Animals
- Animals
In noisy environs, pied tamarins are using smell more often to communicate
Groups of the primate, native to Brazil, complement vocalizations with scent-marking behavior to alert other tamarins to dangers in their urban home.
- Animals
The right bacterial mix could help frogs take the heat
Wood frog tadpoles that receive a transplant of green frog bacteria can swim in warm waters, revealing another role for microbiomes: heat tolerance.
- Paleontology
A one-of-a-kind trilobite fossil hints at what and how these creatures ate
The preserved contents suggest the trilobite fed almost continuously and had a gut environment with an alkaline or neutral pH, researchers say.
- Animals
Seen Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster? Data suggest the odds are low
Floe Foxon is a data scientist by day. But in his free time, he applies his skills to astronomy, cryptology and sightings of mythical creatures.
- Animals
These brainless jellyfish use their eyes and bundles of nerves to learn
No brain? No problem for Caribbean box jellyfish. Their seemingly simple nervous systems can learn to avoid obstacles on sight, a study suggests.
- Animals
For the first time, researchers decoded the RNA of an extinct animal
The Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, was hunted nearly to extinction. Now RNA extracted from a museum specimen reveals how its cells functioned.
- Health & Medicine
A catalog of all human cells reveals a mathematical pattern
Smaller cells occur in larger numbers in the human body, and cells of different size classes contribute equally to our overall mass.
- Animals
Some cannibal pirate spiders trick their cousins into ‘walking the plank’
A pirate spider in Costa Rica uses a never-before-seen hunting strategy that exploits the way other spiders build webs.
- Animals
A little snake’s big gulp may put all other snakes to shame
The humble Gans’ egg-eater can wrap its mouth around bigger prey than any other snake of its size.
- Animals
Wild male palm cockatoos rock out with custom drumsticks
Along with flashy dances and distinctive drumbeats, these birds craft their own signature drumsticks to win over mates.
- Animals
The world’s highest-dwelling mammal isn’t the only rodent at extreme elevation
After discovering a mouse living nearly 7,000 meters above sea level, scientists scoured other extreme environments to make sure the find wasn’t a fluke.
- Ecosystems
‘Crossings’ explores the science of road ecology
Ben Goldfarb talks about his new book, which looks at the science that’s helping to prevent animals from becoming roadkill.
