Animals

Plants

What fairy circles teach us about science

Science can’t yet tell us how fairy circles form, but that’s not a failure for science.

Animals

Hummingbird tongues may work like micropumps

Hummingbird tongues work as elastic micropumps instead of simple thin tubes, researchers say in latest round of a scientific debate.

Animals

Another tiny frog species found in sky islands of Brazil

Another new species of miniature frog has been discovered amongst the leaf litter in the high cloud forests of southern Brazil.

Microbes

Bacteria in flowers may boost honeybees’ healthy gut microbes

Honeybees may deliver doses of probiotics to the hive to help feed baby bees’ microbiome.

Psychology

Baby marmosets imitate parents’ sounds

Vocal learning may work similarly in marmoset monkeys, songbirds and humans.

Animals

A UFO would stress out a bear

Scientists need to know how animals, such as bears, react to the drones being used increasingly to study them.

Animals

Light pollution may disrupt firefly sex

Females of a common big dipper firefly weren’t as flashy when forced to flirt in LED light pollution.

Animals

Cougars may provide a net benefit to humans

Cougars have disappeared from the eastern United States. If they returned, they’d kill deer, preventing many car crashes, scientists find.

Science & Society

Monster fish, forensics and space exploration on display

Exhibits and opera infuse science into their experience.

Animals

Biologists aflutter over just where monarchs are declining

Citizen science data fuel debate over whether weed control ruined monarch habitat and whether the butterflies are failing to reach their Mexican winter refuge.

Animals

Simple change to fishing nets could save endangered whales’ lives

Making industrial fishing ropes weaker would reduce humpback and right whale bycatch by almost three-quarters

Animals

Boa suffocation is merely myth

Boa constrictors don’t suffocate prey; they block blood flow, says a new study that shatters a common myth about the snakes.