All Stories by Susan Milius
- Life
Nanoscale glitches let flowers make a blue blur that bees can see
Bees learn about colorful floral rings faster when nanoscale arrays aren’t quite perfect.
- Animals
Being a vampire can be brutal. Here’s how bloodsuckers get by.
Blood-sucking animals have specialized physiology and other tools to live on a diet rich in protein and lacking in some nutrients.
- Plants
José Dinneny rethinks how plants hunt for water
Plant biologist José Dinneny probes the very beginnings of root development, which may have important implications for growing food in a changing climate.
- Paleontology
Woolly rhinos may have grown strange extra ribs before going extinct
Ribs attached to neck bones could have signaled trouble for woolly rhinos, a new study suggests.
- Climate
Rising temperatures threaten heat-tolerant aardvarks
Aardvarks may get a roundabout hit from climate change — less food.
- Animals
Bones reveal what it was like to grow up dodo
Scientists take a first look at the inside of dodo bones.
- Life
Polluted water: It’s where sea snakes wear black
Reptile counterpart proposed for textbook example of evolution favoring darker moths amid industrial soot.
- Animals
Ticks are here to stay. But scientists are finding ways to outsmart them
Researchers acknowledge that there’s no getting rid of ticks, so they are developing ways to make them less dangerous.
- Life
Light pollution can foil plant-insect hookups, and not just at night
Upsetting nocturnal pollinators has daylight after-effects for Swiss meadow flowers.
- Animals
Newly discovered lymph hydraulics give tunas their fancy moves
There’s still some anatomy to discover in fishes as familiar as bluefin and yellowfin tunas.
- Animals
Ravens pass tests of planning ahead in unnatural tasks
Clever birds may have evolved their own broad powers of apelike thinking about the future.
- Animals
Whales feast when hatcheries release salmon
Whales: “They’re 40 feet long and they’re feeding on fish that are the size of my finger.”
