Animals
- Animals
Hot and hungry bees hit hot spots
New lab experiments suggest that bumblebees like warm flowers and can learn color cues to pick them out.
- Animals
Babbling Bats: Do pups talk baby talk as human infants do?
Young sac-winged bats make long strings of adultlike noises and could be the first animals besides some primates and birds that babble when they're babies.
- Animals
Stilts for ants make case for pedometer
Changing the leg length of desert ants upsets their ability to judge distance, providing the first evidence in any animal of a built-in odometer based on stride.
- Animals
Live Prey for Dummies: Meerkats coach pups on hunting
Meerkats easing their pups into the job of handling live prey are among the few animal species shown so far to be natural teachers. With audio.
- Animals
Dawn Sneaks: Old birds sing early, cuckold sleepyheads
Among European birds called blue tits, older males join the springtime dawn chorus extra early—which may signal their charms to philandering females.
- Animals
Fishy Reputations: Undersea watchers choose helpers that do good jobs
Coral reef fish use smart-shopper techniques of looking for satisfied customers before choosing a small fish to provide cleaning services.
- Animals
Naked and Not
The Damaraland mole rat may be less famous than its naked cousin, but both have some of the oddest social structures found in a mammal.
- Animals
Mixed Butterflies: Tropical species joins ranks of rare hybrids
A South American butterfly is one of the few animal species that seems to have arisen via the supposedly rare path of crossing two older species.
- Animals
Leggiest Animal: Champ millipede located after 79-year gap
A millipede species that can grow up to 750 legs has turned up in California after decades with no sightings.
- Animals
Walking on Water: Tree frog’s foot uses dual method to stick
The tree frog can cling to both wet and dry terrains, despite its permanently lubricated foot.
- Animals
Lobster Hygiene: Healthy animals quick to spot another’s ills
Caribbean spiny lobsters will avoid sharing a den with another lobster that's coming down with a viral disease.
- Animals
True-pal lizards may show odd gene
Colorful lizards in California may offer an example of a long-sought evolutionary factor called greenbeard genes, a possible explanation for altruism.
