Animals

  1. 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.

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  2. Animals

    Mice really do like to run in wheels

    When scientists stuck a tiny wheel out in nature, wild mice ran just as much as their captive counterparts do.

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  3. Animals

    How an octopus keeps itself out of a tangle

    The suckers on an octopus stick to just about anything, except the octopus itself. Scientists think they’ve figured out why.

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  4. Animals

    Lizards may scale back head bobbing to avoid predators

    Brown anoles may scale back mating signals to avoid being eaten.

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  5. Animals

    For upside-down sloths, what goes down can’t come up

    Upside-down sloths have to hold their organs up and their food down.

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  6. Animals

    Winds predict deadly jellyfish blooms

    A change in the winds flowing over Australia’s Great Barrier Reef coincides with reports of the potentially fatal Irukandji syndrome.

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  7. Animals

    Fly more, live longer

    An examination of animal lifestyles reveals that the most important factor linked to longer life is the ability to fly.

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  8. Environment

    Fukushima contamination affects butterfly larvae

    Butterfly larvae fed leaves with radioactive cesium from the Fukushima nuclear disaster had a higher rate of death and development abnormalities than larvae that got leaves from a location farther from the accident.

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  9. Animals

    Anemone eats bird, and other surprising animal meals

    A fuzzy green anemone eating a bird many times its size shows that you can’t take anything for granted when it comes to which animals can eat each other.

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  10. Paleontology

    Giant 17-million-year-old fossil sperm found

    Giant sperm have been found in 17-million-year-old fossilized mussel shrimp. The specimens, collected in Queensland, Australia, sport the oldest petrified sex cells on record.

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  11. Neuroscience

    To pee or not to pee

    Mice recognize others’ scents through proteins in urine, suggesting that mouse pheromones produce more complex behaviors than previously thought.

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  12. Animals

    A tale of wolves, moose and missing ice

    Wolves have persisted on Lake Superior’s Isle Royale for decades, keeping moose in check, but climate change may doom the balance between the two species.

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