Animals
- Life
Fluid dynamics may help drones capture a dolphin’s breath in midair
High-speed footage of dolphin spray reveals that droplets blast upward at speeds approaching 100 kilometers per hour.
- Life
Stick-toting puffins offer the first evidence of tool use in seabirds
Puffins join the ranks of tool-using birds after researchers document two birds using sticks to groom, a first for seabirds.
- Life
Ocean acidification could degrade sharks’ tough skin
Nine weeks of exposure to acidic seawater corroded the toothlike denticles that make up a puffadder shyshark’s skin, a small experiment found.
- Life
Koalas aren’t primates, but they move like monkeys in trees
With double thumbs and a monkey-sized body, an iconic marsupial climbs like a primate.
- Animals
A year of big numbers startled the world into talking about nature
One million species are at risk. Three billion birds have been lost. Plus surges in Amazon burning.
- Animals
Texas has its own rodeo ant queens
New species of rodeo ants, riding on the backs of bigger ants, turned up in Austin, Texas.
- Animals
A biochemist’s extraction of data from honey honors her beekeeper father
Tests of proteins in honey could one day be used to figure out what bees are pollinating and which pathogens they carry.
- Animals
Why some whales are giants and others are just big
Being big helps whales access more food. But how big a whale can get is influenced by whether it hunts for individual prey or filter-feeds.
- Paleontology
Licelike insects munched on dinosaur feathers around 100 million years ago
Fossils in amber push the origin of feather-feeding insects back over 50 million years, a study finds.
- Oceans
Stealthy robots with microphones could improve maps of ocean noise
Recordings from underwater microphones on stealthy robotic gliders could create a better “soundscape” of noises throughout the ocean, researchers say.
- Science & Society
‘A Polar Affair’ delves into a centurylong cover-up of penguin sex
In a new book, Lloyd Spencer Davis seeks to understand why an Antarctic explorer kept some of his penguin observations a secret.
- Life
An ancient critter may shed light on when mammals’ middle ear evolved
Rare skeletons are helping to pin down the evolution of mammals’ three middle ear bones, known popularly as the hammer, anvil and stirrup.
