Animals
- Animals
African cicadas warm up before singing
The first tests of temperature control in African cicadas have found species with a strategy that hogs energy but reduces the risk of predators.
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- Animals
Snake Pits: Viper heat sensors locate cool spots
Scientists who glued aluminum foil and plastic balls to live rattlesnakes say that snakes use their heat-sensing organs for more than hunting prey.
- Animals
Skin Scam: Parasite’s host provides an insect hideaway
A group of parasitic insects called Strepsiptera can hide inside their victim by making the host form a protective bag of its own skin.
- Animals
Ballistic defecation: Hiding, not hygiene
Evading predators may be the big factor driving certain caterpillars to shoot their waste pellets great distances.
- Animals
Toothy valves control crocodile hearts
The odd cog teeth of the crocodile heart may be the first cardiac valve known to control blood flow actively.
- Animals
Chicks open wide, ultraviolet mouths
The first analysis of what the mouths of begging birds look like in the ultraviolet spectrum reveals a dramatic display that birds can see but people can't.
- Animals
Slavemaker Ants: Misunderstood Farmers?
A test of what once seemed too obvious to test—whether ant colonies suffer after being raided by slavemaker ants—suggests that some of the raiding insects have been getting unfair press.
- Animals
Fishy Paternity Defense: Bluegill dads: Not mine? Why bother?
Bluegill sunfish have provided an unusually tidy test of the much-discussed prediction that animal dads' diligence in child care depends on how certain they are that the offspring really are their own.
- Animals
Costly Sexiness: All that flash puts birds at extra risk
Distinctive his-and-her plumages increase the chance that a bird species will go extinct locally, according to an unusually far-ranging study.
- Animals
Careful Coots: Do birds count their eggs before they hatch?
A coot may tally the eggs in her nest, a rare example of an animal counting in the wild, suggests a new study.
- Animals
Secret Signal: Fish allurement that predators don’t see
In a rare demonstration of secret messaging in animals, a swordtail fish uses ultraviolet courtship signals that are invisible to a predator.
