All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Chicks open wide, ultraviolet mouths
The first analysis of what the mouths of begging birds look like in the ultraviolet spectrum reveals a dramatic display that birds can see but people can't.
- Animals
Slavemaker Ants: Misunderstood Farmers?
A test of what once seemed too obvious to test—whether ant colonies suffer after being raided by slavemaker ants—suggests that some of the raiding insects have been getting unfair press.
- Animals
Fishy Paternity Defense: Bluegill dads: Not mine? Why bother?
Bluegill sunfish have provided an unusually tidy test of the much-discussed prediction that animal dads' diligence in child care depends on how certain they are that the offspring really are their own.
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Wasp redesigns web of doomed spider
A wasp larva injects a spider with a web-altering drug, driving the spider to spin a shelter just right for a wasp cocoon.
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Parasite deludes rats into liking cats
A protozoan that infects rats dims their wariness around cats and can even lead to what Oxford researchers call a fatal attraction.
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Banning deer boosts migratory birds
In a 9-year test, excluding deer raised the population numbers among bird species, such as hooded warblers, that have a high conservation priority.
- Animals
Costly Sexiness: All that flash puts birds at extra risk
Distinctive his-and-her plumages increase the chance that a bird species will go extinct locally, according to an unusually far-ranging study.
- Plants
Team corners culprit in sudden oak death
After 5 years of mystery, California pathologists announced they may have identified the cause of a new tree disease called sudden oak death.
- Animals
Careful Coots: Do birds count their eggs before they hatch?
A coot may tally the eggs in her nest, a rare example of an animal counting in the wild, suggests a new study.
- Animals
Secret Signal: Fish allurement that predators don’t see
In a rare demonstration of secret messaging in animals, a swordtail fish uses ultraviolet courtship signals that are invisible to a predator.
- Animals
At last, a bird that nails killer chicks
For the first time, researchers have found a bird species—Australia's superb fairy-wren—that reacts when all its own chicks disappear and a giant imposter takes their place.
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After West Nile Virus
As biologists try to estimate the impact of West Nile virus on wildlife, it's not the famously susceptible crows that are causing alarm but much rarer species.
