Animals
- Environment
This moth may outsmart smog by learning to like pollution-altered aromas
In the lab, scientists taught tobacco hawkmoths that a scent changed by ozone is from a favorite flower.
- Animals
This hummingbird survives cold nights by nearly freezing itself solid
To survive cold Andean nights, the black metaltail saves energy by cooling itself to record-low temperatures, entering a state of suspended animation.
- Animals
Sea butterflies’ shells determine how the snails swim
New aquarium videos show that sea butterflies of various shapes and sizes flutter through water differently.
- Animals
Flamboyant cuttlefish save their bright patterns for flirting, fighting and fleeing
A new field study of flamboyant cuttlefish shows they don’t always live up to their reputation.
- Animals
Female hyenas kill off cubs in their own clans
Along with starvation and mauling by lions, infanticide leads as a cause of hyena cub death. Such killings may serve to enforce the social order.
- Animals
Genetically modified mosquitoes have been OK’d for a first U.S. test flight
After a decade of heated debate, free-flying swarms aimed at shrinking dengue-carrying mosquito populations gets a nod for 2021 in the Florida Keys.
- Archaeology
X-rays reveal what ancient animal mummies keep under wraps
A new method of 3-D scanning mummified animals reveals life and death details for a snake, a bird and a cat.
- Animals
Culling dingoes with poison may be making them bigger
Meat laced with toxic powder has been used for decades to kill dingoes. Now, dingoes in baited areas are changing: They’re getting bigger.
- Life
Climate change, not hunters, may have killed off woolly rhinos
Ancient DNA indicates that numbers of woolly rhinos held steady long after people arrived on the scene.
- Life
A single molecule may entice normally solitary locusts to form massive swarms
Scientists pinpoint a compound emitted by locusts that could inform new ways of controlling the pests.
- Health & Medicine
How two coronavirus drugs for cats might help humans fight COVID-19
Scientists are exploring if drugs for a disease caused by a coronavirus that infects only cats might help also people infected with the coronavirus.
- Animals
How tuatara live so long and can withstand cool weather
Tuatara may look like your average lizard, but they’re not. Now, researchers have deciphered the rare reptiles’ genome, or genetic instruction book.
