Animals
- Animals
Great Galloping Crinoids: Lilylike sea animal takes a brisk walk
A sea creature called a stalked crinoid may look as motionless as a flower on a stem but a video has revealed it practically jogging across the ocean floor. Video.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Cool Birds
Emperor penguins go to such extremes to cope with life in Antarctica that they've inspired interesting science as well as a hit movie.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Proxy Vampire: Spider eats blood by catching mosquitoes
Researchers studying food preferences among spiders report finding the first one with a taste for vertebrate blood.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Baited camera snaps first live giant squid
For the first time, researchers have photographed a living giant squid in the wild.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Looks Matter: If swallows aren’t spiffy, mates’ fidelity is iffy
If a male barn swallow's plumage is more attractive than that of other males, his mate is less likely to have furtive flings with other wooers.
By Sid Perkins - Animals
Balls of Fire: Bees carefully cook invaders to death
Honeybees that defend their colonies by killing wasps with body heat come within 5 degrees C of cooking themselves in the process.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Perfect Match: Tied contest gives fish no hormone rush
A male fish produces a burst of hormones as he fights off an intruder, but this surge isn't triggered simply by fighting.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Bumblebee 007: Bees can spy on others’ flower choices
Bumblebees that watched their neighbors feast on unusual flowers often later checked out the same kinds of blossoms themselves, a behavior that amounts to social learning.
By Susan Milius - Animals
What’s That Knocking? Sound evidence offered for long-lost woodpecker
Cornell's Laboratory of Ornithology has released recordings from the woods of eastern Arkansas that researchers say could be the distinctive drumming and calls of the ivory-billed woodpecker.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Hey, kids, it’s time for drool
A researcher has for the first time decoded a vibrational signal used by paper wasps.
By Susan Milius - Animals
When a chipmunk teases a rattlesnake
Several of the Northeast's least ferocious forest creatures taunt rattlesnakes.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Faithful voles have hidden infidelities
Prairie voles, used for studying the biological basis of monogamy, do form social bonds but they also have more out-of-pair sexual encounters than most biologists had expected.
By Susan Milius