All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Young insect legs have real meshing gears
Tiny teeth on hiplike structures keep legs in sync, allowing juvenile planthoppers to jump.
- Microbes
Horsetail spores don’t need legs to jump
Forget legs. A plant uses curly, humidity-controlled ribbons to make epic leaps.
- Animals
Avoiding feces may be ‘luxury’ wild mice can’t afford
For a mouse in the woods, finding any food at all may trump poopy locations.
- Animals
Collision Course
The tales of two ornithologists trying to prevent birds colliding with windows highlight the obstacles facing applied biology.
- Animals
New fungus species found killing salamanders
First there was amphibian killer fungus Bd. Now there's Bs.
- Animals
Traveling with elders helps whooping cranes fly straight
Rare data show birds get more efficient the more they migrate along route between Wisconsin and Florida.
- Microbes
Let the bedbugs bite
Harold Harlan has been feeding bedbugs, intentionally, on his own blood since 1973. He keeps pint or quart jars in his home containing at least 4,000 bugs.
- Animals
Birds know road speed limits
Crows, house sparrows and other species judge when to flee the asphalt by average traffic rates rather than an oncoming car's speed.
- Plants
Dastardly daisies
This flower isn’t just any old sex cheat. It can be sexually deceptive three ways and in 3-D.
- Animals
Antarctic waters may shelter wrecks from shipworms
Ocean currents and polar front form 'moat' that keeps destructive mollusks at bay.
- Animals
Noise may disrupt a bat’s dinner
Mechanical cacophony can drown out the whispers of moving insect prey.
- Animals
Climate change may bring dramatic behavior shifts
Shifting temperatures and rainfall are expected to alter animal lifestyles from the poles to the tropics.
