It's Alive
- Animals
How to milk a naked mole-rat
For the sake of science, Olav Oftedal has milked bats, bears and a lot of other mammals. But a naked mole-rat was something new.
- Animals
See-through shrimp flex invisible muscle
Much of the body of a Pederson’s transparent shrimp looks like watery nothing, but it’s a superhero sort of nothing.
- Animals
Pelican spiders: slow, safe assassins
Spiders, thank goodness, haven’t evolved assassin drones. But the specialized hunters of the family Archaeidae can kill at a distance.
- Animals
‘Packrat’ is the new term for ‘really organized’
The more eclectic hoarder species segregate pantry from lumber room from junk museum. The result is more orderly than the closets of some human packrats.
- Animals
Disco clams put on a streak show
Scuba divers call Ctenoides ales the disco or electric clam because the restless, curling lips of its mantle flash bright streaks.
- Animals
When snakes fly
A gliding snake gets some lift by spreading its ribs, but much about its flight remains a mystery.
- Animals
Sperm on a stick for springtails
Many males of the tiny soil organisms sustain their species by leaving drops of sperm glistening here and there in the landscape in case a female chooses to pick one up.
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- Life
Fungal fight club
Combat between fungal individuals is a bit like war between heaps of spaghetti.
- Animals
Pink armadillos ain’t your Texas critters
It’s a real animal, the smallest armadillo species in the world. At about 100 grams, it would fit in your hands.
- Animals
The colorful lives of squid
Your calamari, it turns out, may have come from a temporary transvestite with rainbows in its armpits.
- Animals
Vampire reality check
A vampire bat drinks one meal a night, and missing just three nights in a row would probably kill the animal.
