Animals
- Oceans
Corals need to take their vitamin C
Newly settled corals use vitamin C to help build their stony skeletons, researchers propose.
- Animals
Invasive toads will probably overrun Madagascar
A new report finds that eradicating invasive Asian toads before they overtake all of Madagascar is “not currently feasible.”
- Paleontology
Surprise! Ancient armadillos are related to modern armadillos
DNA evidence proves that ancient glyptodonts are indeed related to today’s armadillos, as Charles Darwin suspected.
- Animals
Without a ban on trade in old ivory, elephant killing continues
Samuel Wasser has been working to track down where poached ivory comes from. But to stop the killing, he says, a ban on the ivory trade is necessary.
- Animals
Chubby king penguins wobble when they waddle
King penguins’ weight gain makes their waddle a bit wobbly, study suggests.
- Animals
Slow-moving nurse sharks have a metabolism to match
The nurse shark has the slowest metabolism of any shark measured so far, a new study finds.
- Animals
Saving salamanders from amphibian killer may take extreme measures
Experience from lethal Bd fungus outbreak is helping researchers defend North America’s salamander paradise from new Bsal threat.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Africa’s poison arrow beetles are key in traditional hunting method
In the Kalahari of Namibia, some San people still hunt with a traditional method — arrows laced with poison taken from beetle larvae.
- Tech
This roach-inspired robot can wiggle through tight spaces
Cockroaches inspired a compressible, crevice-navigating robot.
- Animals
White-tailed deer have their own form of malaria
The otherwise well-studied white-tailed deer turns out to carry the first malaria parasite discovered in any deer.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Harvester ants are restless, enigmatic architects
Florida harvester ants dig complex, curly nests over, then leave and do it again.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Why some birds sing elaborate songs in the winter
Several obvious hypotheses fail to explain why great reed warblers sing in winter.
By Susan Milius