Animals

  1. Animals

    No Early Birds: Migrators can’t catch advancing caterpillars

    Pied flycatcher numbers are dwindling in places where climate change has knocked the birds' migration out of sync with the food-supply peak on their breeding grounds.

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  2. Animals

    Just turn your back, Mom

    A female in a species of legless amphibians called caecilians nourishes her youngsters by letting them eat the skin off her back.

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  3. Animals

    Bird hormone cuts noise distractions

    A jolt of springtime hormones makes a female sparrow's brain more responsive to song.

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  4. Animals

    Grammar’s for the Birds: Human-only language rule? Tell starlings

    A grammatical pattern called recursion, once proposed as unique to human language, turns out to fall within the learning abilities of starlings.

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  5. Animals

    Worm can crawl out of predators

    A parasitic worm can wriggle out through a predator's gills or mouth if the predator eats the worm's insect host. With video.

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  6. Animals

    Into Hot Water: Lab test shows that worms seek heat

    Worms from deep-sea vents prefer water at temperatures near the upper limit of what animals are known to survive.

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  7. Animals

    Foodfree growth

    Rattlesnakes undergo a hibernation-like state to survive long periods of famine, while continuing to grow longer.

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  8. Animals

    Hummingbirds can clock flower refills

    Hummingbirds can keep track of when a particular flower has replenished its nectar and is worth visiting again.

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  9. Animals

    Sharpshooter threatens Tahiti by inedibility

    A North American insect is menacing Tahitian ecosystems by getting itself killed and proving surprisingly toxic to its predators.

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  10. Animals

    Wary male spiders woo lifelessly

    When trying to court a cannibalistic female spider, males of a certain species play dead.

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  11. Animals

    Hairy crab lounges deep in the Pacific

    A newly discovered deep-sea creature has the body of a crab, but with long, fluffy, blonde hair covering its legs.

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  12. Animals

    That’s One Weird Tooth

    The narwhal's distinctive spiral tusk has structures that could make it phenomenally sensitive, raising new questions about its functions.

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