Animals
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Genetics
Blind mole-rats are loaded with anticancer genes
Genes of the long-lived blind mole-rat help explain how the animal evades cancer and why it lost vision.
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Animals
Beware the pregnant scorpion
Female striped bark scorpions are pregnant most of the time. That makes them fat, slow and really mean.
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Animals
Pets’ rights explored in ‘Citizen Canine’
Science journalist David Grimm describes pet's progression towards full citizenship.
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Animals
Otters provide a lesson about the effects of dams
A dam created a new habitat, but that habitat’s lower quality kept otter density low.
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Animals
Reef fish get riled when intruders glow red
A male fairy wrasse gets feisty when he can see a rival’s colorful fluorescent patches.
By Susan Milius -
Animals
Toxic toad infiltrates Madagascar
Asian common toads may have hopped a ride to Madagascar and could pose an ecological risk to the island's native species.
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Animals
Zebra finches can detect variations in human speech
When humans vary the pitch or rhythm of their speech, zebra finches perceive the changes, suggesting that the ability to detect such variations is not linked to language.
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Animals
New salamander stays young at heart
A new salamander species was long mistaken for the juvenile form of another.
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Life
Flightless birds’ history upset by ancient DNA
The closest known relatives of New Zealand’s small, flightless kiwis were Madagascar’s elephant birds, so ancestors must have done some flying rather than just drifting with continents.
By Susan Milius