Animals
- Animals
Tiger sharks feast on migratory birds that fall out of the sky
Terrestrial birds that fall from the sky during their migration across the Gulf of Mexico can end up in the bellies of tiger sharks.
- Animals
Bad moods could be contagious among ravens
Ravens may pick up and share their compatriots’ negativity, a study on the social intelligence of these animals suggests.
- Animals
Vaccines may help bats fight white nose syndrome
Researchers are developing an oral vaccine that helps little brown bats survive the fungal disease white nose syndrome.
- Animals
Some dog breeds may have trouble breathing because of a mutated gene
Norwich terriers don’t have flat snouts, but can suffer the same wheezing as bulldogs. It turns out that a gene mutation tied to swelling could be to blame.
- Life
Bloodthirsty bedbugs have feasted on prey for 100 million years
Research sheds light on the evolutionary history of the bloodsucking bedbugs. The first species evolved at least as early as the Cretaceous, scientists say.
- Animals
Peacock spiders’ superblack spots reflect just 0.5 percent of light
By manipulating light with tiny structures, patches on peacock spiders appear superblack, helping accentuate the arachnids’ bright colors.
- Genetics
Tweaking one gene with CRISPR switched the way a snail shell spirals
The first gene-edited snails confirm which gene is responsible for the direction of the shell’s spiral.
- Animals
Deep-sea fishes’ eye chemistry might let them see colors in near darkness
An unexpected abundance of proteins for catching dim light evolved independently in three groups of weird deep-sea fishes.
- Earth
A belly full of wriggling worms makes wood beetles better recyclers
Common beetles that eat rotten logs chew up more wood when filled with a roundworm larvae, releasing nutrients more quickly back to the forest floor.
- Ecosystems
War wrecked an African ecosystem. Ecologists are trying to restore it
Bringing back big predators to Gorongosa, once a wildlife paradise in Mozambique, is just one piece of the puzzle in undoing the damage there.
- Animals
These award-winning photographs capture rarely seen wildlife and landscapes
Winners of the California Academy of Sciences’ annual photo contest dove deep underwater and hiked to great heights to create these striking images.
- Animals
Pandas’ share of protein calories from bamboo rivals wolves’ from meat
The panda gut digests protein in bamboo so well that the animal’s nutritional profile for calories resembles a wolf’s.
