Animals
- Life
Artificial butterfly mixes high, low tech
Model shows importance of wing veins and bobbing flight to keeping swallowtails aloft.
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- Animals
Argonauts use shells as flotation devices
The octopus relatives create their own buoyancy devices by gulping and hoarding air from the surface.
- Animals
Fight or flee, it’s in the pee
Researchers get a better understanding of how mice smell a rat, or a cat, and maybe even a snake.
- Animals
Mirror, mirror on the wall, you’re the scariest fish of all
That thing in the mirror may be more upsetting than a real fish.
- Animals
Aphids make their own bright colors
The insects’ ancestors adapted fungal DNA for manufacturing vital compounds.
- Animals
Chimps may be aware of others’ deaths
Reactions of chimps to dead companions and infants suggest a basic realization of what death entails.
- Animals
Male spiders have safe(r) sex with siblings
In a cannibalistic species, brothers minimize risk when mating with their sisters.
- Ecosystems
Pigeons usually let best navigator take the lead
One bird usually leads the flock, but sometimes another gets a turn at the helm.
- Health & Medicine
Cats attracted to ADHD drug, a feline poison
Since 2004, drugs designed for use by people have been the leading source of poisonings among companion animals, according to the national Animal Poison Control Center in Urbana, Ill. And among cats, Adderall – a combination of mixed amphetamine salts used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – has quickly risen to become one of the most common and dangerous of these pharmaceutical threats.
- Life
Evolutionary genetic relationships coming into focus
Researchers have filled in about 40 percent of the tree of life for mammals and birds, but other vertebrates lag behind.
- Earth
Green-ish pesticides bee-devil honey makers
Pesticides are agents designed to rid targeted portions of the human environment of undesirable critters – such as boll weevils, roaches or carpenter ants. They’re not supposed to harm beneficials. Like bees. Yet a new study from China finds that two widely used pyrethroid pesticides – chemicals that are rather “green” as bug killers go – can significantly impair the pollinators’ reproduction.
