Can Birds Smell?

Sexual Dimorphism: Can You Smell the Difference?

A powerful new technique for visualizing neurons in the fly brain has uncovered fine neuroanatomical differences between the olfactory circuitries of male and female Drosophila.

What Can Birds Hear?

For bids, hearing is second in importance only to vision for monitoring the world around them. ./\vim hearing is most sensitive to sounds from about 1 to 4 kHz, although they can hear higher and lower frequencies. No species of bird has shown sensitivity to ultrasonic frequencies (>20 kHz). Sensitivity to frequencies below 20 Hz (dasound) has not received much attention; however, pigeons and a ...

Avian olfactory receptor gene repertoires: evidence for a well-developed sense of smell in birds?

Among vertebrates, the sense of smell is mediated by olfactory receptors (ORs) expressed in sensory neurons within the olfactory epithelium. Comparative genomic studies suggest that the olfactory acuity of mammalian species correlates positively with both the total number and the proportion of functional OR genes encoded in their genomes. In contrast to mammals, avian olfaction is poorly unders...

Evolutionary Study of Birds' Sense of Smell Reveals Important Clues for Behavior and Adaptation.

From Austrian monks to American craft brewers, beer geeks are everywhere. But making a good beer not only depends on the best ingredients, but also the best yeast. The beer world is divided into ales and lagers. Lager yeasts are hybrid strains, made of two different yeast species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and S. eubayanus (discovered in 2011). In a new study in the journal Molecular Biology and...

To smell or not to smell? That is the question!