Animals
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Animals
Lizards may scale back head bobbing to avoid predators
Brown anoles may scale back mating signals to avoid being eaten.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
