1,566 results
- Life
Mouse sperm parties make for straight swimmers
Mouse sperm hunt for eggs in packs, but grouping doesn’t boost speed. Instead, gangs of the reproductive cells move in straighter lines.
- Animals
Ten real-life Halloween horrors in the natural world
Vampires and witches are nothing compared to mind-controlling parasites, nose ticks and antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
- Animals
African frog conceals itself with chemicals
Two small peptides keep the West African savanna frog from being stung by ants.
- Earth
Mineral hunting, mob math and more reader feedback
Readers ask about Earth's most abundant mineral and discuss the notoriously unpredictable behavior of pedestrians.
- Animals
Elephant shrews are, oddly, related to actual elephants
A new species in the group is the smallest yet, with adults smaller than a newborn kitten.
- Animals
Mama frog’s care includes a gift of poison
Strawberry poison frog tadpoles get defensive chemicals through unfertilized, nutritious eggs provided by mom.
- Animals
A brief history of animal death in space
The Russian “sexy space geckos” join a long list of creatures that have died after humans sent them into space.
- Life
Epic worldwide effort explores all of insect history
A whopper of a genetic analysis fits all living orders of insects into one genealogical evolutionary tree.
- Physics
The arrow of time
Gravity may explain how time always runs forward, even though the laws of physics should permit it to run backward.
- Animals
Insect queens sterilize workers with similar chemical
When exposed to a form of saturated hydrocarbons that mimicked the queen’s scent, the worker insects’ ovaries degraded.
- Science & Society
Sewing study stitches up Broadcom prize
Holly Jackson of San Jose, Calif., zigzagged her way through three days of science, engineering and math challenges to win the top prize at the Broadcom MASTERS middle school science competition.
- Anthropology
Bronze Age herders spread farming around Asia
Ancient seeds indicate that Central Asian animal raisers had an unappreciated impact on early agriculture.
