Animals

  1. Neuroscience

    Both fish and humans have REM-like sleep

    Sleeping zebrafish have brain and body activity similar to snoozing mammals, suggesting that sleep evolved at least 450 million years ago.

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  2. Animals

    Ground beetle genitals have the genetic ability to get strange. They don’t

    A new look at the genetics of sex organs finds underpinnings of conflicts over genital size.

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  3. Ecosystems

    Moonlight shapes how some animals move, grow and even sing

    The moon’s light influences lion prey behavior, dung beetle navigation, fish growth, mass migrations and birdsong.

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  4. Animals

    Some ancient crocodiles may have chomped on plants instead of meat

    Fossil teeth of extinct crocodyliforms suggest that some ate plants and that herbivory evolved at least three times in crocs of the Mesozoic Era.

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  5. Archaeology

    Peru’s famous Nazca Lines may include drawings of exotic birds

    Pre-Inca people depicted winged fliers from far away in landscape art.

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  6. Life

    These fungi drug cicadas with psilocybin or amphetamine to make them mate nonstop

    Massospora fungi use a compound found in magic mushrooms or an amphetamine to drive infected cicadas to mate and mate and mate.

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  7. Archaeology

    Capuchin monkeys’ stone-tool use has evolved over 3,000 years

    A Brazilian archaeological site reveals capuchins’ long history of practical alterations to pounding implements, researchers say.

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  8. Animals

    Parasites ruin some finches’ songs by chewing through the birds’ beaks

    Parasitic fly larvae damage the beaks of Galápagos finches, changing their mating songs and possibly causing females to pick males of a different species.

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  9. Animals

    U.S. honeybees had the worst winter die-off in more than a decade

    Colonies suffered from parasitic, disease-spreading Varroa mites. Floods and fire didn’t help.

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  10. Genetics

    DNA confirms a weird Greenland whale was a narwhal-beluga hybrid

    DNA analysis of a skull indicates that the animal had a narwhal mother and beluga father.

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  11. Paleontology

    Hyenas roamed the Arctic during the last ice age

    Two teeth confirm the idea that hyenas crossed the Bering land bridge into North America, a study finds.

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  12. Astronomy

    Readers boggled by black hole behemoth

    Readers had questions about the first image of a black hole and a chytrid fungus.

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