442 results
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Monkeys May Tune In to Basic Melodies
Simple tunes prove as memorable to rhesus monkeys as they do to people.
- Humans
Science News of the Year 2000
A review of important scientific achievements reported in Science News during the year 2000.
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Beast Buddies
As researchers muse about the evolutionary origins of friendship, even the social interactions of giraffes are getting a second look.
- Earth
A Dam Shame? Project may slam China’s biodiversity
When the Three Gorges Dam begins to impound the waters of the Yangtze River in China later this year, dozens of mountains and other elevated areas upstream will become islands—an outcome that will probably devastate the rich diversity of species now living along the river.
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River dolphins can whistle, too, sort of
In the most elaborate attempt so far to eavesdrop on Brazil's pink river dolphins, researchers have detected what may be a counterpart to seafaring dolphins' whistles.
- Earth
Catch Zero
It generally has taken less than a generation for modern, industrial-scale fishing, once deployed in a new plot of ocean, to exhaust the vast majority of the sea’s edible bounty and leave behind decimated ecosystems and depleted economic opportunities.
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Dolphins may seek selves in mirror images
Dolphins apparently recognize their own reflections.
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Cries and Greetings
Baboon intimacy and detachment present vexing clues.
- Animals
Even deep down, the right whales don’t sink
A right whale may weigh some 70 tons, but unlike other marine mammals studied so far, it tends to float rather than sink at great depths.
- Paleontology
Sea Dragons
About 235 million years ago, as the earliest dinosaurs stomped about on land, some of their reptilian relatives slipped back into the surf, took on an aquatic lifestyle, and became ichthyosaurs—Greek for fish lizards.
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Copy Crab: DNA confirms that crab forms have several origins
New genetic evidence suggests that crabs aren't all close relatives and their characteristic shape evolved independently on numerous occasions.
- Paleontology
New Fossils Resolve Whale’s Origin
The first discovery of early whale fossils with key ankle bones intact provides compelling paleontological evidence that whales are closely related to many living ungulates, a relationship already supported by molecular data.
