Animals

  1. Health & Medicine

    Pigs use mirrors

    After some time to play around with a mirror, pigs figure out what to do when they glimpse a reflection of food.

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  2. Animals

    Spider men weave silken tapestry

    It took herculean effort, but Madagascar crafters created an extraordinary piece of woven art from spider silk.

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  3. Animals

    Ants in the pants drive away birds

    Yellow crazy ants can get so annoying that birds don’t eat their normal fruits, a new study finds.

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  4. Animals

    Vultures get their day

    Hurray for avian garbage collectors.

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  5. Animals

    Play that monkey music

    Man-made music inspired by tamarin calls seems to alter the primates’ emotions, a new study suggests.

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  6. Earth

    Oh, rats — there go the snails

    A food fad among introduced rats has apparently crashed a once-thriving population of Hawaii’s famed endemic tree snails.

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  7. Animals

    Oops, missed that fossil iridescence

    Nanostructures on a preserved feather offer the first fossil evidence of bird colors not from pigments, a new study says.

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  8. Animals

    Fruity whiff may inspire new mosquito repellents

    Odors from ripening bananas can jam fruit flies’ and mosquitoes’ power to detect carbon dioxide, a new study finds.

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  9. Animals

    Back off, extinct moa

    A New Zealand tree’s peculiar leaves may have served as defenses against long-gone giant birds.

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  10. Animals

    Vocal abilities lost, found and drowned out

    Reports from the meeting of the American Ornithologists' Union

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  11. Earth

    Rapid evolution may be reshaping forest birds’ wings

    Logging during the last century might have driven birds in mature boreal forests toward pointier wings while reforestation in New England led to rounder wings.

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  12. Animals

    SOS: Call the ants

    Emergency ant workers bite at snares, dig and tug to free trapped sisters

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