All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Long Horns Win: Selection in action—Attacks favor spike length for lizards
A hunting bird's quirk—a tendency to impale prey on thorns—leaves a record that has allowed scientists to catch a glimpse of an evolutionary force in action.
- Animals
Wolf vs. Raven? Thieving birds may drive canines to form big packs
A previously underappreciated reason why wolf packs get so big could be the relentless food snitching of ravens.
- Plants
Sudden oak death jumps quarantine
The funguslike microbe that causes sudden oak death has turned up on nursery plants in southern California for the first time.
- Animals
The Social Lives of Snakes
A lot of pit vipers aren't the asocial loners that even snake fans had long assumed.
- Animals
Road rage keeps ants moving smoothly
Streams of ants manage to avoid traffic gridlock by a bit of strategic pushing and shoving.
- Animals
Hornbills know which monkey calls to heed
Hornbills can tell the difference between two kinds of alarm calls given by monkeys.
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Bean weevils get a kick out of mates
Breeding in stored grain throughout the tropics, bean weevils represent an unusually clear example of the evolutionary male-female arms race.
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Squirrels save for the family’s future
Some female red squirrels hoard extra food for youngsters that haven't yet been conceived.
- Animals
Second bird genus shares dart-frog toxins
Researchers have found a second bird genus, also in New Guinea, that carries the same toxins as poison-dart frogs in Central and South America.
- Animals
New Green Eyes: First butterfly that’s genetically modified
Scientists have genetically engineered a butterfly for the first time, putting a jellyfish protein into a tropical African species so that its eyes fluoresce green.
- Animals
Jungle Genes: First bird genome is decoded
Researchers have unveiled a draft of the first bird genome to be sequenced, a vintage chicken.
- Animals
Fox Selection: Bottleneck survivors show surprising variety
Foxes native to a California island—famous for the least genetic diversity ever reported in a sexually reproducing animal—have some variation after all.
