Animals
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Animals
Jungle Genes: First bird genome is decoded
Researchers have unveiled a draft of the first bird genome to be sequenced, a vintage chicken.
By Susan Milius -
Animals
Fox Selection: Bottleneck survivors show surprising variety
Foxes native to a California island—famous for the least genetic diversity ever reported in a sexually reproducing animal—have some variation after all.
By Susan Milius -
Animals
Feral breed lacks domestic dogs’ skill
Wild dogs that haven't lived with people for 5,000 years share little of the capacity of their domesticated cousins for interpreting human gestures.
By Ben Harder -
Animals
Flesh Eaters: Bees that strip carrion also take wasp young
A South American bee that ignores flowers and collects carrion from carcasses has an unexpected taste for live, abandoned wasp young.
By Susan Milius -
Animals
How blind mole rats find their way home
The blind mole rat is the first animal discovered to navigate by combining dead reckoning with a magnetic compass.
By Susan Milius -
Animals
Where’d I Put That?
Birds that hide and recover thousands of separate caches of seeds have become a model for investigating how animals' minds work.
By Susan Milius -
Animals
Fish in the dark still size up mates
Female cave fish still have their ancestral preference for a large male, even though it's too dark to see him.
By Susan Milius -
Animals
Wasps drive frog eggs to (escape) hatch
A tree frog's eggs can match their response to the degree of danger: all-out mass action for snakes but less activity for one wasp.
By Susan Milius -
Animals
Vanishing Vultures: Bird deaths linked to vet-drug residues
The recent puzzling crash in vulture populations in Pakistan comes not from some new disease but from exposure to veterinary drug residues in livestock carcasses.
By Susan Milius -
Animals
Beetle fights bass in mouthwash duel
A whirligig beetle duels with a hungry fish by dribbling out a repulsive chemical while the fish tries to rinse it off.
By Susan Milius -
Animals
Cheap Taste? Bowerbirds go for bargain decor
When male spotted bowerbirds collect sticks and other doodads to wow females, they don't search for the rare showpiece but go for the cheap trinket.
By Susan Milius