Animals
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Animals
Eyewitness account of a dolphin birth takes a dark turn
Scientists witnessed the first wild birth of a bottlenose dolphin — and an attempt at infanticide.
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Animals
Polar bears’ ‘walking hibernation’ not much of an energy saver
Summer’s “walking hibernation” doesn’t shut down polar bears as much as winter does.
By Susan Milius -
Life
Good luck outsmarting a mosquito
Mosquitoes use their senses in sophisticated combinations and sequences to find you.
By Susan Milius -
Animals
Birds learn what danger sounds like
In just two days, superb fairy-wrens learned to recognize an unfamiliar alarm call as a sign that a predator loomed.
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Animals
Feeding seabirds may give declining populations a boost
Supplementing the diets of kittiwakes with additional food might give fledglings a head start, a new study finds.
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Paleontology
50-million-year-old fossil sperm discovered
Ancient worm sperm preserved in 50-million-year-old cocoons from Antarctica set age record.
By Meghan Rosen -
Animals
Some animals’ internal clocks follow a different drummer
Circadian clocks in some animals tick-tock to a different beat.
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Life
A downy killer wages chemical warfare
The common fungus Beauveria bassiana makes white downy corpses of its victims.
By Beth Mole -
Animals
Children’s classic ‘Watership Down’ is based on real science
The novel ‘Watership Down’ is the tale of a bunch of anthropomorphized rabbits. Their language may be unreal, but the animals’ behavior was rooted in science.
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Animals
Giant pandas live in the slow lane
Giant pandas burn far less energy than similarly sized land mammals.
By Meghan Rosen -
Climate
Bumblebee territory shrinking under climate change
Climate change is shrinking bumblebee habitat as southern territories heat up and bumblebees hold their lines in the north.
By Beth Mole -
Animals
Cuckoos may have a long-lasting impact on other birds
Some birds that don’t have to worry about parasites like cuckoos reject eggs that aren’t their own. It might be a legacy of long-ago parasitism.