Animals

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Animals

Hey, kids, it’s time for drool

A researcher has for the first time decoded a vibrational signal used by paper wasps.

Animals

When a chipmunk teases a rattlesnake

Several of the Northeast's least ferocious forest creatures taunt rattlesnakes.

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.

Animals

Coati version of spoiled brats

A biologist reports that ring-tailed coatis in Argentina have a kind of dominance structure never before documented in animals, with adolescents as a group outranking their moms and older half-sibs.

Animals

Getting the Gull: Baiting trick spreads among killer whales

A young male orca that spits up fish and then ambushes gulls attracted to the mess seems to have started a wave of cultural transmission.

Animals

Myth of the Bad-Nose Birds

Even though a lot of people still believe birds have no sense of smell, certain species rely on their noses for important jobs, such as finding food and shelter, and maybe even a mate.

Animals

Out of the Jungle: New lemurs found in Madagascar’s forests

Two new species of lemur have been discovered in Madagascar, the only home of these tiny and endangered primates.