All Stories by Susan Milius
- Life
Sun-oil mix deadly for young herring
Fish embryos proved surprisingly vulnerable to a 2007 spill in San Francisco Bay.
- Life
Pigeons rival primates in number task
Trained on one-two-three, the birds can apply the rule of numerical order to such lofty figures as five and nine.
- Humans
Uncommitted newbies can foil forceful few
Decisions more democratic when individuals with no preset preference join a group.
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- Life
Mere fear shrinks bird families
Just hearing recordings of predators, in the absence of any real danger, caused sparrows to raise fewer babies.
- Life
Biology’s big bang had a long fuse
The fossil record’s earliest troves of animal life are the result of more than 200 million years of evolution.
- Life
Cretaceous Thanksgiving
A fossilized feathered dinosaur dined on bird not long before its own demise.
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- Life
How both macho and meek persist
Research in voles demonstrates one way that evolution preserves two divergent strategies in a single population.
- Paleontology
DNA suggests North American mammoth species interbred
Supposedly separate types may really have been one.
- Life
Giant beavers had hidden vocal talents
With air passageways in its skull like no other animal known, an extinct outsized rodent may have made sound all its own.
- Life
Python’s heart-restoring elixir works in mice
A chemical brew used by snakes to build cardiac muscle could have medical applications.
