All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Butterfly’s clock linked to compass
The most detailed look yet at the monarch butterfly's daily rhythm keeper suggests it's closer to ancient forms than to the fruit fly's or mouse's inner clock.
-
Seeing Again: Blind fish parents have fry that see
Cross two strains of blind cavefish that have lived in the dark for a million years, and some of their offspring will be able to see.
- Animals
Purring birds teach their chicks to beg
African birds called pied babblers teach their chicks that certain parental noises mean food is on the way.
- Animals
Not So Spineless
Looking for personalities in animals, even among spiders and insects, could add new twists to ideas about evolution and explain some odd animal behavior.
-
Furry Math: Macaques can do sums like people in a hurry
Macaques and college students showed similarities in performance on a computer test of split-second arithmetic, suggesting a common inheritance of the ability to do approximate math without counting.
- Humans
Fishing curbs can lead to profit
New economic models suggest that fishing crews that cut back long enough to let stocks rebound will find compensation in higher profits later.
- Animals
Hatch a Thief: Brains incline birds toward a life of crime
When it comes to a bird family's propensity to pilfer, a larger than usual brain for a particular body size is more important than body size alone.
- Animals
Female antelopes take the lead in courtship
Topi antelopes, with their hesitant males, reverse the usual sex roles in mammal courtship.
-
Chimp Champ: Ape aces memory test, outscores people
A young chimp outperforms college students on a test of recalling numbers glimpsed for less than a quarter of a second. With video.
- Plants
Botanists refine family tree for flowering plants
Two research teams have used the biggest array of flowering-plant genes yet to try to reconstruct the elusive evolutionary history of today's flowers.
- Plants
So Sproutish: Anti-aging gene for plants gives drought protection
A gene that can hold off the decrepitude of old age in plants offers an unusual approach to protecting crops from drought.
- Earth
Hey, What about Us?
The plight of polar bears may get most of the attention as climate change disrupts the Arctic ice, but plenty of other species, from walrus and seals to one-celled specks, are also going to see their world change radically.
