All Stories by Susan Milius
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Bad Dancers: Childhood chills give bees six left feet
Honeybees kept just a bit cool when young grow up looking normal but dancing badly, which impedes their ability to communicate with other bees.
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Troubling Treat: Guam mystery disease from bat entrée?
A famous unsolved medical puzzle of why a neurological disease spiked on Guam may hinge on the local tradition of serving boiled bat.
- Animals
Ballistic defecation: Hiding, not hygiene
Evading predators may be the big factor driving certain caterpillars to shoot their waste pellets great distances.
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Do people flirt like guppies?
Researchers who have studied how female guppies copy other females' choice of mate are tackling the same question in Homo sapiens.
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Beaks change songs in Darwin’s finches
A new look—and listen—at Darwin's finches finds that the famous relationship between beak size and food supply affects their courtship songs as well.
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Puppy tests flunk long-term checkups
A follow-up study of dog-personality tests suggests that they don't have the predictive power many puppy purchasers expect.
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Looking for a mate? Oh, whatever
Two cricket species don't seem to care whether they get mixed up at mating time, an oddity that may have something to do with the female's need to dine on leftover sperm.
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Social tuco-tucos develop more variety
In mustachioed rodents called tuco-tucos, group life seems to have fostered more diverse immune systems than has solitary living.
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She salamanders punish fickle mates
Female salamanders get aggressive if the male they share a rock with wanders back after an interlude with another female.
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Yikes! The Lichens Went Flying
Tales from the dark (and frequently crunchy) side of biodiversity.
- Animals
Toothy valves control crocodile hearts
The odd cog teeth of the crocodile heart may be the first cardiac valve known to control blood flow actively.
- Plants
Any Hope for Old Chestnuts?
Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of the discovery of chestnut blight in the United States, but enthusiasts still haven't given up hope of restoring American chestnut forests.
