All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
No Early Birds: Migrators can’t catch advancing caterpillars
Pied flycatcher numbers are dwindling in places where climate change has knocked the birds' migration out of sync with the food-supply peak on their breeding grounds.
- Animals
Just turn your back, Mom
A female in a species of legless amphibians called caecilians nourishes her youngsters by letting them eat the skin off her back.
- Animals
Bird hormone cuts noise distractions
A jolt of springtime hormones makes a female sparrow's brain more responsive to song.
- Animals
Grammar’s for the Birds: Human-only language rule? Tell starlings
A grammatical pattern called recursion, once proposed as unique to human language, turns out to fall within the learning abilities of starlings.
- Animals
Worm can crawl out of predators
A parasitic worm can wriggle out through a predator's gills or mouth if the predator eats the worm's insect host. With video.
- Animals
Into Hot Water: Lab test shows that worms seek heat
Worms from deep-sea vents prefer water at temperatures near the upper limit of what animals are known to survive.
- Animals
Hummingbirds can clock flower refills
Hummingbirds can keep track of when a particular flower has replenished its nectar and is worth visiting again.
- Plants
They’re All Part Fungus
Hidden deep in their tissues, all plants probably have fungi that don't make them sick but still may have a big influence.
- Animals
Sharpshooter threatens Tahiti by inedibility
A North American insect is menacing Tahitian ecosystems by getting itself killed and proving surprisingly toxic to its predators.
- Animals
Wary male spiders woo lifelessly
When trying to court a cannibalistic female spider, males of a certain species play dead.
- Animals
Hairy crab lounges deep in the Pacific
A newly discovered deep-sea creature has the body of a crab, but with long, fluffy, blonde hair covering its legs.
- Plants
Reality Botany: Data ease doubts about plant species
Despite the doubts of some botanists, plant species aren't just some arbitrary human classification scheme, says a team of evolutionary biologists.
