Animals
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AnimalsScary Singing: Precise birds signal, ‘Don’t mess with us’
A pair of magpie-larks can advertise their toughness by the precision of the duets they sing.
By Susan Milius -
AnimalsPothole Pals: Ants pave roads for fellow raiders
By throwing their bodies into tiny potholes on rough trails, army ants enable their comrade to race over them, improving the colony's overall foraging success.
By Susan Milius -
AnimalsVirgin Birth: Shark has daughter without a dad
DNA testing of two sharks confirms an instance of reproduction without mating, adding a fifth major vertebrate lineage to those known for occasional virgin births.
By Susan Milius -
AnimalsLow Life: Cold, polar ocean looks surprisingly rich
The first survey of life in deep waters around Antarctica has turned up hundreds of new species and a lot more variety than explorers had expected.
By Susan Milius -
AnimalsFace it: Termites are roaches
Termites are just cockroaches with a fancy social life.
By Susan Milius -
AnimalsSex—perhaps a good idea after all
A family of mites may be the first animal lineage shown to have abandoned sexual reproduction and then reevolved it millions of years later.
By Susan Milius -
AnimalsEgg Shell Game
Birds apparently cheat chance when it comes to laying eggs that contain sons or daughters.
By Susan Milius -
AnimalsSpider blood fluoresces
Among spiders, fluorescence under ultraviolet light seems to be a widespread trait.
By Susan Milius -
AnimalsLiving Fossil: DNA puts rodent in family that’s not extinct after all
The Laotian rock rat, which is very much alive, belongs to a rodent family that supposedly vanished 11 million years ago.
By Susan Milius -
AnimalsKiller mice hit seabird chicks
A surveillance video shows a worrisome sight: house mice nibbling to death rare seabird chicks on a remote island breeding colony.
By Susan Milius -
AnimalsToo Few Jaws: Shark declines let rays overgraze scallops
A shortage of big sharks on the U.S. East Coast is letting their prey flourish, and that prey is going hog wild, demolishing bay scallop populations.
By Susan Milius -
AnimalsHoney, I Ate the Kids
Some of the most devoted parents in the animal kingdom routinely devour some of their own children.
By Susan Milius