Animals
- 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.
By Susan Milius - Life
How the Galápagos cormorant got its tiny wings
Galápagos cormorants’ tiny wings may be due to altered reception in cellular antennas.
- Health & Medicine
Scientists wrestle with possibility of second Zika-spreading mosquito
It’s hard to say yet whether Asian tiger mosquitoes will worsen the ongoing Zika outbreak in the Americas.
By Susan Milius - Animals
‘America’s Snake’ chronicles life and times of iconic timber rattlesnake
America’s Snake looks past timber rattlesnake’s fearsome reputation and delves into the fascinating biology of this iconic serpent.
By Sid Perkins - Animals
Vultures are vulnerable to extinction
Life history makes vultures more vulnerable to extinction than other birds, a new study finds, but humankind’s poisons are helping them to their end.
- Animals
History of road-tripping shaped camel DNA
Centuries of caravan domestication and travel left some metaphorical tire marks on Arabian camel genes, researchers find.