Animals
- Climate
Readers share climate change concerns
Readers respond to the April 16, 2016, issue of Science News with thoughts on climate change, prairie dogs and more.
- Animals
Pandas have ultrasonic hearing
Giant pandas hear very high frequencies. Scientists still don’t know why.
- Animals
Animals get safe spots to cross the road — and car collisions drop
Over- and underpasses built for wildlife in Wyoming proved a success for both the animals and the humans traveling the roads.
- Animals
Counting cats is hard, but we know the numbers aren’t good
Recent studies highlight the difficulty of counting big cats, but even imperfect counts show that these species are in trouble.
- Life
Fruit fly’s giant sperm is quite an exaggeration
Giant sperm, about 20 times a male fruit fly’s body length, could make the insects the champs of supersized sexual ornaments.
- Animals
Antibiotics in cattle leave their mark in dung
Treating cattle with antibiotics may have side effects for dung beetles, microbes and greenhouse gases.
- Animals
Snot could be crucial to dolphin echolocation
An acoustic model reveals that echolocation relies on mucus lined tissue lumps in the animal’s nasal passage.
- Animals
For baby sea turtles, it helps to have a lot of siblings
After hatching, baby sea turtles must dig themselves out of their nest. This requires less energy if there are lots of siblings, a new study finds.
- Animals
These mystery mounds are actually giant piles of earthworm poop
The grassy mounds that dot a watery landscape in South America are created by giant earthworms, a new study finds.
- Animals
Hornbills join toucans in the cool beak club
Like toucans, southern yellow-billed hornbills keep things chill with cool beaks.
- Animals
The bizarre mating ritual of a bee parasite
Stylops ovinae insects — parasites found in mining bees — have short lives filled with trauma.
- Animals
Some animals ‘see’ the world through oddball eyes
Purple urchins, aka crawling eyeballs, are just one of several bizarre visual systems broadening scientists’ view of what makes an eye.
