Animals

  1. Animals

    Algal blooms created ancient whale graveyard

    Whales and other marine mammals died at sea and were buried on a tidal flat in what's now in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

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  2. Life

    Rivalry helps fruit flies maintain brainpower

    In lab tests, males dim mentally after generations without competitors.

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  3. Animals

    The mystery of the missing fish heads

    When scientists opened up the stomachs of shortfin mako sharks, they found that nearly all of the digesting fish had no heads or tails.

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  4. Animals

    Methylation turns a wannabe bumblebee into a queen

    Epigenetic changes to bumblebee DNA turns a worker into a reproductive pseudo-queen, suggesting that genomic imprinting could be responsible for the bumblebee social system.

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  5. Animals

    A tiny ocean vortex, with pop art pizzazz

    Coral polyps kick up a whirling vortex of water by whipping their hairlike cilia back and forth in the photography winner of the 2013 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.

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  6. Animals

    We’re only noticing the snowy owls

    A lemming boom last summer probably led to rises in populations of several predator species.

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  7. Animals

    Fish lose their fear on a denuded reef

    Juvenile damselfish lose their ability to smell danger when in a degraded habitat.

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  8. Neuroscience

    Like people, dogs have brain areas that respond to voices

    MRI study may help explain how pups understand human communication.

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  9. Life

    Fins and wings alike share design features

    Animals have adapted a number of different ways to swim and fly. But new research suggests that wings, fins and flukes share a couple of basic design parameters.

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  10. Animals

    Elephants offer a reassuring touch in stressful times

    Elephants seem to comfort their comrades in times of need, hinting that the animals may have the capacity for complicated mental feats such as empathy.

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  11. Animals

    Why was Marius, the euthanized giraffe, ever born?

    The problem of ‘surplus’ zoo animals reveals a divide on animal contraceptives.

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  12. Animals

    A weighted butt gives chickens a dinosaur strut

    Scientists put wooden tails on chickens to learn how small feathered dinosaurs moved, with results captured on video.

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