Animals
- Animals
For glowworms, the brightest girls get the guy
Brighter female glowworms attract more mates and lay more eggs than their dimmer peers.
- Animals
How architecture can make ants better workers
The right nest architecture can make harvester ants better at their job, new research shows.
By Susan Milius - Paleontology
300 million-year-old giant shark swam the Texas seas
Fossil find shows oldest known ‘supershark,’ about the size of a limo, prowled the ocean 300 million years ago.
By Meghan Rosen - Animals
‘Whalecopter’ drone swoops in for a shot and a shower
Whale biologists are monitoring the health of whales using drones that snap photos and then swoop in to sample spray.
By Susan Milius - Animals
DNA trail leads to new spot for dog domestication
A new study suggests that dogs were first domesticated in Central Asia.
- Animals
Slow, cold reptiles may breathe like energetic birds
Finding birdlike air patterns in lungs of crocodilians and in more distantly related lizards raises the possibility that one-way airflow evolved far earlier than birds themselves did.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Marine biologist chronicles a lifelong love of fishing
In A Naturalist Goes Fishing, a marine biologist takes readers on a round-the-world fishing expedition
By Sid Perkins - Paleontology
New evidence weakens case against climate in woolly mammoths’ death
Hunters responsible for woolly mammoths’ extinction, suggests a chemical analysis of juveniles’ tusks.
By Meghan Rosen - Climate
High-flying birds recruited for meteorology
Monitoring the midflight movements of high-flying birds can provide valuable meteorological data, new research shows.
- Animals
How to drink like a bat
Some bats stick out their tongues and throbs carry nectar to their mouths.
By Susan Milius - Paleontology
Dimetrodon’s diet redetermined
The reptilelike Dimetrodon dined mainly on amphibians and sharks, not big herbivores as scientists once believed.
By Meghan Rosen - Animals
Bees get hooked on flowers’ caffeine buzz
Flowers drug honey bees with caffeinated nectar to trick them into returning, causing the bees to shift their foraging and dancing behaviors.