All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
True-pal lizards may show odd gene
Colorful lizards in California may offer an example of a long-sought evolutionary factor called greenbeard genes, a possible explanation for altruism.
- Animals
Jay Watch: Birds get sneakier when spies lurk
A scrub jay storing food takes note of any other jay that watches it and later defends the hoard accordingly.
- Agriculture
Biotech cotton: Less spray but same yield
The way farmers grow transgenic cotton in Arizona lets them skip some of their regular spraying but end up with the same yield as traditional farmers, as well as the same impact on ants and beetles.
- Animals
Monkey Business: Specimen of new species shakes up family tree
The new monkey species found in Tanzania last year may be unusual enough to need a new genus, the first one created for monkeys in nearly 80 years.
- Plants
Nectar: The First Soft Drink
Plants have long competed with one another to lure animals in for a sip of their sweet formulations.
- 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.
