Animals
- 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.
By Susan Milius - 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.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Jay Watch: Birds get sneakier when spies lurk
A scrub jay storing food takes note of any other jay that watches it and later defends the hoard accordingly.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Monkey Business: Specimen of new species shakes up family tree
The new monkey species found in Tanzania last year may be unusual enough to need a new genus, the first one created for monkeys in nearly 80 years.
By Susan Milius - 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.
By Susan Milius - 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.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Bird hormone cuts noise distractions
A jolt of springtime hormones makes a female sparrow's brain more responsive to song.
By Susan Milius - 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.
By Susan Milius - 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.
By Susan Milius - 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.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Foodfree growth
Rattlesnakes undergo a hibernation-like state to survive long periods of famine, while continuing to grow longer.
By Janet Raloff - Animals
Hummingbirds can clock flower refills
Hummingbirds can keep track of when a particular flower has replenished its nectar and is worth visiting again.
By Susan Milius