All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Long-tongued fly sips from afar
Long-tongued flies can dabble in shallow blossoms or reach into flowers with roomier nectar tubes.
- Animals
Seeing humans as superpredators
People have become a unique predator, hunting mostly adults of other species.
- Animals
Hummingbird tongues may work like micropumps
Hummingbird tongues work as elastic micropumps instead of simple thin tubes, researchers say in latest round of a scientific debate.
- Animals
Light pollution may disrupt firefly sex
Females of a common big dipper firefly weren’t as flashy when forced to flirt in LED light pollution.
- Animals
Biologists aflutter over just where monarchs are declining
Citizen science data fuel debate over whether weed control ruined monarch habitat and whether the butterflies are failing to reach their Mexican winter refuge.
- Animals
Boa suffocation is merely myth
Boa constrictors don’t suffocate prey; they block blood flow, says a new study that shatters a common myth about the snakes.
- Animals
First known venomous frogs stab with toxin-dripping lip spikes
Two Brazilian frogs jab foes with venoms more deadly than pit vipers'.
- Animals
Where salamanders should be very afraid
Three zones of North America at high risk if the salamander-killing fungus disease Bsal invades.
- Animals
Caterpillar treats and tricks ants by oozing spiked juice
Caterpillars ooze droplets that lure ants away from colony duties to instead lick and defend their drug source, new lab tests suggest.
- Life
The tree of life gets a makeover
Biology’s tree of life has morphed from the familiar classroom version emphasizing kingdoms into a complex depiction of supergroups, in which animals are aligned with a slew of single-celled cousins.
- Animals
Toddler seahorses are bumbling and adorable
Rice-grain-sized youngsters can’t yet get a grasp with their tails.
- Animals
Social pecking order gives roosters something to crow about
Small groups of laboratory roosters keep to the rankings for orderly morning crows.
