Animals

Neuroscience

Rats can bop their heads to the beat

Rats’ rhythmic response to human music doesn’t mean they like to dance, but it may shed light on how brains evolved to perceive rhythm.

Animals

Long considered loners, many marsupials may have complex social lives

Some marsupials may be more sociable than previously thought, opening the door to a possible deep legacy of social organization systems in mammals

Animals

These devices use an electric field to scare sharks from fishing hooks

SharkGuard gadgets work by harnessing sharks’ ability to detect electric fields. That could save the animals’ lives, a study suggests.

Ecosystems

Tiger sharks helped discover the world’s largest seagrass prairie

Instrument-equipped sharks went where divers couldn’t to survey the Bahama Banks seagrass ecosystem.

Animals

A clam presumed extinct for 40,000 years has been found alive

The reappearance of living Cymatioa cooki clams places it among a group of back-from-the-dead creatures dubbed the Lazarus taxa.

Animals

Some harlequin frogs — presumed extinct — have been rediscovered

Colorful harlequin frogs were among the hardest hit amphibians during a fungal pandemic. Some species are now making a comeback.

Animals

Deer-vehicle collisions spike when daylight saving time ends

In the week after much of the United States turns the clock back, scientists found a 16 percent increase in crashes between vehicles and deer.

Animals

Here’s how polar bears might get traction on snow

Microstructures on the Arctic animals’ paws might offer extra friction that keeps them from slipping on snow, a new study reports.

Animals

Bizarre aye-aye primates take nose picking to the extreme

A nose-picking aye-aye’s spindly middle finger probably reaches all the way to the back of the throat, CT scans suggest.

Animals

Insect swarms might generate as much electric charge as storm clouds

Honeybees flying over a sensor measuring atmospheric voltage sparked a look into how insect-induced static electricity might affect the atmosphere.

Animals

Mountain lions pushed out by wildfires take more risks

A study tracking mountain lions showed that after an intense burn, the big cats crossed roads more often, raising the risk of becoming roadkill.

Animals

Honeybees order numbers from left to right, a study claims

In experiments, bees tend to go to smaller numbers on the left, larger ones on the right. But the idea of a mental number line in animals has critics.