to avoid predation, including patterns to reduce the risk of detection (camouflage), to indicate that the animal is toxic or inedible ('warning colors'), or to mimic another animal or object ('mimicry' and 'masquerade').