1,416 results
- Animals
Two bonobos adopted infants outside their group, marking a first for great apes
Female bonobos in a reserve in the Congo took care of orphaned infants — feeding, carrying and cuddling them — for at least one year.
- Animals
Bonobos, much like humans, show commitment to completing a joint task
Experiments with bonobos suggest that humans aren’t the only ones who can feel a sense of mutual responsibility toward other members of their species.
- Life
Koalas aren’t primates, but they move like monkeys in trees
With double thumbs and a monkey-sized body, an iconic marsupial climbs like a primate.
- Animals
Jumping spiders’ remarkable senses capture a world beyond our perception
Clever experiments and new technology are taking scientists deep into the lives of jumping spiders, and opening a portal to their experience of the world.
- Animals
Fire ants build little syphons out of sand to feed without drowning
To escape a watery death, some fire ants use build sand structures that draw the insects’ sugary, liquid food out of containers and to a safer place.
- Psychology
Monkeys may share a key grammar-related skill with humans
A contested study suggests the ability to embed sequences within other sequences, a skill called recursion and crucial to grammar, has ancient roots.
- Animals
Small, quiet crickets turn leaves into megaphones to blare their mating call
A carefully crafted leaf can double the volume of a male tree cricket’s song, helping it compete with larger, louder males for females.
- Health & Medicine
After 40 years of AIDS, here’s why we still don’t have an HIV vaccine
The unique life cycle of HIV has posed major challenges for scientists in the search for an effective vaccine.
- Anthropology
A tiny skull fossil suggests primate brain areas evolved separately
Digital reconstruction of a fossilized primate skull reveals that odor and vision areas developed independently starting 20 million years ago or more.
- Animals
Why mammals like elephants and armadillos might get drunk easily
Differences in a gene for breaking down alcohol could help explain which mammals get tipsy.
- Animals
On a cool night in Malaysia, scientists track mysterious colugos across the treetops
Our reporter tags along for nighttime observations of these elusive gliding mammals.
- Humans
Fossils and ancient DNA paint a vibrant picture of human origins
Paleoanthropologists have sketched a rough timeline of how human evolution played out, centering the early action in Africa.
