Animals
- Health & Medicine
Cooperative sperm outrun loners in the mating race
Sperm that swim in clusters travel more directly toward the uterus, while overcoming fluid currents in the reproductive tract.
- Animals
Tree-climbing carnivores called fishers are back in Washington’s forests
Thanks to a 14-year reintroduction effort, fishers, or “tree wolverines,” are once again climbing and hunting in Washington’s forests after fur trapping and habitat loss wiped them out.
- Animals
Video captures young mosquitoes launching their heads to eat other mosquitoes
New high-speed filming gives a first glimpse of mosquito hunting too fast for humans to see.
By Susan Milius - Animals
‘Wonderful nets’ of blood vessels protect dolphin and whale brains during dives
Complex networks of blood vessels called retia mirabilia that are associated with cetaceans’ brains and spines have long been a mystery.
- Animals
This spider literally flips for its food
The Australian ant-slayer spider’s acrobatics let it feast on insects twice its size, a new study shows,
By Freda Kreier - Life
Marcos Simões-Costa asks how cells in the embryo get their identities
Marcos Simões-Costa combines classic studies of developing embryos with the latest genomic techniques.
By Aina Abell - Ecosystems
A Caribbean island gets everyone involved in protecting beloved species
Scientists on Saba are introducing island residents to conservation of Caribbean orchids, red-billed tropicbirds and urchins.
By Anna Gibbs - Animals
After eons of isolation, these desert fish flub social cues
Pahrump poolfish flunked a fear test, but maybe they’re scared of other things.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Drumming woodpeckers use similar brain regions as songbirds
Woodpeckers drum on trees and other objects using brain regions similar to those that songbirds use to sing, suggesting a common evolutionary origin for the complex behaviors.
- Animals
Video shows the first red fox known to fish for food
Big fish in shallow water are easy pickings for one fox — the first of its kind known to fish, a study finds.
By Freda Kreier - Life
Here’s what triggers giant honeybees to do the wave
A new study is revealing details about what sets off a defensive behavior in open-nesting bees known as shimmering.
By Ananya - Life
Not all camouflage is equal. Here are prey animals’ best options
When prey masquerade as innocuous objects in the environment, they slow detection from predators by nearly 300 percent.
By Jake Buehler