All Stories by Susan Milius
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Evolution may not be slow or random
Studies of fruit flies taking over the New World and stickleback fish adapting to Canadian lakes suggest that evolution can proceed quickly and take predictable paths.
- Animals
Why don’t racing horses fry their brains?
Lumpy sacs bulging out of a horse's auditory tubes may solve the mystery of how such an athletic animal keeps its brain from overheating during exercise.
- Animals
Altruistic Sperm: Mouse gametes team up to power one winner
The sperm of wood mice hook together by the thousands to form high-speed teams racing toward an egg, even though only one of the pack will get the prize.
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Tough Tradeoff: Beetle brains show how sex shortens life
Brain surgery in beetles reveals yet another way that having sex can shorten life.
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Aphids with Attitude
A few aphid species that live socially in groups raise their own armies of teenage female clones.
- Animals
Wasp Painting: Do insects know each other’s faces?
A researcher who dabbed tiny stripes on the faces and abdomens of paper wasps says that she's found the first evidence that the insects can recognize individuals by their markings.
- Animals
Butterfly ears suggest a bat influence
Researchers have found the first bat-detecting ear in a butterfly and suggest that the threat of bats triggered the evolution of some moths into butterflies.
- Animals
Oops. Woodpecker raps were actually gunshots
The knock-knock noises recorded last winter that raised hopes for rediscovering the long-lost ivory-billed woodpecker in Louisiana turn out to have been gunshots instead of bird noises.
- Animals
Who’s on first with hummingbird bills
A survey of 166 hummingbird species links sex differences in bill length to sex differences in plumage and to breeding behavior.
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Handsome blue tit dads have more sons
A female blue tit with a particularly dashing mate is more likely to have sons than is a female matched with a ho-hum guy.
- Animals
Marine Mules: Near-sterile hyrids boost coral diversity
Reef corals that spawn in great mixed-up soups of many species may be maintaining their diversity because their hybrids are sterile mules.
- Animals
Bay leaves may make rat nests nicer
Wood rats may be fumigating their nests with bits of California bay leaves, sprigs that killed flea larvae in lab tests.
