All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Pelican spiders: slow, safe assassins
Spiders, thank goodness, haven’t evolved assassin drones. But the specialized hunters of the family Archaeidae can kill at a distance.
- Animals
Peacocks sometimes fake mating hoots
Peacocks may have learned a benefit of deception by sounding their copulation calls even when no peahens are in sight.
- Life
Rivalry helps fruit flies maintain brainpower
In lab tests, males dim mentally after generations without competitors.
- Life
Big study raises worries about bees trading diseases
Pathogens may jump from commercial colonies to the wild.
- Animals
‘Packrat’ is the new term for ‘really organized’
The more eclectic hoarder species segregate pantry from lumber room from junk museum. The result is more orderly than the closets of some human packrats.
- Animals
In crazy vs. fire, the ant with the detox dance wins
Tawny crazy ants pick fights with fire ants and win, thanks to a previously unknown way of detoxifying fire ant venom.
- Life
Charms of small males may collapse a Darwin’s finch species
Mating rules may be changing for one of the storied Galápagos birds.
- Animals
Embryos in eggs move to get comfy
Even before hatching, Chinese alligators, snapping turtles and some relatives can shift toward favorable temperatures.
- Animals
Disco clams put on a streak show
Scuba divers call Ctenoides ales the disco or electric clam because the restless, curling lips of its mantle flash bright streaks.
- Animals
When snakes fly
A gliding snake gets some lift by spreading its ribs, but much about its flight remains a mystery.
- Plants
Sexually deceived flies not hopelessly dumb
Pollinators tricked into mating with a plant become harder to fool a second time.
- Animals
Windows may kill up to 988 million birds a year in the United States
Single-family homes and low-rise buildings do much more damage than skyscrapers.
